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Via Middle East Eye

Israeli tanks have moved into eastern Jabalia in northern Gaza following a night of intense bombardment, which has killed some 19 Palestinians and flattened residential blocks, according to health officials.

Israeli fire targeted ambulances near the camp's Unrwa clinic, Wafa news agency is reporting. The Israeli army said that the latest incursion on the camp was to prevent Hamas from "rehabilitating military capabilities" there.

Via Reuters

In other areas of Gaza, Israeli air strikes reportedly killed some 27 Palestinians overnight. In Rafah, 18 Palestinians were killed in air strikes,  including several children, according to Wafa.

Wafa is also reporting that the continuing air strikes have killed dozens more in the past few hours, with 12 bodies arriving at Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya, in northern Gaza.

The director of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, Sam Rose, has warned that Palestinians in Rafah are being instructed to evacuate to a nearby "expanded humanitarian area" which is already overcrowded and lacking in essential services.

In an interview with BBC news, Sam Rose explained that al-Mawasi is "essentially sand dunes on the Mediterranean coast that are crowded with hundreds of thousands of people" who have already been displaced.

"There is no water network, there is no infrastructure, sewage, sanitation," he said.

.@BarakRavid @axios sources suggest the Israelis are going to try to salami-slice Rafah to avoid crossing Biden's "red line": https://t.co/ND4EgQ4McI

Here are some of the latest updates:

• The Israeli military has intensified attacks across Gaza in the past 24 hours, with 27 Palestinians killed overnight, including several children in southern Rafah.

• Israeli forces "carpet-bombed" Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza, killing and wounding several Palestinians, Wafa news agency is reporting. Residential houses and evacuation centres have been flattened. The death toll is currently unknown.

• In the West Bank, Israeli forces have raided the Arroub refugee camp near Hebron on Sunday, Wafa is reporting.

• UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres renewed calls for an "immediate ceasefire".

• UN agencies have warned that food supplies for distribution in southern Gaza will run out today.

• Unrwa estimates that 300,000 Palestinians have fled Rafah in the last week, emphasising that displaced people have "nowhere safe to go".

Two weeks ago, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was thoroughly savaged during a debate at Oxford University over the question of whether populism is a "threat to democracy." In case you missed it, read on as it's making the rounds. If you have 14 minutes to spare, jump right in:

Opening the case for the left was Rachel Haddad, Secretary of the Oxford Union. She argued that populist leaders like Donald Trump and Nigel Farage pose a threat to democracy, and are not a "new generation of geniuses" who can find simple solutions to longstanding, complex problems.

Pelosi closed the debate for the proposition, defining populism as an "ethno-nationalist populism, generated by an ethnic negativity to immigrants, people who are different from them and the rest" (so, 'they're racists!').

Speaking against the motion were Union committee members Sultan Kokhar (Chair of Consultative Committee) and Oscar Whittle (Director of Research), as well as former Mumford & Sons lead guitarist, Winston Marshall - now a podcaster for The Spectator - who got into an exchange with Pelosi during parts of his speech.

Marshall started out by saying:

"Words have a tendency to change meaning when I was a boy, "woman" meant "someone who didn't have a cock."

Populism has become a word used synonymously with "racists." We've heard "ethno-nationalist," with "bigot," with "hillbilly," "redneck," with "deplorables."

Elites use it to show their contempt for ordinary people."

He then noted that Barack Obama, while still president, tried to frame he and Bernie Sanders as actual populists vs. Donald Trump, who 'doesn't care about working people.'

But then, "If you watch Obama's speeches after that point, more and more recently, he uses the word "populist" interchangeably with "strong man," with "authoritarian." The word changes meaning, it becomes a negative, a pejorative, a slur."

"To me, populism is not a dirty word. Since the 2008 crash and specifically the trillion-dollar Wall Street bailout, we are in the populist age, and for good reason. The elites have failed," Marshall continued.

He then got into it with Pelosi after drawing a parallel between January 6th and June 2020, saying: "I'm sure Congresswoman Pelosi will agree that the entire month of June 2020, when the federal courthouse in Portland, Oregon was under siege, and under insurrection by radical progressives, those too were dark days for America."

