Zero Hedge

MSM Claims MAHA "Threatens To Set Women Back Decades" 

MSM Claims MAHA "Threatens To Set Women Back Decades" 

An increasing number of Americans are abandoning processed foods and taking control of their own food supply chain—planting backyard gardens and sourcing meat, eggs, dairy, and pantry staples directly from local markets and farms. The trend, which is gaining momentum under the "Make America Healthy Again" movement—and even noted by Goldman—reflects a broader push for food independence and a return to community-based sourcing.

Not everyone is on board with MAHA — especially not the feminist journalists at SELF (owned by the corporate media company Condé Nast), who recently penned an article that reads like a hit piece against MAHA.

Erica Sloan's critique of MAHA is that food independence is unrealistic and burdensome for women in the modern progressive world. 

In her article titled "How the MAHA Food Agenda Threatens to Set Women Back Decades," Sloan writes...

But it's what MAHA isn't saying that's most important: Stoking so much fear around these vital industries implies that Americans—more specifically, the mothers of America—need to find a different way to feed their families.

"Women do a disproportionate share of the kind of work that the MAHA movement is asking people to do, which is to grow their own food, to prepare all of their food from scratch, and to avoid processed food and even packaged foods," Norah MacKendrick, PhD, associate professor of sociology at Rutgers University and author of Better Safe Than Sorry: How Consumers Navigate Exposure to Everyday Toxics, tells SELF. Even today, with approximately 60% of women working outside the home, women still spend about two hours more on housework daily and cook more than twice as many meals a week as men do. The implication that our current food system is inherently unsafe just stands to pile on the labor.

"In order for a family to eat a diet of mostly homegrown or even just homemade meals… that's going to be a lot more work for women and mothers especially," Dr. MacKendrick says. It's an ideal that the MAHA moms have already embodied—and that would be not only unrealistic but unfair to expect from all American families.

Decades? 

The angle that Sloan uses to bash MAHA via a quote from some woman in acemedia is entirely flawed, that's because MAHA doesn't force anyone to grow their own food or make everything from scratch—it simply raises awareness about the systemic failures of Big Food and Big Pharma and empowers families to reclaim control where possible. Some folks plant gardens, while others buy from local ranchers and farmers. The movement calls for informed choices and better public policy—not a return to the primitive 1800s—or is asking women to live like the modern-day Amish. 

Heaven forbid women to cook from scratch for their families! More nonsense from the PR journalist ... 

MAHA's villainization of food processing just adds the burden of cooking from scratch to women's plates.

The journalist concluded the article with this: "Processed and ultraprocessed items are also functional necessities for many, and can spark joy. And again, some of them have positive nutritional value." 

Meanwhile...

At the end of the article, SELF advises readers to...

Why SELF is targeting MAHA remains a mystery, though the answer may lie in who their mega-corporate advertisers are.

Tyler Durden Sun, 06/29/2025 - 20:25

Justice Kagan's Own Words Come Back To Haunt Her On Nationwide Injunctions

Justice Kagan's Own Words Come Back To Haunt Her On Nationwide Injunctions

Authored by Matt Margolis via PJMedia.com,

The Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision in Trump v. CASA, Inc., released Friday, finally put the brakes on the reckless abuse of nationwide injunctions by lower courts—and has Democrats in full meltdown mode. The left’s favorite judicial weapon just got neutered, and the hypocrisy is impossible to ignore.

The liberal wing of the court didn’t do itself any favors, either. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s dissent was so horrible that Justice Amy Coney Barrett felt compelled to call it out in the majority opinion.

But Justice Elena Kagan’s credibility also took a direct hit. In a stunning display of judicial flip-flopping, Kagan’s own words from 2022 have come back to haunt her, exposing the left’s all-too-familiar habit of changing the rules when it suits their political objectives. 

Nationwide injunctions have been the left’s go-to tactic for derailing conservative policy at the stroke of a single judge’s pen. Under Trump, district judges from deep-blue enclaves repeatedly issued sweeping orders to block administration policies nationwide at an unprecedented pace, no matter how tenuous the legal grounds. 

Despite all the apocalyptic rhetoric, there’s no doubt that the left’s current position on nationwide injunctions is purely political—and Justice Elena Kagan accidentally proved it.

How? Well, Justice Kagan, who dissented in this case, was singing a very different tune just a couple of years ago.

Back in 2022, when President Biden was in the White House and conservatives were the ones seeking relief from his executive orders, Kagan was openly skeptical of nationwide injunctions. 

“This can’t be right that one district judge can stop a nationwide policy in its tracks and leave it stuck for the years that it takes to go through a normal process,” she said. 

That’s not some out-of-context paraphrase—it’s her own words, on the record.

Fast forward to 2025, and suddenly Kagan’s skepticism has evaporated. Now that Donald Trump is back in the Oval Office, she’s all-in for the same judicial overreach she once panned. It just goes to show you who the real partisans on the court are. They aren’t adhering to any particular judicial philosophy or the Constitution, they care only about whether a particular ruling hurts or benefits the Democratic Party.

This isn’t just about one justice’s hypocrisy. It’s a window into the left’s broader approach to power. When they control the levers of government, they demand deference and restraint from the courts. When they’re out of power, they want unelected judges to act as a permanent veto against any policy they dislike. It’s not about the Constitution or the separation of powers—it’s about maintaining their grip on the bureaucracy by any means necessary.

The Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v. CASA, Inc. is a must-needed correction, that frankly, should have been bipartisan. It restores a measure of balance and puts an end to the judicial free-for-all that has plagued our system for far too long. And if Justice Kagan and her allies are upset, maybe they should reread their own words from just a few years ago. Consistency, after all, used to be a virtue. But in today’s Democratic Party, it’s just another casualty of the endless war for power.

The Supreme Court just restored the rule of law—and the left can’t handle it.

Tyler Durden Sun, 06/29/2025 - 19:50

11 Signs That The Entire Country Is Facing Enormous Economic Challenges Right Now

11 Signs That The Entire Country Is Facing Enormous Economic Challenges Right Now

Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

While everyone has been preoccupied with the war in the Middle East and the anti-ICE protests going on around the nation, economic conditions in the U.S. have continued to deteriorate.  The housing market is in abysmal shape, consumer spending is down and layoffs are way up.   Meanwhile, fear of our seemingly endless cost of living crisis is preventing the Federal Reserve from cutting interest rates, and we shouldn’t expect any additional “economic stimulus” from our politicians in Washington any time soon because the federal government is already facing an unprecedented debt crisis.  In other words, our economy is a giant mess and the cavalry isn’t going to come riding along to save us.

If you find yourself deeply struggling in this difficult economic environment, you are definitely not alone.  

The following are 11 signs that the entire country is facing enormous economic challenges right now…

#1 Sales of new homes in the United States absolutely tanked last month…

Sales of new single-family homes dropped 13.7% in May compared with April to 623,000 units on a seasonally adjusted, annualized basis, according to the U.S. Census.

That sales total was 6.3% lower than May 2024 and well below both the six-month average of 671,000 and the one-year average of 676,000. It also lags the pre-pandemic average in 2019 of 685,000 units sold.

Wall Street analysts were expecting May new home sales of 695,000, according to estimates from Dow Jones.

#2 According to the latest numbers that we have been given, home prices in the U.S. have fallen for two months in a row…

After US home pries declined in March (the latest data) for the first time in over two years, this morning’s Case-Shiller Home Price Index data was expected to show another drop in the cost of buying a home.

And the consensus was right but way off in magnitude as prices in April tumbled 0.31% MoM (-0.02% exp) – the biggest MoM drop since Dec 2022…

#3 Last month, existing home sales in the U.S. were the worst that we have seen during the month of May since 2009.

#4 Retail sales fell even more than expected last month…

Consumer spending pulled back sharply in May, weighed down by declining gas sales and looming unease over where the economy is headed, the Commerce Department reported Tuesday.

Retail sales declined 0.9%, even more than the 0.6% drop expected from the Dow Jones consensus, according to numbers adjusted for seasonality but not inflation. The decline followed a 0.1% loss in April and came at a time of unease over tariffs and geopolitical tensions.

#5 The Federal Reserve Bank of New York is warning that the labor market “deteriorated noticeably” during the first quarter of this year…

Economic research from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York indicated the labor market “deteriorated noticeably” in the first quarter of 2025, with those just entering the workforce taking the hardest hits.

The Labor Department reported that employers added 139,000 jobs in May while unemployment held steady at 4.2%. The unemployment rate for all college grads was 2.7%, but the rate for those between the ages of 22 and 27 years old jumped to 5.8%, according to the New York Federal Reserve. That’s the highest reading since 2021.

#6 According to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, U.S. employers announced 47 percent more job cuts in May 2025 than they did in May 2024…

Layoffs of U.S. workers were nearly 50% higher in May than they were a year ago, with reductions attributed to the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) remaining the leading reason for job cuts this year, according to a new report.

