It is sad that there are what you might call professional Catholics who make a living on their Catholicism, but in whom the spring of faith flows only faintly, in a few scattered drops. We must really make an effort to change this.
Distinction Matter - Subscribed Feeds
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Site: Zero HedgeThe Third World Is Forever Chasing The White ManTyler Durden Wed, 05/28/2025 - 23:25
Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us
This week I was researching the history of the modern African economy as well as the financial effects of “colonialism”, largely in an effort to discern if Africa is actually better off with or without western influence. One can of course argue that racial divisions like Apartheid in South Africa or segregation in Rhodesia have their own oppressive social effects beyond the financial. There’s also the argument that only “white colonists” ever benefited from the infrastructure they built (which is actually untrue, wherever white colonists were established, everything from water access to roads to medical care improved for everyone).
However, I think it’s fair to ask if these nations were experiencing growth and prosperity under white governance, or if things were relatively the same. We’re not supposed to talk about it – We’re only supposed to say “colonialism bad”. I don’t care about that, I just want to know what the realities are.
In the process I came across an interesting video featuring a black South African man who presented the race issue and the South Africa issue in a way that was simple but it brought impressive clarity. In summary he said:
“Africans are forever chasing the white man.”
What he means is, African culture, some elements of black culture, the third world in general, all of them are constantly trying to co-opt what white western culture builds. He argues that wherever the white population in Africa shrinks or migrates away, the country “becomes a shithole”. So, Africans chase white people.
When white people in Africa relocate to Australia, or Canada, or the US or Europe, the Africans try to follow. Instead of building up their own communities and nations they use and then eventually tear down the infrastructure that whites already built. They never replace it with anything else. Then they immigrate overseas to where the white people are because their own countries are in disarray. Eventually, they start tearing down those countries.
Leftists will call this a “racist” argument rooted in “white supremacy”, but this is a black South African making the point. It’s not racist, it’s just an observation of concrete fact. When Rhodesia became Zimbabwe and the whites were ethnically cleansed, the country collapsed and the black people starved to death.
South Africa systematically oppresses (or kills) the white citizenry because they want the land the whites own (they chase the white men). The Afrikaners are 7% of the population but make up around 70% of all agriculture and food production. Instead of seeing the white populace as a valuable asset to the country, they treat them as a foreign enemy. And so, the country falls deeper into economic despair and they are now on the verge of their own collapse.
When Matamela Ramaphosa, President of South Africa, sauntered into the White House with his big grin and his large entourage, he was there to get money. He wasn’t there to explain how he was going to improve conditions in his country. And, he certainly wasn’t there to debate the finer details of the ethnic cleansing of whites in his country or the government confiscation of their land. No, he was a black African leader petitioning a white US President for handouts.
In this case he believes his country is entitled to that money, so it doesn’t come off as begging so much as it comes off as arrogant conceit. If his country could build on its own, it would. If they had the ability to construct and innovate and maintain on their own, they would. Instead, they travel halfway across the world to the US. They chase the white man.
They’ve had over 30 years to get their system to work, and instead everything is broken. They can’t even keep their electrical grid and water functioning. And it’s not just South Africa, this is true for much of the third world. In Europe the populace is far more familiar with Africans chasing them, but we see a similar trend with Central and South Americans chasing whites in the US.
Wherever the west builds and creates and improves, the third world demands a piece. They arrive in vast caravans that stretch for miles. They arrive in boats on beaches in the night. They slip across borders and enter illegally like invaders because they see the west as something to be pillaged. They do not want to build their own thing. They don’t even know where to begin. They simply see what we have and they want to take it. They chase us wherever we go because they can’t emulate, they can only confiscate.
In progressive literature white people overall are elevated to the status of ultimate villains – The great oppressors that enslave and destroy. Yet, if this was true, why is it that the third world chases after us so much? You would think they would stay as far away from whites as possible, but they INSIST on immigrating to the west. Or they bitch and moan about our capitalist ways, but they never leave.
By extension, leftists will claim that white people are the “real invaders” that exploit and steal from the third world. In other words, we are “chasing the brown man”. But, if this was the case, then why aren’t white people rushing to migrate to Africa? Why is the western industrial presence in Africa in steep decline? Even black Africans leave Africa in droves when they get the chance to do so. No one is chasing the brown man. This is not a thing. No one covets what a beggar society has.
Now, I see this not as a race issue but as a cultural issue (I’m sure there are people who will debate that sentiment). If you look at countries like Japan or South Korea, they don’t chase white people. They build their own societies and fuel their own progress for the most part. They don’t need white culture or western culture to feed off of (China does, but that’s a whole separate article).
There are societies in the Middle East that remain relatively self sufficient, while others in the Middle East view the west as a target for conquest. The difference is in the culture, not the skin color. And what do most third world cultures have in common? This first thing is an oversupply of AK-47s, the second thing is they tend to be socialist or communist. These are beggar cultures with a beggar mentality.
In the US we can see this same mentality bleeding into parts of our own society. Every time leftist black American’s demand reparations or special privileges in employment and schooling or handouts through DEI programs, they are, in essence, chasing the white man. They want what the white man has and they’re not really shy about saying it. They didn’t build it or earn it but they want it, and if they can’t have it they will just as happily tear it all down.
The phrase “black fatigue” comes to mind, but again, it’s far more about culture than skin color. It’s something that white people like me aren’t supposed discuss.
Frankly, I find race divisions to be a distraction from the bigger problem, which is elitism and the sabotage of the west from within by wealthy oligarchs so that they can replace it with an authoritarian socialist “Utopia”. That said, I cannot ignore the fact that certain minorities in the US tend to lean majority far left, or that most third world migrants hold socialist ideals.
To be sure, there are millions of white woke liberals helping to fuel this fire, but again, most of the black community is happy to be used. These people become the enemy because they have allowed themselves to be weaponized in the hopes of getting a piece of the western pie before whole thing is ransacked. They don’t want to build for themselves, so, they voluntarily become the barbarians at the gate.
My advice to these people is to stop. Stop chasing the white man. Stop trying to feed off the western world. Put in the effort to construct your own great societies with your own accomplishments. No one is stopping you except yourselves. You are being duped into acting as a battering ram for globalism and multiculturalism; you are a tool for deconstructing the west.
By extension, stop coveting what white people have built within your own communities and start seeing such people as valuable allies in creating something better.
If you try to take from them they will eventually retaliate and it will not be a pretty sight. But, the interesting thing about white people (at least the conservative types) is that they will often help you if you ask nicely. Instead of threatening them, maybe try learning from them? Most white people I know love to improve their communities in any way they can, and they enjoy helping people who want to help themselves.
Instead of seeing white people as the enemy because of historic “crimes” which every single ethnic group has been guilty of, why not look to the future? Of course, this would require people in the third world to abandon their socialist leanings. Far left ideology is a poison that makes nations and cultures weak. It makes them perpetual beggars. To improve one’s future, one must aspire to create, not steal.
Why not stop chasing the white man and work with him instead?
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Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ZeroHedge.
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Site: Zero HedgeUS To Start Revoking Visas Of Chinese Students: RubioTyler Durden Wed, 05/28/2025 - 22:35
Authored by T.J. Muscaro via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced on May 28 that the United States would begin revoking visas of Chinese students, including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
“The U.S. will begin revoking visas of Chinese students, including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields,” Rubio wrote on X.
The State Department confirmed the action in a short press release, stating that it will work with the Department of Homeland Security to “aggressively revoke” the visas. It will also revise the visa criteria and “enhance scrutiny of all future visa applications” from China and Hong Kong.
The Epoch Times reached out to the State Department for further comment on the matter.
According to the State Department, the Chinese regime monitors Chinese students, mobilizing them through the Chinese Students and Scholars Association (CSSA). Some CSSA branches in the United States have openly admitted that they are directed, supported, or financed by Chinese consulates. These students have been known to attempt forced cancellation of events or speeches hosted by overseas dissident groups at U.S. schools.
The FBI warns on its website that the CCP uses its post-graduate students and post-doctorate researchers in fields like engineering, science, and mathematics to “operate as non-traditional collectors of intellectual property.”
“China is the world’s principal infringer of intellectual property. The annual cost to the U.S. economy of counterfeit goods, pirated software, and theft of trade secrets is between $225 billion and $600 billion,” the FBI states.
Rubio’s announcement comes two months after House Republicans raised the issue of Chinese student visas on March 14.
Introduced, in part, by Rep. Riley Moore (R-W. Va.), the “Stop Chinese Communist Prying by Vindicating Intellectual Safeguards in Academia Act of 2025,” or “Stop CCP VISAs Act of 2025,” would ban Chinese citizens from obtaining student visas, citing CCP-related national security concerns.
“Every year we allow nearly 300,000 Chinese nationals to come to the U.S. on student visas. We’ve literally invited the CCP to spy on our military, steal our intellectual property, and threaten national security,” Moore said in a statement to The Epoch Times.
The bill was co-sponsored by Reps. Brandon Gill (R-Texas), Scott Perry (R-Pa.), Addison McDowell (R-N.C.), Andrew Ogles (R-Tenn.), Troy Nehls (R-Texas), Owens Burgess (R-Utah), and Mary Miller (R-Ill.)
“The Chinese Communist Party is fundamentally opposed to our American values, and yet we have handed out hundreds of thousands of student visas to Chinese nationals, many of whom are state-sponsored spies,” Gill said in a statement to The Epoch Times.
Recent Cases
Some Chinese nationals who have gained access to the United States under student visas have also been at the center of legal matters concerning national security.
In 2020, Ye Yanqin, a lieutenant in the People’s Liberation Army, who attended Boston University from October 2017 to April 2019 on an exchange program, was charged by federal prosecutors with allegedly concealing her continued military service on her visa application. She allegedly completed “numerous assignments” for the Chinese military, including sending U.S. documents to China and retrieving U.S. military intelligence.
In October 2024, five Chinese nationals who were students at the University of Michigan as part of a joint program with the China-based Shanghai Jiao Tong University were indicted after being accused of misleading investigators about their trip to a remote military site in-state and conspiring to delete photo evidence from their cell phones.
In December 2024, Wen Shenghua, a Chinese national, was arrested in California for allegedly making military shipments to North Korea. Shengua had also overstayed his student visa.
More Visa Changes
The news also comes one day after a senior State Department official confirmed to The Epoch Times that an internal cable was sent to American embassies around the world, pausing student visa interviews effective May 27.
That suspension, according to the cable, which prohibits consular sections from adding any appointment slots for student and exchange visitor visas “until further guidance is issued,” was part of an effort to strengthen the vetting process of visa applicants, specifically regarding social media screenings.
“There is no right to a student visa,” Rubio told reporters in March. “We can cancel a student visa under the law just the same way that we can deny a student visa under the law. And we will do so in cases we find appropriate.”
This announcement also comes hours after Rubio announced new visa restrictions for foreign nationals found to be involved with censoring the free speech of U.S. citizens.
“For too long, Americans have been fined, harassed, and even charged by foreign authorities for exercising their free speech rights,” Rubio announced in a post on X.
“Today, I am announcing a new visa restriction policy that will apply to foreign officials and persons who are complicit in censoring Americans. Free speech is essential to the American way of life—a birthright over which foreign governments have no authority.”
Ryan Morgan, Emel Aken, Frank Fang, and Eva Fu contributed to this report.
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Site: Zero HedgeUS To Start Revoking Visas Of Chinese Students: RubioTyler Durden Wed, 05/28/2025 - 22:35
Authored by T.J. Muscaro via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced on May 28 that the United States would begin revoking visas of Chinese students, including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
“The U.S. will begin revoking visas of Chinese students, including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields,” Rubio wrote on X.
The State Department confirmed the action in a short press release, stating that it will work with the Department of Homeland Security to “aggressively revoke” the visas. It will also revise the visa criteria and “enhance scrutiny of all future visa applications” from China and Hong Kong.
The Epoch Times reached out to the State Department for further comment on the matter.
According to the State Department, the Chinese regime monitors Chinese students, mobilizing them through the Chinese Students and Scholars Association (CSSA). Some CSSA branches in the United States have openly admitted that they are directed, supported, or financed by Chinese consulates. These students have been known to attempt forced cancellation of events or speeches hosted by overseas dissident groups at U.S. schools.
The FBI warns on its website that the CCP uses its post-graduate students and post-doctorate researchers in fields like engineering, science, and mathematics to “operate as non-traditional collectors of intellectual property.”
“China is the world’s principal infringer of intellectual property. The annual cost to the U.S. economy of counterfeit goods, pirated software, and theft of trade secrets is between $225 billion and $600 billion,” the FBI states.
Rubio’s announcement comes two months after House Republicans raised the issue of Chinese student visas on March 14.
Introduced, in part, by Rep. Riley Moore (R-W. Va.), the “Stop Chinese Communist Prying by Vindicating Intellectual Safeguards in Academia Act of 2025,” or “Stop CCP VISAs Act of 2025,” would ban Chinese citizens from obtaining student visas, citing CCP-related national security concerns.
“Every year we allow nearly 300,000 Chinese nationals to come to the U.S. on student visas. We’ve literally invited the CCP to spy on our military, steal our intellectual property, and threaten national security,” Moore said in a statement to The Epoch Times.
The bill was co-sponsored by Reps. Brandon Gill (R-Texas), Scott Perry (R-Pa.), Addison McDowell (R-N.C.), Andrew Ogles (R-Tenn.), Troy Nehls (R-Texas), Owens Burgess (R-Utah), and Mary Miller (R-Ill.)
“The Chinese Communist Party is fundamentally opposed to our American values, and yet we have handed out hundreds of thousands of student visas to Chinese nationals, many of whom are state-sponsored spies,” Gill said in a statement to The Epoch Times.
Recent Cases
Some Chinese nationals who have gained access to the United States under student visas have also been at the center of legal matters concerning national security.
In 2020, Ye Yanqin, a lieutenant in the People’s Liberation Army, who attended Boston University from October 2017 to April 2019 on an exchange program, was charged by federal prosecutors with allegedly concealing her continued military service on her visa application. She allegedly completed “numerous assignments” for the Chinese military, including sending U.S. documents to China and retrieving U.S. military intelligence.
In October 2024, five Chinese nationals who were students at the University of Michigan as part of a joint program with the China-based Shanghai Jiao Tong University were indicted after being accused of misleading investigators about their trip to a remote military site in-state and conspiring to delete photo evidence from their cell phones.
In December 2024, Wen Shenghua, a Chinese national, was arrested in California for allegedly making military shipments to North Korea. Shengua had also overstayed his student visa.
More Visa Changes
The news also comes one day after a senior State Department official confirmed to The Epoch Times that an internal cable was sent to American embassies around the world, pausing student visa interviews effective May 27.
That suspension, according to the cable, which prohibits consular sections from adding any appointment slots for student and exchange visitor visas “until further guidance is issued,” was part of an effort to strengthen the vetting process of visa applicants, specifically regarding social media screenings.
“There is no right to a student visa,” Rubio told reporters in March. “We can cancel a student visa under the law just the same way that we can deny a student visa under the law. And we will do so in cases we find appropriate.”
This announcement also comes hours after Rubio announced new visa restrictions for foreign nationals found to be involved with censoring the free speech of U.S. citizens.
“For too long, Americans have been fined, harassed, and even charged by foreign authorities for exercising their free speech rights,” Rubio announced in a post on X.
“Today, I am announcing a new visa restriction policy that will apply to foreign officials and persons who are complicit in censoring Americans. Free speech is essential to the American way of life—a birthright over which foreign governments have no authority.”
Ryan Morgan, Emel Aken, Frank Fang, and Eva Fu contributed to this report.
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Site: Zero HedgeVictoria's Secret Exposed In 'Security Incident' As Site Goes Offline For Days, Shares Down 6.9%Tyler Durden Wed, 05/28/2025 - 22:10
Fashion giant Victoria's Secret & Co. has halted certain office operations and told employees to avoid using company technology amid a "security incident" that has caused the company to take their e-commerce and some store services offline.
Employees were locked out of email accounts on Wednesday, a 'person familiar with the situation' told Bloomberg Thursday. Shares of the company fell 6.9% (Beavis) on Wednesday.
"Recovery is going to take awhile," said CEO Hillary Super in a note seen by Bloomberg, which adds that customer care operations and some distribution center operations had been halted.
also...
The incident comes on the heels of yet another retailer - Adidas AG - which said that customer data was stolen by a third-party service provider, which included the contact information of anyone who had emailed the German company's customer service help desk.
One sec...
As Bloomberg continues;
In addition, several UK retailers announced breaches in recent weeks. Marks & Spencer Plc said it is facing a £300 million ($403 million) hit to operating profit from a cyberattack that disrupted sales and operations. The hackers were able to breach M&S’s systems via human error at a third party, the company said. The UK supermarket chain Co-op said intruders were able to access and extract customer data during a recent cyberattack, while luxury department store Harrods Ltd. disclosed that it had suffered attempts to compromise its systems.
A hacking group called DragonForce claimed responsibility for the UK attacks - which came after investor BBRC International Pte Limited increased its stake in Victoria's Secret - causing the company to adopt a poison pill strategy.
We hope they can pull this off!
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Site: Zero HedgeVictoria's Secret Exposed In 'Security Incident' As Site Goes Offline For Days, Shares Down 6.9%Tyler Durden Wed, 05/28/2025 - 22:10
Fashion giant Victoria's Secret & Co. has halted certain office operations and told employees to avoid using company technology amid a "security incident" that has caused the company to take their e-commerce and some store services offline.
Employees were locked out of email accounts on Wednesday, a 'person familiar with the situation' told Bloomberg Thursday. Shares of the company fell 6.9% (Beavis) on Wednesday.
"Recovery is going to take awhile," said CEO Hillary Super in a note seen by Bloomberg, which adds that customer care operations and some distribution center operations had been halted.
also...
The incident comes on the heels of yet another retailer - Adidas AG - which said that customer data was stolen by a third-party service provider, which included the contact information of anyone who had emailed the German company's customer service help desk.
One sec...
As Bloomberg continues;
In addition, several UK retailers announced breaches in recent weeks. Marks & Spencer Plc said it is facing a £300 million ($403 million) hit to operating profit from a cyberattack that disrupted sales and operations. The hackers were able to breach M&S’s systems via human error at a third party, the company said. The UK supermarket chain Co-op said intruders were able to access and extract customer data during a recent cyberattack, while luxury department store Harrods Ltd. disclosed that it had suffered attempts to compromise its systems.
A hacking group called DragonForce claimed responsibility for the UK attacks - which came after investor BBRC International Pte Limited increased its stake in Victoria's Secret - causing the company to adopt a poison pill strategy.
We hope they can pull this off!
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Site: Zero HedgeHow California Has Destroyed Its Middle ClassTyler Durden Wed, 05/28/2025 - 21:45
Authored by Edward Ring via American Greatness,
California has declared war on its middle class, and the special interests controlling the state are doing everything they can to impose this punitive economic model on the rest of America. It’s a quasi-feudal system, with the entire population divided into aristocrats and serfs. The means to destroy the middle class is to engineer an unaffordable cost of living for households, and a regulatory environment that only huge corporations can afford to navigate. The moral justification for this destruction is to cope with the “climate emergency” and to achieve social “equity.”
While the Trump interregnum has slowed the march of neo-feudalism in the rest of America, in California, the plan continues to move relentlessly forward. If you’re extremely wealthy, California’s abusive cost of living is not a big concern, and you stay for the scenic beauty and abundant sunshine. If you’re extremely poor, you stay because California’s taxpayer-funded assistance programs—financial aid, food assistance, healthcare, and other support services—offer a lifestyle orders of magnitude better than what you may have previously endured in the barrios of Tegucigalpa or the suburbios of Maputo.
