Russia Will Target US Nuclear Weapons In Poland If They Appear

Russia has warned that Poland will make itself a 'priority target' if it hosts NATO nuclear weapons on its territory. In a Thursday statement Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said "Moves in this direction will not provide greater security (for Poland or other nations that host such weapons)." He was further quoted in Russian media as saying: 

Moscow considers any expansion of NATO’s nuclear-sharing arrangement as “deeply destabilizing” in nature, “and in fact threatening” Russia, Ryabkov was quoted as saying by TASS on Thursday. This applies to joint missions, where non-nuclear members of the US-led bloc are trained to use American hardware, and even more so to the permanent stationing of such weapons “which hotheads in Warsaw are talking about,” he said.

In follow-up, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova stipulated that "any nuclear weapons deployed to Poland would be legitimate targets in the event of war with the alliance." Russian media translations said Moscow would see this as a "priority target".

All of this was in response to words issued by Polish President Andrzej Duda in a Monday interview. He said his country is "ready" to host nuclear weapons should NATO decide to do so as reinforcement of its eastern flank. It remains that the United States chiefly supplies and oversees NATO's nuclear-sharing program, thus any possible future nukes in Poland would be supplied by Washington.

"Russia is increasingly militarizing the Königsberg oblast (Kaliningrad). Recently, it has been relocating its nuclear weapons to Belarus," Duda continued, apparently wanting to match and mirror Russian moves. Indeed Belarus is now believed to host possibly dozens of Russian tactical nukes.

via infobrics.org

"If our allies decide to deploy nuclear weapons as part of nuclear sharing on our territory as well, in order to strengthen the security of NATO's eastern flank, we are ready for it," the Polish president had added.

Duda additionally said while discussing the topic of NATO's nuclear sharing program in the interview that Warsaw and Washington have been in talks "for some time." He emphasized: "I've already talked about it several times. I must admit that when asked about it, I declared our readiness."

But the reality is Brussels and Washington are likely to be deeply hesitant based on the nuclear threats emanating from Moscow of late. Moving NATO warheads to Polish soil would most certainly greatly intensify the already somewhat high nuclear tensions, and at a moment the proxy war in Ukraine shows no sings of abating.

While three NATO members are officially nuclear weapons states - the United States, France and the United Kingdom – others are authorized to host nukes (typically 'tactical' nuclear weapons). They are Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey.

Apparently Poland is now throwing its name in the hat for NATO's nuclear-sharing program, which would expand Western nuke placement right up to Russia's backyard. The Kremlin would no doubt deploy more of its strategic assets near Eastern Europe in such a scenario.

Tyler Durden Fri, 04/26/2024 - 04:15

European ESG Funds Witness Heavy Decline In Inflows

Authored by Irina Slav via OilPrice.com,

European exchange-traded funds with a focus on ESG investing saw a substantial decline in inflows in the first quarter amid what Morningstar called “an existential crisis”.

According to the Financial Times, net inflows into these funds totaled 7.1 billion euros, or $7.62 billion, in the first three months of the year. This was down from 13.8 billion euros in the final three months of 2023, equal to $14.8 billion.

As a result, the portion of ESG fund inflows during the period fell to 16% of total net flows into exchange-traded funds, down from 29% in November to December 2023.

The trend is the latest sign of trouble in energy transition industries as wind, solar, and EV companies struggle with persistently high interest rates, rising raw material costs, and growing competition from low-cost Chinese producers.

“This means further deceleration from the highs of 2022 when close to 65 percent of all flows into the European ETF market were directed to ESG-themed strategies,” Morningstar associate director of passive strategies Jose Garcia-Zarate said.

The news follows a revelation in March that a total of 70% of passive funds passed off as “sustainable” by five of the largest asset managers in the U.S. and Europe were exposed to companies developing new oil and gas projects, according to a report by environmental organization Reclaim Finance.

Reclaim Finance has examined 430 “sustainable” passive funds managed by five of the biggest passive fund managers – Amundi, BlackRock, DWS, Legal & General Investment Management (LGIM), and UBS AM – and found that 70% of the passive funds are exposed to companies developing new fossil fuel projects.

These giant asset managers “are turning a blind eye to the climate impact of their passive investments, with funds invested in oil giants including TotalEnergies, Shell and ExxonMobil, and coal developers such as Glencore and Adani,” Reclaim Finance said in the report.

Tyler Durden Fri, 04/26/2024 - 03:30

Poland Ready To Help Ukraine Round Up Military-Aged Men

Poland says it is ready and willing to help Ukraine with its crisis-level manpower and recruitment problems, as it could be poised to round up Ukrainian military-aged males and return them to their home country. Government officials are now strongly signaling just such a controversial plan.

Polish Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz issued the words Wednesday, largely in response to Ukraine's new law and policy requiring men between 18 and 59 living abroad to get or renew their passport only at offices inside Ukraine. It is designed to prevent them from leaving in the country and thus avoid military service.

"Poland has suggested in the past helping Ukraine so that those who are subject to military service go back to their country to fulfill their civic obligation, Kosiniak-Kamysz told Polsat News television," according to Reuters.