Global outplacement Challenger, Gray & Christmas on Thursday released a report that said there were 93,816 job cuts announced by U.S. employers in May. That amounts to an increase of 47% from 63,816 announced last May, while last month’s figure was down 12% from 105,441 cuts in April.

#7 For the first five months of this year, U.S. employers announced 80 percent more job cuts than they did during the first five months of last year…

That brings the total number of job cuts announced this year to 696,309 — an increase of 80% from the 385,859 jobs cut in the first five months of 2024. This year’s total is just 65,049 job cuts away from matching the 2024 annual total.

“Tariffs, funding cuts, consumer spending, and overall economic pessimism are putting intense pressure on companies’ workforces. Companies are spending less, slowing hiring, and sending layoff notices,” said Andrew Challenger, senior vice president of Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

#8 Factories in California are permanently shutting down at a staggering pace…

All within a week, California lost Amy’s Kitchen’s San Jose plant (331 jobs), Anheuser-Busch’s Oakland warehouse complex (142 jobs), and several smaller plants, all for unsustainable prices and operational disruption.

Amy’s Kitchen, for example, was losing $1 million monthly, consumed by inflation, labor shortages, and supply chain problems. Anheuser-Busch’s exodus, conversely, left workers in suspense as the plant changed hands without a guarantee of employment.

It is not bad luck, evidence of a business environment where even legendary companies can’t survive the relentless fiscal squeeze.

#9 More than 3 percent of Paramount’s entire workforce will be hitting the bricks…

Paramount Global is trimming its U.S. workforce by 3.5% in a move to cut costs.

The company’s plans to cut jobs were announced Tuesday by its three co-CEOs in a company-wide memo viewed by FOX Business.

Co-CEOs George Cheeks, Chris McCarthy and Brian Robbins said in the message that Paramount was “taking the hard, but necessary steps to further streamline our organization this week.”

#10 Microsoft is cutting jobs in its gaming division for the fourth time in 18 months…

Microsoft is planning another round of cuts at Xbox as part of the tech giant’s ongoing reorganization.

Xbox managers are expecting substantial job cuts across the entire group as soon as next week, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg. This marks the fourth time Microsoft downsized its gaming division in the past 18 months, the outlet reported. Several video game studios at the company’s Xbox division were shuttered in 2024, too.

#11 At this point, things are so bad that even Google is reducing headcount…

Google on Tuesday offered buyouts to employees across several of its divisions, including those within its knowledge and information and central engineering units as well as marketing, research and communications teams, CNBC has learned.

Knowledge and information, or K&I, is the unit that houses Google’s search, ads and commerce divisions. The buyouts Tuesday are the company’s latest effort to reduce headcount, which Google has continued to do in waves since laying off 12,000 employees in 2023.

CNBC could not confirm how many employees were impacted by the latest round of buyouts. The Information reported earlier that the company offered buyouts to employees in the search and ads unit.

Our ongoing economic decline is just one element of the “perfect storm” that we are now experiencing.

Everywhere around us, chaos is erupting.

Unfortunately, I believe that conditions will become even more chaotic in the months ahead.

If you currently have a job that you value, I would hold on to it as tightly as you can.

We all remember what happened in 2008 and 2009, and now it appears that another very serious downturn has arrived.

*  *  *

Michael’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

Tyler Durden Sun, 06/29/2025 - 12:50

Zohran Mamdani's Socialist Policies Would Put The Final Nail In New York's Coffin

Zohran Mamdani's Socialist Policies Would Put The Final Nail In New York's Coffin

Socialists always rise to power in the midst of failed liberal leadership.  The assumption being that liberal policies accomplish nothing because they "don't go far enough" to push the collectivist values of wealth redistribution and equity-based cultural engineering.  If only the political left asserted more control over people's lives and property, all the ailments of American society would magically disappear.

In most cases socialism also fails to make people's lives better.  Though one could argue that it does eventually achieve its goals of equal wealth - Socialism makes everyone equally poor.  In countries where socialism actually finds "success" a couple of factors are always present:  A small population that avoids multiculturalism and mixed demographics, and access to abundant natural resources.   

Wherever socialism in introduced into an otherwise prosperous economy, the standard of living automatically degrades.  When socialism is used as a bandage to stop the financial bleeding of a depressed market wounded by liberal management, it always makes things far worse.

The city of New York is on the verge of learning this lesson the hard way with the sudden popularity of mayoral candidate Zohran Mandani.  Zohran Mamdani, a 33-year-old assemblyman, democratic socialist and "rap music producer", defied expectations when he pulled well ahead to presumed victory over former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in New York City's June 24 Democratic mayoral primary. 

While there were 11 candidates on the ranked-choice ballot, preliminary polling named Cuomo and Mamdani the front-runners by a large margin. Cuomo frequently polled above Mamdani in the weeks leading up to voting day, but the former governor ultimately ended up calling his opponent on Tuesday night to concede.  Mamdani led Cuomo 44% to 36% among first-place votes, with 96% of ballots counted as of around 1 p.m. on Wednesday, June 25

A Muslim immigrant born and raised in Uganda, Mamdani only became a legal citizen in the US in 2018.  He supports communistic economic reforms and woke social engineering concepts.  If you thought NYC could not be any worse, get ready because if Mamdani becomes Mayor his policies will prove the progressive enclave has far further to fall.  A look at his campaign proposals reveals a disturbing list of childish ideas that would put the final nail in New York's coffin.

Rent And Housing Controls

New York already made this deadly mistake during the covid lockdowns when they applied an eviction moratorium from 2020 to 2022.  Government property controls in any form tend to force owners out of rental markets, compelling them to sell their properties in order to avoid losing money in the future maintaining homes and apartment buildings that don't bring in a profit.

As owners sell, renters are made homeless and the supply shrinks, causing rents to skyrocket even higher.  The vacancy rate for rental housing in NYC has dropped to 1.4%, (the lowest since 1968).

Mamdani has consistently called for multi-year rent price freeze and acts as if property owners are the source of New York's rent inflation.  In reality, the prices are rising because of basic supply and demand.  A price freeze would not solve the the problem of diminishing supply for renters.  In fact, it would drive more owners out of the market and reduce the supply even further.  Prices might be suppressed by the government, but more and more people will have to leave New York or become homeless. 

The result would be a disaster for the city as the population shrinks and tax revenues decline, and Mamdani's reforms require more taxes, not less. 

The candidate hopes to offset the supply problem with government subsidized housing, but this will mean billions in tax expenditures over the course of the next ten years.  Similar efforts in California have resulted in disaster along with billions in wasted taxes and their homeless problem has only increased.  Building housing is also expensive and socialists can't make contractors work for free.  The solution would be for progressive politicians to drastically reduce regulations on construction and cut taxes, but they will never do this.

Defunding The Police

Mamdani has long been a proponent of defunding the police along with other woke notions of reducing crime by reducing enforcement.  He has recently changed his position, claiming he will not cut funding to police as New Yorkers grow increasingly fearful of theft and violence.  However, his policies remain suspect and he argues that criminal violence "is an artificial construct".

He plans to create a "Department of Community Safety", a proposal that includes increased investment in mental health programs and crisis response, expanding "evidence-based gun violence prevention programs" and increasing funding to "hate violence prevention programs" by 800%. 

In other words, Mamdani is going to pursue strict gun controls that will disarm law abiding citizens, making them easier to victimize.  Furthermore, focus on mental health will likely come at the expense of actual prosecution and jail time for offenders, meaning repeat criminals will run rampant.  "Hate violence" is a non-issue in NYC unless one counts attacks on Asians, often committed by black perpetrators as video evidence shows.  This is not something that a leftist like Mamdani will acknowledge.

As we have seen in leftist cities like Seattle and Portland, overt restrictions on policing lead to a law enforcement exodus.  Cops quit in droves and move away, leaving the population with less protection and more crime.

City Owned Grocery Stores

Leftists are outraged by the fact that retailers are closing up shop in high crime neighborhoods, leaving residents with "food deserts" and less jobs.  The thing is, the residents are the problem, not the companies that are forced to leave to avoid constant theft. 

On top of this, grocery prices are incredibly high after the stagflation crisis struck under the Biden Administration, leaving Democrats struggling to find a way to reduce costs and avoid losing even more of their working class voter base. 

Mamdani's solution is, of course, more price controls.  This time through government operated grocery stores. Mamdani has said he plans to address the cost of food by creating city-owned grocery stores that will pay no rent or property taxes, buy and sell at wholesale prices from centralized warehouses and partner with local vendors to keep prices down.  Meaning, the city would have to manage the entire supply chain to these stores in order to get the price cuts Mamdani wants.

Typically this leads suppliers to stop supplying as their profits shrink to nothing when dealing with socialist government buyers.  One must also ask why Mamdani doesn't simply reduce taxes on existing retailers in exchange for helping food prices go down?  Government grocery stores with price controls might lower costs for consumers, but they would also destroy local competition, causing more and more companies to leave NYC, creating even more "food deserts".

