ceasefire Archives - The Automatic Earth

The reason ID is banned in California (and New York) elections is to enable large-scale fraud.

When you combine no ID and mail-in voting, fraud is de facto legalized. https://t.co/mVskXMLcNi
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 7, 2026

Both sides paused overnight last night.

• Netanyahu Confirms Israel ‘Holding Fire…For Now’ (ZH)

Israel Halts Iran Attacks ‘For Now’
“After Iran attacked Israel, I instructed the IDF to strike military and economic targets throughout Iran,” Netanyahu said in a fresh Monday statement. “For now, the fire has been contained, because after we struck the terrorist regime in Tehran, it ceased attacking us. If the terrorist regime in Iran makes the mistake of attacking us again, we will respond with force.” The key lines from Netanyahu: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday that Israel had stopped its attacks on both Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon, after the Iranian military announced it was halting operations.

In a brief statement Monday, Netanyahu said “Iran and Hezbollah are weaker than ever, and we are stronger than ever – but our struggle with them is not over yet.” Having bombarded both adversaries, he added, “right now, the fire has been halted.” Iran’s military headquarters responds: “Should aggression and hostile actions continue—including in southern Lebanon—far more severe and forceful measures than before will follow,” it said, according to Iranian state media. And in a clear sign of the exchange of strikes having ceased: Iran says flight restrictions have been lifted with airspace returning to normal conditions: state media
Israel Pauses Iran Strikes At Trump’s Request
Israel’s N12 News is reporting that Israel is halting strike on Iran at President Trump’s request. There are widespread initial reports that Israeli forces are indeed pausing the attacks, which persisted overnight through Monday morning, and included attack on a major petrochemical complex. However, the latest Israeli messaging has included a warning on the Lebanon front, per Bloomberg: Senior Israeli official says Israel is stopping strikes in Iran at Donald Trump’s request, but confirms operations in southern Lebanon will continue at full intensity in the coming days. The official also warns that Dahieh in Beirut could be targeted if attacks on Israeli settlements and civilians continue.
There are also emerging reports (via CBS) that Trump did not order any US defensive efforts to protect Israel from the latest Iranian ballistic missile attacks – which were the first against Israel since the early April ceasefire. Meanwhile, in a fresh message from Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei, Iran says “Without a doubt … the actions of the Zionist regime in the region cannot be separated from U.S. policies.” Tehran is rejecting the attempts of the Trump administration to distance the US from Israeli actions: “No one believes that the Zionist regime would carry out any action without prior coordination and cooperation with the United States,” Baqaei added.
Trump: ‘Stop Shooting’
A big question remains is if this flare-up in major fighting, which has featured the first direct attacks between Iran and Israel since the April ceasefire took effect, will be short-lived or whether it will endure and escalate into sustained war. So far the situation is showing signs it could be short-lived, after early Monday morning President Trump urged Israel and Iran to immediately stop “shooting” in a Truth Social post. He also expressed that this musts be done “quickly” and is still talking up a “final” peace deal – which at this moment looks as distant as ever. Iran is signaling it is ready to get back to ceasefire, but Israel is again threatening the Beirut suburbs.

“..that missile fire toward Israel was most likely carried out under pre-established military protocols, without coordination with the office of Supreme Leader.”

• Score Two More Big Wins for Israel Vs. Iran… Maybe (Stephen Green)

It started so simply, as these things do, with a barrage of Iran’s patented Totally Ceasefire Missiles™ that Israel knocked out of the sky. It ended, if that’s the right word, with Israeli airstrikes taking out Iran’s top two leaders. That’s a big win, even if one of them was already mostly dead. The fun began on Sunday, when “Iran launched missiles into Israel, not just in the north by the Galilee, but all the way down to Caesarea,” as reported by PJ Media’s own Rabbi Michael Barclay. In all, Tehran launched a total of about 30 missiles in several waves. They were all either shot down by IDF antimissile systems like Iron Dome, or caused no notable damage.

Israel responded with two air attacks that PJ Media’s own Catherine Salgado reported on at Zero Dark Thirty last night, but only now are we learning just how effective those strikes really were. Several outlets report today that Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander Ahmad Vahidi is among those dead in yesterday’s Israeli Air Force (IAF) strikes.Vahidi’s death isn’t confirmed yet, but fingers crossed. He’s only been IRGC chief since March 1, when his predecessor was taken out in similar fashion.
Considered a hardliner — which is a nice way of saying, “lying genocidal thug” — reports of Vahidi’s death please me very much. I keep trying to get the message through to the White House that if the current Iranian leadership is too hardline to negotiate in good faith, then keep killing them until more pliable leadership emerges. And maybe bomb them, too, just to be sure. Thankfully, the IAF was kind enough to take the next step for us.
Just as pleasing, if perhaps not quite as consequential, is the reported death of the regime’s so-called Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei — son and heir of the previous Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei. The elder Khamenei, you’ll recall with no small measure of schadenfreude, was killed in a similar IAF strike in the opening hours of Operation Epic Fury. The younger Khamenei — long rumored to be homosexual and also believed to have been severely wounded during the air campaign — is (or was) at best a figurehead. He hasn’t been seen or heard in public since before Ali’s death, lending credence to the reports that he is (or was) barely alive. Or living it up on Fire Island. Accounts differ.
At the very least, Israel Hayom reported today that their opposition source believes “that missile fire toward Israel was most likely carried out under pre-established military protocols, without coordination with the office of Supreme Leader.” Notice the source indicated Khamenei’s office, not the man himself. “Israel and Iran… are looking to do an immediate CEASEFIRE! Final negotiations on ‘Peace’ are proceeding, subject to ignorance or stupidity getting in its way,” President Donald Trump posted to Truth Social in response to Sunday’s exchange of fires. But I’m inclined to agree with PJ’s Rick Moran, when he wrote on Sunday that “The war has shattered the Iranian leadership structure, making an agreement next to impossible.” And that was before Khamenei and Vahidi hopefully woke up this morning in Hell.

“The Protocols of the Elders of Zion “

• Trump’s Secret Weapon Against Iran: The Power of Antisemitism! (Scott Pinsker)

Sometimes, antisemitism is hilarious. Don’t believe me? Here’s a historic example: “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was a 1902 Russian hoax that claimed to document a late-19th century meeting of Jewish leaders, where those evil, untrustworthy Jews discussed their secret plans for world domination. Some consider it “the most influential work of antisemitism ever written.” Throughout vast swathes of Nazi Germany, it was mandatory reading for schoolchildren. In Russia and Western Europe, it was a runaway best-seller. It even gained a following in the United States, where it was republished and serialized 91 times in Henry Ford’s newspaper, The Dearborn Independent. (Ford later published the series in book form as The International Jew: The World’s Foremost Problem.)

Sadly, in countries shaped by Judeo-Christian traditions, this hoax greatly inflamed tensions between Jews and Christians. Hitler cited it to justify the Nazi’s institutional antisemitism — which, of course, led directly to the Holocaust. From the United States Holocaust Museum: “Hitler referred to the Protocols in some of his earliest political speeches in the 1920s. He also wrote about the book in his autobiography Mein Kampf (1925). Hitler claimed that the Protocols “reveal the nature and activity of Jewish people and expose…their ultimate final aims.” He also predicted that what he called the “Jewish menace” would be “broken” after the Protocols became more widely known.”
Sounds pretty bleak for the Jews. You could draw a straight line between its publishing, the rise of antisemitism, and the genocidal horror of the Holocaust. Yet there was one country that got its hands on The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and reached the exact opposite conclusion: “Whoa! You mean there’s a secret group of Jews who control the entire world? And they magically make money wherever they go? HOW AWESOME! Let’s party with those guys!” And that country was… Japan.
Because, after all, Judeo-Christian traditions didn’t shape Japan’s history, culture, and values. So instead of interpreting The Protocols through the lens of European history, the Jewish diaspora, and its (many) antisemitic dog whistles, Japanese readers accepted everything at face value: Somehow, these magical, mysterious Jews figured out how to become global puppet-masters. They controlled the media, the banks, foreign governments, international trade — and more! Apparently, nobody can stop them. Not even the mighty governments of Europe! So imagine what a wonderful ally they’d be to imperial Japan!
It led to a Japanese program called the Fugu Plan to import up to 600,000 Jews. Japan even planned a PR mission to the United States, where Japanese officials would show American rabbis the similarities (?) between Judaism and Shintoism and then invite them to visit Japan. From All That’s Interesting: From the moment it was conceived, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was viciously anti-Semitic, packed with false charges of a Jewish conspiracy to conquer the world. But for a time, a powerful faction in Japanese military and political circles came to believe that this infamous piece of hateful propaganda was completely accurate.
To them, the book — purportedly notes from a meeting of a Jewish shadow government — was not only true, but it was an indication that, rather than attack the Jews, they should befriend them and use them to their own advantage. The result was later called the Fugu Plan, an effort to encourage Jewish immigration to Japanese territory before and during World War II in order to bolster the country’s economic prosperity. Because of imperial Japan’s wartime partnership with Nazi Germany, it eventually abandoned the Fugu Plan. (As you could imagine, Der Führer wasn’t such a big fan.) But it deserves to be remembered, for it illustrates an undeniable truth: People stupid enough to buy into antisemitic conspiracy theories aren’t smart enough to differentiate between facts and fiction.
This brings us to President Donald Trump, Iran, and the never-ending negotiations to bring peace to the Middle East. Spoiler alert: It ain’t been going so swimmingly.And the American people are quickly losing confidence that a peace deal is even reachable. That’s because President Trump has been hinting since March 30 that a great deal was “probably” right around the corner. On May 23, a deal was “largely negotiated.” Then, as recently as May 29, he told us he was making the “final determination” on signing an agreement. Yet it’s now June 8, and not only is there no peace deal, but over the weekend, Iran launched a barrage of missiles at Israeli civilian targets.
Politicians pay a political price when they overpromise and underdeliver. President Trump is no exception: The hawks are mad because Iran is still standing (and giving America the finger); the doves are mad because we went to war; Joe Six-Pack is mad because gas prices are too damn high. Everyone is unhappy! We’ve gone from demanding Iran’s “unconditional surrender” to endless negotiations that aren’t going anywhere. The whole thing is a mess.
As we discussed last week, it certainly seems that stringing U.S. diplomats along — promising great things behind closed doors, agreeing to 99% of demands, but perpetually keeping the final 1% from ever reaching a conclusion — is now Iran’s strategy. From the mullah’s point of view, it’s their best available option because: With a ceasefire already in place (at least in name), the U.S.-Israeli bombing campaign has stopped. No more mullahs have been killed. As long as the ceasefire continues, Iran has a free hand to rebuild its military — which it seems to be doing. By linking a peace deal to Hezbollah’s survival, Iran has gotten President Trump to order Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu to stop attacking its terrorist proxies in Lebanon. But once a peace deal is signed, Iran would lose that leverage.

For years, they were always neglecting the Kennedy Center. No more. Trump made his point. He threatened to put his name on it.

The Anti-Weaponization Fund is not worked out, just a try-out. Everybody knows how they will react. More soon.

• Trump Suffers Rare Court Setbacks Amid Broader Record of Legal Success (JTN)

The first recent loss came on May 29, when U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper ordered that Trump’s name be stripped from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. President Donald Trump has enjoyed considerable success in the courts during his second term. Federal judges and the Supreme Court have allowed key parts of his immigration agenda to proceed, upheld major personnel actions across the executive branch and endorsed an expansive view of presidential authority in several high-profile disputes. But over the past two weeks, the administration suffered two notable legal setbacks: one involving the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and another concerning a controversial compensation fund created through a settlement with the Internal Revenue Service.

Kennedy Center Ruling Reverses Renaming Effort
The first loss came on May 29, when U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper ordered that Trump’s name be stripped from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. D.C. Cooper, an Obama appointee, also temporarily blocked the administration’s plan to shut the landmark Washington, D.C. venue for two years of renovations, which had been scheduled to begin on July 6.The backstory starts in December 2025, when a board stacked with Trump’s handpicked allies voted to rebrand the arts complex as the “Trump-Kennedy Center,” and signage bearing the new name went up on the building. Ticket sales declined sharply in the months that followed, and artists began canceling performances in protest. In February 2026, Trump announced the center would be closed for a sweeping overhaul.
Rep. Joyce Beatty, an Ohio Democrat who had been a member of the center’s board before her voting rights were stripped, filed suit to stop both moves. Judge Cooper’s ruling was sweeping and pointed. In a 94-page opinion issued on what happened to be President Kennedy’s birthday, he wrote that “the Kennedy Center’s organic statute makes crystal clear that the Center is to be named for President Kennedy, and it cannot bear any other formal name or public memorial based on the Board’s unilateral say-so. Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name, and only Congress can change it.”
On the closure question, Cooper found that the board had not properly weighed its legal obligations to the institution before voting to shutter it, though he left open the possibility that a future board vote could still authorize renovations. Trump reacted with characteristic directness. In a post on Truth Social, he blasted Cooper and suggested Congress should take the whole institution back: “We are going to be working with Congress to transfer this failing Institution back to them so they can make a determination as to what to do with it.”
Court Halts Anti-Weaponization Fund
A Justice Department spokesperson said in the statement that the agency “will continue to defend President Trump’s ability to restore the Center to its former glory as the finest performing arts center in the country – if not the world.” For now, Trump’s name is coming off the building. The second setback involved a program that drew criticism from an unusual source: members of Trump’s own party. In mid-May, the Justice Department announced the creation of the “Anti-Weaponization Fund,” a nearly $1.8 billion pool of taxpayer money intended to compensate individuals who claimed they had been unfairly targeted or persecuted by previous administrations.
The fund was established not by Congress, but through a settlement agreement in a lawsuit Trump himself had filed against the IRS over the leak of his tax returns. Under the settlement’s terms, Trump and his family received a formal apology but no cash. The money in the new fund, however, would be available to a broad universe of other claimants. Critics immediately pointed out that this project was an extraordinary arrangement: a fund of public money, created without congressional authorization, through a lawsuit in which the president was simultaneously the plaintiff and the head of the executive branch overseeing the defendant agency.
A group of 35 former federal judges—appointed by Democratic and Republican presidents—filed a motion arguing that the entire legal vehicle was, in their words, “a fraud on the court.” On May 29, the same day as the Kennedy Center ruling, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema, in the Eastern District of Virginia, issued a temporary order halting all operations of the fund while she considered its legality. Challengers had argued that money could flow out the door and become impossible to recover before the court could act, and the judge agreed that the risk was serious enough to require a pause.
The political fallout was fast. Democrats called the fund a giveaway to Trump allies. Crucially, even some Republicans in Congress balked, and reports emerged that the fund was throwing the president’s legislative agenda into turmoil. By June 1, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche made it official: the Anti-Weaponization Fund was dead. DOJ’s said in a statement on X that it “disagrees strongly” with Brinkema’s ruling but would comply. Trump later told ABC News he accepted the outcome, saying: “We are subject to the courts. At this moment, that’s what it is.”

Connected to TDS.

• On the Kavanaugh Anniversary, Democratic Leaders Swap Me Too for Maine (Turley)

“It’s clear the fix is in.” Those words from Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). came with her vote against confirming Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. Warren was outraged that her fellow senators refused to believe a woman who came forward with a decades-old allegation against Kavanaugh that lacked any corroboration. It now appears that Kavanaugh’s former accusers are making the case that he was treated unjustly at their hands. At least they are now willing to swap “Me Too” for Maine. Warren’s words were part of a mantra from Democratic members that either you believe women about sexual harassment and assault, or you are enabling abusers.

It was almost exactly eight years ago, in July 2018, that President Trump nominated Kavanaugh to fill the seat of retiring Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy. Kavanaugh, who was at first a very uncontroversial nominee, suddenly became the target of a well-financed, well-orchestrated campaign that would continue to resonate in that fall’s election campaigns. At the time, your failure to accept the word of Christine Blasey Ford that Kavanaugh had assaulted her in high school was just proof that you and the system were sexist.
Long after the Senate confirmed Kavanaugh, the left continued to claim that his presence on the Supreme Court “rests on a mountain of misogyny.” In Ms. Magazine, actress Kathleen Turner reminded people that not believing women was furthering misogyny: “Survivors who come forward break the rules of silence a sexist society demands, and society expects them to pay a price.” If you recall, the lack of evidence led to the Senate Judiciary Committee combing through Kavanaugh’s personal calendars. Denials that such a thing had ever happened, coming from childhood friends, were treated as still more evidence of sexism.
There was Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), who grilled Kavanaugh about using the term “boofing” (apparently referring to passing gas) with a high school friend as if it were a confession to a rape. His inquisitorial barrage was something straight out of the McCarthy period. Whitehouse expressed disgust that some would not take Ford’s word for it, declaring, “Today I stand with women who are brave enough to come forward with their stories of abuse and mistreatment. They deserve to be heard and credible allegations must be investigated. We must believe survivors, not bully them.”
Whitehouse is now a major donor and supporter of Graham Platner, the leading Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate from Maine. He dismisses the New York Times accounts from women of Platner’s physically and mentally abusive behavior. Instead of believing these women, he reportedly attacked Lyndsey Fifield, who “bravely” came forward publicly with her story at the request of Times reporters. Whitehouse is quoted as saying that he was “unimpressed” by the allegations and the multiple women coming forward “seems like a lot of nothing.” He suggested that he is not prepared to believe a woman if she is a conservative. “I mean, the only one who had anything to say that seemed ‘unsettling’ was a woman who works for right-wing political operations,” he said.
That attack was picked up by others like writer Krystal Ball. She too had denounced those who did not believe Ford in the Kavanaugh controversy. In the past, she claimed at that time, “women just didn’t come forward. They knew they wouldn’t be believed. ”Now she cannot imagine why anyone would believe these women, particularly Fifield. “NYT published uncorroborated accusations against [Platner] of ‘unsettling’ and ‘toxic’ behavior that came from a Heritage staffer who previously worked for a conservative org that backs Collins,” she posted online.
Fifield, after sharing stories with the Times of Platner’s alleged abusive behavior, went public to complain that the newspaper had failed to include the corroboration she had provided. She posted that the paper not only failed to include that she has supported Democrats for office, but also asked, “Why does it say ‘nobody could corroborate’ when I offered them sources that COULD corroborate?”
She added, “The Times also failed to include any mention that I DID confide in multiple friends through the years that Graham had been abusive — long before he was running for office. Those friends confirm they told the Times so.” If true, that is a strikingly different approach from the one taken by the media in reporting on the Kavanaugh allegations.

“Love that the crack heads on Skid Row are up on the issues, know the candidates, and are able to Make Their Voices Heard in between hits of meth.” —Peachy Keenan on X

“.., transformed itself in a decade or so into an out-and-out racketeering operation, that is, to a criminal enterprise dedicated to the misappropriation of taxpayer money among its rank and file, many of whom are not citizens.”

• The Jungle Drums Speak! (James Howard Kunstler)

Whaddaya know? Looks like the charismatic Nithya Raman has overtaken maverick candidate Spencer Pratt in the Los Angeles mayoral “jungle” primary because. . . jungle reasons. That is, the denizens of LA’s vast homeless encampments — once known as “hobo jungles” — apparently voted overwhelmingly by mail for the Harvard-credentialed champion of street-junkies in the Silver Lake, Echo Park, Los Feliz, Atwater, and Hollywood neighborhoods (SELAH) she represents on the LA City Council.

So, it will be a November runoff between the super-duper “progressive” incumbent Karen Bass, and merely super-progressive Ms. Ramen. Better reserve your U-Haul trailer ASAP, as the City of Angels completes its transformation to the City of Zombies. And no complaining, please. This is what you voted for.
By the way, what does “progressive” actually mean these days? Progress towards. . . what? The culminating disintegration of a civil polity? The concerted failure to govern a large, urban organism? Unconditional surrender to the forces of entropy? One might suspect a soupçon of racial animus in the mix, too, something of a middle-finger to this thing called white supremacy we hear so much about. It must be rooted out at all costs, including the cost of a place that a productive population once loved — the very people renting all those U-Hauls, dispersing out into the USA gloaming.
Of course, this “progressive” Democratic Party has transformed itself in a decade or so into an out-and-out racketeering operation, that is, to a criminal enterprise dedicated to the misappropriation of taxpayer money among its rank and file, many of whom are not citizens. The model is not unlike more primitive early versions, such as Boss Tweed’s ring in 19th century New York, or the gang under mayor James Curley, the “Rascal King” of Boston. The system was known as “patronage.” Voters were the party’s patrons, and the patrons were on the payroll. Some had actual party jobs. Some just got free stuff in exchange for their votes. They called it a “machine” because its operations became automatic, self-fulfilling.
There was one big difference, though: these earlier Democratic Party grifters, for all their moneygrubbing shenanigans, were American patriots. They celebrated a country so ostentatiously “free,” so fervently dedicated to upward mobility, that it made room for their garish political corruption. The Democratic machine of Los Angeles today is quite the opposite: It’s a faction that loathes and detests the American system and seeks sedulously to destroy it, even while grabbing as much loot as it can in the process.
Mayor Karen Bass was trained for that mission in Cuba. Beginning at age 19, in 1973, Ms. Bass made eight trips there with the Venceremos Brigade (founded in 1969 by the Lefty-left SDS) to “show solidarity with the Cuban revolution,” which, you might remember, was a straight-up communist revolution. One might infer, then, that Mayor Bass is a straight-up communist, with ambitions to destroy the capitalist city of Los Angeles, so as to replace it with a communist utopia — where all production (if there is any) is owned and controlled by the government, which then dispenses the fruits-of-production to the people, according to their needs, as officers of the government see fit.

“US officials have prepared proposals to bypass Britain and negotiate directly for control of Diego Garcia ..”

• Trump Plans To Buy Chagos Islands, Home To Diego Garcia Military Base (ZH)

The White House is actively considering a plan to purchase the Chagos Islands, potentially undermining the UK’s agreement to transfer sovereignty of the strategically vital territory to Mauritius, according to reports. US officials have prepared proposals to bypass Britain and negotiate directly for control of Diego Garcia, the key Indian Ocean atoll that hosts a major joint US-UK military base. The idea forms part of broader options being developed by the Trump administration as alternatives to Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s plan to cede the islands to Mauritius, which has close ties to China and Iran.

Strategic Importance
Diego Garcia’s location makes it critical for long-range operations. It enables round-the-clock bomber missions, including potential strikes on Iran using B-2 Spirit stealth bombers, and places key areas within striking range. Amid ongoing conflicts involving Iran and China’s expanding naval presence, US and UK officials stress the need to maintain a robust chain of global military bases.

Senior Trump administration officials worry that transferring control to Mauritius could expose the base to espionage or interference. One former adviser to UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy, Ben Judah, told the Telegraph that the base has “super secret, super sensitive facilities” that are vital to British and allied capabilities, noting they would be difficult to replicate elsewhere.
Background on the UK-Mauritius Deal
The UK had agreed to hand sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius while securing a long-term lease for the military base, reportedly involving around £35 billion ($46.7 billion) over 99 years. However, the deal requires US consent due to longstanding agreements governing the base, and Britain has since placed it on hold. President Trump initially appeared open to the arrangement but later strongly opposed it, particularly after the UK reportedly declined to allow strikes on Iran from Diego Garcia in the early stages of the Iran war. He publicly denounced the deal as “great stupidity” and criticized Starmer for weakening the special relationship, calling him “no Winston Churchill.”
US Position and Ongoing Talks
A US official told Reuters: “President Trump has been consistent in his position that the United Kingdom should not give away the British Indian Ocean Territory, which includes our joint U.S.-UK military facility on the Diego Garcia atoll. Diego Garcia’s strategic location in the Indian Ocean makes it a vital and indispensable military installation of significant importance to the national security of the United States.” The US continues regular discussions with Britain to preserve the base’s viability.
Purchasing the islands outright would likely involve waiting for the UK-Mauritius sovereignty transfer before negotiating with Mauritius. No specific price has been discussed, according to sources. In February, Trump said that he had retained the right to “militarily secure” the Diego Garcia air base after calling the UK’s decision an “act of total weakness.” A UK government spokesperson defended the original agreement, stating it was necessary to protect long-term interests and prevent adversaries from gaining a foothold:
“Diego Garcia is a key strategic military asset for both the UK and the US, which has protected our shared security for nearly 60 years. Maintaining long-term operational control and security of Diego Garcia is the entire basis for the UK-Mauritius agreement.” In May, UK minister Hamish Falconer stated there was “no scenario” in which Washington could purchase the islands, reaffirming commitment to the deal. Downing Street has not commented on the latest US proposals.

I get the feeling they’re all after the same pot of money. There’ll be $200 billion (or however much it is, maybe a trillion), but not 5 or 6 times that. ~And there’s never enougn money, or energy, for any single one of them.

For now, it’s a feeding frenzy, however. Everyone’s just afraid to miss out.

• OpenAI Files Confidentially For IPO, Joining SpaceX and Anthropic (ZH)

The rush by AI companies to go public before the window closes (i.e., “market conditions” emerge) entered its final lap late on Monday, when OpenAI joined its two mega peers in filing for a blockbuster IPO that could value the ChatGPT creator at more than $1tn as it races rival Anthropic to list its shares publicly, following an imminent offering by SpaceX.

OpenAI said it had confidentially submitted a draft IPO prospectus to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, formally kicking off the process for one of the year’s most hotly anticipated debuts. The company is also planning to launch a tender sale of its shares to provide liquidity to employees in the coming weeks, before the company goes public, Bloomberg reported. Why employees would want to sell shares ahead of an IPO is not exactly clear, unless they fear the market reaction to the public offering would disappoint.
OpenAI’s listing announcement comes days before SpaceX is set to IPO in a deal that could raise a record $86bn and value Elon Musk’s rockets-to-AI conglomerate at $1.78tn. Anthropic, the startup behind the chatbot Claude, said last week that it had filed confidentially for an IPO of its own. The company soared to a $965 billion valuation in its latest private funding round – above OpenAI’s for the first time – as its revenue surged. The three Wall Street listings comes at a time of unbridled euphoria among investors over AI, which has helped propel US stocks to a series of record highs but also prompted worries that markets are overheating.
Last week, Goldman published a note seeking to preempt the big question: “Can Markets Absorb Massive Stock Supply From Coming Mega IPOs Without A Crash:” While Goldman did not express concerns about the coming flood of stock supply (its argument is that demand will more than offset the flood of new shares), the bank which is also a lead underwriter for both SpaceX and Anthropic calculated that recent and upcoming IPOs will result in roughly $500 billion of additional unlocked shares available to sell in 2026 and likely a larger quantity in 2027 as insiders sell and distribute their stakes to public (mostly retail) shareholders. The bank expects the majority of potential equity supply from the current pipeline of IPOs will become free float in 2027.
OpenAI’s IPO – which also comes at a time when CEO Sam Altman has floated handing out shares to US taxpayers ostensibly in hopes that such an action would lead to a government backstop and/or bailout if and when the AI cycle turns – will mark a test of investors’ appetite for a company posting booming revenue growth but also staggering losses that are forecast to continue for many years as the company spends vast sums on data centres and other infrastructure: its funding commitments to hyperscalar companies are well north of $1 trillion and unless the company manages to dramatically boost its revenue growth it will find itself woefully undercapitalized in coming years. Hence the IPO, as well as a bevy of private credit deals which mask the company’s true debt exposure.
OpenAI has been investing heavily in AI research to compete with rivals including Google and Anthropic, as well as to expand the computing capacity needed to serve ChatGPT’s 900mn users. In February, the company told investors it was planning to spend about $600 billion on AI infrastructure by 2030. It said in a statement on Monday that it had not “decided on timing yet; it may be a while because there are things we want to do that are likely easier as a private company”. “But it’s a complicated set of trade-offs and this gives us the option to go public sooner if that ends up being best,” it added.
A public debut in 2026 would also pit Altman squarely against Elon Musk on a different plane than the failed lawsuit against OpenAI and its CEO. SpaceX, Musk’s rocket, satellite and AI firm, is targeting an IPO at a valuation of roughly $1.8 trillion on Thursday, which would immediately make it one of the world’s most valuable public companies. As an indication of the staggering demand for AI exposure, OpenAI has already dwarfed even SpaceX’s IPO in a single funding round. The company completed a deal to raise $122 billion from investors at an $852 billion valuation.
The ChatGPT maker also planned to launch an employee share sale ahead of going public at its current $852bn price tag, according to people familiar with the matter. One said OpenAI’s decision to announce its confidential filing was intended to give employees who were considering selling shares “transparency” about the upcoming IPO. US tech groups often file IPO paperwork privately, keeping their financial figures out of the public eye while the SEC reviews documents. That allows start-ups to gauge investor demand, make revisions and sometimes scrap IPO plans without broader scrutiny.
The San Francisco-based company’s move to progress its listing plans received a boost after a California court last month threw out Musk’s legal case against OpenAI and its chief Sam Altman. A public debut in 2026 would also pit Altman squarely against Elon Musk on a different plane than the failed lawsuit against OpenAI and its CEO. SpaceX, Musk’s rocket, satellite and AI firm, is targeting an IPO at a valuation of roughly $1.8 trillion on Thursday, which would immediately make it one of the world’s most valuable public companies.
OpenAI had been working with bankers at Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley and lawyers at Cooley for the past few months, people familiar with its preparations previously told the FT. Monday’s filing sets OpenAI on a path to start trading as early as the autumn, they said. It is already one of the world’s most valuable private companies, after closing a record funding round of up to $122bn in March. As part of that deal it raised $3bn from retail investors, who will be given a wider opportunity to invest in the start-up when it becomes publicly traded.

“Ukraine is not an EU member state, and Ukraine is not a NATO member. Why would the EU put themselves into the conflict resolution when Ukraine is not in the EU.”

“Putin knows the people of Europe do not want the corrupt nation of Ukraine as part of their wealth draining operation.”

“Hey, at least the ‘coalition of the willing’ is now begging for an audience with Putin.”

• EU Coalition of the Willing: Five Terms for Direct Ukraine-Russia Talks (CTH)

Politico is reporting that Germany is going to replace the United States as the direct contact for negotiations with Russia; that’s according to a spokesperson for Merz. However, if you read the actual printout from their collective agreement there is nothing of the sort mentioned. Instead, what actually exists within the statement are five terms they have agreed upon in order to start direct discussions between Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin. At least two of the terms are non-starters for Russia: […] Conditions that would need to be in place for a just and lasting peace.

First, a stop to the fighting. They called on President Putin to agree to an immediate and complete ceasefire.
Second, the current line of contact should be the starting point for negotiations. International borders must not be changed by force, and Ukraine’s sovereign right to choose its own security arrangements and alliances must be fully respected.
Third, Ukraine must have robust and legally binding security guarantees in place once a ceasefire enters into force, building on commitments made in Berlin in December 2025 and Paris in January 2026. This includes the deployment of the Multinational Force – Ukraine.
Fourth, Russian assets will remain immobilised until Russia ceases its war of aggression and compensates Ukraine for the damage caused by the war.
Fifth, that European security interests must be safeguarded in any deal. Elements of any negotiation related to the EU and NATO would need the consent of the EU and its Member States and NATO Allies respectively.

The #3, #4 and #5 points are not going to go anywhere.
Germany, France, the U.K and/or EU participants are not going to put troops on the ground in Ukraine without United States security guarantees. President Trump has already rejected that proposal on three occasions. The Russian sovereign fund that was seized by the EU is not the property of Vladimir Putin; it is wealth belonging to the Russian people and President Putin will not accept that term. Additionally, two-thirds of the world has been against that seizure bolstering Russia’s position.
The fifth point is laughable. The EU collective in Brussels is going to be required to give consent to any peace agreement? Highly doubtful Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin would even entertain that condition. Ukraine is not an EU member state, and Ukraine is not a NATO member. Why would the EU put themselves into the conflict resolution when Ukraine is not in the EU. From a brutally obvious and pragmatic Russian position, this makes no sense. However, I would look for Putin to do something funny with this, like force the EU to adopt Ukraine first as a ‘put up – or shut up‘ type challenge.
Putin knows the people of Europe do not want the corrupt nation of Ukraine as part of their wealth draining operation. Hey, at least the ‘coalition of the willing’ is now begging for an audience with Putin.

“The gaffe-prone former foreign minister has been blamed for Berlin’s failure to win a rotating seat on the UN Security Council..” …a rotating seat on the UN Security Council that Germany wants to be a permanent one?!

• German Lawmakers Want Answers From Baerbock After UN Humiliation – Bild (RT)

German lawmakers want former Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock questioned over Berlin’s failure to secure a seat on the UN Security Council, Bild reports. According to the outlet, the ruling CDU/CSU alliance blames the former top diplomat for the setback and wants her summoned before the Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee. Germany failed to win a non-permanent seat on the UNSC – the UN’s most powerful body, with authority to adopt legally binding resolutions and sanctions – for the first time in modern history on Wednesday, losing out to Portugal and Austria. Germany won all six previous contests it entered since 1977, but this time received only 104 votes, well short of the required two-thirds majority.

German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul described the result as a “bitter defeat,” but insisted he “did not personally blame himself,” arguing that Germany entered the race too late. According to Bild, lawmakers are placing the blame on Wadephul’s predecessor, Baerbock, who served from 2021-25. “We must thoroughly investigate the causes of this embarrassing electoral defeat,” Stephan Mayer, a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, told the outlet. “[It is] absolutely essential that Annalena Baerbock answer questions before the Bundestag [to explain] how, when, and what exactly her ministry did to mobilize support for Germany’s bid.”
Hesse’s Minister for International Affairs, Manfred Pentz, also pointed the finger at Baerbock. “You cannot blame [Chancellor] Friedrich Merz and Johann Wadephul for this electoral defeat. Annalena Baerbock messed it up during her time as foreign minister,” he stated. Baerbock’s tenure as Germany’s top diplomat drew frequent criticism for a lack of diplomatic pragmatism, an inconsistent agenda, and high-profile verbal blunders.During her time in office, she said she would support Ukraine “irrespective of what my voters think,” declared the EU to be “fighting a war against Russia,” and described Israeli strikes on Palestinian schools as “self-defense.” She also made several awkward historical, geographical, and mathematical slip-ups, including promising a “360-degree foreign policy.”
Despite the gaffes, Baerbock was appointed president of the UN General Assembly after leaving the Foreign Ministry – a largely ceremonial but prestigious UN post. Munich Security Conference chairman Wolfgang Ischinger suggested that Germany’s defeat this week may have partly been retaliation for how Baerbock “snatched” the role, which he told WELT TV had “not exactly generated new sympathy for Germany” among UN ambassadors.
A diplomatic source told Bild that Baerbock is widely unpopular in the General Assembly for being “too focused on Germany… selfies and herself.” Botswana’s former president, Mokgweetsi Masisi, also told the outlet that Germany could have secured more support from African countries in the Security Council vote had Baerbock not treated African partners in a “condescending and disrespectful” manner. He cited diplomatic disputes over infrastructure projects during her tenure as foreign minister.

Michael Snyder is the boy who cried wolf. Amusing at times.

• A “Godzilla El Niño” (Michael Snyder)

The waters of the Pacific Ocean are getting extremely warm, and that could provide fuel for an immensely destructive climate event that is unlike anything we have ever seen before. Even the United Nations has issued an ominous warning about the El Niño event that is in the long-term forecast, because it will have a dramatic impact on every man, woman, and child on the entire planet. We are being told that there is more than an 80 percent chance that El Niño conditions will arrive by the end of next month due to rapidly warming equatorial waters in the Pacific. Meanwhile, an unprecedented “9,000-mile marine heatwave” has developed in the North Pacific. Many experts are concerned that the confluence of those two factors could produce a “Godzilla El Niño”…

The chance of an El Niño event emerging by July is now over 80 percent, which will likely make 2026 one of the hottest years on record. At the same time, an exceptionally large 9,000-mile marine heatwave has been forming in the North Pacific since the end of 2025. These extreme warming events are now evolving together across the Pacific. Scientists are increasingly concerned that the warm water will fuel a “super” or “Godzilla” El Niño, potentially prolonging marine heatwaves, disrupting fisheries and ecosystems, and intensifying global climate impacts well into 2027. The “9,000-mile marine heatwave” in the North Pacific is absolutely astounding climate scientists.
At the same time, the warming in the equatorial waters where El Niño events normally develop is at a level that we haven’t seen since at least 1877… The temperature of the ocean in the equatorial waters where these El Niños form was predicted to be 3 degrees Celsius above average. Experts are saying that this is a level of heat in the Pacific Ocean that hasn’t been recorded since 1877. I have written about the “Super El Niño” that started in 1877 before. That “Super El Niño” was one of the primary reasons why 50 million people starved during the Great Famine that stretched from 1876 to 1878…
This El Niño, they say, could rival the intense event of the late 19th century that triggered “the Great Famine” on a global scale, killing millions of people. And its scythe sliced through southern Africa. “The 1876-78 Great Famine impacted multiple regions across the globe, including parts of Asia, Nordeste [Northeast] Brazil, and northern and southern Africa, with total human fatalities exceeding 50 million people, arguably the worst environmental disaster to befall humanity,” a team of scientists said a decade ago in a ground-breaking paper presented at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union.
3 percent of the entire population of the world starved to death during those years. Today, 3 percent of the entire population of the world would be 240,000,000 people. In 1982 and 1983, we experienced the most severe “Super El Niño” of the 20th century… In 1982-83, the most intense El Niño of the 20th century caused extreme weather events throughout the world, including floods in the American Pacific and in the southern United States, and droughts in north-eastern Brazil and Indonesia. It also caused a very mild winter in the mid-latitudes of Europe, Asia and North America. That “Super El Niño” sparked a horrific famine in eastern Africa that wiped out a very large proportion of the population…

“..the first great realist thinker…”

• In the Land of Thucydides (John J. Mearsheimer)

I gave a lecture in Athens on 2 June 2026 that was hosted by two prestigious Greek organizations: the Council for International Relations and the Institute of International Relations. I was asked to speak about why I think Realism explains contemporary geopolitical developments better than any other theory. I was fully aware that I was speaking in the home of Thucydides, the first great realist thinker.

Elon Musk explains why Starlink is basically unbreakable

“There are over 10,225 Starlink satellites in low Earth orbit right now, moving at 25 times the speed of sound, Zipping around the Earth at ~550 km altitude

Because they’re so close, latency is extremely low unlike… pic.twitter.com/74a94YbEq3
— Elonogy (@ElonogyX) June 7, 2026

https://twitter.com/Real_RobN/status/2063695049314185386?s=20

Time for change in Germany https://t.co/tSLxhzcE2b
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 6, 2026

https://twitter.com/mcafeenew/status/2063714994014093733?s=20 https://twitter.com/jackprandelli/status/2063698942630506617?s=20

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Debt Rattle May 12 2026

May 122026

May 12, 2026 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:03 am Finance Tagged with: AOC, ceasefire, Durov, GOP, Iran, Khameini, midterms, Putin, TDS, Trump, WWIII, Zelensky 53 Responses »

Henri Matisse The Dessert – Harmony in Red 1908

• Trump to Iran: Time’s Up (Robert Spencer)

• Trump: Iran Ceasefire ‘On Life Support’ (JTN)

• Trump Mulls Military Action As Ceasefire On “Life Support” (ZH)

• Dear Mr. President: Just Finish the Mullahs Already (Stephen Green)

• Khamenei Orders Iran’s Army To ‘Continue Decisive Operations’ (Cradle)

• Confused About Iran? Here’s What U.S. Victory Looks Like. (Victoria Taft)

• EU Prepares For ‘Potential’ Talks With Putin As US Slowly Reduces Troops (ZH)

• Putin’s Failure as a World Leader has Cleared the Path to WW III (PCR)

• The Earth Moves Just a Bit (James Howard Kunstler)

• Durov Slams French Hypocrisy Over X Crackdown (RT)

• Um… Did the GOP Just Win the Midterms? (Stephen Green)

• Zelensky Touts That 20 Countries Seek Ukraine Drone Deals (ZH)

• White House Identifies Treatment Course for TDS Sufferers (CTH)

• Trump Floats Making Venezuela The 51st State (ZH)

• “You Just Can’t Earn a Billion Dollars”: AOC (Turley)

https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2053517163177169095?s=20 https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2053838729467371690?s=20

We have the evidence and the documents that prove Obama and his administration, including Hillary Clinton and our own intelligence community committed treason and ran a coup on President Trump to steal the 2016 election.

1. Hillary Clinton greenlights the plan to tie Trump to… pic.twitter.com/fncRuQdWyW
— The SCIF (@TheSCIF) May 10, 2026

https://twitter.com/Real_RobN/status/2053635138765062154?s=20

Trump just reposted this. pic.twitter.com/j9loQ1e1ql
— johnny maga (@johnnymaga) May 11, 2026

Barack Hussein Obama wiretapping Trump Tower during the 2016 election was a million times worse than anything Nixon did during Watergate. It is time to arrest the Renegade. pic.twitter.com/qefWDZAxlW
— I Love America News (@ILA_NewsX) May 9, 2026

https://twitter.com/MAGAVoice/status/2053546881050169600?s=20

Bankrupting the insurance Cartels. Something has to be done. pic.twitter.com/fDvVgcQpNw
— Johnny Midnight ⚡️ (@its_The_Dr) May 11, 2026

I’m a big fan of Marco Rubio now—this is easily the best Catholic political speech I’ve heard from someone

video: CIT pic.twitter.com/hI0E0Y0taP
— Sachin Jose (@Sachinettiyil) May 10, 2026

This is simply unreal. What happened in Germany? Has the left virus completely eaten their minds?

How on earth is it possible to not be willing to defend one's country and family? pic.twitter.com/wPedD5gNvy
— Michael A. Arouet (@MichaelAArouet) May 10, 2026

“I don’t like it — TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE! Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J. TRUMP”

• Trump to Iran: Time’s Up (Robert Spencer)

“Iran,” said President Donald Trump in a Truth Social post early on Sunday afternoon, “has been playing games with the United States, and the rest of the World, for 47 years (DELAY, DELAY, DELAY!),” and there is no doubt that his assessment is true, particularly in regard to the present on-and-off negotiations. Now, however, Trump has issued an ominous warning that the surviving leaders of the Islamic Republic would be wise to take seriously, which doesn’t at all mean that they will do so.

The leaders of the Islamic Republic, whoever they may be, have been playing a delaying game with Trump with the peace talks, and that’s essentially all that those talks were or ever could be. This is clear from the very fact that Iran is an Islamic republic that strives to adhere to Islamic principles and laws in all of its dealings. Islamic law allows for a truce between a Muslim force and a non-Muslim one only under two circumstances: if the non-Muslim force is about to convert to Islam, which is obviously not in play here (although it could be sooner than anyone expects), and if the Muslim force is losing the war, and needs time to gather strength to fight again more effectively.
There is no scenario in Islamic law in which a Muslim force and a non-Muslim one sign a treaty for a lasting peace, lay down their arms, and coexist. The assumption among Western policymakers that the Islamic Republic of Iran would do such a thing under any circumstances is based on those policymakers’ willful ignorance regarding Islamic law, and fond assumption that everyone in the world thinks just the way they do. Trump went on in his Truth Social post to skewer a pair of his predecessors for showering the Islamic Republic with American largesse in pursuit of exactly that chimerical peaceful coexistence:
“…and then finally hit “pay dirt” when Barack Hussein Obama became President. He was not only good to them, he was great, actually going to their side, jettisoning Israel, and all other Allies, and giving Iran a major and very powerful new lease on life. Hundreds of Billions of Dollars, and 1.7 Billion Dollars in green cash, flown into Tehran, was handed to them on a silver platter. Every Bank in D.C., Virginia, and Maryland was emptied out — It was so much money that when it arrived, the Iranian Thugs had no idea what to do with it. They had never seen money like this, and never will again. It was taken off the plane in suitcases and satchels, and the Iranians couldn’t believe their luck. They finally found the greatest SUCKER of them all, in the form of a weak and stupid American President. He was a disaster as our “Leader,” but not as bad as Sleepy Joe Biden!”
Trump was right about Obama giving the Islamic Republic a “very powerful new lease on life.” Without the financial boost that Obama gave to the mullahs, they likely would not have survived the nationwide protests that swept Iran several times since Obama’s billions arrived. Those protests were ruthlessly suppressed, and the money for that suppression came from the United States. Adding insult to injury for the long-suffering people of Iran, Old Joe Biden sent them $10 billion. All this cash has kept the bloodthirsty Islamic regime alive. Trump continued:
“For 47 years the Iranians have been “tapping” us along, keeping us waiting, killing our people with their roadside bombs, destroying protests, and recently wiping out 42,000 innocent, unarmed protestors, and laughing at our now GREAT AGAIN Country. They will be laughing no longer! President DONALD J. TRUMP” Just over two hours after posting this, Trump added: “I have just read the response from Iran’s so-called ‘Representatives.’ I don’t like it — TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE! Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J. TRUMP”
What Trump will do now is anybody’s guess, but one thing is certain: the Islamic Republic will keep on behaving belligerently and aggressively toward the United States and Israel as long as it continues to exist. It cannot end its hostility to either country without ceasing to be an Islamic republic. It hates the U.S. because free society and representative government is the foremost competitor to the Sharia-based society that it wishes to export, and it hates Israel because the Qur’an designates the Jews as the “most vehement in hostility” to the Muslims (5:82).
And as long as Iran is losing, it will continue to delay. Trump is correct to call them out. Now is the time to act.

“I didn’t even waste my time reading all of it. It’s on life support..”

• Trump: Iran Ceasefire ‘On Life Support’ (JTN)

President Donald Trump on Monday stated that the ceasefire with Iran was “on life support” amid a growing diplomatic deadline between Tehran and Washington and the exchange of live rounds across the Persian Gulf. It’s unbelievably weak. After reading that garbage they sent over? I didn’t even waste my time reading all of it. It’s on life support,” he told reporters. “I would say the ceasefire is on massive life support, where the doctor walks in and says, ‘sir, your loved one has approximately 1% chance of living.'”

Trump’s remarks came from the Oval Office during an unrelated event. He also lamented the difficulties of dealing with Iran, saying they agreed to commitments and then backed out. He rejected the Iranian peace proposal over the weekend, calling it “totally unacceptable.” Earlier this month, Iran and the United Arab Emirates exchanged fire across the Persian Gulf, despite the ceasefire, with Iran launching missiles toward UAE territory and striking at least one industrial oil facility.

Iran act like they’re winning.

“Everything we proposed in the text was reasonable and generous.” However, US officials continue to insist on their “unreasonable demands,” Baghaei stressed. He described that Iran’s demands for the war to stop, for the US to lift its blockade, and the release Iran’s frozen assets, remain legitimate..”

• Trump Mulls Military Action As Ceasefire On “Life Support” (ZH)

President Trump is meeting with his national security team Monday to discuss the way forward in the Iran war, including possibly resuming military action, after negotiations with the countrydeadlocked on Sunday, three U.S. officials told Axios. U.S. officials say Trump wants a deal to end the war, but Iran’s rejection of many of his demands and refusal to make meaningful concessions on its nuclear program puts the military option back on the table. This sent oil prices back to the highs of the day…

President Trump also told Fox, that he sees a 1% chance of an Iran deal materializing and succeeding, as even the ceasefire is one of “the weakest, on life support”: President Donald Trump called out the “piece of garbage” peace proposal from Iran on Monday from the Oval Office, saying only “stupid people” in Iran are questioning his resolve in guaranteeing Iran will never have a nuclear weapon. The latest Iranian proposal reneged on a past vow to give up enriched uranium. None of this bodes well for the prospect of the Strait of Hormuz opening up anytime soon. Oil prices have reflected general pessimism at the start of this week.
Trump Might Fully Restart Project Freedom
Fox News is reporting that President Trump is considering renewing Project Freedom, pushing oil up. According to the developing story: President Donald Trump has stated in an interview with Fox News that he is considering renewing Project Freedom, a military operation originally launched to secure the passage of commercial vessels through the Strait of Hormuz. This operation, involving significant U.S. naval assets, had been paused amid diplomatic efforts with Iran. The initial pause was influenced by diplomatic progress mediated by Pakistan, although recent developments suggest a potential escalation.
However, the reality is that the de facto US naval blockade has remained in place. The Iranians last week fired on US warships which were escorting foreign vessels through the strait. Since then there’s been an uneasy calm amid stalled negotiations. There’s really no movement on either side. Trump indicated in the fresh comments that all of this could be part of a larger operation, and strangely a bit of a contradictory stance: he said of Iran’s “hardline leaders” that “they are going to fold” and that “I will deal with them until they make a deal”. Of course, the very label of ‘hardline’ would suggest the opposite.
The same Fox correspondent was told by Trump that forcibly retrieving Iran’s ‘nuclear dust’ is still on the table: It is clear there remains a huge gap between the positions of Washington and Tehran, after the past days saw proposal and counterproposal submitted via Pakistan, with the White House issuing its final response over the weekend, as President Trump called it ‘unacceptable’.
According to new Monday words from Iran’s Foreign Ministry Spokesman, Esmail Baghaei, “Everything we proposed in the text was reasonable and generous.” However, US officials continue to insist on their “unreasonable demands,” Baghaei stressed. He described that Iran’s demands for the war to stop, for the US to lift its blockade, and the release Iran’s frozen assets, remain legitimate. Further, Tehran is demanding safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz, along with establishing security in the region and in Lebanon.
Senior Iranian military official Mohsen Rezaee to Tasnim: There Is No Clear Prospect for a Political Agreement With the United States n”Unfortunately, the US continues to insist on its one-sided view,” Baghaei added of the “reasonable, generous offer” built around Iran’s national interests. Iran has strongly suggested that the US is actually too influenced by driving Israeli interests, not American priorities. But per WSJ, Washington’s focus remains on the nuclear issue, which Iran considers a non-starter in negotiations: “The president on Sunday said a multipage response that Iran sent to the U.S. proposal to end the war, which didn’t include commitments about Tehran’s nuclear program, was unacceptable,” the publication writes.