But if you’re not rich, and you’re not poor, but just work, pay taxes, and pay for everything you need with after-tax earnings and without government assistance, California is a hostile environment. The numbers on out-migration are unequivocal. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, an astonishing 8.5 million people have moved out of California since 2010. In 2023 alone, the last full year for which estimates are available, 690,000 people left. In 2022, 818,000; in 2021, 841,000. No other state has sustained anywhere near this 15 years of unrelenting mass exodus.
These people aren’t just leaving. By the millions, they’re being driven out. The latest reported cost of a home in California averages nearly $788,000 compared to $361,000 in the rest of the U.S. The price for a gallon of gasoline in California is roughly $5.00 compared to $3.00 nationwide. With refineries quitting production in California thanks to ridiculous and escalating regulatory harassment by state agencies, the price of gasoline is only going to rise. As for residential electricity rates, consumers in California have to pay around $0.30 per kilowatt-hour, a rate that is twice the national average.
This isn’t news. It costs a lot to live in California due to restrictions placed on housing and pretty much any enabling energy or water infrastructure by extreme environmentalists and the special interests that support them. It’s simple math. Homes cost twice as much. Gasoline costs nearly 60 percent more. Electricity costs twice as much. Double the cost of real estate and energy, and you double the cost of everything that needs real estate and energy to be produced.
And to ameliorate the problems they caused, California’s state legislature has indulged in a spending spree designed to shower benefits onto residents who can’t afford the overpriced necessities. It’s a good trick. Deny people the ability to make a living, blame a scapegoat (climate change, greedy corporations, billionaires, racism), and then distribute free stuff from the government in exchange for votes.
But massive government benefits are expensive for the state to maintain, with costs going into hyperdrive in the 21st century. Between 2010 and 2020, the per capita state government spending in California, adjusting for inflation, more than doubled. Since then, it’s continued to grow, with Newsom’s proposed 2025-26 state budget of $322 billion equating to $8,173 per resident. Back in 2011, in 2024 dollars, total state spending was only $4,696 per resident. Did anything get better? Schools? Crime rates? Homelessness? Affordability?
Meanwhile, the middle class pays. Not only via the cost of living, which they pay for in full since they’re not poor enough to qualify for free stuff from the government. They also pay higher taxes to support the swollen state. A lot more taxes.
Suppose a person works as an independent contractor in California and makes $100,000 per year in their regular job. They then work nights and weekends to make enough money to support their family. Let’s assume that second job doesn’t pay enough for their total annual income to exceed $176,100, which is the ceiling beyond which workers don’t have to contribute any further to Social Security (Medicare withholding has no limit). Here’s how bad these taxes get:
The marginal withholding rate for the State of California on income over $141,212 is 9.3 percent. Anything over $111,732 is taxed at 8.0 percent. Then there is federal tax of 22 percent on any income over $94,300, with Social Security and Medicare (for which an independent contractor pays the employee and the employer share) adding another whopping 15.3 percent. In all, the government taxes 46.6 percent of those last hard-earned dollars.
That’s how the State of California thanks an independent contractor who is working nights and weekends to make some extra money. Sure, the federal government takes most of it, and the federal government wastes trillions instead of merely wasting hundreds of billions. But other states don’t have California’s punitive cost of living, and in states with low or minimal state income taxes, the hit for federal income tax and Social Security/Medicare would be 37 percent, little more than a third of marginal earnings instead of nearly half.
And it doesn’t end there. Let’s have a look at sales taxes in Los Angeles County, where 9.7 million people live, 25 percent of the entire state’s population. The combined state and local sales tax rate is 9.75 percent, which means if the household in our example spent $2,000 per month on retail purchases, they’d be out another $2,340 annually. The average home in Los Angeles County costs $900,000, which means California’s supposedly low property tax rate of 1.0 percent still equates to another $9,000 per year in property taxes.
Most people in California haven’t mustered the degree of hard work and good luck it takes to make a six-figure income. The average annual salary in California is $68,917. For people making that amount of money, owning a home is an impossible dream. Just paying for gasoline and electricity is a hardship.
The betrayal that California’s state and local politicians have inflicted on the people living there is unforgivable. The state is run by a coalition of public sector unions, allied with environmentalist billionaires and the nonprofit advocacy groups they fund, and the monopolistic corporations that thrive in over-regulated environments that smaller competitors can’t survive. These aligned special interests pour billions into backing politicians who do what they’re told. The result is a bloated public sector and “green” industries profiting off of high prices and a captive market. And the established media—increasingly populated with indoctrinated youths straight out of union-controlled universities—marches in lockstep with this corrupt establishment, saying all the right things and controlling the narrative.
It’s easy enough to blame California’s voters for the predicament they’re in. Except that 40 percent of the electorate routinely votes against the one-party Democratic machine candidates. And the rest of them, certainly enough to swing the result away from Democrats, have been thoroughly indoctrinated by what is probably the most powerful political machine in America. They spend literally billions to foment nonstop fear of boiling oceans, burning forests, and genocidal Nazis lurking in every shadow. They hire the best behavioral scientists on earth to foment this paranoia. And it works. Never mind the price of gas; we have to save the planet and end racism.
California is a failed state. The only people of modest income who can possibly afford to live there are people who purchased their homes decades ago or people who inherited those homes from their parents and grandparents. Everyone else just works, all the time, and barely survives, or they give up and get government handouts.
Americans in the rest of the country need to thoroughly recognize the threat coming from California, because it is not obvious. The special interests running the state don’t merely deflect accountability by blaming the hardship they’ve engineered on climate and racism. They’ve also successfully conned voters into thinking that these special interests fight against each other, when in fact they are united. Public sector unions, billionaire-backed NGOs, and monopolistic corporations are not antagonists. These aligned groups share the same agenda, and they work together. To serve each of their varied interests, they intend to destroy the middle class in this country.
In California, they’ve succeeded in doing exactly that.
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Site: Zero HedgeHarvard Fires Star Professor Who Fabricated Data For 'Dishonesty' StudiesTyler Durden Wed, 05/28/2025 - 21:25
A celebrated Harvard professor who researched why people are dishonest was fired and stripped of tenure after a probe found she fabricated data on multiple studies.
Francesca Gino, a star behavioral scientist at Harvard Business School whose work focused on why people cheat, was found to have manipulated observations in four studies so that their findings supported her hypotheses - according to a 1,300-page report detailing the university's months-long investigation.
Of note, Harvard hasn't revoked a professor's tenure since the 1940s - when the American Association of University Professors formalized termination rules, the Harvard Crimson reports.
"The committee concludes that Professor Gino has engaged in multiple instances of research misconduct, across all four studies at issue in these allegations," according to the report.
Gino, a star academic who had authored over 140 academic papers and snagged numerous awards, came under fire last year after a trio of behavioral scientists published a series of explosive posts on their blog Data Colada, writing four academic papers published between 2012 and 2020 that the Harvard professor had co-authored “contained fraudulent data.”
The university report detailed that Harvard began a preliminary investigation of Gino’s work in October 2021 after the Data Colada researchers brought their concerns about the papers’ sketchy data to the school. -NY Post
The university launched a preliminary investigation into Gino's work after red flags emerged in a study she co-authored that claimed requiring people to sign an honesty pledge at the beginning of a form vs. the end significantly boosts honest responses. The study was retracted in 2021 due to "evidence" of data fabrication relying on three separate lab experiments to support its findings, the Post reports.
The 'Data Colada' scientists then found three more studies in the same paper which appeared to rely on manipulated data, prompting a full probe into the allegations which was conducted in 2022 and 2023, in which people who worked with Gino on the papers were interviewed and Harvard Business School faculty analyzed her data, emails, and the papers' manuscripts.
An outside forensics firm was also hired to assist in the analysis.
When asked, Gino insisted that issued with her work may stem from errors by her or her research assistants - or (Joe Reid is that you?) someone with "malicious intentions" who may have tampered with her work.
Investigators saw right through that and provided their findings to HBS Dean Datar in March of 2023, after which Gino was placed on unpaid leave.
Gino took to her blog to defend herself - insisting "There is one thing I know for sure: I did not commit academic fraud. I did not manipulate data to produce a particular result," adding "I did not falsify data to bolster any result. I did not commit the offense I am accused of. Period."
She then sued Harvard, Harvard Business School Dean Srikant Datar, and the Data Colada bloggers, claiming reputational damage and loss of income and career opportunities due to the investigation and placing her on administrative leave beginning in June 2023.
"Harvard shared their case. And while my lawyers have discouraged me from speaking out, I just need to say that I did not — ever — engage in academic fraud," she wrote on her website in March 2024. "Once I have the opportunity to prove this in the court of law, with the support of experts I was denied through Harvard’s investigation process, you’ll see why their case is so weak and that these are bogus allegations."
Except, a Boston judge dismissed her defamation claims against both Harvard and the Data Colada bloggers last September, ruling that her work can be scrutinized under the First Amendment due to her status as a public figure.
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Site: Zero Hedge$13 Billion In Renewable Projects At Risk In Vietnam Due To Subsidy CutsTyler Durden Wed, 05/28/2025 - 21:20
Over 40 investors in Vietnam’s solar and wind energy sector are warning they may default unless the government honors its original pricing commitments, according to Nikkei Asia.
Vietnam had initially offered feed-in tariffs ranging from 7.09 to 9.35 U.S. cents per kWh for solar energy, valid for 20 years, to attract investment and support the country's shift to renewable energy. However, the government now wants to pay in local currency at a rate equal to 4.7 U.S. cents per kWh—a cut of 34% to 50%, depending on the exchange rate.
Most affected projects are solar farms, and many investors have reported delayed or reduced payments from the state utility Electricity Vietnam (EVN). These delays stem from a government review claiming that key documentation—the construction completion acceptance (CCA)—was missing, despite not being required at the time.
Investors argue that most projects have since secured the document and paid related penalties.
In a letter sent on May 16 to top leaders including Communist Party chief To Lam and Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh, the investors urged the government to protect what they described as Vietnam’s “contractual integrity, regulatory consistency, and the credibility” of its investment environment. They also warned that the dispute “poses serious and immediate risks to investor confidence, financial stability, and Vietnam’s long-term energy and climate objectives.”
Concerns have grown over EVN’s proposal to retroactively change terms, which could require investors to return past payments. One Vietnamese investor noted that while the rules have shifted, most developers are now in compliance.
The Nikkei report says that the letter—signed by more than 40 foreign and local investors representing a combined 6.38 gigawatts of capacity—also noted that over $13 billion in equity is at risk, including about $4 billion from foreign-led projects.
Signatories include Japan’s Fujiwara Energy and Toho Gas, Thailand’s B.Grimm Renewable and Super Energy, the Philippines’ ACEN, Portugal’s Sunseap, and the Netherlands’ SEP. The group warned that they are breaching loan agreements and face growing risks of default. According to the letter, the situation has led to cash flow problems affecting “plant maintenance, repairs, and operations,” threatening project sustainability and business operations overall.
Vietnam’s export-driven economy relies heavily on foreign capital and competitive energy prices. With growth expected to hit 8% this year and even higher in the coming years, the country is facing rising energy demand. Power outages in 2023 already rattled manufacturers and residents in the north.
EVN posted nearly $1 billion in losses last year, following an $800 million shortfall in 2022. Although it was still in deficit in the first half of 2024, price hikes eventually helped the utility return to profit by year’s end.
Authorities have so far maintained that only projects meeting all formal requirements are eligible for the favorable pricing.
Dominic Scriven, chairman of Dragon Capital, whose firm has 123 megawatts of solar affected by the changes, said the lack of clarity is already hurting both investor confidence and the stability of ongoing projects. He added that he hopes the government will act constructively to resolve the dispute.
Even companies without current feed-in-tariff projects are watching closely. Kengo Nagaki, deputy chief representative of Tokyo Gas in Vietnam, said that while his firm’s projects are not affected, “if this were to happen, it would be a concern for foreign investors.”
He emphasized that the government cannot meet its renewable energy targets without international investment.
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Site: Zero Hedge$13 Billion In Renewable Projects At Risk In Vietnam Due To Subsidy CutsTyler Durden Wed, 05/28/2025 - 21:20
Over 40 investors in Vietnam’s solar and wind energy sector are warning they may default unless the government honors its original pricing commitments, according to Nikkei Asia.
Vietnam had initially offered feed-in tariffs ranging from 7.09 to 9.35 U.S. cents per kWh for solar energy, valid for 20 years, to attract investment and support the country's shift to renewable energy. However, the government now wants to pay in local currency at a rate equal to 4.7 U.S. cents per kWh—a cut of 34% to 50%, depending on the exchange rate.
Most affected projects are solar farms, and many investors have reported delayed or reduced payments from the state utility Electricity Vietnam (EVN). These delays stem from a government review claiming that key documentation—the construction completion acceptance (CCA)—was missing, despite not being required at the time.
Investors argue that most projects have since secured the document and paid related penalties.
In a letter sent on May 16 to top leaders including Communist Party chief To Lam and Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh, the investors urged the government to protect what they described as Vietnam’s “contractual integrity, regulatory consistency, and the credibility” of its investment environment. They also warned that the dispute “poses serious and immediate risks to investor confidence, financial stability, and Vietnam’s long-term energy and climate objectives.”
Concerns have grown over EVN’s proposal to retroactively change terms, which could require investors to return past payments. One Vietnamese investor noted that while the rules have shifted, most developers are now in compliance.
The Nikkei report says that the letter—signed by more than 40 foreign and local investors representing a combined 6.38 gigawatts of capacity—also noted that over $13 billion in equity is at risk, including about $4 billion from foreign-led projects.
Signatories include Japan’s Fujiwara Energy and Toho Gas, Thailand’s B.Grimm Renewable and Super Energy, the Philippines’ ACEN, Portugal’s Sunseap, and the Netherlands’ SEP. The group warned that they are breaching loan agreements and face growing risks of default. According to the letter, the situation has led to cash flow problems affecting “plant maintenance, repairs, and operations,” threatening project sustainability and business operations overall.
Vietnam’s export-driven economy relies heavily on foreign capital and competitive energy prices. With growth expected to hit 8% this year and even higher in the coming years, the country is facing rising energy demand. Power outages in 2023 already rattled manufacturers and residents in the north.
EVN posted nearly $1 billion in losses last year, following an $800 million shortfall in 2022. Although it was still in deficit in the first half of 2024, price hikes eventually helped the utility return to profit by year’s end.
Authorities have so far maintained that only projects meeting all formal requirements are eligible for the favorable pricing.
Dominic Scriven, chairman of Dragon Capital, whose firm has 123 megawatts of solar affected by the changes, said the lack of clarity is already hurting both investor confidence and the stability of ongoing projects. He added that he hopes the government will act constructively to resolve the dispute.
Even companies without current feed-in-tariff projects are watching closely. Kengo Nagaki, deputy chief representative of Tokyo Gas in Vietnam, said that while his firm’s projects are not affected, “if this were to happen, it would be a concern for foreign investors.”
He emphasized that the government cannot meet its renewable energy targets without international investment.
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Site: Zero HedgeVenezuela's Shadow War Over Oil-Rich Essequibo Is EscalatingTyler Durden Wed, 05/28/2025 - 20:55
Authored by Charles Kennedy via OilPrice.com,
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Following ExxonMobil’s massive 2017 oil discovery offshore Guyana, Venezuela has revived and intensified its claim over the Essequibo region.
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A series of cross-border attacks on Guyanese troops, including three on May 15, points to a potential Venezuelan strategy of deniable, Russia-style hybrid warfare.
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The U.S. has warned Venezuela that any attack on Guyana or ExxonMobil would carry serious consequences.
A quiet frontier in South America is rapidly becoming one of the world’s most volatile energy flashpoints.
The disputed region of Essequibo, a sparsely populated expanse administered by Guyana but claimed by Venezuela, has seen tensions simmer for years. But a combination of geopolitical ambition, economic desperation, and energy opportunity is now threatening to tip the standoff into open conflict.
At stake is one of the most valuable stretches of territory in the world—an area that, until recently, few outside the region had heard of.
Essequibo, which comprises nearly two-thirds of Guyana’s landmass, was thrust into the global spotlight after ExxonMobil’s 2017 discovery of the Stabroek Block offshore reserves, estimated at over 11 billion barrels of recoverable oil.
For Guyana the find transformed the country from economic backwater to a regional energy giant almost overnight.
The newfound wealth has also revived Venezuela’s long-standing claim to the region, a grievance dating back to colonial arbitration rulings of the late 19th century. Caracas has never fully relinquished its claim, but it was only after the oil discovery that Venezuela began actively pressing the issue. Since 2022, under President Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela has dramatically escalated its rhetoric and actions—announcing referenda, redrawing maps, and even moving military assets toward the border.
Most alarmingly, Venezuela has begun to mimic the playbook of its closest geopolitical ally—Russia. Much like Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea using unmarked “little green men,” Venezuela appears to be laying the groundwork for a slow, deniable incursion into Essequibo. The playbook combines official rhetoric with irregular warfare tactics, allowing for plausible deniability while steadily undermining Guyana’s control.
The first major signal of this new phase came last year when Maduro’s government held a referendum to “reclaim” Essequibo. Despite international condemnation, the vote passed and led to the formal creation of a new Venezuelan “state” encompassing the territory. Venezuela began offering citizenship to Essequibo’s residents and launched efforts to organize elections in the region.
In March 2025, a Venezuelan naval gunboat intercepted ExxonMobil operations in Guyanese waters, accusing the U.S. oil major of encroaching on Venezuelan territory.
The incident was widely seen as a warning shot—not just to Exxon, but to any foreign investors backing Guyana’s energy future.
But the most ominous sign yet came on May 15, when Guyana’s military reported three armed attacks in a single day on its patrols along the Cuyuni River, a critical stretch of the Guyana–Venezuela border. According to the Guyana Defence Force, unidentified gunmen in civilian clothing opened fire on soldiers in three separate engagements. No casualties were reported, and the Guyanese military responded with what it described as “measured force.”
The attacks were chilling in their timing and coordination. While the assailants were not officially identified, officials in Georgetown and most international observers believe they were Venezuelan operatives or proxies acting on Caracas’s behalf. The region is not known for organized crime or guerrilla activity, and no local insurgency has taken root—at least not yet.
This wasn’t the first time violence erupted in the contested zone. In February, another attack left two Guyanese soldiers critically injured. That incident, too, was blamed on Venezuela-linked forces.
While the skirmishes may seem minor in isolation, taken together they mark a dangerous pattern of escalation. What’s emerging is a shadow conflict—gray-zone warfare that avoids the threshold of open war while steadily eroding Guyana’s control over Essequibo. The danger, analysts warn, is that this slow-motion campaign could culminate in a de facto annexation, much like Crimea, before the international community has time to respond.
The Guyana Defence Force fields just over 3,000 active personnel with limited air, land, and naval capabilities. Venezuela, by contrast, commands over 100,000 troops, around 200 tanks, dozens of combat aircraft, and a sizable paramilitary force—making any conventional war a one-sided affair.
However, during a visit to Georgetown in March, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio cautioned that any Venezuelan attack on Guyana or ExxonMobil would mark “a very bad day” for Caracas, hinting at serious consequences. Venezuela swiftly condemned the remarks.
The real question now is how the international community, and especially the United States, will respond. ExxonMobil’s deep involvement gives Washington both an interest and a stake in the dispute. But the broader issue goes beyond oil. A successful Venezuelan land grab would further erode the already fragile post-Cold War order. It would also send a message to authoritarian regimes worldwide: territorial revisionism is back—and it works.
Guyana has vowed to defend its sovereignty and is seeking stronger security partnerships.
But unless it receives military support or any other type of real security guarantee from the U.S., Georgetown will struggle to hold the line alone.
For now, Essequibo remains under Guyana’s flag. But the shadow of Caracas is growing—and so is the risk that South America’s next war may erupt in one of its least known, but most strategically vital, regions.