Raising Minimum Wage To $30

The minimum wage debate is built on naivety.  Socialist think they can dictate one aspect of the free market without negative consequences on all other aspects of the free market.  Mamdani's plan to raise New York City's minimum wage to $30 would be devastating to the economy, driving employers out of the area.  The same thing that happened when Seattle raised their minimum wage to $20, and California is experiencing an exodus of fast food jobs after they raised wages to $20.  

The only way this idea would not end with businesses fleeing the city is if the government forced a tax as punishment for companies that relocate (as California tried to do). 

Higher Taxes On "Richer And Whiter" Neighborhoods

Mamdani is fully onboard with DEI initiatives including race based wealth redistribution.  In his "Soak The Rich" proposal, Mamdani states:  

“Shift the tax burden from overtaxed homeowners in the outer boroughs to more expensive homes in richer and whiter neighborhoods..."

While many New Yorkers support the idea of balancing property taxes, the candidate's calls to target "white neighborhoods" has raised concerns that he is seeking to implement hidden reparations through race-based taxation. 

At bottom, Mamdani's campaign is rooted in an even more extreme version of the platform that led to the defeat of the Democratic Party in 2024.  As mayor in NYC, it's inevitable that these policies would destroy what remains of New York's already struggling economy and trigger a capital flight the likes of which the city has never seen before. 

Tyler Durden Sun, 06/29/2025 - 12:15

Texas Law Gives Grid Operator Power To Disconnect Data Centers During Crisis

Texas Law Gives Grid Operator Power To Disconnect Data Centers During Crisis

By Brian Martucci of UtilityDrive

Utilities, energy system analysts and ERCOT expect exponential growth of data centers and other large loads in Texas over the next several years. ERCOT forecasts 138 GW of large loads on its grid by 2030, up from 87 GW this year.

Even if only a fraction of proposed data centers get built, the boom could threaten grid reliability during the spring and fall months, when many thermal generators go down for planned maintenance, Aurora Energy Research said earlier this month. Reliability is already a concern in some parts of ERCOT — including the San Antonio area, where ERCOT is deploying more than 400 MW of mobile generation units and inked a costly “reliability must run” agreement with an aging 400-MW gas plant. 

Aurora models suggest data centers will be the largest single source of load flexibility available to mitigate Texas’ reliability risk. By 2030, up to 50% of the expected 35 GW of ERCOT’s data center capacity could provide some degree of emergency reliability support, Aurora said.

S.B. 6 authorizes the Public Utility Commission of Texas to develop two demand management programs — one mandatory and one voluntary — to ensure Texas data centers and other non-critical large loads help rather than hinder reliability.

The law’s intent is “to make sure [large loads] pose as little reliability risk to the system as possible and [are] not drinking the milkshake of all other Texas power customers,” NRG Vice President of Regulatory Affairs Travis Kavulla said in an interview.

S.B. 6 could avoid a future scenario like Winter Storm Uri, the dayslong freeze in February 2021 that saw millions of residential customers cut off from the grid as nearby industrial loads hummed along, Kavulla added.

The mandatory demand management program applies to loads of 75 MW or greater that interconnect to ERCOT from January onwards. It allows utilities to disconnect eligible loads during firm load shed events and mandates the installation of shutoff equipment as a condition of grid interconnection.

The voluntary program is a competitively procured reliability service active during specific times of the year, subject to a minimum 24-hour notice period and off-limits to any large-load customer that “curtails in response to the wholesale price of electricity … or that otherwise participates in a different reliability or ancillary service,” the law says.

The advance warning period is key for this sort of voluntary program, especially one counting on participation from hyperscale data centers with sensitive IT equipment worth billions, Kavulla said.

“This should not be the kind of demand response where you’re calling it with no notice and curtailing the customer straight off,” he said.

The mandatory program will surely alleviate stress on the ERCOT grid during extreme weather events but the jury is still out on customer uptake for the voluntary program, Kavulla said. Some data center operators have sounded open to voluntarily curtailing their loads or switching to onsite backup generation when needed, while others have been more resistant, he noted.

Kavulla credited Texas legislators for “calling the question,” however. 

“They have decided to create a market and test [customers’] willingness to participate,” he said. “Nothing gets people thinking like offering them money.”

Kavulla and Texas Blockchain Council President Lee Bratcher cheered other S.B. 6 provisions, like a $100,000 minimum initial interconnection fee for large load customers and a requirement that such customers disclose to utilities any potentially duplicative interconnection requests elsewhere in Texas. 

Both provisions could mitigate the “phantom loads” gumming up utility and grid operator forecasts in Texas and elsewhere, Bratcher said in an email.

“The Texas Blockchain Council and our member companies are glad to see that Senate Bill 6 tackles the phantom load challenge associated with the interconnection queue [and gives ERCOT] a more accurate picture of future load growth,” Bratcher said.

Some experts say 80% to 90% of proposed data centers in the U.S. interconnection queue will never get built, in part because they duplicate requests made in other utility territories.

The next step for ERCOT and its continental counterpart, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, is to “develop a non-firm load category for modeling purposes [that] would greatly increase the efficient utilization of transmission infrastructure and properly signal load behavior expectations to the transmission/distribution service providers,” Bratcher said.

And while Texas’s intrastate electricity market makes it something of a special case, some core S.B. 6 provisions are transferable to other states in the restructured Eastern markets, Kavulla said.

For example, states in the PJM Interconnection “could certainly precondition or accelerate interconnection of large loads on the basis of their willingness to participate in demand response,” he said.

Tyler Durden Sun, 06/29/2025 - 11:40

Senate Advances Trump Tax & Spending Bill In Saturday Night Vote

Senate Advances Trump Tax & Spending Bill In Saturday Night Vote

Update (2335ET): Senate Republicans narrowly advanced President Trump's tax and spending package, as GOP lawmakers in both chambers are hoping to pass the legislation by the 4th of July. Now that the bill has advanced, it will be followed by a Democrat-demand to read the entire 1,000-page bill on the floor (total children) before a maximum 20 hours of debate on the legislation and a multi-hour vote-o-rama, putting it on course for final passage from Sunday into Monday.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (AP)

Two Republicans voted against the bill; Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) - who opposed raising the debt ceiling by $5 trillion, and Thom Tillis (R-NC), who says the 'Big Beautiful Bill' could cost his state heavily when it comes to Medicaid funding.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) flipped his vote from "no" to "aye," while Sens. Mike Lee (UT), Rick Scott (FL) and Cynthia Lummis (WY) also voted yes. 

There was drama into the home stretch... less than an hour after the vote opened up, Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Lee, and Scott, hadn't made an appearance on the Senate floor. Paul and Tillis had previously announced that they would oppose the motion to proceed, and could not support the bill in its current form. 

When Murkowski finally sauntered onto the floor, Thune quickly approached her along with Sens. Barrasso, Graham, and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Mike Crapo (R-ID), who peppered her with demands - as one does when it comes to Lisa Murkowski...

*  *  *

Update (1718ET): Elon Musk has weighed in on the Senate's latest iteration of President Trump's tax and spending bill, calling it "utterly insane and destructive," and that it will "destroy millions of jobs in America and cause immense strategic harm to our country!"

Musk also called it 'political suicide.'

Meanwhile, Senate Republicans are marching toward an initial vote Saturday afternoon despite several GOP Senators expressing grave concerns. 

Both Sens. Susan Collins (Maine) and Thom Tillis (North Carolina) are either "leaning against" or "no" on final passage. According to Politico, Trump "has personally reached out to Tillis to try to work him on the bill."

If at least two other Republicans join Tillis to oppose the procedural vote Saturday afternoon, Senate leadership would have to rely on Vice President JD Vance to break a tie to move forward to debate the bill. Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Tim Sheehy (R-Mont.) all have concerns that could drive them to vote against moving forward.

Johnson and Paul, who have been vocally opposed to the bill because of its impact on the national debt, met with the president on Saturday shortly before the vote, according to Lee.

According to Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK), "We won’t bring it to the floor if we don’t have the votes," adding "I think it’d be better to have the vice president close. I don’t know if we’re going to need him."

*  *  *

Senate Republicans unveiled a revised version of President Trump’s $4.2 trillion tax package early Saturday morning, making targeted concessions on state tax deductions, Medicaid policy, and renewable energy provisions in an effort to unite their caucus ahead of a July 4 deadline set by the White House.

The updated draft reflects compromises among Senate GOP factions that have sparred for weeks over how aggressively to cut social safety net programs and whether to roll back clean energy incentives enacted under the Biden administration. The legislation, if passed, would serve as the centerpiece of Mr. Trump’s second-term economic agenda.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune announced that voting on the bill would begin Saturday afternoon, with a final vote potentially coming as soon as Sunday. If it does pass the Senate, Republican leaders have indicated they will call House members back to Washington early next week in hopes of sending the legislation to the president’s desk before Independence Day.