Do the mullahs still have any say? Or is it now really the IRGC?

• Dear Mr. President: Just Finish the Mullahs Already (Stephen Green)

“When you set out to take Vienna,” Napoleon advised, “take Vienna.” When President Donald Trump initiated the current round of hostilities in the 47-year-old Iran War on February 28, observers had no way to tell whether Trump had merely ordered U.S. forces to inflict more heavy damage to the Islamic Republic’s nuclear ambitions, or if he was determined to force regime change.

Lately, it looks like neither. As PJ Media’s own Robert Spencer noted on Sunday, “There is no scenario in Islamic law in which a Muslim force and a non-Muslim one sign a treaty for a lasting peace, lay down their arms, and coexist.” There comes a point where even Trump’s so-much-winning art-of-the-deal negotiating tactics come up against this hard reality, and it looks increasingly like that’s where we are.
Look, I love the idea of Trump doing to Tehran what he did to Caracas back in January, and removing the problem leader, then making peace with the much more pliable survivors. But it’s clear by now that either no such people exist in the Islamic Republic, or the government is too fractured or leaderless to comply. Either way, the fiery-but-mostly-peaceful ceasefire may have run its course. The man himself said on Sunday that the regime “will be laughing no longer!” at the U.S., but that’s not the way it looks to those of us watching from the outside.
This exchange between my Red State colleague Bonchie and another X user explains where I arrived over the weekend: In the interest of fairness, let’s look at the flip side, because there’s also the global picture that Oil Price analyst Irina Slav reported on this weekend. The short version is that China is hurt more by the growing oil crisis than the U.S. is. If temporarily higher gas prices are the price of ending the Islamic Republic and hurting the CCP, too, then I’d think of them as a worthwhile investment.
Then again, midterm voters are likely less sanguine about gas prices than I am, and political considerations are real. Or as another X user put it, “We either prove we can open the straits now or deal with it being closed in October.” It may well be that Trump is simply running out the clock on Tehran’s finances and oil storage issues that could go critical as soon as this week. If that’s the ploy, and it works, then please forgive my itchy trigger finger. But the more I think about what desperate actions the regime might take in either one of those circumstances, the more convinced I become that waiting them out could prove to be a huge mistake.
There are two clocks ticking. One on the Islamic Republic, the other on America’s patience with the war’s economic fallout. It’s always looked like Tehran’s clock will run out first, but after 10 weeks, the time might have come to force a decision instead. Did Trump set out to take out the regime? He’s been typically coy about his actual endgame, but whatever the goal was on February 28, maybe now Trump needs to finish the job.

Khameini jr. “orders”? Who listens?

• Khamenei Orders Iran’s Army To ‘Continue Decisive Operations’ (Cradle)

Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei has ordered the country’s forces to continue military operations against the US and Israel, according to a report by Iranian public broadcaster IRIB released Sunday. The order came during a meeting between Khamenei and Major General Ali Abdollahi, the commander of the Iranian army’s Khatam al-Anbiya Headquarters. “During this meeting, the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, His Eminence Ayatollah Sayyed Mojtaba Hosseini Khamenei, while expressing appreciation for the brave and valiant fighters and the country’s powerful armed forces, issued new directives and guidance for continuing operations and confronting enemies decisively,” the report said.

Abdollahi also “presented a report on the readiness of the armed forces” during the meeting, IRIB added. The report comes after two months of speculation and unverified media claims about the Supreme Leader’s status. Western news outlets like The Guardian and The Times had claimed earlier in the war that Khamenei was in a coma following the US-Israeli strikes that assassinated his father. Reports also claimed that he fled to Russia. Mazaher Hosseini, head of protocol in the office of Iran’s supreme leader, recently stated that Khamenei was healing from minor injuries he sustained and “is now in complete health.”

“Thank God, he is in good health. The enemy is spreading all kinds of rumors and false claims. They want to see him and find him, but people should be patient and not rush. He will speak to you when the time is right,” the Iranian official stated. The IRIB report came a day after CNN cited US intelligence as saying that Khamenei “is playing a critical role in shaping war strategy alongside senior Iranian officials.” It also comes days after Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian said he met with the supreme leader. “What struck me most during this meeting was the vision and the humble and sincere approach of the supreme leader of the Islamic Revolution,” he said.
Tehran has sent out its response to a new US proposal for a ceasefire via Pakistan, according to state media. The US has maintained an illegal blockade of Iranian ports since the ceasefire began. Washington violated the truce days ago by bombing Iran’s coast and attacking two vessels. Iranian forces targeted two US military vessels in response. The next day, skirmishes broke out between Iranian and US forces in the Strait of Hormuz. Spokesperson for the Iranian parliament’s Foreign Policy and National Security Committee, Ebrahim Rezaei, said on Sunday that Tehran will strike US military bases and vessels in response to any new violations from Washington – stressing that “restraint has come to an end.”

“..maximum victory for the U.S. would look like, in addition to the other tiers of victory. “Regime change … empowering the Iranian people and giving us an Iran that could be a friend in the future..”

• Confused About Iran? Here’s What U.S. Victory Looks Like. (Victoria Taft)

The Trump Administration is the most transparent in the history of the country, but keeping up with the torturous talks with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is getting harder all the time. It started off clearly enough, but since this Iran campaign went into negotiation mode with the leftover leaders of the IRGC, it’s been as if we’re “looking through a glass, darkly,” as Paul put it in 1 Corinthians. From claims of kamikazi dolphins, to on-and-off-again negotiations, claims of full air superiority, use of autonomous ships, to the question of whether we can call it a “war,” there’s been confusion about what is going on in the Iran conflict and the subsequent talks. Some of this confusion is on purpose, no doubt, to confound the IRGC leftovers, but people like me who try to keep up are, well, frustrated.

The Iranian leftover leaders are conducting what is obviously a stall strategy, of course, and President Trump posted on Truth Social over the weekend that he knows what they’re doing, “DELAY, DELAY, DELAY!” he wrote. I asked a subject matter expert, Edmund Fitton-Brown — a former UK ambassador to Yemen and former UN negotiator with Al Qaeda and the Taliban — to explain if those talks can get us to something we can call “victory.” The Iran conflict is something I tackle on Tuesdays in my Adult in the Room Podcast livestream, and I asked the senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies to explain things to me.
In the interview, Fitton-Brown explained that “[Trump] is really serious about peace, but you don’t get peace with people who want to kill you.” However, there are three tiers of achievable “peace,” and they are “minimum victory, medium victory, and … maximum victory.” You can see the entire exchange at 22:20 of this video below, but here’s a distilled version of his theory. “Minimum is the straightforward moves, open [Hormuz], no Iranian toll, complete reassertion of… the law of the sea and freedom of navigation,” he told me. “[W]e need the Iranians to acknowledge that they can’t enrich uranium in the future,” he said. “Those are the minimum conditions.”
The Hormuz takeover, though not completely unexpected, gave the Iranians another leverage point they didn’t have before. Fitton-Brown said he’d negotiate for more, of course. “Medium conditions for success would be to get the Iranians to agree that they will not resume their procurement and manufacture of ballistic missiles so that so that we don’t have this constant threat to Israel that has destabilized the Middle East,” and that sounds even better. He continued, “Iranians would acknowledge that they have to reign in their proxies. They can’t just keep waging war on their neighbors using the Houthis, the Hezballah, Iraqi militias and Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.”
Minimum plus Medium equals a better deal. Here’s what he says maximum victory for the U.S. would look like, in addition to the other tiers of victory. “Regime change … empowering the Iranian people and giving us an Iran that could be a friend in the future,” he told me. He says they’ve been anything but that in the past 47 years. “We have allowed the Iranians for 47 years to chant death to America. And that should never have been allowed. Right from the start, we should have said to them, you know, if you say that, then you cannot be allowed to have a kind of civilized relationship with us,” he stated. He’d keep sanctions going until “they realized there was a real cost to [saying] it.” The IRGC gets a vote, too. Now the Iranian nuke czar says Trump’s number one goal, the Islamist’s nuclear program, will not be part of any negotiations.

Mohammad Eslami, head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, told a parliamentary security committee session that nuclear technology will not be part of any negotiations and that enrichment is off the table entirely. Reported by committee spokesman Ebrahim Rezaei. pic.twitter.com/bEAVOmNTBD
— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) May 11, 2026

Fitton-Brown says, “The lesson is to take people at their word.”
Maybe it’s time to bring back the B-2s.
Watch my interview below.

Europe has a long way to fall.

• EU Prepares For ‘Potential’ Talks With Putin As US Slowly Reduces Troops (ZH)

A recent report in Financial Times indicates the European Union is preparing for “potential” future talks with Russia and President Vladimir Putin at a moment of extreme doubts over both US military commitments and Russia’s intentions in Ukraine. Putin himself during his V-Day speech Saturday hinted for the first time that the conflict may be ‘coming to an end’: “I think that the matter is coming to an end,” Putin told reporters of the Russia-Ukraine war, Europe s deadliest conflict since World War II.

The Russian leader, however, added he would be willing to meet Zelensky only after the terms of a peace agreement had already been settled. The Kremlin had rejected US President Donald Trump’s August 2025 offer to hold a trilateral meeting with Zelenskyy, Putin and Trump. “This should be the final point, not the negotiations themselves,” Putin said after the Victory Day, which marks Russia’s victory over Nazi Germany in 1945 in World War II. Also on Saturday, António Costa, the president of the European Council, said to a press conference the EU will only talk to Putin at the “right moment”. Costa ultimately sees “potential” for direct EU engagement with Putin.
“We need in the right moment to have talks with Russia to address our common issues with security,” the EU president had said. “We don’t want to disturb the initiative led by President Trump,” said Costa at a ‘Europe Day’ celebration in Brussels. He also spoke of preparations aimed at being “ready to do what we need to do” regarding Europe’s security. And separately an EU official said: “There will be a moment when the EU will need to speak to Russia because it’s an existential issue for Europe. Now it’s not the time.”= President Trump has recently blasted NATO as a “paper tiger” (though it wasn’t the first time) and has said the US is withdrawing 5,000 American troops from Germany.
In response, European governments have accelerated discussions on deeper EU military coordination, including joint defense initiatives which bypass US protection. Currently, the three-day Ukraine ceasefire announced and backed by President Trump appears to have held throughout the weekend, as no drone attacks have been registered on Moscow or other parts of the country. Trump had presented this as a window and opportunity to achieve a more permanent truce, and Putin is without doubt seizing on the initiative, but surely wants a final settlement in line with Kremlin aims in Ukraine.

In 1999, Putin took over a desperate, despondent, bankrupt country from Yeltsin. Life expectancy among men was in their 50s. Ask them now how they feel about Putin. Not as a failure, I guarantee you.

• Putin’s Failure as a World Leader has Cleared the Path to WW III (PCR)

Igor Girkin regrets that Putin’s pusillanimous behavior has humiliated Russia before the world.

“We — as an entire country — have been humiliated before the whole world by our astonishing inability not only to defend our status as a Great Power (something that had remained unquestioned for Russia for centuries), but even to uphold ordinary national interests. We allow ‘neutral’ states to seize our ships and cargo without the slightest response; we supply (at a discount) oil, gas, and other essential resources to states openly producing missiles and drones that rain down daily on Russian soldiers and civilians; we are ‘passionately friendly’ with neighbors openly laying claim to Russian territory; and in the end, amid triumphant shouting, endless boasting, and equally endless lies from state media, we are unable to defeat an enemy that 10 years ago was pitiful both militarily and socioeconomically — but which we ourselves allowed to grow stronger through our own insane (downright idiotic) actions and inaction.
“And there is much more besides…“We tolerate these idiots in power in the hope that they will ‘come to their senses’ and finally (if only out of self-preservation) defend Russia from external enemies — but the further things go, the more these idiots behave like cowards, while continuing to profit shamelessly from the difficult and unsuccessful war they themselves are losing. “So why should anyone respect us as a country? Who would genuinely ally themselves with obvious losers?”
In 2007 when Russian President Putin spoke at the Munich Security Conference it looked as if the fear of the American Zionist neoconservatives had been realized that a country sufficiently strong to stand as a barrier to Washington’s hegemony had appeared on the scene. Putin declared that Russia did not accept Washington’s unilateralism. Not long after he drove the American trained and equipped Georgian Army out of South Ossetia. Next he threw down the gauntlet with his unequivocal statement that “Russia will never again fight a war on its own territory.” Putin presented Russia to the world as a barrier to US imperialism and looting of the world.
The Israeli-American Zionist neoconservatives decided to fight back. They saw Russia’s weakness in Putin’s desire for peace and good relations. The Zionists correctly read this weakness as an opportunity to seize Ukraine, which Washington had already broken out of Russia and created as an independent state when the Soviet Union collapsed politically. The American Zionists reasoned correctly that Putin would regard Russia’s intervention against their coup as a propaganda advantage for Washington to portray Russia as a revanchist state bent on recovering the Soviet empire and then adding all of Europe. As Putin’s goal was mutual trust and beneficial business relationships, he stood aside, not understanding that the Zionist intent was to use Ukraine in a proxy war against Russia in the expectation of destabilizing Russia.
The American Zionists are achieving their goal. Increasingly, Russians are expressing discontent with Putin’s prevention of the Russian military from winning the conflict initiated by Washington. More and more Russians are speaking out strongly. Drones and missiles supplied by Washington and NATO now hit deep into Russia. They hit Russian energy production facilities, reducing the energy flow. They hit Russian energy export facilities, reducing the ability to export energy. They hit civilian residential housing killing Russian civilians. EU countries of zero military potential seize Russian oil tankers on the high seas. The humiliations go on and on, and Putin accepts them to the disgrace of Russia.

“Operation Epic Fury was the loud one. Operation Economic Fury is the quiet one. . . . While the carriers were on television, Treasury was doing the actual demolition.” —Jesús Enrique Rosas on X

• The Earth Moves Just a Bit (James Howard Kunstler)

Expect a consequential week. The Persian Gulf remains closed and colossal oil slicks leak out of Kharg Island while Iran blusters and stomps its feet. No one can even try to buy its oil anymore, not even China. The sanctions are too onerous. Iran’s wells must be shut in now. Imagine how the production chiefs out in the oil fields are howling at their insane IRGC overseers. Iran has no economy left operating. Iran’s domestic security force, the Basij (Sâzmân-e Basij-e Mostaz’afin, or “Mobilization of the Oppressed”) is strangling anyone who expresses discontent in the streets, not a good look for a regime that can’t survive without the pretense of popular support.

Late Sunday, the US President rejected Tehran’s latest conditions for peace out of hand. They are trying to jerk the whole world around, even while they whirl around the drain. Despite what you read in The New York Times — Iran’s US-based chief cheerleader — it is probably a matter of days now before capitulation. The ball is in America’s court this morning, a real hanging lob shot. The return is apt to be hard. Of course, whatever official utterances come out of Iran, you must discount by about 99.9-percent. For now, there is nothing but the morning fog of suspense.
But strange doings are a’foot elsewhere. You might have noticed that the UK’s labor government got drubbed in local elections, losing nearly 1,500 council seats, a humiliating repudiation. It’s a matter of days before PM Keir Starmer will have to hang it up. His possible replacements are utterly unknown to Americans — Angela Rayner, a former Deputy PM, Energy Secretary Ed Milliband, Health Sec’y Wes Streeting — and any of them is just a place-holder for the election’s main winner Nigel Farage of the Reform Party, which exists wholly outside the age-old British political transect of Labour / Tories.
The Labour Party, you see, is lately as loathsome in the altogether to British voters as its current avatar, Sir Keir (Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath, KCB), whose latest act was to extend social welfare benefits to the additional wives of poly-marital Muslims. Way to go! Why not just travel the island empire from town-to-town and slap every indigenous Briton in the face? And the Tories (putative Conservatives), well, just fuggeddabowdem. Sir Keir’s Tory predecessor as PM, Rishi Sunak, screwed the pooch for his party into the next twenty years allowing net Third World migration to hit record highs while the kingdom crumbled.
The way it works over there, Sir Keir or whoever takes over from him, asks King Charles to dissolve Parliament, and you get a sudden national election short of Parliament’s regular five-year term. And so, sometime in the months ahead, Nigel Farage will become Prime Minister and things will change-up bigly in Britain. Mr. Farage will have to contend, among other things, with Donald Trump’s dismantling of whatever was left of Britain’s stealth neo-colonial command of global finance through the British banking system.
he question really is: can Farage arrest his country’s sickening slide into becoming an Islamic caliphate, with all the Third World bells and whistles? Can he possibly even start shipping the most recent arrivals back to where they came from? Can he do what Mr. Trump is attempting in the USA and turn the UK back to an economy based on the actual production of goods rather than financial finaglery?

“France is illegally harvesting its citizens’ data, while accusing social media platforms of doing the same, the entrepreneur has alleged ..”

• Durov Slams French Hypocrisy Over X Crackdown (RT)

Telegram co-founder Pavel Durov has accused France of hypocrisy after prosecutors expanded a criminal investigation into Elon Musk’s X. Durov said French authorities were violating citizens’ privacy while accusing the social media platform of similar conduct. The entrepreneur made the remarks on Sunday, just days after the Paris prosecutor’s office announced that it would seek new charges against X over alleged illegal sexual deepfakes made by the platform’s Grok AI, as well as unlawful data extraction and other crimes.

“The French government is accusing X of the very things the French government itself is doing,” Durov tweeted. The French government is panicking. They know a major political shift in 2027 will expose their misdeeds – so they’re trying to silence free speech platforms under whatever pretext they think they can get away with.He called on the international community to back X against what he called the French state’s “immoral assault” on the social media app.
French investigators initially launched their investigation of X and Grok in January, alleging that the platforms’ algorithms were biased and accusing the company of illegal data gathering and of possessing and spreading sexualized deepfakes created by its AI, including images involving minors. The tech mogul has denied any wrongdoing and dismissed the legal action as a “political attack.” Last month, the US Department of Justice reportedly denied a request from French prosecutors to cooperate in the investigation. US President Donald Trump’s administration has long been critical of what it has called attacks on free speech and political opposition in the EU and UK.
Durov’s Telegram has also faced legal troubles in France. The entrepreneur was arrested at a Paris airport in 2024 and indicted on a dozen charges after French prosecutors accused him of being complicit in crimes committed using his social media platform. Durov has since been allowed to leave France, despite the ongoing investigation. The entrepreneur has repeatedly called the arrest absurd and condemned crackdowns on social media networks as a concerted attack on free speech.

“You ask for miracles, Theo? I give you the Virginia Democrats.” —Hans Gruber, possibly

• Um… Did the GOP Just Win the Midterms? (Stephen Green)

You probably know that I’m not exactly up on the GOP’s chances of holding the House in November, but there’s a glimmer of light ahead, thanks in no small part to overreach by Virginia Democrats — and Republicans finally wising up. Over the weekend, Roger Kimball looked at the Supreme Court’s Louisiana v. Callais decision and declared that “the decision will net Republicans some 8-12 additional House seats in the midterms. In other words, Republicans will not only hold the House; they will also expand their majority.”

Reporting for the (extremely) left-wing Mother Jones, Ari Berman called the decision “devastating” for Democrats, but also noted that “the only silver lining for those harmed may be that the ruling came be too late to have a major impact on the 2026 midterm elections.” “Candidate filing deadlines have passed in most Southern states; primary elections have been held already in North Carolina, Texas, and Mississippi; and Louisiana, Alabama, and Georgia have mailed ballots for upcoming May primaries.” That’s six deep-red states out of play for 2026 redistricting, so it isn’t that Roger’s numbers are wrong, but they might be premature. Don’t get me wrong — I pray he’s right.
So for the moment, the GOP’s odds remain too long for comfort. Democrats are comfortably ahead on the 2026 generic congressional ballot, typically the best indicator of what happens on election day. The RealClearPolitics average has them up by 5.6 points. Overcoming a number like that requires the kind of enthusiasm that, frankly, much of the Trump electorate just doesn’t enjoy right now. The Iran War — while totally necessary, they were about to get nukes — has gas prices uncomfortably close to Biden-era highs. Food prices, particularly beef, remain stubbornly high. And the GOP Congress refuses to do a damn thing about election integrity. I’m looking at you, Sen. John Thune.
That last one is a real problem, for reasons both practical (election integrity, duh) and political (Trump voters need this win). We sent the GOP to Congress to undo the damage done to our election system, and they have yet to deliver. You had one job. But sometimes — as we learned from watching Hans Gruber make the FBI sing to his tune in Die Hard — knowing the other guy’s procedure is a yuge part of winning. Which brings us to Virginia, Indiana, and the GOP’s improved chances come November.
By now, you know what happened in Virginia. State Democrats — led by non-former CIA spook Gov. Abigail Spanberger — did what they’re now basically compelled to do, and broke every law on their way to gerrymandering the GOP into oblivion. Then the state Supreme Court knocked them down and declared the illegal referendum void. And Another Thing: Please note that the Virginia Supreme Court did not say that Democrats can’t gerrymander the GOP into oblivion. It just said you actually have to follow the law of the land to do it. At the next court-approved opportunity, you can be sure they’ll get it done.
In Indiana, GOP voters took one look at the new rules and voted out every RINO they could in the state’s primary election last week. Most of the Republican state senators who blocked Indiana’s congressional redraw got hammered by Trump-backed challengers, and Gov. Mike Braun is pushing again for redistricting. If successful, that could net the Republicans one or two more seats. Altogether, in states where it isn’t already too late, and including states like Florida that have already redistricted, Republicans could redraw themselves between 11 and 14 seats before the midterms. Is that enough to overcome the generic congressional ballot deficit? There’s just no way to know this far out, although if Sen. Thune would stop posturing on X long enough to pass the Save Act, I’d bet next month’s car payment that the GOP holds the House.
Grrrr.
Looking ahead, however, 2028 looks really good.

Ukraine is all about money, Russia is not.

• Zelensky Touts That 20 Countries Seek Ukraine Drone Deals (ZH)

Ukraine is emerging as a global drone export powerhouse, coming fresh off vast experience gained in over four years of war with Russia – or at least that’s the image Kiev is seeking to present to the world. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Monday that nearly 20 countries are pursuing drone agreements with Ukraine, with four deals already finalized. Agreements already confirmed include deals with Germany, Norway and the Netherlands, alongside long-term security partnerships with Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates which were inked in late March as Zelensky personally toured the Gulf, even amid the ongoing Iran war, according to Reuters.

Zelensky has been offering Ukraine’s services and drone supplies to Gulf countries as a cheaper, effective alternative to dwindling and costly American-supplied anti-air defenses. “Nearly 20 countries are currently involved at various stages: 4 agreements have already been signed, and the first contracts under these agreements are now being prepared,” Zelensky has newly proclaimed on X. “Ukraine has already started to receive the necessary volume of fuel thanks to the agreements,” Zelensky also stated. Interestingly, he’s also of late been pitching being a supplier of battlefield robots, as we’ve detailed before.
Starting in April, Zelensky had hailed that Ukrainian personnel were able to help partners build effective air defenses using interceptor drones to combat Iranian Shaheds. Low-cost interceptor drones deployed by Ukraine are among the most effective ways to combat the inexpensive $20,000 Shaheds, as a war of attrition makes little economic sense when interceptor missiles cost hundreds of thousands of dollars or more.
Ukraine has had four years to develop low-cost one-way attack drones and interceptors during its war with Russia. Now, this technology is clearly being exported across multiple theaters in Eurasia. Zelensky did not identify the countries or the exact interceptor drones used in his comments at the time, but it is possible that Octopus-100 autonomous interceptor drones were deployed. The past couple months have seen Zelensky touring around proclaiming Ukraine’s ability to fill defense tech sector gaps for allied countries:

Zelensky:

If Ukraine, Türkiye, Norway, and the UK were EU members, you would have the strongest army in the world.

It would become the strongest alliance in the world.

Together, these countries and the EU have smart engineers, the best technologies, the best drones,… pic.twitter.com/xFRe5nVz5Z
— Clash Report (@clashreport) April 21, 2026

He said Ukraine had deployed hundreds of experts to the Gulf area, and, in return, has received weapons to protect its energy assets as well as financial support. After the Trump White House began signaling a significant drawdown in direct military aid to Ukraine and to Europe more broadly, the Zelensky administration began launching more creative means to ensure ongoing funding for the war with Russia. Support from EU countries, however, doesn’t look to have wavered.

Growacet.

• White House Identifies Treatment Course for TDS Sufferers (CTH)

The White House has identified a treatment course for those suffering from acute cases of TDS. In many cases the issue can be treated by moderate changes in behavior or lifestyle:

For more severe or intense cases of TDS, like the Carlson strain, the prescription below is also an option.

Inviting outrage.

• Trump Floats Making Venezuela The 51st State (ZH)

First Canada, then Greenland… and now Venezuela?

President Donald Trump said Monday he is seriously considering annexing the South American nation as the 51st U.S. state, citing the country’s vast oil reserves and what he described as strong local support for his leadership. In a telephone interview with Fox News anchor John Roberts, Trump mused that he is weighing the move for a nation that holds an estimated $40 trillion in oil resources. “Venezuela loves Trump,” the president told the reporter.
The suggestion comes months after U.S. forces conducted a military operation in Venezuela in January that resulted in the capture of longtime President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. The couple was extradited to the U.S. to face narco-terrorism and weapons charges, effectively ending more than a decade of socialist rule that had transformed one of Latin America’s richest economies into an economic disaster marked by hyperinflation, mass emigration and the breakdown of public services.
Rather than installing opposition figure María Corina Machado, a Nobel Peace Prize recipient, as the new leader, the Trump administration supported the installation of Delcy Rodríguez—Maduro’s former vice president—as interim president. Trump has described the arrangement as “spectacular” and predicted a rapid economic turnaround. Rodríguez’s government has moved swiftly on economic reforms. Within weeks of taking power, it enacted legislation opening the oil sector to privatization, dismantling core elements of the Chavista model that had dominated for more than two decades.
Meanwhile, commercial activity has accelerated thanks to Chevron, which signed two agreements expanding its participation in a joint venture with state-owned Petróleos de Venezuela SA in the Orinoco Oil Belt, Reuters reported at the time. Venezuelan oil output is already rising.
PDVSA reported production of 1.095 million barrels a day last month, up 75,000 barrels a day from February, with Oil Minister Paula Henao setting a target of 1.3 million barrels a day by year-end. Trump administration officials have been candid about the financial stakes. A White House spokesman called the first $500 million portion of an approximately $2 billion oil-supply agreement a “historic energy deal,” CBS News reported at the time. Trump has said the U.S. would rebuild Venezuela “in a very profitable way,” adding, “We’re going to be using oil, and we’re going to be taking oil.”

“Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) came up with the best reason to tax billionaires: They do not actually exist…”

• “You Just Can’t Earn a Billion Dollars”: AOC (Turley)

This week, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) came up with the best reason to tax billionaires: They do not actually exist. On a podcast, Ocasio-Cortez declared with all the certainty of a freshman in a Smith College political science course that the notion of a self-made billionaire is simply a fantasy, because “you just can’t earn” a billion dollars. It is only the latest in a series of socialist fables that are being dressed up as economic facts. The difference is that this fable, if told often enough, could become true. In suggesting that true billionaires are a capitalist myth, Ocasio-Cortez is suggesting that people like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos really did not earn their wealth and, therefore, it is really not their money.

“There’s a certain level of wealth and accumulation that is unearned. You can’t earn a billion dollars. You just can’t earn that. You can get market power, you can break rules, you can abuse labor laws, you can pay people less than what they’re worth, but you can’t earn that.” In other words, you can only make a billion dollars through theft and exploitation rather than actual entrepreneurial enterprise. This statement comes as support builds for the California billionaires’ tax which, even before it has a chance to pass in November, has already cost the state trillions due to an exodus of these billionaires.
In my book, “Rage and the Republic,” I discuss common myths spread by the left to fuel economic factionalism. One common myth is that the “wealthy do not pay their fair share of taxes.” In truth, the top ten percent of taxpayers pay the vast majority of taxes in the U.S. In the book, I also dispel the claim that most millionaires inherited their wealth or came from privileged backgrounds. These myths are designed to make redistribution schemes more palatable. And Democrats are ramping up the “eat-the-rich” rhetoric ahead of the midterms in pushing both millionaire and billionaire taxes. Democrats from Washington to Virginia are pushing millionaire taxes, and the mere conversation has already set off a stampede of high-earning taxpayers to red states like Texas and Florida, which have no state income tax.
It was also evident in this week’s California gubernatorial debate. Candidate Katie Porter (D) said she opposes the billionaire’s tax because it would not go far enough. Porter then pressed the only billionaire in the group, Tom Steyer, who has been moving to the far left to grab voters in the wake of the departure of former Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) as a candidate. Steyer said that he supports the billionaire tax but would want to go even further.Steyer has spent a fortune of his own money on this race, apparently to convince Democratic primary voters that he is some kind of red billionaire in the mold of a George Soros or Neville Roy Singham. Good luck with that — after spending roughly $150 million of his own money, Steyer is still languishing between 12 and 18 percent support.
Of course, Steyer was not asked if he believes that real billionaires such as himself exist. Yet he has already apologized for making considerable money on private prisons, including those used to hold undocumented immigrants. Ironically, in finance, a “unicorn” is a company worth more than $1 billion dollars, a term coined by venture capitalist Aileen Lee to capture the rare and almost magical status of such enterprises Conversely, Ocasio-Cortez’s unicorn myth is part of a general denial of economic realities that has taken hold on the left. The cost of these policies is borne by workers, who are being left to eat soundbites.
Democrats have sold voters on raising minimum wages as high as $30 per hour, even though such policies cost thousands of jobs. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg bragged about blocking a merger of JetBlue and Spirit Airlines, claiming that it would create cheaper flights and better jobs. Spirit has now been forced to close its doors, causing the loss of thousands of flights and jobs. A rising generation of voters is eagerly devouring soundbites and promises of the “warmth of collectivism” from figures like New York’s socialist mayor, Zohran Mamdani. From promises of free buses to state-run grocery stores, voters are buying the same threadbare socialist schtick.
That was on display this week as socialist Seattle mayor Katie Wilson laughed when asked about the millionaires fleeing the city over rising taxes and crime. She delighted the crowd by mocking the departing millionaires with two words: “Like, bye!” The last laugh, however, rests with those fleeing a city facing a projected deficit of $114 million. As Wilson faces major cuts in the city budget, she gleefully mocks those whose tax dollars the city will desperately need to close this gap if it is to maintain public services.
Ironically, Wilson and other Democrats are quickly making their myth a reality. Soon, there will be no billionaire unicorns roaming the land. Even millionaires may become scarce, as these wealthy citizens move to less hostile states with less delusional leaders. The solution to this exodus is equally predictable. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who has campaigned for a billionaire tax in his state while representing Silicon Valley, has also joined with socialist Bernie Sanders to push for a national billionaire’s tax — an effort to guarantee that there is no place to hide. This is the same approach that tanked the French economy under François Mitterrand after the wealthy fled that nation.
These are not, however, a time for economics or history. It is the time of fables. Ocasio-Cortez has thrived in the land of socialist unicorns. She can even attend the ultra-rich Met Gala wearing an expensive “Eat-the-Rich” gown. Like her dress, it is fashionable to deny that billionaires created their wealth. It is your money for the taking. The result is that billionaires and even millionaires in states like New York may go the way of unicorns, fanciful creatures that once thrived in a land of jobs and growth.

U.S. Senator John Kennedy is now publicly demanding that Barack Hussein Obama return $120 million that he allegedly earned through ownership related to “Obamacare.”

“He allocated money under his own laws using taxpayer-generated prestige,” Kennedy said, calling it “an abuse of… pic.twitter.com/E0TYsFUEpq
— JOSH DUNLAP (@JDunlap1974) May 11, 2026

https://twitter.com/warDaniel47/status/2053414597722300913?s=20

ONE DAY BEFORE the hantavirus fear campaign began…WHO pandemic treaty talks COLLAPSED prompting Tedros to warn the next pandemic was "a matter ⁠of when, not if."

Then suddenly… ONE DAY LATER… the cruise ship hantavirus media frenzy exploded.

Don't fall for the Bill… https://t.co/GvEJfdqn1K pic.twitter.com/4dpZTGcmwd
— Nicolas Hulscher, MPH (@NicHulscher) May 10, 2026

Hantavirus – cruise ship – and false narratives galore!

My scientific and medical opinion as a scientist who did research on Hantavirus is that an inquiry into Dr Bix is warranted
Please share massively – accurate info –

1. First and foremost we studied Hantavirus in my lab for… https://t.co/wWbNY53lWi pic.twitter.com/3fwpnCXsQM
— Martin Zizi (@MartinZ_uncut) May 11, 2026

https://twitter.com/ChildrensHD/status/2053612044860199013?s=20

The Department of War celebrates the launch of https://t.co/odnX2WDaGO as a major milestone in government transparency. In just 12 hours, the site has received 340 MILLION hits from Americans and truth seekers worldwide seeking unfiltered UAP information.

This overwhelming…
— Sean Parnell (@SeanParnellASW) May 9, 2026

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

Debt Rattle May 10 2026

May 102026

May 10, 2026 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:32 am Finance Tagged with: AfD, ceasefire, Comey, Farage, Fetterman, Germany, Hormuz, Khameini, Qatar, Red Square, Russia, Starmer, Victory Day 46 Responses »

Douglas Percy Bliss High Noon, Windley 1951

• US Reportedly Struck 4 Iranian Oil Tankers Entering The Strait (ZH)

• Qatari LNG Tanker Transits Hormuz As U.S. Awaits Iran’s Response (ZH)

• Iran Discloses Supreme Leader’s Status For First Time: Marginally Injured (ZH)

• World Must Hear Russia’s Warning To Zelensky, Understand Importance – MFA (TASS)

• Putin Rips NATO Aggression At Scaled-Down Victory Day Parade (ZH)

• Trump: Ceasefire Between Russia, Ukraine Could Be Extended (TASS)

• Starmer’s Labour Party ‘Wiped Out’ In UK Elections (RT)

• Germany’s AfD On Verge Of Absolute Majority In Eastern Saxony-Anhalt (ZH)

• From Market To Military: Germany’s Private Sector Is Imploding (RT)

• Trump Indicates US Could Move Troops From Germany to Poland (JTN)

• Federal Judge Sets Comey Criminal Trial For July 15 In North Carolina (JTN)

• Is Marco Rubio The New Heir Apparent To Trump? (ZH)

• John Fetterman: ‘I’d Be a Terrible Republican’ (Rick Moran)

• Gerrymander Debacle in Virginia Leaves Dems with a Dangerous Agenda (Turley)

https://twitter.com/RapidResponse47/status/2052770921258143867?s=20

If this is true, Sen. John Fetterman has confirmed what we all suspected, Obama is running a Shadow Government which Democrats are lock stepping with, undermining President Trump’s agenda for “we the people”.
It also confirms Obama is GITMO qualified. “Sedition”. pic.twitter.com/vjlqY47x6Y
— John D (@jtd_gameon12) May 9, 2026

The 2020 Election was Stolen

We had a fake president for 4 years.

Our country has yet to recover.

The corporate media was complicit in the crime.

Anyone who uses the phrase “election denier” can GFT!

Enough is Enough!!!

Hold these people accountable NOW! https://t.co/2rldky9I4x
— General Mike Flynn (@GenFlynn) May 9, 2026

https://twitter.com/17QStorm/status/2053255626029961662?s=20

With my favorite photograph.

Key sentence:: “Iran Keeps US Waiting”.

• US Reportedly Struck 4 Iranian Oil Tankers Entering The Strait (ZH)

Multiple accounts across social media are reporting that four tankers were apparently struck or disabled by the U.S. forces near Iran’s Jask area. @EGYOSINT notes that satellite imagery shows one tanker on fire and extensive oil spills, including leaks from two tankers, with another spill detected about 7.4 kilometers from the anchorage site. @Merrux confirmed that US forces hit an Iranian oil tanker near the port city of Bandar Jask last night.

The vessel is currently on fire. It remains unclear if other tankers were also hit, though smoke is rising from them. The tanker is visibly ablaze, there has been no response from Iran. Presumably these are just more “love taps” and do not represent any threat to the so-called ‘ceasefire’.
Iran Keeps US Waiting On Formal Response To Peace Proposal
A state of relative calm prevailed around the Strait of Hormuz on Saturday, after days of sporadic flareups, as the Trump administration continues to await a formal response from Tehran on a U.S. proposal aimed at ending the war and reopening the Hormuz chokepoint, following last week’s clashes between Iranian and U.S. naval forces in the world’s most critical waterway. As Times of Israel reports, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Friday that Washington expected a response within hours and President Donald Trump later said it would likely be submitted “tonight.”
But a day later, there was no sign of movement from Iran on the proposal, which would formally end the war before talks on more contentious issues, including the Iranian nuclear program. With US President Donald Trump due to begin a long-awaited visit to China next week, there has been mounting pressure to draw a line under the conflict, which has thrown energy markets into turmoil and posed a growing threat to the world economy. As Tehran kept Washington waiting for its response after saying Friday it was not paying attention to “deadlines,” the Islamic Republic’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi called into question the reliability of the US leadership in a call with his Turkish counterpart.
“The recent escalation of tensions by American forces in the Persian Gulf and their numerous actions in violating the ceasefire have added to suspicions about the motivation and seriousness of the American side in the path of diplomacy,” he said, according to an Iranian account of the call published by the ISNA news agency. While there were no official signs of a breakthrough in negotiations as of early Saturday morning, new ship data from the Hormuz area may suggest that positive developments are ahead.

It’s getting busy.

• Qatari LNG Tanker Transits Hormuz As U.S. Awaits Iran’s Response (ZH)

The Trump administration continues to await a formal response from Tehran on a U.S. proposal aimed at ending the war and reopening the Hormuz chokepoint, following last week’s clashes between Iranian and U.S. naval forces in the world’s most critical waterway. While there were no official signs of a breakthrough in negotiations as of early Saturday morning, new ship data from the Hormuz area may suggest that positive developments are ahead. https://twitter.com/SStapczynski/status/2053100985346925013?s=20

The tanker is fully loaded with LNG and is currently transiting the Hormuz chokepoint. We must point out that the ship did not sail through the Hormuz Island route. There is no word on whether Iran charged the vessel a transit fee, but Tehran allows ships from “friendly” nations, primarily China, India, and the UAE, to pass. On Friday, UBS energy analyst Anna Kishmariya told clients that shipping flows through the Hormuz chokepoint remain very restricted and that the global oil market is getting tighter. There is certainly urgency among the Trump administration and other nations to unfreeze Hormuz, as oil market insiders see a roughly one-month countdown to global energy chaos if the waterway remains blocked through this month.
Latest overnight headlines, courtesy of Bloomberg:
Ceasefire and Diplomatic Efforts

• The US is waiting for Iran’s response to Trump’s latest proposal to end the war, which suggests Iran reopen the Strait of Hormuz while the US ends its blockade of Iranian ports over the next month
• Tehran’s response to the US proposal is “under review,” according to Foreign Ministry Spokesman Esmail Baghaei
• Trump has changed his approach to prioritize reopening the Strait of Hormuz at all costs while leaving nuclear and ballistic missile negotiations for later
Recent Military Clashes

• The US struck Iranian military targets on Thursday after Iran fired multiple missiles, drones and small boats at three US Navy destroyers in the Strait of Hormuz, with no US assets hit
• US forces targeted missile and drone launch sites and other military assets in Iran that were responsible for attacking the US warships
• The US “disabled” two unladen Iranian-flagged oil tankers, according to US officials
• Iran seized the tanker Ocean Koi in the Gulf of Oman, which appeared to be carrying Iranian oil
Hormuz
• The Strait of Hormuz remains effectively closed to commercial shipping since Tuesday following the US-Iran clashes
• A Qatari LNG tanker, Al Kharaitiyat, is attempting to transit the strait, which would mark Qatar’s first export from the region since the war began
• Saudi Aramco and UAE’s Adnoc have managed to move some crude cargoes through the strait despite Iran’s effective closure of the waterway
Impacts
• The world has burned through oil inventories at record speed as the Iran war throttles flows from the Persian Gulf, eating into buffers that protect against supply shocks
• Chinese energy imports fell sharply in April, with crude cargoes dropping about 20% year-on-year to 38.47 million tons and gas falling about 13% to 8.42 million tons
• Global food prices climbed to their highest level in more than three years as the Iran war disrupted supply chains, with the UN food-commodity index gaining 1.6% in April
• Iran’s record internet blackout is taking a heavy toll on private businesses, with warnings it could lead to mass layoffs and closures
International Response

• The US imposed sanctions on three Chinese firms for providing satellite imagery to Iran, enabling its military strikes on American forces in the Middle East
• The UK will deploy HMS Dragon warship to the Middle East as part of planning for a European-led mission to escort ships through the Strait of Hormuz once there’s a stable ceasefire
• Iran is ramping up trade with China via rail to bypass the US blockade, with cargo trains from Xi’an to Tehran increasing from one per week to one every three or four days

Just refuse to address him until he shows himself. Anyone can claim to be him in a letter.

• Iran Discloses Supreme Leader’s Status For First Time: Marginally Injured (ZH)

The Iranian government has for the first time officially weighed in on the health of new supreme leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, who was injured in the opening strikes of Trump’s Operation Epic Fury, which killed the younger Khamenei’s father and wife. “A government official claimed Khamenei, who hasn’t been seen in public since that attack, is now in good health,” The Wall Street Journal writes Saturday. He hasn’t been seen in public since the war began, and even official statements have been read aloud on state media broadcasts. There have since been conflict reports. However, according to the latest:

Yet the chief of protocol for the supreme leader’s office, Mozaher Hosseini, said on Friday that Khamenei is in “complete health,” stressing that he has only been “marginally injured” on his foot and lower back and hit by “a small piece of shrapnel had hit him behind the ear.” “The enemy is spreading all kinds of rumors and false claims. They want to see him and find him, but people should be patient and not rush. He will speak to you when the time is right,” Hosseini told a crowd in Tehran.
Prior international reports suggested he was being treated for severe burns and that he could undergo surgery, and resorts to communicating commands to lower officials via low-tech means, including written and hand delivered messages, in order to avoid Israeli or US intelligence intercepting signals related to his whereabouts. Regional and Gulf media have also summarized of the latest official Iranian description of the Ayatollah’s health, that “there were no indications of a serious deterioration in his condition.”
And, “According to Iranian media reports, the official stated that medical examinations confirmed Mojtaba Khamenei’s condition was completely stable. He added that the injury did not require complex surgery. Furthermore, he is undergoing only routine medical monitoring to ensure his well-being.” Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian revealed on Thursday that he for the first time recently held a meeting with Mojtaba Khamenei, at an undisclosed location, and that the encounter was a long and productive one. State media said it was two-and-a-half hours.

US intelligence assesses that Iran’s new supreme leader is playing a critical role in shaping war strategy alongside senior Iranian officials, according to multiple sources. https://t.co/Ejyo5tGipb pic.twitter.com/c4nfMMR25r
— CNN (@CNN) May 9, 2026

“What stood out more than any other topic in the meeting was the way of dealing, the type of outlook, and the humble and deeply friendly manner of conduct by the leader of the revolution,” Pezeshkian described. He characterized the new Ayatollah’s approach as “a model based on taking responsibility, being close to the people, and truly listening to issues and problems.” Western officials and intelligence have all the while been seeking to assess just who is ultimately in charge of running the country. There have been reports of a growing split between the IRGC military apparatus and the Islamic Republic’s civilian leadership. However, none of these reports are confirmable, but it’s largely only guesswork by those far outside the country.

Zelensky represents nazis. Victory Day commemorates the last time Russia defeated Nazis.

• World Must Hear Russia’s Warning To Zelensky, Understand Importance – MFA (TASS)

The entire world must hear Russia’s warning to Zelensky, who is threatening the Victory Day parade, and recognize the importance of the moment, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in an interview with TASS arranged to coincide with the 81st anniversary of Victory Day.

“This (warning – TASS) was done because we understood that the collective West, this collective Western minority, is doing everything possible to once again avoid seeing the misanthropic logic and not hear the absolutely extremist, terrorist threats from Zelensky, to once again provide him with political support, to put him on the front pages in terms of information and, of course, to provide him with weapons, money, and so on. And precisely so that they would wake up and understand the seriousness of the situation, a set of appropriate measures was taken, which then had this kind of information support: clear, understandable, and, I emphasize again, responsive,” she said.
The Russian Defense Ministry declared a ceasefire for May 8-9 in honor of celebrations of the 81st anniversary of the Soviet Union’s Victory over Nazi Germany in the 1941-1945 Great Patriotic War. The ministry stated that Russia expects the Ukrainian side to follow suit. However, if the Kiev regime attempts to attack Moscow on May 9 to disrupt the celebrations, Russian troops will launch a massive retaliatory strike against central Kiev. These are not mere statements, Zakharova noted. “This is a clear warning about retaliatory steps that will be taken if Zelensky’s monstrous threats, which he voiced in Yerevan, are carried out in practice. And all of this is not just relevant,” she said.
The Russian side has warned all states and international organizations through their embassies and missions in Moscow, as well as Russian diplomatic missions in foreign countries and at international organizations, that “this is not just a matter of urgency, but that they must take concrete steps in this direction,” the diplomat stressed. These measures are a response to “the aggression that Zelensky has declared as a threat,” she added.Zakharova said earlier that Russia views Zelensky’s threat to stage a drone attack on Moscow during the upcoming Victory Day celebrations as the Kiev regime’s intent to carry out a terrorist act.

Many if not most Russians understand that their army cannot just go kill Ukrainians.p>

• Putin Rips NATO Aggression At Scaled-Down Victory Day Parade (ZH)

By many accounts Russia’s Saturday Victory Day parade and memorial observances in Moscow’s Red Square were once again muted and somewhat scaled down compared to the immense pageantry which marked the pre-Ukraine war years. President Putin used the occasion while speaking in front of thousands of military personnel and flanked by a handful of world leaders to take swipes at NATO and the West, saying he’s fighting “just” war and called Ukraine an “aggressive force” that is being “armed and supported by the whole bloc of NATO”.

“The great feat of the generation of victors inspires the soldiers carrying out the goals of the special military operation today,” Putin said. “They are confronting an aggressive force armed and supported by the entire NATO bloc. And despite this, our heroes move forward.” He added: “I firmly believe that our cause is just.” The three-day Ukraine ceasefire announced and backed by President Trump appears to be holding, as no drone attacks have been registered on Moscow or other parts of the country. Large-scale drone waves were coming on a daily basis throughout last week. Massive bombardment of Ukraine has also ceased. Ukraine’s Zelensky had reportedly ordered his armed forces to adhere to the short ceasefire:
Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky issued a decree on Friday (May 8) ordering the Ukrainian military not to attack the parade. He also confirmed that his government would adhere to the ceasefire and the prisoner swap of 1,000 detainees from each side. n”Red Square is less important to us than the lives of Ukrainian prisoners who can be returned home,” Zelensky said, referring to the historic site in Moscow where the annual event is held.
The Kremlin has over the past days repeatedly warned that Kiev would come under immense bombing if the parade did get attacked, and went so far as to tell foreign diplomats they should evacuate the Ukrainian capital in such a scenario. Among the foreign leaders that attended Saturday V-Day included Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko, President of Laos Thongloun Sisoulith, Malaysia Supreme Leader Sultan Ibrahim, President of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev and President of Uzbekistan Shavkat Mirziyoyev. The NY Times (and a lot of other Western media outlets) is reading all of this as a ‘loss’ and reputational hit for Putin, again given the scaled-down and lower key nature of everything.