Getty Images

"I think many Poles are outraged when they see young Ukrainian men in hotels and cafes, and they hear how much effort we have to make to help Ukraine," he said, but without specifying what precise steps Warsaw is set to take.

According to more of the Polish defense minister's words:

"The Ukrainian authorities are doing everything to provide new soldiers to the front, because the needs are huge," Kosiniak-Kamysz said.

The Polish official said that Warsaw had previously offered to help Kiev track down those who dodge their "civic duty," but noted that "the form of assistance depends on the Ukrainian side."

Of course, we should note that such a policy of helping get young Ukrainian men 'off the streets' is highly convenient from a Polish perspective, given the historic anti-Ukrainian sentiment among the Polish population. Simply put, the two nationalities tend to hate each other, and Warsaw will now cast its policies pressuring Ukrainians to leave as somehow noble.

Ukraine's foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba wrote earlier this week on X that he had "ordered measures to restore fair attitudes toward men of conscription age in Ukraine and abroad." Kuleba complained, "How it looks now: A man of conscription age went abroad, showed his state that he does not care about its survival, and then comes and wants to receive services from this state."

Russian media has estimated that almost one million Ukrainians have been given temporary sanctuary in Poland, and that a significant but unknown portion of these are likely eligible for conscription.

As the West agree to send billions more to Ukraine, mass mobilisation gets underway as officers staged a mass raid in a cafe in Uzhgorod.

Eyewitnesses filmed mobilisation and police officers leading men out of the cafe who will no doubt be heading to the front shortly. pic.twitter.com/K2o1InhbTa

— Dean O'Brien (@DeanoBeano1) April 24, 2024

Despite Biden's $60 billion for Ukraine's defense having finally been signed into law by the president, the reality remains that Ukraine is fundamentally suffering a severe crisis of manpower. This essentially means that even as US weapons and equipment arrive, there are fewer and fewer troops experienced enough to actually man and operate them.

Tyler Durden Fri, 04/26/2024 - 02:45

Former British PM Liz Truss Warns About Global Threat Of The Left

Via The Epoch Times,

Former British Prime Minister Liz Truss spoke Monday at The Heritage Foundation about how the United States and the United Kingdom are facing very challenging forces in the global left, not just in terms of their extremist activists, but also in the power they hold in our institutions.

She warned that conservatives must create a stronger infrastructure to take on the left—which is well-funded, activist, and has many friends in high places—by recruiting more conservative activists and candidates who can fight in the trenches in the ideological war that we now face.

Excerpts from her remarks are below.

Why am I launching “Ten Years to Save the West” in the United States as well as in the United Kingdom? Well, I like to think of the United States of America as Britain’s greatest invention, albeit a slightly inadvertent invention. And if you look at our history, from Magna Carta to the Bill of Rights to the American Constitution, we have developed and perfected representative democracy.

And if you look at what is going on in our societies, first of all, the Brexit vote back in 2016 and then the election of President Donald Trump later that year, you can see the same desires of our people for change and the same desires for those conservative values and that sovereignty.

And if you look at the battle for conservatism now and the frequency with which we get new prime ministers in the United Kingdom and the frequency with which you get new speakers of the House here in the United States, we can see again that there is a battle for the heart and soul of conservatism on both sides of the Atlantic. And I think that battle is very important. Because, let’s be honest, we have not been winning against the global left.

If you look at the history since the turn of the millennium, the left have had the upper hand. And it’s not the old-fashioned left who used to argue about the means of production and economic inequality. It’s the new left who have insidious ideas that challenge our very way of life.

Whether it’s about climate extremism that doesn’t believe in economic growth, whether it’s about challenging the very idea of a man and a woman and biological sex, whether it’s about the human rights culture that’s been bedded into so much of our society that makes us unable to deal with illegal immigration—those new ideas have been promulgated by the global left and they have been successful in infiltrating quite a large proportion of society and a large part of our institutions.

Let’s just look at the state of economics. I am a supply-sider. I know that it works. We saw it work under [U.S. President Ronald] Reagan and [UK Prime Minister Margaret] Thatcher, and yet we’ve seen the domination of Keynesian economics in recent years, bloated size of government, huge debts in both of our countries.

On the immigration and human rights culture, look at what is going on now on American university campuses where it is not safe anymore to be Jewish, or the streets of London where a Jewish man could not cross the road during yet another appalling protest, or the fact that we can’t seem to deport illegal immigrants either from your southern border or the small boats that are crossing the channel.

Or take wokery, another bad neo-Marxist idea developed from [Michel] Foucault and all those crazy post-modernists in the 1960s, the idea that biological sex is not a reality.

We now have President [Joe] Biden introducing regulations around Title IX, which means that girls could see biological boys in their changing rooms, in their locker rooms, in their school restrooms and not be able to do anything about it. And if they complain about it, they could be the ones guilty of harassment. How on earth can that be happening in our society?