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Site: Zero HedgeSix Mexican Soldiers Killed By Cartel Roadside BombTyler Durden Wed, 05/28/2025 - 20:30
At least six Mexican soldiers were killed when a homemade explosive detonated on a roadway at the Michoacán-Jalisco border—territory controlled by the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), according to one of Mexico's top newspapers.
El Universal reported that the incident occurred as Mexican troops were conducting an operation to dismantle CJNG operations and a training center in Santa María del Oro, located in eastern Michoacán near the Jalisco border.
Sources said at least one cartel member was armed with a "Minigun machine gun at that location, along with an arsenal and hitmen."
The report from El Universal continued:
"Sources told El Universal that an operation entered that area through the neighboring municipality of Jilotlán, reaching Santa María del Oro, where they clashed with the criminal cells. But as the military convoy was traveling through a gap, the criminal group detonated an explosive."
And noted:
"Six Texas aircraft and four helicopters were dispatched to the scene to provide support to the ground force."
Alleged image from the incident area:
Sin perdon, ni olvido!, QEPD, Seis Elementos de las Fuerzas Especiales de Reacción e Intervención FERI del Ejercito Mexicano murieron y dos resultaron heridos, por la explosión de una mina cuando circulaban en un Sand Cat blindado en la comunidad de El Santuario de Los Reyes,… pic.twitter.com/M4CEp8stQJ
— Blog del Narco México (@blogdelnarcomex) May 28, 2025There has been no official clarification from U.S. authorities regarding the newspaper's mention of "six Texas aircraft and four helicopters." However, as previously reported, the U.S. has deployed signals reconnaissance aircraft and drones across Mexico—likely in preparation for operations like this one, aimed at disrupting the command-and-control structures of major drug cartels.
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Site: Zero HedgeSmotrich Calls For 'Rebuilding Temple' During Jerusalem Day CelebrationsTyler Durden Wed, 05/28/2025 - 20:05
Far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has called for the rebuilding of a Jewish temple on the site of Al-Aqsa Mosque and for the expansion of Israel’s borders and Jewish settlements in Gaza.
In speech addressing crowds at a Jerusalem Day rally on Monday, which celebrates Israel’s occupation of the old city of Jerusalem, Smotrich also called for "complete redemption" and reconstruction of "the Temple here," referring to Al-Aqsa Mosque, which settlers had raided earlier.
Reuters: Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich walks to visit the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem's Old City, as Israelis mark Jerusalem Day, 26 May 2025
“We are conquering the Land of Israel, liberating Gaza, settling Gaza and defeating the enemy,” Smotrich said to crowds that had chanted “death to Arabs” as they marched through Jerusalem’s Old City and attacked Palestinians.
“With God’s help, we will expand Israel’s borders, bring about complete redemption, and rebuild the Temple here,” he said.
Smotrich also reiterated his calls for Jewish settlement in Gaza, declaring that “Israel is not afraid of the word occupation”.
“Some people are afraid of victory. We are not afraid of victory,” he said. “Lets give strength to our brave and heroic fighters”.
Several attacks and brawls were caught on film during Jerusalem Day marches...
Right-wing Israelis storm Al-Aqsa compound in occupied East Jerusalem, attacking Palestinians and chanting anti-Muslim slogans on “Jerusalem Day,” which marks Israel’s 1967 occupation of the city. pic.twitter.com/XFNTjW2yEN
— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) May 26, 2025“Are we afraid of victory? Are we afraid of the word occupation?” Smotrich demanded, to which the crowd responded with a resounding “no”.
Smotrich has long advocated for extending Israeli sovereignty over the occupied West Bank and Gaza, and across the Middle East as part of his vision of a “Greater Israel”.
Earlier this month, Smotrich vowed that “Gaza will be entirely destroyed” and its Palestinian population will “leave in great numbers to third countries”.
He also declared that Israel would “apply sovereignty” in the occupied West Bank before the next Israeli general elections in October 2026.
On Jerusalem Day, Israeli women chanted ‘May your village burn!’ as they marched through the Armenian Quarter in the Old City of Jerusalem. pic.twitter.com/AtbTK6S9nv
— Kegham Balian (@kbalian90) May 28, 2025“Within a few months, we will be able to declare that we have won. Gaza will be totally destroyed,” Smotrich said. “In another six months, Hamas won’t exist as a functioning entity.”
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Site: Ron Paul Institute for Peace And Prosperity
Elon Musk, the leader of the Department of Government Efficiency in Donald Trump’s presidential administration, has expressed in a new interview his disappointment in Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” which the United States House of Representatives approved last week.
Jeff Cox reported Wednesday at CNBC regarding Musk’s interview:
In an interview to be aired June 1 on ‘“’CBS Sunday Morning,’ the richest person in the world and the head of the Department of Government Efficiency advisory board said the ‘big, beautiful bill’ will not help the nation’s finances.
‘I was, like, disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decrease it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing,’ Musk said in a clip the program shared on social media platform X.
DOGE says it has saved $170 billion in taxpayer money since it began in January, targeting areas of government waste and redundancy in sometimes-controversial ways.Unfortunately for advocates of reducing US government spending, this situation is what I suggested would arise in my April 4 article “The DOGE Switcheroo.” In the article, I noted that, despite DOGE efforts at cost cutting, “the trajectory of US government size and power will continue upward and onward.” This is due in part, I noted, to the fact that “Congress has, with President Donald Trump’s strong support, kept spending on autopilot based on the course established in the previous presidential administration.”
Three months earlier, in my article “Downsized DOGE,” I had suggested that Musk, who had already reduced his goal for DOGE derived government spending reductions from two trillion to one trillion dollars annually, may, in a year, have given up on asserting DOGE would reduce overall spending and have instead settled for just “talking about how DOGE can limit the increasing of US government spending.” That situation came to pass in less than half a year.
As far as cutting overall government spending goes, DOGE appears to have failed.
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Site: Public Discourse
As a homeschooling mother, I sometimes encounter people who are shocked that I spend all day with my children. Several months ago, a neighbor—who is a lovely woman— told me something along the lines of: “I just don’t know how you do it.” She has children herself but found it hard to envision what she would do if they were home all day, rather than off at school or at other extracurricular activities. I sympathize! Before I became a homeschooling mom, I worked as an attorney and my kids went to daycare and regular school. I remember well the feeling of desperation when school closed unexpectedly, and I suddenly had to find something to do all day with my highly energetic and inquisitive little boys. What on earth would I do with them all day?
I know now that it becomes easier to deal with your kids all day . . . if you do it every day. Parenting is a skill, and you can develop certain aspects of that skill through repetition. To be clear, all parents engage in parenting. Whether they work full-time, part-time, or not at all, every parent is tasked with the critical work of raising their kids. This role is irreplaceable, and the full-time working mom is just as important a parent as a stay-at-home mom. But for the mom or dad at home, the math simply is that they spend more hours each day caring “hands on” for their kids than parents with full-time jobs. This occupation, especially in the little years, is remarkably physical. There are toddlers to feed, diapers to change, groceries to carry in, floors to mop . . . the list goes on. It also requires significant mental discernment: When to intervene in a toddler tantrum? Should a child with a tough math problem be pushed to finish or allowed to leave it until tomorrow? How to make the family budget stretch to cover extracurriculars for several kids? Our society seems reluctant to believe that this physical and mental effort is skilled work. This leads to an important question: How might society change if it understood the care of children and home to be a skill one might seek to improve through deliberate practice aimed at achieving expertise?
Before delving into that question, I want to note one terminological difference. There is a tendency, especially among those on the left-of-center, to call all care of children “care work,” and to make no distinction between care by parents and care by others. While I have the deepest respect for those who work in daycares and preschools, and I believe they are doing needed and valuable work, care by a daycare worker is different from care by a parent. Daycare workers can excel at providing safe, nurturing environments for young children, but their relationship with their charges is inherently limited, in contrast to the hopefully life–long relationship between parent and child. Group care is also different from home care. As any parent who has been stumped by their wild toddler’s sudden docility in a group setting (or vice versa!) can tell you, it is simply different to put a child with a large group of same-aged children and a single authority figure rather than to have that child at home in a family. This is not to say one is better or worse—or that children don’t benefit from group care. But the classroom management techniques used by a teacher are simply not identical to the strategies a parent might use to run a household, even if there are some similarities.
To the main question: How might our society change if we understood parenting as a skilled occupation? Most millennials (my generation) are familiar with the “10,000 hours rule.” Popularized by Malcom Gladwell in his bestselling book Outliers, the central thesis of the book is that the more often you practice a skill, the better you get at it. Put another way per Gladwell, “Practice isn’t the thing you do once you’re good. It’s the thing you do that makes you good.” Consider a surgeon as she works at her chosen craft. Surgery is, of course, a highly technical skill. It involves physical dexterity, good judgment, and expertise. It should surprise no one that the more surgery a surgeon does, the better she is at it. For example, should you need knee surgery, studies repeatedly find that you have the best chances of a good outcome by finding a surgeon with a high-volume knee surgery practice. Similarly, patients of older surgeons often have a lower mortality rate. Young doctors may be more energetic and familiar with cutting-edge technology, but when it comes to routine surgery, older is actually wiser. We don’t accord the same respect to the skills displayed by competent mothers and fathers at home as we do to surgeons, but perhaps we should. Child development experts tell us that no relationship is more formative, or has more of an impact on childhood outcomes, than that between a child and parent. What would it mean for us to face the somewhat uncomfortable fact that parenting is a skill that can, like all skills, be developed by time and effort?
First, if we understand parenting and homemaking as skills, it should not be surprising when one person in a couple chooses to specialize in developing that skill set. Claudia Goldin, the renowned Harvard economist, has famously argued that the pay gap between men and women is largely due to “greedy jobs,” or jobs where those putting in “overtime, weekend time or evening time will earn a lot more.” Thus, Goldin argues, families with kids will economically benefit from some specialization, as one parent works less to manage the home front of children and house, freeing up the other parent to pursue the gold ring of law firm partnership, the corporate C-suite, etc. However, we might see a corollary principle here. What if one spouse takes on the duties of earning the family’s daily bread in order to free up the other spouse to develop the expertise needed to skillfully raise their children and manage their home life? I remember watching a mother of ten deal with a temper tantrum by her youngest child, and being in awe of her matter-of-fact approach. She simply knew things I did not,; hard-won knowledge that had been won by many years in the trenches of parenting. The fact that parenting is a skill set might even lower the marginal cost of having another child. If much of the steep hill of learning how to parent is done with the first child, it’s easy to see some economies of scale in having each subsequent child. It also helps explain why the first baby is so exhausting. For many parents, the sleep deprivation and pregnancy recovery are paired with the mental exhaustion of learning a new skill.
Second, once we accept that parents at home are doing something difficult and mentally challenging, society might be more willing to support them. Unfortunately, we still think of taking care of kids and family as unskilled labor; something daycare workers and cleaning ladies are paid pitifully little to tackle. But how much the workplace pays someone to do a job is not the full measure of how valuable it is! Despite our emphasis on GDP and economic growth in determining which jobs are socially useful, the unpaid—yet skilled—work of the home remains a crucial part of society. If we recognize that fact, we might be more willing to hire homemaker parents who want to rejoin the paid workforce. Recognizing that parents at home have been doing something demanding and important means recognizing their “résumé gap” is not a gap at all, but rather time spent honing skills—such as project management, multitasking, and emotional intelligence—that translate to the paid workforce. Likewise, there might be more pressure on policymakers to support these important men and women, including through helping to ensure that they have generous social safety net benefits. We need not return to the nineteenth century’s cult of domesticity and its “glorification of motherhood,” as historian Christopher Lasch pointed out, to value the work of the home. As he wrote in his essay “The Sexual Division of Labor,” modern feminists often argue that equality for women can only be achieved when mothers work full-time just like men. Lasch disagrees, claiming instead that a “feminism worthy of the name . . . [i]nstead of acquiescing in the family’s subordination to the workplace would seek to remodel the workplace around the needs of the family.”
Third, if we understand caring for children and home to be skilled and demanding work, this helps to make clear that those who do it need time off lest they risk burnout and exhaustion. Surgeons are famously prone to burnout. Major risk factors include the number of hours worked and time spent working on overnight shifts. What if we looked at these same factors with respect to parents? This might indicate to us that a mother or father who is waking at night with a baby or toddler, but also spending all day caring for the rest of the family, is at significant risk of burnout. A surgeon who dedicates serious time and effort to her craft will probably become a better surgeon for it. A surgeon who dedicates all her time and effort to surgery will run the risk of medical malpractice due to exhaustion. The same is true for parents, especially those with young children and/or large families, for whom the mental and physical demands are likely to be the most intense. Ensuring that a hard-working parent has some regular time away from family demands is a difficult but vital task. Medical professionals often encourage moms to engage in “self-care.” A list by the Mayo Clinic, for example, tells moms to schedule “me time” like “coffee with a good book.” The Mayo Clinic cautions, however, that “taking 10 minutes a day to focus on deep breathing, meditation or positive affirmations may be all that is realistic at this time.” In no other occupation are workers told to limit their realistic expectations of rest time to “10 minutes a day to focus on deep breathing!” Parents who do the skilled work of the home are doing real work, and those around them should do their best to ensure that they are receiving sufficient protected time to rest in order that they may continue ably carrying out their obligations.
Fourth, once we understand homemaking as skilled labor, we must also accept that there are many for whom this occupation is not a good fit or whose natural gifts better suit them for other occupations. I could not be a surgeon. This is not because I don’t think the surgeon’s craft is valuable—of course I do. But I lack whatever gift gives someone the courage and ability to slice into another person’s unconscious body in hopes of helping them. I’m much happier at home with my kids. When Betty Friedan wrote of “the problem with no name,” I hypothesize it resonated so deeply because she was speaking on behalf of the many women who were simply unhappy at home in the 1950s and 1960s and saw a calling elsewhere. Homemaking often becomes a political flashpoint because of those who insist that only women should do it, and because of those who insist that no woman should do it. One author wrote, for example, that “When women choose to stay home full-time, abandon career and earning, in the name of better mothering, life balance, or commitment to family, we all lose, most especially women.” This absolutist argumentation (on either side) does not make sense. It would obviously be folly to argue all men over 6’5″ should be basketball players. Ditto that all women should be homemakers, or no men should be: circumstances, natural gifts, and inclination all help determine what role one is best suited to fill in society.
I don’t know how the surgeon does it. But I’m glad she does. As she saves lives, I’ll work at my own chosen profession, trying every day to get a little better at educating my children, getting dinner on the table, and the babies in bed on time. I’m certainly not perfect, but I’m working hard at improving. We both—the surgeon and the homemaker—have something special to offer the rest of society. It remains to be seen if one day the wider world will realize it.
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Site: LifeNews
I was privileged to know Mother Teresa of Calcutta and to consult with her extensively during the last three years of her life, which coincided with the first three years of my fulltime leadership of Priests for Life.
In a visit with her in Calcutta in June of 1994, I discussed with her the bill that President Bill Clinton had signed into law just the previous month: The Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act.
This law came into prominence again over the last couple of years as Joe Biden’s DOJ used it to prosecute pro-life activists who were peacefully intervening to save lives at abortion facilities. President Trump, understanding the injustice of this law, pardoned those activists in the first days of his second term, as promised.
I will have a discussion with several of them tonight at 8pm ET in a live broadcast on my EndAbortion.TV program.
Click Like if you are pro-life to like the LifeNews Facebook page!
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One of the stories I will tell is what Mother Teresa said to me after I explained that this law punishes peaceful behavior of citizens who — convinced, as both science and morality show, that abortion kills a baby — therefore intervene to save that baby’s life. They may approach a woman entering the facility, in the hopes of persuading her to turn around and take the help the pro-life movement offers.
Or they may peacefully block the entrance to the clinic, trespassing indeed, but in the same way that any of us would willingly ignore a “No Trespassing” sign to save a child drowning in someone’s swimming pool.
Bill Clinton and the abortion lobby weren’t satisfied with the fact that state and local laws already punish trespassing and physical violence against people or property.
No, that wasn’t enough.
They were intent, while saying they were protecting abortion clients from intimidation, to impose that same intimidation on peaceful pro-life activists who wanted to lead those women away from those places of death.
Here were Mother Teresa’s exact words to me: ”Fr. Frank, if we had that law here in India, I would have been thrown in jail many times – because I go to the places where the abortions are done, and I take the women by the arm, and I pull them away from that place. I tell them to come with me, because our sisters and I will help them and their baby.”
Those who have been prosecuted under FACE, both under Biden and previously, should be proud. They stand with a saint revered by all the world, Catholic or not.
The FACE law is regarded by many, myself included, as both superfluous and unconstitutional. Efforts have been introduced in the 119th Congress to repeal this law, and those efforts should be supported. President Trump has already, by executive order, modified the enforcement of it to make sure people are not discriminated against because of their religious and pro-life convictions.
Now it’s time to get the law off the books altogether.
Shortly after the law was passed, I was offering brochures to mothers entering abortion facilities to invite them to choose alternatives to abortion. The pro-abortion protestors accused me of violating FACE, because they said that I was clearly intimidating them.
That’s just one simple example of how FACE lends itself so easily to vague and arbitrary interpretation, and to reverse intimidation of peaceful, pro-life people.
But more egregiously, the law seeks to put a cap on our love. It doesn’t require anyone to abort their baby, but it tries to limit how much we love the baby. Love has to be practical. We need to intervene to save the lives of the vulnerable. This law tells us we can love them from afar, but if we get too close to their bodies or to the instruments about to dismember those bodies, we are the ones who must be stopped.
We say no. There is no cap on love. We will be peaceful, but we will intervene. We will respect everybody, but we will abandon nobody.
Children are being killed, and laws that make it a crime to save them have no place in our country.
LifeNews Note: Prolife Leader Frank Pavone is the National Director of Priests for Life and President of Prolife Vote. This originally appeared at Gateway Pundit.
The post Mother Teresa Said She’d Break This Law to Save Babies From Abortions appeared first on LifeNews.com.
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Site: Zero HedgeWhy Ending The War In Ukraine Is So Difficult NowTyler Durden Wed, 05/28/2025 - 18:25
Authored by Connor O'Keefe via The Mises Institute,
As President Trump wrestles to deliver on his campaign promise to end the war on Ukraine by helping to bring about a negotiated peace deal, the effort has, in part, been undermined by an escalating exchange of kamikaze drones by both sides.
The last week especially saw a sharp escalation, with Ukraine launching thousands of drones deep into Russia—most of which the Russians claim to have intercepted—and Russia, in turn, stepping up its drone attacks in Ukraine. The Russian strikes over the weekend got a lot of coverage in the American media, especially an aerial assault on Saturday night where parts of some of the largest drone swarms launched in the war so far hit residential buildings around the Ukrainian armament factories Russia claimed to be targeting.
That series of strikes led Trump to issue his sharpest rebuke of Vladamir Putin to date. He called the Russian president crazy and voiced frustration with how Putin has changed since their phone call together—after which Trump had characterized Putin as reasonable and interested in a ceasefire.
The establishment press gleefully seized on Trump’s comments to argue that even he is now waking up to what they’ve been saying this whole time: that Putin is an unhinged maniac who cannot be reasoned with because he is motivated solely by bloodlust and delusions of conquering Europe. They then, predictably, bring it back to their broader argument that Trump’s “naïve” effort to “appease” Putin with a peace agreement and then “retreat from Europe” to usher in a new age of American isolationism is futile and dangerous and that he ought to instead recommit to the establishment’s preferred strategy of heavy-handed interventionism.
It is true that the Trump administration’s attempt to kickstart negotiations to end the war in Ukraine has run into difficulties that make it unlikely a ceasefire will be reached soon. But that is not an argument in favor of the political establishment’s interventionism, as that is the very thing that brought about this difficult situation in the first place.