Happy Great Victory Day! pic.twitter.com/trYNYEz1K2
— Dmitry Medvedev (@MedvedevRussiaE) May 9, 2026

“President Vladimir V. Putin has cultivated the annual Victory Day parade commemorating the Soviet triumph over Nazi Germany into a cornerstone of Russian patriotic ritual,” NYT wrote. “Tanks and nuclear launchers roll across Red Square in a showcase of military prowess and righteous pride that the Kremlin has used to justify the country’s great-power posture toward the West.”But then the report underscores that “Moscow is under a heavy security presence as Ukraine rattles Russia with long-range drone and missile strikes. The Russian authorities have appeared exposed as they acknowledged that the beefed-up security was intended to protect Mr. Putin.”

Face-to-face on Red Square! – Putin speaks with DPRK commander after V-Day parade pic.twitter.com/7Ica2VaaRM
— Viory Video (@vioryvideo) May 9, 2026

It further highlighted: “The parade on Saturday included none of the usual muscle-flexing missiles and armor. Personnel from Russian military academies and other servicemen made their way through Russia’s most famous square.”

But Zelensky’s Kiev mob needs weapons payments to skim off of.

• Trump: Ceasefire Between Russia, Ukraine Could Be Extended (TASS)

The US leader Donald Trump admitted that the ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine could be extended. “I’d love to see that war end,” he told reporters on the South Lawn in front of the White House.Trump added that he “would like to see a big extension” of ceasefire. As has been decided by Russian President Vladimir Putin, Moscow declared a ceasefire from May 8 to 10 during the celebrations of the 81st anniversary of the Soviet Union’s Victory over Nazi Germany in the 1941-1945 Great Patriotic War.

On Friday, it was announced that telephone contacts between Russia and the United States, as well as Washington’s interactions with Kiev, had resulted in agreements on a ceasefire for May 9-11. The Russian Defense Ministry has reported a complete cessation of hostilities by Russian troops in the area of the special military operation as of midnight on May 8. The Ukrainian army continued to strike Russian military positions and civilian targets.

“Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has hailed the results as “a complete reshaping of British politics”

• Starmer’s Labour Party ‘Wiped Out’ In UK Elections (RT)

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour Party has been decimated in parliamentary elections in Scotland and Wales, as well as local elections in England. However, Starmer is refusing calls to resign. Labour was the biggest loser in Thursday’s elections. As results came in on Friday, Starmer’s party had lost more than 1,300 local council seats in England, around five seats in the Scottish Parliament, and 21 seats in the Welsh Senedd, as of 11 PM local time.
https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2052921709930365100?s=20

While full results are not expected until Saturday, Starmer has already admitted that “when voters send a message like this, we must reflect and we must respond.” However, although the PM has been urged to resign by some within his own party, including Energy Secretary Ed Miliband, he has dismissed the idea, stating that he is not “going to walk away and plunge the country into chaos.”Some 5,066 out of 16,000 local council seats in England and all 129 and 96 seats in the Scottish and Welsh legislatures were up for grabs on Thursday. Labour went into the election holding 5,873 local seats, but looks set to emerge with closer to 4,000.
For the first time this century, Labour will lose control of Wales, with First Minister Eluned Morgan losing her seat and the Plaid Cymru and Reform dominating the Senedd. Labour’s loss has not been the Conservative Party’s win. While power has typically swung back and forth between both parties for more than 100 years, the Tories are on track to lose 550 council seats, plus 16 seats in Scotland and 9 in Wales.
Nigel Farage’s Reform UK was the big winner in England, picking up more than 1,200 local council seats. In some constituencies, Reform’s gains have come almost entirely at the Conservatives’ expense. Reform picked up 37 seats in Suffolk, where the Tories lost 36. Farage has spent years hammering successive Tory governments over their failure to reduce immigration and lower the cost of living, and as such has drawn the votes of dissatisfied right-wingers who once backed the Tories.

“It’s a big, big day, not just for our party, but for a complete reshaping of British politics in every way,” Farage told reporters, adding that Labour had been “wiped out.”Zack Polanski’s Green Party has also drawn votes from former Labour supporters abandoning Starmer’s party over the prime minister’s austerity policies and support for Israel. “I said that the Green Party was going to replace Labour,” Polanski told reporters, “and we’re seeing that right across the country. The new politics is the Green Party vs. Reform.” As of Friday evening, Polanski’s Greens had picked up 363 seats in England, five in Scotland, and two in Wales.

Can they still try to ban AfD? Do they?

• Germany’s AfD On Verge Of Absolute Majority In Eastern Saxony-Anhalt (ZH)

With just one more point on election day, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) is closing in on producing a political earthquake. According to a recent poll by Infratest dimap, the AfD in Saxony-Anhalt is pushing its lead even further, now at 41 percent. The poll also shows that for the CDU, establishing a government is becoming more difficult, especially since any realistic option besides the AfD appears to be a minority government. There are just four months until election day, and much could change until then, but the AfD appears to be only gaining momentum, not only in the state, but also nationwide, where it just hit a record of 28 percent in the latest Insa survey.
SACHSEN-ANHALT | Sonntagsfrage Landtagswahl Infratest dimap/MDR, MZ, Volksstimme

AfD: 41% (+2)
CDU: 26% (-1)
LINKE: 12% (-1)
SPD: 7%
GRÜNE: 4% (+1)
BSW: 4% (-2)
Sonstige: 6% (+1)

Änderungen zur letzten Umfrage vom 04. September 2025

Verlauf: https://t.co/x9wTDqkYqA #ltwst… pic.twitter.com/1T1SnGSDuF
— Deutschland Wählt (@Wahlen_DE) May 7, 2026
In the “Sachsen-AnhaltTREND” survey, which was conducted by Infratest dimap on behalf of the Magdeburger Volksstimme, the Mitteldeutsche Zeitung, and Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk, the AfD hit 41 percent. Meanwhile, its closest rival, the CDU, lost 1 percentage point compared to the previous week and sits at 26 percent. Compared to an Infratest poll from last September, the AfD has increased its support by 2 percentage points. Following the CDU are Die Linke at 12 percent and the SPD at 7 percent. https://twitter.com/RMXnews/status/1988598925142499805?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1988598925142499805%7Ctwgr%5Ec1c41d11f941f7151318f62f1c7c460144d4d515%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fpolitical%2Fgermanys-afd-verge-absolute-majority-eastern-saxony-anhalt-just-months-election Both the Greens and the BSW are polling at 4 percent. These two parties, along with the FDP, would currently fail to enter the state parliament. The FDP, a current member of the state government with the CDU and SPD, was not listed individually in the results because of its low figures. All other parties combined represent 6 percent of the total. If all the current values of the other parties held, then just one point more for the AfD would allow the party to rule with an absolute majority. However, if other parties, such as the Greens, were to pass the 5 percent threshold on election day, this would complicate the math for the AfD. In addition, a majority of respondents are unhappy with the state government, with 62 percent stating they are only slightly or not at all satisfied. Only 33 percent expressed that they are very satisfied or satisfied with the government’s performance. Furthermore, 82 percent of people have little to no confidence that the state is generally fulfilling its duties, and the same number, 82 percent, assess the current economic situation as “less than good” or “poor.” Only 14 percent rate the economy as “very good” or “good.”

“Public spending is coming to the rescue for an economy that is facing severe structural problems..”

Merkel has destroyed the economy so badly it now looks like the East-German economy she comes from: all is State.

• From Market To Military: Germany’s Private Sector Is Imploding (RT)

After two years of recession, it seemed that Germany’s economy had stabilized in 2025 and was even inching in the direction of a return to growth. Sure, nobody was sounding the trumpets of a full-fledged recovery, but it seemed the worst had passed. That was, admittedly, before the US-Israeli war on Iran muddied those waters. But even apart from this black swan event, what has really been going on in the German economy deserves a closer look. After all, there are different ways of generating GDP growth and not all of them have the same deeper implications.

In Germany’s case, it turns out the nascent recovery was almost entirely fueled by state spending while the private sector is in virtual free-fall. This, incidentally, goes some way toward explaining the ongoing rearmament in Germany in response to the supposed threat from Russia – a threat that very conveniently is breathing new life into unsustainable industry. This is no less than military Keynesianism, a phenomenon few expected to see in Germany. And it is being tasked to address several major structural shifts at once.

2025 marked an inflection point
The German economy broke a two-year recession, growing by 0.2% in 2025, following a 0.5% contraction in 2024. However, the growth was driven in large part by government spending. There was a late-year pickup in industrial and construction output – also government-driven – while exports continued to lag.Public spending, however, rose 5.6% in 2025 and now represents more than 50% of GDP. This number itself isn’t particularly eye-popping in a European context. Several EU countries have higher ratios.
But Germany has historically been more fiscally conservative with an economy much more oriented toward private industry and exports. Helmut Kohl, German chancellor in the 1980s and ‘90s, once called a spending ratio above 50% socialism. This is a threshold beyond which Germany would be seen as having adopted a different economic model. That different economic model is now here. But think about it from this angle: What happens when you boost public spending by over 5% and still can only barely eke out any economic growth? It means the private sector is crumbling.
Digging into the data
A widening split has opened in Germany’s economy since 2022, dividing industries more exposed to market forces from those being backstopped by public spending. Traditional sectors – especially the automotive and chemical industries – have struggled with high energy costs and global competition. This has been reflected in the share prices, which have been very sluggish, with Porsche leading the way among the declines.
The weakness is also visible in underlying demand, with domestic orders broadly declining, although amid volatility, since 2022. Last year saw periodic spikes driven by large contracts – almost certainly state-driven – whereas underlying demand remained weak. Exports were weak, so was private investment. Capital goods orders, a key gauge of private-sector investment, have been falling, pointing to continued contraction in market-driven industrial activity.

At the same time, defense contractors and state-backed industrial firms have surged on the back of government spending. Rheinmetall shares have rocketed more than 1,000% since early 2022, with its market cap rising from about €4 billion to roughly €67 billion. Hensoldt and Renk have also posted strong gains, while even adjacent players such as Infineon have nearly doubled in value. Construction and industrial groups tied to public projects – including Hochtief, Heidelberg Materials, and Bilfinger – have also rallied sharply, in some cases climbing several-fold from 2022 lows.
This has all come while the economy has been in recession and the manufacturing sector has been hemorrhaging jobs. What this points to is that Germany’s headline market gains are masking a lack of real recovery. While the country’s stock market, the DAX, has risen strongly, most of the growth is concentrated in a narrow, state-backed segment.
The contrast reflects very different operating conditions. Automakers and chemical firms compete in open global markets, where rising energy and labor costs erode competitiveness and push production to cheaper regions. Consumers can choose from many options. Defense contractors, by contrast, operate largely outside these pressures, relying on government-funded demand. Arms deals are driven by political and strategic decisions rather than market pricing, meaning input costs such as energy matter far less.
Rising costs have made large parts of Germany’s traditional industrial base less competitive. The response of the German state to that has been to shift toward sectors insulated from the market. Industry is not recovering in a conventional sense, but being redirected to where demand is state-driven rather than market-driven. This shift is already reshaping Germany’s manufacturing base. According to the German Chamber of Industry and Commerce (DIHK), about 17% of industrial firms are now tied to the defense supply chain, with involvement particularly high in vehicle manufacturing at 36%. Some struggling auto plants are being repurposed for military production.

Just bring ’em home. Russia will not attack unless we attack first.

• Trump Indicates US Could Move Troops From Germany to Poland (JTN)

President Donald Trump said Friday night that the United States military could decide to relocate the troops that are currently stationed in Germany and move them to Poland. The president touted his friendship with the country’s leader, President Karol Nawrocki, who assumed office last year. The Pentagon previously indicated that the U.S. would move 5,000 troops from Germany in the next six to 12 months. Well, Poland would like that,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “We have a great relationship with Poland. I have a great relationship with the president. I endorsed him, and he won.

He came from way behind, and he won. He’s a great fighter, he’s a great guy. I like him a lot, so that’s possible. Germany is currently home to the largest U.S. military presence in Europe, with more than 35,000 troops currently stationed in the country, and is also viewed as crucial to the U.S.’s presence on the continent. The United Kingdom and Italy also host over 10,000 U.S. troops each. Poland currently hosts 369 permanently assigned active-duty service members and about 10,000 personnel of rotational force, according to Reuters.

If his defence really is that he didn’t know what “86-47” means, he’s toast. But…

• Federal Judge Sets Comey Criminal Trial For July 15 In North Carolina (JTN)

A federal judge Friday scheduled former FBI Director James Comey’s upcoming criminal trial for July 15 at her court in North Carolina, after a grand jury in the state indicted him on two criminal charges. The decision comes a day after the same judge agreed to cancel Comey’s first court appearance in the state, because he had already surrendered himself to authorities and appeared in a Virginia court for the same case. His appearance was scheduled for Monday. Comey was indicted by a grand jury in North Carolina last month for posting a photo of shells on a beach last year with the inscription “86-47” that prosecutors alleged was a threat against the president.

U.S. District Judge Louise Flanagan, who will oversee the trial, instructed Comey’s legal team to file all of its pretrial motions by June 5 and said Comey can make his first official appearance in her court to enter his plea on June 30. Comey’s team is expected to frame the case as a retribution campaign and will seek to toss the new indictment as selective and vindictive prosecution, according to The Hill. The former director has been officially charged with making a threat against the president and transmitting a threat in interstate commerce. If convicted, he faces up to 20 years in prison.

2 years to go. Is the US ready for a Latino president?

• Is Marco Rubio The New Heir Apparent To Trump? (ZH)

For months, the conventional wisdom inside Republican circles has been settled and simple: JD Vance is next. The vice president has led 2028 Republican presidential nomination polling by a country mile, averaging nearly 45.5 points in the RealClearPolitics aggregate — more than 30 points ahead of Donald Trump Jr. at 14.8% and Marco Rubio at 14%. And yet, something shifted this week. One press briefing, and the betting markets started hedging.

Rubio stepped in as White House press secretary on Tuesday, covering for Karoline Leavitt while she’s on maternity leave, and delivered what even the skeptics had to acknowledge was a polished, commanding performance. He defended the war in Iran before a press corps not exactly known for its generosity toward administration officials — and walked away with his standing improved. The room, by most accounts, was notably less adversarial than it tends to be when Leavitt or Trump takes the podium. Rubio was fluid and measured, giving the journalists little to sharpen their teeth on. Washington noticed, and Kalshi, one of the leading prediction markets, noticed too.
By Tuesday, Rubio had leapfrogged Vance to become the overall favorite to win the 2028 presidential election, coming in at 18% to Vance’s 17%. Gov. Gavin Newsom sits just behind at 16% – a reminder that the Democrats haven’t entirely vacated the field in the markets’ eyes. For Rubio, the jump is particularly striking given that he was sitting in the single digits on Kalshi earlier this year. Polymarket still has Vance in front overall – 19.6% to Newsom’s 16.7% and Rubio’s 15%. On the GOP nomination question specifically, Vance retains a meaningful edge on Polymarket (though Rubio’s odds are rising). Primary voters and general-election bettors, it turns out, are pricing these things very differently.
None of this, of course, happens in a vacuum. Trump himself has been notably careful — or deliberately noncommittal — about who carries the MAGA torch after January 2029. Weeks into his second term, Trump sat down with Fox News’s Bret Baier and declined to designate Vance as his heir apparent, saying simply that it was too early for such an endorsement. For a president who has never been shy about anointing winners and losers, that hesitation was conspicuous to say the least. He left the door ajar, and markets being markets, traders are now watching to see who walks through it.
Vance remains the favorite by most conventional metrics. His polling advantage is enormous, and he’s been the heir apparent since joining the Trump ticket in 2024. But Rubio’s trajectory is definitely worth watching to see if his stock goes higher or merely plateaus. His rise from the low single digits to within striking distance of Vance on Kalshi over just a few months could be a one-off or the opening act of a longer repositioning. For now, Vance’s commanding polling lead offers the most grounded picture of where Republican voters actually stand. But, prediction markets have a knack for capturing things polls don’t. And it will likely take some time to determine if Rubio’s rise will stick.

“I’m sure Fetterman will find a way to anger Republicans, if only to reestablish his bona fides as a blue-collar Democrat.”

• John Fetterman: ‘I’d Be a Terrible Republican’ (Rick Moran)

Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman is the quintessential iconoclast. He’s a disruptor of the first order, a thorn in the side of Democrats, and the media’s go-to guy if it wants a juicy quote from a Democrat who’s likely to say something bad about his own party. But Fetterman is no Republican. He made that very clear in an op-ed he wrote for the Washington Post, published Thursday. Talking about his first race for political office in 2008, the mayor of his dying steel town of Braddock, Penn., Fetterman wrote that it “wasn’t about being a Democrat or Republican, but about making sure places such as Braddock received the benefits, focus, and investments they deserved for their contributions to this great country.”

Fetterman has sought to maintain that political identity ever since.I’d say he was an “old-fashioned” politician, looking to work with the other party to achieve mutually beneficial goals, but it wasn’t that long ago that the sort of bipartisanship Fetterman ascribes to was the dominant political identity of members of both parties.Today, the base of both parties sees that sort of bipartisanship as weak and even traitorous. This has made Fetterman a lonely figure, as much of his own party shuns him. Democrats in Pennsylvania give Fetterman a 22% approval rating, while Republicans embrace him, with 73% approving of the job he’s doing.
What Democrats object to most of all is that Fetterman doesn’t hate Donald Trump. He opposes Trump on most issues, but the visceral, hysterical hate that Democrats feel toward Trump is missing from Fetterman’s rhetoric.On some issues, he supports the president, which drives the radical left nuts. He has been a strong supporter of Trump’s policy toward Israel and Iran, and he has backed Trump’s border crackdown.My party cannot simply be the opposite of whatever President Donald Trump says. The president could come out for ice cream and lazy Sundays, and my party would suddenly hate them. Such pointless pile-ons and attacks are unproductive. The American people want us to work together to find solutions on issues they and our country face.
It wasn’t long ago when Democrats wanted a secure border. I voted on an immigration bill in 2024 to make sure an influx the size of Pittsburgh doesn’t come through the border like it did under the previous administration. I have co-sponsored legislation to stop the flow of fentanyl. I was the lead Democrat on the Laken Riley Act, and I strongly believe that someone who comes here illegally and commits a violent crime should be deported. Full stop. This support for some of Trump’s agenda has Republicans eying Fetterman for a party switch. It’s not going to happen.
Fetterman is not the vindictive type, and even if Democrats boot him off committees and support someone more radical in the primary (he’s up for reelection in 2028), he will remain a Democrat. “I remain strongly pro-choice, pro-weed, pro-LGBT, pro-SNAP, pro-labor and even pro-rib-eye over bio slop,” he wrote. None of that except preferring rib-eye sounds very “Republican” to me. Fetterman explains: “Being an independent voice that works with the other side to deliver for Pennsylvanians might put me at odds with the party that I have stayed committed to and have no plans to leave — but I will continue to put the commonwealth and the country first,” he said.
He added, “Plus, I’d be a terrible Republican who still votes overwhelmingly with Democrats.” Heritage Action, the political arm of the Heritage Foundation, gives Fetterman a 0% score for the 119th Congress, indicating that from a staunchly conservative perspective, his voting record is still overwhelmingly aligned with the Democratic caucus. Fetterman says he “has no plans to leave” the Democratic Party. Some commentators, such as Aaron Blake of Politico, point out that plans can change. The first thing to note is that while some have cast this as Fetterman rejecting a party switch, he didn’t fully rule it out.
Yes, it’s significant that he even felt pressured enough to write this op-ed downplaying the prospect, and Democrats should be heartened that he did. But “no plans” is not the same as “no chance,” and politicians often use the former phrasing to keep their options open. If things were to change, Fetterman — who’s not facing reelection until 2028 — could say he truthfully wasn’t planning on switching parties, but that his plans changed because of XYZ. I’m sure Fetterman will find a way to anger Republicans, if only to reestablish his bona fides as a blue-collar Democrat. But he remains one of the more colorful politicians in a city full of black, white, and gray.

We’ll hear a lot about this, rest assured.

• Gerrymander Debacle in Virginia Leaves Dems with a Dangerous Agenda (Turley)

“Eff around and find out”: That taunt from Hakeem Jeffries celebrating Virginia’s gerrymander did not age well. On Friday, the House minority leader found out that Virginia’s Supreme Court was not quite as gleeful as he about Democrats’ attempt to virtually eliminate Republican representation in the purple state. The court just cooked the party’s infamous lobster, a district over 100 miles long that was designed to help devour the GOP’s slender majority in the House of Representatives.mIt also cooked the ambitions of Gov. Abigail Spanberger and the Democratic establishment, which tossed aside any pretense of principle in a raw political gambit.

The resulting faceplant is nothing short of legendary: Spanberger’s Democrats have succeeded in alienating half of the state. For the governor, the court’s decision was particularly embarrassing. Before assuming power, Spanberger denounced gerrymandering as “detrimental to our democracy and weakens the individual voices that form our electorates.”She ran as a moderate, but Spanberger immediately turned sharply left once in office and called for the most extreme gerrymander in the nation. The court found that effort was not only unconstitutional, but “wholly unprecedented in Virginia’s history.” It characterized the state’s position as “a story of the tail wagging the dog that has no tail.”
While some of us had previously expressed skepticism over the rushed effort to circumvent the state constitution, the media almost exclusively relied on liberal experts who predicted the new districts would be upheld. It was a calculated risk for Democrats, who have now burned their bridges with Virginia conservative and Republican voters. As Winston Churchill said, “Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.” Exhilarating and unforgettable: In a purple state where politicians often require crossover votes to prevail, the redistricting push was not just partisan but personal for voters. National Democrats will soon “find out” whether Jeffries was right to prematurely celebrate a victory that seemed to secure his anticipated elevation to Speaker of the House.
The party is facing a potentially catastrophic reversal of fortune. When Democrats declared a gerrymandering war, some of us warned that the party, with its already heavily gerrymandered blue states, had far more to lose than the GOP did. It was particularly comical when Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey pledged to join the redistricting fray, even though her state is so badly gerrymandered that it’s elected zero Republicans to the House since the 1990s. Virginia, a state long opposed to gerrymandering, has been considered the fairest state in the country, with a distribution of congressional seats that closely matches its partisan divide.
Once Spanberger sought to eradicate Republican representation, total war broke out — and now red states like Florida and Tennessee have moved forward with their own redistricting. On top of the fact that GOP states have more room for partisan gerrymandering, the Virginia Supreme Court decision comes on the heels of the US Supreme Court’s ban on racial gerrymandering. That means a dozen or more Democratic districts could now be deemed unconstitutional — and Louisiana and Mississippi are moving to redistrict in line with the Supreme Court’s decision. The result could be a dramatic shift in districts favoring the GOP.
To make matters worse for the Democratic Party, a new census in 2030 will correct the mistakes that erroneously awarded them multiple districts after the 2020 census. Those corrections, and the ongoing exodus from high-tax blue states to booming red ones, could translate into even more congressional gains for the GOP. That prospect of a political apocalypse has Democratic strategists pushing for radical changes in Washington before it’s too late. Top priority: packing the Supreme Court as soon as they retake power. As Virginia has shown, an independent court can unravel the best-laid plans.
Democratic politicians, pundits and professors have been openly pushing for expanding the high court to 13 members with four new liberal additions, in order to rubber-stamp the radical changes needed to keep the party in power. James Carville recently told Democratic politicians that they have no choice but to pack the court, declaring “F–k it . . . Just do it.” He suggested, however, that they might not want to tell the voters.
“Don’t run on it. Don’t talk about it,” he said. “Just do it.” Last week, Jeffries declared the Supreme Court “illegitimate” as he blasted its ban on racial gerrymandering. After the Virginia court’s ruling, the frustrated Democratic establishment is ever more likely to echo him — and to go beyond. Many Democrats are now “all in” with this radical agenda. With the courts declaring their redistricting efforts unconstitutional, it is the constitutional system itself that will now have to go.

This is eye-opening. A fast food job in the US pays significantly more than AI developer jobs in France or Germany, which have higher salaries than most other European countries.

Europeans simply don’t notice how poor they become compared to others. Choices have consequences. pic.twitter.com/AAy39aP5aU
— Michael A. Arouet (@MichaelAArouet) May 9, 2026

The human-perceived RGB is image 1 and the Tesla AI photon count reconstruction is image 2.

This is why Tesla FSD can see so well at night or through extreme glare. pic.twitter.com/ttBMzgpJtd
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 9, 2026

https://twitter.com/jackprandelli/status/2053052668529058006?s=20 https://twitter.com/MichaelARothman/status/2053114983098282460?s=20

A BOMBSHELL study just confirmed Fauci & top COVID officials used FRAUDULENT PCR case counts (86% NOT REAL INFECTIONS) to terrorize America into deadly mRNA jabs, lockdowns, and the fictional 6-foot rule.

TERMINATE Fauci’s autopen pardon NOW and CHARGE HIM.

2 days remain… pic.twitter.com/vCKEiUHAMK
— Nicolas Hulscher, MPH (@NicHulscher) May 9, 2026

When this sculpture was unveiled in 1753, people refused to believe it was made of marble.

They were convinced the artist had used alchemy…

The veil draped over the body of Christ was rendered with such impossible precision that the only explanation was that some chemical… pic.twitter.com/3NQivzbdYD
— James Lucas (@JamesLucasIT) May 9, 2026

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Debt Rattle May 2 2026

May 022026

May 2, 2026 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:20 am Finance Tagged with: 8647, assassination, ballroom, ceasefire, Comey, Hakeem Jeffries, indictment, Lincoln, mass layoffs, Mueller, shutdown, Supreme Court 30 Responses »

Johannes Vermeer The girl with the wine glass (Dame en twee heren) 1659

• Trump Issues Letter Rejecting Congressional Oversight For War (ZH)

• Trump’s ‘Assurances’ To Americans as GOP Members Start to Scramble (ZH)

• Iran’s Brutal Test Of Endurance (ZH)

• Indictment-O-Rama (James Howard Kunstler)

• The Comey Memos and the Appointment of Robert Mueller (CTH)

• Another DOJ Investigative Case Against James Comey Happening in Virgina (CTH)

• James Comey Knew EXACTLY What ‘86 47’ Meant (Robert Spencer)

• New Footage of Trump Assassination Attempt Released (Matt Margolis)

• The Real Reason the Democrats Hate President Trump’s Ballroom (Tim O’Brien)

• Remember That Half the Country Once Hated Lincoln (Stephen Kruiser)

• House Ends 76-Day Shutdown (Sarah Anderson)

• Hakeem Jeffries Denounces the Supreme Court as “Illegitimate” (Turley)

https://twitter.com/BoLoudon/status/2049927123083657272?s=20

In the aftermath of the bombshell Supreme Court ruling, the news keeps getting worse for the Democratic Party.

CNN pollster @ForecasterEnten lays out devastating new polling data that show Trump is gaining support among black Americans.

"Trump's GOP is holding on to the… pic.twitter.com/bmZgRw9gig
— Kyle Becker (@kylenabecker) April 30, 2026

Not everyone knows it, but Todd Blanche was the lawyer who represented Trump during all the lawfare in 2024, when everyone else was abandoning him.

Todd knows what Trump has been through. And he is very, VERY pissed off about it.

This is the guy we need right now. pic.twitter.com/WwDeDqLDVo
— The Conservative Alternative (@OldeWorldOrder) April 30, 2026

Obama & former CIA Dir. John Brennan would meet every Tuesday morning & discuss who they were going to assassinate that week.

Whether with a drone, or a hitman…

"They were just going out whacking everybody."

– John Kiriakou pic.twitter.com/44x1r3T6Hh
— The SCIF (@TheSCIF) May 1, 2026

Holy crap!

John Solomon says the DOJ is building a massive case against the Deep State.

It's all coming.

Have some faith. pic.twitter.com/UNHhasUn6b
— Mila Joy (@Milajoy) April 30, 2026

Does a president need to ask permission for a ceasefire?

• Trump Issues Letter Rejecting Congressional Oversight For War (ZH)

Trump Letter: Doesn’t Need Congressional Approval As Ceasefire Has ‘Terminated’ Conflict

In an acknowledgement that his anti-Iran Operation Epic Fury has indeed hit 60 days, President Trump has issued a formal letter to Congress which argues he does not need their authorization for war. He is arguing the current ceasefire has in effect ‘terminated’ the conflict. Below are his main points via NBC [emphasis by ZH]:
• “On April 7, 2026, I ordered a two-week ceasefire. The ceasefire has since been extended. There has been no exchange of fire between the United States Forces and Iran since April 7, 2026. The hostilities that began on February 28, 2026, have terminated,” Trump wrote in the letters, one of which went to the House and one of which went to the Senate.
• “Despite the success of United States operations against the Iranian regime and continued efforts to secure a lasting peace, the threat posed by Iran to the United States and our Armed Forces remains significant,” the president added in the letter, promising to keep congressional leaders updated on further developments in Iran.
• “I have and will continue to direct United States Armed Forces consistent with my responsibilities and pursuant to my constitutional authority to conduct United States foreign relations and as Commander in Chief and Chief Executive,” the president wrote in his letter.

Trump claims it's unconstitutional to seek congressional authorization for war pic.twitter.com/W2rnTOXbDn
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 1, 2026

In fresh Friday words to reporters, President Trump says he is not satisfied with the latest proposal from Iran. He further stated that these negotiations “are not getting there right now.”
His main points via Newsquawk:
• Iran wants a deal, but i am not satisfied.
• Iran has no military left.
• Talks with Iran are by phone.
• Made strides in talks with Iran.
• Not sure we are going to get to a deal.
• Not happy with Italy or Spain on Iran.
• Iran leaders do not get along with each other.

Bessent Lists 5 Pressures Iranian ‘Rats’ Facing
US Treasury Secretary Bessent takes to X on Friday to again call Iranian leaders “rats” – which won’t bode well for restarting stalled negotiations. He’s busy boasting on the economic damage unleashed by the ongoing US naval blockade, writing: “It is very difficult for rats in a sewer pipe to know what’s going on in the outside world. Some color for the Iranian Leadership as they literally sit in the dark.” He then lists out the following:
1. The United States has complete control of the Strait of Hormuz.
2. There is a hard currency, i.e. U.S. dollar, shortage.
3. Food and gasoline rationing are in place.
4. The entire international community has turned against you.
5. The BLOCKADE will continue, until there is pre-February 27 Freedom of Navigation.
He also shared a WSJ article proclaiming that the Iranians have ‘failed’ to roll back the US military blockade, and that supposedly the clock is ticking on the government’s ability to rule…

It is very difficult for rats in a sewer pipe to know what’s going on in the outside world. Some color for the Iranian Leadership as they literally sit in the dark:

1. The United States has complete control of the Strait of Hormuz.

2. There is a hard currency, i.e. U.S. dollar,… https://t.co/oNHVEvdNE4
— Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent (@SecScottBessent) May 1, 2026

Israel To Renew Bombing if Nuclear Issue Not Dealt With
The Netanyahu government is signaling that it will restart the bombing campaign if the nuclear issue is not resolved. It should also not be forgotten that ‘denuclearizing’ Iran by force has been a multi-decade priority of Prime Minister Netanyahu and the hardliners of Israel. These are the latest warnings out of the Israeli military establishment on Friday: An Israeli military official says that if Iran’s stockpile of more than 400 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60% is not removed from the Islamic Republic, the entire latest war will be considered “one big failure.” Israeli officials have said that this stockpile is sufficient for 11 nuclear bombs.
And the Times of Israel underscores further, “The senior officer says that if, as part of negotiations between the United States and Iran, no agreement is reached to remove the uranium stockpile and halt enrichment in the country, the achievements in the 40 days of fighting will have been for nothing.” So this means that “If the nuclear objective is not achieved, then everything we did in Iran will be one big failure. The evil Iranian regime can pounce on the nuclear program,” the official emphasized. And then the threat…
The officer adds that “if the uranium is removed from Iran through diplomatic means, we have done our part.” However, if that does not happen, Israel would need to launch another operation in Iran to achieve the objective, they say. Already Israel has demonstrated its immense influence over the decision to go to war in the first place.

Susan Collins (R-Maine) votes with Adam Schiff. Dump her!

• Trump’s ‘Assurances’ To Americans as GOP Members Start to Scramble (ZH)

The Iran war and Hormuz closure remains a game of geopolitical chicken, where each side believes it can inflict more pain on the other while being the one to outlast. But Iran, while being subject to a years long sanctions regimen and recent large-scale US-Israeli bombing campaign, does not operation on 4-year and 2-year election cycles. With next fall’s midterms staring Congressional Republicans in the face, there this increasingly uncomfortable trend: The average price of one gallon (3.8 litres) of gasoline in the United States has reached $4.30, according to the American Automobile Association (AAA), up from less than $3 before the February 28 start of the US-Israel war on Iran.

President Trump addressed this in fielding questions in the Oval Office on Thursday,telling reporters that gas prices would “drop like a rock” as soon as the Iran war ended. “The [price of] gasoline and the oil will go down rapidly once the war’s over,” he stated confidently – “like a rock,” he added.

President Trump cuts off a reporter when informed that the average price of gas is now $4.30.

Trump: “Yeah. And you know what? We're not gonna have a nuclear weapon in the hands of Iran. The gas is gonna go down. As soon as the war’s over it’ll drop like a rock.” pic.twitter.com/0bCxak9d3w
— The American Conservative (@amconmag) April 30, 2026

However, the war is about to hit 60-days on Friday and America’s overall strategy and timeline remains anything but clear. Instead, Trump is insisting the Iranians have “nothing” in terms of a military, and yet the crisis in global energy remains, and Operation Epic Fury is still on, the extended uneasy ceasefire notwithstanding…

President Trump on Iran:

“They’re sitting in a cave and all their leaders are dead… They have no navy, they have no air force, they have no nothing. We can fly right over the middle of Tehran without being shot at because they have no anti-aircraft. They have nothing.” pic.twitter.com/L7AVoV90ZZ
— The American Conservative (@amconmag) April 30, 2026

Meanwhile, an interesting argument (below) from Hegseth this week, as Congress is supposed to vote on a formal war authorization once any foreign conflict hits the 60-day mark, per US law. And the first Republican Senator has ‘switched’ and broken ranks with GOP leaders on Trump’s Iran war and Congressional authorization: Centrist Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) on Thursday broke ranks with Republican leaders and most GOP colleagues by voting for a war powers resolution sponsored by Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) to halt military actions against Iran, the first Republican senator to change her position on curtailing President Trump’s military authority.
Rand was over there getting lonely defending the Constitution, but the longer the Iran conflict persists – and Americans feel it at the pump – the more Republican members will likely peel off: Collins joined Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) in voting to advance a resolution to withdraw U.S. military forces from the conflict with Iran unless Congress votes to authorize the use of force. She and Paul voted with most Democrats for a motion to discharge the resolution from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, but it still failed by a vote of 47 to 50. It marked the sixth time that Senate Republicans have defeated a resolution under the 1973 War Powers Act to halt further military operations against Iran.

HEGSETH: On Iran, we are in a ceasefire right now, which I understand means the 60 day clock pauses or stops

KAINE: I do not believe the statute would support that pic.twitter.com/1JGdThEdR9
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 30, 2026

Amid chatter that Israel could be preparing for renewed attacks on Iran, and as Trump is said to be mulling more limited strikes – but while at the same time the USS Gerald R Ford is returning to the United States after a record deployment – Iran is signaling it is ready for a long war and can endure the US naval blockade for a long time to come. However, there are also unconfirmed reports out of Pakistan that another draft peace proposal could be presented by Tehran as soon as this weekend. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has newly said Thursday the blockade is effectively an “extension of military operations” by Washington, despite the extended ceasefire declared by Trump.
Also on Thursday, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent signaled that the US administration gameplan seems to be to drive Iran into economic ruin, in hopes of triggering some kind of uprising toward regime change. But this was the exact same ‘prediction’ and gameplan in the opening days of the war – which never materialized. One the one hand his below message on X seems to gloat over imposing widescale misery over the bombed-out country, while on the other claiming to help and support the Iranian people, saying they “deserve a new era”.
As we reported earlier, Iran’s currency on Wednesday collapsed to a record low, plunging to 1.8 million rial per dollar amid the prolonged US-Israel war and uneasy ceasefire, also as surging global energy prices hit the economy. The rial began sliding sharply two days prior to this after weeks of artificial stability. In the early phase of the war that kicked off on February 28, the currency held steady due to a near-total halt in imports and limited market activity.
“We think the price was worth it” vibes…

Amid the impact of Economic Fury, Iran’s currency has hit an all-time low.

The Iranian people deserve a new era, which the corrupt and shambolic Iranian regime cannot provide.

With their oil industry closing and their currency plummeting, it is past time for the Iranian regime… pic.twitter.com/k7QvKoWbl2
— Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent (@SecScottBessent) April 30, 2026

The hardship will be dumped upon the people. Don’t let’s forget they killed some 40.000 of their own people even before the US got involved.

• Iran’s Brutal Test Of Endurance (ZH)

Iran’s economy is undergoing one of the most brutal stress tests in its modern history. Official annual inflation has surged to 50% according to central bank figures released shortly after the ceasefire, while the year-on-year rate reached as high as 67% through mid-April, according to the Wall Street Journal. The rial has crashed to a record low of 1.8 million to the dollar, roughly two million workers have lost their jobs, and the US naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz continues to throttle the country’s oil exports and critical imports.

Reconstruction costs from bombed infrastructure are estimated near $270 billion – alarmingly close to the country’s entire annual GDP of roughly $341 billion last year. What was already a sanctions-battered, mismanaged economy now confronts a grinding “no war, no peace” stalemate. Tehran is wagering that it can hunker down and endure a protracted war – allowing it to outlast American pressure. The early data and on-the-ground reality suggest that wager is being tested to its limits.
The human impact is immediate and visible in everyday Tehran life. A 56-year-old housewife described to Najmeh Bozorgmehr of the Financial Times how a simple block of cheese rose from 5.2 million rials to 6.7 million rials (about $5.09) in a single week. Comparable jumps have struck rice, eggs, chicken, red meat, and other staples. A popular Peugeot 207 has climbed from 18 billion rials to 25 billion since the conflict began, while officials are preparing to authorize a 40 percent increase in government-mandated cement prices.
The cost of living has soared, with the annual inflation rate reaching 67% in the month through mid-April from the same period a year earlier, according to Iran’s central bank. The subsidized price of red meat, which was mostly imported through sea routes, has gone up to the equivalent of around $3.60 a pound, beyond the reach of most in a country where the minimum wage is around $130 a month. -WSJ
Business consultant Siamak Ghassemi publicly advised Iranians that anything short of a near-doubling of wages would fail to offset the cost-of-living explosion. One small petrochemical-dependent factory outside the capital has already dismissed nearly a third of its workforce. A clothing business owner reported recent costs running 150 percent above sales, bluntly concluding, “This is not sustainable.”

“Pam Bondi’s era —which paved the way by restructuring the DOJ and navigating the Epstein disclosures— is over. We’re in the Blanche era now.”—Jeff Childers

Indict-O-Rama rolls lightly off the tomgue. Indictment-O-Rama sounds constructed.

• Indictment-O-Rama (James Howard Kunstler)

You might be pleased to know that today’s May Day street actions — rallies, marches, teach-ins, walkouts, demonstrations, and a broad economic blackout (”No Work, No School, No Shopping”) — planned and coordinated by hundreds of activist orgs, is styling itself as “Workers Over Billionaires.”

How do they figure that, exactly, considering the Lefty-left Resistance movement is entirely funded by. . . billionaires? You know. . . George and Alex Soros (the Open Society Foundations), Neville Roy Singham (the People’s Forum, Code Pink), Hansjörg Wyss (the Wyss Foundation), Reid Hoffman (Forward Majority Action, Crowdpac), Sir Chris Hohn (the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation), Alan Parker (Arabella Advisors, Environmental Law Institute) . . . .
Some 3,000-plus actions are planned today in cities all over the country. Last week, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries framed the Lefty-left’s strategy as “maximum warfare, everywhere, all the time.” Will the party’s foot soldiers do his bidding and get frisky out on the streets today. . . a little lootin’ perhaps. . . a fire here and there? Is May Day, as promised by its sponsors, the gateway into another Summer of Love (mostly peaceful riots)?
We’ll have an idea by day’s end. Meanwhile, the Lefty-left’s business-class lounge, the Democratic Party, has suddenly caught a case of the jim-jams over this week’s 6-3 SCOTUS ruling on the racial gerrymandering of Congressional districts, which is: no more snake-shaped districts through the bayous, cotton fields, pine Islands, palmetto scrubs, and Cypress hammocks of deepest Dixieland for the purpose of creating majority-black seats. Observers forecast the loss of up to nineteen Democratic House members going into the 2028 election. It’s not clear how the Party’s billionaires might be able to fix this.
Also, this week, interesting developments in the Lefty-left’s retirement clubhouse. The law (the DOJ’s Eastern District of North Carolina) finally caught up with Jim Comey’s prank of one year ago when he posted on Instagram a curious arrangement of seashells on a Carolina beach saying “86 47.” The cryptic message — “cool shell formation,” Mr. Comey said in the caption — was universally understood to mean get rid of the forty-seventh POTUS, Donald Trump. Because the former FBI Director was well-versed in mob lingo from prosecuting gangsters, it appears he knew exactly what the code stands for: the instruction to go whack somebody. Hence, the question: was Mr. Comey issuing such an instruction to the Lefty-left rank and file?
Mr. Comey suddenly finds himself in a sort of brand-new crossfire hurricane. Turns out, an investigation (said to be at the “pre grand jury stage”) was launched lately in the DOJ’s Eastern District of Virginia concerning Mr. Comey’s use of a “cut-out” messenger, Columbia U professor and BFF Daniel Richman, for leaking a confidential conversation with President Trump to reporter Michael Schmidt of The New York Times back in 2017. This was Mr. Comey’s notorious disclosure in a Trump Tower consultation with the new president that a video existed of Russian whores peeing on a bed in the Moscow Ritz-Carlton hotel for Mr. Trump’s amusement. It was, of course, a kick-off for the FBI’s totally fake RussiaGate campaign.
It’s also widely expected that the former FBI Director will be one of the many former officials fingered in the DOJ’s RICO case out of the Southern District of Florida. The grand jury is already seated and hearing the evidence in a Fort Pierce federal courthouse. That case is predicated on the chain of legal attacks against Mr. Trump, running back a decade, amounting to an ongoing coup, a comprehensive campaign of legalistic chicanery disguised as legality designed to overthrow the chief executive.
Observers have started trying to pre-bunk the seashell case, saying there are six ways to Sunday that Mr. Comey can explain it away. Don’t be so sure about that. Mainly, what the DOJ has to demonstrate is Mr. Comey’s mens rea (Latin for “guilty mind”), a fundamental concept in criminal law that refers to the mental state or intention a person must have when committing a nefarious act, in order to be held criminally liable. Expect to see bales of written evidence on that.
The beauty of the seashell case is this: It’s quite straightforward and uncomplicated. There might be little room for Mr. Comey’s lawyers to create procedural delays, such as dragging out discovery issues. Which means that in this case Mr. Comey will get exactly the speedy trial that the US Constitution calls for. . . meaning, the courtroom showdown could take place before the midterm election.

It’s all one big anti-Trump soup.

• The Comey Memos and the Appointment of Robert Mueller (CTH)

I apologize for the deep weed details, but this stuff will soon become critical. If James Comey is indicted for leaking the “Comey memos” suddenly the door opens wide to see how the Robert Mueller appointment was a coordinated ongoing ‘conspiracy’ effort to target Donald Trump. Back in June 2017 CNN (and other media) filed a FOIA suit to gain the Comey memos. As the lawsuit progressed through a lengthy battle -where the Mueller team did not want to turn over those memos- Mueller’s lead FBI agent, David Archey, made sworn declarations to the court. Those statements became known as the “Archey Declarations”. Inside those declarations agent Archey provided a specific outline of the FBI and the memos.

There are two sets of documents that outline a very specific picture. Robert Mueller’s lead FBI Agent David Archey made sworn declarations to the court. However, at the time of his sworn statement, Archey did not have knowledge of an inside FBI “whistleblower” who provided information to DOJ Inspector General, Michael Horowitz. There is a distinct conflict within the IG Horowitz report on James Comey (and memos) [Available Here] and the David Archey declarations. However, beyond the conflict there’s an even more alarming picture of how Robert Mueller was deployed, when all the information is overlaid in a timeline. A very clear picture emerges; very clear.
Note the date: Agent Archey states the “investigative team” came into full possession of the Comey memos: “on or by May 12th, 2017,”…

The “investigative team” would be Andrew McCabe, Bill Priestap, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, and then James Baker as lead counsel for the group. The “Director’s staff” would be James Rybicki, who is identified by Archey as having “maintained” possession of the memos. This “small group”, particularly Comey’s Chief of Staff, James Rybicki, is the center of the team. This team is also confirmed by the IG Horowitz report. This team had the memos on May 12th, 2017.
Now we move into the aspect where the motives and ideology become clear as we look at the IG custodial record of the memos, as outlined by the Supervisory Special Agent in charge of Comey’s documents within the IG report, compared to the Archey declarations.The FBI Supervisory Special Agent (SSA) in charge of Comey’s document retrieval is the “whistleblower” who eventually went to the IG. I’ll explain why and how below; and to make understanding easier we shall use “SSA Whistleblower” to describe him.On May 10th, the Comey memos were not in Comey’s office [per IG report]. At the time of the search and review of Comey’s office there were no hard copies found by SSA Whistleblower.

We should have 100 of these cases. So people can read every day what a piece of crap he is.

• Another DOJ Investigative Case Against James Comey Happening in Virgina (CTH)

In the first case against James Comey for allegedly lying to Congress, there was no dismissal; instead, the judge rejected US Attorney Lindsey Halligan’s involvement. After that, the statute of limitations ran out. However, if the report below is accurate, this would represent the third currently active investigation against former FBI Director James Comey, and Lindsey Halligan might get the last laugh.

The first investigative notice to Comey was in mid-March from the Sunshine State. Essentially the ‘conspiracy case’ being reviewed by Jason A. Reding Quiñones, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida The second investigative case was in North Carolina, where a grand jury released an indictment for threats against President Trump. Now, Bloomberg is reporting on a third investigation against Comey for leaking classified documents to his friend and special government employee, Daniel Richman.
BLOOMBERG – […] The investigation is tied to his dissemination of documents to Columbia University Law Professor Daniel Richman, the individuals added. If successful, it would be the Trump DOJ’s third time indicting Comey since last fall. […] It hasn’t been decided if the department will present an indictment to a grand jury in Eastern Virginia, where Comey resides, or if the case could be pursued in a different location—such as in Richman’s home of New York. It doesn’t really matter whether New York or the Eastern District of Virginia (EDVA), either location would be the third state where the disgraced former FBI Director Comey would have to defend himself. Again, I remind everyone of ‘pressure points’ in Lawfare.
If the EDVA/NY case proceeds it is based around James Comey leaking his memos to his friend Daniel Richman. In addition to being a close personal friend to James Comey, Daniel Richman is part of the Lawfare network and close friends with Benjamin Wittes, another member of Comey’s tribe. The evidence of this leaking operation is solid, very solid. The only defense James Comey holds in this matter is to claim his memos were not ‘classified’ material.
In fact, several months ago I was told the reason Comey was not yet indicted was due to an internal debate within the DOJ as to the classification status of the Comey memos. To wit I replied, “there is a profound irony in this question the DOJ is asking itself.” You see, in the Mar-a-Lago documents case Jack Smith appealed the ‘classification’ ruling by Judge Aileen Cannon when she appointed a “Special Master” to review the documents and determine the classification status.
The DOJ/FBI Special Counsel, previously said to the Florida court they would not reveal the content of the Mar-a-Lago document information because it was “classified” under “national security” grounds. You might remember President Trump’s legal position was to make the content public because Trump said there was no classified material.To reconcile the issue, during discovery phase Florida Judge Cannon appointed a Special Master to review the “classified” documents. The FBI and Jack Smith balked at the demand and filed an appeal with the 11th Circuit to keep the Trump defense from reviewing what Jack Smith said were “documents marked classified.”
Smith didn’t want the documents made public or revealed to President Trump, so the DOJ/FBI position was that the documents were too sensitive (TSCI) with “national security” implications. The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the “classification status” of the Mar-a-Lago documents was whatever the national security apparatus of the federal government (DOJ, FBI and Intelligence Community) said it was. The judicial branch could not interfere in the classification status applied by the executive branch.

“.. the line between speech and crime is – it should be clear, but it’s fuzzy.”

• James Comey Knew EXACTLY What ‘86 47’ Meant (Robert Spencer)

James Comey, former FBI director, former deputy attorney general, former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, is a friend of presidents and kings, an admired figure who presents himself as a voice of reason and morality, and a pillar of the Washington establishment — or, as the Mafia would put it, a made guy. Surely he would never do something so lawless and undemocratic as threaten the president of the United States, would he?