Or the climate extremists who aren’t satisfied with just stopping coal-fired power stations here in America, [liquefied natural gas] terminals being built, fracking in the United Kingdom, but want to go further. Whether it’s imposing electric vehicles or air-source heat pumps or extra taxes on the public. Meanwhile, our adversaries in China are busy building coal-fired power stations every week.

I see that as unilateral economic disarmament in the middle of what is a various, serious threat to the West.

So how has it ended up that after the turn of the millennium, despite the fact that we have many conservative intellectuals and politicians, why have our institutions, why has so much of our public discourse shifted to the left?

Well, first of all, too many conservatives have not been making the argument. Now, I call them conservatives in name only, CINOs. I know in America you call them RINOs. But these conservatives in name only, rather than taking on those ludicrous ideas, instead have tried to appease and meet them halfway.

Why have they done this? Well, first of all, they don’t want to look mean. They don’t want to look like they’re against human rights. They don’t want to look like they’re against the environment. They don’t want to be mean to transgender people. They’ve allowed those arguments to affect their views on what is right and wrong. But it’s also more cynical than that.

If you want to get a good job after politics, if you want to get into the corporate boardroom, there are a group of acceptable views and opinions that you should hold. And most of them are on that list. If you want to be popular and get invited to a lot of dinner parties in Washington, D.C., or London, there are reviews on that list that you should hold. And people have chosen dinner parties over principle.

But the other thing I think we’ve missed on the conservative side of the argument, and I put my hands up to this, is the rising power of the administrative state. The fact that power—which previously lay in the hands of democratically elected politicians, like them or not they can be voted out of office—is now in the hands of so-called independent bodies, whether it’s central banks, whether it’s government agencies, or whether it’s the civil service themselves.

And what we’re seeing in bureaucracy in the United Kingdom, and I think here in the United States as well, is a growing activist class of civil servants who have views on transgender ideology or climate or human rights, which they are keen to promote in their roles.

I saw this firsthand and one of the key points the book is about is my battles that I had with that institutional mindset. And there’s a phrase that we use in Britain called “consent and evade.” Quite often the officials will be very polite on the request, but it will take a very long time to do if it’s something like helping deport illegal immigrants or sort out the Rwanda scheme. If it’s something that they like, like dealing with climate change, that will be expedited.

And I think it’s very difficult for people who haven’t worked in government to understand just how cumbersome and how treacle-like it has become. And I don’t know if that’s a product of the modern era, if it’s a product of the online society, but it is very, very difficult now to deliver conservative policies.

Now, I did many jobs in many different government departments. I was in the justice department, the environment department, the education department, the treasury, I was in trade, I was in the foreign office, and I faced battles against activist lawyers, against environmentalists, against left-wing educationalists.

But what I thought when I ran to be prime minister in 2022 is I thought I had the opportunity to change things because that was surely the apex of power. I hadn’t been able to change it as environment secretary or trade secretary, but as prime minister, surely that was the opportunity for me to be able to really change things.

Now, there’s a bit of a spoiler alert about the book. It didn’t quite work out. I ended up being the shortest-serving British prime minister as a result of trying to take on these forces. And the particular thing that I tried to take them on was the whole issue of our economy.

*   *   *

I come today with a warning to the United States of America. I fear the same forces will be coming for President Donald Trump if he wins the election this November. There is a huge resistance to pro-growth supply-side policies that will deliver economic dynamism and help reduce debt.

What the international institutions and the economic establishment want to see is they want to see higher taxes, higher spending, and more big government, and more regulation. They do not want to see that challenged. And we’ve already heard noises from the Congressional Budget Office and elements of the United States market about the financial stability situation.

So, what have I learned from my experience? What have I learned from my time in office? I have learned that we are facing really quite challenging forces of the global left, not just in terms of their virulent activists making extremist documents, but also the power they hold in our institutions. And that leads me to believe that what conservatives need is what I describe as a bigger bazooka.

Now, what do I mean by a bigger bazooka? Well, first of all, I mean that we need really strong conservative political infrastructure to be able to take on the left. They are well-funded, they are activists, they have many friends in high places. And we need strength and depth in our political operation.

That’s why I’m working on a new political movement in the UK called Popular Conservatism, which is about bringing in more activists, more candidates, more potential legislators, more operators who can actually fight in the trenches against the left in the ideological warfare that we now face.

The second thing we need to do is we need to dismantle the administrative state. And there are lots of people I speak to who say, “It’s just because you ministers aren’t tough enough. If only you were a bit bolder in taking on things, if only you had a bit more political will, you would be able to deliver.”

Those people are not right. Until we actually change the system, we are not going to be able to deliver conservative policy such as the depths of resistance in our institutions and our bureaucracy that we do have to change things first.

And what does that mean? Well, you’re ahead of us in the United States in that the president gets to appoint 3,000 people into the government positions. In Britain it’s only 100 people. And those 100 people are relatively junior. They’re not in charge of departments. So, I believe we need to change that in Britain. We need to properly appoint senior figures in our bureaucracy.

We also need to deal with the proliferation of unaccountable bureaucratic bodies. They have to go. There has to be a real bonfire of the quangos.