Much has been written on the decades between the collapse of the USSR and the rise of the Western-friendly Russian Federation and the eventual return of Cold War conditions encapsulated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. There is plenty of debate about the details and consequences of decisions made along the way. But nobody with any real credibility is even trying to argue that this period was characterized by a lack of US meddling in Eastern Europe.
Washington was heavily involved in the region from the beginning. At first, it was all under the friendly guise of helping with the transition from communism to capitalism. But as that process was botched by a combination of statist Western economists—who thought free markets had to be organized and managed in a top-down fashion—and outright corruption by officials on all sides, the respect, admiration, and trust the American government enjoyed in much of the region began to fade away.
That was accelerated when US presidents began working to expand NATO, the anti-Soviet military alliance, up to Russia’s border. For Russia’s entire history, the lack of natural barriers between Moscow and the rest of Europe has been a source of tremendous anxiety for Russian leaders. No mountains or major waterways blocked the armies of Napoleon and, later, Hitler from marching directly into the Russian heartland. The only factor that doomed both of those invasions was distance.
Even in the age of nuclear weapons, when long infantry supply chains are less relevant, the greater the distance a ballistic missile needs to travel to reach Russian cities, the more time the Russian regime has to detect, assess, and respond. Distance is still a factor in their defense strategy.
US officials knew this and still chose to help NATO expand closer and closer to Moscow. They were even told explicitly by the US ambassador to Russia that working to bring Ukraine, specifically, into NATO would almost certainly cause Russia to invade Ukraine.
Virtually every major American Cold War strategist was vocally against NATO expansion because they saw it as a surefire way to unnecessarily restart the US-Russia conflict that had just miraculously ended without nuclear annihilation. But they were out-lobbied and out-maneuvered by the weapons companies that produce all the military hardware that new NATO countries are required to buy.
So NATO expanded, American military hardware moved east, and anti-government protests in countries aligned with Russia received funding and support from the American government.
Even if we accept the establishment’s argument that Putin doesn’t actually care if the US pours weapons into and arranges security guarantees with the countries right on his border and is only using those actions as an excuse to further his imperial ambitions, US officials still handed Putin an easy way to get the Russian public onboard with an invasion of Ukraine for no real reason whatsoever.
Then, tragically, after the invasion happened, US officials and their allies in Western European governments like the UK convinced the Ukrainians to abandon an early peace agreement that would have resulted in Russian forces pulling back to pre-invasion boundaries. In the years since, Russia has laid permanent claim to much of the eastern Ukrainian territory they had earlier agreed to relinquish. And the Ukrainian government has continuously lost leverage over its Russian occupiers as they tried and failed to drive them out by force.
Last summer, Ukraine made the surprising decision to draw soldiers and resources away from the front lines to conduct a small invasion in Russia’s Kursk region on Ukraine’s northern border. That operation may have been an attempt to regain some leverage in future negotiations. But it did not accomplish much, and Russia has since retaken virtually all the territory they lost. The transfer of Ukrainian troops and resources has now given the Russians momentum on the rest of the front.
That is why it is unlikely that a peace agreement will be reached in the near future. Because it appears that Russia can achieve more if it continues fighting than through negotiations. And, importantly, that is not because the US and its European allies have held back and avoided giving the Ukrainians what they needed to fight the Russians. It’s because the officials who recognized the West’s leverage in future negotiations would only get worse lost out to those who thought the war should be prolonged anyway because it was a good way to “weaken Russia” without risking American lives.
There is no easy path out of this mess. It’s not as if NATO governments have some special weapons system they haven’t sent to Ukraine yet that could begin to turn the tide of the war. If they had, they would have sent it already. Short of sending American troops into combat with the Russians, there is little more that can be done to prop up Ukrainian forces. And, as Scott Horton noted in his recent talk here at the Mises Institute, even if Trump genuinely tried to reverse course and repair relations between Washington and Moscow, the Russians would probably just assume, understandably, that any progress he made would be undone by the next Democrat to win the presidency.
That’s why, if we’re ever going to see a true end to this unnecessary second Cold War with Russia, it requires that more Americans understand how it truly came about in the first place. It needs to be widely understood that if our government’s priority were really keeping us safe, they would have done everything in their power to avoid kickstarting a new conflict with the most heavily nuclear-armed government in the world. And yet, they seemed to have done the precise opposite.
What the path out certainly does not involve is doubling down on the same exact policies that both created this mess in the first place and that are being championed by those who want to see this war drag on indefinitely in a vile attempt to use Ukrainians to weaken Russia a little bit more.
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Site: LifeNews
“And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength. The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” – Mark 12:30-31.
Is your neighbor just the person who lives next door to you or the person who lives across the street?
In Luke 10, a lawyer asked Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?”
Jesus answered with the parable of the Good Samaritan. Jesus explained that a Levite and a Priest traveling down a road both saw a man in need in a ditch and just passed him by, not offering any help. Then a Samaritan saw him and helped him. The Samaritan loved his neighbor as himself, even though there was animosity between Jews and Samaritans.
Who is our neighbor? I would say anyone in our path who is in need is our neighbor. If we see a homeless man and we give him food, we are loving our neighbor, even if this man does not live next door to us.
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How would I want someone to love me if I were in danger? If my life was in danger and my neighbor knew about it, wouldn’t I want him to help me? Would I expect someone to speak up for me if I were sentenced to death unjustly? Of course. I would expect others to live by this command to love their neighbor as themselves.
I have heard this verse thousands of times in my life, taught in church and at youth groups and many other places. It is a perfect teaching verse.
But sadly, so many Christians ignore this verse when it comes to children in the womb who have been unjustly sentenced to death by abortion. It’s not hard to get people to volunteer for things like feeding the homeless or donating to worthy causes but when I have talked to others about standing up for our neighbors in the womb, the comment I get so often is “I am not called to that.” I wonder, did the Good Samaritan stop and ask God if he was called to a ditch ministry? Does this verse say love your neighbor if you are called to meet that particular need?
Every day in this country, thousands of our neighbors face a horrific and unjust death. Every day thousands of our neighbors are lying in a ditch, so to speak, with no one willing to stop and help them. Or do they? I say, they do have someone who can stop to help but they just won’t stop.
Is there an abortion mill close to you? Do you pass one on your way to work every day? Do you ever stop to think what is really going on in that building? Inside that building, your neighbor is about to brutally butchered. For the most part we do not want to think about this because it makes us sick. We would never want to actually see what goes on in that building because it is too disturbing. So we just pass by thinking “what a shame”?
What if it was you in that building and some man or woman was about to tear you limb from limb? What if your neighbors were passing by and knew what was going on but didn’t stop because they were too busy or did not want to think about what was going to happen to you? That seems ridiculous to think about. Or what if it was a daycare center and we saw a man walking with a butcher knife, heading toward kids on the playground? I would bet money you would stop and do whatever you could to prevent him from reaching those innocent children.
Unfortunately, the children entering into the abortion mill are not seen and we don’t get that emotional bond that we would if we saw them playing on a playground. The fact is that abortion has become so political that so many of us are able to pretend we don’t know what is really going on in that building. If we truly saw abortion for what it actually is, I do not believe it would still be legal anywhere.
So I ask you, who is your neighbor? Are you willing to love your neighbor as yourself? Are you willing to live by what Christ taught us in this parable of the Good Samaritan?
LifeNews Note: Bryan Kemper is the youth outreach and street activism director for Priests for Life and the founder of its youth outreach Stand True.
The post Jesus Said Love Your Neighbor, Which Includes Unborn Babies appeared first on LifeNews.com.
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Site: Zero HedgeTrump: I Warned Netanyahu Against Iran StrikeTyler Durden Wed, 05/28/2025 - 18:00
President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he has told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to not attack Iran, or at least to hold off any preemptive action to give more time for Washington and Tehran to forge a nuclear agreement.
“Well, I’d like to be honest. Yes, I did. Next question, please?”...and also: "I told him this would be inappropriate to do right now because we're very close to a solution," Trump told reporters at the White House when asked about the issue.
Q: "On Iran, did you warn Prime Minister Netanyahu against taking some sort of actions that could disrupt the talks there in a phone call last week?"
— CSPAN (@cspan) May 28, 2025
President Trump: "Well, I'd like to be honest. Yes I did." pic.twitter.com/yoXB3t90SZ"It’s not a warning," Trump added. "I said, ‘I don’t think it’s appropriate.’ I just said I don’t think it’s appropriate. We’re having very good discussions with them, and I don’t think it’s appropriate right now."
The question to Trump was prompted by an Axios report published the day prior:
President Trump cautioned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a phone call last week not to take any action that could jeopardize negotiations between the U.S. and Iran on a new nuclear deal, a White House official and a source familiar with the details tell Axios.
Trump's message was "he doesn't want him to antagonize at a time when he is trying to solve problems," the official said.
Trump also repeated his tone optimism on the talks, telling reporters, “We’re doing very well with Iran.”
The White House's messaging to Israel has been to say "stay united and let this process play out" - and that the process needs some time. Of course, Trump has still warned that "other options" are on the table should Tehran refuse to make progress.
The Iranians have said they are willing to guarantee (and allow monitoring) that uranium enrichment is only for peaceful nuclear energy production, and will pledge no development of nukes. Critics of Trump point that this was essentially the 2015 JCPOA nuclear which the first Trump administration pulled out of in April 2018.
Plenty of indirect 'threats' were peppered into Trump's Wednesday Iran comments:
He seems to suggest that his conditions for a deal with Iran include the US being allowed to come in and “take whatever we want, we can blow up whatever we want.” Seems unlikely that Iran would consent for the US to come in and “blow up” its infrastructure pic.twitter.com/jxHUM8oljw
— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) May 28, 2025Also on Wednesday, the head of the United Nations' atomic watchdog, the IAEA's Rafael Mariano Grossi, said that "the jury is still out" on negotiations. "For the moment, the jury is still out. We don't know whether there's going to be an agreement or not," Grossi told journalists in Vienna.
"I think that is an indication of a willingness to come to an agreement. And I think that, in and by itself, is something possible," he added of ongoing meetings.
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Site: LifeNews
The Texas House failed to pass the Woman and Child Protection Act (SB 2880/HB 5510) on Tuesday, leaving preborn children prey to mail-order abortion pills for the foreseeable future. The bill died after Chairman Ken King (R–Canadian) slow-walked the measure for nearly a month, despite pressure from hundreds of Pro-Life Texans.
The Woman and Child Protection Act ranked as the top Pro-Life bill of 2025, as it would have stopped the biggest threat to preborn children: abortion pills sent to Texas from other states and countries. Instead of brick-and-mortar clinics, abortion groups sell these deadly pills online or sneak them over the border.
Yet King ignored the danger, delaying a vote on the Pro-Life bill in his committee for weeks. Only when the legislative clock was about to run out did he move the Woman and Child Protection Act forward—far too late. The bill then stalled between King’s State Affairs Committee and the Calendars Committee. King’s apathy meant the Pro-Life policy never reached the House floor for a vote.
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Without the Woman and Child Protection Act, 19,000 babies may die by abortion pills per year in Texas unless the governor intervenes. At the same time, these drugs pose serious risks to mothers—sending nearly 1 in 9 women to the emergency room.
The Woman and Child Protection Act would have made Texas the first state to effectively combat the growing threat of illegal chemical abortions by:
- Allowing Texans to sue abortion pill manufacturers and distributors;
- Giving women and families the right to sue for wrongful deaths or injuries caused by these drugs; and
- Empowering the attorney general to prosecute abortion pill traffickers directly.
Despite overwhelming grassroots and institutional support—including from Republican lawmakers, Human Coalition, Students for Life of America, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, Right to Life Across Texas, and the Texas GOP—House leadership let the bill die.
If nothing is done, an estimated 38,000 abortion pills will be trafficked into Texas between now and the next regular legislative session in 2027—killing babies and endangering their mothers.
The only way Texas lawmakers could save children from chemical abortions before 2027 is if Governor Abbott calls a special session for the Woman and Child Protection Act.
This opportunity must not be ignored while lives are on the line.
The post Texas House Kills Bill That Could Have Saved 19,000 Babies a Year appeared first on LifeNews.com.
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Site: Zero HedgeFBI Probing Allegations Of 'Targeted Violence' Against Religious Groups in Seattle: OfficialTyler Durden Wed, 05/28/2025 - 17:40
Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,
The FBI is investigating after officials said a religious event in Seattle was disrupted by violence, a top FBI official said on May 27.
“We have asked our team to fully investigate allegations of targeted violence against religious groups at the Seattle concert,” Dan Bongino, the FBI’s deputy director, said on social media platform X. “Freedom of religion isn’t a suggestion.”
The office of Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell did not respond to a request for comment by publication time.
Organizers said the May 24 event was held at Cal Anderson Park in support of “the sanctity of human life, the sacrality of biological gender, the importance of the nuclear family, and the right to freedom of speech and religion.”
They said the movement organizing the event stands against indoctrination of children “by a liberal, political, and sexual agenda that seeks to destroy their God-given identities.”
Counterprotesters, including the Freedom Socialist Party, said their demonstration was meant to “keep your bibles off our bodies.”
Clashes at the event resulted in 23 arrests, the Seattle Police Department said. One juvenile was released. The rest of those arrested were charged with assault and obstruction.
The White House Faith Office said in a statement on Tuesday that it condemned “the violent disruption of Seattle’s MayDay USA worship event.”
“We affirm the fundamental rights to free speech and religious freedom for all Americans, as protected by federal law. Public officials must protect the inalienable rights of all citizens, regardless of their faith or religious beliefs. We urge the City of Seattle to uphold these rights at all faith-based events, safeguarding the ability of people of faith to gather and express their beliefs without fear of harassment or violence,” the office said.
After the event, Harrell, a Democrat, called it a “far-right rally” that he said was meant “to provoke a reaction by promoting beliefs that are inherently opposed to our city’s values, in the heart of Seattle’s most prominent LGBTQ+ neighborhood.”
He said that anarchists infiltrated counterprotesters and “inspired violence,” which led to officers making arrests and asking organizers to end the event early. The request was accepted.
Organizers said in a statement to news outlets that “under Mayor Harrell’s leadership, the city of Seattle has continued its spiral into lawlessness and dysfunction while the First Amendment rights of citizens to peacefully assemble has been disregarded.”
The Seattle mayor’s office later released statements from some faith leaders that offered support for Harrell and criticized the event organizers.
Russell Johnson, the lead pastor at Pursuit NW, said on X that Harrell should apologize to Christians in the state “for his bigoted remarks after folks who were holding a peaceful worship event at Cal Anderson Park were violently assaulted for the high crime of expressing their deeply held religious beliefs in the form of a permitted worship event on city property.”
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Site: LifeNews
Missouri Right to Life welcomes the Missouri Supreme Court Decision on Tuesday, ordering a Jackson County judge to vacate the preliminary injunctions that she had entered earlier this year in which she declared the Missouri abortion ban and all of Missouri’s health and safety regulations unconstitutional under Amendment 3.
This decision will save lives of preborn babies and the health and safety of Missouri Women.
Among the regulations that the judge had declared unconstitutional included requirements that:
- Only doctors perform abortions.
- Surgical instruments be sterilized before use.
- Doctors examine the mother to determine the gestational age of the unborn child and to identify any medical risk before performing an abortion.
- Ultrasounds only be performed by licensed medical professionals.
- Abortion clinics have emergency trays and emergency supplies.
- Doctors obtain informed consent prior to performing an abortion.
HELP LIFENEWS SAVE BABIES FROM ABORTION! Please help LifeNews.com with a donation!
The Missouri Supreme Court’s ruling came as a result of an appeal filed by Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, utilizing the authority granted by the Missouri Right to Life backed Senate Bill 22, in which the Attorney General challenged the Jackson County preliminary injunctions.
The Missouri Supreme Court sent the case back to the Jackson County court with instructions to reevaluate Planned Parenthood’s request for preliminary injunction based on several criteria, including if Planned Parenthood would suffer irreparable harm without the injunction and also to balance that harm with any injury that an injunction would inflict on other interested parties.
Planned Parenthood had previously stated in court filings that they could not comply with the health and safety standards listed above and after the ruling stated they were cancelling abortion appointments and would cease abortions, the killing of innocent unborn children, until further order of the court.
This is a great victory for life!
LifeNews Note: Steve Rupp is President of Missouri Right to Life.
The post Missouri Babies are Safe From Abortion Again Thanks to State Supreme Court appeared first on LifeNews.com.
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Site: Zero HedgeZelensky Proposes 3-Way Meeting With Trump, Putin As US Rejects More Anti-Moscow SanctionsTyler Durden Wed, 05/28/2025 - 17:20
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has called for a three-way summit with Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin at a moment aerial strikes between the warring sides have been escalating for several consecutive days. "If Putin is not comfortable with a bilateral meeting, or if everyone wants it to be a trilateral meeting, I don't mind. I am ready for any format," Zelensky said Tuesday, in comments which were published Wednesday.
Zelensky said he's ready for a "Trump-Putin-me" meeting, but simultaneously called for Washington to slap more sanctions on the Kremlin. "We are waiting for sanctions from the United States of America," the Ukrainian leader said. And Trump's response?... "If I think I’m close to getting a [peace] deal, I don’t wanna screw it up by doing that," he told reporters at the White House.
Reporter: What’s stopping you from imposing sanctions on Russia?
Trump: If I think I’m close to a deal, I don’t want to screw it up. Let me tell you: I’m much tougher than those you’re talking about. You have to know when to use it. I think it would hurt the deal.
‘I don’t want to screw it up’ – Trump explains why he won’t impose sanctions
— Zlatti71 (@Zlatti_71) May 28, 2025
– What’s stopping you from imposing sanctions on Russia?
– If I think I’m close to a deal, I don’t want to screw it up. Let me tell you: I’m much tougher than those you’re talking about. You have to… pic.twitter.com/WgSutLzcTbMainstream media and pundits have also of late been pressuring the White House to escalate the economic war against Russia, despite some seventeen waves of sanctions since the conflict began not doing much if anything to change the actual course of the war.
Zelensky had also said in his comments, "Trump confirmed that if Russia does not stop, sanctions will be imposed. We discussed two main aspects with him – energy and the banking system. Will the U.S. be able to impose sanctions on these two sectors? I would very much like that."
The Ukrainian leader is at the same time alleging that Russia is surging more troops to the battlefield:
On the battlefield, Zelenskyy said Russia was "amassing" more than 50,000 troops on the front line around the northeastern Sumy border region, where Moscow's army has captured a number of settlements as it seeks to establish what Putin has called a "buffer zone" inside Ukrainian territory.
NATO appears to be 'answering' with a build-up of its own, per Reuters on Wednesday:
NATO will ask Germany to provide seven more brigades, or some 40,000 troops, for the alliance's defencs, three sources told Reuters, under new targets for weapons and troop numbers that its members' defence ministers are set to agree on next week.
The alliance is dramatically increasing its military capability targets as it views Russia as a much greater threat since its 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
So Trump's instincts to avoid sanctions, seeking to prevent further uncontrollable escalation at this sensitive point, are correct - at least from the perspective of avoiding action which would unnecessarily sabotage the chance for peace.
After all, there's little the United States can do and each option is a 'bad' option, given Russia is in control on the ground in the Donbass. However, the US can lean on Kiev to make territorial concessions, given this is likely the only realistic option for permanent peace.
Meanwhile, Kremlin officials have been saying this week that they are concerned that the intelligence being provided to Trump is highly skewed in a hawkish direction. Lavrov has asserted that info given to the US Commander-in-Chief is likely "filtered" - and that he doesn't have the full picture on the intensity of ongoing Ukrainian attacks on Russian territory.
VERY interesting.