That’s what Comey contends in response to charges that he was issuing a veiled threat to the president when he posted on his Instagram account a photo of seashells arranged to say “86 47.” “86” is a well-known expression for getting rid of someone, and whether or not Comey meant that Trump should be gotten rid of by assassination, it was an extraordinarily irresponsible statement for him to make at a time when leftist calls for violence against Trump and his supporters are distressingly common.
Those calls have now resulted in three assassination attempts against Trump, and no one knows how many more there will be, but in this climate, only a fool would say that the president will finish out his term without any more attempts to kill him. Comey took the photo down on the same day that he posted it, and explained: “I posted earlier a picture of some shells I saw today on a beach walk, which I assumed were a political message. I didn’t realize some folks associate those numbers with violence. It never occurred to me, but I oppose violence of any kind, so I took the post down.”
However, the idea that the former director of the FBI actually “didn’t realize some folks associate those numbers with violence” strains credulity well beyond the breaking point. That is clear from a potboiler crime novel, FDR Drive, that Comey wrote, or that was more likely ghostwritten for him.
In an unwittingly revealing May 2025 interview with NPR to plug the book, Comey explained that his novel was “about a right-wing podcaster who is trying to motivate his followers to engage in acts of violence against the targets of his vitriol. And it’s about my protagonist, Nora Carleton, a federal prosecutor in Manhattan, trying to figure out, how do we stop the violence? And is there a way to hold this podcaster criminally accountable for what he clearly knows he’s doing? And that’s the trick because the line between speech and crime is – it should be clear, but it’s fuzzy.”
All right. So here’s the intrepid FBI director explaining that he wrote a book about a “right-wing podcaster” (after all, who else do leftists think is evil these days?) who “is trying to motivate his followers to engage in acts of violence against the targets of his vitriol,” but he is apparently doing so in a veiled manner, because Comey adds that “he clearly knows” what he’s doing. Comey’s novel, he says, is all about “the line between speech and crime.”
And then Comey would have us believe that he posted a photo on his Instagram account that many of his followers would understand as a call to engage in an act of violence against the target of his vitriol, but that poor, naïve Comey himself didn’t know what he was doing? Sell me a bridge while you’re at it, why doncha?
This becomes all the clearer when the NPR interviewer asks Comey about the “line between free speech and violent incitement and domestic terrorism, ideologically motivated violence,” and Comey says he has had to “grapple with that very issue throughout my career.” Yet he expects us to believe that he didn’t pause to ponder even for a moment whether posting “86 47” might constitute violent incitement and domestic terrorism.
That’s what he’s insisting: “I took a picture and posted it ’cause I thought it was a clever political thing. Never occurred to me that someone would try to say it was associated with violence. I actually still don’t see that. But I took it down because I don’t want – I mean, this is my Instagram account, for God’s sakes. I don’t want anything on there to be associated with violence, even if I don’t get it.” And he didn’t think anyone else would get it, either: “Yeah, I’m not worried, ‘cause there’s no world in which this is an actual threat.”
Of course. So here is a guy who published a novel about veiled calls to violence, claiming that he didn’t know what he posted was a veiled call to violence, despite the fact that it’s common parlance. Sure, Comey. I’ll bet you would still insist you were acting in good faith regarding the Russia hoax, too.

“The video also includes footage from the day before the attack. Allen can be seen walking the same corridor where the shooting would later occur ..”

• New Footage of Trump Assassination Attempt Released (Matt Margolis)

The friendly fire theory just got buried — on video. For days, questions swirled about whether a Secret Service agent wounded at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner had actually been hit by fellow agents in the chaos. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro put that narrative to rest Thursday night. Pirro released new, high-quality security video from the Washington Hilton Hotel showing 31-year-old Cole Allen charging through a Secret Service checkpoint during the April 25 dinner, where President Trump was scheduled to speak. The footage, she noted, had already been submitted to U.S. District Court.

“Today, we are releasing video already provided to U.S. District Court showing Cole Allen shoot a U.S. Secret Service officer during his attempt to assassinate the President at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner,” Pirro said in her X post. “There is no evidence the shooting was the result of friendly fire.”

Today, we are releasing video already provided to U.S. District Court showing Cole Allen shoot a U.S. Secret Service officer during his attempt to assassinate the President at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.

There is no evidence the shooting was the result of friendly… pic.twitter.com/a8gRXkW6BH
— US Attorney Pirro (@USAttyPirro) April 30, 2026

The new video is a significant upgrade from the grainy footage that circulated in the immediate aftermath of the shooting. When slowed to 35% speed, it captures something the earlier clips couldn’t clearly show — Allen, armed with a 12-gauge pump-action shotgun, opening fire at close range on a Secret Service agent as he blows past the magnetometer. Multiple agents return fire almost simultaneously. The wounded agent took buckshot to the chest but was protected by his bulletproof vest.
The video also includes footage from the day before the attack. Allen can be seen walking the same corridor where the shooting would later occur, stopping in the hotel gym to chat with an attendant, and studying the layout. Prosecutors say this is part of a weeks-long pattern of deliberate planning — Allen allegedly researched the event, booked his hotel room nearly a month out, tracked Trump’s schedule in real time on the day of the attack, and even watched a live broadcast of the president’s arrival moments before making his move.
NBC News has more: Investigators believe the man charged with the attempted assassination of President Donald Trump shot a Secret Service officer who was wearing a ballistic vest, according to three law enforcement officials familiar with the case. Investigators have determined that the Secret Service Uniformed Division officer was not struck by friendly fire from another member of law enforcement, the sources told NBC News on Wednesday. […]
The officer, who was taken to a hospital, was released over the weekend. Allen was charged with discharging a weapon but has not been formally accused of assaulting a federal officer. A law enforcement source said work continues analyzing Allen’s devices, including desktop and laptop computers from his California home, as well as his phone, a laptop and hard drives recovered from his guest room at the Washington Hilton hotel. While Allen already faces federal charges of attempted assassination, prosecutors have signaled that additional charges may follow as the investigation continues.

Because it’s Trump’s Ballroom

• The Real Reason the Democrats Hate President Trump’s Ballroom (Tim O’Brien)

In the grand scheme of things, a White House ballroom seems to be too trivial a thing to create the level of controversy this one has. There are many reasons the Democrats are attacking the project, but there is only one reason that drives all the hate you’ve been seeing. Sure, the preservationists might say the new ballroom is not in keeping with the way the White House has been designed and carefully modified over the years. Others might take issue with its look, saying it’s too oversized and dwarfs the main building. The aesthetics don’t work for them. Still others say it’s about the money—that taxpayers don’t need to spend a single penny on a project that was never needed in the first place.

These are all fair opinions if held sincerely, but the Democrats are never sincere, so when they express these concerns, it’s all just noise to hide the real reason they despise the idea of President Donald Trump building a new ballroom at the White House. They hate the ballroom because Trump is building it, and once it’s complete, it will be a lasting legacy of the 45th and 47th president, even if he never steps foot in it as president. It’s the Trump ballroom, and it will always be known as just that.That is why the Washington Post, the newspaper that brought you the Watergate investigation, is devoting as much ink and resources to a ballroom story as it did to make “Woodward and Bernstein” household names.

The East Wing has been the traditional starting point for White House state dinners.

But for now, VIPs have to make their way around a construction site since the historic entryway has been demolished for President Trump's 90,000-square-foot ballroom. https://t.co/NpWg0xUhyP pic.twitter.com/XGCEXEtWro
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) April 30, 2026

That Washington Post pull quote is pure propaganda. Sure, no one likes waiting in line, but they still have to do that no matter the size of the room. And no one likes going to a White House state dinner and then being crammed in so tight that they feel like they’re sitting in coach in a Spirit Airlines seat, either. Suppose a Democrat takes the presidency two, six or 10 years from now. They can try to erase Trump’s name from the project. They can rename it the Michelle Obama Dance Room and Aerobics Studio, the Lenin Grand Hall, or the Mamdani Mosque. It won’t matter. Everyone will still know it as the Trump ballroom, because it was Trump’s idea and he built it.
And that’s what bothers the Democrats most. Trump gets the last word and the last laugh. Trump has made many good arguments for building the ballroom. It’s embarrassing to be the world’s foremost superpower and be forced to erect tents on the White House lawn to hold events. As Trump noted immediately after the latest attempt on his life, a White House ballroom would provide necessary security for many events the president hosts or attends, which, for current logistical reasons, must take place off-site. By the way, the photo of Princess Diana and John Travolta below was taken in the White House East Wing entranceway, and it could only accommodate 150 people standing.

The White House never had a dedicated Ballroom. It had one room it used for a variety of things, State Dinners, meetings, etc, but when a large party was bein g entertained, they moved outside to a tent.
Like this one. pic.twitter.com/NZV3AjUwcd
— Apelham (@Apelham8) May 1, 2026

One of the funny things about the Democrat campaign against the ballroom in the wake of the latest assassination attempt on Trump is that many leftists are pointing out that the Washington Hilton, which hosted the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, has the capacity for over 2,600 attendees, while the planned White House ballroom is designed to hold 650–1,000, and so they say the new ballroom is too small.

First, in a typical year for the WHCA dinner, attendance runs up to 2,600, a number the ballroom at the Washington Hilton can accommodate. The White House ballroom under construction was initially said to seat 650 people, but in October, Trump said the room would be able to seat… pic.twitter.com/DSlwHoUFD8
— Jim Geraghty (@jimgeraghty) April 28, 2026

At the same time, they say the new ballroom is too big and will overpower the main house.

President Trump’s new White House ballroom project began Monday, demolishing the East Wing in four days.

The ballroom will almost double the size of the White House and was initially estimated to cost $200 million, but now exceeds $300 million. https://t.co/q1DwkEP7NF
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) October 25, 2025

So, which is it: too small or too big? This is how you know how unserious the Democrats are when it comes to the ballroom. They mean nothing of what they say. All they know is that if Trump is doing it, they’re against it. And they’re willing to go to the wall to defeat it. But the truth is, Trump is several steps ahead of them. The project is well underway. The East Wing is demolished. The project must be finished now, no matter how much negativity the left tries to attach to it. F
rom a public relations and a political standpoint, that’s really all the left is trying to do. It’s the same thing they have been doing to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and the same as what they did during those “summer of love” riots back in 2020. They start the chaos. Their billionaire funders pay for the chaos and orchestrate it, and they blame Trump for making them do it. If you want the chaos to stop, you have to get rid of Trump. It’s classic Democrat blackmail.
Since they can’t stop construction of the new ballroom in the end, they want to make enough of a mess of it so they can say that Trump made the mess. Then their narrative will be that they had to clean up after him.mIronically, the more they fight Trump on this, the more closely the ballroom will be associated with his name for decades or longer. Since the ballroom will be a very nice feature, that will only help Trump in a legacy sense. In the end, there will be a big, beautiful White House ballroom one day soon enough. It will be known as the Trump ballroom. And there’s nothing they can do about it.

“President Trump is on the right side of history. He knows it. We know it. Now they just have to keep him safe. ”

• Remember That Half the Country Once Hated Lincoln (Stephen Kruiser)

Oh, the emotions in the United States of America here in the Year of Our Lord 2026! There’s despair. There’s anger. There’s…well, there’s mostly anger. Heck, I tend to be dead inside and the partisan political acrimony has even been getting to me. In a recent VIP column, I wrote that I was taking a brief break from my workday habit of perusing the Opinion sections of The New York Times and The Washington Post because I’m starting to worry about that kind of crazy being contagious.

That followed a week or two of me venting in various ways about the state of things in American politics. Then I remembered something very important: I’m rather enjoying President Trump’s second term. Seeing the Democrats rend their garments over everything that he does isn’t something I should let get me frustrated. It’s kind of a schadenfreude-filled bonus.
As I began to return to my typical Zen-like state, I decided it would be fun to trigger the lefties by writing a column that not only likened President Trump to President Abraham Lincoln, but likened today’s Democrats to the seditious secessionists (say that three times fast) of the Civil War era. I know I’m not the first conservative pundit to do this. Honestly, I’m surprised at how long it took me to get around to it. I have a lot of lefty trolls and a kajillion prog followers on X; I really should be thinking of triggering them more often.
Even though the circumstances are obviously different, finding parallels between what’s happening now and the America of the 1860s isn’t difficult for conservatives, mostly because we’ve all read history books. I am in no way saying that things are as severe right now — families aren’t killing each other from opposite sides of a war. I just can’t help but think that there are some similarities between the political climate then and now.
Today’s Democrats may not want to secede from the Union in the way that the South did back in the day. They’re far more insidious. The progressive dream that drives modern Dems involves the absolute shredding of any parts of the Constitution that pertain to real liberty. Free speech as we know it will be gone. Gun rights will be gone. Due process? See ya. Goodbye Electoral College, hello every president being elected by California, New York, and Illinois. The execrable 16th Amendment will, of course, be safe.
As I have written many times, they will still be calling it the United States of America, but it won’t resemble the country that we love. True, it’s not secession, but they’re still trying to break up the country in a different way. Now considered the greatest president in American history, Abraham Lincoln was unpopular with a lot of people when he was in office. See if this sounds familiar: during the presidential election of 1864, Lincoln faced intra-party opposition from Republicans who were dissatisfied with his handling of the war. The GOP has had its whiny turncoat problem since its earliest days.
While the Southerners pretended they had a new country, they were all still Americans in the eyes of Lincoln and the Unionists. Because they were. A note for the pedants out there: I know that the Southern states didn’t really make up half the population. I’m an opinion writer, not a journalist, and I sometimes take creative license to make a headline fit. Whatever the exact number, quite a lot of people had Lincoln Derangement Syndrome. You all get the sentiment, though.
When we are talking about support for a president, we’re never really considering the entire population anyway, just the electorate. Right now, a good chunk of that electorate really, really, loathes President Trump. The amazing thing about this second term is that he is not getting distracted by that at all. That’s one of the reasons that the Trump Derangement Syndrome sufferers are getting more unhinged by the minute. They’re still spitting nails because they couldn’t put him in jail in 2023 or 2024.
President Trump shares an important quality with President Lincoln: resolve. We can throw vision in there for good measure as well. Both are essential for a leader in troubled times. We may not be at war with each other like we were in the 1860s, but these are most definitely troubled times. Once again, the trouble is coming from the people who are trying to destroy the Republic and are consumed with hatred for the president who is fighting to preserve it. President Trump is on the right side of history. He knows it. We know it. Now they just have to keep him safe.

Does anyone still wonder why?

• House Ends 76-Day Shutdown (Sarah Anderson)

It only took 76 days.

On Thursday, the United States House of Representatives unanimously approved a Senate-passed bill to fund most of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which will soon end the shutdown that began on February 14 — the longest partial government shutdown in the history of the country. All it needs now is for Donald Trump to sign it into law.

The 76-day DHS shutdown is over

Better late than never

It should never have taken this long https://t.co/ByQoJWxk8a
— Mike Lee (@BasedMikeLee) April 30, 2026

The chamber approved the bill via voice vote and with “little fanfare,” according to CBS. It’s important to note that it does not fund U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). However, Republicans advanced a separate budget reconciliation package that will provide those agencies with funding for the next three years using only GOP votes. The shutdown only impacted DHS, including critical agencies like the TSA, Coast Guard (civilians), FEMA, Secret Service, USCIS, CISA, ICE, CBP, and more, leaving many of them struggling to pay employees.
Tens of thousands were furloughed, and many worked with delayed pay. Others quit. The shutdown led to long security lines at airports, as well as unpaid bills, delayed contracts, and cyber planning gaps, according to the White House. Shortly before the vote, we learned that active-duty Coast Guard members were using flashlights to see because they couldn’t pay their electric bills. Some were going into debt because they were not receiving payments for their reassignment moves. They were putting money on credit cards and taking out loans. We also had to cancel numerous national security exercises.

The U.S. Coast Guard cannot pay its bills. The military branch – now 75 days into the longest shutdown in U.S. history – owes over $300 million in unpaid obligations. And with thousands of utility bills overdue, totaling $5.2 million, duty stations and military housing worldwide… pic.twitter.com/kQnVlluzsW
— CBS News (@CBSNews) April 30, 2026

Democrats shut down @DHSgov, and now, members of the Coast Guard are using flashlights to light their homes, going into debt to follow orders.

The @USCG has been forced to cancel "at least 30 national security exercises" ahead of major events like the World Cup.

SICKENING! pic.twitter.com/NCuocIvj3X
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) April 30, 2026

The shutdown was triggered by the fatal shootings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good by Border Patrol agents in Minnesota earlier this year. Democrats in Congress refused to fund DHS until Republicans agreed to new oversight rules and restrictions on border agents. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson calls it a win for Republicans.
“We got the budget resolution passed. This is very, very important because that will ensure that border security and immigration enforcement will continue today and well into the future, despite Democrat attempts to re-open our borders and protect criminal illegal aliens from removal. The net result of passing our reconciliation bill is that ICE and CBP are funded for three years, and Democrats got absolutely nothing for their political charade and shenanigans out of that.”

Let ’em try.

• Hakeem Jeffries Denounces the Supreme Court as “Illegitimate” (Turley)

The Supreme Court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais took 36 pages to explain why Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act is about combating intentional racial discrimination, not allowing racial gerrymandering. However, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries wrapped it up in one word: “illegitimate.” Jeffries was not speaking of the case, but the Court. The man who would become the next Speaker of the House if Democrats retake power in November has joined other radicals in denying the legitimacy of the nation’s highest court.

Just for the record, the Supreme Court did not strike down Section 2, but said that neither the law nor the Constitution allows legislators to manipulate district lines to guarantee that candidates of a particular race will be elected. It was written not to give any race an advantage, but to prevent a state from creating a disadvantage to voters based on their race. The Act prevents any State from intentionally drawing districts “to afford minority voters less opportunity because of their race.” This is a matter upon which people of good faith can disagree. Many of the justices have been long opposed to racial criteria in areas ranging from college admissions to voting districts.
Chief Justice John Roberts stated it bluntly in 2006 that “It is a sordid business, this divvying us up by race.” Like others, Roberts abhors racial discrimination but declared in another case that “way to stop discriminating on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”You will find no such distinctions in much of the press where experts declared the death of equal voting laws in America. UCLA Law Professor Richard Hasen dispenses with any nuance and simply ran a Slate column titled “The Slaying of the Voting Rights Act by the Coward Alito.” For years, liberal law professors have been trashing conservative justices, including Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, who called them “partisan hacks.”
However, the name-calling has mutated into a movement to scrap the Court or the Constitution, or both. Chemerinsky wrote a book recently titled “No Democracy Lasts Forever: How the Constitution Threatens the United States.” There was, of course, no such movement during the decades with a liberal majority that set aside an array of long-standing cases. It was only when a stable conservative majority emerged that law professors declared the Court illegitimate or dangerous, with many calling for packing the Court with an instant liberal majority once Democrats retake power. I discuss some of these voices as the “new Jacobins” in my book Rage and the Republic, figures echoing the radical concepts or means used in France before what became known as “The Terror.”
Law professors Ryan D. Doerfler of Harvard and Samuel Moyn of Yale have called for the nation to “reclaim America from constitutionalism.” Last December, they published a column titled “It’s Time to Accept that the US Supreme Court is Illegitimate and Must be Replaced.” They insist that citizens must be rid of this meddlesome court: “remaking institutions like the US supreme court so that Americans don’t have to suffer future decades of oligarchy-facilitating rule that makes a parody of the democracy they were promised.”
Many Democrats realize that the public is rather attached to both the Constitution and its core institutions. That is why various Democratic politicians and pundits have been pledging to pack the Court once they are back in power. Some have suggested that, if they are going to change the political system and retain power, they will have to do it with the help of a compliant Court.
Democratic strategist James Carville stated matter-of-factly, “They’re going to recommend that the number of Supreme Court justices go from nine to 13. That’s going to happen, people.” He added recently, “Don’t run on it. Don’t talk about it. Just do it.” To do that, you must first delegitimate the Court. You must attack both the individual justices and the institution itself. You need true rage to get a people to tear apart the core institution of a Republic on its 250th anniversary. Now you have the next possible Speaker of the United States declaring the Supreme Court illegitimate because he disagrees with its interpretation of the law.
What these figures do not mention is that the majority of opinions by the Supreme Court are unanimous or nearly unanimous. A comparably few cases break along strict ideological 6-3 lines. Indeed, just last week, it was President Donald Trump who was denouncing the conservative justices as disloyal and weak for, again, ruling against his Administration. It is not the voting record nor the underlying interpretations that are motivating this campaign of delegitimation. It is power. Former Attorney General Eric Holder explained it most clearly recently in pushing the packing plan after the Democrats retake power: “[We’re] talking about the acquisition and the use of power, if there is a Democratic trifecta in 2028.”

https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2049822208969617893?s=20

Tesla Optimus could change the global economy forever.

The first company to scale humanoid robots wins the future of labor.

Cars were just the beginning. pic.twitter.com/mBotAD5yZB
— Adams (@Adams_Tech_AI) April 30, 2026

https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2049961728314589207?s=20

This sound combines the Schumann resonance (7.83 Hz) with 963 Hz to create a grounded yet uplifting tone.

The 7.83 Hz rhythm falls within the theta brainwave range, often linked to deep relaxation and inner balance.

It’s carried on 240.75 Hz, positioned two octaves below 963… pic.twitter.com/1T7nUDqnFA
— Paul White Gold Eagle (@PaulGoldEagle) April 30, 2026

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

Debt Rattle April 23 2026

Apr 232026

April 23, 2026 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:44 am Finance Tagged with: Atlantic, Bongino, California bar, ceasefire, John Eastman, Kash Patel, sock puppet, SPLC, Todd Blanche 47 Responses »

Edward Hopper Railroad sunset 1929

• Trump Extends Ceasefire with Iran Pending Internal Regime Discussions (CTH)

• Trump Extends Iran Ceasefire and Forces Tehran to Make the Next Move (Manney)

• IRGC Leader Takes Control of Iran’s Military As US Tensions Rise (Fox)

• President Trump Didn’t Just Win. He Revived the Warrior Poet (David Manney)

• Trump Spooked Over Iran War Crimes – Larry Klayman (USAW)

• Trump’s “Sock Puppet” (Philip Marey)

• Bongino’s Ominous Warning About the Kash Patel Smear (Margolis)

• A Crazy Lefty Lady Learns What Kamala and Hillary Said About Iran (Green)

• Southern Poverty Law Center Charged With Fraud Over Hate Ratings (JTN)

• Democrats Lose A Vital Propaganda Machine With The Fall Of The SPLC (ZH)

• There Is Simply Too Much Schadenfreude in This New York Times Profile (Thorne)

• The California Bar Bags a Trump Lawyer and Leaves Troubling Questions (Turley)

Elon Musk just named the single variable that will decide the next hundred years.

It is not compute. It is not capital. It is not the chip.

Musk: “Nothing will make you happier than having kids. We’ve evolved to have that, as all creatures have.”

The consensus says this… pic.twitter.com/7cfuSFLDoa
— Dustin (@r0ck3t23) April 22, 2026

This collective suicide of humanity needs to turn around! https://t.co/dUigYCpSXW
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 21, 2026

https://twitter.com/GuntherEagleman/status/2046747498576765157?s=20 https://twitter.com/mrddmia/status/2046596691374010460?s=20

The DOJ removed the prosecutor who said there wasn’t enough evidence to charge Brennan.

Replaced her with DiGenova — a lawyer who spent years publicly accusing Brennan of manufacturing the Russia investigation before being hired to prosecute him.

The case moved to Fort Pierce,… pic.twitter.com/bgobX2QJt1
— Jake (@JakeCan72) April 21, 2026

Elon Musk: Optimus 3 is almost done. Entering the final stage.
Most advanced robot on
Earth. Nothing else compares.
Production starts this summer. Classic S-curve ramp.
High volume near year. Optimus 4 next.
New robot. Every year.
That's the goal. pic.twitter.com/ikHtMapbBz
— Eva McMillan ♥️ (@EvasTeslaSPlaid) April 21, 2026

“50,000 extremist clerics and IRGC members are holding 90 million people as hostages ..”

• Trump Extends Ceasefire with Iran Pending Internal Regime Discussions (CTH)

The issue inside Iran is essentially: 50,000 extremist clerics and IRGC members are holding 90 million people as hostages to a fanatical religious regime. Hopefully the economic oil embargo will eventually begin to fray this Gordian Knot.

In the last two weeks, President Trump has forcefully and publicly been pushing back against the aggressive posture of Israel. While the Arab partners in the region are aligned with Trump on the issue of “extremism” and radicalism, thereby supporting the confrontation with Iranian religious extremists – those same regional partners also consider Israeli conduct in Gaza and Lebanon as religious “extremism.”
STATEMENT OF PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP:
“Based on the fact that the Government of Iran is seriously fractured, not unexpectedly so and, upon the request of Field Marshal Asim Munir, and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, of Pakistan, we have been asked to hold our Attack on the Country of Iran until such time as their leaders and representatives can come up with a unified proposal. I have therefore directed our Military to continue the Blockade and, in all other respects, remain ready and able, and will therefore extend the Ceasefire until such time as their proposal is submitted, and discussions are concluded, one way or the other.” ~ President DONALD J. TRUMP
The totality of the intelligence chatter must be overwhelming.

Only now do we find out who’s in charge there. That in itself is a negotiating tactic.

• Trump Extends Iran Ceasefire and Forces Tehran to Make the Next Move (Manney)

President Donald Trump extended the ceasefire with Iran as the original two-week truce neared its end. He made the decision after a request from Pakistani officials while he waits for a unified proposal from Tehran. U.S. President Donald Trump said Tuesday he is extending the ceasefire with Iran at Pakistan’s request while awaiting a “unified proposal” from Tehran, even as the U.S. military maintains its blockade of Iranian ports. The move comes as the White House put on hold Vice President JD Vance’s planned trip to Pakistan for a second round of truce talks with Iran, which has balked at further discussions. The extension keeps negotiations alive and avoids further loss of life on both sides.

Trump made clear that the United States will maintain its blockade of Iranian ports, stating that the military remains ready to act if Iran rejects a fair agreement. The extension doesn’t signal weakness; it reflects a deliberate choice to keep pressure in place while giving negotiations time to produce results. Trump explained that the pause allows a path toward a lasting resolution without immediate resolution. Iranian leaders rejected earlier ceasefire terms and demanded permanent guarantees. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi leads that response and continues to push for concessions that favor Tehran. Iran has also warned of a swift reaction to any new U.S. action. Trump declined to rush into additional conflict, using the extension to force Iran to decide between continued resistance and meaningful negotiation.
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz addressed Iran’s claim that it controls the Strait of Hormuz, rejecting that position and stating that no country holds exclusive authority over that waterway. Waltz said, “Well, you saw real confusion on the Iranian’s part. I think that shows the discord within their ranks after devastating attacks on their leadership. The foreign minister says it’s open, the IRGC says that it’s closed. Regardless, it’s the U.S. Navy and President Trump as the commander in chief that decides what ultimately comes in and comes out, and I think the bigger picture here is that the Iranian regime cannot hold the entire world’s economy hostage.
They cannot mete out collective punishment because of a dispute over its nuclear program. It’s something that will not stand. It’s something in the United Nations that record 135 countries joined us and joined our gulf Arab allies in condemning including Iran’s attacks on ports, airport, roads, bridges, hotels, you name it. Even civilian neighborhoods with their drones and with their missiles. So Iran is increasingly isolated diplomatically. It’s struggling economically with its currency and foreign currency reserves tanking and at the end of the day they do not have the cards and they’re coming back to the table for a deal.”
He added, “The Strait of Hormuz is an international waterway unlike what the Iranians are trying to claim. They moved the goalpost and they’re claiming it is a waterway of theirs which is a violation of international law. Ultimately it’s the U.S. navy and President Trump that decides what comes in and what comes out.”

Support for iGRC is not very broad.

• IRGC Leader Takes Control of Iran’s Military As US Tensions Rise (Fox)

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the elite branch of the Iranian armed forces, has blocked President Masoud Pezeshkian’s presidential appointments and erected what sources described as a security cordon around Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, a report published Tuesday by Iran International said. The IRGC effectively has assumed control over key state functions, the report claimed. “It was always a matter of when, not if, the IRGC was going to step forward even more than it has in the last three decades,” Behnam Ben Taleblu, senior director of the Iran program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Fox News Digital.

Pezeshkian has reached a “complete political deadlock” as tensions between his administration and the military leadership deepen, according to the report. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the elite branch of the Iranian Armed Forces, has blocked President Masoud Pezeshkian’s presidential appointments, a new report says. (John Lamparski/Getty Images) The reported shift could have major consequences far beyond Iran. Analysts say a more powerful IRGC likely would mean a more confrontational Iran, less willing to compromise in talks with Washington and more inclined to continue military escalation across the region.
With U.S.-Iran negotiations already faltering and uncertainty growing over whether Tehran will even send negotiators to the next round of talks, the rise of the Revolutionary Guard raises fresh doubts about who actually is making decisions in Iran and whether any civilian official can still speak for the regime. “But it’s a mistake to assume this is some sort of coup,” Ben Taleblu said. “This has been the process in Iran for years now, as the regime has chosen conflict over cooperation and emboldened its security forces at every juncture.”
Pezeshkian’s recent effort to appoint a new intelligence minister collapsed after direct pressure from IRGC commander Ahmad Vahidi, sources told Iran International, arguing that all proposed candidates, including former Defense Minister Hossein Dehghan, were rejected. Vahidi reportedly insisted that under wartime conditions, all critical and sensitive positions must be chosen and managed directly by the Revolutionary Guard until further notice.
“By any standard, Vahidi is considered a radical even within the regime’s hardline elite, and his rise is a warning that Tehran’s war machine now calls the shots,” Lisa Daftari, foreign policy analyst and journalist, told Fox News Digital. Under Iran’s system, the president traditionally nominates an intelligence minister only after securing approval from the supreme leader. But with the condition and whereabouts of Mojtaba Khamenei unclear in recent weeks, the IRGC appears to be increasingly acting without civilian oversight.

I want what he’s smoking.

• President Trump Didn’t Just Win. He Revived the Warrior Poet (David Manney)

A warrior poet fights with courage and speaks with lasting truth, an idea that stretches back through history. Warriors defend their people with strength, while poets shape words that move hearts and clarify purpose. When those traits come together, action and vision reinforce each other. King David embodied that union by defeating Goliath in battle and later wrote the Psalms that still guide millions. Samurai in feudal Japan trained with the sword and composed haiku that reflected discipline and honor. Medieval knights followed codes of chivalry while studying philosophy and faith. History shows that strength and expression can live in the same man.

President Donald Trump reflects that tradition in a modern setting as he fights for American workers and national security with a direct approach. He imposed tariffs to rebalance trade and bring leverage back to the United States.nHe authorized strikes when threats emerged in key waterways, pushed military readiness, and demanded clear outcomes from allies and adversaries, and he doesn’t step back when pressure builds. That posture mirrors the role of a warrior who protects what belongs to his people.
Trump also communicates with clarity that reaches beyond policy language, using short, direct phrases that people remember and repeat. “Make America Great Again” became a national message that carries emotion and direction. His rallies draw large crowds and create a shared sense of purpose. His speeches simplify complex issues without losing focus, a style that connects with people who want leaders to speak in terms they can understand. It echoes the role of a poet who turns ideas into language that lasts.
Trump’s tone has been criticized as blunt, but critics miss the function behind it. Warrior poets never softened every edge. King David wrote about conflict and victory in the same breath. Samurai poets described the cost of battle alongside moments of reflection. Trump addresses border security, trade imbalance, and national defense in terms that leave no ambiguity. He states the problem and moves forward toward action, a pattern that aligns with leaders who combine force with message.
The United States benefits when leadership blends resolve with vision. Trump has faced elections, investigations, and constant opposition while remaining focused on policy goals and public messaging at the same time. Trump’s administration reduced taxes, expanded domestic production, and reinforced border enforcement as he engaged foreign adversaries from a position of strength and pursued agreements that shifted regional dynamics.
Alongside those actions, he offered a consistent message about national pride and shared identity, a balance that reflects the core of the warrior poet idea.Opponents challenge his methods and dismiss his language, overlooking how that language reaches people who feel unheard. His speeches energize audiences and translate policy into a clear direction, speaking to workers, families, and communities that want protection and opportunity. That connection resembles the historical role of leaders who defended their people and gave voice to their experience.
Americans recognize the combination. Trump leads with determination and communicates with impact, protecting national interests and framing that effort in words that stay with the public. King David secured his nation and wrote songs that endured. Trump secures American priorities and delivers a message that resonates across the country. The warrior poet tradition continues through that blend of action and expression.

Love Larry, but he’s wrong here. Trump does not fear the International Criminal Court.

• Trump Spooked Over Iran War Crimes – Larry Klayman (USAW)

Renowned Attorney Larry Klayman, founder of Judicial Watch and later Freedom Watch USA, weighs in on a variety of legal subjects. Top on the list is Iran cancels peace talks in Pakistan, and then President Trump “unilaterally extends ceasefire” until Iran can “come up with a unified proposal.” Trump says the Iran government is “seriously fractured.” What happened to Trump’s threat of bombing power plants and bridges if the talks broke down? The last time talks failed, Iran put women and children around power plants and on bridges. Would a country that reportedly murdered more than 40,000 of its own citizens a few months ago do that again?

Klayman says, “First of all, I have a lot of experience with Iran. I have represented many families who have had their sons tortured and killed by the Iranian regime. I have represented Gold Star families of special ops (military) that died in a helicopter crash in the Tangi Valley (Afghanistan) that was caused by the Taliban because of bounties on their heads by Iran. . .. President Trump has lost his credibility because he has said time and again, if you don’t do X, I’ll do Y. It looks like he’s getting down on his knees and begging for peace. The reason he’s doing that is he’s worried he’s going to cost the Republicans the Mid-term elections. . .. He should have bit the bullet and taken out the regime. You can’t leave them there. . .. The President now looks weak. He had victory in his grasp, and now he’s getting down on his knees, and I am really sad about that.”
There is another thing that Klayman says might be holding President Trump back. Klayman says, “The threat of war crimes at the International Criminal Court (ICC) scared Trump. It’s not a war crime when you have to bomb something that has a dual use as in military and civilian. We did it in World War II, and others have done it elsewhere. . .. It’s not a war crime, but I think the President is spooked, and that’s the bottom line. . .. Pinochet (President of Chile from 1973 to 1990) was indicted and convicted by the ICC. If he had not died, they would have arrested him. Netanyahu (PM Israel) can’t travel to Europe or any place the ICC has jurisdiction. He will be arrested. If Trump was to go to Europe and he was indicted and convicted (for war crimes), they would arrest him.”
Klayman adds, “What I am saying here is tough love. If you really care about somebody, you tell them the truth. You don’t pussyfoot around. If the President is going to get himself out of this and if there is any chance of him winning the Mid-terms and keeping control of Congress and stop him from being subjected to all this lawfare, which will be vicious, then he needs to end this war quickly on our terms with unconditional surrender like Winston Churchill, not Neville Chamberlain. . .. I love the President, don’t get me wrong. I am trying to get him to do the right thing for his own good.”
Klayman also weighs in on the fight over voter fraud and the Department of Justice suing 29 states to get access to the voter rolls. The DOJ wants to enforce voter integrity. With the states complying and not fighting the DOJ, they found 350,000 dead people still on the voter rolls. Klayman says, “The American people have a right to know about the fraud that goes on, and it’s not just dead people, it’s illegal aliens. . .. this is a very serous matter. This will end up in the Supreme Court. The question is will this go up soon enough to help in the Mid-term elections in November?”

It’s not hard to do a better job than Jay Powell.

• Trump’s “Sock Puppet” (Philip Marey)

The confirmation hearing of Fed Chair nominee Kevin Warsh by the Senate Banking Committee was a very partisan affair. In his prepared remarks, Warsh stressed that monetary policy independence is essential, but he does not believe that the operational independence of monetary policy is particularly threatened when elected officials state their views on interest rates. Warsh thinks the Fed must stay in its lane and avoid straying into fiscal and social policies. Warsh was walking a tightrope between convincing the Senate Banking Committee that he is going to be an independent Fed Chair and staying loyal to President Trump.

Meanwhile, there was as much interest in Warsh’s personal balance sheet as in the Fed’s balance sheet. Obviously, there were several questions about Fed independence and whether Warsh had promised President Trump to cut rates in order to get the nomination. Of course, he denied. Warsh repeatedly said that interest rates rather than the balance sheet should be the dominant tool of monetary policy. He did not have a specific target for the balance sheet in mind, and eased fears of a rapid change. Warsh wants a robust reform of the inflation framework and improve the data to assess the underlying inflation trend.
First Democratic senator Warren called nominee Warsh president Trump’s sock puppet. Then Republican senator Kennedy tried to settle the issue by asking: “Mr Warsh, are you going to be the president’s human sock puppet?” “Absolutely not,” said Warsh. This was clearly a very partisan confirmation hearing for Kevin Warsh and near the end of the 2.5 hour session one of the more empathetic senators asked him why he would want this job. This was a big change from 20 years ago when Warsh was confirmed as Fed Governor with bipartisan support. Warren gave him a couple of litmus tests of his independence by asking whether Trump lost the election of 2021 and if Warsh could name one aspect of Trump’s policies that he disagreed with. Warsh gave evasive answers and the tone for the hearing was set. Warsh was walking a tightrope between convincing the Senate Banking Committee that he is going to be an independent Fed Chair and staying loyal to President Trump.
Meanwhile, there was as much interest in Warsh’s personal balance sheet as in the Fed’s balance sheet. Warsh said he had made an agreement with relevant authorities to divest his assets before sworn in (or within 90 days of his confirmation), but that answer did not seem satisfactory to several (Democratic) senators. Ironically, Senator Tillis (Rep) – who wants to hold up the confirmation until the case against Powell is dropped – had to come to the rescue by stressing that Warsh was not out of compliance.
Warsh wants the Fed to stay in its lane
Warsh did not read the full text of his prepared remarks that were published a day before the hearing, as Chairman Scott tried to keep the meeting on schedule. In his speech, he stressed that monetary policy independence is essential, but he does not believe that the operational independence of monetary policy is particularly threatened when elected officials – presidents, senators, or member of the House – state their views on interest rates. He said that Fed independence is largely up to the Fed. He highlighted three important implications.
First, Congress has tasked the Fed with price stability and that means that low inflation is the Fed’s plot armor (against criticism). Second, Fed independence is at its peak in the operational conduct of monetary policy, but that does not mean that the central bank has the same degree of independence in other areas, such as regulation and supervision. Third, the Fed must stay in its lane and avoid straying into fiscal and social policies. In response to the opening question by Chairman Tim Scott (Rep), Warsh said that he wanted a new inflation framework, that he preferred the interest rate tool over the balance sheet tool, and that he wanted a new communications approach. For a more detailed discussion of the nominee’s ideas, we refer to The Warsh Regime
Rates and independence
Obviously, there were several questions about Fed independence and whether Warsh had promised President Trump to cut rates in order to get the nomination. When Senator Reed (Dem) asked him about Fed independence, Warsh said that presidents (in general, not just Trump) want lower rates, but that independence is up to the Fed. In an answer to Senator Kennedy (Rep), Warsh said that the president never asked him to pre-commit on any interest rate decision. It got really heated when Senator Gallego asked Warsh whether it was his sworn testimony that the President had not asked him to commit to cutting rates. When Warsh confirmed, Gallego (Dem) concluded that either Warsh or Trump was lying, referring to an article in the Wall Street Journal on December 12. In response, Warsh said that these reporters needed better sources and that he took independence very seriously: “the President never asked me and I would never do so.”

“You’re gonna find out, as they say in the South, right quick about why they need him out..”

• Bongino’s Ominous Warning About the Kash Patel Smear (Margolis)

Something is coming. That’s the message Dan Bongino delivered to his audience this week, and if you’ve been paying attention, the pieces are already falling into place. As PJ Media previously reported, The Atlantic dropped a lengthy smear job against FBI Director Kash Patel last week, painting him as an erratic, hard-drinking paranoid who allegedly “panicked” and “freaked out” after a routine computer login glitch — convinced, supposedly, that he’d been fired. According to the story, the access issue turned out to be a technical error that was quickly resolved.

Patel’s attorney sent a letter to the magazine before publication, warning that the allegations it planned to run were false and that printing them would trigger a defamation lawsuit. The Atlantic ran the piece anyway. Now Patel is suing for $250 million, calling it a “sweeping, malicious, and defamatory hit piece” designed to “destroy Director Patel’s reputation and drive him from office.” And right on cue, the left-wing machinery started moving the moment the Atlantic piece went live.
Democrats started calling for investigations, and left-wing groups went all in, too. Democracy Forward — a progressive lawfare outfit that spends its days litigating against DEI rollbacks, immigration enforcement, and abortion restrictions — fired off a 16-page FOIA request to the Justice Department. They want Patel’s calendars, schedules, text messages, communications with staff, and — get this — any records related to a request for “breaching equipment” allegedly made by his security detail. The Atlantic hit piece planted that allegation. Democracy Forward immediately took the bait.
But Bongino isn’t just calling it a mere hit piece. He’s saying there’s something much bigger going on here, and the reason why will become clear very soon.”The hit on Kash Patel, the bullshit hit by The Atlantic, which I addressed yesterday, is gonna make a lot more sense in the coming weeks and months,” Bongino explained. “I can’t give you a definitive timeline. I’m on the outside now. However, I can tell you what I know is going on because I started a lot of it.” He didn’t stop there.
“Look me in the eye, and I’m telling you, I promise this thing is gonna make a whole lot of sense. You’re gonna find out, as they say in the South, right quick about why they need him out, like, now. It’s got nothing to do with that story being even remotely true. Remember this. Bookmark it.” Make no mistake about it, he’s not speculating. He’s someone who knows something, and we should believe him. This is what the left does: they manufacture a narrative, find a publication to run with it, and then use it as the pretext for discovery-style records requests aimed at forcing Patel out.
Now, ask yourself why Democrats want to force him out so badly. The Atlantic published a lie. Democrats pounced on it immediately. The entire response feels bizarrely coordinated. Now, Bongino is telling you point-blank that the left is doing this for a reason. It’s panic. And we’ll all understand why soon.

“Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia.” Except that, you know, up until that moment, Oceania had been allied with Eastasia in a war against Eurasia. Things change.”

• A Crazy Lefty Lady Learns What Kamala and Hillary Said About Iran (Green)

“The past was alterable. The past never had been altered,” George Orwell wrote in 1984. “Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia.” Except that, you know, up until that moment, Oceania had been allied with Eastasia in a war against Eurasia. Things change. So does the propaganda — so smoothly that you wonder if Orwell got his ideas for Big Brother from time-traveling modern-day Democrats. Case in point: The crazy lady in the video below.

If the U.S. hasn’t exactly always been at war with the Islamic Republic, the Islamic Republic has always been at war with the U.S. The regime was born in an act of war against us — storming sovereign U.S. territory and taking 52 hostages for 444 days. In the 47 years since, the regime has directly committed or financed countless acts of terrorism against the U.S. and our interests. During the Iraq War, it was largely Tehran that waged the IED campaign that killed and wounded so many of our troops. The Islamic Republic is responsible for the deaths of more than 1,200 Americans. And by its own boast to Trump administration negotiators, it was on the verge of having nearly a dozen nuclear bombs.
So after nearly five decades, 1,200 deaths, and a lot of tough talk from every American president since Ronald Reagan, President Donald Trump took action — action that would have been applauded by previous incarnations of Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris, and American lefties. In an epic (and justifiably expletive-filled) X rant, L.H. Grey noted that Reagan called out the Islamic Republic as “the epicenter of terrorism,” and that “Bush, Clinton, Bush II, Obama… all of them, without exception, treated the mullahs as a strategic cancer requiring sanctions, isolation, or the occasional kinetic reminder that [effing] with America has consequences.
“”Kamala Harris herself, as Vice President, stood in front of microphones and labeled Iran the United States’ greatest adversary.” The consensus against the Islamic Republic is both decades old and bipartisan — until the Bad Orange Man took the first meaningful action against it. Which brings us to the lefty activist in Monday’s delightful gotcha video.
https://twitter.com/LangmanVince/status/2046574522367696991?s=20
Watching the “nice lady” grasp at one straw after another… that’s exactly the schadenfreude I enjoy with my morning coffee. She isn’t the only one, of course. “Donald Trump is dragging the United States into a war the American people do not want,” is what Harris said at the start of Epic Fury, and then called it “a dangerous and unnecessary gamble.” This month, Harris escalated her criticism, claiming that Trump had been “pulled into” the war by Bibi Netanyahu and that Epic Fury was “a feeble attempt to distract from the Epstein files.”
The needs of the Party are subject to change, comrades. But Orwell’s deeper warning wasn’t that the Party could rewrite history at a moment’s notice — it was that the people would eagerly go along. “There was, of course, no admission that any change had taken place. Merely it became known, with extreme suddenness and everywhere at once, that Eastasia and not Eurasia was the enemy… Without words said, a wave of understanding rippled through the crowd. Oceania was at war with Eastasia!” And always had been.

USAID is long gone, and now the SPLC. No coincidence in sight. Both are (were) Democratic money dispensers.

• Southern Poverty Law Center Charged With Fraud Over Hate Ratings (JTN)

A federal grand jury in Alabama on Tuesday indicted the Southern Poverty Law Center on 11 counts of wire and bank fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering, as the Justice Department accused the group that rose to fame during the 1960s Civil Rights movement of paying members of 21st century extremist groups to stoke hatred. “The SPLC is a nonprofit entity that purports to fight white supremacy and racial hatred by reporting on extremist groups and conducting research to inform law enforcement groups with the goal of dismantling these groups,” Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told a news conference attended by CBS News. “The SPLC was not dismantling these groups. It was instead manufacturing the extremism it purports to oppose by paying sources to stoke racial hatred.”

Blanche said the group was charged with six counts of wire fraud, four counts of bank fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering. He said that the SPLC had paid at least $3 million to eight members of these extremist groups. Among the groups whose members received funds were the Ku Klux Klan, United Klans of America, Aryan Nations, and the Nationalist Socialist Party of American Nazis. The SPLC is a nonprofit that tracks white supremacist and other hate groups across the U.S., and has been a frequent target of President Donald Trump’s allies. It is best known for its work investigating the Ku Klux Klan.
The group has acknowledged using such informants to infiltrate extremist groups and gather intelligence on their operations, which it shared with local and federal law enforcement, according to the Associated Press. The Justice Department had no immediate comment, the wire service also said.Bryan Fair, CEO of the SPLC, said that the organization doesn’t know all the details, but the Trump administration has launched an investigation, which may lead to charges. Fair said the SPLC worked with informants during the height of the Civil Rights Movement, when violence against activists was running high. He said the SPLC will “vigorously defend” themselves.

As in: “yet another” Vital Propaganda Machine..

• Democrats Lose A Vital Propaganda Machine With The Fall Of The SPLC (ZH)

When creating a short list of nefarious NGOs that manipulate government policy and socially engineer public opinion, the Southern Poverty Law Center is usually near the top. The group has been fading in influence due to excessive exposure, with new and less visible left wing NGOs taking it’s place. However, it remains a key pillar of the Democratic Party’s propaganda machine and a poisonous cloud looming over grassroots conservative organization. News from the Trump FBI and DOJ indicates that this reign of political terror may finally be coming to an end. The Southern Poverty Law Center has been indicted on federal fraud charges that accuse it of illegally raising millions of dollars to pay informants in white supremacist and other extremist groups.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said the SPLC used paid operatives within extremist circles to incite and intensify racial tensions, arguing the group fostered the very threats it claimed to fight. But why was an NGO allowed to operate like a covert federal agency for so long? These operations were essentially endorsed by the Democratic Party (as well as some Neo-Cons). One could say that the SPLC had two missions: First, to drum up hysteria among weak minded liberals and make them believe that there are malicious “hate groups” under every rock and behind every tree. Second, to make conservatives paranoid about informants when seeking to build political opposition movements.
Sadly, to this day, the SPLC was rather successful in achieving both goals. The NGO’s efforts to create a false model of “hate networks” (especially during the Obama years) was a primary impetus for the eventual rise of the woke activist movement from around 2012 onward. In other words, the insane cult obsessed with race and identity that plagues America today found its roots within the SPLC and their alliance with the Democratic Party. SPLC “informants” were a constant nuisance among conservative activist and protest groups as well as preparedness groups. Nothing these conservatives did was actually illegal, but, the SPLC had a knack for making it sound as if they were engaging in criminality.
Far too many right wingers were frightened into refusing to engage in basic meetings and public discussions, simply on the possibility that SPLC informants might be present. No such infiltration was used to target left wing extremist groups like Antifa, which have carried out numerous criminal attacks, riots, sabotage and acts of intimidation against their political opponents. But, times change and the truth cannot be suppressed forever. Conservative and nationalist movements grew exponentially, even if they still suck at organizing formally. And today, the SPLC is a widely known and rightfully despised entity.
The SPLC was specifically integral to the Obama and Biden Administrations, including a direct information sharing relationship with the DHS and FBI. The majority of anti-conservative policy papers published by the federal government during this time were crafted using SPLC propaganda. The 2009 DHS Rightwing Extremism Report, a unclassified assessment warning of potential “surges” in right-wing extremism, drew input extensively from SPLC info. The report targeted militia groups as potential homegrown terrorists and was partially withdrawn because of political backlash.
A separate 2009 state-level fusion center report – the Missouri Information Analysis Center (MIAC) “Modern Militia Movement” report – linked supposedly dangerous militia members to “3rd party political groups” and “supporters of Ron Paul, Chuck Baldwin, and Bob Barr.” The report flagged symbols like the Gadsden Flag, as well as anti-government, anti-new world order and anti-martial law discussion as potential indicators of homegrown terrorism. The SPLC was a key participant in the formation of the MIAC report.
SPLC President Richard Cohen served on Secretary Janet Napolitano’s CVE Working Group in 2010. Cohen and an SPLC colleague acted as subject-matter experts on right-wing extremism in the DHS Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) Working Group. Their purpose was to shift federal law enforcement focus almost entirely from Islamic-based terrorism over to right wing extremism.