But even here in the United States, policies like Schedule F are going to be very, very important in order to be able to deliver a conservative agenda. And the project that Heritage is sponsoring, Project 2025, is another vital part of building that institutional infrastructure that can actually deliver conservative policies. Having seen what I’ve seen on both sides of the Atlantic, I think both of those things are vital in order for conservative policies to deliver.

But we can’t just deal with the administrative state at a national level because what we’ve also got is the global administrative state. We have the United Nations, the World Health Organization, we have the [Conference of the Parties] process.

And one of the things I tried to do was stop Britain hosting COP in Glasgow. I failed. But I want to see us in the future abandon that process. The best people to make decisions are people that are democratically elected in sovereign nations. It is not people sitting on international bodies who are divorced from the concerns of the public.

The final thing conservatives need to do is end appeasement. And by ending appeasement, I’m talking about the appeasement of woke Orwellianism at home as well as the appeasement of totalitarianism abroad. We have to do both of those things because both of those things are threatening our way of life.

Totalitarian regimes like China, Russia, and Iran have to be stood up to, the only thing they understand is strength. And now the military aid budget has been passed through Congress. There needs to be more clarity about how Russia can be defeated and how China and Iran will also be taken on. And in order to achieve that, we are going to need a change in personnel at the White House.

Now, I worked in Cabinet whilst Donald Trump was president and while President Biden was president. And I can assure you, the world felt safer when Donald Trump was in office. 2024 is going to be a vital year, and it’s the reason that I wanted to bring my book out now. Because getting a conservative back in the White House is critical to taking on the global left. And I hate to think what life would be like with another four years of appeasement of the woke left in the United States, as well as continued weakness on the international stage.

But my final message is that winning in 2025 or winning in 2024 and going into government in 2025 is not enough. It’s not enough just to win. It’s not enough just to have those conservative policies. That there will be huge resistance from the administrative state and from a left in politics that has never been more extremist or more virulent.

And that is why it will need all the resources of the American conservative movement, think tanks like Heritage, and hopefully your allies in the United Kingdom to succeed. But you must succeed because the free world needs you.

Reprinted by permission from The Daily Signal, a publication of The Heritage Foundation.

Tyler Durden Fri, 04/26/2024 - 02:00

The Great Game Returns To Central Asia

Via EurasiaNet.org,

• Russia's invasion of Ukraine has reanimated US and EU interest in Central Asia.

• China has eclipsed Russia as the region's largest trade partner.

• Central Asian trade is diversifying away from Russia and towards the West.

The Great Game is playing out once again in Central Asia, but it is getting a new name and adopting a different set of rules. Economics, not politics, is defining the terms of the current superpower competition for regional influence, according to a report prepared by a Kazakh research institute. 

There is a key difference governing the global rivalries in Central Asia in the 19th and 21st centuries: these days, regional states, not outsiders, wield the more influence over potential outcomes, according to the report, titled Pursuing Multi-Vectorism Through Business Diplomacy: The Path for Central Asia. The report was published by the Talap Center for Applied Research. 

“The region, previously the theater of the Great Game in the confrontation of superpowers, is now trying to become an opportunity zone,” the report states.

Russia’s unprovoked attack on Ukraine in 2022, and the imposition of Western sanctions to punish Russian aggression, changed Central Asia’s geopolitical dynamics by reanimating US and European Union interest in the region. By extension, Russia’s actions encouraged the diversification of trade and investment, changing East-West trade patterns connecting China and Europe. Sanctions have diminished the utility of the Northern Corridor via the trans-Siberian railway, while providing impetus for the growth of the Middle Corridor via Central Asia.

These changes have shifted Central Asia’s center of geo-economic gravity. China has eclipsed Russia as the region’s largest trade partner, while the overall trend is toward diversification of trade partners. The West’s share of Central Asian trade under the present dynamic is set to keep rising.

“The trade and investment dynamics in the region show a significant shift of diversification with non-traditional markets of Europe, North America, South Asia, and the Middle East since 2022,” the Talap report notes.

“This has become possible due to a traditional, multi-vector policy for the region, which, under the stress of escalating conflicts, was transformed into a policy of emphatic non-alignment – a firm rejection of any involvement in the conflict.”

The report notes that the contacts between the European Union and Central Asian states have “have gained a special dynamism” since the start of the Russia-Ukraine war.

It also notes that public opinion in the region indicates that a majority of regional residents do not want to get dragged into the confrontation between the West and Russia, which is supported by China. 

The prevailing circumstances have forced Central Asian states to “balance a genuine interest in developing their ties with the Western world while being surrounded by Iran, Afghanistan, China, and Russia, countries with which the West has strained and even tense relations,” the report says.

Maximizing economic multi-vectorism will require some work by Central Asian governments to enhance the predictability of the regional business climate. Vaguely defined trade rules and property rights, along with the unreliability of regional judicial systems, remain big impediments to Western investment. The lack of mechanisms to enforce contracts or resolve corporate disputes also constitutes an investment barrier. In addition to bolstering the independence of the judicial system, the Talap report recommends reforms to regional tax codes to foster more “equitable” business environments. 