— Clandestine (@WarClandestine) May 28, 2025
Lavrov alleges that Trump is not being fully briefed on everything regarding the situation in Ukraine, and that bad actors are giving him information “through a filter” in order to coerce the Trump admin into supporting Ukraine.
pic.twitter.com/Z7N6m6EeDKAs an example of these kinds of recent attacks, the below shows a major strike on a site dubbed Russia's "Silicon Valley"....
Moments ago, Ukrainian attack drones hit a major Russian cruise missile manufacturer north of Moscow, the Dubna Machine-Building Plant.
— OSINTtechnical (@Osinttechnical) May 28, 2025
At least one drone slammed into the complex that produces long-range cruise missiles used to strike Ukraine. pic.twitter.com/V7iHp4N11e"A major Ukrainian drone assault targeted the city of Zelenograd, known as Russia’s 'Silicon Valley,' as well as a machine-building plant north of Moscow, Russian media and Ukrainian officials reported Wednesday," a regional source reported.
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Site: Catholic ConclaveOpening of the cause for beatification of Maurice Blondel, "the philosopher of Aix" (1861-1949)On 4 June 2025, at 6 p.m., in the Church of Saint John of Malta in Aix-en-Provence,The Archbishop of Aix and Arles, Mgr. Christian Delarbre, will officially open the cause for beatification of Maurice Blondel (1861-1949), a renowned professor of philosophy at the University of Aix.The beginning of a Catholic Conclavehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06227218883606585321noreply@blogger.com0
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Site: Zero HedgeTrump's Monetary Reset: Is A Gold-Backed Dollar On The Horizon?Tyler Durden Wed, 05/28/2025 - 17:00
Authored by Nick Giambruno via InternationalMan.com,
“More and more people are asking if a gold standard will end the financial crisis in which we find ourselves. The question is not so much if it will help or if we will resort to gold, but when.
All great inflations end with the acceptance of real money—gold—and the rejection of political money—paper.”
– Ron Paul
Two powerful catalysts are driving the coming monetary reset.
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First, the federal debt crisis has reached a breaking point, with skyrocketing interest payments now surpassing defense spending and on track to become the largest single budget item. This trajectory is unsustainable, signaling that a major financial reckoning is imminent.
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Second, the Trump administration views the US dollar as severely overvalued, believing it is crippling the economy and that urgent intervention is necessary.
So, what’s the tried-and-true solution to both of these problems?
The answer is clear: a significant dollar devaluation.
Devaluing the dollar is a boon to debtors, especially the US government, allowing it to borrow in dollars and repay in dimes. Short of an outright default—which Washington is unlikely to do—a weaker dollar is the only practical way to address the spiraling debt crisis.
At the same time, devaluation directly addresses the Trump administration’s concern that the US dollar is dangerously overvalued, a problem they believe is crippling American industry and exports.
That’s why a significant dollar devaluation isn’t just possible—I believe it’s a near certainty.
The only question is how the Trump administration will do it. And if history is any guide, gold will once again be at the center of it all.
Before going further, it’s essential to understand Trump’s stance on gold.
It’s no secret that Trump has a deep appreciation for gold—a fact reflected in his buildings, branding, and personal style. From the towering gold letters on his properties to the lavish gold-themed decor of Trump Tower, his affinity for the yellow metal is unmistakable.
Trump’s fascination with gold goes back to the 1970s when he made big profits as a gold investor. After the US government legalized private gold ownership in 1975, he aggressively bought in at around $185 per ounce. Reflecting on the investment, he later remarked:
“We sold in the range of $780, $790. We did very well. It’s easier than the construction business.”
Then, in September 2011, Trump accepted gold bars as a security deposit from a commercial tenant—one of the largest precious metals dealers in the US, APMEX. Instead of cash, the company paid its deposit with three one-kilo gold bars, each 99.99% pure and collectively weighing about 96.5 troy ounces.
“The Trump Organization has always strived to be ‘the gold standard.’ We welcome APMEX as our tenant at 40 Wall, a prestigious and historical location. The legacy of gold as a precious commodity has transcended to become a viable currency and an accepted universal monetary standard. Central banks around the world are holding gold as a reserve asset. It is also a terrific, potentially lucrative diversifier in a portfolio, especially with such volatility in the stock market.”
In a 2015 GQ interview, Trump openly expressed his admiration for a gold-backed monetary system, stating:
“Bringing back the gold standard would be very hard to do, but boy, would it be wonderful. We’d have a standard on which to base our money.”
He echoed this sentiment in another interview when asked about the possibility of returning to a gold standard:
Interviewer: Can you envision a scenario in which this country ever goes back to the gold standard?
Trump: I like the gold standard. There’s something very nice about the gold standard. There’s something very nice about having something solid, you know we used to have a very very solid country because it was based on a gold standard. We don’t have that anymore. There is something very nice about the concept of that.
Trump’s Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, shares a similar enthusiasm for gold. In an interview last November, he made his stance clear:
“I think we’re in a long-term bull market in Gold. We’re seeing reserve accumulation by central banks. I follow it closely. It’s my biggest position.”
With both Trump and Bessent signaling a strong interest in gold, the idea of a gold-backed monetary shift is no longer just speculation—it may be part of the broader monetary realignment already in motion.
So, how might gold be involved in a monetary reset today?
A significant dollar devaluation is likely necessary to address the debt crisis and growing trade imbalances. In previous monetary resets, the solution was straightforward—the US government simply revalued gold at a higher price, effectively devaluing the dollar.
However, today’s situation is different. Since 1973, the US government no longer directly sets the price of gold—it now floats freely on the open market.
This raises an important question: How could the Trump administration use gold to weaken the dollar today?
While no one can say for sure, one potential method would be for the US government to print dollars to buy gold on the open market—driving the price of gold higher and, in turn, devaluing the dollar against it.
Remember, Trump has no interest in a minor tweak. He has made it clear that he wants a fundamental and permanent realignment to fix two existential problems: the debt crisis and the overvalued dollar hindering US industry.
Given the scale of these challenges, it’s reasonable to expect a materially higher gold price as part of the solution. A gold price of $10,000, $20,000, or even higher is within the realm of possibility.
Once this major dollar devaluation is achieved, a logical next step could be re-pegging the dollar to gold to ensure monetary stability and restore global confidence. This is where Fort Knox could become relevant again, as its gold reserves would potentially be used to back a new gold-linked dollar.
Pegging the dollar to gold at a much higher price post-devaluation would also drastically reduce the burden of US debt. If gold were revalued to $20,000 per ounce, the 261 million ounces that Washington claims to own would suddenly be worth around $5.2 trillion, significantly strengthening the asset side of the US government’s balance sheet.
The exact form this new gold standard might take is uncertain. The government could back 20%, 40%, or more of the money supply with gold or go to a fully gold-backed system, even allowing gold coins to circulate as legal tender, as they did before the 1933 confiscation.
When we connect the dots, the big picture emerges.
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Trump has put Fort Knox’s gold holdings back in the national spotlight, calling for an audit for the first time in decades.
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Central bank gold purchases are accelerating at record-breaking levels.
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An unusually large influx of physical gold is flowing into the US, far beyond regular market activity—an intriguing development ahead of a potential Fort Knox audit.
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The US debt crisis has reached an inflection point and is spiraling out of control, making a monetary reset practically inevitable.
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The Trump administration sees the dollar as dangerously overvalued, blaming it for America’s worsening trade imbalances and economic stagnation.
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The conditions today are ripe for a monetary reset.
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The US has undergone numerous monetary resets in its history, and most have followed the same pattern: gold revaluation and dollar devaluation.
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If the Trump administration were to reset the monetary system, it would likely involve devaluing the dollar, revaluing gold to a much higher price, and re-pegging the US dollar to gold. A gold-backed dollar would require an audit of Fort Knox’s reserves.
When you lay out all the facts, it becomes clear that a new monetary reset is likely on the horizon.
All signs point to a historic shift: Trump is eyeing a dollar reset, gold is quietly moving into US vaults, and the debt crisis is reaching a breaking point.
This isn’t speculation—it’s a playbook that’s been used before.
What does it all mean for your money—and how can you turn this shift into opportunity?
That’s why I’ve just released an urgent new report revealing the top three strategies you need to prepare—and profit—from what’s coming next. Click here to download it now before the window closes.
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Site: Zero HedgeNVDA Jumps 5% After Solid Q1 Results Despite $2.5BN In Lost Sales To ChinaTyler Durden Wed, 05/28/2025 - 16:47
Earlier today we wrote an extensive preview of what to expect from Nvidia's Q1 earnings (here), but for those who missed it here is the summary: focus for the quarter will center around margin performance, but the higher-level debate still centers around trajectory of numbers into 2026 and the moving pieces around tariffs and geopolitics.
Ahead of earnings, we noted that Nvidia’s stock has recovered most of the ground it lost earlier this year in the wake of concerns about the endurance of a spending surge on artificial intelligence computing. It is also about 50% higher from the April post "Liberation Day" lows. Which is why now that the downside case has been widely forgotten, the company will need to deliver a solid set of forecasts to avoid triggering them again.
The bogeys: analysts expect sales of $43.3 billion in Q1, although the numbers are tricky. Because of new US rules, shipments of AI chips to China are going away, and only some analysts have factored that in. For the second quarter ending in July, Wall Street is estimating revenue of $45.1 billion on average. Nvidia will also give its own guidance for that period.
A bunch of analysts in the run-up to this report have said they think the consensus estimate for fiscal 2Q revenue is way too high. According to an average of five analyst estimates from reports published in the past week, the sales target for the July period should be about $42.7 billion, with one estimate calling for a total of lower than $40 billion.
That said, Goldman has cautioned that geopolitics have been a far greater drag on Nvidia’s growth than industry competition; CEO Jensen Huang has lobbied hard for the rollback of limits on his ability to ship to China. But even under a more sympathetic Trump administration, the restrictions have only tightened. As a result, in April, Nvidia disclosed that it will notch a $5.5 billion writedown due to new limits on its shipments of the already-pared-back H20 product to China
With all that in mind, here is what NVDA reported moments ago for Q1:
- Non-GAAP EPS 81c, missing estimate 93c
- Adjusted EPS ex the $4.5 BN charge: $0.96.
- Revenue $44.06 billion, +69% y/y, beating estimate of $43.29 billion
- Data center revenue $39.1 billion, +73% y/y, missing estimate $39.22 billion
- Automotive revenue $567 million, +72% y/y, missing estimate $579.4 million
- Networking revenue $4.96 billion, +56% y/y, beating estimate $3.45 billion
- Gaming revenue $3.76 billion, +45% y/y, beating estimate $2.85 billion
- Professional Visualization revenue $509 million, +19% y/y, beating estimate $505 million
- Adjusted gross margin 71.3% vs. 78.9% y/y, estimate 71% (margin including H20 charge was 61%)
- Adjusted operating income $23.28 billion, +29% y/y, below estimates of $27.15 billion
- Adjusted operating expenses $3.58 billion, +43% y/y, below the estimate $3.63 billion
- R&D expenses $3.99 billion, +47% y/y, below estimate $4.07 billion
- Free cash flow $26.14 billion, up 75% y/y
As noted above, the numbers are not exactly apples to apples because the company incurred a substantial, $4.5 billion charge associated with H20 excess inventory and purchase obligations as the demand for H20 diminished: "Sales of H20 products were $4.6 billion for the first quarter of fiscal 2026 prior to the new export licensing requirements."
On the revenue side, NVIDIA was unable to ship an additional $2.5 billion of H20 revenue in the first quarter (the company said that sales of H20 products were $4.6 billion for the first quarter of fiscal 2026 prior to the new export licensing requirements). Excluding the $4.5 billion charge, the company said Q1 non-GAAP diluted earnings per share would have been $0.96.
Here is a full breakdown of recent results:
While the Q1 results were ok, the company's guidance came slightly on the weak side of the buyside expectations we discussed in our premium preview.
- Revenue is expected to be $45.0 billion, plus or minus 2%; the mid-point is below the consensus of $45.5 billion
- The outlook for fiscal second quarter sales reflects a loss in H20 revenue of around $8 billion
- Also notes that while the official consensus estimate was $45.5 billion, recall that some analysts factored in the potential of lost revenue from H20 and some did not. As a result, the number is rather flexible.
- Sees adjusted gross margin 71.5% to 72.5%, in line with estimates of 71.7%
- Sees adjusted operating expenses $4.0 billion, above estimates of $3.86 billion
Commenting on the results, CEO Jensen Huang said that “Global demand for NVIDIA’s AI infrastructure is incredibly strong. AI inference token generation has surged tenfold in just one year, and as AI agents become mainstream, the demand for AI computing will accelerate.”
Just like AAPL in its early days, Nvidia is now building a big cash pile: "Cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities were $53.7 billion, up from $31.4 billion a year ago and $43.2 billion a quarter ago."
With the company's recent attempt to buy Arm stopped by regulators, how long before investors start demanding greater payouts, either in the form of bigger dividends, stock buybacks, or maybe even a one-time dividend.
To be sure, there was the usual cautionary language too. Here are some of the warnings from the company's 10Q:
- May Be Unable to Create A Competitive Product for China
- Expect to Begin Shipping Blackwell Ultra 2Q Fiscal ‘26
- Would Have to Foreclose From Competing in China Market
- China Market Foreclosure Would Materially Hit Business
- Export Controls Applicable to China Are Complex
- Still Evaluating Limited Options to Comply W/ Usg Rules
- Still Looking at How to Supply Usg Compliant Compute
Separately, the 10Q also has this disclosure about China and China’s own questions for Nvidia:
Regulators in China have inquired about our sales and efforts to supply the China market and our fulfillment of the commitments we entered at the close of our Mellanox acquisition. For example, regulators in China are investigating whether complying with applicable U.S. export controls discriminates unfairly against customers in the China market. If regulators conclude that we have failed to fulfill such commitments or we have violated any applicable law in China, we could be subject to financial penalties, restrictions on our ability to conduct our business, restrictions or other orders regarding our networking business, products, and services, or otherwise impact our operations in China, any of which could have a material and adverse impact on our business, operating results and financial condition.
Usual boilerplate stuff.
So as they look at the market reaction, investors are asking a question: how did Nvidia make up for the lost sales of H20 to China? Bloomberg answers that the deals announced during President Trump’s tour of the Middle East (which Jensen Huang attended) seem to be too recent to make their way into that 2Q outlook, and adds that "hopefully someone will ask on the call with analysts."
Overall, the results were solid despite the expected miss in China sales due to the H20 sales loss. And, as Bloomberg put it, how many companies could front-load their earnings release with details of what they’re missing out on and still get a positive reaction from investors? The stock is holding a solid 5% gain after hours.
Erasing all of the loses since the last earnings...
Still, at today’s close, Nvidia shares were about 10% below the record high hit in early January. The downward pressure on shares had also lowered its valuation. The stock trades at about 29 times forward earnings, a big step down from where shares were valued at the start of the year, around 35 times forward earnings. It appears that investors see room for the stock to run
- Non-GAAP EPS 81c, missing estimate 93c
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Site: Catholic Conclave"Pope Leo will also challenge us"What leadership style does Leo XIV practice? Father Dominic Sadrawetz knows the new pope. Sadrawetz leads the Augustinians in Vienna from Switzerland – one of the closest branches of the order, which was subordinate to Robert Prevost as the worldwide leader of the Augustinians.What is it like when a fellow monk suddenly becomes pope?It was a special moment Catholic Conclavehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06227218883606585321noreply@blogger.com0
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Site: Catholic ConclaveThe new Pope visited Schönborn last Autumn for a delicate discussion.The current Pope has visited Vienna several times. In Autumn, he discreetly visited Schönborn – the topic was the new Archbishop in Vienna. At that time, Prevost was still head of human resources at the Vatican.Tourists stream in large numbers through the narrow Augustinerstrasse in the center of Vienna. Few look up to catch a Catholic Conclavehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06227218883606585321noreply@blogger.com0
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Site: Zero HedgeThe Middle Class Is Collapsing: Nearly 1 In 4 Americans Is Now "Functionally Unemployed"Tyler Durden Wed, 05/28/2025 - 16:20
Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,
Do you ever feel like you are “functionally unemployed”? If so, you are definitely not alone. There are lots of people out there that cannot pay the bills each month even though they have jobs. In fact, there are lots of people out there that literally cannot afford to put a roof over their heads even though they are employed. Yes, there are many hard working Americans that are now living in their vehicles or in “tent communities” because that is all they can afford. In recent years, the cost of living has been rising much faster than paychecks have, and so now a substantial percentage of the population is living in a state of constant financial stress. The middle class has been collapsing all around us, and we are witnessing an extraordinary amount of economic suffering all over the country right now.
For years, the federal government has been telling us that the unemployment rate in the U.S. is very low.
Everyone knows that is a bunch of hogwash.
According to a report that was recently released by the Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity, the true rate of unemployment in the U.S. was 24.3 percent last month…
But another indicator suggests those pieces of government data may be painting an overly rosy picture of the economy, with a recent report from the Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity (LISEP) finding the “true rate” of unemployment stood at 24.3% in April, up slightly from 24% in March, while the official Bureau of Labor Statistics rate remained unchanged at 4.2% over the same period.
LISEP’s measure encompasses not only unemployed workers, but also people who are looking for work but can’t find full-time employment, as well as those stuck in poverty-wage jobs. By tracking functionally unemployed workers, the measure seeks to capture labor market nuances that other economic indicators miss, such as Americans who are left behind during periods of economic expansion.
Today, there are millions upon millions of Americans that are “functionally unemployed”.
According to Gene Ludwig, you can literally “be homeless and in a tent community and have worked one hour” and be counted as “employed” by the federal government…
“The unemployment data, as it’s put out, has some flaws,” LISEP chairman Gene Ludwig told CBS MoneyWatch. “For example, it counts you as employed if you’ve worked as little as one hour over the prior two weeks. So you can be homeless and in a tent community and have worked one hour and be counted, irrespective of how poorly-paid that hour may be.”
I know that a lot of you can really identify with what I am talking about in this article, because you are experiencing deep economic pain on a daily basis.
Earlier this month, I heard from a reader that is essentially “functionally unemployed” at this point.
I asked him if I could share an excerpt from his email to me with all of you, and he gave me permission. If you are suffering too, hopefully his story will help you to realize that you aren’t alone…
Last year my income was $19,000. If I didn’t have a mortgage/rent free house to live in, I would be homeless!!!
I try to stock up on food when ever my local Grocery Store puts items on sale.
I shop at Thrift Stores and only on the half price days.
In 8 years my Real Estate Taxes have gone from $1,400 to $2,000.
In 8 years my Real Estate Insurance has gone from $1,500 to $2,200.
I haven’t had a Vacation in DECADES!!!
I seldom eat out.
I drive a 40 year old Pickup with 220,000 miles on it.
I try to combine errands and shopping in one trip to conserve on gasoline and not put as many miles on my old Pickup.
During the hot summer months I take a shower out of the end of a garden hose to cut my water bill.
I wear my clothes day after day until they get so dirty I can’t stand it or they start to stink.
I can only dream about living a normal American middle class lifestyle.
I hear of people making $100,000 a year and how they cannot pay their bills. MY GOODNESS MAN, I WOULD CONSIDER MYSELF RICH IF I COULD MAKE $100K A YEAR!!!!!!
Countless others are living a similar lifestyle.
As I discussed earlier this month, one survey discovered that 70 percent of Americans are the most financially stressed that they have ever been in their entire lives.
And the cost of living just continues to soar.
In fact, the average price of a pound of ground beef just surged to another brand new record high…
The average cost of one pound of ground beef reached a record-high of $5.80 in April, according to numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That is up nearly 50% from five years ago.
Ouch.
Our cost of living crisis never seems to end.