Under Biden, the SPLC was highly active in shaping public narratives surrounding the J6 trials. SPLC staff provided training to DOJ prosecutors and SPLC leaders/staff visited the White House at least 11 times. President Biden personally met with SPLC representatives at least 6 times.
With the fall of the SPLC, the Democrats lose a vital tool in their social engineering arsenal. If the accusations turn out to be true and SPLC leaders are convicted, their activities should be considered as treason against the American people. Any and all NGOs participating in social engineering operations against the US populace must eventually be indicted and erased if the country is ever going to rebuild the public trust, but bringing down the SPLC is a good start.

Typical example: “She made $175,000 a year. That was Jan. 28, 2025. Today Amy Uccello and her husband, who also lost his job when U.S.A.I.D. funding for his nonprofit dried up, rely on food stamps ..”

• There Is Simply Too Much Schadenfreude in This New York Times Profile (Thorne)

I am 100% for sure going to hell for enjoying this New York Times article as much as I am. There but for the grace of God go I, I remind myself. But then, I would never have put myself in that position, devoting my professional life to making six figures off the taxpayer to work on “nice-to-haves” rather than creating actual, useful products that must survive in the marketplace. Anyhoo, the article that is bringing me so much guilty pleasure is entitled “A Year After U.S.A.I.D.’s Death, Fired Workers Find Few Jobs and Much Loss.” The subtitle tells the tale: “People have plowed through savings, cashed out retirement funds and moved in with relatives. Former U.S.A.I.D. workers estimate that less than half have found full-time work.”

Why, it’s almost as if no one would hire them to ply their trade, so they must force taxpayers to subsidize it. There follow over 2,000 words of dignified profiles of the victims of DOGE, punctuated by beautifully photographed portraiture of the stolid world-savers as they cope with the loss of their raison d’être. Sadly, this masterpiece of turned tables is behind a paywall, but fear not: I can provide some tasty quotes here (although the entire piece is almost worth subscribing to the NY Times for). As you read, perhaps you, like me, will recall the bad old days of the Obama regime, when this very variety of elitist Ivy League do-gooders swarmed the capital and NOVA to turn traditional energy workers out of their jobs.
“Learn to code,” they sneered at the coal miners and rig workers and their families whose lives they upended. To them, I say, Sucks when it’s you, don’t it? Let’s dive into the first profile: She was fired by email while on maternity leave, given 24 hours to clear out her desk and left with three days of health insurance and no severance pay. She had worked for the U.S. Agency for International Development or related groups for more than two decades. She made $175,000 a year. That was Jan. 28, 2025. Today Amy Uccello and her husband, who also lost his job when U.S.A.I.D. funding for his nonprofit dried up, rely on food stamps, Medicaid and a supplemental nutrition program for women and children that helps with their now 19-month-old daughter.
The mortgage on their home in Washington was until recently in forbearance, meaning they negotiated to pay less than they owed each month. But the bank has now cut them off and suggested they apply for a low-income mortgage program. “We don’t know if we’ll qualify,” Ms. Uccello said. She and her husband have applied for more than 100 jobs with no luck. Most of their friends don’t have jobs either. And, look, I feel awful when that happens to anyone. But this couple was raking in hundreds of thousands of dollars, much of it paid by Americans poorer than they, to go meddle in the lives of people in other parts of the world. And we all know how leftist USAID and related NGOs — “soft power” — worked in developing nations:
They only granted aid to countries that agreed to import the entire suite of first-world progressive virtues, such as abortion-on-demand, same-sex “marriage,” and forgoing effective, reliable fossil fuel in favor of “green” energy contraptions that came nowhere close to facilitating a modern lifestyle. These are the same people who denied effective mosquito control methods to poor nations, leaving tens of millions of black and brown babies to die of malaria, while raising their own precious child in the pinnacle of Western healthcare.
“When the Trump administration dismantled the sprawling global aid agency last year, it wiped out virtually an entire industry — international development — that had been based in Washington since U.S.A.I.D.’s creation in 1961 under President John F. Kennedy,” the Times reminds us. “Nearly all of the agency’s 16,000 employees were laid off. An estimated 280,000 contractors, partners and local hires worldwide lost their jobs as well.”
And, “Former U.S.A.I.D. workers who have done informal surveys estimate that less than half have found full-time work, with many making less than before. An estimated third are unemployed. Others are in part-time work.” That’s rough. I left my corporate life behind because I couldn’t betray my conscience and my faith, and pretend the man with whom I had worked for two years was suddenly a woman on Monday. I couldn’t stomach the corporate cop-bashing; I live in a law enforcement family. I didn’t want to spend my entire life under soul-crushing pressure to stifle myself. Did I take a pay cut and part-time work? You bet I did. So whatever, wokesters.
“The District of Columbia currently has the highest unemployment rate in the nation, at 6.7 percent, in large part because of major reductions in the federal work force, including U.S.A.I.D., and cuts to government grants and contracts,” the Times mourns. To this, I say, Thank you, President Trump! Countries whose governments grow too big and employ too large a percentage of the population tend to fail. The few former U.S.A.I.D. workers who have landed similar or better jobs don’t like to talk about it in front of unemployed friends.
“I feel guilty, honestly, that of all my colleagues who I know are still unemployed, I’m the one who found something,” said Sara Miner, 42, who was a senior adviser in the agency’s H.I.V.-AIDS office and previously ran health programs in Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Now she helps manage health and human service programs for Fairfax County, Va.
Jobs are also gone at the many nonprofits and partner agencies once funded by U.S.A.I.D. “Everyone I know is also up the creek, all my bosses, my mentors, the people you would normally go to, the people providing me references,” said Catherine Baker, 36, who, as a contractor, made $127,000 a year recruiting staff and helping to start up U.S.A.I.D. projects. Ms. Baker now volunteers as a manager for OneAid, which helps former U.S.A.I.D. workers, and works nine hours a week as a companion for two elderly women.
And yet, there are still enough of them in the NOVA area to vote the otherwise conservative state of Virginia into gerrymandered left-wing tyranny. (And for the record, I have plenty of friends who work as aides to the elderly. It is honorable and worthwhile work, and it can provide a decent living, too — maybe not what these taxpayer-funded fancy folk are used to, but not impoverishment, either.)

“.. Eastman is being punished for a different reason: He helped to develop Trump’s legal argument for blocking the election certification.”

If Eastman were a Democrat lawyer, he’d still have a job.

• The California Bar Bags a Trump Lawyer and Leaves Troubling Questions (Turley)

Last week, the California Supreme Court upheld the disbarment of John Eastman. It is a decision that will prevent Eastman from practicing law – the most serious punishment the California State Bar can deliver. Eastman is the former dean of the law school at Chapman University in California. He represented President Donald Trump in some of his election challenges in 2020. In 2020, I publicly disagreed with Eastman’s legal theory that Congress could block the certification of President Joe Biden. However, Eastman’s disbarment should be a concern for everyone who values the rule of law and free speech. After the election, various legal advisers told Trump that there wasn’t enough evidence of fraud to overturn the election –– as some of us in the media also said.

But Eastman and other lawyers believed there were still arguable grounds to challenge the certification. In the past, Democrats in Congress had moved to block the certification of Republican presidents, and Eastman believed that their playbook was legal, or at least defensible.nElection disputes are often difficult to resolve in court because time is quite limited. As the date for the 2020 certification approached, Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, and others made sensational claims about voting machines and other conspiracies that they later admitted were not supported by evidence.bThe courts uniformly rejected these challenges.
Eastman is being punished for a different reason: He helped to develop Trump’s legal argument for blocking the election certification. He admitted that there were few cases to cite as precedent, and acknowledged that he and the Trump legal team were advancing novel theories. But that is not unusual in controversial cases. Public interest attorneys often advance novel legal arguments, challenging existing precedent and the status quo. Even longstanding precedents, like Roe v. Wade, have been overturned after years of litigation.California State Bar officials failed to address the implications that disbarring Eastman would have on other cases in which new legal theories are tested.
The animus of the California State Bar was also evident in the original charges against Eastman. He was ultimately found guilty on 10 of 11 charges of egregious and deceitful conduct. The lower court’s decision placed great emphasis on Eastman’s public remarks on Jan. 6, 2021, at Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally. The court dismissed his claims that his speech was protected by the First Amendment. Democratic Party election lawyers have been punished by courts and accused of meritless or unsupported claims. However, bar associations in “blue” states have not moved to disbar them, and I would not support such an effort. Take Democrat attorney Marc Elias. He was a critical player in the infamous Steele dossier on “Russia collusion,” and helped push the false Alfa Bank conspiracy.
The animus of the California State Bar was also evident in the original charges against Eastman. He was ultimately found guilty on 10 of 11 charges of egregious and deceitful conduct. In Maryland, Elias’s team filed in support of an abusive gerrymandering of the election districts that a court found not only violated Maryland law, but also the state constitution’s equal protection, free speech and free elections clauses. The court found that the map “subverts the will of those governed.” In 2024, the chief judge of the Western District of Wisconsin not only rejected but ridiculed the Elias Law Group for one of its challenges. Judge James Peterson (an Obama appointee) said that the argument “simply does not make any sense.”
Elias has been sanctioned in court. However, neither he nor associates were, of course, disbarred over prior challenges. The California Bar and the California Supreme Court insist that they are merely imposing minimal standards of conduct in disbarring Eastman. However, the record in this matter shows more distemper than deliberation on critical points. The California State Bar has created new problems, rather than clarifying standards. Even as someone who disagreed with John Eastman, I am not sure what the standard is for zealous advocacy by attorneys. While Eastman was giving bad advice, he was not committing a crime or, in my view, committing an offense that deserved disbarment.= There cannot be a different standard for different candidates, or different clients.

The Sun rounds up to 100% of energy in our solar system, even if Jupiter and all non-solar mass is burned https://t.co/TTTriaK703
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 22, 2026

SPLC funded a large number of false flag “right wing” organizations and events. Total scam. https://t.co/1IzH99Dlt2
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 21, 2026

Outrageous! SPLC executives who did this need to go to prison for a long time. https://t.co/dzVpS3M3ql
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 22, 2026

Wow, it's quite an achievement for Canada to have had even lower growth than Germany during the last decade.

Germany has done almost everything humanly possible to ruin its economy. How has Canada been able to beat that? pic.twitter.com/G8dm4D44xQ
— Michael A. Arouet (@MichaelAArouet) April 21, 2026

https://twitter.com/Rainmaker1973/status/2046588679611621449?s=20

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Debt Rattle April 9 2026

Apr 092026

April 9, 2026 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:53 am Finance Tagged with: ceasefire, Gilbert Doctorow, Hormuz, Hungary, Kneissl, petrodollar, proxy war, Satan, strategic defeat, superpower, Xi Jinping 65 Responses »

Rufino Tamayo Perro aullando (Howling Dog) 1960

• Tanker Passage Through Hormuz Halted As Iran Accuses Israel (ZH)

• The Petrodollar Breakdown is Real (GoldFix)

• Nobody Knows What Will Happen Next (Rabo)

• China Facilitated US-Iranian Ceasefire – AP (TASS)

• US Suffered Major Strategic Defeat In Failed Isfahan Operation (Press TV)

• The Persian Backstabber Strikes Again (John Helmer)

• Senate Democrats Might Not Have November In The Bag (ZH)

• Recognizing The Intervention of Satan In Our Times (Gilbert Doctorow)

• FBI Finds Americans Lose Billions To Cryptocurrency Scams (JTN)

• Hungary Election A US-EU ‘Proxy War’ – Ex-Austrian Foreign Minister (RT)

• Unconstitutional Effort to Bar Trump from Ballot in Maine (Turley)

• Xi Jinping Carries Out Record-Breaking Punishments Inside CCP (JTN)

• This Is What a World Superpower Looks Like (Ben Shapiro)

• Melania vs. the Mean Girls (Sarah Anderson)

https://twitter.com/MichaelARothman/status/2041721663679819901?s=20 https://twitter.com/MichaelARothman/status/2041722116316524603?s=20

JD Vance:

I wasn’t even aware that Zelensky had said that he was going to send private soldiers to Orbán’s residence until yesterday.

Viktor actually told me that, and then I went and looked it up.

I almost couldn’t believe it’s true, but it’s true. It’s completely… pic.twitter.com/nNsFw3vHzE
— Clash Report (@clashreport) April 8, 2026

https://twitter.com/JoshHall2024/status/2041871511913459923?s=20 From 10 years ago I would LOVE to dee this contradicted. https://twitter.com/MrWhiplash_/status/2041865575354245423?s=20

They’re meeting on Friday afternoon in Islamabad. Before then, anything can and will happen. Testing the waters.

• Tanker Passage Through Hormuz Halted As Iran Accuses Israel (ZH)

Summary:
• The Hegseth/Caine presser as expected declared ‘victory’ in Iran while Gen. Caine emphasized the ceasefire is a “pause” but US forces remain “ready to resume combat.” Pentagon is trying to put a bow on Operation Epic Fury. NYT: 10-point plan might differ between Tehran & Washington.
• US, Iran agree to meet for first direct talks in Islamabad Friday, Pakistan PM Sharif announces. Situation fragile given that Iran is threatening to hit Israel again over IDF’s massive Lebanon airstrikes.
• Iran meanwhile demands stiff fees for ships passing through Hormuz during the ceasefire, and says it holds the final authority on which vessels get to pass. Tehran leaders have asserted ‘victory’ for Iran, amid positive international reaction to the ceasefire.
• The first two ships since the ceasefire was announced have crossed the Strait of Hormuz after Iran said it will demand that shipping companies pay tolls in cryptocurrency. Hours later, Fars announces a halt to ships’ passage. This as IDF pummels Lebanon.
• Saudi Arabia’s vital East-West oil pipeline carrying crude from the Gulf to the Red Sea for export has been attacked at a pumping station, oil rises on the news. There’s been sporadic attacks on other Gulf states too. Kuwait sees key energy, water sites hit.
* * *
Differing Versions of the 10-point Plan?
This is alarming and surreal, and doesn’t bode well for what’s already a very shaky ceasefire holding, via the NY Times:
A White House official says that the 10-point peace plan that Iran publicly released on Wednesday differs from the plan that Trump said was a workable basis on which to negotiate. The official declined to elaborate on the differences but said Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, was expected to clarify at a 1 p.m. briefing.
There’s talk of Kushner, Witkoff, and maybe Vance going to Pakistan for planned Friday meeting with Iranian side. Key Energy Sites Hit in Kuwait, Despite Ceasefire Kuwait’s ` Interior Ministry is condemning fresh Iran attacks, reporting “severe material damage” at ` several vital facilities of the ` Kuwait Petroleum Corporation. Also water desalination plants have been hit. “The ministry said fire broke out at some of the attacked sites, which include oil facilities, three power stations and water desalination plants,” Al Jazeera reports.
Oil Transit through Hormuz Halted Again: FARS Iran’s Fars News agency reports that oil tankers passing through Hormuz have been stopped after Israel’s “ceasefire breach.” This as Iranian officials are warning of resumed missile launches on Israel for what’s happening in Lebanon (see below). There’s currently contradiction and confusion over whether the Pakistan-mediated Iran ceasefire deal extends to Lebanon. Pakistan says yes, Iran says yes, while the US and Israel say no. Tehran appears willing to apply its leverage. Oil jumps on initial ‘breach’ rumblings...

Ii there an alternative for the petrodollar?

• The Petrodollar Breakdown is Real (GoldFix)

After reading a Bloomberg opinion piece deconstructing the Petrodollar stresses currently manifesting from the war with Iran the following became apparent. The longstanding financial arrangement in which the United States underwrote stability in the Middle East in exchange for Gulf states recycling dollar revenues into US Treasuries has fractured. What functioned for decades as a reinforcing loop between energy flows, dollar demand, and sovereign financing is now under strain. The framework traces back to the 1974 agreement engineered under Henry Kissinger, in which Saudi Arabia priced oil in dollars and reinvested surpluses into US assets, primarily Treasuries. Other Gulf states followed, while the United States provided security guarantees and maintained the broader geopolitical order.

A Circular System of Energy and Capital
The system operated with internal consistency. Oil-importing nations paid in dollars; those dollars accumulated in Gulf economies; and surpluses were recycled into US government debt. This loop supported US borrowing conditions and reinforced the dollar’s reserve status. That structure depended on two continuous processes: surplus generation through energy exports, and reinvestment into US assets. Both are now disrupted.

Fracture Point One: Importers Liquidate Treasuries
Following the escalation of the US-Israeli conflict with Iran, foreign central banks have shifted into sustained Treasury selling. Holdings at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York declined by roughly $82 billion over five consecutive weeks to $2.7 trillion, the lowest level since 2012. At the same time, yields diverged from historical crisis behavior. The 10-year Treasury yield rose from 3.9% to above 4.4% instead of falling under safe-haven demand.
“Foreign official sectors are selling US Treasury bonds.”
The mechanism reflects currency defense. Oil-importing economies such as Turkey, India, and Thailand face rising dollar-priced energy costs alongside weakening domestic currencies. Stabilization requires dollar liquidity, sourced through Treasury sales.
Dollar Demand Turns Defensive
Dollar demand remains present, yet its form has shifted. Central banks are accessing liquidity through liquidation rather than accumulation. Treasuries function as a funding tool under stress rather than a passive reserve asset. A system built on steady accumulation behaves differently when forced into periodic selling.
Fracture Point Two: Exporters Unable to Generate Surplus
Historically, higher oil prices increased Gulf revenues, reinforcing demand for dollar assets. This relationship has broken down. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has constrained exports across Kuwait, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, with production cuts of roughly 10 million barrels per day. Qatar’s declaration of force majeure on LNG exports following strikes on Ras Laffan further highlights the disruption. Without export flows, surplus petrodollars do not form. The loop requires both income generation and reinvestment capacity. Both are impaired.

“This could be the Golden Age of the Middle East.”

• Nobody Knows What Will Happen Next (Rabo)

Yesterday, the US and Iran threatened to, respectively, “destroy Iranian civilisation” with “new tools” and other countries in the Gulf with old ones. Ahead of the 8PM deadline that Trump had set for “Bridge and Power Plant Day,” US and Israeli forces reportedly already destroyed some bridges and other infrastructure. Washington and Tehran struck a last-minute, two-week ceasefire – provided that the Strait of Hormuz is fully reopened. Notably, this was after China leaned on Iran to listen to interlocutor Pakistan, according to the New York Times. That key intervention underlines the global nature of this war beyond energy and related exports, and how it is resolved.

Markets are trading this as a TACO Tuesday. Brent futures are down 14% at the time of writing, Asian equity markets rallied, and futures pricing suggests the same will happen when European and American markets open. And bets of near-term rate hikes evaporated as the truce ends days before major central banks next reconvene to recalibrate their policy stance. 10-year German Bund yields fell 18bp (!)on the open. Yet, this short-term truce is not a peace deal, and is anyone willing to sail through the Strait as long as the conflict isn’t fully resolved? So, today’s reprieve will be followed by at least two weeks of extended uncertainty – and possibly longer, if both sides agree to extend the negotiations.
Moreover, there is a world of difference between Iran having blinked under US military threats, which would be a huge win for Trump and the US, and the US having blinked in the face of Iranian resistance and oil prices, which would be a massive 1956-style geostrategic defeat for Trump. In the immediate aftermath of the ceasefire, both headlines and missiles kept flying. Iran hit Israel and a GCC energy site. The US said “an” Iranian 10-point plan is a “workable basis on which to negotiate” (might we have an intractable public version and a more pliable private one to save face?), while Iran’s foreign minister is “considering” the directly opposed 15-point US plan.
And, returning to shipping, Iran claimed it will still take tolls from Hormuz with Oman, adding that only 10-15 ships per day can pass, a tiny fraction of normal flows. Is that the “full reopening” of Hormuz that the US set as a precondition?
Subsequently, an unsubstantiated report claimed that Iran has agreed to most US conditions, including: a permanent commitment not to possess nuclear weapons; handing over enriched uranium to the IAEA; allowing the IAEA to monitor all nuclear infrastructure; a complete halt to uranium enrichment within Iran; reducing the range and number of missiles; immediately ceasing support for militias and proxies in the region; ceasing attacks on regional Gulf energy facilities; reopening the Strait of Hormuz immediately and unconditionally; the lifting of all sanctions imposed on Iran; eliminating the mechanism for reimposing UN sanctions; and US support for the Bushehr nuclear power plant, provided it is under direct American supervision.
Iran’s Supreme National Security Council has stated, “The current negotiations are a national negotiation and a continuation of the field, and it is necessary for all people, elites, and political groups to trust and support this process, which is under the supervision of the Leader of the Revolution and the highest levels of the system, and to strictly avoid any divisive comments.” Trump claimed “total and complete victory”, and posted that it’s a “big day for World Peace”, the US will be “helping with the traffic buildup in the Strait of Hormuz,” while Iran can “start reconstruction,” and the US will be “loading up with supplies of all kinds, and “just “hangin’ around” in order to make sure everything goes well,” where “This could be the Golden Age of the Middle East.”
So, the fog of war is still in place even if the fighting might have stopped for now. Nobody knows what will happen next, but the possible spectrum is clear:

Everything involves China.

• China Facilitated US-Iranian Ceasefire – AP (TASS)

According to the news agency, Beijing initially tried to act through intermediaries, including Islamabad, Ankara, and Cairo. After that, Chinese officials directly contacted Iran. China directly contacted Iran to persuade Tehran to agree to a temporary ceasefire with the US, the Associated Press (AP) news agency reported. According to the report, Chinese officials were in contact with the Iranian government to facilitate the ceasefire. Beijing initially tried to act through intermediaries, including Islamabad, Ankara, and Cairo.

US President Donald Trump said a bilateral ceasefire between the United States and Iran will be in force for two weeks. The decision is “subject to the Islamic Republic of Iran agreeing to the complete, immediate, and safe opening of the Strait of Hormuz,” Trump said. Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif invited US and Iranian delegations to Islamabad on April 10 for further negotiations. US Vice President JD Vance, special envoy Steve Witkoff, and US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, businessman Jared Kushner, are expected to take part in the planned peace talks with Iran in Pakistan’s Islamabad, CNN reported.

Press TV is Iranian.

• US Suffered Major Strategic Defeat In Failed Isfahan Operation (Press TV)

Information obtained by Press TV regarding the recent operation by the US-Israeli coalition in the central Isfahan province reveals a major strategic defeat for the enemy. US President Donald Trump’s frantic threats in the past few days to target Iran’s civilian infrastructure, including power plants and bridges, are a direct consequence of the heavy defeat suffered by the US forces in the Isfahan operation. The failed raid was carried out after the enemy conducted extensive aerial reconnaissance operations in the days leading up to the attack, according to the exclusive information. During those initial infiltration and reconnaissance missions, the US and possibly the Zionist regime lost a significant number of aircraft, including at least one A-10 Thunderbolt II and two Black Hawk helicopters.

The information obtained by Press TV reveals that “zero hour” for the failed Isfahan operation was set during a secret meeting at the White House under the direct supervision of the US president himself. It has now become clear that this operation had no connection to the claimed rescue of a downed F-15 fighter pilot, a narrative initially pushed by American officials. Instead, evidence examined and confirmed by Press TV indicates that the real objective was to infiltrate and attack one of Iran’s nuclear facilities in Isfahan. The landing site for C-130 transport aircraft, chosen based on previous reconnaissance, was an abandoned airstrip located dangerously close to one of these nuclear sites.
The Americans miscalculated, believing that Iran’s air defense would be unable to confront the aircraft involved in the operation. However, Press TV learned that the deployment of numerous US aircraft occurred while the Iranian Armed Forces were in full alert, waiting for them. In fact, American special forces fell directly into a trap set by Iranian forces. The Iranian Armed Forces, including the Army, Law Enforcement (Faraja), the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), and local popular forces, initially did not show a serious reaction to the landing of the first C-130, which was carrying dozens of special forces commandos. Evidence shows this aircraft veered somewhat off the runway while landing at the abandoned dirt airstrip.
Minutes later, a second C-130 aircraft approached, carrying specialized vehicles, several MH-6 Little Bird helicopters, and other support equipment. At that moment, Iranian forces on the scene targeted the second aircraft before it could land, turning its normal landing into an emergency one. Two Black Hawk helicopters also arrived shortly after. It was at this moment that the aircraft, helicopters, and commandos who had disembarked from the first plane became perfect targets for the Iranian Armed Forces. After the special forces realized they had fallen into the trap, the White House situation room made a critical decision: the main operation to infiltrate the nuclear site was changed into a desperate rescue operation for the dozens of US commandos trapped under Iranian fire.
The Americans immediately sent several smaller aircraft to extract their forces, barely managing to gather the individuals and withdraw them from the deadly situation. The rescue operation was conducted so hastily that some soldiers and officers abandoned their equipment, including, according to the evidence possessed by Press TV, the identification document of an American officer left behind in the area, to save their lives. After the commandos were evacuated, American fighter jets established a line of fire with a 5-kilometer radius to prevent Iranian forces from approaching the abandoned C-130s at the airstrip. The jets also carried out heavy bombing of their own equipment to prevent it from falling into Iranian hands. I
n this failed operation, US special forces did not even have the chance to fly the special Little Bird helicopters; some were destroyed on the ground, while others were destroyed inside the second C-130 aircraft. Following this disgraceful and heavy defeat, Trump hastily and chaotically held multiple press conferences to cover up the failure and falsely portray it as a pilot rescue operation. The information obtained by Press TV describes these propaganda shows, led by Trump and his Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, as reminiscent of Hollywood films – lies that have not even been accepted by many American audiences.The information available notes that Trump will continue to fabricate other “Hollywood-style” operations to falsely claim achievements and appease public opinion in the US.
However, his and Hegseth’s repeated storytelling and lying, which have reduced public confidence in him both in the US and across the world to the lowest possible level, have made his “Goebbels-style lies” very difficult to believe.People in the US and across the world are asking a pointed question: “How is it that a country which supposedly has neither air defense left nor an army or armed forces has managed to shoot down and destroy so many fighter jets and various aircraft, and continues to add to its album of different types of destroyed fighter jets, planes, helicopters, and drones,” a highly-placed source in Tehran told Press TV.
The heavy defeat of the Isfahan operation, he noted, could be recorded in history as the worst and most disgraceful failure of the US military, even worse than the failed Tabas operation of 1980, which saw a botched rescue attempt end in disaster for Washington. The information obtained by Press TV notes that the heavy aftershocks of this “great debacle” for Trump will affect not only the fate of the ongoing war against the Islamic Republic of Iran but also the political future of “America’s gambling and ignorant president,” his Republican party, and the American political scene for years to come.

” In Moscow, Zarif is known as a Russia-hating, backstabbing liar who negotiates with deceit and whose word is worthless.”

• The Persian Backstabber Strikes Again (John Helmer)

Mohammed Javad Zarif has grown fatter and more swollen-headed since he was replaced as Iran’s Foreign Minister in 2021, then removed as Vice President in 2025. In Moscow, Zarif is known as a Russia-hating, backstabbing liar who negotiates with deceit and whose word is worthless.

For Zarif to publish last week an essay titled “How Iran Should End the War – A Deal Tehran Could Take”, from the tribune of the money establishment in New York, the Council on Foreign Relations, is understandable in Moscow. This is because, comments a Moscow source in position to know, he is “registering his address in Teheran at the very least to tell the Americans to target their bombs and missiles elsewhere. He hates Russians and someone is promoting him. The US has shown what they do with discussions, plans, ideas through the negotiations,” the source said. “They have demonstrated there is zero or less regard for any idea. Trump is fixated on ‘stone age’ destruction and ‘capitulation.’ If and when he does a ceasefire, it will be so he can break it. That’s a lesson the North Koreans alone seem to have learned and not anyone else. “
This is a guarded reference to the Russian look and sound-alikes in Moscow telling President Vladimir Putin to trust President Donald Trump’s “Anchorage understandings” and to end the war on the Ukraine battlefield with schemes for US investments in exchange for Russian assets.
Just so, Zarif’s end-of-war plan includes the proposal “to further consolidate peace, Iran and the United States should initiate mutually beneficial trade, economic, and technological cooperation. Iran, for example, could invite oil companies, including interested American ones, to immediately facilitate exports to buyers. Iran, the United States, and Persian Gulf countries might all partner on projects involving energy and advanced technologies. .. Finally, Iran and the United States should announce and sign a permanent nonaggression pact. By doing so, they would commit to not use or threaten to use force against each other.”
The Russian promoting the same combination of trust in Trump, trust in money that talks through Steven Witkoff and Jared Kushner – not yet in the pages of Foreign Affairs – is Kirill Dmitriev. He too is described by his Russian critics as too pro-American to be trusted.
The Iranian Prosecutor is reported to have issued a reprimand for Zarif. “According to follow-up and information from informed sources, following the publication of an article in the American journal Foreign Affairs that has been determined to be contrary to national security, Mohammad Javad Zarif has been issued a reprimand. In this regard, the Prosecutor’s Office, issuing a warning addressed to political figures and those with a public platform, emphasized: ‘During this imposed war, figures and those with a platform must not express opinions or publish material contrary to national interests, national integrity, and social cohesion, nor outside the bounds of their authority.’” The Russian Security Council is highly critical of Dmitriev but he is in no danger from the state prosecutor.
Iran International, the Shah Pahlavi opposition publication financed by Saudi Arabia in London, has quoted the reaction to Zarif by a well-known Iranian government supporter: “Even someone who is blind, deaf, and mute can understand that you [Zarif] are a traitor. In the middle of this proposal you call for improved relations between Iran and the US, an enemy that killed my leader and has shown such disrespect to Iran. I give Zarif three days. If he does not say he screwed up, on the fourth night we will gather and go to (storm) his house.”
The same publication claims that Zarif’s publication accompanies a recent speech by Hassan Rouhani, Iran’s president between 2013-21 and Zarif’s political patron, behind the closed doors of the Supreme National Security Council. Rouhani reportedly said: “Alongside heroic resistance, we must be prepared to bring the war to an honourable end in the interest of the country and the people. Preserving the country and the system requires immediate fundamental reforms in policymaking; the people have made their position clear to the authorities…it was necessary to coordinate national resources to prevent attacks on the Persian Gulf islands and maintain control of the Strait of Hormuz.”
Zarif lived in New York when he was Iran’s ambassador to the UN. His children were born in the city and hold dual US citizenship. He has published several articles in Foreign Affairs going back to 2014 when he wrote an appeal to the Obama Administration on Rouhani’s behalf entitled “What Iran Really Wants — Iranian Foreign Policy in the Rouhani Era”.
In the Russian file, Zarif claimed that Foreign Minister Lavrov and President Putin had conspired with General Qassem Soleimani in 2015 – before Trump assassinated him in 2020 – to block the terms endorsed by the US and Zarif of the nuclear-limiting Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). The claim was false. The interpretation in Moscow was that Zarif was lying to benefit either his political allies in Teheran or in Washington, or both.

”The math is brutal. Even in a blue wave scenario where Democrats flip every competitive seat, Republicans would still hold the Senate 51-49“

• Senate Democrats Might Not Have November In The Bag (ZH)

Based on various polls, Democrats are leading Republicans by roughly five to six points on the generic congressional ballot. While this certainly means they have an advantage, the numbers actually show real trouble for the Democrats for this year’s midterm elections. And even CNN isn’t trying to sugarcoat it for the Democratic Party. CNN chief data analyst Harry Enten took a hard look at the numbers, and the picture for Democrats is not what most might expect. They should have a much bigger lead, and the fact that they don’t is a huge red flag.

“This lead is historically low for Democrats at this point with a Republican president,” Enten pointed out. “On average, their lead is actually slightly less. It’s five points. That’s less than it was back in 2018 when it was eight points and way less than it was during the 2006 cycle when it was 11 points.” According to Enten, there’s a huge disparity between how Democrats are performing in generic congressional ballot polling and President Donald Trump’s approval ratings. Trump’s net approval rating is somewhere between -20 and -30 points. This is not a strong position for the party in power. Combined with the historical precedent that midterm elections usually favor the minority party, the numbers should spell disaster for the Republican Party, but it’s not.
“You’d make the argument Democrats should be way ahead, and they’re just only sort of slightly ahead.” A small shift might be enough for Democrats to take the House, but the Senate is a completely different animal, and according to Enten, the numbers suggest Democrats’ hopes of winning the Senate are not good. The math is brutal. Even in a blue wave scenario where Democrats flip every competitive seat, Republicans would still hold the Senate 51-49 because Trump carried states like Ohio, Texas, and Alaska by more than ten points. In this scenario, Democrats would pick up North Carolina and Maine, which would be a huge let down for the GOP, but that’s not enough to flip the upper chamber.
For years, Democrats have fantasized about flipping Texas, and they think that James Talarico is the perfect candidate to make it happen. But as Enten noted, Democrats have never been able to flip Senate seats that Trump won by 10 points or more. So, what’s holding the Democrats back? Favorability, or the lack thereof. In 2018, Democrats held a 12-point net favorability advantage over Republicans at this stage of the cycle. In 2006, that gap was 18 points. Today? Republicans are actually ahead on net favorability by five points.n”Democrats are just, simply put, running behind their previous benchmarks,” Enten said, “and they need to be running well ahead of them if they want to take back the United States Senate.”
https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2041161341608603688
Democrats have spent months positioning themselves as the resistance to Trump’s second term, betting that public anger at the administration would carry them into the majority and give them the power actually to block his agenda. But if voters dislike Democrats even more than they dislike Republicans, that entire strategy blows up. A six-point generic ballot lead just won’t cut it if Democrats want to win back the Senate. This, of course, is a huge problem for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, whose future in party leadership is in doubt. Senate Democrats are growing increasingly restless with him – and more importantly, with the strategy he’s banking on for the midterms.
Schumer has been supporting more centrist picks he believes have a better shot at winning their elections, while more progressive candidates are being sidelined. According to reports, some lawmakers have already begun informally counting votes to see whether there’s enough support to make a move. He may have the votes to survive a challenge now, but if Democrats fail to win back the Senate, the blame is going to land squarely on him.
Even without control of the Senate, Donald Trump still holds a powerful advantage where it matters most: the courts. Democrats no longer have the judicial filibuster at their disposal, which means they’ve lost one of their last tools for stalling or blocking nominees. So even if they manage to flip the House, it won’t stop Trump from reshaping the judiciary. Judicial confirmations—and even potential Supreme Court appointments – can still move forward, ensuring his influence on the courts endures well beyond his time in office.

If and when you compare the president of the United Stateds with satan, you count for nothing anymore.

Because over half the American population votes for, and supports, the person.

Go to the supermarket, go to Main Street, today, watch everyday life, and tell me what you saw. Over 50% of Americans are satanists?

Bye Doctorow. You’re done, you’re over.

PS Hitler wasn’t bad enough?

• Recognizing The Intervention Of Satan In Our Times (Gilbert Doctorow)

The personality defects of Donald J. Trump have been the subject of amateur psychology in mass media since his first presidential electoral campaign in 2016. The trait that has been most discussed was and is narcissism. Google’s AI Search has the following to say about this issue: “Numerous mental health professionals and critics have publicly suggested that Donald Trump exhibits traits consistent with narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), antisocial personality disorder (ASPD), and paranoid personality disorder, often grouping them under the term “malignant narcissism“. These claims, primarily argued by psychologists and psychiatrists, cite patterns of grandiosity, lack of empathy, need for admiration, and impulsivity.”

This portrait of Trump is the product of specialists operating in our secular culture. However, this is Easter Sunday and I think it entirely appropriate to approach the issue from a Christian binary analytical framework of Good and Evil, God and Satan. This is all the more relevant because Trump professes to take religion seriously. Key members of his administration, like Marco Rubio and Pete Hegseth, are zealous Believers and speak publicly of their religion.
In this context and considering the Easter Sunday dateline of this message to the Community, I say that Trump and the senior members of his Administration have stepped right out of Dostoevsky’s novel The Possessed. They are Evil Incarnate, they are possessed by Satan in their support of Israeli genocide in Gaza and now in the vicious, inhuman violence they are directing against the Iranian people. Listening to Trump’s daily diatribes, his bloody threats against Tehran, it strains belief that these words are coming from our top elected official.
And so I conclude: Shame on the United States if this man is not impeached and removed from office, sent to face the International Court of Justice for war crimes.
Amen.

“..more than $11B in 2025 alone..”

• FBI Finds Americans Lose Billions To Cryptocurrency Scams (JTN)

Americans lost more than $20 billion to cryptocurrency and other online scams in 2025, a 26% increase over the year before, according to the latest figures from the FBI. Online fraud is rising fast. Scams that use cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence are getting smarter. This makes it hard for people, especially seniors, to tell what is real and what is a scam. The new FBI data shows these scams are becoming a bigger problem, and police are trying to fight back. According to the FBI’s 2025 Internet Crime Report, nearly $11.4 billion of last year’s $20 billion in online scam losses came from cryptocurrency scams. Of that, $7.2 billion resulted from cryptocurrency investment scams.

The report also says that seniors are the most likely to lose money to scams. People ages 60 and older lost about $7.7 billion, which is 37% more than in 2024.In 2025, the FBI received 81,565 cryptocurrency-related complaints, a 21% increase from 2024. These reports accounted for $11.4 billion in losses, with an average individual loss of $62,604. Over 18,500 complaints involved losses exceeding $100,000. “Cryptocurrency investment scams are sophisticated long-term scams using psychological manipulation, the appearance of legitimacy, and exploitation of cryptocurrencies to deceive victims into investing large sums of money,” according to the report.
“These scams are largely perpetrated by organized criminal enterprises based in Southeast Asia using victims of human trafficking as forced labor to run the scam operations.”In a high-stakes scheme, scammers aggressively lure victims, urging them to transfer cryptocurrency to fraudulent investment platforms or apps. They quickly show victims fabricated profits and dangle the promise of loans, pressing them to invest even more. The moment victims attempt to withdraw funds, they are slammed with bogus taxes and fees, amplifying the devastation. Then, in a final bid to get more money, some offer recovery scams to these victims. “Victims are also targeted in recovery scams, claiming to help recover lost funds,” according to the report. ”
These scams are often devastating because they can leave victims with significant financial loss and emotional distress.” The FBI wants everyone to use the “Take a Beat” method to spot scam warning signs. “Resist pressure to act quickly and assess the situation before turning over money or personal information,” the agency warned. People who are victims or may know victims of a fraud or scam should call their local FBI office or submit a complaint at ic3.gov as soon as possible. Victims should document the name of the scammer, the company, the methods of contact, the dates of contact, the methods of payment, where funds have been sent, and a thorough description of the interactions.

“Brussels would rather “paralyze” the member state or stage a coup than allow Viktor Orban to stay in power, Karin Kneissl has told RT..” Vance in Budapest in just theater. Kneissl is not.

• Hungary Election A US-EU ‘Proxy War’ – Ex-Austrian Foreign Minister (RT)

The US and EU are engaged in a political “proxy war” in Hungary, with Washington and Brussels backing rival sides ahead of the country’s parliamentary elections, according to former Austrian Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl. Kneissl made the remarks in an interview with RT as US Vice President J.D. Vance visited Budapest on Tuesday in a show of support for Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. During the trip, Vance criticized “bureaucrats in Brussels, who have done everything that they can to hold down the people of Hungary,” ahead of Sunday’s vote.

According to Kneissl, Vance’s decision to visit Europe while the US was simultaneously involved in a contentious war with Iran “says a lot” about the importance Washington places on the elections. She noted that the move aligns with the US National Security Strategy released last December, which identifies “cultivating resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations” as a priority. She said the language is “very telling” about how the Americans “feel about Brussels,” noting that Washington is known for being persistent in pursuing its geopolitical objectives. “Yes, you can call it interference – what the Americans are doing. The same thing they did in Yugoslavia, Serbia in 2001,” the former diplomat said.
Brussels has been openly critical of Orban – described by Kneissl as a life-long “Hungarian nationalist” and “sovereignist” critical of many agendas pushed by EU leaders – labeling him as ‘pro-Russian.’She also pointed to Brussels apparently backing Ukrainian efforts to bar Hungary’s access to Russian oil – for which Budapest retaliated by blocking a joint EU loan for Kiev – as well as discussions in the bloc about potentially suspending Budapest’s voting rights if Orban remains in power.
”They will just put a member state… paralyze it. And some people even speak of – they use the word ‘Maidan,’ they use the words ‘color revolution.’ Not in a third country, but inside an EU member country,” Kneissl said.

“:This is akin to Pete Rose sending out copies of the MLB betting policy.”

• Unconstitutional Effort to Bar Trump from Ballot in Maine (Turley)

Maine’s Secretary of State Shenna Bellows is actually running for governor on her willingness to take flagrantly unconstitutional action. Bellows is touting her removal of Trump from the ballot, an effort that led to a unanimous Supreme Court swatting down Colorado and Maine. Bellows is virtually giddy recounting her efforts to stymie democracy and prevent voters from casting their ballots for the man who ultimately won the election.

Democrats have been running this year on the pledges to launch a virtual roundup of Trump officials and supporters for investigations and impeachments. New York congressional candidate George Conway is pledging to change impeachment rules to secure the removal of President Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance. However, Bellows, the former ACLU executive director in Maine, is parading her willingness to do things barred by the Constitution. Campaigning on an unconstitutional act rejected 9-0 by the Supreme Court (including three liberal justices) truly captures this age of rage. It is the equivalent to how mobsters “make their bones” by whacking someone. Bellows is effectively saying that she was willing to do what other Democrats were unwilling to do: violate the Constitution.
Shenna Bellows has long embraced extreme political and historical viewpoints, including denouncing the electoral college as a “relic of white supremacy.” Bellows also declared that voter ID laws are “rooted in white supremacy.” Bellows previously declared that “the Jan. 6 insurrection was an unlawful attempt to overthrow the results of a free and fair election…The insurrectionists failed, and democracy prevailed.” A year after the riot, Bellows was still denouncing the “violent insurrection.” In her campaign speeches, she is still calling the riot an “insurrection” and heralding her own bravery in seeking to block a democratic vote.
Notably, polls show the public rejecting the claim of an insurrection and neither Trump nor his associates were ever charged with insurrection. Yet, it is certifiably established that Bellows attempted to violate the Constitution and subvert the democratic process. In its unanimous rejection of the move, the Court declared “Nothing in the Constitution requires that we endure such chaos.” Bellows was one of those agents of chaos. As Bellows relished the national attention for her consideration of cleansing the ballot, some of us argued that the act would be outrageously unconstitutional.
Ironically, Bellows never got very far in her effort. A superior judge enjoined her, and she repeatedly and unsuccessfully tried to get the matter before a higher court. In other words, it did nothing but generate publicity for Bellows and was an utter failure that ended in the 9-0 loss in the Colorado case. Bellows did not even get to join Colorado in defending the effort. Even Maine’s Democratic U.S. Rep. Jared Golden denounced Bellows decision.The irony is crushing. Bellows is posting videos declaring that she has attempted to instruct Trump on the Constitution, but “The President clearly didn’t get the copy of the Constitution I sent him.”
This is akin to Pete Rose sending out copies of the MLB betting policy. bThere is no sense of self-awareness as Bellows proclaims, “there are no kings in America…we have a democracy.” She sought to prevent democracy by blocking the candidate who went on to win the election handily.
In my recent book “Rage and The Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution”, I discuss the rise of the “new Jacobins,” radicals who are calling for the scrapping of the Constitution or utilizing unconstitutional means to achieve political power. “By any means necessary” has become a mantra on the left.
The true tragedy is that this is likely to work in garnering support. Bellows and other Democrats are in a race to the bottom in proving that they are willing to do things that might make others hesitate. While she may be viewed as bonkers by the courts, Bellows is bona fide for the perpetually enraged.

Almost a million party members were punished.

• Xi Jinping Carries Out Record-Breaking Punishments Inside CCP (JTN)

More evidence comes in pointing to Xi Jinping having purged the ranks of the PLA and CCP. Reports say the Chinese Communist Party disciplined 983,000 party and government officials last year . China’s strongman leader Xi Jinping carried out a record number of disciplinary actions against Chinese Communist Party members and government officials, a Taiwanese intelligence agency assessed, as Xi conducted a massive purge of People’s Liberation Army leaders ahead of a 2027 deadline to be ready to invade Taiwan.

The Taiwan government’s National Security Bureau reportedly assessed that the CCP had punished nearly one million CCP members and People’s Republic of China officials during 2025, a new report found, which seems to dovetail with Xi’s removal of a host of high-ranking Chinese military brass as he prepares the PLA for war and increases his already iron-like grip on power in the country.
44 generals and admirals, as well as 57 lieutenant generals and vice admirals removed
“The Chinese Communist Party last year disciplined 983,000 party and government officials, a record high during Chinese President Xi Jinping’s tenure, according to a report by the National Security Bureau,” the Taipei Times reported on Tuesday, with the assessment reportedly being sent to Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan — the democratic island nation’s equivalent of the U.S. Congress — ahead of the scheduled committee testimony of Tsai Ming-yen, the director-general of the important Taiwanese intelligence agency. The Department of War’s annual report on China from December assessed that “China expects to be able to fight and win a war on Taiwan by the end of 2027.”
Xi has carried out a multi-year spree of removing top Chinese military commanders from the highest echelons of the PLA, with the Center for Strategic and International Studies finding that the Chinese leader has removed 44 generals and admirals as well as 57 lieutenant generals and vice admirals since 2022. CSIS added that, of the nearly four dozen PLA leaders who were generals in 2022 or were promoted to three-star roles post-2022, 87 percent of them “were purged or potentially purged” as of February of this year.
“Among those whose titles the CCP revoked last year were eight top researchers, including Liu Cangli, former director of the China Academy of Engineering Physics, the country’s main institution for research, development and testing of nuclear weapons and related technologies,” the Taipei Times said the new intel report also found. The outlet wrote on Tuesday: “Since the beginning of this year, the CCP has investigated many senior officials, including two high-level CCP officials — Central Military Commission Vice Chairman Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli, chief of the commission’s Joint Staff Department — as well as politburo member Ma Xingrui, Chongqing Mayor Hu Henghua, and 17 centrally managed cadres, the NSB said.”
CCP purges might be driven by U.S. military successes
Some assessments have contended that changes within the Chinese military leadership have occurred due to fears about U.S. military superiority demonstrated on the battlefield. The Taiwanese intel assessment from this month reportedly found that “the removals” of top Chinese generals and admirals “might have been linked to the CCP’s sale of military equipment to countries such as Venezuela that have performed poorly in conflict scenarios in the past few years.” Miles Yu, the director of the China Center at the Hudson Institute, also wrote in late March that the waves of Xi-led purges inside the PLA might be being driven by recent impressive performances by the U.S. military.
“The modern trajectory of China’s weapons development cannot be understood without recognizing a recurring pattern: Every major leap in the People’s Liberation Army has been triggered by decisive demonstrations of U.S. military superiority,” Yu wrote in the Washington Times. “From the Persian Gulf War to more recent confrontations involving Iran and Venezuela, American battlefield dominance has repeatedly exposed systemic weaknesses in China’s military-industrial complex, forcing cycles of hurried modernization, internal crisis, and political purges.”