However, it remains uncertain whether all 50 Republican senators are prepared to back the measure. Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin said Saturday on Fox News that he would oppose beginning debate on the bill immediately, citing the need for more time. “This is an important bill,” Johnson said. “There’s no need to rush it.”

A Revised SALT Cap

To address concerns from House Republicans representing high-tax states, the new draft raises the cap on the state and local tax (SALT) deduction from $10,000 to $40,000 for five years. The cap would snap back to its original level thereafter, with a modest 1% annual increase during the interim period. The deduction would begin phasing out for taxpayers earning more than $500,000 annually.

A House provision aimed at curbing SALT workarounds used by pass-through businesses was stripped from the text. While fiscal conservatives have criticized the SALT compromise as overly generous, the deal is expected to secure the support of swing-district Republicans and has been endorsed by the White House.

Senate Republicans also removed a controversial Section 899 “revenge tax” on foreign companies and investors following concerns from Wall Street and a request from Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

Tax Relief and Medicaid Tweaks

The legislation makes permanent the individual and corporate tax cuts first enacted in 2017 and introduces new temporary breaks for tipped workers, seniors, and car buyers. In a nod to moderate Republicans, the revised bill creates a $25 billion rural hospital fund intended to mitigate the effects of Medicaid spending reductions that critics warn could threaten services in underserved areas.

Senator Susan Collins of Maine had pressed for a $100 billion allocation but has not yet commented on whether the smaller fund will earn her support.

The new version delays the full impact of a 3.5% cap on state Medicaid provider taxes from 2031 to 2032. The cap, which would begin phasing in by 2028, applies only to states that expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. Additionally, the bill imposes new work requirements for Medicaid recipients and would require ACA-expansion beneficiaries to contribute to their care through co-pays or deductibles.

Renewable Energy Rollbacks and New Land Sales

Republicans accelerated the phaseout of tax credits for wind and solar energy projects, now requiring such projects to be fully operational by the end of 2027 to qualify. That change, reportedly supported by Mr. Trump, could impact companies like NextEra Energy, the nation’s largest renewable developer.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer criticized the change, warning on social media that the rollback would “jack up your electric bills and jeopardize hundreds of thousands of jobs.”

The bill also ends the $7,500 electric vehicle tax credit sooner than earlier versions proposed, cutting it off after September 30, 2025, including for used and commercial EVs.

A separate provision reinstated in the draft would authorize the sale of up to 1.2 million acres of federal land across 11 western states for housing and community development, a measure pushed by Senator Mike Lee of Utah. The plan could raise up to $6 billion but faces resistance from GOP senators in affected states.

Tax credits for hydrogen production, originally slated to end this year, would now continue through 2028 for projects started by then.

Broader Cuts and Debt Ceiling Increase

The legislation includes steep cuts to funding for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and federal food assistance programs, while increasing allocations for the U.S.-Mexico border wall. It preserves $15 million in funding for a task force to study alternatives to the IRS Direct File program, though it drops language that would have terminated the free filing service entirely — a defeat for tax software providers like Intuit.

A proposed tax on money transfers by non-citizens was scaled back from 3.5% to 1%, a win for companies like Western Union and MoneyGram.

Finally, the bill would raise the debt ceiling by $5 trillion, a move intended to avert a potential federal default projected for as early as August.

With internal GOP divisions still simmering, the path to final passage remains uncertain. Yet with Independence Day looming, Senate Republicans are betting that the new concessions will be enough to unify their ranks — and deliver a long-sought legislative victory for the president.

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/28/2025 - 23:43

China's Economy Spirals With No End In Sight, Says Kyle Bass

China's Economy Spirals With No End In Sight, Says Kyle Bass

Authored by Frank Fang and Jan Jekielek via The Epoch Times,

Communist China is grappling with the most severe economic crisis in its history, a downturn that the regime will not recover from, according to Kyle Bass, founder and chief investment officer of Hayman Capital Management.

“There is nothing that is going to bail China out of their economic spiral. They’re having a real estate crisis, a banking crisis, a youth unemployment crisis, and now they need to be worried about their current account,” Bass said in an interview on EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders” that aired on June 26.

Bass said U.S. tariffs and declining trade threaten China’s economic advantage, which is its trade surplus with the United States.

China’s exports to the United States plunged by 35 percent in May compared to a year earlier, according to Chinese customs data.

“China’s once bright spot is now in question,” Bass said. “I actually am surprised it’s not down more.”

China has also been hit hard by capital flight.

In 2024, Bass said, China experienced a massive outflow of both foreign direct investment (FDI) and portfolio investment totaling about $500 billion, pointing to the gap between its trade surplus of about $980 billion and its current account surplus of about $420 billion.

China is also facing unsustainable debts. When combining China’s sovereign debt and local government financing debt, Bass estimated that the country’s debt-to-GDP ratio should be roughly 350 percent, which he said is difficult to manage considering the various economic challenges.

Another indicator of China’s financial crisis is the performance of China’s bond market, Bass said. As of June 27, the yield on China’s 10-year sovereign bond is approximately 1.64 percent, compared to 4.26 percent for the U.S. 10-year Treasury.

“So the Chinese government is pretty good at lying about whatever they want to lie about, but the bond market kind of tells the truth, and the bond markets telling you that China is in an economic winter,” Bass said.

China’s economic troubles have persisted for several years, highlighted by the collapse of major real estate developers Evergrande and Country Garden, which marked the onset of the current property crisis in 2021.

In February, the national unemployment rate reached 5.7 percent, the highest in two years, while the youth jobless rate topped 16.9 percent.

Adding to the concerns, consumer prices fell for a fourth consecutive month in May, while industrial profits decreased by 9.1 percent compared to a year earlier, underscoring deepening deflatory pressures in the world’s second-largest economy.

Taiwan

Despite China’s economic struggles, the United States continues to rely on China for certain imports, particularly rare earths and pharmaceutical ingredients.

According to data from the U.S. Geological Survey, the United States imported 70 percent of its rare earths from China between 2020 and 2023.

In the face of China’s leverage over these items, Bass said that the United States retains the ultimate “trump card” through its control of the global dollar system.

“They don’t have the ability to purchase things around the world in yuan or RMB because no one accepts a currency they don’t trust or that doesn’t trade,” Bass said.

Bass stated that the United States should signal to Beijing its intention to sever China’s access to the dollar system, the very moment the regime initiates military action against Taiwan.

“Deterrence is something that we should all be engaging in to try to stop China from being militaristically belligerent with Taiwan,” Bass said.

“That is a better first move on our part than sending carrier strike groups of our brave men and women into the Taiwan Strait in a kinetic conflict with China ... tens of thousands of our men and women will die if that happens.”

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) claims Taiwan as a renegade province, intent on annexing the island, though the regime has never exercised authority there. Taiwan is a de facto independent nation with its own democratically elected government, military, constitution, and currency.

In May, during a speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth warned about CCP leader Xi Jinping’s timetable for making a move against Taiwan.

“It’s public that Xi has ordered his military to be capable of invading Taiwan by 2027,” Hegeseth said at the time.

“Any attempt by communist China to conquer Taiwan by force would result in devastating consequences for the Indo-Pacific and the world.”

President Donald Trump’s recent decision to bomb three Iranian nuclear facilities “got China’s attention,” Bass said.

“I bet it unmoored China’s views of warfare,” he added

Bass said he believed the situation in Iran “is going to make the Chinese think twice about being more belligerent on the military side with Taiwan.”

Ultimately, the Chinese regime aims to break the first and second island chains and “project power all the way to San Francisco,” Bass said.

Taiwan sits at the heart of the first island chain that stretches from the southern Japanese island of Kyushu, the Philippines, to the Malay Peninsula. The second island chain extends from Japan through Guam to Micronesia.

Bass warned that “allowing China to simply take over Taiwan is something that is an existential national security crisis for the U.S.”

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/28/2025 - 23:20

White House Pressures Syria To Normalize Ties with Israel Amid 'Quiet Talks'

White House Pressures Syria To Normalize Ties with Israel Amid 'Quiet Talks'

President Trump believes Syria may soon join the Abraham Accords, based on comments given to reporters by White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt on Friday. The reasoning seems to be that with Assad out, this provides an opportunity to control the outcome and force Damascus to make peace with Israel.

After all, Syria under the Assad family was the single fiercest, longtime enemy of Israel, with a de facto state of war on for half-a-century, centered on the occupied Golan Heights.

Leavitt told reporters that Trump remains optimistic about expanding the peace agreement. She confirmed that the president brought up the issue directly with Syria’s new de facto leader, Ahmad al-Sharaa (aka. US-terror designated Jolani) during this Riyadh visit and Gulf tour. 

"One of President Trump’s main requests during his meeting with President Sharaa was for Syria to join the Abraham Accords," Leavitt said. "Achieving a lasting peace in the Middle East is a core objective for this administration."