Inflation is one of the primary reasons why consumer sentiment in the U.S. just hit the second lowest level ever recorded…
The index of consumer sentiment dropped to 50.8, down from 52.2 in April, in the preliminary reading for May. That is the second-lowest reading on record, behind June 2022.
The outlook for price changes also moved in the wrong direction. Year-ahead inflation expectations rose to 7.3% from 6.5% last month, while long-term inflation expectations ticked up to 4.6% from 4.4%.
And the outlook for the months ahead is not promising at all.
Last month, the Conference Board’s index of leading economic indicators fell for a fifth month in a row…
The short-term outlook for the U.S. economy worsened significantly in April, according to the Conference Board’s latest Leading Economic Index (LEI).
On Monday, the D.C.-based research said that the index—a closely monitored composite of several economic indicators—had fallen by 1.0 percent to 99.4 in April, registering the fifth consecutive monthly decline and the steepest drop since March 2023. Over the six months ending in April 2025, the LEI fell by two percent, matching the pace of decline posted over the previous six months.
Let me try to end this article on a positive note.
If you are “functionally unemployed”, I know that it is tough right now.
In this difficult economic environment, we are all just going to have to get lean and mean.
Do your best to try to earn as much money as you can, and once you have got it hold on to it very tightly.
The middle class has been getting eviscerated for years, but we must never give up.
It won’t be easy, but if you are willing to fight you can survive in this economy.
Just keep putting one foot in front of the other every day, and just keep looking for more opportunities to make things better for you and your family.
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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.
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Site: LifeNews
“This is evil.” Fr. Sam French, a young priest with a significant following on Instagram, recently posted these remarks in response to the resurfacing of a 2022 video created by a misguided woman who demonstrates steps that she recommends women take as they prepare to kill their baby with the abortion pill.
Yes, she created an altar to celebrate the act that will kill a preborn baby. With the increased use of abortion pills—as almost 70% of abortions are done via the abortion pill regimen—we cannot ignore posts like this, and they serve as potent reminders of the sick abortion mentality taking over our country today.
In the video, the woman, who calls it a “sacred abortion experience,” begins by saying that “building an altar for your abortion [is] a beautiful way to give reference to your experience.” Sitting on the floor with several objects around her, she speaks of including things like oils, photos, candles, and even the abortion pills themselves. She then recommends adding sage to “bless” the pills.
HELP LIFENEWS SAVE BABIES FROM ABORTION! Please help LifeNews.com with a donation!
The woman also suggests adding a vessel to hold the “products of conception or fetal remains”—her dead baby—until the mother finds a way to “properly dispose” of this child’s remains.
As I watched, I couldn’t help but feel disgust, anger, and incredulity. But mostly I just felt sad. How did our society get to the point where a woman could think so little about the tiny human being growing inside her that she not only makes a mockery of the Catholic faith—as she claims “I work a lot with the Mary Guadalupe or Mother Mary energy”—but she makes a mockery of human life itself?
Yes, this truly is evil. As 1 Peter warns, “Be sober and vigilant. Your opponent the devil is prowling around like a roaring lion looking for [someone] to devour.”
Nowhere is this more evident than on an altar to abortion.
A mother’s job is to protect her child. Yet society wants us to believe that she has a “right” to kill her preborn child.
There is no such right.
The creation of an altar to abortion illustrates just how misguided and warped many in our society have become. And I have to wonder what the mother will think as she stares into the jar with her dead baby’s tiny and bloody body. Does reality hit when she sees his little hands and feet? Does she see a bit of herself when she looks into his beautiful face?
What a truly sad and disturbing moment that must be.
Some may say that we should not draw attention to this woman or to her sick altar, but I disagree. We must acknowledge that this kind of evil exists. We cannot bury our heads in the sand and ignore actions like this, as we can use them as teaching moments for those who do not yet see the humanity of the preborn baby.
One of the first steps to conquering evil is identifying it.
For a long time we have lived in a world where people say “live and let live,” and now the line between good and evil has become so blurred that many cannot even identify what is in fact evil.
As Fr. Mark-Mary Ames said in an Ascension video about morality, there are “certain actions which by their very nature are intrinsically evil.” These include the intentional taking of an innocent human life. That is the purpose of every abortion.
So how are we to get from a place where people think that an abortion altar is a good to teaching them that killing a baby is intrinsically evil? If they are ever to understand this, they must see the humanity of the preborn baby and work selflessly to protect him. That truth is one we must teach to our friends and family, to those who scream for “bodily autonomy,” and to our children as they grow.
Like all people, our children must understand the science that proves that a new human being is created the moment the sperm fertilizes the egg and that from then on this new little person is growing exponentially every day.
They must understand that a child growing in his mother’s body is not part of her body but simply residing in it.
They must understand that children are gifts.
Once they understand these truths, they will see that killing a preborn child is murder.
However, this understanding requires a radical shift in our culture, and it won’t be easy because, as Fr. Sam rightly says, “abortion has become the sacrament of Satan.”
Satan rejoices when a mother sacrifices her child at the altar of abortion. Satan rejoices when a mother shouts “My body, my choice”—a veritable slap in the face to Jesus’ words at the Last Supper when He offered up His body to save us.
The child growing in his mother’s body has his own body and his own soul. He is not a choice; he is a human being.
And so we must pray. Pray for the moms who are contemplating abortion. Pray for the women who think an altar to abortion is a good. Pray that the blinders are lifted from our collective eyes and we stop glorifying the slaughter of the innocents.
We all have the responsibility to stand up and protect the vulnerable, for as Jesus taught, “Whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.”
When we meet Christ face to face and He asks how we protected His little ones, will we say we did everything in our power to protect them, or will we say we turned a blind eye and allowed the evil to continue?
If we don’t speak up when we see atrocities like this video, if we ignore the horrors pushed on young people through social media, and if we continue to “live and let live,” the blood of the innocent will be on our hands too.
LifeNews Note: Susan Ciancio is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame and has worked as a writer and editor for over 20 years; nearly 16 of those years have been in the pro-life sector. Currently, she is the editor of American Life League’s Celebrate Life Magazine—the nation’s premier Catholic pro-life magazine. She is also the director and executive editor of ALL’s Culture of Life Studies Program—a pre-K-12 Catholic pro-life education organization. This article does not necessarily represent the views of LifeNews.
The post Woman Builds Altar to Celebrate Killing Her Baby in Abortion appeared first on LifeNews.com.
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Site: Novus Motus LiturgicusThe following description of the Rogation Processions comes from a canon of the cathedral of Siena named Oderico, who in the year 1213 wrote a detailed account of the liturgical texts and ceremonies used in his church. “Mindful of that promise of the Gospel, ‘Ask, and ye shall receive,’ (John 16, 24; from the Gospel of the Sunday which precedes the Lesser Litanies) St Mamertus, bishop of VienneGregory DiPippohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13295638279418781125noreply@blogger.com0
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Site: Zero HedgeSay Goodbye To The PennyTyler Durden Wed, 05/28/2025 - 15:50
Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Epoch Times,
The U.S. Mint will stop making the penny next year. The reasons are purely practical. It costs three times as much to make as it is worth. Dropping it will save $56 million. Most people don’t carry them anyway; the bulk of the existing stock is thrown out or put in jars at home.
Presidents have urged this for many years, but the time has finally come. Many people will be relieved. Someone gave me pennies in change just the other day. All I could think was that they were taking up space in my pocket for no reason.
Good riddance.
However, the legacy of the penny will last in our language. We will still ask a penny for thoughts. We will still throw in our 2 cents in discussions. A penny saved will even be a penny earned. We can still be penny-wise and pound-foolish. In tight times, we will still pinch pennies.
But pricing will likely shift. The old psychological trick of pricing things at 99 cents will persist. I saw a bag of chips the other day marked at $11.99. The memorable part is the 11, not the masked 12. That habit will likely go away. Even though only one in five transactions are in cash, it is likely that pricing habits will adapt in time.
However, aside from all these seeming trivialities, there is a gravely serious matter here. What it ultimately reveals is the monetary system’s mass theft of the public’s wealth. Here’s why.
Back in 1913, if you had 3 cents, you had the spending power that you would have if you had a dollar today. That’s a 33-fold increase in prices over a century and a decade of central banking and money printing to sustain an ever larger government and an ever bigger debt burden.
The loss of purchasing power in the money is the equivalent of a tax, a sneaky, surreptitious tax that masks its coercion in monetary depreciation.
By the way, I’m pretty sure that these numbers don’t capture the whole of it. They are drawn from the Consumer Price Index (CPI). I no longer trust it.
Memorial Day weekend reminds me why. Did you get out and about and look at the prices at the stores? They are simply astonishing. The world around us has fundamentally changed in five years.
I saw jeans for $200, a blazer for $1,500, cheap beef for $7, and bar burgers for $48 that looked affordable compared with everything else on the menu. I was thrilled for a $12 beer, which I thought was a bargain until I remembered that this would have been $6 only five years ago.
There is no number that can precisely measure how much prices have risen in five years. It is a good rule of thumb to add one-third to the sticker price of most things. This is more than the 23 percent that the CPI claims. But even as you read that, I know you are thinking of goods and services that have gone up far more, by 50 percent or even 100 percent in price.
It’s a completely different world out there now. I know I’m not adjusting well. My memory of prices just five years ago makes me feel like a dinosaur from a different age. I get the impression that I’m constantly being ripped off, even though it is not the sellers’ fault. The robbery is more subtle. It makes me not want to buy anything.
I cannot even imagine what it must be like for someone in their 20s of moderate income. It must feel like there is no way they will ever get ahead. They are lucky if they have parents who can flip them a few thousand dollars from time to time to help them get by. If not, they go into debt.
My phone and email light up constantly with offers to split payments, buy on credit, get a cash advance, try a new app that links directly to my bank, and so on—huge and growing businesses all built on the insolvency of average people. People use them out of desperation. They offer a temporary means of survival. They are not a solution. They are temporary palliatives that make matters worse.
This is the bigger picture and why we simply cannot treat the end of the penny as a trivial matter. It signals something terrible: the weaponization of the monetary system as a means of enriching elites and impoverishing the masses. It is a prescient symbol of deep and abiding suffering.
What is being done about it? Nothing really. The Supreme Court issued an opinion last week (Trump v. Wilcox) that was very strange. It said the president can fire the heads of any executive agency (he clearly can, according to the Constitution). Good. But then the court added a baseless carve-out.
The court said it disagrees with arguments that the decision “necessarily [implicates] the constitutionality of for-cause removal protections for members of the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors or other members of the Federal Open Market Committee.” The opinion describes the Fed as “a uniquely structured, quasi-private entity that follows in the distinct historical tradition of the First and Second Banks of the United States.”
Wait, that’s it? The Fed is “uniquely structured” and that’s why the president cannot fire its head? Note that the First Bank and Second Bank were sources of huge controversy in the nation. Both were abolished as terrible threats to liberty. These were national banks for the government alone. The Fed is far worse: a central bank for the entire system and the whole nation.
This decision alone reveals that the court is not particularly serious about the Constitution as a whole. It picks and chooses whatever it wants from it. There is obviously nothing in that document that permits a central bank. Quite the reverse: The Framers even required that only gold and silver be minted as money and banned paper issuance by the states.
Would that such strictures had stuck throughout U.S. history. In a true market system of money based on sound principles, with rising productivity, we have every reason to expect that purchasing power would rise over time, as it did in the age of the old gold standard.
If someone asked me today what to do about it, I would falter at the precise answer. I don’t have a plan to offer to restore the gold standard of old, and every plan that I’ve seen has embedded problems. That said, there is plenty that can be done to at least get us back on the right track.
Balance the budget. Stop the debt creation. Rein in the Fed’s powers to print. If we could at least get that much done, we could have a conversation about the next steps—but we aren’t even close to that.
At the outset of the Trump administration, I was optimistic that the Department of Government Efficiency would make a big difference. Yes, I trusted the rhetoric, even if all experience suggested that I should not. Sure enough, a Republican-controlled Congress has pushed through a bill that pretty much ignores all the cost savings found by Elon Musk and his team. Disgusted, Musk has lost interest in politics and gone back to building a great fortune.
This is a sad moment in some ways. It is possible that we will never see another opportunity like that in our lifetimes.
Meanwhile, I made the mistake of looking at real-time prices just now. They are rising again after having fallen precipitously after the inauguration. They are again above 2 percent per year. And the money supply—already up by $6.5 trillion from what it was five years ago—is rising again and just barely short of matching its previous height of April 2022.
Is this the tariffs starting to bite? They are contributing, no question. It is also possible that suppliers are using tariffs as a means of excusing delayed price increases from previous inflation. Regardless, we are starting to see signs of a second wave of inflation. I cannot fathom how we can endure such a thing.
I truly wish that this were a new Golden Age. There are many good trends, no question. But the fundamentals related to fiscal and monetary policy are still cracked and decaying. That worries me. Even more troubling, the system seems impenetrable to repair, even under the heavy hand of President Donald Trump.
That’s my 2 cents. Penny for your thoughts?
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.
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Site: Catholic ConclaveThe Holy See's bulletin of May 28 reports a series of episcopal changes in Latin America. Among them, Pope Leo XIV accepted the resignation of the Archbishop of Paraná, Juan Alberto Puiggari, and appointed Monsignor Raúl Martín, currently the Bishop of Santa Rosa, in his place.Also called MartinAccording to the statement, Monsignor Martín—born in Buenos Aires in 1957, ordained a priest in 1990, Catholic Conclavehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06227218883606585321noreply@blogger.com0
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Site: Zero HedgeYale Dean Emails Everyone Anti-Trump Essay: "I Know You Share My Concern"Tyler Durden Wed, 05/28/2025 - 15:25
Authored by Ibrahim Garza via The College Fix,
A Yale University dean emailed the entire Divinity School a copy of his MSNBC essay criticizing President Donald Trump, according to an email recently obtained by The College Fix.
But the email is just the latest example of bias against conservatives, according to a concerned student.
“Trump’s USAID cuts are anti-Christian at the core,” Dean Gregory Sterling wrote in an opinion piece for MSNBC.
The article criticized President Trump for downsizing the United States Agency for International Development, saying it went against the teachings of Christianity.
Dean Sterling (pictured above) shared the essay with the Divinity School.
“Greetings. I am writing today to share a new commentary piece I have published at MSNBC,” the email stated.
“The article represents my effort to call attention to the anti-Christian nature of efforts by our government to eliminate or drastically reduce humanitarian work domestically and abroad, and to reach the broad public with the message that Christianity is more than the picture they are probably forming from politics and media.”
The message ended with Sterling stating:
“I know that you share my concern.”
Despite multiple requests for comment, neither Dean Sterling nor Yale Divinity School have responded.
Sterling’s biography shares how under his leadership, the divinity school “tripled the number of faculty from underrepresented groups and doubled the number of staff and students from diverse backgrounds.”
A Yale Divinity School student, who wished to remain anonymous due to fear of backlash, said “taxpayers would be upset knowing that left-wing propaganda is being pushed…by administrators at so-called elite schools.”
“I wanted to believe that these schools still had immense value, but their value lies not in their curriculum nor in the administration, only in the extracurricular events you get to attend with alumni and successful people in their field,” the student, a conservative Catholic, told The Fix.
“The name ‘Yale’ carries with it a lot of prestige, and I hope that there are changes made in the free exchange of ideas to actually honor that perception.”
The student stated that this email confirmed concerns that Yale is biased against conservatives – however this experience has “strengthened” the student’s support for the Trump administration and its direct action against elite universities.
“When Dean Sterling shared his article on MSNBC, it confirmed to me that Yale Divinity School isn’t a politically neutral institution and talking openly about being a conservative isn’t an option, unless you want to get ostracized by your peers,” the student said.
“It’s deeply disappointing as a student and has strengthened my support for the Trump Administration cutting federal funding for Ivy League institutions.”
Data supports the student’s view that the university leans left.
For example, 97 percent of faculty donations in the 2024 election went to Democratic candidates, according to the Buckley Institute, a conservative Yale group. In the social sciences and humanities, Democratic professors outnumber Republicans 78 to 1, the Buckley Institute found. The total ratio is 28 to 1, according to the Buckley Institute.
The conservative group also criticized a new “Trust in Higher Education” committee formed by Yale President Maurie McInnis.
The committee seeks to address declining public confidence through “open discourse and self-reflection” however the committee has no Republican representation.
“Yale President Maurie McInnis deserves recognition for trying to address the loss of trust in higher education. At the same time, creating a committee that is 70% Democrat and has zero Republicans is a poor way of doing it,” the Buckley Institute commented in a statement to The Fix.
“American higher education has lost the faith of the public because it is seen as an out-of-touch progressive ideological echo chamber dominated by views that diverge widely from the average American,” Executive Director Lauren Noble told The Fix via an emailed statement.
She said Yale should adopt institutional neutrality and eliminate its “diversity, equity, and inclusion” programs.
“Using the university name to support a uniformly progressive political agenda has given the impression that institutions of higher education have been co-opted for the sake of politics and abandoned their educational mission,” Noble stated.
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Site: Catholic ConclaveStatement on the performance by the group Bodytalk during the opening of the exhibition "775 – Westphalia" | May 26, 2025On Thursday, May 15, 2025, the Regional Association of Westphalia-Lippe (LWL) and the LWL Cultural Foundation opened the exhibition "775 – Westphalia" with a ceremony in Paderborn Cathedral as part of the anniversary year "1250 Years of Westphalia."Easter a few weeks Catholic Conclavehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06227218883606585321noreply@blogger.com0
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Site: LifeNews
The assisted suicide movement is slowly metastasizing throughout the West. Delaware just became the twelfth U.S. jurisdiction allowing doctors to intentionally prescribe a lethal overdose of drugs as a supposed “treatment” for a terminal illness. (Why such an event pleases certain politicians and activists is beyond me. We are talking about endorsing suicide.)
Now, France is on the verge of legalizing assisted suicide/euthanasia as the General Assembly just passed a bill by a comfortable 305–199 margin. From The Guardian:
The legislation would allow a medical team to decide if a patient is eligible to “gain access to a lethal substance when they have expressed the wish”. Patients would be able to use it themselves or have it administered by a nurse or doctor “if they are in no condition physically to do so themselves”.
Get the latest pro-life news and information on X (Twitter). Follow @LifeNewsHQ//
Patients must meet a number of strict conditions: they must be over 18, hold French citizenship or residency and suffer from a “serious and incurable, life-threatening, advanced or terminal illness” that is “irreversible”.
The disease must cause “constant, unbearable physical or psychological suffering” that cannot be addressed by medical treatment, and the patient must be capable of “expressing freely and in an informed manner” their wish to end their life.
If the bill ultimately passes, these supposed “strict” restrictions will be continually expanded — as has happened in almost every jurisdiction in which some form of hastened death has been legalized — until they eventually melt away. Indeed, one of the supporters of the French bill gave away the game:
Right-to-die campaigners have welcomed the law, though describing it as relatively modest in scope. “It’s a foot in the door, which will be important for what comes next,” said Stéphane Gemmani of the ADMD association.
That is always the strategy: Get whatever you can today and once the principle that killing is a splendid answer to human suffering is established, the expansion of eligibility will follow in due course.
Our cultures are becoming so nihilistic that, in some quarters, the emerging right to death — eventually for any reason — has greater emotional salience than the steadily eroding right to life.
LifeNews.com Note: Wesley J. Smith, J.D. is Chair and Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute’s Center on Human Exceptionalism. Wesley is a contributor to National Review and is the author of 14 books, in recent years focusing on human dignity, liberty, and equality. Wesley has been recognized as one of America’s premier public intellectuals on bioethics by National Journal and has been honored by the Human Life Foundation as a “Great Defender of Life” for his work against suicide and euthanasia. Wesley’s most recent book is Culture of Death: The Age of “Do Harm” Medicine, a warning about the dangers to patients of the modern bioethics movement. He blogs at Human Exeptionalism.