To which Pelosi shot back, "You are not. There is no equivalence there," adding "It is not like what happened on January 6, which was an insurrection incited by the president of the United States."

Read on for Marshall's complete masterclass in populism (transcript courtesy of RealClear Politics).

My point, though is that all political movements are susceptible to violence, and indeed insurrection. And if we were arguing that fascism was a threat to democracy, I'd be on that side of the House.

Indeed, the current populist age is a movement against fascism. I've got quite a lot to get through.

Populism as you know, is the politics of the ordinary people against an elite, populism is not a threat to democracy. Populism is democracy, and why else have universal suffrage, if not to keep elites in check?

Ladies and gentlemen, given the success of Trump, and more recently, Javier Milei taking a chainsaw to the state behemoth of Argentina's bureaucratic monster, you'd be mistaken for thinking this was a right-wing populist age, but that would be ignoring Occupy Wall Street. That would be ignoring Jeremy Corbyn's "for the many, not the few," that would be ignoring Bernie against the billionaires, RFK Jr. against Big Pharma, and more recently, George Galloway against his better judgment. Now all of them, including Galloway, recognize genuine concerns of ordinary people being otherwise ignored by the establishment.

I'm actually rather surprised that our esteemed opposition, Congressman Pelosi, is on that side of the motion. I thought the left was supposed to be anti-elite. I thought the left was supposed to be anti-establishment today, particularly in America, the globalist left have become the establishment. I suppose for Miss Pelosi to have taken this side of the motion, she'd be arguing herself out of a job.

But it's here in Britain, where right and left populists united for the supreme act of democracy, Brexit. Polls have showed the number one reason people voted for Brexit was sovereignty, for more democracy.

What was the response of the Brussels elite? They did everything in their power to undermine the Democratic will of the British people and the Westminster elite were just as disgraceful. As we've heard, David Cameron called the voters "fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists." The liberal Democrats did everything they could to overturn a democratic vote. Keir Starmer campaigned for a second referendum. Elites would have had us voting and voting and voting until we voted their way. Indeed, that's what happened in Ireland and in Denmark.

Let's look at some of the other populist movements. The Hong Konger populist revolt is literally called the Pro-Democracy Movement. In the Farmer revolts from the Netherlands to Germany, France, Greece, to Sri Lanka, farmers are taking their tractors to the road to protest ESG policy that's floated down to us from those all-knowing, infallible elites of Davos. The trucker movement in Canada became anti-elitist when petty tyrant Prime Minister Justin Trudeau froze their bank accounts, not the behavior of a democratic head of state. The Gilets Jaunes France, ULEZ in London, working people protesting policy that hurt them. And how are they treated? They're called conspiracy theorists. They're called far-right, by the mayor as well.

Ladies and gentlemen, populism is the voice of the voiceless. The real threat to democracy is from the elites. Now don't get me wrong, we need elites. If President Biden has shown us anything, we need someone to run the countries. When the president has severe dementia, it is not just America that crumbles, the whole world burns.

But let's examine the elites. European corporations spend over €1 billion a year lobbying Brussels, U.S. corporations spend over $2 billion a year lobbying in DC, and two-thirds of Congress receive funding from pharmaceutical companies. Pfizer alone spent $11 million in 2021. They made over $10 billion in profit. No wonder then that 66% of Americans think the is rigged against them for the rich and the powerful.

And by the way, we used to have a word for when big business and big government were in cahoots. And I think any students here of early 20th-century Italian history will know what I'm talking about.

What about Big Tech? Throughout the pandemic, Biden's team, the FBI, and the Department of Homeland Security colluded with Big Tech in censoring dissenting voices. Not kooky conspiracy theorists, people like Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, the Stanford epidemiologist, people like Harvard scientist Martin Kulldorf, people spreading true information, not misinformation, true information at odds with the government narrative.

Need I remind you, democracy without free speech is not democracy.

This was a direct breach by the way of the First Amendment. Before COVID, Intelligence services colluded with Big Tech to have Trump suspended off Twitter. Yes, the same platform which hosted the Taliban and Ayatollah "Death To Israel" Khomeini. They thought the president crossed the line when he tweeted on Jan 6 quote, "Remain peaceful. No violence! Respect the law and our great men and women in blue." That's a quote.