The Artemis story I don’t quite get. They’re doing stuff that NASA should have done 50 years ago, and pretending it’s party-worthy?1

• This Is What a World Superpower Looks Like (Ben Shapiro)

America is living through a moment difficult to describe without sounding a little unhinged. But here goes: We are watching the United States do things that only the United States can do. In the span of a few days, Americans have watched astronauts push farther into space than any human beings in history, while U.S. forces execute military operations so precise and technologically overwhelming that they look like something written for a Hollywood script. Pilots are being rescued in missions that resemble “Mission: Impossible.” Terrorists are being eliminated with the kind of targeted strikes that only a modern superpower can carry out.

And somehow, this has become so normal that we barely stop to appreciate it. On Monday, Artemis II made history. According to The Wall Street Journal, the astronauts aboard NASA’s Orion spacecraft traveled more than 248,655 miles from Earth — farther than any human beings have ever gone. It is worth repeating: farther than any human beings have ever gone. Not in science fiction. Not in a theoretical model. In real life. In real time. With Americans at the controls. President Donald Trump called the crew to congratulate them, and what followed was a reminder of how far beyond our daily politics the American project really reaches.
“Tell me, what is the most unforgettable part of this really historic day?” the president asked. “The whole world is watching and listening. Please tell me.” Commander Reid Wiseman responded with the kind of awe you would expect from someone looking at the universe from a vantage point no human being has ever had before. He spoke of seeing the moon from a new perspective, of witnessing sights “no human has ever seen before,” even during Apollo. He described an eclipse — the sun, the moon, darkness outside the window, the corona visible — and even the “planet train” lining up in the distance.
Then he said something that sounded less like an astronaut’s report and more like a statement of national destiny: America, he said, was becoming part of the story of a “two-planet species.” That is what the United States is doing right now. And it is not happening in isolation. It is happening alongside a broader national posture that is unmistakably American: an insistence that the country is not merely capable of greatness but obligated to pursue it. For years, Americans have been trained to speak about their own country in tones of apology. The national mood has been one long exercise in self-criticism, as if confidence itself were a moral failing.
But there is a reason the rest of the world still looks at the United States as the place where things happen. People don’t just come here because we have jobs. They come because America still offers something rare: the opportunity to build, to create, to rise. The system is imperfect, but it remains the most powerful engine for human advancement ever constructed.And that same system, the same country capable of sending astronauts a quarter-million miles into space, is also the guarantor of global security — whether people want to admit it or not. That brings us to Iran.
For decades, the Iranian regime has played the same game: fund terrorism, destabilize the Middle East, pursue nuclear weapons, develop long-range ballistic missiles, brutalize its own population, and then demand to be treated as a legitimate member of the international community. The Trump administration’s position is simple: That game is over. What critics conveniently ignore is that Iran has been offered an off-ramp repeatedly. The United States has not demanded cultural surrender or humiliation. The requirements are basic: Stop pursuing nuclear weapons, stop developing long-range missiles, and stop funding terrorism. That is it.
Iran could have chosen that path at any time — not just in recent years but over nearly half a century. They could have been reintegrated into the world economy. They could have normalized relations. They could have chosen prosperity over fanaticism. Instead, they chose escalation. They chose theocracy. They chose regional domination. They chose to bankroll terror groups and accelerate toward nuclear capability. They chose to become a permanent source of instability. And now, they are facing the consequences.
The United States has unleashed military power with a level of dominance that has few parallels in history. The Iranian navy has been devastated. Its air force has been neutralized. Missile-launching capacity has been pushed toward collapse. Key industrial targets have been hit. Nuclear facilities have been bombed. Checkpoints and regime infrastructure have been struck with precision. This is not a stalemate. This is not a quagmire. By any reasonable historical standard, it is a superpower dismantling a hostile regime’s military capacity in real time.

Isn’t this how this all started? All the Dems saying in 2015 he had no chance in hell to win the election, were also claiming there was no way she loved him. Today, you can only WISH for your lady to love you how she does.

• Melania vs. the Mean Girls (Sarah Anderson)

We can also all agree that women can be catty when it comes to other women’s looks. No one wants to be the ugliest girl in the room, and I can imagine it may feel that way when you’re frumpy and dumpy and standing next to Melania Trump. The first lady is a good bit older than me, and I’ll be the first to admit that I will never look like she does. Even if I work out for hours a day, go on a special diet, have all the surgery and procedures, buy all the products, and wear outfits worth tens of thousands of dollars.

But I’m okay with that. I accept it. The older I get, the more I realize that someone’s physical appearance isn’t nearly as important as who they are, as cliché as that sounds. While I do enjoy seeing what Melania is wearing at various events, I’m far more interested in watching her interact with sick children in a hospital, talk to people who just lost their homes to national disasters, or interact with former hostages. She truly shines in these situations. Unfortunately, other women are not able to put that aside. Initially, I thought it was all politics — they hate Trump, so they’re going to bash his wife. But now I’m beginning to think that they are just catty and jealous.
They’re the frumpy and dumpy — and incredibly shallow — who can’t stand to be outshined by Mrs. Trump’s beauty. Some of the latest examples of this are actress Meryl Streep and former Vogue editor Anna Wintour. I guess they’re promoting a new movie, The Devil Wears Prada 2, and they had “a conversation” as part of this month’s Vogue cover story. I’ll admit that I partially read that article so I could write this one, and by the time I was done, I wanted to go take a shower or bleach my brain or something. It was the most pretentious, hoity-toity crap I’d ever read. These women need to get out of their limos and touch grass. Or maybe Artemis II can grab them and bring them back down to earth with it on Friday. But I digress.
Anyway, the Melania-bashing began when filmmaker Greta Gerwig, who was conducting the interview, posed the question: “Do you think about how women are meant to dress to communicate power?” Because of all the things going on in the world right now, this is important. Wintour responded by propping up the “women one admires:” Michelle Obama and Rama Duwaji, wife of New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani — you know, the one who cheered on Hamas on October 7 and uses racial and homophobic slurs on social media. No, Anna, one does not admire these women. At least not one with a brain.
“Think about the women that one admires: Mrs. [Michelle] Obama comes to mind,” Wintour said. “Whether she’s wearing J.Crew or Duro Olowu or Matthieu Blazy’s Chanel, she always looks like herself. I’m full of admiration for New York City’s new first lady because she looks so cool and wears a lot of vintage—young and modern and also entirely herself.” Then she added this: “To be fair, Melania Trump also always looks like herself when she dresses.” There was no explanation, no breakdown of what she wears, just a blunt statement that came across as an insult and was presumably meant that way.
Streep claimed she had “so many thoughts about this” and brought up one particular outfit that Mrs. Trump wore in June 2018. “I think the most powerful message that our current first lady sent was in the coat that said ‘I Really Don’t Care, Do U?’ when she was going to see migrant children who were incarcerated.”
Nice try, Meryl, but let’s add some context. The “coat” she’s referring to is this one:

On June 21, 2018, Melania went to a migrant detention center wearing a Zara design jacket with the phrase "I Really Don't Care. Do U?" on the back. pic.twitter.com/gVYefFafF3
— MythoMAGA (@MythoMAGA) January 19, 2026

Marc Andreessen thinks Elon Musk hasn't just built successful companies, he might have actually cracked the code on how to manage for the next hundred years.

The fundamental problem with any traditional organization that has multiple layers of management is what Andreessen… pic.twitter.com/xJL3HaCVyD
— Ian Miles Cheong (@ianmiles) April 7, 2026

Looking forward to working with Intel on the Terafab! https://t.co/i8Eie90ru0
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 7, 2026

https://twitter.com/XFreeze/status/2041595253640310906?s=20

May 29, 1453. The Ottoman Empire under Sultan Mehmed II besieged Constantinople after 55 days of relentless assault.

80,000 Ottoman soldiers stood against 7,000 Christian defenders. Constantine XI Palaiologos, the last Roman Emperor, had spent years sending letters across Europe… pic.twitter.com/1wFl8ms4XH
— sacredchad (@sacredchad_ig) April 7, 2026

Η Μινωική Θαλασσοκρατία#Ιστορία https://t.co/zHjE1lfXSA pic.twitter.com/yWgr4ts97J
— Dr Spyros Plakoudas (@PlakoudasSpyros) April 7, 2026

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

Debt Rattle April 8 2026

Apr 082026

April 8, 2026 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:50 am Finance Tagged with: AI, Andreesen, ceasefire, defiance, foldable phones, Iran, leverage, Markwayne Mullin, midterms, sanctuary cities, Trump 73 Responses »

Emil Nolde Half Moon Over The Sea 1945

• Trump Announces a Ceasefire (Sarah Anderson)

• President Trump, Iran Agree To 2-Week Ceasefire (ZH)

• President Trump Threatened Iran, the Democrats Blinked (Tim O’Brien)

• Trump Threatens To ‘Take Out Entire Country Of Iran’ (ZH)

• Defiance Without Leverage: Tehran’s Fatal Miscalculation (David Manney)

• Trump: ‘A Whole Civilization Will Die Tonight’ (Catherine Salgado)

• The New York Times Says We Lost the War (Scott Pinsker)

• German ‘Militaristic Frenzy’ Could End In Tragedy – Zakharova (RT)

• Foldable Apple iPhone Hits Engineering Snags, Raising Risk Of Delays (ZH)

• Here’s How Bad the Midterms Situation for the Democrats Really Is (Margolis)

• Mullin Drops a Bombshell on Sanctuary Cities (Matt Margolis)

• Marc Andreessen Calls AI Job-Loss Fears ‘Fake’, Expects Employment Gains (ZH)

https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2041488240062906637?s=20

Ukrainian sources confirm: 4,000 Ukrainian coup specialists have already been transferred to Hungary.

They plan to seize buildings in Budapest, organize riots, and refuse to recognize PM Viktor Orbán's victory.

Ukraine is interfering in Hungarian elections… and we know why. pic.twitter.com/LHTMAwdCgb
— Garbage Human (@GarbageHuman24) April 7, 2026

Elon Musk just said it plainly:

“Government can’t keep up with AI — it’s moving 10 times faster than them, maybe more.
The one thing they can do is just issue people money.”

He pointed to COVID checks and Trump’s recent $1,776 military payments as examples. In short: expect… pic.twitter.com/lI4BPkYN8u
— Camus (@newstart_2024) April 6, 2026

https://twitter.com/maggiewise111/status/2041472711365403054?s=20

When I've previously shared this exact figure, I was told that it was Islamophobic to do so. Is it? pic.twitter.com/lk0deVakTQ
— Gad Saad (@GadSaad) April 6, 2026

Germany WAKES UP as AfD’s Alice Weidel drops the bomb…

“Within 100 days…we will CLOSE THE BORDERS, CUT ALL MIGRANT SUBSIDIES…and we’ll launch the LARGEST DEPORTATIONS IN HISTORY!”

After years of no-go hellholes… the migrant invasion ends NOW.

Remigration or death. pic.twitter.com/4igaYwjp26
— Liz Churchill (@liz_churchill10) April 6, 2026

Prince William preaches that Islam is the ‘Religion of Peace’ that other Faiths must learn from.

He’s the same gutless Royal as his father…ditching Christianity while Britain burns under grooming gangs and stabbings.

Defender of the Faith?

More like Defender of the Invaders. pic.twitter.com/uArgPgfOXv
— Liz Churchill (@liz_churchill10) April 5, 2026

Trump might claim it is a normal negotiation. Though it’s not for everyone.

Then again, some of the language coming out of Tehran sounds like they studied and imitated Trump. And he knows it.

Then again again, we don’t know who speaks for Iran. Is it a mullah? The IRGC?

To be sure, everyone’s threatening battles they don’t want.

• Trump Announces a Ceasefire (Sarah Anderson)

UPDATE: 8:08 p.m. EST: Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi says Iran will allow safe passage for maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz for two weeks, provided there is coordination with Iran’s armed forces.

pic.twitter.com/lVrOBtjEiq
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) April 7, 2026

Original article

Well, it doesn’t look like he’ll be destroying any civilizations on Tuesday night. Donald Trump has announced, via his Truth Social account, that there will be a two-week ceasefire with Iran, subject to “complete, immediate, and safe” opening of the Strait of Hormuz. He said that Iran has proposed a 10-point peace plan — he called the plan significant but “not good enough” on Monday — and he now believes it’s “a workable basis on which to negotiate.” The two-week ceasefire period will allow an agreement to be finalized. He also said that it’s an “honor to have this long-term problem close to resolution.” Here’s his full statement.
“Based on conversations with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Field Marshal Asim Munir, of Pakistan, and wherein they requested that I hold off the destructive force being sent tonight to Iran, and subject to the Islamic Republic of Iran agreeing to the COMPLETE, IMMEDIATE, and SAFE OPENING of the Strait of Hormuz, I agree to suspend the bombing and attack of Iran for a period of two weeks. This will be a double sided CEASEFIRE! The reason for doing so is that we have already met and exceeded all Military objectives, and are very far along with a definitive Agreement concerning Longterm PEACE with Iran, and PEACE in the Middle East. We received a 10 point proposal from Iran, and believe it is a workable basis on which to negotiate. Almost all of the various points of past contention have been agreed to between the United States and Iran, but a two week period will allow the Agreement to be finalized and consummated. On behalf of the United States of America, as President, and also representing the Countries of the Middle East, it is an Honor to have this Longterm problem close to resolution.
Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP”
This comes after Trump issued a strong warning for Iran earlier on Tuesday, stating, “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will.” He continued: “However, now that we have Complete and Total Regime Change, where different, smarter, and less radicalized minds prevail, maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen, WHO KNOWS? We will find out tonight, one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the World. 47 years of extortion, corruption, and death, will finally end. God Bless the Great People of Iran!”
As my colleague Rick Moran reported earlier, “Iran rejected a ceasefire proposal by Pakistan on Monday, which would have included the immediate reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.” Obviously, some last-minute diplomacy has taken place, but whether it will hold remains to be seen.
https://twitter.com/WhiteHouse/status/2041649076500869158
Fox News’ Laura Ingraham says she spoke to Trump just after he announced the ceasefire and claims he is “extremely serious” and “cautiously but seriously optimistic.” He also said the negotiations were incredibly complex and he doesn’t want anything to jeopardize them.

“This will be a double sided CEASEFIRE!”

• President Trump, Iran Agree To 2-Week Ceasefire (ZH)

Building on the conversations leaked all day, it appears President Trump has withdrawn his threat to end Iranian civilization as they know it…

“Based on conversations with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Field Marshal Asim Munir, of Pakistan, and wherein they requested that I hold off the destructive force being sent tonight to Iran, and subject to the Islamic Republic of Iran agreeing to the COMPLETE, IMMEDIATE, and SAFE OPENING of the Strait of Hormuz, I agree to suspend the bombing and attack of Iran for a period of two weeks. This will be a double sided CEASEFIRE! The reason for doing so is that we have already met and exceeded all Military objectives, and are very far along with a definitive Agreement concerning Long-term PEACE with Iran, and PEACE in the Middle East.
We received a 10 point proposal from Iran, and believe it is a workable basis on which to negotiate. Almost all of the various points of past contention have been agreed to between the United States and Iran, but a two week period will allow the Agreement to be finalized and consummated.On behalf of the United States of America, as President, and also representing the Countries of the Middle East, it is an Honor to have this Long-term problem close to resolution. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP
Additionally, CNN reports that Israel has agree to suspend bombing while talks are ongoing.
Alayna Treene (@alaynatreene) Israel is a part of the two-week ceasefire Trump agreed to just an hour and a half before his deadline, a senior White House official tells CNN. Israel has agreed to also suspend its bombing campaign while negotiations continue, the official said. And the most important variable, Iran, is also on the same page, and accepts Pakistan’s two-week ceasefire proposal with the deal approved by the New Supreme Leaders, according to Iran’s Foreign Minster, Aragchi. More importantly, Iran has said that safe passage via Hormuz “possible” for two weeks.

Talks between the US and Iran will start on Friday, although Iran was quick to note that it will engage in talks with complete distrust.
* * *
The reaction is as you would expect.
Oil plunged (WTI -16%)…

Stocks spiked (S&P Futs +2%)…

Gold ($4800) and Bitcoin ($72500) are soaring.
Treasury yields and the dollar are tumbling. …well it wouldn’t be Tuesday without TACOs.
Last Ditch Peace Effort by Pakistan Prime Minister With just hours until Trump’s self declared deadline wherein he said a “whole civilization will die tonight” – Pakistan’s leader and host of mediation efforts, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, has tried to introduce a last minute olive branch, hoping that the US will avoid its decimation campaign:
“I earnestly request President Trump to extend the deadline for two weeks. Pakistan, in all sincerity, requests the Iranian brothers to open Strait of Hormuz for a corresponding period of two weeks as a goodwill gesture. We also urge all warring parties to observe a ceasefire everywhere for two weeks to allow diplomacy to achieve conclusive termination of war, in the interest of long-term peace and stability in the region.”
Will Trump latch on to this plea and last minute effort of good will? The sides are aware of the proposal:
TEHRAN IS POSITIVELY REVIEWING PAKISTAN’S REQUEST FOR A TWO-WEEK CEASEFIRE: SENIOR IRANIAN OFFICIAL
TRUMP IS AWARE OF PAKISTAN’S PROPOSAL: AXIOS CITING LEAVITT
Diplomatic efforts for peaceful settlement of the ongoing war in the Middle East are progressing steadily, strongly and powerfully with the potential to lead to substantive results in near future. To allow diplomacy to run its course, I earnestly request President Trump to extend… — Shehbaz Sharif (@CMShehbaz) April 7, 2026
In the meantime, some fresh statements via state Tasnim:
“If Trump wants to fall into a hole with his madness, we have prepared a black hole for him from which it will be impossible for him to get out”, Tasnim reports citing an Iranian military source “Have prepared good surprises for Trump’s possible madness; One of them is the addition of Aramco oil facilities, Yanba oil facilities and the Fujairah pipeline to Iran’s goals, and in case of Trump’s crime, Iran will not hesitate to impose heavy costs on America and its partners.” “Trump thinks that with these threats the strait will be opened and the price of oil will go down! He doesn’t know that if he carries out his threat, he will have to wait for the oil price of $200 in the coming days.”

Talk about being caught with your pants down your ankles.

• President Trump Threatened Iran, the Democrats Blinked (Tim O’Brien)

By now you’ve seen the reports of the latest threat President Donald Trump made against Iran. My colleague Catherine Salgado detailed: President Donald Trump made a dramatic threat on Tuesday morning as his deadline approaches for the terrorist Iranian regime to surrender or face bigger and more devastating strikes than ever from the United States and Israel. ‘A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,’ Trump began in explosive style in his April 7 Truth Social post. He had threatened on Easter Sunday to bring such terrible retribution against the terrorist Iranian regime that its tyrants would think they were in hell, and it appears that since talks are unsurprisingly going nowhere, he will execute his threat.

Before that, our colleague Rick Moran covered the president’s description of what would happen to Iran if it continued to rebuff his attempts to negotiate and arrive at a diplomatic solution to the current situation in Iran. ‘We have a plan where every bridge in Iran will be decimated by 12 o’clock tomorrow night. Where every power plant in Iran will be out of business, burning, exploding, and never to be used again. I mean complete demolition by 12 o’clock, and it will happen over a period of four hours if we wanted to,’ Trump said. “We don’t want that to happen. Iran rejected a ceasefire proposal by Pakistan on Monday, which would have included the immediate reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. Instead, they offered a 10-point ceasefire proposal of their own that no one is taking seriously.
It would seem Iran got Trump’s message and has now returned to the bargaining table, agreeing to a two-week ceasefire one day after rejecting it. Our Sarah Anderson has the latest. I’d say that Trump’s tough talk, most likely backed up by the very credible threat real action against what remains of Iranian leadership, worked. Don’t tell that to the Democrats. Before Iran flinched, the Democrats outright panicked. Some of it was fake and by design, but a good bit of it was honest-to-goodness panic. Their scripted, AstroTurfed narrative has gone full 25th Amendment and “war crimes.” Keep in mind tat all of these accusations are about something Trump threatened to do but has not done. Question: Is it a war crime if you just talk about it on social media?
The Democrats always attack Trump and the right for things they imagine but that never happened, but when it comes to things that have happened, if it doesn’t benefit them, they ignore it. Like the time a few weeks ago when the legacy media all but ignored Iran slaughtering some 40,000 actual peaceful protesters. So, when I tell you the left flinched, let’s start with RINO Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska).

The President’s threat that “a whole civilization will die tonight” cannot be excused away as an attempt to gain leverage in negotiations with Iran.

This type of rhetoric is an affront to the ideals our nation has sought to uphold and promote around the world for nearly 250…
— Sen. Lisa Murkowski (@lisamurkowski) April 7, 2026

After watching what the Iranian regime just did to its own people, she had the gall to put the entire onus on the victims of Iranian oppression to rise up. The gun-less people of Iran. What are they supposed to do to overthrow that regime? Stage a sit-in? Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.) got the memo. His X post is representative of a large number of Democrats in Congress and the Senate, and in the media.

I'm officially calling for the Cabinet to remove Trump from office under the 25th Amendment. If they can't, Congress must return from recess today and begin impeachment proceedings.

Read my full statement below.https://t.co/WmoVZgs6wi
— Mike Quigley (@RepMikeQuigley) April 7, 2026

Now that Trump has effectively induced the Iranian regime to talk, will Quigley step up and admit that Trump is speaking the only language the murderous leadership of that country understands? Of course not. Quigley will do what all leftists are doing, which is to notice Trump’s rhetoric and then ignore it or downplay it when it works. Worse, some will try to get away with saying that Iran came back to the bargaining table in spite of Trump’s threats, not because of them, even when the exact opposite is true.
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) is always good for repeating the left’s focus-grouped messaging, and he delivered here.

We need to invoke the 25th Amendment and remove Trump.

Threatening war crimes is a blatant violation of our constitution and the Geneva Conventions. pic.twitter.com/31F3BkA9kR
— Ro Khanna (@RoKhanna) April 7, 2026

He made sure to include both the 25th Amendment and the “war crimes” narratives because Trump said a thing. Meanwhile, speaking of the 25th Amendment, while Khanna wants to use it to get Trump out of office, I guess we’re to believe Khanna couldn’t see President Joe Biden’s mental decline days before that disastrous debate performance with Trump, which helped force him to drop out of the race in 2024.

Joe Biden decimated Paul Ryan in the 2012 Vice Presidential debate and defeated Trump in two debates in 2020. He brings resilience and grit and understands a campaign is a marathon. That's why he'll win. pic.twitter.com/S1cuFPIu2L
— Ro Khanna (@RoKhanna) June 21, 2024

You can always tell which messages are contrived by who delivers them on the Democrat side. Khanna is one. Others include Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) and Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who by the way, couldn’t pass this opportunity up.

The President is threatening to destroy an entire civilization.

Congress must finally reclaim its war power from this increasingly dangerous president.

Before he creates more chaos and destruction.

Before more servicemembers get killed. pic.twitter.com/uz9m67aL2F
— Adam Schiff (@SenAdamSchiff) April 7, 2026

In Congress, Iran could have no better friend that Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.). See if you notice a pattern emerging. Could it be that someone told these Democrats what to say, and that these aren’t things they thought up on their own?

After bombing a school and massacring young girls, the war criminal in the White House is threatening genocide.

It's time to invoke the 25th Amendment. This maniac should be removed from office. pic.twitter.com/Mm7iC3xqdP
— Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (@RepRashida) April 7, 2026

In the process:

• Trump Threatens To ‘Take Out Entire Country Of Iran’ (ZH)

US-Israeli strikes have been on a noticeable uptick against Iranian institutions of higher learning over the last days. This has included a large-scale aerial assault on Tehran’s Sharif University, which is often dubbed the “MIT of Iran”. After this attack, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi threatened Iranian retaliation, warning “aggressors will see our might.” He said several other universities have also been struck over the last days. One regional report (Al Jazeera) says that at least 30 Iranian colleges and universities have suffered damage amid the ongoing attacks.

Neither the US nor Israel divulged the reasons behind attacking university campuses. Many of the students at these very campuses were involved in the January protests. The US claims to be “helping” the protesters through the Trump-ordered massive bombing campaign. Shahid Beheshti University in northern Tehran was attacked last Friday. It issued a statement saying: “This hostile act not only targets the security of academics and the country’s scientific environment, but is also a clear attack on reason, research, and freedom of thought.”
Trump Threatens Iran’s Decimation By Midnight Tues If No Deal
Having already spoken to reporters earlier in the day (before, during, and after the Easter Egg party), discussing ceasefire proposals (‘not good enough’) and his desire to ‘take the oil’, President Trump took the lectern in the White House Briefing Room at 1pm ET to discuss the rescue of the downed airmen over the weekend. President Trump centered his remarks on the weekend search-and-rescue operation for downed airmen, highlighting its success while condemning the leak of details surrounding the mission. “Rescue leak is a national security concern,” he said, adding that authorities “will examine media firm that reported rescue leak.” He further declared, “we have to find that leaker, that’s a sick person,” and warning of potential legal action, as he “threatens to jail journalist over leak,” before adding, “The left will love that!”
He then pivoted to a more aggressive stance on Iran, stating, “Iran can be taken out in one night, maybe tomorrow,” and doubling down with, “entire country of Iran could be taken out in one night.” He also at one point said, “we won.” Pete Hegseth then stepped in and reinforced the escalation, stating, “today will be largest volume of strikes on Iran,” and warning, “tomorrow’s strikes on Iran will be more than today.” During the Q&A session, Trump signaled undisclosed strategy, saying, “I have the best plan of all, won’t tell you what it is,” while insisting, “we didn’t do this for regime change.” He described Iran’s leadership shift in stark terms: “new regime is smarter, sharper, less radical.”
Vital infrastructure attacks already in progress… He also addressed the Iranian public directly, stating, “Iranians should rise up, but the consequences are great,” while claiming, “Iranians want us to keep bombing,” and adding, “Iranian people are willing to suffer for freedom.” He also emphasized that “free traffic of oil” in the Hormuz Strait “must in the Iran deal”. He has warned that “every bridge” and power plant will be decimated by midnight tomorrow night if the Iranians don’t accept a ceasefire deal. This followed a report from The Wall Street Journal that the US military is making preparations for potential strikes on energy targets in Iran, according to multiple U.S. officials – as President Trump ratchets up his demand for Tehran to open the Strait of Hormuz – sending oil prices significantly higher…

The US and Israel are carrying out intense bombing raids on Iran’s South Pars petrochemical complex, which accounts for 85% of the country’s production in this sector.
The damage is massive, yet the complex covers 54,000 hectares and would require many days of sustained heavy… pic.twitter.com/9CB00VZNJ3
— Patricia Marins (@pati_marins64) April 6, 2026

That military planners are pulling out existing lists of potential targets to provide the president options if he decides to attack energy infrastructure (according to WSJ sources), this should not be new news for traders (but the market is so sensitive), since Trump has ramped up his threats to do just that in recent days, telling The Wall Street Journal on Sunday that he would destroy all of Iran’s power plants if the regime doesn’t agree to reopen the Strait of Hormuz by Tuesday evening.
IRGC Intel Chief Taken Out; Israel Suffers Heavy Casualties The head of the Intelligence Organization of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) was killed in a Monday airstrike, according to confirmation in Iranian media. IRGC-linked Tasnim News Agency reported that the IRGC Public Relations Department confirmed Monday that Major General Majid Khademi was killed earlier in the day during an attack by US and Israeli forces. However, Tasnim did not disclose the location of the strike.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) earlier stated on X that Khademi was one of the IRGC’s most senior commanders with decades of experience. “Khademi worked to advance terrorist attacks worldwide, and was responsible for monitoring Iranian civilians as part of the regime’s suppression of internal protests,” it claimed.RFE/RL reported that Khademi assumed the post last summer after Mohammad Kazemi was killed in Israeli strikes during the 12-day war. Before that, he led the Intelligence Protection Organization of the Ministry of Defense and Armed Forces Logistics. Iran is now vowing to enact vengeance on Israel for his death.
Meanwhile Sunday into Monday saw significant casualties in Israel, after the IRGC claimed in a statement carried by state media that Iranian forces had targeted an oil refinery in Haifa. But instead, it appears that the missile slammed directly into a residential building, killing at least four Israelis. Search and rescue teams have spent some 18 hours pouring through the ruins of the complex, recovering two bodies early Monday after an initial two had been found. The casualties could climb amid ongoing recovery efforts. Another regional source stated that “Over 160 Israelis have been transferred to hospitals over the past 24 hours, Israel’s Health Ministry said on Monday.”

“And if they don’t, they’ll have no bridges. They’ll have no power plants. They’ll have no anything.”

• Defiance Without Leverage: Tehran’s Fatal Miscalculation (David Manney)

Iranian leaders rejected a United States proposal for a long ceasefire delivered through Pakistani intermediaries on April 5. Iran communicated its response through Pakistan, signaling that it is unwilling to accept a temporary pause in hostilities. “We won’t merely accept a ceasefire,” Mojtaba Ferdousi Pour, head of Iran’s diplomatic mission in Cairo, said in remarks to the Associated Press. “We only accept an end to the war with guarantees that we won’t be attacked again.” At the White House, Trump said Iran is making a mistake by rejecting the proposal. “They just don’t want to say ‘uncle,’” Trump told reporters. “They don’t want to cry, as the expression goes, ‘uncle,’ but they will. And if they don’t, they’ll have no bridges. They’ll have no power plants. They’ll have no anything.

“I won’t go further because there are other things that are worse than those two.” The offer called for a 45-day pause in fighting and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most critical energy corridors. Tehran responded with a 10-point counterproposal, demanding a permanent end to hostilities, full security guarantees, sanctions relief, and control over the Strait. Mojaba Ferdousi Pour, head of Iran’s diplomatic mission in Cairo, stated that Iran would accept nothing short of a definitive halt to military action. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi delivered the counter-demands and positioned Tehran as seeking “peace with dignity.”
According to IRNA, Tehran’s proposal includes 10 provisions, such as ending regional conflicts, ensuring safe navigation through the Strait of Hormuz, lifting economic sanctions, and initiating reconstruction efforts. Iranian and Omani officials are working on a framework to manage shipping through the strategically vital Strait of Hormuz, a critical global energy corridor. Tensions escalated further as Israel launched strikes on Iran’s South Pars natural gas field—the world’s largest, shared with Qatar—targeting a major source of the country’s revenue.The attack also killed two senior commanders of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. Israel described the strike as an effort to weaken Iran’s economic capacity, although it appeared separate from the U.S. ultimatum.
The development raises doubts about the viability of a proposed 45-day cease-fire amid rapidly intensifying hostilities. The framework, however, required the United States and Israel to surrender military leverage already demonstrated on the battlefield. President Donald Trump made his position unmistakable, speaking the day after the rescue of a downed American airman, warning that Iran could be “taken out in one night” if escalation continues. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth stood beside him and confirmed that recent operations inflicted heavy losses on Iranian naval vessels and missile infrastructure.
It’s an obvious strategic imbalance: American forces maintain air dominance, precision strike capability, and maritime superiority in the region. Iranian naval units have already suffered substantial losses. Missile facilities have been degraded; shipping lanes remain vulnerable to further disruption if Tehran continues hostilities. Instead of accepting a pause that would’ve allowed regrouping and diplomatic maneuvering, Iran’s leadership demanded sweeping concessions.
Mojtaba Khamenei was selected by Iran’s Assembly of Experts on March 8 and is the “current” supreme leader of Iran, succeeding his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was directly targeted on February 28, the beginning of Operation Epic Fury.
Mojtaba’s supposed approval or rejection of diplomatic overtures (he may be hooked up to medical machinery) signals that hardliners within Iran’s leadership continue to favor a posture of defiance in the face of U.S. pressure. The supreme leader has the final say on major foreign and security decisions under Iran’s constitutional system, and Mojtaba’s stance suggests Tehran believes firm resistance strengthens internal unity and extracts better terms at the negotiating table.

“.. but unfortunately, their regime is satanically stubborn.”

• Trump: ‘A Whole Civilization Will Die Tonight’ (Catherine Salgado)

President Donald Trump made a dramatic threat on Tuesday morning as his deadline approaches for the terrorist Iranian regime to surrender or face bigger and more devastating strikes than ever from the United States and Israel. “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” Trump began in explosive style in his April 7 Truth Social post. He had threatened on Easter Sunday to bring such terrible retribution against the terrorist Iranian regime that its tyrants would think they were in hell, and it appears that since talks are unsurprisingly going nowhere, he will execute his threat.

After having issued his formidable warning Tuesday, Trump continued, “I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will. However, now that we have Complete and Total Regime Change, where different, smarter, and less radicalized minds prevail, maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen, WHO KNOWS? We will find out tonight, one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the World.” Referring to the current regime’s lengthy record of tyranny and terror, Trump ended his statement, “47 years of extortion, corruption, and death, will finally end. God Bless the Great People of Iran!”
The message is somewhat cryptic, and it doesn’t clarify whether the regime change is to happen after tonight, or whether Trump thinks it has already begun. Hopefully, it is the former, because we cannot trust a single member of the government that has proudly made “death to America” and “death to Israel” its favorite slogans for half a century. The leader who was the negotiator with America, Mohammad Ghalibaf, is still swearing vengeance. Some members of the government might be willing to agree to terms made by the great Satan, but that does not mean they will live up to those terms. After all, the Islamic concept of taqiyya endorses lies to non-Muslims for the sake of accomplishing Jihad.
Of course, Trump had already issued a more specific and definite threat against Iran’s murderous regime, as my colleague Rick Moran reported earlier. After insisting the “entire country could be taken out in one night, and it might be tomorrow night,” Trump wrote, “We have a plan where every bridge in Iran will be decimated by 12 o’clock tomorrow night.” He expatiated, “Where every power plant in Iran will be out of business, burning, exploding, and never to be used again. I mean complete demolition by 12 o’clock, and it will happen over a period of four hours if we wanted to. We don’t want that to happen.”
Naturally, America wants to leave infrastructure for the much-oppressed Persian people, but unfortunately, their regime is satanically stubborn. As we learned during WWII with a similarly genocidal regime — imperial Japan — sometimes peace comes only after massive devastation and unconditional surrender. The Iranian regime has been attacking Americans directly or through proxies for almost 50 years now. We have long been at war — the murderous mullahs did not leave us that choice. But while we didn’t get to choose when the war began, Americans can choose how the war will end. May Trump eliminate the threat of the Islamic regime once and for all.

“The Times regrets the error. Want more?”

• The New York Times Says We Lost the War (Scott Pinsker)

At least it’s colorful: The Gray Lady just gave us the green light to wave the white flag.Running in the April 7 edition of The New York Times: “The Iran War Is Turning Iran Into a Major World Power.” The author, Professor Robert Pape of the University of Chicago, offers the following thesis:
1) Iran will keep control of the Strait of Hormuz for “months or years,” and there’s nothing militarily we can do about it. (Sorry, guys.)
2) The U.S. and Europe are now in decline — and the axis of China, Russia, and Iran is ascending.
3) Iran will emerge as a “new major world power” and the “fourth center of global power” (the other three: America, China, Russia).
But before we pulverize Professor Pape’s preposterously pessimistic proposal, here’s an earlier example of The New York Times’ piercing wisdom, courtesy of author Hans Mahncke:

The story behind the New York Times’ 1903 claim that human flight was between one and ten million years away is even worse than it looks.

Once you understand the backstory, you realize that the New York Times story is not really about flight at all but about how elites and… https://t.co/6JlRT1nja8
— Hans Mahncke (@HansMahncke) April 5, 2026

It’s an X post about a New York Times story from 1903: “Flying Machines Which Do Not Fly.” (And if that story sounds familiar, it’s because beloved PJ Media alum and/or Supreme Leader Editor Paula Bolyard wrote about it in 2024. From Mahncke: “The New York Times did not dismiss the possibility of powered flight at random. There was a very specific reason behind it. At the time, America’s most prominent scientific authority, Smithsonian Secretary Samuel Langley, had been showered with large amounts of taxpayer funding to build an aircraft, the Langley Aerodrome. Despite all the money, institutional backing, and elite prestige, Langley and his team could not get it to fly, culminating in a series of very public failures, the last on December 8, 1903.”
So when the New York Times declared that flight was millions of years away, what it was really saying was that if the most credentialed and well-funded “experts” cannot do it, then it cannot be done. A mere nine days later, the elites’ proclamation of impossibility lay in ruins. Two totally unknown bicycle mechanics from Ohio achieved the first powered flight using improvised parts, a few hundred dollars of their own money, and sheer persistence. From stupid ideas that crash and burn to lame-brained theories that never get off the ground, there’s a long and illustrious history of the Gray Lady getting caught red-handed practicing yellow journalism.
In fact, in honor of Artemis, there’s also this doozy from Jan. 13, 1920, when The New York Times insisted that rockets cannot function in space: That professor [Robert] Goddard, with his ‘chair’ in Clark College and the countenancing of the Smithsonian Institution [from which Goddard held a grant to research rocket flight], does not know the relation of action to reaction, and of the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react — to say that would be absurd. Of course he only seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools. [emphasis added]
It was only AFTER Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins left the surly bonds of earth — on a rocket, by the way — that the Times offered a correction: “Further investigation and experimentation have confirmed the findings of Isaac Newton in the 17th century, and it is now definitely established that a rocket can function in a vacuum as well as in an atmosphere. […] The Times regrets the error. Want more?

“Berlin should not forget the lessons of World War II, the Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman has said.“

Russia has not forgotten.

• German ‘Militaristic Frenzy’ Could End In Tragedy – Zakharova (RT)

Germany’s continued military buildup could lead to another tragedy on a global scale, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has warned. Last week, German media reported that male citizens who remain abroad for more than three months without prior approval could face penalties in line with a new requirement under the Military Service Modernization Act. The rule, which came into force on January 1, 2026, obliges German males between the ages of 17 and 45 to obtain permission before leaving the country for an extended period. The Defense Ministry said the measure is intended to maintain a reliable registry of individuals eligible for military service.

In a post on Telegram on Monday, Zakharova noted that previously German men were required to register before going abroad only during a “state of tension” or a “state of defense,” but that the measure has now been expanded to peacetime “as part of Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s strategy of militarizing the country.” Germany recently moved to reintroduce lottery-based conscription as Berlin is looking to increase the number of its active troops from 180,000 to more than 260,000 by 2035. The spokeswoman suggested that “in the heat of militaristic frenzy, Germany has completely forgotten the lessons of history.” “
The last time the German political elite set out to make their country ‘the main military power in Europe,’ it ended in tragedy for all of humanity,” Zakharova said, referring to the Second World War, in which between 60 to 65 million people are estimated to have been killed. Following the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022, Germany launched a massive military buildup, with reported plans of spending more than €500 billion (around $580 billion) on defense by 2029. According to officials in Berlin, the armed forces must be “war-ready” for a potential conflict with Russia by that date. Moscow has repeatedly rejected as “nonsense” claims of it harboring any aggressive plans against the European members of NATO, saying that they are only being made by Western politicians to scare the population and justify increased military spending.

Up in the air. Free promotion.

• Foldable Apple iPhone Hits Engineering Snags, Raising Risk Of Delays (ZH)

Hours after Nikkei Asia reported that Apple’s first foldable iPhone could face delays in mass production, Bloomberg pushed back on the report, citing sources who say the foldable iPhone remains on track for a September debut alongside the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max. Apple shares fell as much as 5.1% in the U.S. cash session after the Nikkei report raised concerns about engineering test issues with the new device, potentially delaying mass production.

Initial production could be heavily constrained by the complexity of the foldable phone, but Bloomberg’s sources suggest Apple is still aiming to put it on store shelves within the same launch window as the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max. Bloomberg’s report, countering Nikkei Asia’s earlier story, fits a familiar pattern of information operations, and Apple was likely not thrilled with the stock’s performance after the overnight note. Polymarket odds of the foldable iPhone launching before 2027 stood at around 81% as of early Tuesday afternoon, up from 75% during the overnight hours.
Apple is about 8 years late to the foldable smartphone space, with Samsung’s Galaxy Fold released in October 2018. Now, Tim Cook’s big launch of Apple’s first foldable smartphone could face “delays in its mass production and product shipment schedule,” according to new Nikkei Asia sources deep within the handset supply chain. Supply chain sources told the Japanese business outlet that the complexity of the new foldable iPhone is causing engineering problems during early testing, and these issues could delay mass production and shipments by months.

Some suppliers have already been warned that component production schedules could be pushed back. “It’s true that more issues than expected have emerged during the early test production phase, and additional time will be needed to resolve them and make necessary adjustments. … The current situation could put the mass production timeline at risk,” one of those sources said. The source added, “April will mark a crucial stage of the engineering verification test, and this month through early May is extremely critical.”
Nikkei previously reported that Apple adjusted its iPhone launch strategy for 2026, pushing back production of base model iPhones to early 2027 to prioritize production of premium models, including foldable iPhones. This move is intended to allocate constrained supplies of memory chips and other key components more efficiently. Another person in the handset supply chain said the potential schedule delay has very little to do with memory chips, but rather with “engineering challenges” for Apple’s first foldable iPhone: “Apple and the supply chain are working under a tight timeline, and the current solutions are not enough to completely solve the engineering challenges. More time is needed.”

They have no-one.

• Here’s How Bad the Midterms Situation for the Democrats Really Is (Margolis)

Conventional wisdom says that Democrats are going to have a good year in the midterms. In fact, Democrats think a six-point lead in the generic congressional ballot is something to feel good about. Maybe they should take a closer look at the numbers before popping the champagne because the truth is that it looks like Democrats are blowing it. And you don’t have to take my word for it either. CNN chief data analyst Harry Enten broke it down on Monday, and the picture for Democrats is a lot less rosy than party leadership would probably like to admit.Yes, they’re ahead — but only barely. Given historical precedent and the current political environment, they should be running away with it. But they’re not.

“This lead is historically low for Democrats at this point with a Republican president,” Enten said. “On average, their lead’s actually slightly less. It’s five points. That’s less than it was back in 2018 when it was eight points and way less than it was during the 2006 cycle when it was 11 points.” Five points. Now, I don’t exactly trust the approval rating polls showing that President Donald Trump at -20 or -30, but still, with numbers like that, Democrats should be crushing the GOP in the general congressional ballot, but they’re not.”You’d make the argument, Democrats should be way ahead, and they’re just only sort of slightly ahead,” Enten pointed out.
It’s not just me saying that. What does this mean in practical terms? Host John Berman noted that five points might be enough to flip the House, which operates on razor-thin margins. But the Senate? That’s a completely different story. Democrats really want to flip the Senate because they think that if they do, they can impeach President Trump next year and convict him.”I think five points is enough to take back the House,” Enten said. “But in the Senate, five points is almost certainly not enough if you apply it to the Senate map.”
The map is brutal for Democrats. Even in a scenario where Republicans hold only states Trump won by more than 10 points, the GOP still comes out ahead 51-49. Democrats would flip North Carolina and Maine, sure, but Ohio, Texas, and Alaska would stay red. Trump won all three by double digits, and Enten pointed to a sobering historical pattern to explain why that matters so much.
“During the Trump era, look at this, flip the Senate seat, midterm and presidential years, states the other party won by ten plus points in the last presidential election, zero, zero, zero times did a party flip those states.” Then there’s the favorability problem, which might be the most damaging data point of all. In 2018, Democrats led Republicans on net favorability by 12 points. In 2006, they led by 18. Today? Republicans are actually ahead by five points on net favorability. Berman tried to soften it slightly, noting that both parties are deeply unpopular with voters right now. Enten wasn’t having it.
“Democrats are even more unpopular than Republicans,” he pointed out. That’s the core of the problem. Democrats are running behind every relevant benchmark from their two big wave election cycles in an environment that should theoretically be handing them a massive structural advantage. A six-point generic ballot lead sounds decent until you realize it’s probably not enough to take the Senate, too. And that puts a huge dent in their plans for the second half of Trump’s term.

Very clear”

“.. without CBP, there can be no customs clearance. Without customs clearance, you can’t accept international arrivals.”

• Mullin Drops a Bombshell on Sanctuary Cities (Matt Margolis)

Freshly confirmed DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin has wasted no time making his presence felt. Just days into the job, he sat down with Fox News host Bret Baier Monday night and floated an idea so simple and so devastating that it’s a wonder nobody tried it sooner: Pull Customs and Border Protection officers out of international airports in sanctuary cities. Remember, without CBP, there can be no customs clearance. Without customs clearance, you can’t accept international arrivals.

The math isn’t complicated. If Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Boston, Seattle, Denver, Philadelphia, Newark, and New Orleans want to play sanctuary politics, they can explain to thousands of stranded international travelers why their city’s ideological grandstanding just shut down their airport. I love it. I knew Mullin was onto something huge when I watched the interview.”If they are a sanctuary city, should they really be processing customs into their city?” he asked. “Seriously, if they are a sanctuary city and they are receiving international flights, and we’re asking them to partner with us at the airport, but once they walk out of the airport, they’re not going to enforce immigration policy? Maybe we need to have a really hard look at that because we need to focus on cities that want to work with us.”
It’s hard to argue with the logic. These cities actively obstruct federal immigration enforcement, refuse cooperation with ICE, and then expect no consequences?Let’s face it: The time for playing nice has long expired. The DHS shutdown is pushing toward two months, and Democrats show zero interest in negotiating in good faith. They’re demanding absurd reforms for ICE that would effectively kneecap immigration enforcement. And that just isn’t going to happen. Mullin clearly didn’t take the job to play nice with those who’ve declared war on federal immigration law. Democrats were practically giddy when Kristi Noem got fired. They may want to pump the brakes on that celebration because Mullin looks like he’s ready to make her tenure look tame by comparison.
Mullin’s sanctuary city proposal makes perfect sense, and should get Democrats in these cities to reconsider just how far they really want to fight the federal government. Cities that use their local governments as shields against federal immigration law have long operated without real consequences, and Mullin just put consequences on the table. Whether the proposal moves forward depends on how serious the administration is about turning up the pressure. I think they are very serious. But even floating it sends a message: the days of sanctuary cities not suffering consequences for violating federal law are over. Let’s not forget, it was Democrats who created this standoff. They’re the ones who are putting national security at risk over a policy dispute. This is a situation of their own making, and Mullin just handed them the bill.

He’s someone I would listen to.

• Marc Andreessen Calls AI Job-Loss Fears ‘Fake’, Expects Employment Gains (ZH)

It is not the first time that the venture capital guru has questioned some of the fundamentally dystopian scenarios being proposition in an AI world. In February, we noted that amid an armada of dystopian futurists, projecting linear thoughts into a future of ‘AI uber alles’, Marc Andreessen stands as a beacon of potential utopian light, seeing a future that looks very different and very positive for young and old alike. In a brief few minutes, the co-founder of Netscape and VC firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) believes instead that we are living through a unique (and most incredible) time in history with the rise of AI coming right as human civilization needs it… “we’re going to have AI and robots precisely when we actually need them [with populations shrinking] to keep the economy from actually shrinking.”

"This is the biggest technological revolution of my life. This is clearly bigger than the internet. The comps on this are things like the microprocessor and the steam engine and electricity."—@pmarca pic.twitter.com/WMv6UqUwIe
— Brian Roemmele (@BrianRoemmele) April 6, 2026

Simply put, Andreessen says that fears of AI-driven mass job loss are overly simplistic. After decades of unusually slow technological change and low job churn, AI could restore historical productivity levels (exemplified by the period from 1870-1930), sparking opportunity, innovation, and net job growth rather than displacement. Declining populations and reduced immigration will make human labor increasingly valuable. AI’s timing is “miraculous”, Andreessen exclaims, preventing economic shrinkage from depopulation. In even radical scenarios, explosive productivity leads to output gluts, collapsing prices, and massive real-wealth gains – equivalent to “giant raises” for everyone – while making safety-nets more affordable.
Whether incremental or transformative, Andreessen sees the outcome as fundamentally positive economic news. Of course, he does have a lot of skin in this game… Building on that, CoinTelegraph’s Christina Comben reports that Andreessen said artificial intelligence will spark a “massive jobs boom,” dismissing fears of widespread job losses as “all fake” in a Sunday post on X. His optimism contrasts with a March US jobs report showing unemployment holding steady at 4.3%, while the number of people unemployed for 27 weeks or more rose by 322,000 over the past year.
Andreesen shared a Business Insider report showing a sharp rise in tech job openings in 2026, with more than 67,000 software engineering roles, a twofold increase from 2023, and argued that employers had recovered from post-pandemic hiring corrections and the interest rate spike. “The ‘AI job loss’ narratives are all fake,” he wrote. “AI = massive ramp in productivity = massive ramp in demand = massive jobs boom. Watch.” Andreessen is one of Silicon Valley’s most influential investors, a co-founder of Netscape and venture firm Andreessen Horowitz. He is also a major backer of US crypto and AI companies.

https://twitter.com/JoshHall2024/status/2041502407750758533?s=20 https://twitter.com/ed_fin/status/2041250524285084128?s=20

In 1974, only 52 years ago, the Muslim barbarian Turks invaded Cyprus and committed crimes against Greeks that the human mind cannot comprehend and the whole world never heard about them. Mass murders of civilians were carried out systematically by the Turkish army. Not only… https://t.co/dpV1G0cBwa pic.twitter.com/aHDsSzSdSx
— Homer Pavlos (@HomerPavlos) April 7, 2026

https://twitter.com/maximumpain333/status/2041335149309431863?s=20

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Debt Rattle April 2 2026

Apr 022026

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is outright TYRANNY from the EU

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

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

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

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

This wasn’t a mistake.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

80 years ago.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“No One Knows What Will Happen Now”:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The UK today.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He didn't.