The post Delaware Becomes 12th State to Legalize Assisted Suicide appeared first on LifeNews.com.
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Site: AsiaNews.itTo mark Menstrual Hygiene Day, which falls today, Sister Gomes, principal of Holy Cross College in Dhaka, issued an appeal for a collective commitment to menstrual hygiene. In Bangladesh, social taboos, poverty and lack of educational facilities continue to exclude thousands of girls from a safe and dignified menstrual management.
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Site: Zero HedgeCrypto Czar Sacks Says US Could Possibly "Acquire More Bitcoin"Tyler Durden Wed, 05/28/2025 - 14:20
Authored by Stephen Katte via CoinTelegraph.com,
White House AI and crypto czar David Sacks says the US could buy more Bitcoin if the government can fund the purchase in a “budget-neutral” way without a tax or adding to the growing national debt.
Sacks told Gemini co-founders Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss during a May 27 fireside chat at the Bitcoin 2025 conference that while he “can’t promise anything,” a pathway does exist for the government to buy more Bitcoin.
However, it would require convincing Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick or Treasury Secretary Scott Besson to OK the buy and fund it “without a new tax or adding to the debt,” Sacks said, adding that “maybe by finding the money from some other program that’s not using it — then we could potentially acquire more Bitcoin.”
David Sacks said the US could buy more Bitcoin, but he can’t make any promises. Source: YouTube
“The question is, can we get either the Treasury Department or the Commerce Department to get excited about that because if they do and they can figure out how to fund it, they actually do have presidential authorization,” Sacks said.
US can buy Bitcoin if it doesn’t sting budget
The March 6 executive order authorizing the creation of a crypto reserve states it will hold any Bitcoin forfeited as part of criminal or civil asset forfeiture.
Sacks noted part of the executive order “allows the government to purchase more” if it’s “done in a budget-neutral” way.
“Specifically, if either the Commerce Department or the Treasury Department can figure out how to fund it without adding to the debt, then they are allowed to create those programs,” he said.
The US holds approximately 198,012 Bitcoin, according to an April report from CoinGecko, worth over $21 billion at current prices.
Most of its holdings came from two seizures connected to the online marketplace Silk Road, one in November 2020 that netted 69,370 Bitcoin, and another in March 2022 that saw authorities seize 51,351 Bitcoin.
The US also seized 94,636 Bitcoin from Bitfinex hacker Ilya Lichtenstein on Jan. 31, 2022, after authorities hacked into his cloud storage account, which contained a file holding around 2,000 crypto wallet addresses and corresponding private keys.
In January, the US Department of Justice received the green light to sell 198,109 Bitcoin. Previously, the government sold a small portion of its holdings in March 2023, when it offloaded 9,861 Bitcoin for $215.7 million.
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Site: Zero HedgeFOMC Minutes Show Fearful Fed Taking "Cautious Approach" Before Plunge In UncertaintyTyler Durden Wed, 05/28/2025 - 14:05
Since the last FOMC meeting, on May 7th, the market has been mixed with stocks and crude oil rallying strongly while gold and bonds have been sold (the dollar is basically unchanged)...
Source: Bloomberg
...but bitcoin has soared over 15% since the last FOMC meeting...
Source: Bloomberg
Hard data continues to be steady and growing while 'soft' survey data has surged in the three weeks since the last Fed meeting...
Source: Bloomberg
Which has pushed rate-cut expectations lower overall (with cuts shifting from 2025 to 2026)...
Source: Bloomberg
As a reminder, in spite of the exact same macro background of a dramatic tightening in financial conditions (orange oval) and weakness morphing into strength for US Macro data (red and green arrow), Powell and his pals decided a 50bps rate-cut (red oval) was not necessary this time... we wonder why (black line)?
Source: Bloomberg
Finally, before we see what they said (or want us to know), we noted that "uncertainty" was a key word used by Powell (during the statement and the press conference). Overall 'Uncertainty' had fallen into the meeting and since then it has plunged to its lowest since February (before Liberation Day)...
Source: Bloomberg
As we detailed in the preview, these minutes of the meeting are an account of information that was available to the Fed at the time of the meeting on 7th May 2025, therefore it will not incorporate the recent de-escalation on trade with China.
So, What Did They Want Us To Know?
Here are the key headlines from the Minutes:
Participants agreed that uncertainty about the economic outlook had increased further, making it appropriate to take a cautious approach until the net economic effects of the array of changes to government policies become clearer.
Uncertainty is key:
Significant uncertainties also surrounded changes in fiscal, regulatory, and immigration policies and their economic effects.
Taken together, participants saw the uncertainty about their economic outlooks as unusually elevated.
On inflation, they are split:
Some participants assessed that tariffs on intermediate goods could contribute to a more persistent increase in inflation. A few participants noted that supply chain disruptions caused by tariffs also could have persistent effects on inflation, reminiscent of such effects during the pandemic.
Several participants highlighted factors that might help mitigate the magnitude and persistence of potential increases in inflation, such as reductions of tariff increases from ongoing trade negotiations, less tolerance for price increases by households, a weakening of the economy, reduced housing inflation pressures from lower immigration, or a desire by some firms to increase market share rather than raise prices on items not affected by tariffs.
Growth fears:
The labor market was expected to weaken substantially, with the unemployment rate forecast moving above the staff's estimate of its natural rate by the end of this year and remaining above the natural rate through 2027.
...and finally, this fearmongering:
Some participants commented on a change from the typical pattern of correlations across asset prices during the first half of April, with longer-term Treasury yields rising and the dollar depreciating despite the decline in the prices of equities and other risky assets.
These participants noted that a durable shift in such correlations or a diminution of the perceived safe-haven status of U.S. assets could have long-lasting implications for the economy.
Read the full Minutes release below:
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Site: Zero HedgeFOMC Minutes Preview: The "Wait-And-See" MeetingTyler Durden Wed, 05/28/2025 - 13:50
Three weeks after the May 7 FOMC left rates unchanged at 4.25-4.50% for a third consecutive session (as expected) with a unanimous vote, at 2pm ET today we will get the Minutes from said meeting. As a reminder, the statement noted that uncertainty around the economic outlook has increased further and added that '‘risks of higher unemployment and higher inflation have risen”.
The Fed repeated its March language that economic activity continues to expand at a solid pace, though net export swings have affected the data. It maintained its view that inflation remains somewhat elevated and labor market conditions are solid, with the unemployment rate stabilizing at a low level.
The key changes centered on increased uncertainty and the risks on both sides of the dual mandate.
In his press conference, Chair Powell reiterated that the Fed is well-positioned to respond as needed and remains in a "wait-and-see” stance.
On tariffs, he noted they have been larger than anticipated but have yet to show major effects in the data, though concerns remain.
Powell said the Fed will adjust policy as the economy evolves, balancing dual mandate goals by assessing how far and how fast each side may drift from target. He declined to specify which side is at greater risk and stressed the Fed is in no rush but can act quickly if necessary.
According to Bloomberg economists, “Jerome Powell signaled a high bar for rate cuts this year. We think these changes likely reflect significant adjustments to the staff forecast following the Trump administration’s changes to tariff policies in the intermeeting period."
Note, the minutes of the meeting are an account of information that was available to the Fed at the time of the meeting on 7th May 2025, therefore it will not incorporate the recent de-escalation on trade with China.
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Site: Henrymakow.com
Please send links and comments to hmakow@gmail.com
Trumpet warns Putin is 'playing with fire' after declaring the Russian president has 'gone absolutely CRAZY'
https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-warns-putin-playing-fire-180614823.html-As the Russian proverb says, "the Jew will tell you what happened but never why."The crypto Jew and Chabad gangster Donald J Trumpet is ignoring Ukrainian provocations.Trumpet issues a a veiled gangster threat when he says he prevented some "very bad" things from happening to Russia. He is full of hot air and backs down whenever he meets resistance.Do you think Trumpet can lead the badly divided US into another world war without the help of another false flag?
-Over the past few weeks, Ukraine's use of drones has surged in both frequency and range. On a near-daily basis, dozens - sometimes hundreds - of drones are launched toward Russian territory, many targeting civilian infrastructure or flying indiscriminately toward dense urban centers like Moscow.
Here's what they don't tell you about 'massive Russian strikes on Ukraine'
"Despite this escalating threat to Russian civilians, international reaction has been resoundingly one-sided. There is no UN condemnation of Ukraine's drone strikes. There are no emergency meetings in Brussels, no CNN specials about Russian children running to bomb shelters. Instead, the focus is singular: Russia's every response is dissected, denounced, and demonized. The same countries that cheer on Ukraine's technological advancements in warfare turn a blind eye to the human cost - so long as the humans in question are Russian."
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Left--There has been a plethora of statments from GOP members demanding a larger war against RussiaTrumpet must look like he is trying to avoid attacking Iran so MAGA yokels will think they are dying for their own country!
Trumpet warns Netanyahu against taking steps that could harm US-Iran nuclear deal talks - reportTrump's message to Netanyahu was that "this is not the time to escalate the situation while he is trying to resolve the issues."
https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-855668--------Dr. Judy Mikovits Live Panel 21st Century Health Defense
Catherine Austin Fitts, a former Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, investment banker, and founder of the Solari ReportReader--"Normally her interviews are dull but she hit it out the park with this 1.
Watch "$21 Trillion Black Budget is Funding a Rogue Breakaway Civilization | Catherine Fitts" on YouTube
https://youtu.be/eqidDO6T5x0?si=uO9TSvtM3mnFdER8
"She's even stated "Elon Musk isn't a person. he's an operation. i don't know how many ACTORS are playing the role of Elon Musk, but it's a lot."I worked for several years... to understand what was happening with the injections... they were trying to install operating systems in people's bodies... [Like]... tagging livestock... if you get... nanoparticles into the... body, you're creating... an organic barcode.""It's not sci-fi at all. They're tagging livestock. I mean, if one of the things that really helps you to understand what this looks like. I live in a farming community in the United States. And if you've ever studied livestock management. A lot of this makes a lot more sense."----------Caroline Elliott: Closures of B.C. parks to non-Indigenous visitors a sign of things to comeThe province has gone all in on denigrating non-Indigenous residents--
Illuminati intent on ensuring Canadian citizens "will own nothing" even if they have to give it to the Indians.King Charles Engages in Cringeworthy 'Land Acknowledgement' While Opening Canadian Parliament.What Happened: King Charles III delivered his first in-person Speech from the Throne in Canada, opening with a so-called "land acknowledgment" and endorsing the liberal agenda of Prime Minister Mark Carney's minority government.--Trumpet Aims to Cancel All Government Funding for "Anti-Semitic" Harvard UniversityWe've exchanged Communist Jewish tyranny for Zionist Jewish tyranny.-Canada's Communist Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) gets YouTube to BAN a channel tells the truth and BRAGS about it.--Trumpet the troll claims Canada 'considering' becoming 51st US state in exchange for Golden Dome protection-
Hamdi Mig--"Today I walked more than 20 kilometers from Gaza City to Rafah, where the American food distribution centers are located, to get this food parcel, which is only enough for a few days and does not meet our daily needs. See the extent of humiliation and insult we are subjected to in order to get food.I didn't pay for it with money, but I paid for it risking my life and sacrificing it to feed my family. There were tens of thousands of citizens. After the surrender, the occupation forces opened fire on us from tanks stationed in the area, causing many casualties and injuries. They arrested many citizens and took them to interrogation centers. The rest escaped death. I wish we could pay for it with money instead of this humiliation and this risk.UNRWA: Aid should be distributed through the United Nations and international organizations, rather than forcing Palestinian citizens to travel dozens of kilometers to obtain food. It would be better if aid reached those who deserve it, rather than for people to be exhausted just to make ends meet.We see nothing ahead except killing, destruction, and achieving its plans to kill and displace the Palestinians."A Way to Help Gaza-Senator Rick Scott is a No on Trump's Big Beautiful Bill: "There's Not a Chance It'll Get the 51 Votes it Needs"-
G. Edward Griffin At 93 Years Old Talks About False Flags, Indie Success, Health & Political Wisdom...Journalist An0maly interviewed G. Edward Griffin and discussed false flags and political deceit. Mr. Griffin explained his views on health, diet, medicine as a business, returning to nature to restore health, clean foods, and positive thinking. Griffin described how he marketed his book, The Creature from Jekyll Island, and controls over information-Silence from Ottawa as 2.6 million shady deals exposed -
Site: LifeNews
In an effort to combat “potential public corruption,” the nation’s top law enforcement agency is revisiting one of the most significant and high-profile unsolved cases from the Biden administration era. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Deputy Director Dan Bongino announced Monday that he and FBI Director Kash Patel are going to “re-open” an investigation into the consequential 2022 leak of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, which sparked widespread violence across the nation, including at least one attempted assassination of a Supreme Court justice.
“Shortly after swearing in, the director and I evaluated a number of cases of potential public corruption that, understandably, have garnered public interest. We made the decision to either re-open or push additional resources and investigative attention to these cases,” Bongino shared. He continued, “I receive requested briefings on these cases weekly, and we are making progress. If you have any investigative tips on these matters that may assist us then please contact the FBI.”
John Malcolm, vice president of the Institute for Constitutional Government and director of Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at the Heritage Foundation, told The Washington Stand, “The Dobbs leak was a gross abuse of trust by someone within the court system.” He explained, “I doubt that the Dobbs leak itself had much impact on how the public views the court’s legitimacy and impartiality. The public’s view of such matters is more governed by whether they like the results in particular cases and by ill-considered, harsh rhetoric challenging the integrity of some of the justices and criticizing opinions in controversial cases.” He continued, “In a very real way, though, the Dobbs leak imperiled the lives of the justices and their families.”
Get the latest pro-life news and information on X (Twitter). Follow @LifeNewsHQ//
In May of 2022, Politico published a draft Supreme Court opinion, authored in February by Justice Samuel Alito, in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. The draft opinion made it evident that not only was the Supreme Court all but certain to rule in favor of the Mississippi pro-life law at the center of the case, but that a majority of justices on the Supreme Court were prepared to overturn Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, prior Supreme Court opinions (handed down in 1973 and 1992, respectively) which had extended broad federal legal protections to the practice of abortion.
Politico cited a “person familiar with the court’s deliberations” to confirm that Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett had already voted in favor of Alito’s opinion following oral arguments in December of 2021, yielding a five-justice majority to strike down Roe and Casey, as the abortion-centered precedents are known colloquially.
Chief Justice John Roberts, who sided with the majority on Mississippi’s pro-life law but did not join in overturning Roe and Casey, publicly confirmed that the leaked draft opinion was authentic. He said in a written statement at the time that “this betrayal of the confidences of the Court was intended to undermine the integrity of our operations…” Roberts added, “This was a singular and egregious breach of that trust that is an affront to the Court and the community of public servants who work here.” CNN later reported that Roberts had been attempting to sway his fellow Republican-appointed justices to join him in his own opinion, which would not have affected Roe and Casey, but would have still upheld Mississippi’s pro-life legislation. The news outlet said that the leak of the draft opinion “made the effort all but impossible…”
When the Supreme Court issued its final verdict in late June, the published opinion was almost identical to the leaked Alito draft, and Alito was joined by Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett, just as Politico had anticipated. Of course, other news outlets — such as SCOTUSblog, CNN, and CNBC — had made similar predictions following oral arguments, over six months before the Supreme Court rendered a final ruling, based purely on the line of questioning pursued by Republican-appointed justices.
Although the draft opinion leak was declared “unprecedented” by some news outlets, there have been some leaks in the past. It has been reported that the Supreme Court’s 1857 ruling in Dred Scott v. Sandford, holding that black slaves were not legally classified as U.S. citizens, was leaked to then-President-elect James Buchanan just a few days before the ruling itself was published. However, the narrow scope of the leak naturally narrowed its impact, only allowing Buchanan to prepare to deal politically with the Supreme Court’s ruling.
In 1973, the Supreme Court’s Roe ruling was leaked to Time Magazine. While this leak was broader in scope than the Dred Scott leak, being published in a well-read national news magazine, it still had little impact on the court’s actual ruling. Larry Hammond, a clerk for Justice Lewis Powell, gave a copy of the opinion to a Times reporter, expecting the ruling to have been published by the Supreme Court before the magazine could publish its next issue. A slight delay in the Supreme Court’s publication of the decision, however, meant that the text of the controversial opinion was printed and published by Time hours before the Supreme Court published its decision officially.
The Dobbs leak was, perhaps, equally broad in its scope but significantly deeper in its impact. The Supreme Court, in this instance, was not mere hours away from publishing an already-finalized opinion — as the final opinion itself makes clear, Alito made several changes between February and the date of the Supreme Court’s final ruling — but was still in the late stages of deliberation and would not officially render an opinion for nearly two months. A lot can happen in two months.
Already anticipating a possible ruling aborting Roe and Casey, groups like Planned Parenthood had planned a series of demonstrations and protests, but rapidly re-organized the events in the wake of the Dobbs leak. Thousands of pro-abortion activists marched through Washington, D.C. and major metropolitan centers like New York City and Los Angeles less than two weeks after the Dobbs leak. Some pro-abortion groups warned that the nation could expect a “summer of rage” if the Supreme Court followed through on the leaked opinion. With the disastrous Black Lives Matter riots of 2020 — which cost unparallelled billions of dollars in property damages, injured at least 700 police officers in a matter of mere months, and claiming 25 lives or more — fresh in the minds of many Americans, the threat was not taken lightly.
In fact, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) specifically warned in a memo that political violence was likely to occur as a result of the Dobbs leak and would only “persist and may increase leading up to and following the issuing of the Court’s official ruling.” While the memo, issued under the tenure of pro-abortion then-President Joe Biden, claimed that “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists’ embrace of pro-life narratives may be linked to the perception of wanting to ‘save white children’ and ‘fight white genocide,’” the DHS ultimately warned that political violence would most likely be carried out by pro-abortion activists.
Pro-abortion activists made clear their intent to target pro-life pregnancy resource centers and Catholic parishes in response to the Dobbs leak. DHS reportedly warned the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) of credible threats against Catholic parishes and leaders. The Catholic Church, of course, has long opposed abortion and Justices Alito, Thomas, Kavanaugh, and Barrett are all Catholics; Gorsuch was raised Catholic and educated by Jesuits, and both Roberts and Sotomayor identify as Catholic, although Roberts did not join the majority in reversing Roe and Casey and Sotomayor has long been an abortion proponent. The advocacy organization CatholicVote reported that there have been, to date, nearly 340 attacks on Catholic churches in the U.S. since the Dobbs leak, ranging from vandalism and property destruction to attempted arson and firebombing.
Five weeks after the Dobbs leak, a man flew from California to D.C. with the intention of going on a killing spree. His target: Supreme Court justices. Nicholas Roske went to Kavanaugh’s house first, in Montgomery County, Maryland. He was armed with a pistol and equipped with gear to break into the justice’s house undetected. Roske confirmed that he intended to kill at least three justices and specifically cited the leaked Dobbs opinion as his inspiration. Notably, the Chief Justice had been courting Kavanaugh as a potential ally in defecting from the majority and joining him in his own opinion, which would have effectively split the Supreme Court and preserved Roe and Casey. Thanks to the increased presence of U.S. Marshals deputies providing security for Kavanaugh and the other justices, Roske turned himself in to police. He is slated to be sentenced in October of this year.
Malcolm commented to TWS, “This should not have been surprising.” He explained, “The would-be assassin no doubt figured out that if he could kill one of the justices in the majority, that would not only change the outcome of the case (since a four-to-four tie would have left the lower court opinion, which upheld Roe, in place), but also would have resulted in President Biden getting to replace one of the Republican appointees; there is no question that anyone he would have appointed would vote in a future case to uphold Roe. Thankfully, that assassination attempt failed.”