You may be thinking now that Trump is a populist. You are right. He didn't accept the 2020 elections and he should have. So should Hillary in 2016. So should Brussels, and so should Westminster in 2016. And so too should Congresswoman Pelosi, instead of saying the 2016 election was quote, "hijacked."

PELOSI: That doesn't mean we don't accept the results, though!

WINSTON MARSHALL: What about the mainstream media? Let me read you some mainstream media headlines. The New Yorker the day before the 2016 election, "The Case Against Democracy." The Washington Post, the day after the election, "The Problem With Our Government Is Democracy." The LA Times, June 2017, "The British Election Is A Reminder Of The Perils Of Too Much Democracy." Vox, June 2017, "Two eminent political scientists say the problem with democracy is voters." New York Times, June 2017, "The Problem With Participatory Democracy Is The Participants."

Mainstream media elites are part of a class who don't just disdain populism, they disdain the people. If the Democrats had put half their energy into delivering for the people, Trump wouldn't even have a chance in 2024. He shouldn't, he shouldn't have a chance. You've had power for four years. From the fabricated Steele dossier, to trying to take him off the ballot in both Maine and Colorado, the Democrats are the anti-Democrat party. All we need now is the Republicans to come out as the pro-Monarchist party.

Ladies and gentlemen, populism is not a threat to democracy, but I'll tell you what is. It is elites ordering social media to censor political opponents. It's police shutting down dissenters, be it anti-monarchists in this country or gender-critical voices here, or last week in Brussels, the National Conservative Movement.

I'll tell you what is a threat to democracy. It's Brussels, DC, Westminster, the mainstream media, big tech, big Pharma, corporate collusion and the Davos cronies. The threat to democracy comes from those who write off ordinary people as "deplorable." The threat to democracy comes from those who smear working people as "racists." The threat to democracy comes from those who write off working people as "populists."

And I'll say one last thing. This populist age can be brought to an end at the snap of a finger. All that needs to be done is for elites to start listening to, respecting, and God forbid, working for ordinary people. Thank you.

And of course, being Oxford, the Union voted for 'populism bad' - with 177 members voting for the motion, and 68 voting against. 

Authored by Paul Mueller via the American Institute for Economic Research,

Nobel Prize–winning economist Esther Duflo thinks rich countries should pay poor countries $500 billion in compensation each year for climate-change damages. It is our “moral debt.” She proposes an international 2-percent wealth tax on the ultra-rich and an increase in the global minimum corporate tax rate to fund this $500 billion transfer. 

Fishermen haul their catch near a fishery in Goa, India. 2016.

You and I may be shocked by such a suggestion but don’t worry: “It’s really necessary. And it’s reasonable. It’s not that hard.” Only someone in an elite, progressive bubble could say something like that. Let’s check her reasoning.

Duflo claims that climate change creates costs, specifically through “excess” deaths due to excessive heat. Poorer countries from the global south near the equator will see more days of extreme heat, and so will see a disproportionate increase in excess deaths. 

Other economists translated those deaths into an externality cost of $37 per ton of CO2. Multiply that by the roughly fourteen billion tons of CO2 emitted by the US and Europe and voila, wealthy countries generate $500 billion in externality costs per year.

She proposes paying for this by increasing the global minimum corporate tax rate from 15 percent to 18 percent and introducing an international 2-percent wealth tax on the ultra-rich, which she defines as the 3000 richest billionaires. We can’t go into the many problems and obstacles to such funding mechanisms here — suffice it to say such ideas will be nearly impossible to implement.

But Duflo’s back-of-the-envelope calculations, besides missing the bigger picture, are so speculative as to require playing make-believe. Let’s play along for a moment to see why. We’ll start by reverse-engineering her $500 billion number into a measure of harm.

Regulatory agencies and insurance companies use the concepts of “statistical value of life” or the “statistical value of a life-year” to do cost-benefit analysis on risk and the monetary value of life. These concepts are slippery, however, and calculated in a variety of ways with a wide range of estimates. 

To keep things simple, let’s assume that the value of one life-year is $200,000. The $500 billion number proposed by Duflo suggests that the cost imposed by wealthy countries burning fossil fuels is the loss of roughly 2.5 million life-year” in poor countries per year.