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

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

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

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

The corporate world built a religion around one lie.

That leadership is separable from understanding.

That you can run a machine you cannot read.

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

Not strategy meetings. Not press tours. Not optics.

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

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Debt Rattle July 12 2025

Jul 122025

July 12, 2025 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:12 am Finance Tagged with: Bongino, BRICS, ceasefire, Epstein, Fentanyl, inertia, Jamie Dimon, Kash Patel, Pam Bondi, Von der Leyen, wokeism 71 Responses »

Salvador Dali Neo-Cubist Academy (Composition with Three Figures) 1926

• Bongino and Patel May Resign If Pam Bondi Stays As Attorney General (Margolis)

• Tensions Explode Between Bongino And Bondi Amid DOJ Epstein Memo Fallout (ZH)

• Is This What Happened to the Epstein Client List? (Margolis)

• Flux Rules (James Howard Kunstler)

• Trump Attempts to Slow the Inertia of War (CTH)

• Trump’s Renewal of America Has Gone Dramatically Wrong (Paul Craig Roberts)

• Sen. Kennedy Skewers Comey and Brennan (Margolis)

• Trump Threatens Canada With 35% Tariff If It Does Not Help With Fentanyl (JTN)

• Sen. Ron Johnson Prepares Subpoenas For DOJ, FBI in Butler Shooting Probe (JTN)

• Europe Is Losing – Jamie Dimon (RT)

• JPM CEO Jamie Dimon: Democrats “Idiots” Obsessed With Failed Wokeism (ZH)

• EU ‘Has No Money Except For War’ – Hungarian Official (RT)

• Western European Leaders Dragging Continent Toward War With Russia – Lavrov (RT)

• Relations With US Will Never Be The Same – von der Leyen (RT)

• Kiev Needs Ceasefire By The End of 2025 – Ukrainian Spy Chief (RT)

• Zelensky Claimed He ‘Never Heard Of’ Ukrainian Nazi Crimes – Duda (RT)

• The West Mocked BRICS For Years But Now It’s Paying Attention (Lukyanov)

• France Opens Criminal Case Against Musk’s X (RT)

Everybody who voted against the One Big Beautiful Bill voted to raise taxes on the American people by $4.3 trillion.

That’s just a fact. pic.twitter.com/EgdPpYN9Il

— John Kennedy (@SenJohnKennedy) July 11, 2025

When you tax something, you get less of it.

If you don’t want businesses to expand, tax the hell out of them.

If you don’t want people to work, take their money.

That’s why it’s so important that we passed the One Big Beautiful Bill and blocked a $4.3 trillion tax hike. pic.twitter.com/0JLwFrG5VU

— John Kennedy (@SenJohnKennedy) July 10, 2025

Jeffrey Epstein victim attorney Sigrid McCawley drops a bombshell accusing Pam Bondi’s DOJ of withholding a treasure trove of evidence including names of co-conspirators, financial records, and multiple computers.

She says the department has every piece of information on who… pic.twitter.com/INSYaCaRXJ

— Shadow of Ezra (@ShadowofEzra) July 10, 2025

#Brazil is one of the worst countries in the world in terms of trade barriers.

Lula should lift the country's trade barriers instead of complaining.

The worst ranked in the Trade Barriers Index 2023: India (#88 of 88 countries)
Russia (#87)
Indonesia (#86)
Argentina with… pic.twitter.com/7a0wAtjHTJ

— Daniel Lacalle (@dlacalle_IA) July 11, 2025

Benz
https://twitter.com/jayplemons/status/1943353450101878963

Scott

If you trust Trump, you have to also trust him to lie to you when it's in your best interest.@ScottAdamsSays “If you know the CIA exists and haven’t demanded its end, then you've accepted that your government can lie to you.”

Is Trump hiding the truth for our good or even… pic.twitter.com/VztQEGdBss

— jay plemons (@jayplemons) July 10, 2025

Reagan
https://twitter.com/mcucolo57/status/1943379084051927438

“This isn’t just about how Epstein died; it’s about whether the deep state inside the Department of Justice can finally be exposed and held to account.”

• Bongino and Patel May Resign If Pam Bondi Stays As Attorney General (Margolis)

FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino is on the verge of walking away from the bureau over what insiders are calling a full-blown crisis of confidence. According to a source close to Bongino who spoke with The Daily Wire, he’s issued an ultimatum: either Attorney General Pam Bondi goes or he does. The standoff stems from Bongino’s growing frustration with Bondi’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files, which he sees as a betrayal of the public’s right to the truth. The source says Bongino is “furious” and feels that he can’t in good conscience continue working alongside Bondi. After taking the job in February, he had hoped to help restore trust in the FBI, but Bondi’s alleged stonewalling has made that mission impossible. “He’s done if she stays,” the source said bluntly. “He’s not backing down.”

As PJ Media previously reported, Bongino’s frustration with Bondi has reached a breaking point over her handling of the Epstein investigation. Once promising a bombshell about Epstein’s so-called “client list,” Bondi has since backpedaled, claiming she was misunderstood and that the “file” on her desk was just routine paperwork. The DOJ, under her leadership, now insists there’s no evidence of a client list, no sign of blackmail, and no indication Epstein was murdered. For those demanding answers, this reversal isn’t just disappointing; it’s infuriating. But the story has gotten even bigger. According to independent journalist Nick Sortor, FBI Director Kash Patel is also considering resigning if Bondi stays on and Bongino leaves.

Axios previously reported that both Bongino and FBI Director Kash Patel are “furious” with Bondi over the blowback her handling of the Epstein files has caused them. Bongino reportedly did not come into work on Friday. This isn’t some petty bureaucratic spat; it’s a crisis of trust. Bongino’s absence from the FBI after a heated exchange with Bondi signals how serious things have become. His once-busy social media has gone silent. One source close to him summed it up: “He ain’t coming back.” Officially, the administration claims he’s still on the job, but the writing is on the wall.

The DOJ’s memo concluding there was no client list was a slap in the face to anyone who’s paid attention. No client list? No blackmail? No reason to investigate further? That’s not a conclusion; it’s a cover-up. Epstein’s entire operation was built on compromising the elite. To suggest that he acted alone defies logic and insults the intelligence of the American people. What this country needs right now isn’t more spin or bureaucratic buck-passing — we need the truth. Real answers. Real accountability. Not some carefully worded memo designed to dodge the most damning questions. Bongino and Patel understand exactly what’s at stake. This isn’t just about how Epstein died; it’s about whether the deep state inside the Department of Justice can finally be exposed and held to account.

It looks very bad on Trump if he loses Patel and Bongino, just like it looked good when he brought them in. Bondi has a much more chequered past. But he won’t want to let her go either.

• Tensions Explode Between Bongino And Bondi Amid DOJ Epstein Memo Fallout (ZH)

Speculation is mounting that FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino is furious over the Department of Justice’s explosive memo concerning Jeffrey Epstein, with anonymous sources claiming he has issued a stark ultimatum to the White House: dismiss Attorney General Pam Bondi or he will resign from his position. Axios, citing four sources familiar with the matter, reported Friday morning that FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino was absent from work following a heated confrontation with Attorney General Pam Bondi over the handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files. The Washington insider outlet noted that Bongino’s absence sparked speculation about whether he had resigned, though a White House source quickly clarified that he remains in his role at the FBI.

This week, federal law enforcement released a memo asserting that an “exhaustive review” of evidence from Jeffrey Epstein’s death at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City conclusively ruled out murder. “Following a comprehensive investigation, FBI investigators determined that Jeffrey Epstein died by suicide in his cell on August 10, 2019,” the memo stated. The agencies also firmly denied the existence of a “client list” linked to Epstein, directly contradicting earlier statements by Attorney General Pam Bondi. Bondi had previously claimed on Fox News that such a list was “sitting on my desk” for review, fueling speculation about Epstein’s alleged blackmail of global elites.

By Friday afternoon, reports indicated that tensions between FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino and Bondi were escalating, with the FBI official reportedly contemplating resignation if Bondi remains in her role. “Source close to Dan Bongino tells me it’s either him or Pam Bondi, and that he won’t stay at FBI if she stays at DOJ,” The Daily Wire’s White House correspondent Mary Margaret Olohan posted on X. Independent journalist Julie Kelly corroborated Olohan’s reporting, writing on X: “Sources confirm to me the blow up between Dan Bongino and Pam Bondi is very real. This has been brewing for four months and came to a head at the White House on Wednesday.”

https://twitter.com/julie_kelly2/status/1943724569333788760?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1943724569333788760%7Ctwgr%5E282c62e15638351eb281e156bb768b0bd8ae9c8e%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fpolitical%2Ftensions-explode-between-bongino-and-bondi-amid-doj-epstein-memo-fallout-reports

https://twitter.com/julie_kelly2/status/1943726798488936588?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1943726798488936588%7Ctwgr%5E282c62e15638351eb281e156bb768b0bd8ae9c8e%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fpolitical%2Ftensions-explode-between-bongino-and-bondi-amid-doj-epstein-memo-fallout-reports

“He has not been in the office since. Most of the frustration at [the] FBI relates to her handling of Epstein disclosures and disputes between [the] FBI and Bondi about how to proceed,” Kelly continued. “Bongino appears ready to resign imminently if Bondi remains in office,” she added.Fox News sought comment from the White House on whether President Donald Trump was satisfied with Bondi, to which Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt responded that the president is “proud” of his attorney general. “The President is proud of the attorney general’s efforts to execute his Make America Safe Again agenda, restore the integrity of the DOJ, and bring justice to the victims of crime,” Leavitt said.

“The continued fixation on sowing division in President Trump’s cabinet is baseless and unfounded in reality.” On Tuesday, Trump dismissed questions about Epstein during a press exchange. “Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein? This guy’s been talked about for years,” Trump said, while taking questions during a Cabinet meeting. “You’re asking – we have Texas, we have this, we have all of the things, and are people still talking about this guy? This creep? That is unbelievable. I mean, I can’t believe you’re asking a question on Epstein at a time like this, where we’re having some of the greatest success and also tragedy with what happened in Texas. It just seems like a desecration.”

“..he believes that the Biden administration intentionally destroyed the Epstein client files to protect powerful individuals.”

• Is This What Happened to the Epstein Client List? (Margolis)

Every time the topic of Jeffrey Epstein’s infamous client list surfaces, the American public is treated to a familiar dance: officials dodge, the media obfuscate, and the powerful breathe a sigh of relief. After years of waiting for the Epstein client list to see the light of day, the Trump administration says the list doesn’t exist. On Thursday, Alan Dershowitz came out and said that’s not true and that he saw it when he had to defend himself from false accusations of being an Epstein client. If the list does exist, what happened to it? Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) has a theory. In a recent interview with NewsNation, Burchett told host Leland Vittert that he believes that the Biden administration intentionally destroyed the Epstein client files to protect powerful individuals.

“I think the files existed at one time,” Burchett said. “I think they were destroyed in the previous administration… and if they’d ever had anything on Trump, it would have been out day one under the Biden administration.” When Vittert agreed, Burchett continued, suggesting that the real reason the files remain hidden is because of who they might implicate. “I think there’s some very prominent people. There’s Hollywood people, but I think there’s world leaders too. And would it have caused economic disruption around the globe? Maybe. But I don’t really care.” Vittert asked if the hesitation to release names might be due to fear of unjustly tarnishing people who may have interacted with Epstein but did nothing wrong. Burchett rejected the idea and instead pointed to Ghislaine Maxwell’s conviction:

“What’s Ms. Maxwell doing in jail? What did she do? Where is that… you know, who did she provide whatever she did? Why is she in jail? That’s gotta be a question that should be asked at some point.” He was blunt about the finality of the situation: “Dead men tell no tales. He’s dead.” Vittert pressed him to clarify: Was he saying that the Trump administration destroyed the files? “No, I think they destroyed everything,” Burchett replied, referring to the Biden administration. When Vittert asked former special prosecutor Pam Bondi wouldn’t say that directly, Burchett speculated, “Because she doesn’t have any proof of it. I’m just telling you what I think.” He went on to criticize Bondi’s handling of the situation. “I think she’s got over her skis pretty much, saying all this stuff — ‘The files are on my desk. I’m gonna release it.’ — and then she releases stuff that I knew.”

Burchett said he based his belief on his own instincts and experience in Washington. “I’ve been around this town enough. I just don’t think they exist. I think they did at one time.” He tied it back to the Hunter Biden laptop scandal: “You got an administration that lied and said Hunter Biden’s laptop didn’t exist… You had 30 of the top so-called intelligence people in the country say that, and they didn’t get chastised by anybody but y’all and a couple of others.” Burchett doesn’t trust the official story and doesn’t believe that the truth about Epstein will ever come out.

“We’re trapped in a structure. We named the Structure ‘Jeffrey Epstein’.” — Eric Weinstein

• Flux Rules (James Howard Kunstler)

No one in America — not even the most deranged, spike-faced, pink-haired transtifas — believes the latest Epstein story as played out by Mr. Trump and AG Bondi in this week’s cabinet parlay: nuthin to see, just a bunch of pointless child porn, fuggeddabowdit. . . But stay! Much is moving, flowing unseen. The world is yugely in flux, large events in human affairs are in motion, many things are breaking, rotating, dissolving and re-forming, while others wind into giant hairballs. . . so many players acting as though they live in one great hall of mirrors, and treachery abides at every turn. Nobody seems to be actually managing any of it, though there is plenty of pretense, jockeying, staging. The public’s anger and anxiety rise in tandem.

One thing about Epstein is likely certain: it was an intel operation. And one thing is probable: it was a joint operation between the CIA, Israel’s Mossad, and the UK’s MI6. The object: to get as many political poohbahs on-the-hook for disgraceful behavior of the lowest kind and blackmail-able. Under the thumb. Theories and suppositions abound. If Mr. Trump was in on the Epstein sex shenanigans, as Elon blurted this week, why did the Democratic Party not go after him for it in three election campaigns (and all the many months in between)? Well, not to put too fine a point on it, Elon appears to be losing his shit. His CEO at “X” bailed on him this week. His A-I app, Grok, started spouting Hitler gags, and his empire of world-beating genius is tottering on a broken business model.

You can write all that Elon stuff off as a sideshow for now — wildly grotesque as it may be. But what is actually going on in the three rings of this circus? Flux in the Middle East is one. Whatever else the “Twelve Day War” was about, it’s the end of Israel threatening to bomb Iran’s nuke program out of existence. We’ve done that favor for them, or pretended to, as some are saying, kabukied it out. So, Israel, shut up about that for now . . . is the policy. One story is that the actual Epstein material, whatever still exists, that is, which might reside in multiple locations, is so destructive to the architecture of global leadership that it must be squelched for the sake of majorly realigning forces, tensions, and polities across the Middle East, namely, the Abraham Accords. Getting all that lined up is more important to Mr. Trump for the moment than defenestrating the various perverts-in-office around Western Civ. It just is. . . so. . . gotta lump it.

Let’s surmise that the president has learned a lot about the intel hall of mirrors over the past decade, but especially lately, in his second term, from DNI Tulsi Gabbard, who has access to every document in the bottomless pit of the intel archives. The President knows he is not exactly in control of his intel “community.” And he aims to do something about it. You could make the case that the so-called “community” is just a giant criminal syndicate engaged in the most nefarious activities ongoing in this world of sin: human trafficking, drugs, money-laundering, weapons, every off-the-book turpitude you could imagine. Nor is John Ratcliffe exactly in control of his own agency, though he can utilize some of its services. . . but more about that later.

Forget about Bondi’s gaffe. She is just following orders, as are Messrs. Patel and Bongino, standing down, good soldiers, and only on the Epstein business. You can’t even rule out the possibility that Jeffrey Epstein is not dead. Was it suicide? Or an escape? Shall we say, a rendition to parts unknown? I would not assert that, just proffer it as a possibility, since the events of that night in the Manhattan federal lockup were so astoundingly sketchy — the sleepy guards, the broken CC cameras, the missing minute in the one camera recording that worked, the suicide-proofed jail cell. . . . But, then, the autopsy reports. . . performed upon. . . whom, exactly. . . ?

There is parallel matter of Ukraine to consider. Mr. Trump is yugely frustrated by his inability to put a quick end to it, to make that golden deal with Russia. The Ukraine War is the globalists desperate final project, its last stand. By saying which, let’s assume that the Globalists are “a thing,” a combo of the UK’s remaining potent assets (MI6 and the City of London financial octopus), the megalomaniacal EU bureaucratic leadership (von der Leyen & Co.), and the WEF-Davos gang. Ukraine was their instrument to break up Russia. The project has failed. Yet the war goes on. Mr. Trump says he was not even informed about Ukraine’s recent long-range drone attack deep into Russia, to take out its strategic bombers. Wasn’t informed? WTF???

Was it because the CIA has gone rogue over in Ukraine? Running the war their way — and not even Mr. Ratcliffe has a handle on all that? Consequently, Mr. Trump is yugely embarrassed in his many skull sessions with Mr. Putin. And thus, Mr. Putin seeks to bring about an end to this enormous pain-in-the-ass situation by simply winning the war. Which he is doing. His terms have been simple, plain, and straightforward from the get-go: a disarmed, neutralized Ukraine that must surrender the Donbas provinces, end-of-story, and don’t even mention Crimea because there’s nuthin to talk about there. And, of course, regime change in Kiev. . . eighty-six on Nazis, thank you.

Excellent from Sundance.

“Now Sending Weapons to NATO Instead of Ukraine..”

• Trump Attempts to Slow the Inertia of War (CTH)

Everyone can see the play by President Trump. Essentially, the “coalition of the willing” (U.K, Germany, France) are not willing to go to war against Russia without the United States in front of them. Giving the coalition the weapons puts the consequences of their use on the heads of NATO allies. Despite the majority of Washington DC, specifically the Senate thirsting, pleading and demanding an expanded NATO war, President Trump does not want to go to war against Russia. However, simultaneously Trump has to try and steer the war machine controlled by DC, the Senate, USIC and NATO. The INERTIA for expanded war is evident. President Trump is now trying to split the baby regarding Russia, by sending patriot missiles and weapons to NATO as opposed to sending them directly to Ukraine.

In February Marco Rubio earnestly and honestly said, “The Ukraine conflict is a proxy war for the United States against Russia.” President Trump has concurred with that statement and through his prior comments he attempted to extricate the U.S. from this dynamic. The shipment of missiles to NATO instead of Ukraine is simply a way of trying to stop direct support, yet Trump is forced by the inertia toward war to maintain a footing of expanded conflict with Russia. To be very clear, Russian President Vladimir Putin is clear-eyed on this situation with NATO, and he has been all along. Putin has said repeatedly that NATO was/is in direct conflict against Russia despite Ukraine not being a NATO member. This conflict with NATO well precedes Putin’s decision to conduct a ‘special military operation’ within Ukraine.

Now, we see through Trump’s approach the dropping of pretenses. Putin was correct. With NATO directly providing the war weapons to Ukraine there is no pretense, no doubt. NATO countries are funding an offensive war against Russia using a non NATO proxy state, Ukraine. As I have said, this western triggering has always been the inertia for war, and that war is now likely to expand as a result of NATO and even, unfortunately, President Trump’s approach. The only thing that works in his/our favor is the cowardice of the U.K, France and Germany to fight Russia without the USA. President Trump may try and distance himself and by extension the USA from this consequence of expanded conflict. But the consequence exists regardless of the obfuscation. We are parsing terms.

The US is going to fund expansion of the conflict directly with arms to Ukraine or indirectly by sending arms to NATO to give to Ukraine. The destination and intent of the weapons is the same regardless of the procedural process. I came to Russia this time to understand the nature of how western inertia to war can exist, despite the people of the west demanding the opposite. I wanted to see for myself exactly what Russia was preparing for, and exactly how the people of Russia were reacting to that preparation. Russia is well prepared, both physically and psychologically to go to war against any adversary. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s approval rating is between 70 to 80%, and despite what you might have heard in western propaganda media, the economy inside Russia is doing very well.

In addition to the two-year service requirement (18-20 years old), all men aged 25 to 35 have been refresher trained in preparation. The psyche of the Russian military is ready to get rid of the Nazis. Also, the sentiment of Europeans dislike of Ukrainian Nazi’s is easy to spot, albeit not well known outside the region. Despite decades of Brussels and USA provocation and political manipulation (perhaps because of it), there’s not a lot of pro-NATO support for the west here. I am not a big fan of Russia; nor do I agree with the way the government constructs societal life within it. There are a lot of negatives to daily life in Russia. However, I do have a complete understanding of the govt positions and reasons for them.

Western media have pretended that Ukraine was not a U.S/NATO proxy war against Russia. Now, those pretenses are dropped. Conversely, Vladimir Putin never pretended. Putin always accepted that Ukraine was, and long has been, a NATO proxy state for conflict against Russia; which is exactly the reason he ‘invaded‘ Ukraine in the first place. President Trump may be trying to split the baby amid the retention of pretense, but it’s a pretense Russian President Vladimir Putin never held, he could not afford to. Thus, the inertia of war and people asking “how did this happen?” If I am accurate in his exit strategy, President Trump hopes to extricate himself from the Russia-Ukraine problem by putting the conflict directly into the lap of NATO, more specifically into the lap of British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz; the so called “coalition of the willing.”

President Trump is giving the weapons to NATO, again Starmer, Macron and Merz, for transfer to their buddy in Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. President Trump then stands back and draws distance from the consequence of what they do with them. However, this is also a massive provocation because NATO is now essentially operating on behalf of a non-NATO state, Ukraine, against another non-NATO power, Russia. President Trump cannot remove the fact that the USA is the lead in all things NATO. As soon as France, Germany and the U.K start bombing Russia albeit from the geography of Ukraine, the conflict will expand.

NATO -thanks to President Trump- would then be baiting Vladimir Putin to attack France, Germany or the UK in retaliation, which would trigger Article 5; subsequently the USA is drawn into the conflict by agreement, and voilà a full expanded war between NATO and Russia commences. But why? If neither Russia or Ukraine are NATO members, why is NATO involved at all? Good question. Perhaps President Trump will answer that question on Monday. President Trump told NBC News, “I think I’ll have a major statement to make on Russia on Monday.” Live your very best life, but prepare for war. Like a fat kid playing dodgeball, I’m out of here tomorrow (hopefully), and will hold an AMA on the topic of all things Russia next week.

Love to all,
~ Sundance

“Has it ever occurred to Trump and his government that they are seen as nothing but the two-bit punk puppets of Israel led around by Netanyahu with an Israeli ring in their nose?”

• Trump’s Renewal of America Has Gone Dramatically Wrong (Paul Craig Roberts)

Donald Trump attracted massive political support–the most we have seen any candidate attract in many years–because he said his aim was to restore America on its traditional values, the values that had made the United States a successful country. Instead of foreign wars, Trump promised restoration at home. But everywhere we look Trump is enmeshed in foreign, not domestic, affairs. Netanyahu is leading Trump into war with Iran. Trump sends Zelensky, not himself, to meet with Putin despite the fact that Zelensky cannot deliver the mutual security agreement that Putin wants from the West. And now Trump is interfering in Brazilian domestic politics threatening a 50 percent tariff on imports from Brazil unless the current government drops charges against former president Bolsonaro.

I have no knowledge whether the charges against Bolsonaro are legitimate, any more than I know if the former charges against the current President Lula da Silva that resulted in his imprisonment were legitimate. The question is: what business is it of Trump’s? Does it ever occur to Trump and his government that it is incongruous to protect Bolsonaro but not the Palestinians, whose oppressor Trump has hosted in the White House three times in six months and plied with money, weapons, and diplomatic cover for a genocide? One would think that it is Putin, Xi, and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that Trump would have at the white house, and Netanyahu the one under US sanctions and threats for Israel’s genocide of Palestine and war-mongering in the Middle East.

Has it ever occurred to Trump and his government that they are seen as nothing but the two-bit punk puppets of Israel led around by Netanyahu with an Israeli ring in their nose? How are we supposed to be proud Americans when we are ruled by Zionist Israel? Will ever again Americans have a president who represents America?

“Well, I know Mr. Comey, and I know Mr. Brennan. Neither one of them, in my opinion, should attempt more than six of the Ten Commandments.”

• Sen. Kennedy Skewers Comey and Brennan (Margolis)

In a display of his trademark wit and candor, Sen. John Kennedy delivered a scathing rebuke of former FBI Director James Comey and former CIA Director John Brennan, labeling both men as fundamentally unethical and unfit for public trust. Appearing on Fox News with Harris Faulkner, Kennedy wasted no time in making his feelings known, blending his signature biting humor with pointed criticism in a way only he can. Kennedy began by drawing on personal knowledge of both men. “Well, I know Mr. Comey, and I know Mr. Brennan. Neither one of them, in my opinion, should attempt more than six of the Ten Commandments. They’re, they’re, they’re not very nice people. They’re not ethical people.” He added, “I know people who have worked with them closely, and if you talk to people who’ve worked with them closely, those people will tell you that, um, they’re about as, as popular as male pattern baldness.”

The senator’s critique wasn’t just about personality. He questioned their competence, remarking, “What’s scary about both of them is that they think that they’re competent. They’re not.” Kennedy’s signature Southern charm came through as he continued, “I would hire the guy who salts the fries at McDonald’s before I would hire either one of them, but they think they’re competent. They think they’re smarter and more virtuous than the rest of us, and they have… they acted on their political beliefs.”Kennedy then turned his attention to Brennan’s role in the Hunter Biden laptop controversy, saying, “Brennan, for example, Mr. Brennan was one of the ones who told the American people that the Hunter Biden laptop wasn’t real… that it was Russian disinformation. They’re, they’re just not honest people and if they broke the law, they should be held accountable.”

He didn’t let up on their arrogance. “They’re also just… they’re like so many in Washington, Harris. They’re so arrogant. Um, Lyndon Johnson used to have an expression. He’d say, ‘That guy’s so arrogant. He could, he could strut sitting down.’ Well, that’s the way Mr. Comey and Mr. Brennan are.” For Kennedy, the damage Comey and Brennan did went beyond personal failings: “Those two have done more to destroy the American people’s confidence in the FBI and national intelligence than any two people I can think of.”

Kennedy then really drove his point home: “No, they really haven’t. And, and I wouldn’t say that about all of the people in President Biden’s administration, but, but these two are—they’re just especially bad, and they were so political. They’re just political hacks who tried to pretend that they had the American people’s best interests at heart, and they, and they, and they, uh, and they don’t.” He closed with a final jab, “And I love McDonald’s french fries by the way, and the people who salt ’em.”

Salt the fries

I’d hire the guy who salts the fries at McDonald’s before I’d hire either James Comey or John Brennan.

They’re not ethical people—and if they broke the law, they should be held accountable. pic.twitter.com/MV83bq3EJQ

— John Kennedy (@SenJohnKennedy) July 10, 2025

Tariffs as a general policy tool? Is that what they’re for? Like threatening Lula over Bolsonaro?

• Trump Threatens Canada With 35% Tariff If It Does Not Help With Fentanyl (JTN)

President Donald Trump on Thursday sent Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney a letter notifying him that he would impose a 35% tariff on Canadian goods next month if the country doesn’t step up in battling fentanyl. Trump has been sending tariff rate cards out to countries this week that have not reached a trade deal with the United States. The letters have largely been going out to seven countries at a time. The president argued that Canada has not done enough to help with the illegal flow of fentanyl that has been smuggled into the U.S. through the northern border. The U.S. is facing an opioid epidemic, and fentanyl is considered one of the most dangerous opioids in the country.

“If Canada works with me to stop the flow of Fentanyl, we will, perhaps, consider an adjustment to this letter,” Trump wrote to Carney. “These Tariffs may be modified, upward or downward, depending on our relationship with your Country.” The U.S. previously imposed a 25% tariff on Canada, but delayed the tariffs while trying to reach a trade agreement. However, the new tariffs will go into effect on Aug. 1. It is not clear if products covered under the 2020 trade agreement between the U.S., Canada and Mexico will be excluded from the tariffs or not.

“..everybody else seems to have been moving on here and not particularly interested in an investigation. I am..”

• Sen. Ron Johnson Prepares Subpoenas For DOJ, FBI in Butler Shooting Probe (JTN)

Republican Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson approved a subpoena to be sent to the Justice Department (DOJ) and FBI regarding more information on the first assassination attempt against President Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania last year. The subpoenas will be sent near the anniversary of the shooting, which occurred on July 13. Johnson was part of the Senate’s Homeland Security investigation into the assassination attempt last year, but now leads a separate investigation as chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Johnson told Fox News on Thursday that he approved a subpoena on Wednesday to get more information from the two agencies, but has described the investigative process overall as “maddening,” because of the red tape he’s experienced so far.

“I’d like our report to be bipartisan, but everybody else seems to have been moving on here and not particularly interested in an investigation. I am,” Johnson said. “Whether I have the other officers involved or not, I’m moving forward, which is why I approved a subpoena.” Johnson claimed his investigation is still getting “stonewalled” nearly a year after the incident, and that he needs more documentation and information to move his investigation forward. It is not clear when the subpoenas will go out. The accusation comes despite FBI Director Kash Patel’s promise to provide full transparency in the bureau’s investigation into the assassination attempt.

Republicans have largely criticized the federal government for not holding people accountable for the errors that led to the failed attempt. A 180-page House report last year found “preexisting issues in leadership and training created an environment” in which security failures could occur. The Secret Service also recently revealed that six agents were suspended without pay or benefits after the shooting, and were placed in restricted duties or given roles with less operational responsibility when they returned. No Secret Service agents were fired over the assassination attempt but former Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned after facing heavy backlash.

“Europe has gone from 90% [of] US GDP to 65% over 10 or 15 years.”

“..GDP per person had dropped from around 70% of America’s to 50%..”

• Europe Is Losing – Jamie Dimon (RT)

Western Europe is “losing” the economic competition with its main rivals, China and the US, and is struggling with a shortage of globally competitive companies, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon has said. Since 2022, when the EU imposed sweeping sanctions on Russian energy over the Ukraine conflict, growth across the bloc has stagnated. Germany, once its economic powerhouse, is now experiencing its third year of economic downturn. Moscow has argued that EU restrictions are self-defeating, causing surging energy prices and weakening the bloc’s economy. Dimon, CEO of one of the world’s largest banks, cautioned EU leaders at an event in Dublin hosted by the Irish Foreign Ministry on Thursday that Europe has lost its competitive edge compared to the US and is facing a growing crisis in economic competitiveness.

“You’re losing,” he said. “Europe has gone from 90% [of] US GDP to 65% over 10 or 15 years.” “We’ve got this huge strong market and our companies are big and successful, have huge kinds of scale that are global. You have that, but less and less.” The JP Morgan boss has repeatedly expressed concerns about the state of Europe’s economy. Earlier this year, Dimon told Financial Times that Europe needed to “do more” to remain competitive, noting that GDP per person had dropped from around 70% of America’s to 50%, which he deemed “not sustainable.”

Dimon’s warning comes as European NATO members say they need to ramp up their military budgets to deter an alleged threat from Russia. NATO countries have recently pledged to raise defense spending to 5% of GDP over the next decade, more than double the longstanding target of 2%. Moscow denies posing any danger to these nations, accusing Western officials of exploiting fear to rationalize budget increases and cover a decline in living standards.

Jamie Dimon ‘taking the knee’ looks incredibly stupid.

“I have a lot of friends who are Democrats, and they’re idiots..”

• JPM CEO Jamie Dimon: Democrats “Idiots” Obsessed With Failed Wokeism (ZH)

The inconvenient truth for Democrats is that there is still no bottom in sight, as the party of leftist radicals doubles, triples, and quadruples down on diversity, equity, inclusion, all things woke, and most alarmingly, a rapid descent into embracing Marxist ideas. That’s why rational people have been jumping ship from the imploding party. Just look at the tech bros who voted for President Trump and how the right side of the political spectrum reformatted itself with a relatable message: ‘America First’… On Thursday, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon spoke at a foreign ministry event in Dublin, blasting the Democratic Party for going off the deep end with DEI, gender politics, and a series of failed policies that he said have harmed the country. “I have a lot of friends who are Democrats, and they’re idiots,” Dimon said at the event.

Holy. Shit.

Jamie Dimon on Democrats today:

“I have a lot of friends who are Democrats today, and they’re idiots. I always say they have big hearts and little brains. They do not understand how the real world works. Almost every single policy they rolled out has failed.” pic.twitter.com/AUG74vKaBG

— Geiger Capital (@Geiger_Capital) July 11, 2025

“I always say they have big hearts and little brains. They do not understand how the real world works. Almost every single policy rolled out failed.” Dimon continued, “They overdid DEI …. We all were devoted to reaching out to the Black community, Hispanic, the LGBT community, the disabled — we do all of that. But to the extent, they gotta stop it. And they gotta go back to being more practical. They’re very ideological.” He described himself as “barely a Democrat” since the party of woke has fallen into the abyss. His criticism of the Democratic Party also extended to politics in New York City — particularly Manhattan, where the bank is headquartered — which now faces the possibility of a Marxist becoming mayor later this year. “Barely a Democrat”? Please. Dimon was a full-blown kneeler not long ago…

Jamie Dimon kneeling on a taxpayer. pic.twitter.com/XZi5NS9acO

— Rudy Havenstein, Senior Markets Commentator. (@RudyHavenstein) June 5, 2020

“This guy [Zohran Mamdani] just got elected — he’s more of a Marxist than a socialist, and now you see these Democrats falling all over themselves saying, ‘Well, he’s pointing out some real problems, affordable housing and grocery prices.’ OK, maybe,” Dimon said. “There’s the same ideological mush that means nothing in the real world.” Dimon’s criticism of the Democratic Party is nothing new. In late May, the CEO blasted Democrats for the border invasion they facilitated over the Biden-Harris regime’s first term. “If you do not control the borders, you are going to destroy our country … Now that they are sending migrants into New York … all my super liberal friends realize what the problem is,” Dimon told CNBC last year. Dimon’s criticism signals that the party of leftist radicals is nowhere near a reset. In fact, it has gone further off course — doubling, even tripling down on failed policies that are driving more of its own supporters to jump ship and align with the America First movement.

Jason Curtis Anderson from One City Rising highlights just how far off course Zohran and the Democratic Party have gone (and spoiler alert: it’s bad): “Zohran’s worldview is shaped by his father, who has dedicated his life to promoting anti-Western values and decolonization—a field in which he is regarded as a thought leader. Marxism has become the philosophy of the “death to America” class, spanning from the permanent-protest and NGO movements to activist-teachers and into the Democratic Party through the Democratic Socialists of America—the political organization Mamdani calls home. Unfortunately, many Democrats remain slow to recognize that this philosophy breeds only misery and is incapable of improving society. In the 1960s, Frances Fox Piven outlined the revolutionary “Cloward-Piven strategy” to deliberately overload social service and welfare systems until they collapse, creating an opening for the far-left to demand a new system and “prove” that capitalism doesn’t work. It should come as no surprise that she is now an honorary chair of the DSA.”

The progressive vision for America — green new deal cronyism, open borders, DEI, and even outright Marxism , among other disasters— has objectively FAILED. Their agenda is unraveling, just look at Gavin Newsom defending illegal cannabis growers bringing unaccompanied minors to… https://t.co/ujskHhQmk6

— Seamus Bruner (@seamusbruner) July 11, 2025

From hating America to preaching Marxism and fueling chaos in city streets with dark money-funded NGOs, people are fed up with the radical left. And so is Dimon. It’ll be a long time before Dimon takes a knee again — of that, we’e certain.

“While Europe cannot climb out of its own economic, social and security crisis, Brussels would continue to finance the war – weapons instead of peace, new debt instead of a competitive Europe..”

• EU ‘Has No Money Except For War’ – Hungarian Official (RT)

The EU is placing Ukraine’s military needs above the priorities of the bloc’s member states, Hungarian government adviser Balazs Orban has said. He accused EU leaders of always finding money for “war” but not other causes. Leaders of EU nations are considering the creation of a new €100 billion ($117 billion) fund under the bloc’s upcoming seven-year budget to cover expenses for the Ukrainian government, Bloomberg reported this week, citing people familiar with the discussions. Budapest, however, has been a vocal critic of the bloc’s approach to the Russia-Ukraine conflict since its onset. “Europe has run out of money – except when it comes to war. There is always 100 billion euros for that,” Orban wrote on Wednesday on social media. He warned that such an allocation of funds would likely lead to further proposals to spend EU taxpayers’ money on Ukraine.

Orban pointed to Kiev’s estimate that it would require $1 trillion over 14 years for reconstruction and modernization, a figure shared by Prime Minister Denis Shmigal during a donors conference in Rome this week. “While Europe cannot climb out of its own economic, social and security crisis, Brussels would continue to finance the war – weapons instead of peace, new debt instead of a competitive Europe,” Orban said. Last week, Bloomberg reported that US investment firm BlackRock had abandoned efforts to attract private investors for a Ukraine reconstruction program. The fund was expected to be launched at the Rome conference, but potential participants reportedly expressed “a lack of interest amid increased uncertainty” over the country’s future.

Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky said at the event that “only friends are invited” to help rebuild the country. He reiterated his call to confiscate Russian state assets frozen by Western nations and transfer them to Kiev. Moscow has warned that such actions would constitute international theft. EU members have voiced concern that expropriating Russian assets could significantly erode global confidence in their financial systems. As an alternative, Ukraine’s backers have been imposing a “windfall tax” on profits from the immobilized Russian funds and channeling the money to Kiev – an approach Moscow has described as another form of criminality. Hungary has accused the EU leadership of inflicting major economic harm on member states through sanctions on Russia, and of wasting resources on a war effort that it argues cannot deliver a military victory over Moscow.

“..German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who said Germany must once again become Europe’s leading military power. “He didn’t even choke on the word ‘again,’” Lavrov noted..”

• Western European Leaders Dragging Continent Toward War With Russia – Lavrov (RT)

Western European leaders have forgotten the lessons of history and are once again steering the continent toward direct military confrontation with Russia, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has warned. During a press conference following ASEAN events on Friday, he pointed to recent actions and rhetoric coming from Berlin, Paris, and London as evidence that European leaders are taking an increasingly aggressive stance toward Moscow. Lavrov pointed to a public exchange in which French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot was asked why Paris continues to support the Nazi regime in Kiev. The Russian diplomat questioned the sincerity of Barrot’s “hysterical” response, in which he insisted France was defending “the territorial integrity of Ukraine.”

“They have forgotten the conclusions that all of humanity once drew from those lessons. And, essentially, they are once again trying to prepare Europe for war – not some hybrid war, but a real war against Russia,” Lavrov stated. Kiev’s push for territorial control serves only to “suppress the rights of the Russian and Russian-speaking population and to physically eliminate those who oppose” the post-coup regime, according to Russia’s top diplomat. Claims that territorial integrity is the sole motive amount to “self-incrimination,” he added. Moscow has sounded the alarm over the resurgence of Nazi ideology and suppression of Russian culture in Ukraine for years, listing ‘denazification’ as one of the key goals in the conflict.

Lavrov also addressed remarks by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who said Germany must once again become Europe’s leading military power. “He didn’t even choke on the word ‘again,’” Lavrov noted. If Merz now believes peaceful solutions are exhausted, he has effectively dedicated himself to the militarization of Germany at the expense of its own people, Lavrov argued, calling such a stance “complete nonsense.” Moscow has warned that Berlin’s stance could lead to a new armed conflict with Moscow decades after the end of World War II. The Kremlin maintains that Russia prefers a peaceful solution to the conflict but warned that conditions on the ground are rapidly evolving while Kiev balks at a third round of direct negotiations.

Moscow has condemned the EU’s growing militarization, which has stirred divisions within the bloc, while describing its weapons deliveries to Kiev as part of a NATO-led proxy war. Lavrov said Moscow will take Europe’s militarization “into account in all areas of our strategic planning.”

“The EU’s priority is to stabilize the situation with the US, von der Leyen said. “We are working tirelessly to find an initial understanding..”

• Relations With US Will Never Be The Same – von der Leyen (RT)

Relations with the US may never return to what they used to be, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has said, citing tensions with Washington over increased tariffs on European goods. US President Donald Trump introduced 20% tariffs on European imports in February. The EU responded with its own set of trade penalties. Trump later lowered duties to 10%, pending negotiations. That pause has now been extended until early August. ”We believe that tariffs are a loss for everyone. But we are not naive either: we know that the relationship with the US may never go back to what it used to be,” the EU chief stated at an economic-industrial forum in Rome on Thursday. The EU’s priority is to stabilize the situation with the US, von der Leyen said. “We are working tirelessly to find an initial understanding,” she added.

The EU chief called Washington “the most important trading and investment partner” of Brussels. In 2024, the US was the largest exporter of goods to the EU and the second-ranking destination for EU imports after China, according to Eurostat. Trump’s global tariff campaign has grown to include 211 countries. The American leader says his objective is to reduce the US trade deficit and stimulate domestic production. Since his first term, Trump has been pushing European NATO members to spend more on their own defense. While the bloc’s members agreed to a 2% threshold in February, the US president suggested that NATO countries consider spending as much as 5% of GDP, warning: “if they don’t pay, I’m not going to defend them.” NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte has said Trump was right to demand that European members step up military spending.

The bloc subsequently agreed to a 5% minimum in June. NATO leaders insisted that the hike in expenditure was aimed at deterring Russia amid the Ukraine conflict. Some officials suggested that Moscow could launch a full-scale attack on the US-led bloc within a few years. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, however, called the NATO spending increase “unreasonable and counterproductive,” which Trump responded to by saying he would “make them pay twice” through trade measures. Russian officials have repeatedly emphasized that Moscow has never had any plans to attack NATO. Russian President Vladimir Putin rejected the allegations as “nonsense” and “utter rubbish,” stating that Western politicians make such claims to deceive their constituents and justify increased spending on defense and aid to Kiev. “In Ukraine, we are just protecting ourselves,” Putin insisted.

Well, you know the conditions.

• Kiev Needs Ceasefire By The End of 2025 – Ukrainian Spy Chief (RT)

A ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine must be reached by the end of the year, the head of Ukraine’s military intelligence, Kirill Budanov, said in an interview with Bloomberg published on Friday. He made his remarks as Ukrainian troops have been steadily losing ground along different sections of the front line, and after the 2024 incursion into Russia’s Kursk Region ended in costly failure. The Ukrainian army has also been struggling to bring in new conscripts. According to Bloomberg, Budanov argued that “a ceasefire must be reached as soon as possible and well before the end of this year.” “Is it realistic to do so? Yes. Is it difficult? No,” he told Bloomberg. “It takes at least three sides – Ukraine, Russia, and the US. And we will get to this position.”

Moscow has rejected the proposal for an immediate and unconditional truce, insisting that Kiev and its Western backers must first agree to several demands, including the withdrawal of troops from Russian territory claimed by Ukraine, an end to Ukraine’s mobilization campaign, and a halt to foreign military aid. Russian President Vladimir Putin also accused Ukraine of wanting to use any pause in fighting to rearm and regroup its forces. Moscow has further warned that it will not accept the presence of NATO troops in Ukraine, even if they are deployed under the guise of peacekeepers. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said this week that the sides are working to arrange a third round of direct talks in Türkiye. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, however, said during a summit in Rome on Thursday that the countries must first complete the prisoner swaps agreed during negotiations in Istanbul on June 2.

“Militants from the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) slaughtered up to 100,000 Poles between 1943 and 1945..”

• Zelensky Claimed He ‘Never Heard Of’ Ukrainian Nazi Crimes – Duda (RT)

Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky claimed he had no idea about the atrocities committed by Ukrainian Nazi collaborators during World War II until confronted about the issue by Polish President Andrzej Duda, the latter has told the media outlet RMF24. According to the president, Zelensky’s claim underscores that Ukrainians are kept in the dark about their nation’s troubled past. “He said to me: ‘Andrzej, I’ve never heard of the murders, the killing of Poles in western Ukraine, in Volhynia. They didn’t teach us about it in school’,” Duda said, recounting one of his meetings with the Ukrainian leader. The president was referring to the infamous Volyn massacre, which has long been a flashpoint in bilateral relations between the two countries.

Militants from the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) slaughtered up to 100,000 Poles between 1943 and 1945 in the regions of Volhynia and Eastern Galicia, which were later incorporated into Ukraine. Both the UPA and the OUN collaborated with Nazi Germany during WWII. Many historic ultranationalist leaders, including OUN leader Stepan Bandera, a notorious Nazi collaborator, are widely revered by Ukrainians today. According to Duda, they are ignorant about the crimes of the past. The widespread belief that they are aware of their own “difficult history” is wrong, according to the Polish president. It is not the first time Duda has expressed his concerns about Ukraine’s approach to its past. In September 2024, he told Polsat News that “Ukrainians have many problems with their history,” including “the Volyn massacre … service in SS units, collaboration with the authorities of the Third Reich, and participation in the Holocaust.”

The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry released a statement on Thursday, saying that historical events should be studied and discussed “without politicization.” “On the eve of the day when the Republic of Poland commemorates the victims of the Volyn tragedy, Ukraine shares the pain and grief of the Polish people. At the same time, we do not forget about the numerous Ukrainians who became innocent victims of interethnic violence, political repression and deportation on the territory of Poland,” the statement continued. Warsaw has been one of Kiev’s strongest supporters since the escalation of the conflict with Russia in 2022. Poland also provided a key logistics hub which was used to transport between 80-90% of NATO-supplied military equipment and ammunition to Ukraine.

Ukrainian authorities continue to glorify Nazi collaborators despite concerns expressed by Kiev’s Western backers. In February, the city of Rovno celebrated the 120th birthday of Nazi collaborator and prominent anti-Semitic propagandist Ulas Samchuk, who called for the mass killing of Jews and Poles during WWII. Less than a month later, Ukrainian nationalists commemorated the 75th anniversary of the death of UPA leader Roman Shukhevich with a torchlit march, and unveiled a museum dedicated to him. Shukhevich is considered by many historians to have been one of the architects and commanders responsible for the massacre of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia.

“There is no clear international balance, and no blueprint for restoring one. This transitional era will last, perhaps for decades.”

• The West Mocked BRICS For Years But Now It’s Paying Attention (Lukyanov)

The idea of a multipolar world has long been used in two distinct contexts. One is when global hegemony is solid and unchallenged, as it was for the decade and a half following the Cold War. In that case, ‘multipolarity’ serves as little more than a slogan – a symbolic protest against US dominance, with no practical strategy behind it. The other is when that hegemony has fully collapsed, and international relations revert to their historical norm: a fluid, unpredictable interplay of states with differing levels of power. Then, multipolarity becomes a fact, and actions are guided by immediate context. Today’s world fits neither condition. The old unipolar order is fading, but its structures and reflexes remain. That is why the current moment is so peculiar – and why BRICS has become such an important indicator of the transition underway.

This group of nations, for all its diversity and contradictions, reflects the emerging outlines of a world less shaped by Western control. The latest BRICS summit in Rio de Janeiro prompted disappointment in some quarters. Several key leaders were absent, and the headlines lacked drama. Compared to last year’s bold meeting in Kazan, it seemed muted. But this calmer tone is not a setback – it reflects the changing environment BRICS now operates in. Three trends help explain the summit’s tone. First, global tensions are rising. The recent clashes between India and Pakistan, and between Israel and Iran, directly involve BRICS members. While not full-blown conflicts within the group, they underscore a lack of unity. As BRICS expands, internal diversity increases, making it harder to maintain a single voice. The natural result is cautious language and vague formulations. That may frustrate observers, but it reflects realism.

Second, the United States under Donald Trump has adopted a more explicitly anti-BRICS stance. Washington has issued direct threats and imposed new duties on countries perceived to be aligned with the bloc. These efforts have a clear goal: to deter deeper cooperation between BRICS members. So far, they have not provoked open defiance. Most BRICS countries remain wary of direct confrontation with the West. Yet US pressure is steadily fueling resentment, and a firmer response may come if that pressure intensifies.