Sharaa had reportedly told US Representative Cory Mills during a visit in April that Syria was open to joining the accords under the "right conditions."

US Special Envoy to Syria Thomas Barrack has also been bringing the pressure. He has recently referenced quiet discussions with Damascus underway, amid the reopening of the ambassador's residence in Damascus - a first since 2012.

Barrack encouraged the international community to give Syria's new leadership "an opportunity to prove its new direction."

However, so far the government stacked with Jolani's Hayat Tahrir al-Sham members has turned a blind eye to massacres targeting Alawites, Christians, and Druze - along the coast and in Damascus and elsewhere.

Sadly, this whole ugly reality seems to be missing from White House statements. Why didn't Trump name as a firm condition the protection of churches, for example, as a basis for dropping sanctions on Syria?

Just last week Mar Elias Orthodox Church in Damascus was attacked by a suicide bomber, resulting in the deaths of 25 people and scores more wounded.

What government is looking out for Syria's religious minorities? Certainly Washington appears to have shrugged as Damascus' new hardline Sunni masters engage in deal-making, and a blind eye is turned to their ISIS and Al-Qaeda past.

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/28/2025 - 22:45

The Business Of Broken Self-Worth In The Digital Age

The Business Of Broken Self-Worth In The Digital Age

Authored by Kay Rubacek via The Epoch Times,

A new study from JAMA Pediatrics should stop us in our tracks: early adolescents who report addictive use of screens—not just frequent use—are more than twice as likely to consider suicide within two years.

Not because they’re online too much, but because they can’t stop.

At the same time, a young woman named Caroline Koziol, once a top athlete and student, is suing TikTok and Instagram after their algorithms flooded her feed with eating disorder content. What began as a search for fitness tips spiraled into full-blown anorexia. Hers is just one of over 1,800 similar cases being filed.

This isn’t a glitch in the system. It is the system.

Social media platforms aren’t just reflecting our insecurities—they’re cultivating them. Why? Because insecurity is profitable. When a teen feels like they’re not enough—too fat, too plain, too quiet—they stay online longer. They scroll, they compare, they engage. And every second they spend chasing validation, someone else cashes in.

What we’re seeing is the weaponization of low self-worth, scaled by algorithm and monetized by design.

That may sound harsh. But let’s be honest: this is not new. For decades, the beauty industry, fashion, even wellness trends have profited from telling people—especially women and girls—that they’re not quite good enough as they are. Social media just industrialized the tactic.

Now, platforms optimize for compulsive behavior, not joy or creativity. Addictive engagement is rewarded; mental health is collateral damage.

The truth is, many industries benefit when people doubt themselves: advertisers profit from the fear of not measuring up, influencers and online gurus sell the illusion of “fixing” your flaws, and even parts of the pharmaceutical and therapy world expand when anxiety and depression rise.

And those are just the commercial beneficiaries. Politically, a public that lacks confidence is easier to sway. Easier to divide. Easier to control.

The erosion of self-worth isn’t just a personal struggle—it’s a public vulnerability. And in the digital age, it’s becoming systemic.

We need to call this what it is: a cultural emergency. The lawsuits against Meta and other platforms are a start, but they won’t be enough on their own. If we want meaningful change, we need three things:

  • First, legal and design accountability. Platforms must be held responsible for the psychological effects of the algorithms they deploy. That means transparency in how recommendation systems work and consequences when they clearly lead to harm.

  • Second, parental and educational empowerment. We must teach young people not only how to use tech—but how to resist it. To spot manipulation. To value themselves beyond a like count.

  • And third, we need a cultural shift. Self-worth cannot be treated as a niche concern or a private battle. It’s a foundation for freedom, resilience, and public health. When people believe they matter, they’re less likely to be controlled—and more likely to create.

Because the real danger isn’t just that tech platforms make people feel worthless.
 It’s that people don’t even realize it’s happening.

And when you don’t believe in your own worth, you’re willing to trade it—for anything that promises to give it back.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/28/2025 - 22:10

Russian Military Instructs China How To Beat US & NATO Weapons

Russian Military Instructs China How To Beat US & NATO Weapons

One key trend to have emerged over the course of the Russia-Ukraine war is that China, Iran, and Russia are increasingly and very openly cooperating militarily and technologically, including Moscow sharing experience gained in the course of its Ukraine ground operations.

Newsweek reports that "Russia plans to train hundreds of Chinese military personnel this year on lessons learned from its ongoing invasion of Ukraine," based on regional sources. Some of what has been 'learned' is how to defend against US-made and NATO-supplied weaponry - something which Beijing is surely interested in amid the long-running Taiwan standoff with Washington.

Kremlin file image

"Instructors will cover methods for countering weapons systems used by Ukrainian forces that were produced by the United States and its NATO allies, a source in Ukraine's top intelligence agency told the outlet," the Newsweek report continues.

Specifically 'lessons for a Taiwan conflict' would be gleaned:

This training would further strengthen security ties between Russia and its "no limits" ally China, which in recent years has stepped up joint military exercises. Battlefield insights into U.S. weaponry could offer an advantage as China seeks to surpass the U.S. as the leading military power in the Indo-Pacific.

And Ukraine's Defense Intelligence Directorate has told local media, the Kyiv Post, that "The Kremlin has decided to allow Chinese military personnel to study and adopt the combat experience Russia has gained in its war against Ukraine."

Not only have Russian forces destroyed and disabled possibly dozens of Western-supplied main battle tanks, including M1 Abrams, UK Challengers, and French Leopard 2's - but F16s have also been shot down.

American troop carriers have additionally been destroyed, and in some places Western armored vehicles have been put on display in the capital of Moscow, as trophies recovered from the battlefield.

Meanwhile, China this week hosted defense ministers from Iran and Russia for a meeting in its eastern seaside city of Qingdao.

The meeting happened Thursday, and importantly Qingdao is home to a major Chinese naval base, with the country's defense minister Dong Jun calling the PLA Navy and its bases a counterweight to a world in "chaos and instability."

"As momentous changes of the century accelerate, unilateralism and protectionism are on the rise," Dong said. Alongside defense chiefs from Russia and Iran, the military leaders of Pakistan and Belarus were also present.

He was further quoted in news agency Xinhua as decrying "Hegemonic, domineering and bullying acts" which "severely undermine the international order." The comments were clearly aimed at the Western alliance, and Washington in particular.

China over the course of this month's Israeli and US bombings of Iran has condemned what it sees as blatant aggression against a non-nuclear power which was engaged in good faith negotiations. Beijing has also in the past issued statements calling out NATO for its constant expansion, and activity which has even been lately introduced in the Pacific region, and growing ties to Japan.

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/28/2025 - 21:35

Follow The Money: Where Buffett's $6 Billion Donation Could Really End Up

Follow The Money: Where Buffett's $6 Billion Donation Could Really End Up

Bloomberg reports Warren Buffett has donated roughly $6 billion in Berkshire Hathaway shares to five foundations, continuing his long-standing philanthropic commitment. However, the financial outlet conveniently overlooks any scrutiny of where that money may ultimately be going. A closer examination of these nonprofits reveals some highly questionable connections.

A Berkshire Hathaway press release stated that Buffett converted 8,239 Class A shares into 12,358,500 Class B shares in order to donate those B shares to five foundations:

  1. 9,433,839 to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust,

  2. 943,384 shares to the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation

  3. and 660,366 shares to each of the Sherwood Foundation, Howard G. Buffett Foundation, and NoVo Foundation.

"The mathematics of the lifetime commitments to the five foundations are interesting," Buffett wrote in a statement, adding, "99½% of my estate is destined for philanthropic usage."

The bulk of the shares—9,433,839 in total—are headed to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust, a cornerstone funder of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, which leads global vaccination efforts. Over the years, Gavi has received at least $1 billion from USAID, amplifying Gates' private contributions (and others) through public funding. Gates was angered when the Trump administration dismantled USAID, in which the billionaire went on a legacy media outlet to bash Elon Musk's DOGE. 

The remaining 2.92 million shares will be donated to his children's foundations — Sherwood Foundation, the Howard G. Buffett Foundation and NoVo Foundation — as well as the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, named after the billionaire's late wife. 

Using publicly available data, we mapped the leadership and affiliations of each of these nonprofits to gain a better understanding of where these funds could potentially flow through the complex web of nonprofits.

Sherwood Foundation

Howard G. Buffett Foundation

NoVo Foundation

Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation

One notable connection we uncovered involving the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation is its link to the Sunshine Lady Foundation, which is further connected to the Here to Help Foundation—an organization tied to United Way, a group that has faced allegations of using federal grant money to provide free services to undocumented immigrants.

Mapping out the connections, the Here to Help Foundation is also linked to the McGregor Fund...

Let's say the McGregor Fund President Kate Levin Markel is no fan of 'Make America Great Again'... 