“The investment climate in Central Asia reflects a difficult balance between the determination of governments to take advantage of growing interest in the region and the inertia of institutional barriers,” the report states.

“To take advantage of these opportunities, the countries of the region have to address existing institutional and regulatory barriers for both domestic and international companies and investors, strengthen the rule of law, enforce fair and open competition, implement business friendly tax regulations, and align trade, customs and logistical standards.”

Tyler Durden Thu, 04/25/2024 - 23:45

Gaza Aid Flotilla With 1,000 Passengers, Tons Of Supplies Poised To Sail - As IDF Awaits

A flotilla of ships packed with a thousand activists, human rights observers and more than 5,500 tons of food and medical supplies is ready to sail from Istanbul to for Gaza. To do so, they'll need the Turkish government to let them leave the port, and then run the risk of being subjected to a deadly Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) attack -- as their predecessors were in an infamous 2010 incident.  

“The Freedom Flotilla has the support of millions around the world who are outraged at the failure of our governments to protect the Palestinians people from Israel’s genocidal actions, including the deliberate starvation of over two million people,” said the organizing coalition's Zohar Chamberlain-Regev. 

The group has three ships ready to go: one packed with food and medical supplies, and two ships for passengers who hail from 40 different countries. The cargo ship also has eight ambulances and a fire truck aboard -- a grim reminder of the IDF's Nov 3 bombing of an ambulance convoy next to Al-Shifa hospital that killed 15 and wounded dozens. 

A horse lies dead next to an ambulance bombed by the IDF just outside a Gaza hospital on Nov 3 (Momen al-Halabi / AFP - Getty Images via NBC News)

CodePink's Medea Benjamin is among those hoping to set sail, but says she's worries about diplomatic interference. "The Turkish government might cave to pressure from Israel, the United States and Germany, and prevent the boats from even leaving Istanbul," she wrote on Tuesday. 

“We expect that Turkey will not be bought off and we will indeed sail,” Palestinian-American human rights lawyer Huwaida Arraf optimistically said at a press conference hosted on one of the ships. “Anything less than this is collaborating with the illegal siege on Gaza, and we don’t think that is what the Turkish government will do.”

The three Freedom Flotilla Coalition vessels docked in Istanbul 

While the IDF has said little, an Israeli news outlet reported that the Israeli military has already started "security preparations" for commandeering the flotilla. In an infamous 2010 incident, the IDF killed 10 activists aboard a Freedom Flotilla Coalition vessel, the Mavi Marmara. 

With that precedent in mind, organizers have been giving volunteers "non-violence training" and educating them on what the Israeli forces may use on them -- such as tear gas and concussion grenades. 

The Freedom Flotilla Coalition was founded in 2010 to circumvent economically-devastating travel and trade restrictions imposed by the State of Israel on the 25-mile-long Gaza strip. Long before the Oct. 7 Hamas invasion of southern Israel, the Zionist state has blocked the people of Gaza from having an airport or even a seaport.  

From the first days of Israel's post-Oct. 7 attack on Gaza, Israel made clear its intentions to cause widespread devastation in the strip. "I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed," Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told reporters on Oct. 9. "We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly."

A crowd of Palestinians seeking food in Rafah (via Btselem)

On Tuesday, US Special Envoy for Humanitarian Issues David Satterfield belatedly acknowledged that the risk of famine in Gaza is "very high." This comes long after a various news outlets and humanitarian organizations have reported on increasingly desperate measures Gaza residents have resorted to, including boiling weeds and eating animal food. Acute malnutrition among young children is soaring, and UNICEF says the entire population is in increasing peril:

"The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) projected that 1.1 million people face catastrophic levels of hunger (IPC Phase 5) and are at risk of famine in the Gaza Strip, the highest number of people ever recorded in this category by the IPC system."

US money helps enable the IDF-imposed blockade on Gaza -- and more US money is spent circumventing it with airdrops like this 

On Wednesday, President Biden signed off on a controversial foreign aid package that included another $26 billion for Israel. In his State of the Union address, Biden announced that the Pentagon would create a floating port off the Gaza coast to facilitate the flow of humanitarian aid. Some six weeks later, construction hasn't even started, but a spokesman on Tuesday said it should begin "in the coming weeks." 

Tyler Durden Thu, 04/25/2024 - 23:25

"Taken Out By The FBI, CIA, & Bob Woodward" - Tucker Carlson Says Watergate Was Orchestrated To Remove President Nixon From Office

Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,

I have several times reported the same...

Nixon was removed because he was making arms limitation agreements with the Soviets and opening to China.

This was normalizing the enemy that the military/security complex needed for its budget and power.

It was for the same reason that President Kennedy was assassinated by the military/security complex.

The growing suspicion about Kennedy’s assassination meant that the military/security complex could not risk a second violent assassination, so Nixon was politically assassinated.

The same strategy was applied to Trump.

When Trump said he intended to normalize relations with Russia, he presented himself as the same threat to the military-security complex as Kennedy and Nixon.