That sounds like a staggering number!

But what about the benefits that have accrued to developing countries from activities that generate CO2 emissions? Important advances in medicine, such as antibiotics and vaccines, were developed in modern industrialized countries. So, too, were refrigeration, cars, the internet, smart phones, radar; modern agricultural methods with herbicides, pesticides, and fertilizers; improvements in plumbing, building materials, manufacturing, and much more. “Polluting” activities in industrialized countries improved nutrition and safety around the world. These advances, and many others, significantly increased people’s life expectancies — especially in poor countries.

Surely the value of these improvements should weight the opposite side of the scale from the expected harm of climate change — especially since the crusade against fossil fuels and carbon emissions will assuredly slow economic growth and innovation. Let’s consider the case of India for a moment.

Life expectancy in India has basically doubled from about 35 years in 1950 to about 70 years in 2024. If you consider that India has just over a billion people living in it, modern technology developed by rich CO2-emitting countries has added 35 billion life-years in India alone. 

Translating life-years back into dollars, 35 billion life-years times $200,000 per life-year means that the benefits from greater life expectancy in India over the past 75 years is the equivalent of $7 quadrillion dollars — or in annualized terms, an annual benefit of about $93 trillion dollars. In other words, the benefits to India alone are over a hundred times larger than Duflo’s estimate of costs!

Nor is India cherry-picked. China has a similar story with life expectancy rising from 43.45 years to 77.64 years. Similar improvements in life expectancy occur across the global south. 

In Africa: 

• Mali (26.35 years to 60.86 years)
• Chad (35.28 years to 55.44 years)
• Libya (35.28 years to 73.59 years)
• Kenya (41.05 years to 67.70 years)
• Democratic Republic of Congo (38.15 years to 61.86 years)
• Tanzania (39.86 years to 66.67 years)
• Sudan (43.02 years to 66.30 years). 

In South America: 

• Panama (55.19 years to 79.27 years)
• Nicaragua (40.44 years to 75.43 years)
• Colombia (49.48 years to 78.04 years). 

In southeast Asia: 

• Indonesia (39.77 years to 72.50 years)
• Malaysia (52.80 years to 76.79 years)
• Vietnam (51.24 years to 75.91 years).

Of course, one could argue that developed industrial countries are not solely responsible for increases in life expectancy around the world. But one could just as easily say the same about whether developed industrial countries are solely responsible for global CO2 emissions, climate change, or harm to people in the global south due to hotter weather. Connecting these two issues makes perfect philosophical sense, because the production of CO2 has historically been directly associated with increases in economic growth; which in turn is necessary for all the developments increasing longevity around the world.

Even if we massage the assumptions in Duflo’s favor, the results remain favorable to industrialization. Suppose western technology and industrial activities contribute 50 percent to improvements in life expectancy. That’s still a $46 trillion annualized benefit to India. Reduce the value of a statistical life-year to $100,000 — that’s still a $23 trillion/year benefit from industrialization in the west. Exclude India from the analysis and cut the population we focus on down to 500 million people — that’s still over $12 trillion/year in benefits. Reduce the improvement in life-expectancy by six years — that still leaves about $10 trillion/year in benefits.

So, even after making tons of assumptions to reduce their size, the estimated benefits of industrialization are still about twenty times larger than Duflo’s estimate of its costs. 

Worrying about hypothetical, indirect costs of CO2 emissions when it comes to human well-being is like scrounging for pennies while ignoring $100 bills lying on the sidewalk. Actually, it is worse than that. It is like lighting $100 bills on fire to help you search a dark alley for some pocket change of human welfare.

Economic development, driven largely by Adam Smith’s dictum “peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice” which includes strong private property rights and limited government intervention, has improved human living standards in unprecedented ways over the past 300 years. These remarkable improvements in human welfare are not limited to wealthy, developed economies but are enjoyed around the world. 

Duflo talks about the (external) costs of industrialization on certain countries without considering the truly massive (external) benefits of industrialization to those same countries.

If anything, with a proper accounting, developing countries owe rich countries gratitude for the benefits they have received from industrialization and the corresponding CO2 emissions.