Markel praised New York Federal Reserve Visiting Scholar Clara Miller, who recently opined:

This is a moment for all such institutions, including foundations, to stand up and be counted together. Whatever our personal views, we must call out and resist this unprecedented and intolerable intrusion by the government into our fundamental rights as Americans. Trump's deep state intruders will simply be emboldened unchecked if we take no action and insist on silence.

Miller's current and past experiences, as listed on her LinkedIn account...

While there are more questions than answers, one thing is clear: Buffett's $6 billion donation in Berkshire shares is set to flow into a network of nonprofits that appear aligned with left-leaning causes, some of which have been tied to very questionable progressive agendas.

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/28/2025 - 19:50

Lessons Unlearned From Israel's Bombing Of Iraq's Osirak Reactor

Lessons Unlearned From Israel's Bombing Of Iraq's Osirak Reactor

Authored by Jeremy R. Hammond via The Libertarian Institute,

In a recent New York Times opinion article, Amos Yadlin, a former chief of Israel’s military intelligence, attempted to defend Israel’s recent decision to start a war with Iran, in which Israel was briefly joined by the U.S. government under the administration of President Donald Trump.

Under the headline “Why Israel Had to Act,” Yadlin’s opening sentence states, “Forty-four years ago this June, I sat in the cockpit on the Israeli air force mission that destroyed Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor. In one daring operation, we eliminated Saddam Hussein’s nuclear ambitions.”

Via Unpacked Media

The parallels between that event and the current war on Iran are indeed remarkable—but the real lesson to be learned from it is precisely the opposite of the one Yadlin draws.

In addition to constituting aggression under international law, “the supreme international crime” as defined at Nuremberg, the American and Israeli bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities proves how policymakers in both countries refuse to learn from the lessons of history.

The claim that Israel’s bombing of Iraq’s Osirak reactor in 1981 halted or set back Saddam Hussein’s efforts to acquire a nuclear weapons capability is a popular myth.

In fact, Iraq had been a party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) since it came into force in 1970, and its nuclear program was under the safeguards of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which had reported that the program was in compliance with Iraq’s legal obligations under the treaty.

Israel, by contrast, is known to possess nuclear weapons and “has not adhered to” the NPT, as the United Nations Security Council observed in Resolution 487. Unanimously adopted on June 19, 1981, that resolution strongly condemned Israel’s act of aggression.

The Security Council recognized:

“…the inalienable sovereign right of Iraq and all other States, especially the developing countries, to establish programmes of technological and nuclear development to develop their economy and industry for peaceful purposes in accordance with their present and future needs and consistent with the internationally accepted objectives of preventing nuclear-weapons proliferation…”

The Council described Israel’s attack as “a serious threat to the entire safeguards regime of the International Atomic Energy Agency” and called on Israel “urgently to place its nuclear facilities under the safeguards” of the IAEA.

It warrants emphasis that the US government neither abstained from the vote nor used its veto power to block that resolution. The most parsimonious explanation for this is that there was no evidence Iraq had a nuclear weapons program, and Israel’s bombing was instead likely to push Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in that direction and otherwise undermine the goal of nuclear non-proliferation.

In an interagency intelligence assessment titled “Implications of Israeli Attack on Iraq,” dated July 1, 1981, the U.S. intelligence community provided its assessment, stating that

“The US-Israeli relationship once more is a central issue in regional politics, and new strains have been added to US-Arab relations. Washington’s ability to promote Arab cooperation against a Soviet threat or to bring the Arabs and Israelis to the bargaining table has been struck a hard blow. Arab leaders far from the frontlines in the Levant have been shown that their military and economic facilities are not beyond the reach of Israel’s striking power. Rather than drawing them into a negotiating process, Israel’s demonstrated prowess will only speed the arms race.”

Further, Saddam Hussein responded to the attack “by suggesting that world governments provide the Arabs with a nuclear deterrent to Israel’s formidable nuclear capabilities. His message to other Arabs is that they can have no security as long as Israel alone commands the nuclear threat.”

The attack also caused “damage to the Non-Proliferation Treat (NPT) and to the IAEA safeguards system,” with Israel having justified its attack “on the grounds that the IAEA safeguards system is a sham.” The assessment was that this “probably will have a detrimental impact.”

Iraq had received “the support of most IAEA members because of general acceptance that international and bilateral safeguards over Iraq’s program were sufficient to guard against the diversion of fissile material for a nuclear device.”

via Flickr

In sum, the attack did not halt an Iraqi nuclear weapons program but was the impetus that drove Saddam Hussein to subsequently attempt to acquire a nuclear deterrent to Israel’s aggression. Beyond that, the destruction of the Osirak reactor threatened to undermine the IAEA safeguards framework, thus heightening rather than mitigating the threat of nuclear weapons proliferation.

In 2003, the United States waged an illegal war of aggression against Iraq on a pretext of lies to overthrow the regime of Saddam Hussein—who had waged war against Iran throughout most of the 1980s with American support.

In 2007, the U.S. intelligence community produced a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) about Iran’s nuclear program, which has been similarly operating under the IAEA safeguards regime. The assessment was that Iran had been working toward a weapons capability until the United States took out Iran’s enemy Saddam Hussein in 2003, at which time the program was halted and never resumed.

That remained the US intelligence community’s assessment with another NIE issued in 2011. That same year, former Mossad chief Meir Dagan said, “An aerial attack against Iran’s nuclear reactors would be foolish.” He warned that it could start a regional war with unforeseeable consequences.

Notwithstanding the fearmongering proclamations from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Iran was working to build nukes, documents leaked to Al Jazeera in 2015 revealed that the assessment of Israel’s infamous intelligence organization the Mossad was that Iran was not pursuing a nuclear weapon.

In January of this year, the outgoing director of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), William Burns, reiterated the US intelligence community’s longstanding assessment in an interview with NPR, saying that there was no sign that Iran had decided to move forward with nuclear weapons development.

On March 25, Trump’s Director of National Intelligence (DNI), Tulsi Gabbard, testified to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that the intelligence community “continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003.”

The decision by the American and Israeli governments to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities illustrates how the lessons of the past remain unlearned. Rather than preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons, this action will only cause Iran to reconsider the need for a nuclear deterrent against American and Israeli aggression and otherwise undermine the international nuclear non-proliferation safeguards framework.

Osirak, the Franco-Iraqi nuclear power research station. Getty Images

As observed by the Libertarian Institute’s Bill Buppert, host of Chasing Ghosts: An Irregular Warfare Podcast, one option for Iran is to withdraw from the NPT—their parliament has just voted to suspend cooperation with the IAEA—and state that it will rejoin the treaty and accept the IAEA safeguards framework once Israel does the same.

Iran would also be acting within reason to insist that the United States formally acknowledge its right to enrich uranium for nuclear energy as a condition for rejoining the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, especially since the whole current disaster is a consequence of the US government persistent rejection of Iran’s recognized rights under the NPT.

If Washington would like to deter threats to peace by getting other countries to comply with international law, it should start by ending its own criminal violence—including the Trump administration’s continued support for Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza.

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/28/2025 - 19:15

Iran Holds Huge Public Funeral For Slain Military Commanders & Scientists

Iran Holds Huge Public Funeral For Slain Military Commanders & Scientists

Hundreds of thousands of people are in the streets of Tehran on Saturday for a funeral procession honoring military commanders, nuclear scientists, as well as civilians killed in Israeli strikes earlier this month.

State television broadcast scenes of mourners dressed in black, waving Iranian flags, and holding photos of the deceased during the ceremony. It further involved Iranian flag-draped coffins and large displays of portraits depicting slain uniformed commanders in central Tehran.

Both the Israeli and Iranian sides have been declaring 'victory' following the 12-days of airstrikes and also ballistic and hypersonic missile fire on Israel.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has charged that President Trump is "grossly exaggerating" when he says that Iran's nuclear program was obliterated - though Iranian officials have publicly conceded that there was serious damage at key facilities.

Among the prominent figures mourned in the events were General Hossein Salami, the commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, and General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, head of the Guard’s ballistic missile program.

Both were said to be killed on the opening day of the surprise attack. Also honored was the slain Major General Mohammad Bagheri of the Revolutionary Guard, and the leading nuclear scientist Mohammad Mehdi Tehranchi.

There are reports that car bombs and drones guided from within the country (via Israeli spy assets on the ground) also assisted in targeted assassinations.

Heard from the large funeral processions were at times chants of "Death to America" and "Death to Israel" as their coffins were driven along Azadi Street.

At least 60 burials for civilians, including four women and four children, also took place according to state media. According to details from CNN:

Hundreds of thousands filled the streets of Tehran on Saturday to commemorate the senior military commanders, nuclear scientists and civilians killed during Iran’s 12-day conflict with Israel.

As mourners clad in all black chanted death to Israel and America, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi acknowledged the loss of lives was “hard and painful” but pledged the nation would return to “new glory.”

Plenty of banners were seen in the processions proclaimed 'victory' for Iran...