That is what Russiagate was about, and what documentsgate, Jan 6 Insurrection, and two failed impeachments are all about.

When Russiagate and the impeachments failed, they decided to steal the election.

When Trump’s support survived all of this, they decided on the indictments.

In the least, the indictments will keep Trump off the campaign circuit and use up his resources in legal fees.

It is the determination and ability of the military/security complex to protect its budget and power that makes peace impossible and wars our way of life...

Watch Tucker Carlson discuss this below (with key quotes via @CollinRugg):

“Richard Nixon was taken out by the FBI and CIA, and with the help of Bob Woodward.”

“[Woodward] was that guy. And who is his main source for Watergate? Oh, the number two guy at the FBI. Oh, so you have the naval intelligence officer working with the FBI official to destroy the president. Okay. So that's a deep state coup.”

“Richard Nixon was elected by more votes than any president in American history in the 1972 election.”

“The most popular president in his reelection campaign, and two years later, he's gone, undone by a naval intel officer, the number two guy at the FBI and a bunch of CIA employees.”

“You tell me what that is. Those are the facts. Those are not disputed facts.”

NEW: Tucker Carlson explains how the FBI and CIA conducted a coup to take out President Richard Nixon with help from journalist Bob Woodward.

“Richard Nixon was taken out by the FBI and CIA, and with the help of Bob Woodward.”

“[Woodward] was that guy. And who is his main… pic.twitter.com/K8Yt9zy9Qk

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) April 20, 2024

Tyler Durden Thu, 04/25/2024 - 23:05

Tennessee Is First State To Criminalize Adults Who Help Minors Receive "Gender-Affirming" Care Without Parental Consent

Tennessee’s GOP-controlled Statehouse on Thursday approved approval criminalizing adults who help minors receive gender-affirming care without parental consent, clearing the way for the first-in-the-nation proposal to be sent to Gov. Bill Lee’s desk for his signature.

As the AP reports, the bill mirrors almost the same language from a so-called anti-abortion trafficking proposal Tennessee Republican lawmakers approved just a day prior. In that version, supporters are hoping to stop adults from helping young people obtain abortions without permission from their parents or guardians.

Supporters of Lee, a Republican, are certain he will sign them into law. Lee eagerly approved a sweeping abortion ban and a ban on gender-affirming care for children. He has also never issued a veto during his time as governor.

While the Republican supermajority touted the proposed statutes as necessary to protect parental rights, critics - most of whom likely have purple hair and some oh whom occasionally enjoy child porn in a secret folder on their computer - warned about the possible broad application (as in what, the minor child's parents will know what their child is up to?). Violations could range from talking to an adolescent about a website on where to find care to helping that young person travel to another state with looser restrictions on gender-affirming care services.

“This is a parent’s rights bill, nothing more, nothing less,” Republican Rep. Bryan Richey, the bill’s sponsor, said during House debate earlier this week. “At the end of the day, parents should have final say what medical procedures their children are receiving, and nobody else.”

The Human Rights Campaign says Tennessee has enacted more anti-LGBTQ+ laws more than any other state since 2015, identifying more than 20 bills that advanced out of the Legislature over the past few months.

That included sending Gov. Lee a bill banning the spending of state money on hormone therapy or sex reassignment procedures for prisoners — though it would not apply to state inmates currently receiving hormone therapy — and requiring public school employees to report transgender students to their parents, as if requiring parents to know that their child - having undergone years of criminal brainwashing and propaganda as even Bill Mahr now admits - has mental problem is some kind of crime.

It turns out for pedophiles in Hollywood, "It's A Small World After All." pic.twitter.com/4qUtOhXZYL

— Bill Maher (@billmaher) April 20, 2024

Tennessee Republicans previously also passed a measure that would let LGBTQ+ foster children be placed with families that hold anti-LGBTQ+ beliefs. Lee signed it into law this month.

“Tennessee lawmakers are on the verge of enacting more than twice as many anti-LGBTQ+ laws as any other state, a staggering assault on their own constituents,” Cathryn Oakley, senior director of legal policy at the Human Rights Campaign, said in a statement.

To date, no state has placed restrictions on helping young people receive gender-affirming care, despite the recent push among more than 20 Republican-led states — including Tennessee — to ban such care for most minors.

Instead some Democratic-led states have been pushing to shield health care providers if they provide services that are banned in a patient’s home state. Most recently Maine’s Democratic governor signed a bill Wednesday protecting providers of abortion and gender-affirming care from legal action brought by other states.

The proposal has created a disagreement between Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey and attorneys general in several other states, including Tennessee. The other states have warned of legal action over the law; Frey dismissed such threats as “meritless.”

Tyler Durden Thu, 04/25/2024 - 22:45

Excess Deaths In Japan Hit 115,000 Following 3rd COVID Shot; New Study Explains Why

Authored by Joe Wang via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A new study on harms resulting from the COVID vaccine was published on April 8 in the U.S.-based peer-reviewed medical science journal Cureus. It represents the largest study to date on adverse effects of the COVID vaccine, and the results are shocking, to put it mildly.