Paul Mueller is a Senior Research Fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research. He received his PhD in economics from George Mason University. Previously, Dr. Mueller taught at The King’s College in New York City.

The woke takeover of America's higher education system, transforming classrooms into woke indoctrination camps, has been on full display over the last several years. More recently, the pro-Palestinian protests on campuses have been a shocking eye-opener for many, which only reveal America's future leaders are being transformed into toxic, leftist creatures, used as 'useful idiots' by leftist-funded non-governmental organizations (funded by you know who), in a sinister plan masqueraded underneath social justice movements to start an actual revolution, destroy capitalism, and ultimately, conquer America. 

If you don't believe us, we've got some news that might change your mind.

Late last month, one very outspoken speaker at a pro-Palestinian campus protest said the quiet part out loud:

 "There's only one solution, intifada revolution. We must have a revolution so we can have a socialist reconstruction of the USA." 

An extremist on the mic says: "There’s only one solution, intifada revolution. We must have a revolution so we can have a socialist reconstruction of the USA."

This isn’t just about Israel/Palestine. It's an attempt of the Marxist takeover of America. Our colleges have become… pic.twitter.com/2IEqRyuorB

The question law-abiding Americans need to ask is why leftist radicals in the Biden administration, who quite honestly hate America, allow toxic woke ideologies to flow through the education system, promoting hate and violence at colleges and universities. 

Entire education curriculums have been infected with Marxist teachings, and purple-haired folks who are confused about their gender are infecting the vulnerable minds of youngsters with woke ideologies such as diversity, equity and inclusion, and queer theory. 

With some calling for the federal government to intervene and save the republic from this chaos, the most unlikely heroes of our time are the billionaires, such as Elon Musk, Bill Ackman, and Ken Griffin, who are stepping up to the plate to defend Old Glory and the nation. 

Musk is on X, awakening the world's population to various forms of Marxism, pushed by dark money-funded NGOs, which is spreading across governments and society like stage four cancer. On the other hand, Ackman and Griffin have denounced woke Ivy League schools, such as Harvard, in very public ways. 

The latest is Griffin, who founded the $63 billion hedge fund Citadel. In an interview Saturday, Griffin told the Financial Times that Harvard needs to embrace "Western values." The school's major donor said the campus crisis is a byproduct of a "cultural revolution." 

He said the US had "lost sight of education as the means of pursuing truth and acquiring knowledge" over the past decade.

"The narrative on some of our college campuses has devolved to the level that the system is rigged and unfair, and that America is plagued by systemic racism and systemic injustice," he noted.

Griffin continued, "What you're seeing now is the end-product of this cultural revolution in American education playing out on American campuses, in particular, using the paradigm of the oppressor and the oppressed." 

"The protests on college campuses are almost like performative art, and we're not actually helping Palestinians or Israelis with these surreal protests," the billionaire said, adding that in previous humanitarian crises, Americans would focus on practical aid. 

As we've pointed out, the campus riots have nothing to do with helping the poor Palestinians. Similarly, adjacent pro-Palestinian protests, shutting critical infrastructure, such as highways, bridges, and airport terminals nationwide, have zero to do with helping these folks and everything to do with collapsing America. 

The woke cult has been activated and unleashed in the US, as its objective is to scream racism over and over until communism is installed. If that's the solution to their alleged problems - well - this should be a wakeup call - that communism has yet to work in the world - killing more than 100 million people and counting. 

Here's Morgan Freeman on ending racism:

Morgan Freeman on ending racism: pic.twitter.com/Jw6lEymC8D

FT asked Griffin on how to fix Harvard, and his response: 

 "Harvard should put front and centre [that it] stands for meritocracy in America and will educate the next generation of leaders in American business, government, healthcare, and the philanthropic community. Harvard will embrace our Western values that have built one of the greatest nations in the world, foster those values with students, and ask them to manifest these values throughout the rest of their life."

The billionaire added: "Freedom of speech does not give you the right to storm a building or vandalize it. That's not freedom of speech. That's just anarchy."

So again, the unlikely heroes of our time are an elite class of billionaires; they're strapping on their combat shoes in this culture war and are signaling enough is enough. 