Iran's state-run Press TV has called the event the "funeral procession of the Martyrs of Power" and in total involved the burial and memorials for at least 16 scientists and ten senior commanders.

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/28/2025 - 18:05

Trump Says He Will Only Appoint Fed Chair Who Wants To Cut Interest Rates

Trump Says He Will Only Appoint Fed Chair Who Wants To Cut Interest Rates

Authored by Aldgra Fredly via The Epoch Times,

President Donald Trump said on Friday that he may appoint someone who is more inclined to lower interest rates to succeed Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell.

“If I think somebody’s going to keep the rates where they are or whatever, I’m not going to put them in. I’m going to put somebody that wants to cut rates,” Trump told reporters at the Oval Office.

Trump criticized Powell for not lowering interest rates and said that he would “love” the head of the U.S. Federal Reserve to step down if Powell chooses to do so.

The president suggested lowering rates to 1 percent, although he believes cutting interest rates by two percentage points would save the country “more than $600 billion” annually.

“I think we should be paying 1 percent right now,” he said.

The Fed decided last week to keep its benchmark policy rate unchanged at 4.25 to 4.50 percent.

Powell, whose term is set to expire in May next year, has held off on cutting interest rates, citing the need for more clarity on the possible course of the economy following the administration’s policy changes.

During his semi-annual monetary policy report to Congress on June 24, he told lawmakers that the central bank is waiting to determine if Trump’s global tariffs will result in consumer inflation.

While data over the last three months indicate that price pressures have yet to materialize, Powell said that any tariff-related inflation could appear in the June or July data.

“As we go through the summer, we should start seeing this,” he said. “If we don’t, I think we’re perfectly open to the idea that the pass-through will be less than we think.”

Powell stated that the central bank may begin cutting interest rates if it observes that inflation pressures remain contained.

Trump said on Friday that lowering interest rates now could save the country “hundreds of billions of dollars.” He suggested that the Fed could raise rates later if inflation begins to increase.

“If you were there, you’d say ... the United States is doing well, there is no inflation. And if they do get inflation in a year or two, we’ll start raising the rates,” he stated.

Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One earlier this month that he would decide on Powell’s successor “very soon.”

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a CNBC interview on June 27 that there is a possibility that someone could be nominated to succeed Powell between October and November.

When asked if he might become the next Fed chair, Bessent said he “will do what the president wants,” but indicated that he would prefer to stay in his current role.

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/28/2025 - 17:30

Trump Blasts CNN 'Hoax, Fake News' Report That US Looking At $30BN Deal With Iran

Trump Blasts CNN 'Hoax, Fake News' Report That US Looking At $30BN Deal With Iran

President Donald Trump has once again blasted CNN and the "hoax" media reports saying his administration was considering a $30 billion deal to assist Iran in developing civilian nuclear facilities, as one option for future deal-making in the wake of the 12-day Israel-Iran war.

NBC also featured reporting that the White House is mulling major economic incentives for the Islamic Republic to halt its uranium enrichment; however Trump's position still seems to be that there's no more enrichment capability and that core nuclear program components were utterly destroyed in the major US bombing raids of a week ago.

Open source satellite imagery showing a damaged nuclear facility.

The reports claimed that Washington could release billions of dollars in frozen Iranian assets in order to ensure Iran could still have civilian nuclear program, as part of a potential "$30 billion" deal - but importantly with no ability of the Islamic Republic to enrich domestically.

“Who in the Fake News Media is the SleazeBag saying that ‘President Trump wants to give Iran $30 Billion to build non-military Nuclear facilities.’ Never heard of this ridiculous idea,” the president wrote late Friday on social media.

"It’s just another HOAX put out by the Fake News in order to demean. These people are SICK!!!" the Truth Social post added.

The original and 'exclusive' Thursday CNN report claimed that "The Trump administration has discussed possibly helping Iran access as much as $30 billion to build a civilian-energy-producing nuclear program, easing sanctions, and freeing up billions of dollars in restricted Iranian funds – all part of an intensifying attempt to bring Tehran back to the negotiating table, four sources familiar with the matter said."

"Key players from the US and the Middle East have talked with the Iranians behind the scenes even amid the flurry of military strikes in Iran and Israel over the past two weeks, the sources said," the report continued. "Those discussions have continued this week after a ceasefire deal was struck, the sources said."

The report alleged that multiple early-stage proposals have been under discussion, but all based on a key non-negotiable: that Iran must halt all uranium enrichment. However, this is one red line that Tehran has been insistent it won't give in to, as a matter of national sovereignty. 

Trump has also been going after Iranian leadership in his Truth Social posts, for example writing the following of Ayatollah Khamenei:

“His Country was decimated, his three evil Nuclear Sites were OBLITERATED, and I knew EXACTLY where he was sheltered, and would not let Israel, or the U.S. Armed Forces, by far the Greatest and Most Powerful in the World, terminate his life,” he wrote. “I SAVED HIM FROM A VERY UGLY AND IGNOMINIOUS DEATH, and he does not have to say, ‘THANK YOU, PRESIDENT TRUMP!’”

The US President has also said he's willing to strike Iran again if need be, but for now at least the ceasefire is still holding, and does appear to be permanent - as both sides assess to the depth of damage and make efforts to rebuild destroyed buildings and infrastructure.

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/28/2025 - 16:55

Who Has The Moral High Ground On Money?

Who Has The Moral High Ground On Money?

Authored by Jay Davidson via AmericanThinker.com,

Economic theory, and the profound impact it has on our lives, is much simpler than trained economists (apologies to my economist friends) would have you believe. 

To understand the politics of economic theory, one need only to consider two opposing ideas.

One group believes that fiscal and monetary policy should entail more federal government intervention in the private economy.  From some incomprehensible and irrational thought process, these believers try to take the moral high ground.  Yet their way leads to loss of individual freedom, to serfdom.  

Members of both political parties fall prey to this falsehood, some more than others.  When politicians say they are going to Washington to solve your problems, be forewarned: What happens is more rules and regulations controlling your life and costing the taxpayer more of his hard earned income.  The fact is, we don’t need, or want, our government’s help.  Private industry is far more capable of creating profit through free choice than any bureaucrat. 

The illusion of safety is a poor substitute for freedom, self-determination, and individuality.

The other, more enlightened group contends that more economic freedom is necessary for individual and national success.  

Further, that individual freedom stems exclusively from our Creator and demands limited government intervention in our lives.  This is the mentality that forged our nation, that created our Declaration of Independence and Constitution.  Individual self-determination is in fact the moral high ground.

In other words, big government versus limited government.

There can be no freedom without economic freedom, and that hinges on the inalienable right to ownership of property.  We are not guilty of greed when we work hard for our money.  They are greedy for stealing our earnings through excessive taxation and crushing free enterprise with regulation.

When one works at earning his money, to whom does that money, that property, belong?  When any government can tax, impose fees, and put us in debt, on a whim, we don’t own our property; the government does.  Granted, we all need to pay our fair share for the structure a government affords us, but when we have to work half the year to pay all our taxes, the price is too high.  

Our money goes to supporting a massive government that enslaves us with regulation and unconstitutional laws.  Then that same government puts all of us into debt to fund even more of its unnecessary spending.  Our grandchildren will owe this debt, it has become so enormous.  We have an obligation to stop the spending and reduce the deficit before we leave our progeny in crippling debt.  That is the moral high ground.  

This is why I object to imposition of tariffs.  They are a tax on the consumer.  It would be far more effective if we severely limited government regulation and taxation so that private enterprise could once again thrive in a free economy unimpeded by massive federal intervention.  This is the message of the second group, who believe in individual freedom and ownership of property.  

Our president did two tremendous things for us.  

He started DOGE to eliminate excess and wasteful spending by the Deep State bureaucrats, and he nominated three Supreme Court justices who overthrew the Chevron Doctrine, which severely limits the ability of the administrative (deep) state to impose fines and regulations.  

These two actions will do more to limit government and bring it into compliance with the Constitution than anything any other president has done in our lifetime.

We can change the direction of our beloved nation by supporting candidates who will limit government strictly to those rules of law articulated in the Constitution.  

When given a choice, always choose individual freedom — never more government control.  

The principle must always be the sanctity of individual freedom to choose.  

This is the moral high ground.

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/28/2025 - 16:20

Netanyahu Wants To Visit White House To 'Celebrate' Iran Strikes With Trump

Netanyahu Wants To Visit White House To 'Celebrate' Iran Strikes With Trump

Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants to meet with President Trump at the White House in the coming weeks after the 12-day US-Israeli war on Iran, Axios has reported.

Israeli officials said that Netanyahu wants to "celebrate" the joint bombing campaign with Trump, as the Israeli leader is declaring the war a victory, although Israel got hit hard by Iranian missiles right up until the ceasefire took effect, something President Trump has acknowledged.

"Israel got hit really hard. Those ballistic missiles, boy, they took out a lot of buildings," Trump told reporters at the NATO summit in The Hague on Wednesday.