In the study, titled “Increased Age-Adjusted Cancer Mortality After the Third mRNA-Lipid Nanoparticle Vaccine Dose During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Japan,” five Japanese scientists used an entire dataset of the country’s 123 million population (Japan has the highest vaccination rate in the world) to study excess cancer mortalities coinciding with mass COVID vaccination.

The authors also provide a sound explanation as to why these deaths occurred after the mRNA injection.

As a former vaccine researcher, I read the Cureus article with great interest. My fellow Epoch Times columnist, Megan Redshaw, has written an excellent article on this study. Here, I would like to highlight some points that I think are worth reiterating.

Excess Deaths Following the Third Shot

The study shows there were 1,568,961 total deaths in Japan in 2022. About 1,453,162 deaths were expected based on statistical predictions using pre-pandemic information, which means there were 115,799 excess deaths in 2022.

The 115,799 “age-adjusted excess number of deaths” in 2022 occurred after two-thirds of the Japanese population had received the third dose of COVID vaccine.

Based on Japan’s Ministry of Health data, I calculated that there were 39,060 COVID deaths reported in 2022. So, the majority of Japan’s excess deaths in 2022 were not caused by COVID infection, but rather are strongly associated with the vaccination.

Harm Done by the Vaccine, Not the Virus

The study shows that in 2020, after COVID-19 began to spread in Japan but before vaccination was available, the age-adjusted number of deaths was 28,000 fewer than what was predicted. And in 2021, as the virus continued and there was limited COVID-19 vaccination (it started in February), there were 25,000 more deaths than what was predicted.

Based on the number of excess deaths in 2022, the Japanese scientists concluded: “Statistically significant increases in age-adjusted mortality rates of all cancer and some specific types of cancer, namely, ovarian cancer, leukemia, prostate, lip/oral/pharyngeal, pancreatic, and breast cancers, were observed in 2022 after two-thirds of the Japanese population had received the third or later dose of SARS-CoV-2 mRNA-LNP vaccine.”

“These particularly marked increases in mortality rates of these ERα-sensitive cancers may be attributable to several mechanisms of the mRNA-LNP vaccination rather than COVID-19 infection itself or reduced cancer care due to the lockdown,” the authors wrote.

In plain English, this study revealed the mRNA COVID jab is likely the cause of the extra deaths that occurred in Japan.

6 Types of Cancer Had Significant Excess Deaths

The study presented the numbers for all-cause death, but also looked into the details of deaths caused by cancer. It found that of the 20 types of cancer, six of them—ovarian, leukemia, prostate, lip/oral/pharyngeal, pancreatic, and breast cancer—had statistically significant excess mortalities in 2021 and increased further in 2022.

The significant increase in mortalities for the six specific cancer types cannot be blamed on a shortage of health-care services during the pandemic. Reduced cancer screening and health care due to lockdowns should increase deaths for all cancers. However, such an increase was not observed in other types of cancers in Japan in 2022.

So what is so special about the six specific cancer types? They are all known as estrogen receptor alpha (ERα)-sensitive cancers.

The scientists explained why these cancers not only occurred after vaccination, but also killed people in a short period of time after they received the shot.

Cancer After the Jab: A Scientific Explanation

I worked as a research scientist at Sanofi Pasteur, one of the world’s largest vaccine companies, for more than 10 years. As the person who spearheaded Sanofi’s SARS-CoV-1 vaccine development in 2003, I personally found the hypothesis presented by the Japanese scientists very reasonable.

Please bear with me on the scientific terms, because they are important in understanding the possible roles the mRNA vaccine may have played in cancer development.

ERs (estrogen receptors) are a group of proteins found inside cells. They are receptors that can be activated by the sex hormone estrogen. ERα is one of the two classes of ERs, an important regulator in the body’s reproductive system.

Research published in the peer-reviewed journal Science Advances in November 2022 screened 9,000 human proteins to see which protein binds better with the spike (S) protein of SARS-CoV-2, and found the S protein specifically binds to ERα. The binding “upregulates the transcriptional activity of ERα.”

In other words, the S protein of SARS-CoV-2 (from infection or vaccination), when introduced into the human body, binds to ERα and functions as a nuclear receptor coregulator, interfering with the cell’s normal function and leading to malfunction of the cells and organs.

This may explain why death caused by the six types of ERα-sensitive cancers increased in 2022 in Japan after two-thirds of the population received the third dose of the mRNA vaccine.

The vaccine carries the S gene of SARS-CoV-2, hijacking the host cells to produce S proteins. The S proteins produce inside the cell, then bind to ERα, disrupting the cell’s normal function and leading to cancer development.

Cancer is a disease in which some of the body’s cells grow uncontrollably and spread to other parts of the body.

For any healthy person, some cells die, some age, and some become cancerous. All this happens without the person knowing it because the body’s immune system is constantly working to deal with such problems. However, if the immune system is compromised, illness then develops, including cancer.