Third, the rotation of the BRICS presidency from Russia to Brazil altered the rhythm of the group’s activities. For Russia, BRICS is both a practical tool for economic coordination and a political platform that bypasses Western gatekeeping. Moscow invests heavily in its BRICS role. Brazil’s focus is different. Tied more closely to the West, it has other strategic priorities. That doesn’t mean Brasilia is uninterested in BRICS – only that it doesn’t treat it with the same urgency. Still, something important has happened. The 2023 and 2024 summits in South Africa and Russia changed BRICS. The group has matured, acquiring a new identity. That development will take time to digest. India’s upcoming presidency may continue the current more restrained phase, but that should not be mistaken for stagnation. It is a necessary period of consolidation.

This is why the Rio meeting should be seen as a success. The early phases of BRICS expansion, when the group was seen as vague and aspirational, were relatively easy. No one expected much. Now, the stakes are higher. America and its allies, once dismissive, are paying close attention. They are actively probing for weaknesses. This alone shows that BRICS is starting to matter. The group’s appeal lies in its alignment with real global trends. Today’s international environment demands flexibility, minimal obligations, and openness to difference. BRICS embodies these features. It avoids binding structures, embraces diversity, and operates on the basis of shared (though loosely defined) interests. We are living in a time of disorder.

There is no clear international balance, and no blueprint for restoring one. This transitional era will last, perhaps for decades. In the meantime, the world will increasingly look for platforms that reflect the new reality. BRICS is one of them. The perception of the group is shifting. It is no longer treated as a rhetorical device or a curiosity. It is becoming part of the emerging architecture of a multipolar world. That evolution will be slow and uneven, but it is underway. Following the summits in Johannesburg, Kazan, and now Rio, BRICS has entered a new phase. The challenge now is to recognize that change – and to adapt to it.

The unpopular European “leaders” see a chance for revenge. The Trump/Musk rift gives them hope.

• France Opens Criminal Case Against Musk’s X (RT)

France has opened a criminal investigation into whether algorithms on Elon Musk’s X platform were used to interfere in domestic politics. The probe stems from two complaints filed in January, Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said on Friday. Without naming Musk directly, she stated that investigators will examine the company and its executives for allegedly manipulating algorithms “for purposes of foreign interference.” The first complaint came from Eric Bothorel, a legislator from President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist Ensemble party. He alleged that a “reduction in the diversity of voices and options” on X has created a dangerous environment.

Bothorel also criticized the platform’s moderation model as lacking clarity and accused Musk of personally intervening in its management, according to France 24. The complaint described X’s activities as posing a “real danger and a threat to our democracies.” The second complaint reportedly originated from a government cybersecurity official who claimed that changes to the algorithm promote racist and homophobic content, aiming to “skew democratic debate in France.” On Thursday, Socialist Party politicians Thierry Sother and Pierre Jouvet filed a separate complaint against Musk’s chatbot Grok, which recently generated antisemitic and otherwise offensive comments on X, including praise of Adolf Hitler.

The Grok team said on Wednesday that they had updated the model to remove hate speech. Musk commented that the chatbot was “too compliant to user prompts” and “too eager to please and be manipulated” into producing hateful rhetoric. European politicians have increasingly called for greater oversight of X and similar platforms, warning of potential abuse by bad actors. Musk caused controversy in Berlin when he openly endorsed the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party during the parliamentary elections in February. AfD significantly increased its vote share, becoming the second-largest faction in the Bundestag.

Bhakdi

Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi: Because Of mRNA Vaccines, The Brains Of Billions Of People Are Not Working Anymore.

"The mRNA vaccines cause the destruction of brain cells. Obviously. And that is what we are now experiencing. We're seeing — I'm afraid to say BILLIONS OF PEOPLE — whose… pic.twitter.com/pvgpBRjsj7

— Camus (@newstart_2024) July 11, 2025

Birth rate

Naomi Wolf Sounds the Alarm on Global Birth Rate Collapse: "A Million Missing Babies in Western Europe"

In a sobering analysis, Dr. Naomi Wolf highlights a disturbing trend unfolding across the Western world: a dramatic decline in live births, with drops ranging from 13% to 20%… pic.twitter.com/fMT8VNKXl6

— Camus (@newstart_2024) July 11, 2025

Wine
https://twitter.com/LangmanVince/status/1943355762924724718

Men
https://twitter.com/CRIXUSwasHERE/status/1943287953100292104

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Debt Rattle June 24 2025

Jun 242025

June 24, 2025 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 8:08 am Finance Tagged with: ceasefire, Deepfake Informational Barbarism, Green Agenda, Supreme Court, Trump, unipolar control, Wikileaks 63 Responses »

Rembrandt van Rijn The artist’s son Titus 1657

• If Israel Holds Fire, So Will Iran: Fighting ‘Until The Very Last Minute’ (ZH)

• Rope-a-Dope Warfighting Strategy (Helmer)

• The Key Nuclear Allegation That Started The War (Alastair Crooke)

• Hollywood Seeded Iran War Narrative For Years – Wikileaks (RT)

• The West’s Four Main Lies About Iran and Israel (Jay)

• No Justification For Attack On Iran – Putin (RT)

• Boom (James Howard Kunstler)

• War On Iran Is Fight For US Unipolar Control Of World (Michael Hudson)

• ‘No Military Solutions’ to Israel–Iran Crisis – Egypt (RT)

• Moscow Warns of Deepfake ‘Informational Barbarism’ (RT)

• Why the Public Needs Answers on Biden’s Alleged Incapacity (Turley)

• Zelensky Has A Nazi Problem. He Can’t Lie His Way Out Of It (Amar)

• Green Agenda Is Killing Europe’s Ancestry (Constantin Von Hoffmeister)

• Supreme Court Hands Trump Huge Win On Deporting ‘Worst’ Illegals (ZH)

Brilliant analysis.
Israel is kinda fucked. Last year I said it wouldn't exist in 10 years. Now I think it won't be here in 5 years. pic.twitter.com/5DG2t9J1g1

— Kerry Burgess (@KerryBurgess) June 22, 2025

Money

.@DougAMacgregor and I are friends and while we don’t always agree on everything, this interview regarding THE TRUTH must be listened to by every American who cares about America’s Future. The American people CAN handle THE TRUTH and ARE willing to sacrifice IF they are told THE… https://t.co/jksFlWPQP8

— General Mike Flynn (@GenFlynn) June 23, 2025

MTG

Gaetz Explains It All to You pic.twitter.com/YJApgoC0Eq

— Grace Chong, MBI (@gc22gc) June 22, 2025

And therein lies the problem….. The next move is not Trump's to make, it's the Iranians' choice.

If Iran attacks U.S. military bases, Trump is pulled into a regional conflict beyond what most have contemplated, and that would be a fundamental break in his prior promises.… https://t.co/7QjQxZI9u3

— TheLastRefuge (@TheLastRefuge2) June 23, 2025

Who is hurt the most by closing the Strait of Hormuz? pic.twitter.com/rURORR36Jr

— Ryan Dawson (@RyLiberty) June 23, 2025

Alex

President Trump has publicly endorsed REGIME CHANGE in Iran, breaking his promised to the American people and pushing the planet to the edge of a NUCLEAR WORLD WAR!!! pic.twitter.com/equnZi7tNc

— Alex Jones (@RealAlexJones) June 23, 2025

Poso
https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1937165649899602062

The first hours of the Trump-induced ceasefire have been confusing. But expect Trump to put his foot down, until he can’t. And then if he can blame Iran.

• If Israel Holds Fire, So Will Iran: Fighting ‘Until The Very Last Minute’ (ZH)

Update(2200ET): The ceasefire is going to be shaky and likely difficult to maintain given that right up until the very moment it is to go into effect Tehran was on the receiving end of very intense Israeli warplane attacks. And Iran’s Foreign Minister too said Iran hit back overnight: “The military operations of our powerful Armed Forces to punish Israel for its aggression continued until the very last minute, at 4am. Together with all Iranians, I thank our brave Armed Forces who remain ready to defend our dear country until their last drop of blood, and who responded to any attack by the enemy until the very last minute,” said FM Araghchi on X. IRANIAN TELEVISION: ISRAEL ASSASSINATED NUCLEAR SCIENTIST MOHAMMAD REZA SIDDIQI IN ITS RECENT ATTACKS But shortly before that above latest statement, there was this by the top Iranian diplomat:

It’s anything but certain whether it will hold, but likely the White House is putting pressure on Tel Aviv to at least play nice for now, so Trump can take his ‘victory lap’ and declare mission accomplished. And yet, the status of Iran’s uranium enrichment stockpile is unknown. The status of the ceasefire itself may not become clear until the daylight hours…

Update: Fox is reporting, “President Trump spoke with Qatar’s Emir and informed him the U.S. got Israel to agree to a ceasefire with Iran. The President asked Qatar to help persuade Iran to do the same, following that Vice President Vance coordinated with Qatar’s Prime Minister on the details. This effort proved successful and, following discussions with the Qatari PM, the Iranians agreed. The deal was coordinated at the highest level by the President and Vice President and the Qatari Emir and Prime minister directly.” “Despite having been attacked just hours earlier, the Qataris set aside their grievances and prioritized regional security to get the deal done,” this source added. Reuters is reporting that Iran has agreed to the ceasefire, which at the very least will provide a respite to the tit-for-tat missiles. More from Reuters:

• Qatar Brokered Iran’s Ceasefire Deal After U.S. Request
• Qatari PM secured Tehran’s approval following Trump’s outreach to Emir after Iran’s strike on U.S. base.
• Doha played key role in halting Israel-Iran conflict
* * *

Update: Shortly after 6pm, futures jumped and oil slumped even more in one of its biggest intraday reversals on record, after Trump announced on his Truth Social account that Iran and Israel had “fully agreed” to a “Complete and Total ceasefire” which will takes place at approximately midnight ET, “when Israel and Iran have wound down and completed their in progress, final missions”, and will last for 12 hours, at which time Trump says that “War will be considered, ENDED!”

The president adds that “on the assumption that everything works as it should, which it will, I would like to congratulate both Countries, Israel and Iran, on having the Stamina, Courage, and Intelligence to end, what should be called, “THE 12 DAY WAR.” This is a War that could have gone on for years, and destroyed the entire Middle East, but it didn’t, and never will! God bless Israel, God bless Iran, God bless the Middle East, God bless the United States of America, and GOD BLESS THE WORLD!”

“We may forget the words of our enemies, but never the silence of our friends..”

• Rope-a-Dope Warfighting Strategy (Helmer)

When Muhammad Ali famously demonstrated the rope-a-dope strategy in the Zaire title bout against George Forman in October 1974, he allowed Foreman to start attacking him against the ropes in Round 3. By Round 7 Foreman had exhausted his punching strength. In Round 8, Foreman dropped his guard, and Ali counterattacked with a combination of punches which knocked Foreman out. Watch carefully how it was done in seven punches, eight seconds. According to General Daniel Caine, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the US has knocked out Iran’s nuclear enrichment and nuclear weapon preparation plants with “extremely severe destruction”; “completely and totally”, according to President Donald Trump.

The punches were delivered by “tactical surprise”, Caine has announced, with a “deception effort known only to an extremely small number of planners and key leaders here in Washington.” He said the “strike packages” comprised more than 125 aircraft and one submarine. They fired 16 GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) bombs, more than 24 Tomahawk missiles, and a total of 75 precision-guided weapons at three land targets – Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan. According to Caine’s report, no Iranian shot was fired against the US attackers as they flew on to these targets nor “on the way out.” Instead, “decoys” and “preemptive suppressing fires” were launched. “Iran’s fighters did not fly,” Caine claims, “and it appears that Iran’s surface-to-air missile systems did not see us. Throughout the mission we retained the element of surprise.”

The entire operation took 25 minutes. That’s the equivalent in the boxing ring of seven rounds. Iran reports the US had telegraphed its punches with advance notice that the bombing raid would be restricted to the three land targets. Knocking out the Iranian leadership, including military and civilian leaders, plus Ayatollah Ali Kamenei, has been denied by Vice President JD Vance, then reasserted by Trump. “No other military in the world,” said Caine, “could have done this.”

Iran has not acknowledged that rope-a-dope is its warfighting strategy. As Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi prepares for his meetings on Monday with Russian officials, including President Vladimir Putin, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) has issued a warning to Russia and China that they are failing to do enough to meet longstanding assistance promises and treaty obligations. “We may forget the words of our enemies, but never the silence of our friends,” the IRGC media platform Sepahi News has announced just after midnight on Monday morning (June 23). “After going through this sensitive situation, there will undoubtedly be a serious review of relations with some countries.” The text was accompanied by a picture of Putin and China’s President Xi Jinping together at a ceremony shaking hands.

The former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, spokesman for the Security Council, has issued a personal declaration supporting Iran’s war against both the US and Israel, and implying not only that Israel is losing the war, but also there is Kremlin backing for the Iranian nuclear weapons programme. “The critical infrastructure of the nuclear cycle appears not to have been damaged or even slightly affected. The enrichment of nuclear materials, and now we can say it, the future production of nuclear weapons, will continue. A number of countries are ready to directly supply Iran with their nuclear ammunition. Israel is under attack — thundering explosions, people in panic. The United States is drawn into a new conflict with the prospect of a ground operation. The Iranian political regime has been preserved, and with a high degree of probability it has become stronger.”

“With such successes,” added Medvedev for the General Staff and intelligence services, “[we don’t see] Trump [winning] the Nobel Peace Prize, despite the utter venality of this nomination. Good start — congratulations, Mr. President!” This is Russian for rope-a-dope.

“..was coaxed from a Palantir counter-intelligence algorithm..”

• The Key Nuclear Allegation That Started The War (Alastair Crooke)

The sudden claim of Iran being very close to a bomb (that seemingly jumped out of ‘nowhere’ to leave Americans puzzling how could it happen that – in the blink of eye, we are going to war – was subsequently refuted by IAEA Chief Grossi to CNN on 17 June (but only after the abrupt attack on Iran already had taken place): “We did not have any evidence of a systematic effort [by Iran] to move to a nuclear weapon”, Grossi confirmed on CNN. This statement drew the following riposte from Iran by its Foreign Ministry Spokesman, Esmaeil Baqaei on 19 June: “This is too late, Mr. Grossi – you obscured this truth in your absolutely biased report that was instrumentalized by E3/U.S. to craft a resolution with baseless allegation of [Iranian] ‘non-compliance’; the same resolution was then utilized, as a final pretext, by a genocidal warmongering regime to wage a war of aggression on Iran and to launch an unlawful attack on our peaceful nuclear facilities. Do you know how many innocent Iranians have been killed/maimed as a result of this criminal war? You turned IAEA into a tool of convenience for non-NPT members to deprive NPT members of their basic right under Article 4. Any clear conscience?!”.

To which Dr Ali Larijani, Advisor to the Supreme Leader, added: “When the war ends, we will hold the director of the IAEA, Rafael Grossi, accountable”. What they are saying: The Russian Foreign Ministry’s Statement, in relation to the escalation of the Iranian-Israeli conflict – “It was precisely these “sympathisers” [EU3] who exerted pressure on the leadership of the [IAEA] Agency to prepare a controversial “comprehensive assessment” of Iran’s nuclear programme, the flaws of which were subsequently exploited to push through a biased anti-Iran resolution at the IAEA Board of Governors on 12 June [2025]. This resolution effectively provided a green light to actions by West Jerusalem, leading to tragedy” [i.e. to the sneak attack on the immediate day after, 13 June].

Behind the scenes: The underpinnings to the 12 June 2025 IAEA Resolution – giving pretext for Israel to strike Iran (and crafted to sway President Trump to dismiss his own Director of National Intelligence’s warnings that there was no evidence of Iran moving towards weaponisation) – reportedly were drawn not from Mossad or other western intelligence services, but from IAEA software. As DD Geo-politics outlines, since 2015, the IAEA has relied on Palantir’s Mosaic platform, a $50-million AI system that sifts through millions of data points – satellite imagery, social media, personnel logs – to predict nuclear threats:

“Iran’s stockpile [of enriched uranium] had been growing steadily for months—yet the narrative of an imminent breakthrough surged only after the IAEA’s censure on June 6, 2025. That resolution, adopted 19–3, provided Israel the diplomatic cover it needed. Palantir’s Mosaic platform played a critical role in this pivot. Its data shaped the May 31 report, flagging anomalies at Fordow and Lavisan-Shian, and recycling prior allegations from Turquzabad—despite years-old Iranian denials and sabotage … Mosaic was conceived originally to identify insurgent activity in Iraq and Afghanistan”.

Its algorithm looks to identify and infer ‘hostile intent’ from indirect indicators – metadata, behavioral patterns, signal traffic – not from confirmed evidence. In other words, it postulates what suspects may be thinking, or planning. On 12 June, Iran leaked documents, which it claimed showed IAEA chief Rafael Grossi sharing Mosaic outputs with Israel. By 2018, Mosaic had processed more than 400 million discrete data objects and had helped impute suspicion to over 60 Iranian sites such as to justify unannounced IAEA inspections of those sites, under the JCPOA. These outputs, though dependent largely on the algorithmic equations, were incorporated into formal IAEA safeguard reports and were widely accepted by UN member states and non-proliferation regimes as credible, evidence-based assessments. Mosaic however is not a passive system. It is trained to infer from its algorithm hostile intent, but when repurposed for nuclear oversight, its equations risk translating simple correlation into malicious intent.

“Assange recalled that the opening scene depicts Iranian scientists in Tehran assembling a bomb, with one character stating that the device could be operational within six months. “How is it that such a lie got into a script about Wikileaks?” Assange asked..”

• Hollywood Seeded Iran War Narrative For Years – Wikileaks (RT)

Screenwriters in Hollywood who “say they are Jewish” have been planting pro-war narratives about Iran in mainstream entertainment for more than a decade, Wikileaks has claimed. Israel launched airstrikes on Iran earlier this month, claiming Tehran was close to creating a nuclear weapon. Over the weekend, the US also directly joined the conflict by bombing Iranian nuclear facilities.In a post on X on Sunday, Wikileaks stated that Hollywood writers “who say they are Jewish” have been “planting the mental seeds for war with Iran for years,” citing productions such as Top Gun: Maverick, Homeland, 24, and The Fifth Estate. The group shared a clip of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange’s speech at Oxford Union from 2013. In the video, he discussed The Fifth Estate – a biographical drama about Wikileaks – which opens with a side plot about a fictional Iranian nuclear bomb project.

Assange recalled that the opening scene depicts Iranian scientists in Tehran assembling a bomb, with one character stating that the device could be operational within six months. “How is it that such a lie got into a script about Wikileaks?” Assange asked, noting that at the time, 16 US intelligence agencies had already found that Tehran did not have a nuclear weapons program. “It is an attack against Iran,” Assange said, claiming that the scene “fans the flames to start a war with Iran” and served the interests of the “people in the system that want the war.” Prior to Israel’s latest strikes, both the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and US intelligence agencies stated there was no evidence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program. Nevertheless, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has continued to insist that Tehran was on the brink of creating a bomb – a claim he has repeated for decades.

Hollywood script writers who say they are 'Jewish' have been planting the mental seeds for war with Iran for years, including in Top Gun Maverick, Homeland, 24, and in the DreamWorks film on Julian Assange 'The Fifth Estate'. Excerpt from Oxford Union speech, 30 January 2013.… pic.twitter.com/mVfsTQKW5e

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) June 22, 2025

At the UN General Assembly in 2012, he infamously used a cartoon bomb illustration to warn that Iran was “months away” from a nuclear weapon, and made comparable statements throughout the 1990s and 2000s. Israel’s attack has drawn international condemnation, including from Russia, which has said the strikes were illegal. Russian President Vladimir Putin has called the operation “an unprovoked aggression.”US involvement in Israel’s campaign has also drawn criticism, with Moscow comparing it to the lead-up to the 2003 Iraq War, which was started over false claims of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.US President Donald Trump’s decision to strike Iran has also met pushback from inside the White House. According to Reuters, Vice President J.D. Vance – an Iraq War veteran – opposed joining the Israeli offensive and warned during internal discussions that Israel was dragging the US into another war.

“Most of what we see on Sky News and BBC is packaged by the IDF’s media department whose main job is to distort the realities on the ground.”

• The West’s Four Main Lies About Iran and Israel (Jay)

The Iran talks in Geneva with EU foreign ministers started and yet few, if any, Middle East pundits could have predicted the outcome of Trump’s bunker buster bombs on nuclear sites in Iran. Until he did this, one could argue, that was is scope still for a deal with the Iranians which would either completely stop their enriched uranium program or, at the very least, have it run by weapons inspectors of the UN and perhaps even a western company reporting directly to the Americans. That at least must have been the thinking. And yet this is the biggest miscalculation as it is impossible now for the Iranians to ever think about a deal. Was the deal genuine in the first place, many will ask.

This may seem far-fetched but so far it’s important to remember that most of what we read in western media is absolute garbage cultivated by Israel’s fake news operation which more or less provides all the data and so-called victories each day to Sky News, leaving the man in the street misinformed at best. Trump’s two-week deadline was of course stupid and was never going to be respected and was just a ruse to trick the Iranians. Yet here are the four main lies which western media pump out on a daily basis to support Israel and the Americans.Israel has made huge progress with its military campaign at controlling Iran. This is really not true at all. If they had and we are to believe Trump’s claims of having total air dominancy why pause at this point for peace talks?

Most of what we see on Sky News and BBC is packaged by the IDF’s media department whose main job is to distort the realities on the ground. While the F35 jets Israel used made great progress in their campaign they have lost at least three with the pilots held by Iran. Little is reported of this by western media. In addition, there is no credible reporting whatsoever on Iran’s victories inside Israel as many outlets simply miss it out entirely when giving their big screen presentations. It is inconceivable that Iran has not hit some military installations which would explain why all of Israel’s aircraft are out of the country. While it is true that the first strike by Israel had a huge impact, especially by killing top commanders, Iran soon recovered and got on with the job at hand.

It would take a massive operation of perhaps up to 2 million soldiers on the ground to even contemplate taking over the country. Iran is not Iraq. While Israeli jets continue to destroy a number of installations, some of whom were decoys mocked up by the Iranians, the destruction by Iran in Israel can’t go on at its present rate, which explains why Israel agreed to the talks as they hope it might lead to Iran pulling back. Iran doesn’t need to win the war. It just needs to bleed Israel of its resources.

Iran has a nuclear bomb or is in the process of making one. This is perhaps the biggest lie of all and has even been debunked by America’s own director of national intelligence, which of course Trump refuses to accept. We’re now repeating history of U.S. wars started by total bullshit – Iraq, Afghanistan going right back to the Vietnam war where a missile strike against a U.S. warship was faked to justify going in. The U.S. even claimed that Gadaffi had WMDs all proved to be wrong. Trump will go ahead with bombing if he doesn’t get a deal. In the event, this is what happened, or so it would seem by western media accounts. But we should not rush to conclusions as there is a distinct possibility that Trump has bluffed the Israelis, the Iranians and even the American people.

Did he really go ahead with the bunker buster strikes as it is presented to us by media? Did he get informed by his own intel people that the Iranians were about to shift the centrifuges out of those sites? Or had already done so. In this scenario, the hasty bombing scores a number of points for him as he comes out a winner in the short term on all sides even though he was forced to do it to save face. The pressure is now on him and Netanyahu who could both end up with egg on their faces in the coming days as Iran chokes the Persian Gulf shipping and looks for soft targets in the region. Trump does not like to take big decisions which he knows he can’t change at the drop of a hat so the bombing of the nuclear sites should be interpreted not as an easy decision but more of a last resort.

His own Pentagon goons must have told him “it’s damn easy to start a war with Iran, but getting out of one will be tough”. Also, the strategy of bombing the underground nuclear facilities may well come with some blowback which he has miscalculated. What does Israel and the U.S. do after they have done this? Will Iran wheel out the bigger, heavier rockets which they have been saving until now and obliterate Israel? Will they strike U.S. allies in the region and even U.S. forces? Pushed to this extreme it is likely they will do all this and block the Straits of Hormuz. Does Trump want a full on war with Iran? Netanyahu would certainly welcome it with the U.S. involved at the highest level, but Trump does not.

“..the visit was needed for “closer, more precise, and more serious consultations” with Russia..”

• No Justification For Attack On Iran – Putin (RT)

Israeli and US hostilities against Iran are groundless and unjustifiable, Russian President Vladimir Putin has told Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi in an expression of support. Araghchi, who landed in Moscow on Monday, said earlier that the visit was needed for “closer, more precise, and more serious consultations” with Russia in the wake of the US strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities this past weekend. During the meeting at the Kremlin, Putin described the attacks on Iran as “an unprovoked aggression,” for which “there can be no justification.” The actions of Israel and the US are “illegitimate” and violate international norms, he added.

The Russian leader noted that he was glad to see Araghchi in Moscow, saying that his visit would allow Russia and Iran “to discuss these pressing issues and jointly think about a way out of the current situation.” Araghchi agreed with Putin’s assessment, saying that “Russia today stands on the right side of history and international law.” By striking targets in Israel, Iran is defending its sovereignty in a legitimate way, the diplomat stressed. Israel and the US explained their attacks on Iran by claiming that Tehran was on the brink of obtaining a nuclear weapon. The Iranian authorities have repeatedly insisted that that they are not working on a bomb, while defending their right to pursue a peaceful nuclear program.

Jim likes Trump’s original story.

“In eight days, the United States and Israel eliminated Iran’s nuclear capabilities with minimal civilian casualties. One of the greatest military achievements ever.” — Bill Ackman

• Boom (James Howard Kunstler)

Of course, you must expect a whole lot of deranged thinking after the USA’s Saturday night “Massive Ordnance Penetrator” (MOP) attack on Iran’s three nuke sites — because derangement drives the spirit of our time in Western Civ. France, Germany, the UK, Sweden still can’t wrap their brains around the jihad they have fecklessly invited inside their countries — and they prosecute anyone who suggests as much. Over here, the Oregon state legislature brought in drag-queens to entertain members in the chamber . . .California taxpayers subsidize the riots in LA . . . a federal judge orders Kilmar Abrego Garcia released from custody . . . AOC endorses a Muslim lunatic for mayor in New York. . . . So it goes. For all that, often the simplest explanation is the correct one. Of the MOP attack on Iran, Secretary of State Rubio said, “They had all the pieces in place to have a nuclear weapon. . . now, not so much.”

Mr. Rubio’s Sunday chat with Maria Bartiromo is well worth a listen for clarity. He also succinctly stated, “They [Iran] are the sole source of instability in the entire Middle East, and the world has been paying a price for this for forty-something years.” Yet, the American hive-mind is aflame with histrionic hypotheticals over Iran, driven by the same prevailing anxiety that infects the illegal alien issue, lawfare, sexual insanity, our role in the Ukraine fiasco. The leitmotif lately is the popular idea that Israel controls the US like a puppeteer and that the Jews are out to rule the world. Yes, the shrill charge of “Zionism” boils down to that. (Just look at the comment section of this blog.) There is, necessarily, uncertainty about the result of our MOP strikes. We will not be sending troops in to inspect Fordo, Natanz, and Isfahan.

Iran had time, while jerking-around American diplomats, to move its stockpile of 60-percent enriched uranium (if that’s what it was). But they no longer have the facilities to do anything with it, or the top scientists to run the program, and if they attempt to restart all of that, the US will have the option to take them out again. So, you can stop the handwringing over that. Another popular rumor in circulation is that the MOAB mission was a charade, just a show that Mr. Trump put on to satisfy his ego. That assumes everybody in the chain-of-command was duped, a low-percentage supposition. How is it unclear that the president is not messing around? The main message is “No nukes for Iran.”

There was, apparently, some part of that simple proposition the mullahs did not understand. Perhaps the Iranian people understand that the mullahs are not fit to govern their country. It looks like we’ll find out soon enough. Meanwhile propaganda-central keeps trying to steer the hive-mind back onto RussiaRussiaRussia, and onto Mr. Putin especially. CBS’s 60 Minutes re-worked an old segment last night on Putin opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who died in prison last year at 47 under curious circumstances. I doubt we know the whole story, and CBS surely did not try to present it. But the main purpose was to call Mr. Putin names — thief, murderer, tyrant — and the reason for that was also clear and simple: to derail Mr. Trump’s efforts to normalize relations with Russia.

That effort is a cornerstone of Mr. Trump’s campaign to re-arrange trade relations in such a way that our country can become productive again, employing its citizens in a purposeful way. It happens to imply an end to the Ukraine war, which the Obama State Department and the CIA set the groundwork for in 2014. Ending this war is not in the interest of a certain Beltway blob that thrives on creaming-off the weapons industry. Their schemes require Russia to remain an enemy of the US, a wholly engineered idiocy that media outfits like CBS promote. Viewed through a wider lens, the MOP mission was also intended as a message to China. It is a simple and straightforward message: Expect that Mr. Trump means what he says when he says it. He is not messing around.

China has been messing around with us to a stunning degree, especially during the past four years of the phantom president “Joe Biden.” China has infiltrated every critical corner of American life: our government, our universities, our medical research, our computer tech sector, our finances, Hollywood, our news media, our critical infrastructure, you name it. China has been waging war on us in every way except troops and kinetics. Mr. Trump seeks to end all these operations, without coming to blows. That is, he is trying to find a path to what used to be quaintly called peaceful coexistence. If there’s a reason that the political Left in America can’t get behind that simple idea, it might be because the CCP is too deeply mixed up in Democratic Party politics. Their intentions intersect: to bring chaos to America.

“..the war in Iran likewise has as an aim blocking trade with China and Russia and countering moves away from the U.S.-centered neoliberal order..”

• War On Iran Is Fight For US Unipolar Control Of World (Michael Hudson)

Opponents of the war with Iran say that the war is not in American interests, seeing that Iran does not pose any visible threat to the United States. This appeal to reason misses the neoconservative logic that has guided U.S. foreign policy for more than a half century, and which is now threatening to engulf the Middle East in the most violent war since Korea. That logic is so aggressive, so repugnant to most people, so much in violation of the basic principles of international law, the United Nations, and the U.S. Constitution, that there is an understandable shyness in the authors of this strategy to spell out what is at stake. What is at stake is the U.S. attempt to control the Middle East and its oil as a buttress of U.S. economic power, and to prevent other countries from moving to create their own autonomy from the U.S.-centered neoliberal order administered by the IMF, World Bank, and other institutions to reinforce U.S. unipolar power.

The 1970s saw much discussion about creating a New International Economic Order (NIEO). U.S. strategists saw this as a threat, and since my book Super Imperialism ironically was used as something like a textbook by the government, I was invited to comment on how I thought countries would break away from U.S. control. I was working at the Hudson Institute with Herman Kahn, and in 1974 or 1975, he brought me to sit in on a military strategy discussion of plans being made already at that time to possibly overthrow Iran and break it up into ethnic parts. Herman found the weakest spot to be Baluchistan, on Iran’s border with Pakistan. The Kurds, Tajiks, and Turkic Azeris were others whose ethnicities were to be played off against each other, giving U.S. diplomacy a key potential client dictatorship to reshape both Iranian and Pakistani political orientation if need be.

Three decades later, in 2003, General Wesley Clark pointed to Iran as being the capstone of seven countries that the United States needed to control in order to dominate the Middle East, starting with Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, and Sudan, culminating in Iran. Most of today’s discussion of the geopolitical dynamics of how the international economy is changing is understandably (and rightly) focusing on the attempt by BRICS and other countries to escape from U.S. control by de-dollarizing their trade and investment. But the most active dynamic presently reshaping the international economy has been the attempts of Donald Trump’s whirlwind presidency since January to lock other countries into a U.S.-centered economy, by agreeing not to focus their trade and investment on China and other states seeking autonomy from U.S. control. (Trade with Russia is already heavily sanctioned.)

As will be described below, the war in Iran likewise has as an aim blocking trade with China and Russia and countering moves away from the U.S.-centered neoliberal order. Trump, hoping in his own self-defeating way to rebuild U.S. industry, expected that countries would respond to his threat to create tariff chaos by reaching an agreement with America not to trade with China, and indeed to accept U.S. trade and financial sanctions against it, Russia, Iran, and other countries deemed to be a threat to the unipolar U.S. global order. Maintaining that order is the U.S. objective in its current fight with Iran, as well as its fights with Russia and China – and Cuba, Venezuela, and other countries seeking to restructure their economic policies to recover their independence.

“..El-Sisi urged the parties to prevent the cycle of violence from expanding..”

• ‘No Military Solutions’ to Israel–Iran Crisis – Egypt (RT)

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi has called for a diplomatic resolution of the Israel-Iran conflict. Speaking during a phone call on Saturday with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, El-Sisi urged the parties to prevent the cycle of violence from expanding. “There are no military solutions to this crisis,” the Egyptian leader stressed. According to a presidential spokesman, El-Sisi reaffirmed Cairo’s categorical rejection of Israel’s continuing military escalation, describing it as “a threat to the security and stability of the Middle East at a critical time when the region is experiencing multiple crises.” In an earlier statement on Saturday, the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs expressed “deep concern” over the situation in Iran and condemned the rapid military escalation. It also reaffirmed Egypt’s opposition to any violations of the UN Charter and international law, calling for full respect of state sovereignty.

The latest conflict began on June 13, when Israeli fighter jets carried out a wave of strikes on Iranian strategic sites, including the uranium enrichment facility in Natanz. Israeli spies also targeted senior military officials and nuclear scientists in and around Tehran. Iran retaliated by launching dozens of ballistic missiles into Israeli territory. The conflict has continued to escalate since then, with both sides exchanging waves of missiles strikes, forcing populations underground and into hiding. On Sunday, US President Donald Trump announced that American forces had conducted a large-scale bombing campaign on three Iranian nuclear sites—Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan—claiming the facilities had been “completely and totally obliterated.”

The developments have sparked condemnation from several African governments. In a statement on Sunday, the South African Presidency pointed out Pretoria’s “sincerest hope that President Donald Trump would use his influence and that of the US government to prevail on the parties to pursue a dialogue path in resolving their issues of dispute.” The African state called on the US, Israel, and Iran to allow the UN to lead efforts toward a peaceful resolution. Earlier in June, Algeria’s Foreign Minister Ahmed Attaf held a phone call with his Iranian counterpart, Abbas Araghchi, during which he reiterated Algeria’s unwavering condemnation of the Israeli strikes. Attaf characterized the attacks as an act of aggression and called on the UN Security Council to intervene and uphold international legal frameworks.

Deepfake Informational Barbarism. That’s quite the term.

• Moscow Warns of Deepfake ‘Informational Barbarism’ (RT)

The increasing availability of deepfake technology is pushing the world into “informational barbarism,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has warned, urging news agencies to increase investment in fact-checking and video verification. Zakharova identified deepfakes as global concern during a workshop at the 19th General Assembly of the Organization of Asia-Pacific News Agencies (OANA), which Russia hosted last week. Malicious actors are using every opportunity to deploy “poison pills of lies” against their targets, and are turning to generative content to achieve their aims, the diplomat said.

”Just a couple of years ago deepfake was a novelty that could only confuse people, but now the quality and quantity of deepfake videos raises the question whether humanity is equipped to deal with such attacks,” Zakharova said. “I don’t have a definitive answer.” The Russian Foreign Ministry works to disprove falsified content involving its staff, including Minister Sergey Lavrov and Zakharova herself. But as mount of fake content increases, so does the time required to counter them, she said. The problem is multifaceted, as seen in the growing use of deepfakes by scammers, and demands a “systemic and comprehensive” international response.

”It is self-evident that news agencies and leading media outlets need entire sections dedicated to fact-checking that are trained to detect technological tricks, which are used to present non-credible information as credible,” she said. News agencies are naturally at the forefront of the fight against falsified imagery, since they handle the largest flow of raw information in the media ecosystem, Zakharova pointed out. The Foreign Ministry launched a dedicated campaign against “fake news” in 2017 and has since released more than 5,000 regular rebuttals and 350 in-depth exposés of what it considers informational attacks against Russia’s national interests, the official said.

“..it is very difficult to remove a president without the support of the vice president and most of the Cabinet, meaning, little can be done without a virtual mutiny within the White House..”

• Why the Public Needs Answers on Biden’s Alleged Incapacity (Turley)

“Jackie, are you here? Where’s Jackie?” When then-President Joe Biden asked in September 2022 if House Rep. Jackie Walorski, an Indiana Republican who had died weeks earlier in a car accident, was in a meeting, observers were shocked. Biden had not only issued a statement of condolence; he had attended the congresswoman’s memorial service to lower the flags at the White House in her honor. As Washington Post media critic Erik Wemple noted last week, that moment should have been a wake-up call. In Washington parlance, it left no room for “plausible deniability” about whether Biden was still fit to hold the office of president. And it wasn’t just Democratic politicians who were willfully blind to Biden’s obvious deterioration; it was the media, too.

That’s why the country should fully support President Donald Trump’s June 4 order for his administration to investigate Biden’s competence and answer some of these questions, including the possible abuse of an autopen to sign legislation, pardons and other documents while he was president, instead of looking for political motivations. Similarly, the Republican-led House Oversight Committee is also investigating. The New York Times called it part of Trump’s “campaign of retribution against his perceived enemies” and “the latest effort by President Trump to stoke conspiracy theories about his predecessor.”

There is a weird dissonance when journalists blame Biden’s White House for a coverup, but then criticize efforts to investigate that coverup. While criminal charges are unlikely to stem from the investigation, if the White House autopen, for instance, was used without Biden’s consent, that would amount to forgery, obstruction of justice, fraud or other serious crimes. The complicity of politicians, staff and even the press in deception is nothing new in Washington. A century ago, after President Woodrow Wilson experienced a severe stroke in September 1919, his wife, Edith, and his staff covered up the severity of his condition, which made him incapable of fulfilling his duties till the end of his term and affected the race for a Democratic successor. To end such abuses, we must demand accountability and greater transparency on matters of presidential health and competence.

The 25th Amendment of the Constitution was intended to address succession issues, including the incapacity of a president, but it is very difficult to remove a president without the support of the vice president and most of the Cabinet, meaning, little can be done without a virtual mutiny within the White House. That is particularly true when staff have an interest in maintaining the illusion to keep the president and themselves in power. With Biden, according to the reporting in the book “Original Sin” by journalists Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, the staff regularly cut off the access of Cabinet secretaries on down to Biden, limited public events and scripted short remarks for the president to read from teleprompters. Allegations that Biden’s staff misused the autopen are exceptionally difficult to prove, and Biden has issued a statement that he had full knowledge of everything that was signed.

Absent a confession of incapacity, we need someone Congress would need someone like John Dean, the White House counsel during the Nixon administration who was willing to break from the ranks and implicate his former associates. So far, there do not appear to be any Deans on the Biden staff, who are likely eager to avoid being implicated in potential improper use of the autopen or other actions that may have circumvented the president or covered up his decline. But that doesn’t mean that the Trump administration and Congress shouldn’t be trying to get to the bottom of what happened. The worst thing for the American people would be a collective shrug and a resumption of business as usual.

“..at least some Western experts and even mainstream media were well aware that Ukraine had a rapidly growing, increasingly powerful, and extremely subversive (domestically and internationally) far-right movement.“

• Zelensky Has A Nazi Problem. He Can’t Lie His Way Out Of It (Amar)

Anniversaries can be opportunities. For better or worse. In the case of the recent anniversary of Nazi Germany’s massive attack on the Soviet Union of 22 June 1941 – code-named Operation Barbarossa by the Germans – Ukraine’s beyond best-by-date president Vladimir Zelensky went for the worst. Using his own Telegram channel, Zelensky shared his bizarre view of why that anniversary mattered. In short, because it can serve in the information war against Russia. “Eighty years ago,” the Kiev regime leader wrote, “the world overcame Nazism and swore ‘Never again.’ But today Russia is repeating the crimes of the Nazis […] Now Ukrainians are fighting against rashism [a pejorative term fusing the words “Russia” and “fascism”] with the same courage with which our ancestors defeated Nazism…”

Where to begin? Why not with the obvious: IF Russia were following Nazi examples, then much of Ukraine would now look like, for instance, Gaza. And while every death is a tragedy, the numbers of Ukrainian civilians killed in the Ukraine War would be of an entirely different order of magnitude. This is not a matter of opinion. It’s a fact that can be quantified and proven: As of the end of May, the UN counted about 13,279 Ukrainian civilians killed, since the beginning of the large-scale fighting in February 2022. It is true that the UN also warns that these are conservative, minimum figures. Yet consider some figures for Gaza under Israeli genocidal assault since October 2023. As of early June, the enclave’s health ministry – generally acknowledged as reliable and also conservative with its numbers, notwithstanding Israeli and Western propaganda – has counted over 55,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza alone (Israel’s victims in the West bank and elsewhere should, of course, not be forgotten.)

The Gaza Health Ministry does not distinguish between resistance fighters and civilians, but there is a virtual expert consensus that the share of the latter is unusually high, as you would expect during a genocide. A peer-reviewed study in the prestigious and unbiased medical journal The Lancet, for instance, has estimated that 59.1% of deaths between October 2023 and June 2024 were women, children, and the elderly. Other equally reputable organizations have even estimated around 90% of civilian casualties in Gaza. Keep in mind that the above is deliberately restricted to minimum estimates. As The Lancet has also shown, the real death toll in Gaza is likely to be far higher. Let’s also not even dwell here on “details,” such as that Gaza now has the highest concentration of child amputees in the world.

For even the bare figures cited suffice to gain a sense of proportion and perspective: Gaza, before the Israeli mass murder attack had a total population of between 2.2 and 2.4 million. Ukraine’s total population on the eve of the large-scale escalation of February 2022 was just over 41 million, according to Ukrainian official sources. And now compare the numbers of civilian casualties and the total populations. It is obvious: If Vladimir Zelensky is looking for a state that uses methods – if that is the word – of Nazi warfare, then that would be Israel, not Russia. But he cannot say that because Israel is aligned with the US and the West, just like his own regime. Figures can help expose blatant lies, especially when they are as stunningly unambiguous as in this case.

But the quantitative isn’t everything, obviously. What about what social scientists and historians – such as me – call the qualitative dimension? In other words, what about what makes people tick? In that regard, the West’s proxy war against Russia and via Ukraine has seen one of the most successful operations of political whitewashing in recent memory. Before Kiev, first under Zelensky’s predecessor Petro Poroshenko and then under Zelensky himself, turned Ukraine into a Western tool and battering ram against Russia, at least some Western experts and even mainstream media were well aware that Ukraine had a rapidly growing, increasingly powerful, and extremely subversive (domestically and internationally) far-right movement.

As of 2014, even the BBC was still admitting that Ukrainian media and politicians were deliberately “underplaying” the potency and significance of their far-right. But then, as if on command, Western mainstream media united to belittle this malevolent force, pretending that it was either hardly there (and any impressions to the contrary were, of course, “Russian disinformation”), really harmless (a handful of misunderstood “patriots” with a few tattoos that look Nazi but are really just Tolkien), or on the mend, undergoing a steady and, of course, totally honest conversion to mainstream politics.

What happened in reality was that instead of adjusting to the Western “value” mainstream or Center – wherever that supposedly might be – the Ukrainian far right succeeded in making that mainstream adjust to its will. Probably because real-existing Western “values” have a genuine affinity to fascism anyhow. Now with the West’s war going badly, as even Western media have to recognize, even French paper of record Le Monde – as russophobic and rarara-proxy war as its worst peers in the US – has noticed that far-right, indeed strictly Neo-Nazi tendencies – polite expression – are alive and kicking in key units of Ukraine’s armed forces. Dear colleagues from France: Congratulations! And you should see the politics.

“Words like “net zero,” “decarbonization,” and “climate justice” sound pure and benevolent, yet behind them stands an apparatus of control.”

• Green Agenda Is Killing Europe’s Ancestry (Constantin Von Hoffmeister)

Western Europe’s new green regime reorders the continent through policies of territorial cleansing and restriction, replacing the lifeways of rooted peoples with a managed wilderness shaped by remote technocrats and mandated compliance. What arrives with the language of environmental deliverance advances as a mechanism of control, engineered to dissolve ancestral bonds.In the soft light of the northern dawn, when the fog rests over fields once furrowed by hands and prayers, a quiet force spreads, cloaked in green, speaking in the language of “sustainability,” offered with the glow of planetary care. Across Europe, policymakers, consultants, and unelected “visionaries” enforce a grand design of regulation and restraint.

The new dogma wears the trappings of salvation. It promises healing, stability, and ecological redemption. Yet beneath the surface lies a different pattern: one of compression, centralization, and engineered transformation. This green wave comes through offices aglow with LED light and carbon dashboards, distant from the oak groves and shepherd chants that once shaped Europe through destiny and devotion. Traditional Europe lived through the pulse of the land, its customs drawn from meadows, its laws mirrored in trees, its faith carried by the wind over tilled soil and cathedral towers. The terms arrive prepackaged: “rewilding,” “net zero,” “decarbonization,” and “climate justice.” These sound pure, ringing with the cadence of science and morality. Their syllables shimmer with precision, yet behind their clarity stands an apparatus of control, drawn from abstract algorithms rather than ancestral experience.

They conceal a deeper impulse: to dissolve density, to steer the population from the scattered villages of memory into the smart cities of control. The forest returns, yet the shepherd departs. The wolves are celebrated, while the farmer disappears from policy. Across the hills of France, the valleys of Italy, and the plains of Germany, the primordial cadence falls silent. Where once rose smoke from chimneys, now rise sensors tracking deer. Where once stood barns, now appear habitats for reintroduced apex predators. Rural life, the fundament of Europe’s civilizational ascent, receives accolades in speeches, even as its arteries are quietly severed.

The continent reshapes itself according to new models, conceived in simulation and consecrated in policy. Entire regions are earmarked for rewilding, which means exclusion, which means transformation through absence. The human imprint recedes, and in its place rises a curated silence: measured, observed, and sanctified by distance. The bond between man and land, established over centuries of cultivation, ritual, and kinship, gives way to managed wilderness. Yet this wilderness unfolds without its own rhythm, shaped and maintained through remote observation and coded intention. It remains indexed and administered. Every creature bears a tracking chip. Every tree falls under statistical oversight. Drones scan the canopies. Bureaucrats speak of ecosystems the way accountants speak of balance sheets. The sacred space, once alive with sacrifice and harvest, turns into a green exhibit in the managerial museum of Europe.

The minority opinion is a tad disturbing.

• Supreme Court Hands Trump Huge Win On Deporting ‘Worst’ Illegals (ZH)

The US Supreme Court just lifted a lower court’s order that required the Trump administration to give people 10 days’ notice and a chance to object before deporting them to a third country. “The United States is facing a crisis of illegal immigration, in no small part because many aliens most deserving of removal are often the hardest to remove,” Solicitor General John Saur wrote in an emergency application to the court in May. “When illegal aliens commit crimes in this country, they are typically ordered removed. But when those crimes are especially heinous, their countries of origin are often unwilling to take them back. As a result, criminal aliens are often allowed to stay in the United States for years on end, victimizing law-abiding Americans in the meantime.”

The brief unsigned order came in the case known as Department of Homeland Security v. D.V.D. with (surprise, surprise) Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan dissenting from the decision, who said they “cannot join so gross an abuse” of the high court’s authority. “Apparently, the Court finds the idea that thousands will suffer violence in farflung locales more palatable than the remote possibility that a District Court exceeded its remedial powers when it ordered the Government to provide notice and process to which the plaintiffs are constitutionally and statutorily entitled,” Sotomayor wrote. “That use of discretion is as incomprehensible as it is inexcusable.”

The government has tried to speed up the deportation process “by removing aliens to third countries that have agreed to accept them.” “Convincing third countries to accept some of the most undesirable aliens requires sensitive diplomacy, which involves negotiation and the balancing of other foreign-policy interests,” it stated. Now, the administration can proceed with fast-track deportations of “some of the worst of the worst illegal aliens” to countries it has made deals with, such as South Sudan. Of course, not everyone is happy. “The ramifications of the Supreme Court’s order will be horrifying,” said Trina Realmuto, executive director of the National Immigration Litigation Alliance. “It strips away critical due process protections…”

Pardon the Iranian interruption. We now return you to your regularly scheduled episode of "Egg Prices and Tariffs"… pic.twitter.com/J2epFIH4j0

— TheLastRefuge (@TheLastRefuge2) June 23, 2025

Soon-Shiong

Big Pharma spends billions on cancer drugs that may weaken our body’s natural defenses, but Dr. Soon-Shiong reveals a $10 test could hold the key to longevity—keeping your natural killer cells above 1,000 to fight cancer, infections, and more!

Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong unveils a… pic.twitter.com/IBEqts7zoq

— Camus (@newstart_2024) June 22, 2025

Train
https://twitter.com/jacksonhinklle/status/1937041363079503987

Elon

Elon Musk says Tesla’s fleet will be part Uber, part Airbnb

Tesla owners can easily add their vehicles to the autonomous fleet through the app when not using them.

They’ll earn money—often more than their monthly payment, while Tesla takes a small cut pic.twitter.com/j0tD7V3Onl

— Dima Zeniuk (@DimaZeniuk) June 22, 2025

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