Via AFP

Netanyahu may be seeking additional military aid from the US to replenish Israel’s interceptors and bombs in the ongoing conflict. The Axios report said that Trump and Netanyahu are "closer than ever" and that US and Israeli officials have discussed the possibility of Netanyahu’s third White House visit this year, but so far, a date hasn’t been set.

The report comes after Trump called for the corruption charges against Netanyahu to be dropped, which an Israeli official claimed is part of a strategy to 'bring an end to the war in Gaza, the release of all the hostages, an end to Netanyahu’s trial, and a serious regional move."

According to a report from Israel Hayom, Trump and Netanyahu have reached an understanding on terms for a potential deal that would end Israel’s genocidal onslaught in Gaza and involve other moves in the region, but many of the terms are likely unacceptable to Hamas and Palestinians in general.

According to the report, the terms include:

  1. Gaza hostilities will conclude within two weeks, ending conditions will encompass four Arab nations (including Egypt and the United Arab Emirates) to administer the Gaza Strip, replacing Hamas. The remaining Hamas leadership will face exile to other countries, while the hostages gain freedom
  2. Multiple nations globally will accept numerous Gaza inhabitants seeking emigration
  3. Abraham Accords expansion will bring Syria, Saudi Arabia, and additional Arab and Muslim countries to recognize Israel and establish official relationships.
  4. Israel will declare its willingness for future Palestinian conflict resolution under the “two states” concept, contingent upon the Palestinian Authority reforms.
  5. The United States will acknowledge a limited Israeli annexation in the West Bank

President Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, said in an interview on Wednesday that the US may soon announce Arab countries that are willing to join the Abraham Accords, referring to the normalization deals Israel signed with the UAE and Bahrain during the first Trump administration.

Syria, which is now led by a former al-Qaeda leader, has been engaged in normalization talks with Israel, but Saudi Arabia has maintained that it won’t normalize with Israel without a Palestinian state.

For now, there does not appear to be any US pressure on Israel to stop the alleged genocide in Gaza, and Palestinians continue to be slaughtered by Israeli forces every day.

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/28/2025 - 15:10

Turley: The Chilling Jurisprudence Of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson

Turley: The Chilling Jurisprudence Of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

For most citizens, the release of Supreme Court opinions is about as exciting as watching paint dry, particularly in a case dealing with the limits of district courts in issuing universal injunctions.

Yet Friday’s Trump v. CASA case included a virtual slugfest between Justice Amy Coney Barrett and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.

The decision was one of the biggest of the term. The Court moved to free the Administration from an onslaught of orders from district judges seeking to block the President in areas ranging from the downsizing of government to immigration.

However, it was the departure of the normally staid court analysis that attracted the most attention.

The tenor of Jackson’s language shocked not just many court watchers, but her colleagues.

It seemed ripped from the signs carried just a couple of weeks earlier in the “No Kings” protests.

The Court often deals with issues that deeply divide the nation.

Yet it tends to calm the waters by engaging in measured, reasoned analysis — showing the nation that these are matters upon which people can have good-faith disagreements.

But that culture of civility and mutual respect has been under attack in recent years.

Not long ago, the Court was rocked by the leaking of the draft of the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade. That was followed by furious protests against conservative justices at their homes and an attempted assassination of Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

There was also a change in the tenor of the exchanges in oral argument and opinions between the justices.

Recently, during the argument over the use of national injunctions in May, Chief Justice John Roberts was clearly fed up with Justice Sotomayor interrupting government counsel with pointed questions and commentary, finally asking Sotomayor, “Will you please let us hear his answer?”

This hyperbole seemed to border on hysteria in the Jackson dissent. The most junior justice effectively accused her colleagues of being toadies for tyranny.

It proved too much for the majority, which pushed back on the overwrought rhetoric.

While the language may seem understated in comparison to what we regularly hear in Congress, it was the equivalent of a virtual cage match for the Court.

Some of us have argued that our system is working just as designed, particularly as these issues work through the courts. The courts have ruled for and against this Administration as they struggle with the difficult lines of authority between the branches.

Liberals who claim “democracy is dying” seem to view democracy as getting what you want when you want it.

It was, therefore, distressing to see Jackson picking up on the “No Kings” theme, warning about drifting toward “a rule-of-kings governing system”

She said that limiting the power of individual judges to freeze the entire federal government was “enabling our collective demise. At the very least, I lament that the majority is so caught up in minutiae of the Government’s self-serving, finger-pointing arguments that it misses the plot.”

The “minutiae” dismissed by Jackson happen to be the statutory and constitutional authority of federal courts. It is the minutiae that distinguish the rule of law from mere judicial impulse.

Justice Barrett clearly had had enough with the self-aggrandizing rhetoric. She delivered a haymaker in writing that “JUSTICE JACKSON would do well to heed her own admonition: “[E]veryone, from the President on down, is bound by law.” Ibid. That goes for judges too.”

She added, “We will not dwell on JUSTICE JACKSON’s argument, which is at odds with more than two centuries’ worth of precedent, not to mention the Constitution itself. We observe only this: JUSTICE JACKSON decries an imperial Executive while embracing an imperial Judiciary.”

In other words, the danger to democracy is found in judges acting like kings. Barrett explained to her three liberal colleagues that “when a court concludes that the Executive Branch has acted unlawfully, the answer is not for the court to exceed its power, too.”

The last term has laid bare some of the chilling jurisprudence of Justice Jackson, including a certain exasperation with having to closely follow the text of laws.  (In an earlier dissent this term, Jackson lashed out against the limits of textualism and argued for courts to free themselves from the confines — or shall we say the “minutiae” — of statutory language). In this opinion, Barrett slams Jackson for pursuing other diversions “because analyzing the governing statute involves boring ‘legalese.'” Again, what Jackson refers to as “legalese” is the heart of the judicial function in constraining courts under Article III.

Untethered by statutory or constitutional text, it allows the courts to float free from the limits of the Constitution.

For many, that is not an escape into minutiae but madness without clear lines for judicial power.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University and the best-selling author of “The Indispensable Right.”

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/28/2025 - 12:50

Deadly Russian Drone Strikes Have Increased On Ukraine's Odesa 

Deadly Russian Drone Strikes Have Increased On Ukraine's Odesa 

Russian drones slammed into the southern Ukrainian port city of Odesa overnight, killing two people and injuring at least 17 others, Ukrainian officials announced Saturday.

Emergency services said a drone struck a residential high-rise, damaging three floors and trapping residents inside, with the regional governor identifying that the victims were a married couple, with three children among the wounded.

Via Reuters

"Rescuers pulled the bodies of two people from the rubble who died as a result of a hostile drone strike on a residential building," Odesa Governor Oleh Kiper said on Telegram.

Russia’s Defense Ministry was silent on the attack, on saying that it had intercepted more than 40 Ukrainian drones overnight sent over Russian territory, as well as in Crimea.

This comes as both sides increasingly rely heavily on smaller, short-range drones for battlefield operations and missions along their roughly 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) front line - but the key port city of Odesa has been coming under more regular attacks, something which wasn't a feature of the opening years of the war.

Also Saturday Kherson Governor Oleksandr Prokudin said that "Russian troops targeted critical and social infrastructure and residential areas in the region."

In Donetsk, Russian troops have reportedly captured another village, as the slow grinding effort to solidify hold over the whole region continues, with no peace negotiations on the horizon.

A new plan of expanding west of Donetsk appears part of establishing Putin's big security 'buffer zone'. At this point it's clear that Kiev's backers in NATO can do nothing about this, except throw more money and weapons at the conflict.

Presidents Trump and Zelensky this week at the NATO summit reportedly discussed Ukraine procuring more US anti-air defense systems, which ironically enough will likely be purchased with US taxpayer funds already poured into Kiev's coffers.

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/28/2025 - 12:15

Watch Tonight: Mike Benz vs. Cenk Uygur Debate US Foreign Aid As 'Redheaded Libertarian' Moderates

Watch Tonight: Mike Benz vs. Cenk Uygur Debate US Foreign Aid As 'Redheaded Libertarian' Moderates

LIVE NOW

****

As the great Ron Paul said…

But is it worse than that? Not simply a wealth transfer but a lever of control, wielded by the U.S. government to make weaker nations fall in line. Soft power as they call it.

Few understand it better than Mike Benz, formerly the “Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Communications and Information Policy” at the State Department. Benz believes soft power and foreign aid, managed effectively, have their place in the U.S. empire. Tonight we are bringing the reformist Benz together with foreign aid proponent Cenk Uygur and abolitionist Keith Knight (editor of Scott Horton’s Libertarian Institute) to answer the question: “should we abolish foreign aid?” Hosted by Josie the “Redheaded Libertarian”.

Tune in to the top of the ZH homepage or X page at 7pm ET tonight to watch the debate live.

Subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, and Rumble to be notified of new debates.

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/28/2025 - 11:05

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