Immediately following the leak, Roberts ordered Supreme Court Marshal Gail Curley to conduct an investigation determining who leaked the draft opinion and how. Nearly nine months later, in late January of 2023, Curley and the Supreme Court admitted that the investigation had been unsuccessful. The investigation included forensic analysis, nearly 130 interviews with staff members, and an examination of Supreme Court policies and processes regarding the circulation of drafts and the use of technology. A report from Curley’s office concluded that “investigators have found no forensic evidence indicating who disclosed the draft opinion.”
Glenn Fine, a former Inspector General (IG) for the Department of Justice and deputy I.G. for the Department of Defense, wrote a scathing critique of Curley’s investigation in March of 2023. “This result did not surprise me,” Fine said of the investigation’s lack of resolution, noting that, in his prodigious experience, leaks “are notoriously difficult to resolve.” The IG extraordinaire wrote, “Unfortunately, the leak investigation … demonstrates how not to conduct a leak investigation.” He continued, “The first problem in the Court’s leak investigation was whom the Court asked to conduct it.” Fine pointed to Curley’s lack of experience in “conducting this type of complex investigation” and the fact that she “did not have the necessary independence to conduct the investigation. In essence, she was asked to investigate her bosses, the justices, who are in the universe of potential leakers. They supervise her and can fire her.”
Fine also noted a point that numerous news outlets, political pundits, and armchair investigators had also raised their eyebrows over when Curley’s report was first published: while the investigation interviewed nearly 100 staff members, law clerks, and others under oath, the justices themselves were not put under oath. Interviews were conducted with them, sometimes multiple interviews, but neither the justices nor their families were put under oath or asked for sworn depositions. Fine wrote that Curley did not give “any reason for this double standard. It was an Alice in Wonderland investigation: The conclusion seemed to come first — let’s focus on the clerks and employees, not the justices, as the likely source of the leak — rather than result from a consistent investigation focusing on all potential leakers.”
Although Bongino announced that the FBI will “re-open” an investigation into the Dobbs leak, the law enforcement agency never formally opened an investigation in the first place. Concerned with ensuring the Supreme Court’s independence and autonomy, Roberts did not ask the FBI to intervene but instead suggested that the Supreme Court investigate itself.
Malcolm commented, “While I do not know whether the initial investigation was inadequate, I do know that the FBI has certain tools at its disposal that the Supreme Court’s Marshal’s Office and an outside contractor do not have.” Those tools include “being able to issue subpoenas, obtain electronic evidence, and convene a grand jury to receive evidence, including live testimony. I hope that with these tools the FBI will be able to uncover the identity of the leaker,” he added.
Malcolm further anticipated that the leaker, if identified, could face years of prison. “The leaker could be subjected to criminal penalties. Two crimes come to mind. First, obstruction of justice (18 U.S.C. § 1503), which carries a potential 10-year sentence, makes it crime to ‘corruptly … endeavor[] to influence, intimidate any … court of the United States … or endeavor[] to influence, obstruct, or impede, the due administration of justice ….’” Malcolm explained. He continued, “The second, conversion of government property (18 U.S.C. § 641), which carries a potential 10-year sentence, makes it a crime to ‘knowing[ly] convert[] to his use or the use of another … any record … or thing of value of the United States or of any department of agency thereof ….’” He added, “And, of course, if the perpetrator lies to a federal agent or before a grand jury during the course of this investigation, there are additional criminal statutes that would apply.”
LifeNews Note: S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.
The post FBI Will Investigate Unsolved Dobbs Leak appeared first on LifeNews.com.
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Site: Zero HedgeRecord Foreign Demand For Blowout 5Y Treasury AuctionTyler Durden Wed, 05/28/2025 - 13:34
What a difference a month makes.
A little over thirty days after one ugly coupon auction after another, when the market was panicking that the US had "lost its reserve status" and any Treasury auction could well be the last (it turns out that "privilege" belonged to Japan, where last week we almost saw the last ever 20Y auction), demand for US paper is once again off the charts... and we aren't even talking about yesterday's stellar 2Y auction. Moments ago Bessent's Treasury sold $70BN in 5 Year paper which saw the highest foreign demand in history!
Here are the details.
Today's sale of $70BN in 5 Year paper priced at a high yield of 4.071%, up modestly from last month's 3.99% (which was the first sub-4% auction since Sept 24), but otherwise the lowest yield for a 5Y auction since 2024. The auction also stopped through the 4.075% When Issued, resulting in a 0.4bps stop through, the 6th stop in the last seven auctions.
The bid to cover was 2.39, down from last month's 2.41, but right on top of the six-auction average of 2.40.
What was most remarkable about the auction, however, is that at a time when so many are talking about the end of "US exceptionalism", the internals showed just the opposite. In fact, with an indirect award of 78.4%, this was the 5Y auction with the highest foreign demand on record! And with Directs awarded 12.4%, down by half from last month's 24.8% (when they had to step in for the drop in Indirects), Dealers were left holding just 9.2%, the second lowest on record with just January 23's 8.8% lower
Overall, this was a stellar 5Y auction as evidenced by the record foreign demand, and a clear sign that the reports of US exceptionalism have been greatly exaggerated.
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Site: Mundabor's blogI do not live in a Trad fantasy world. I do not expect for Leo to take the sword of Tradition, produce himself in a fearful battle cry, and publicly right all the wrongs in the Church starting last Monday. If I were Pope myself, I might also decide to move gradually, boiling the V […]
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Site: Zero HedgeUS Group Suspends Gaza Operations After All Hell Broke Loose At Aid SiteTyler Durden Wed, 05/28/2025 - 13:25
On Wednesday Reuters is reporting that the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), the controversial US-backed aid organization whose distribution sites are protected by American mercenaries, has suspended its operations in Gaza "due to disorder."
Gaza's Government Media Office announced in a statement, "We confirm that the 'Israeli' occupation's project to distribute aid in the so-called 'buffer zones' has failed miserably, according to field reports and according to what was announced by the Hebrew media as well." Israel has rejected the charge, instead blaming unruly Palestinian masses, Hamas, and criminal gangs who have long looted aid stores in the Strip.
via AFP
"Thousands of starving people, besieged by the occupation and cut off from food and medicine for about 90 days, rushed toward those areas in a tragic and painful scene, which ended with the storming of distribution centers and the seizure of food," it added.
The very public fiasco and chaotic scene at one of the first distribution sites set up by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation outside Rafah on Tuesday was subject of international outrage and condemnation, including by the UN. The GHF has come under scrutiny for lack of experience and a firm track record.
As we had detailed the American security firm lost control of starving crowds and quickly withdrew from the area as the security situation rapidly broke down, resulting in Palestinians seizing the aid amid mayhem, soon after which Israeli aircraft swooped down to help clear the area.
Gunshots were heard, and there are reports the US contractors were using warning shots as crowd control, and amid the onrush. Below is a montage of footage in a Reuters report:
GHF had only begun distributing aid since Monday. Israeli media reviews that "While technically an American company, GHF was established earlier this year in close coordination with Israeli authorities who felt existing aid distribution mechanisms led by the UN and other international organizations were insufficient in preventing the diversion of aid by Hamas."
Hamas has reportedly threatened its operations, also amid US accusations that Hamas and other criminal groups had been routinely stealing and reselling international aid which entered the Strip previously throughout the war. The new plan was as follows:
Israel wanted to create a small number of distribution sites where pre-selected familial representatives would be able to pick up a heavy box full of food for their families in a zone secured and operated by American private contractors.
Emerging reports say at least one person was shot dead in these latest distribution efforts:
At least one civilian was killed and 48 wounded when Israeli troops opened fire on a crowd of Palestinians, after the group chosen by Israel to ship food into Gaza lost control of its distribution center, health officials reported.
Witnesses said Israeli forces started shooting after crowds of Palestinians broke through the fences on Tuesday around the distribution site, as an Israeli military helicopter fired flares and bursts of gunfire were heard in the distance. In one video, a large crowd of panicked civilians, including women and children, can be seen running away from the distribution site, trampling the fencing.
Below: several Middle East publications have slammed the Israeli/US-backed aid scheme as "dehumanization by design":
‘Dehumanisation by design’: US-Israeli Gaza aid operation descends into chaoshttps://t.co/JK04rKebVr
— Middle East Eye (@MiddleEastEye) May 28, 2025But amid looming famine, it appears that once word gets out, there is a rush toward the location. Whatever site is set up becomes a big target for mayhem (or worse, potential armed attacks), and likely it doesn't help that it's well understood that US mercenaries are guarding the centers.
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Site: Zero HedgeUS To Have 'Golden Share' In Nippon Steel Partnership With US Steel: Sen. McCormickTyler Durden Wed, 05/28/2025 - 13:20
Authored by Katabella Roberts via The Epoch Times,
The United States will have a “golden share” in Japan-owned Nippon Steel’s acquisition of U.S. Steel, giving it veto power over some key decisions, Sen. Dave McCormick (R-Pa.) said on May 27.
Speaking to CNBC, the Pennsylvania lawmaker said the details of the deal are laid out in a national security agreement that the companies are expected to sign with the government.
“The control structure is going to be somewhat unique,” McCormick said.
“It'll be a U.S. CEO, a U.S.-majority board, and then there will be a golden share, which will essentially require U.S. government approval of a number of the board members, and that will allow the United States to ensure production levels aren’t cut and things like that.”
McCormick added that Nippon has agreed to invest $14 billion into U.S. Steel as part of the deal.
“That’s going to be $2.4 billion, at least, in the Mon Valley right outside of Pittsburgh,” he said.
U.S. Steel is headquartered in Pennsylvania.
“In the case of Pennsylvania, this saves about 10,000 jobs, 4,000 steelworkers in the surrounding jobs, but beyond that, it adds another 10,000 jobs in the building trades to build a new arc furnace. That’s part of the plan, so this is being extremely well received in Pennsylvania,” McCormick said.
McCormick’s comments come just days after President Donald Trump said he had approved a “planned partnership” that would allow the Japanese company’s nearly $15 billion planned acquisition of the American steelmaker to move forward while ensuring the latter keeps its headquarters in Pittsburgh.
The partnership, which followed “much consideration and negotiation,” will create at least 70,000 jobs, Trump wrote in a May 23 post on social media platform Truth Social.
“This is the largest Investment in the History of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. My Tariff Policies will ensure that Steel will once again be, forever, MADE IN AMERICA. From Pennsylvania to Arkansas, and from Minnesota to Indiana, AMERICAN MADE is BACK,” Trump said.
The bulk of Nippon Steel’s investment “will occur in the next 14 months,” the president added.
Following his post on Truth Social, Trump told reporters on May 25 that U.S. Steel will be “controlled by the United States, otherwise, I wouldn’t make the deal,” and that it’s “an investment, and it’s a partial ownership, but it will be controlled by the USA.”
Biden Opposed Deal Amid National Security Concerns
Nippon Steel first announced its plan to acquire the 122-year-old steelmaker in December 2023, with the Tokyo-based company saying it expected to close the deal in the second or third quarter of 2024.
The move was blocked by President Joe Biden because of national security concerns.
In a statement announcing his decision, Biden said a committee of national security and trade experts across the executive branch had determined the acquisition would “place one of America’s largest steel producers under foreign control and create risk for our national security and our critical supply chains.”
Trump had also opposed the acquisition during his 2024 presidential campaign. He later changed his stance on the deal. In April, he directed the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States to conduct a new review of the transaction and evaluate any potential national security risks.
Following his May 25 post regarding the “planned partnership,” U.S. Steel’s share price increased by more than 20 percent.
Nippon Steel has not said whether it is willing to accept the deal described by Trump and McCormick.
When asked whether the Japanese steel giant is aware of what it has agreed to as part of the deal, McCormick said Nippon Steel will continue to have members of the board as “part of their overall corporate structure.”
He said the deal will also allow Nippon Steel to gain access to the U.S. market as well as the economic benefits that come with that access, something he said the company had sought.
The partnership will also allow the Japanese company to benefit from the policies that Trump has put in place with steel tariffs, the lawmaker said.
“So, I think, they looked at this structure, they know what they’re getting into,” McCormick stated.
“They’ve negotiated it. It was their proposal, and I think they saw it as a great strategic move for them and one that’s great for the United States.”
The Epoch Times contacted Nippon Steel for comment but did not receive a response by publication time.
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Site: AsiaNews.itOn the eve of a critical vote on 3 June, the Justice and Peace Commission of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of Korea informs voters and politicians of the traits that elected officials should have to truly promote the common good: serve the people, unite it beyond ideological and social barriers, promote peace with the North, and commit to safeguarding the environment.
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Site: Mises InstituteMembers of the establishment are trying to seize on Trump’s recent frustrations with Putin to act like they’ve been right all along that the Russian president cannot be reasoned with. In truth, the difficult situation Trump finds himself in is almost entirely their fault.
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Site: Zero HedgeKremlin Issues Outline Of Putin's Truce Demands, Warns "Peace Tomorrow Will Be Even More Painful"Tyler Durden Wed, 05/28/2025 - 13:00
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov started off the week by saying the Kremlin will announce the date of the next direct talks with Ukraine in the near future following the first 'direct' Istanbul meeting on May 16. Lavrov has in follow-up to his initial Monday remarks stated that work on a formal peace outline is at an "advanced stage." On Wednesday he has announced that the next talks are set for June 2 in Istanbul.
But in the meantime, Russia and Ukraine have stepped up drone and missile attacks on each other's territories in a massive way. This has led President Trump to warn of "very bad things" to come for Moscow, and he provocatively mused whether Putin has gone "crazy" in a Truth Social post.
Trump even said Putin is "playing with fire". Moscow has largely shrugged off the hardline rhetoric out of the White House, instead warning that emotionalism shouldn't thwart genuine efforts toward ending the conflict.
Via Reuters
It's been obvious to all honest observers of the war that Russia has the clear battlefield momentum and manpower to keep that momentum, amid more reports of slow but steady gains in the Donbass. Given this, Russia's spy chief in fresh statements Wednesday has said that Moscow cannot afford to be 'weak' right now.
The country’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), Sergey Naryshkin, said as follows:
"Russia has no right to be weak… and to abandon its own values and pursue the chimera of totalitarian liberalism and globalism."
According to Naryshkin, "history teaches us that the security on the Eurasian continent and ultimately the whole world depends on Russia’s firm standing."
Amid this backdrop, one senior Russian source has told Reuters in a Wednesday report that "Putin is ready to make peace but not at any price."
Multiple Russian sources cited in the reaport said Putin wants a "written" pledge by major Western powers not to enlarge the NATO military alliance eastward. This is being taken to mean he's asking to West to formal ruling out ever extending membership to Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova.
These written guarantees and other conditions have been spelled out in English-language Russian state media as follows:
- Ukraine’s permanent neutrality
- Partial sanctions relief for Russia
- Return of frozen Russian assets
- Protections for Ukraine’s Russian-speaking people
And then an or else was offered as part of the ultimatum. While not officially issued by the Kremlin, this appears some very intentional signaling by Putin officials. It was conveyed via the Reuters report:
The first source said that, if Putin realizes he is unable to reach a peace deal on his own terms, he will seek to show the Ukrainians and the Europeans through military strength that "peace tomorrow will be even more painful."
Trump’s frustration with Putin boils over with no Ukraine peace deal in sight
— carin jodha fischer (@carin__fischer) May 28, 2025
https://t.co/ZnuRCtRa23But Ukraine's President Zelensky has made clear of the Donbass and even Crimea, "this is our land" - and has repeatedly said he won't make territorial concessions. While hawks in Europe are supporting this unbending stance, it's as yet unclear whether Washington is brining the pressure on Kiev to at least offer Crimea.
Meanwhile, we highlighted earlier what one prominent conservative American commentator had this to say: "Sorry, but if you want to destroy your base and watch your presidency go down in flames, start something with Russia. It's absolutely asinine."
This could all spiral into WW3 in the blink of an eye...
Word in Moscow is if Merz uses German weapons to strike Moscow - and we all know that Kiev has no independent capacity to operate Tauruses or other long-range missiles - then Russia will have no choice but to strike Berlin directly.
— Margarita Simonyan (@M_Simonyan) May 28, 2025
Simple enough. pic.twitter.com/8jYMr0zpUe -
Site: Zero HedgeGoldman Downgrades Booz Allen Hamilton To 'Sell' Amid DOGE Contract CancellationsTyler Durden Wed, 05/28/2025 - 12:25
Management consulting firm Booz Allen quietly evolved into a government-wide contracting behemoth over the past few decades. By 2024, an astounding 98% of its revenue came directly from government agencies.
Now, enter the DOGE era: Goldman analysts have downgraded Booz Allen from "Neutral" to "Sell," noting medium-term revenue growth is expected to be flat as federal civilian spending comes under pressure and priorities shift within various federal agencies.
Highlighting top-line pressures, analysts Noah Poponak, Anthony Valentini, and Connor Dessert told clients Wednesday morning that Booz Allen shows up on the DOGE contract cancellation website more often than any other government services firm.
"Federal civilian agency budgets are under pressure, as other areas of spending within the government are prioritized," Poponak said.
He noted, "Booz Allen is on the DOGE contract cancel website more than other government services companies. We think several efforts to reduce Fed Civ spending remain underway. We now expect Booz Allen organic revenue growth closer to flat for the next several years, which could take time for the stock to digest following the strong growth run of the last few years."
DOGE data shows that Booz Allen has had 68 contracts canceled, with 41 of these being contracts that had not been fully paid out, and the remainder having been fully paid. The 60 contracts account for over $600 million in deals.
Booz Allen's canceled contracts are spread across multiple federal agencies, with the majority concentrated in the Department of Health and Human Services.
Highlights from the report:
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Downgrade Rationale: Booz Allen is downgraded from Neutral to Sell due to concerns about limited revenue growth, margin compression, and valuation risk over the medium term.
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Revenue Outlook: GS Analysts now expect Booz Allen's organic revenue growth to be flat through FY28 as federal civilian agency spending is cut and DoD priorities shift. The company also appears frequently on DOGE's contract cancellation list.
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Margins Under Pressure: The shift toward outcome-based and fixed-price contracts increases risk for contractors. Margin compression is likely as competitive pricing intensifies in a fragmented industry.
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Valuation Risk: While Booz Allen trades at 17x CY26E P/E and 12x EBITDA—near historical averages—those multiples are at risk if earnings stay flat. GS analysts sees 14% downside to their revised $94 price target.
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Weak FY26 Guidance: Initial FY26 guidance calls for 0–4% revenue growth and EBITDA below consensus. FCF guidance also came in ~19% below consensus.
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Book-to-Bill Concerns: Q1 FY26 book-to-bill ratio was just 0.71x, a sharp drop from prior quarters and an early signal of slowing growth
More broadly, Government IT outlays are set to slow this year and into next, driven by declining federal spending.
Besides Booz Allen, here are the 20 other companies with the highest percentage of revenue from the US Gov't.
Welcome to the era of DOGE. It won't be pretty for the elite class in the Mid-Atlantic area.
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Site: Euthanasia Prevention CoalitionBy Amanda Achtman
My friend Rabbi Jonathan Jaffit didn't expect euthanasia to impact him personally.
As an Orthodox Jew, he always told me, "That's not something we do."
But one day, he got a phone call that brought the issue to him in an unexpected way.
In the newest Dying to Meet You vignette, "Renewing Life", Rabbi Jaffit shares the story and offers some poignant insights on our cultural moment.The Renewing Life vignette is an excellent lead-in to the importance of the Compassionate Community Care program.To receive training in visiting, advocacy or calling people who need a friend, Contact Compassionate Community Care at info@beingwith.org
Reuters: Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich walks to visit the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem's Old City, as Israelis mark Jerusalem Day, 26 May 2025
via AFP
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