Perhaps it's time to upload antivirus woke software in America's schools, not just higher education but the entire damn system in a major overhaul - we suspect the Trump admin team will do that. 

Russian state media is confirming a huge breaking development that President Putin has removed his longtime Defense Minister and personal friend Sergei Shoigu as defense chief, who has overseen the Ukraine war since its beginning in Feb. 2022. He will now serve as head of the nation's security council.

"Sergei Shoigu is likely to lose the post of Minister of Defense of Russia to acting First Deputy Prime Minister Andrei Belousov," English-language RT is reporting. "His candidacy was proposed by President Vladimir Putin, the Federation Council announced on Sunday."

Putin has also reportedly dismissed Secretary of the Security Council Nikolai Patrushev, according to Interfax.

This appears in order to shuffle Shoigu into that position. Putin has now appointed Shoigu as new Secretary of the Russian Security Council. Likely Patrushev is also being moved to another position too.

Wow, indeed. Looks like Putin is pushing out his long-time Defense Minister and Siberian forest hiking partner Sergei Shoigu. https://t.co/XUYoKmR1UO

The proposed candidate for new defense chief, Belousov, has a background in Russia's central bank and economics and finance...

Russian President Vladimir Putin has proposed former First Deputy Prime Minister Andrey Belousov as candidate for Defense Minister, Tass reports https://t.co/jLuFF5g6b8

Below is some background on Belousov and his last two decades of government experience, though specific military decision-making or army experience on a strategic level appears to be absent, interestingly:

2000‒2006: General Director, Centre for Macroeconomic Analysis and Short-Term Forecasting.

2000‒2006: External adviser to the Prime Minister of the Russian Federation.

2006‒2008: Deputy Minister of Economic Development and Trade, Deputy Minister of Economic Development.

2008‒2012: Director, Government Department of Economy and Finance.

2012‒2013: Minister of Economic Development of the Russian Federation.

2013‒2020: Presidential Aide.

21 January 2020: First Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation, appointed by executive order of the President of Russia.

Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov addressed this lack of military experience as follows in a late Sunday press briefing:

Explaining Shoigu's replacement with a non-military official, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said it was "natural" for Putin to decide that a civilian official to head the Defense Ministry.

"The Defense Ministry must be absolutely open to innovation, to introduce advanced ideas and to create conditions for economic competitiveness — that’s why the president chose the candidacy of Andrei Removich Belousov," Peskov told reporters.

According to more details of Putin's big reshuffling via RT:

Senators are scheduled to engage in consultations regarding the nominees put forth by the president during committee sessions on May 13 and during a Federation Council meeting on May 14, as announced by the upper house of the Russian parliament.

No further alterations have been made to the roster of candidates Putin has submitted for cabinet positions. His nominations include Vladimir Kolokoltsev for the position of interior minister, Alexander Kurenkov for minister of emergency situations, Sergey Lavrov for foreign minister, and Konstantin Chuichenko for justice minister.

Denis Manturov, who served as deputy prime minister and head of the Ministry of Industry and Trade during Putin’s last term in office, has been nominated for the position of first deputy prime minister.

Dmitry Peskov, Putin's spokesman, says the Kremlin wanted to appoint an economic official to run the defense ministry after Russia’s security budget ballooned to 6.6 per cent of gross domestic product.

“This demands special attention,” he told reporters.

And TASS has this further confirmation and backgrounder on Belousov (machine translation)...

"Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed the candidacy of Andrei Belousov for the post of Minister of Defense, which was previously held by Sergei Shoigu. This is stated in a message on the Telegram channel of the Federation Council. In the previous government, Belousov worked as first deputy prime minister."

"65-year-old Belousov at various times held the positions of assistant to the head of state Vladimir Putin on economic issues, Minister of Economic Development of the Russian Federation, director of the Department of Economics and Finance of the Government of the Russian Federation, general director of the Center for Macroeconomic Analysis and Short-Term Forecasting, and worked at the Russian Academy in 1981-2006 Sciences (until 1991 - USSR Academy of Sciences). From April 30 to May 19, 2020, during Mishustin’s hospitalization with coronavirus infection, Belousov served as acting head of the Cabinet."

Over the weekend The Washington Post has reported a strange incentive and quid pro quo that the US is offering Israel if it agrees to hold off on the Rafah offensive. 

The Biden administration is ready to hand over to Israel "sensitive intelligence" on the whereabouts of top Hamas leaders. The Washington Post cited four unnamed sources as saying the US "is offering Israel valuable assistance if it holds back, including sensitive intelligence to help the Israeli military pinpoint the location of Hamas leaders and find the group’s hidden tunnels."

The 'offer' is bizarre and somewhat unprecedented given one would think that Washington's aim alongside Israel would be to dismantle a designated terror organization and ultimately bring down its top leadership. 

But instead this is apparently being dangled like a carrot. Washington is holding out hopes that a ceasefire deal can be accomplished with Qatari and Egyptian mediation, but that still appears to be going nowhere. A full-scale Rafah assault is likely to put an end to Hamas-Israel talks, at least for the near future.

According to more of the 'incentives' for Israel to abandon its Rafah ground offensive: "American officials have also offered to help provide thousands of shelters so Israel can build tent cities — and to help with the construction of delivery systems for food, water and medicine — so that Palestinians evacuated from Rafah can have a habitable place to live, said the officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to disclose secret diplomatic talks," WaPo writes.

"President Biden and his senior aides have been making such offers over the last several weeks in hopes they will persuade Israel to conduct a more limited and targeted operation in the southern Gaza city," the report continues.

Separately, public comments made by White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby during a Thursday briefing appeared to confirm the Post's reporting.

Kirby had said, "We could also, in fact, help them target the leaders, including [Hamas leader Yahya] Sinwar, which we are, frankly, doing with the Israelis on an ongoing basis."

Part of the White House's plan is to first get the bulk of Rafah civilians—which have been widely reported to be at over one million Palestinians—safely removed and evacuated before major fighting begins. But the main question echoed by almost all is: where will they go?

"The aid community generally is very skeptical there’s any safe way to relocate people out of Rafah," Jeremy Konyndyk, president of Refugees International, was quoted in The Washington Post as saying.

People in Rafah sending me photos of the new evacuation orders from Israeli military for Al-Shaboura, Al-Geneina and Khirbet Al-Adas. “Everyone in these areas is risking their lives and the lives of their family members. For your safety - we ask you to evacuate immediately” pic.twitter.com/39B9f7VUq4

It of course remains unknown the degree to which US intelligence actually has more info on Hamas leaders' whereabouts compared to Israeli intelligence.

Presumably such intel would come through intercepted communications, or perhaps even a human source that had infiltrated Hamas. However, it's highly doubtful the US has its own intelligence officers on the ground - other than possibly those working alongside IDF forces.

Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A paralegal from Manhattan Attorney General Alvin Bragg’s office testified on Friday during former President Donald Trump’s “hush money” trial that some phone call records between Michael Cohen and Stephanie Clifford’s (a.k.a. Stormy Daniels) lawyer were deleted, raising questions about evidentiary integrity.

In a bid to challenge some of the evidence being put forward in President Trump’s business records falsification trial in Manhattan, Trump attorney Emil Bove asked paralegal Jaden Jarmel-Schneider in court on May 10 about roughly three pages worth of records that the attorney claimed Mr. Bragg’s office had deleted.

Mr. Jarmel-Schneider confirmed some deletions. He acknowledged that some phone call records from 2018 between Mr. Cohen and Keith Davidson (Ms. Clifford’s lawyer) had been deleted, along with some records of conversations between Ms. Clifford’s manager Gina Rodriguez and then-National Enquirer editor Dylan Howard about Ms. Clifford’s claim that she had an affair with President Trump.

The Trump attorney alleged that the deletions were “significant,” prompting Mr. Jarmel-Schneider to dispute that characterization, though he acknowledged that some of the records had indeed been deleted.

Prosecutors have submitted the call records into evidence in a bid to bolster their case that the alleged affair—which President Trump has denied—took place and that the former president falsified business records to conceal payments allegedly made to Ms. Clifford to stay silent.

President Trump has denied any wrongdoing and maintains the case is a politically motivated bid to undermine his 2024 presidential campaign.

The fact that prosecutors submitted the call records into evidence but didn’t tell the Trump defense team that some of them had been deleted raises questions about the integrity of the proceedings, according to Trump attorneys, and others.

“Insanity! How on earth is this not a felony committed by Bragg and his minions? It sure would be if team Trump did it,” the former president’s eldest son, Don Trump Jr., said in a post on X.

Insanity! How on earth is this not a felony committed by Bragg and his minions? It sure would be if team Trump did it.

I’d love if we had actual journalists that would report on this ongoing travesty.

Sadly, proper journalism is dead. They’re just scribes for the regime. https://t.co/vQkLDk3t1T

Mr. Trump Jr. was presumably referring to the fact that evidence tampering is a class E felony in the state of New York.

Mr. Bragg’s office did not respond to a request for comment on the deleted records.

The development comes at the tail end of an intense week that saw President Trump subjected to gag order sanctions, two failed attempts by the defense team to have a mistrial declared, and Ms. Clifford taking the stand.

Mr. Cohen is expected to take the stand next week.

Trial End in Sight

After four weeks in court, prosecutors signaled that the first-ever criminal trial of a former U.S. president will be coming to an end.

Jurors will soon have to decide whether prosecutors have proved beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump was involved in falsifying business records as part of a scheme to influence the 2016 election.

President Trump was charged by Mr. Bragg with 34 counts of falsifying business records. Typically, this is a misdemeanor charge, but in this case prosecutors allege the records were falsified to cover up a scheme to influence the 2016 election and therefore amounts to a felony.

A number of legal experts have challenged the way Mr. Bragg elevated the misdemeanor into a felony. This includes retired Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, who argued that Mr. Bragg was operating on an invalid legal premise because he invoked federal statutes over which New York has no jurisdiction.

Mr. Dershowitz also recently said that he believes that Mr. Bragg’s office has violated voters’ rights with the Trump prosecution, with the legal scholar arguing that the case amounts to a criminal conspiracy to influence elections.

Prosecuting attorney Joshua Steinglass said Friday that prosecutors plan to call just two more witnesses and that it’s “entirely possible” that the prosecution will rest its case at the end of next week.

Mr. Cohen, [a total liar] who is set to testify next week, made the original claims that led to the case. Specifically, the allegation of falsified business records pertains to 11 checks Mr. Cohen received and their corresponding invoices and vouchers.

The defense team says that Mr. Cohen was paid attorney’s fees, while prosecutors allege that the legal expense categorization of the payments was fraudulent in order to cover up that they were meant to buy Ms. Clifford’s silence about the alleged affair.

Ms. Clifford testified over the course of two days, with attorneys and the judge expressing some frustration that she frequently responded to questions with commentary that did not directly answer the question.

Defense attorneys moved for a mistrial, arguing that her statements were “extremely prejudicial” and would improperly influence the jury.

The judge denied that motion.

In a client note on Friday, Goldman's Mark Wilson commented on the money supply (M2) growth, which has noticeably turned upward following the most significant crash since the Great Depression. He questions if this is an inflection point in a "monetary juncture akin to 1995 or 2011." 

"Although we may be 12 months past the inflection in M2, the historic analog of that chart does pose the interesting macro question of might this indeed be a monetary juncture akin to 1995 or 2011," Wilson wrote. 

M2% Y-o-Y chart via Wilson's note:

As a reminder, the complete disinflation trend followed the M2 growth slump and really should've fallen faster if deficit spending wasn't so out of control. The latest CPI bounce comes after the money supply bottomed about one year ago and, of course, rising deficits, with the federal government spending $1 trillion every 100 days. 

On a separate note, Tressis chief economist Daniel Lacalle recently pointed out, "The massive deficit means more taxes, more inflation, and lower growth in the future," adding, "Deficits are not a tool for growth; they are tools for stagnation." 

Ahead of next week's April CPI print, we outlined to pro-subs on Friday that traders should expect a "downside surprise" as the lagging OER "crashes" and catches up with real-time metrics. 

And now comes the April CPI "downside surprise" as OER crashes down to catch up with real time metricshttps://t.co/yRwuFen2e4

However, we'll leave you with this from Dohmen Capital Research: "The Fed is being forced to step on the accelerator to enable the financing of the record deficits at the US Treasury. They know that is inflationary, but they have no alternative."