Plenty of evidence has started to emerge showing that the COVID-19 vaccine has the potential to severely interfere with the human body’s immune system. This new Japanese study provides further evidence of the extent of this phenomenon.

Vaccination and Suppression of Cancer Immunosurveillance

It has been shown the mRNA vaccine not only has the potential to cause cancer, it may also weaken the immune systems’ ability to recognize and repress cancerous tumours.

In a study published last October, Konstantin Fohse and colleagues reported vaccination with BNT162b2 modulated innate immune responses, resulting in a weakened cancer immunosurveillance.

The damage caused by COVID vaccines would have been less if the vaccination wasn’t as widespread, and the dosage of the vaccines were not as high due to boosters.

The Japanese scientists found that for each Pfizer-BioNTech dose, there are about 13 trillion SARS-CoV-2 mRNA-LNP molecules. For Moderna, the number is 40 trillion. Since the average human body has about 37.2 trillion cells, one COVID-19 mRNA-LNP dose would have enough molecules to spread into each and every human cell.

As I wrote previously, contrary to what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s claim that “after the body produces an immune response, it discards all of the vaccine ingredients” because uridines in normal RNA are now replaced with pseudo-uridines in this COVID-19 mRNA-LNP, we know the modified RNA now lives in the body for months and can even find its way into babies through breast milk.

The Japanese study was written before October 2023 using information from 2022 and earlier. As COVID vaccination continues in many countries, it is scary to think how many people may die or develop cancer if the 2022 trend continues.

Uncertain Future

As authorities across the world still claim that the COVID-19 vaccine is “safe and effective” and continue pushing vaccination, it is uncertain what the future holds.

This is because the COVID-19 mRNA-LNP molecules already in the bodies of hundreds of millions of people will remain there and continue producing the S protein, interfering with the immune system and causing cancer and other diseases.

Studies like the one by the Japanese scientists should have been undertaken in countries such as the United States, Canada, and the UK and published in top medical journals without censorship so that we can learn from mistakes and prevent the mistakes from happening again. Unfortunately, that has not happened.

However, hopefully more and more scientists and researchers will be brave enough to point out the very obvious: that the COVID-19 vaccine is not safe.

It is worth noting that the Cureus medical journal was recently acquired by the Springer Nature Group in December 2022. The group also owns renowned scientific publications such as Nature and Nature Medicine.

COVID vaccine injury has been a taboo subject for scientists and medical journals. Many people were cancelled when they tried to defy the censorship. It is refreshing to see Springer Nature publish the Japanese study.

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

Tyler Durden Thu, 04/25/2024 - 22:25

Palmer Luckey's Anduril & General Atomics Selected By USAF For Next Round Of AI Drone Program 

The US Air Force's hot pursuit of drone wingmen, known as collaborative combat aircraft, flying alongside piloted stealth fighter jets such as the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II and Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor, is a major effort to modernize its fleet and advance defensive and offensive capabilities in a world erupting into chaos.  

On Wednesday, the USAF announced that Palmer Luckey's defense tech startup Anduril and General Atomics Aeronautical Systems were selected to build and test wingmen drones for the next phase of the CCA program. This means the pool of competitors has shrunk from five to two, eliminating Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman. We don't think the military is ready for 737 Max drones. 

"The companies not selected to build these production representative CCA vehicles, and execute the flight test program, will continue to be part of the broader industry partner vendor pool consisting of more than 20 companies to compete for future efforts, including future production contracts," the service wrote in a press release. 

USAF wants to deploy more than 1,000 wingmen drones that can carry out a wide range of missions, including electronic warfare, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and dogfighting. 

Commenting on the announcement, Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall said the CCA started "just over two years ago" as part of his "Operational Imperatives, to pursue collaborative combat aircraft."

"The progress we've made is a testament to the invaluable collaboration with industry, whose investment alongside the Air Force has propelled this initiative forward. It's truly encouraging to witness the rapid execution of this program," Kendall said.

General Atomics has pitched the Air Force on its autonomous collaborative drone known as "Gambit." 

While Anduril has submitted a high-performance autonomous air vehicle called "Fury."

"There is no time to waste on business as usual," Anduril chief executive Brian Schimpf said in a release, adding, "With the CCA program, Sec. Kendall and the Air Force have embraced a fast-moving, forward-looking approach to field autonomous systems at speed and scale. ... Anduril is proud to pave the way for other non-traditional defense companies to compete and deliver on large-scale programs."

We've been saying for years that the next major conflict will be fought with hypersonic weapons and drones. And that's precisely the technology being used in Ukraine. 

Luckey's startup, Anduril, aims to cement America's lead in the military technology race, as the bloated military-industrial complex risks blowing the lead. 

"We need a new breed of defense technology companies to reboot the arsenal of democracy," Anduril states on its website.

Tyler Durden Thu, 04/25/2024 - 22:05

Hertz Increases The Number Of Electric Cars It Wants To Get Rid Off To 30,000 From 20,000

By Charles Kennedy of OilPrice.com

Hertz raised the number of electric vehicles it plans to sell this year as it is cutting its EV fleet to reduce losses that have weighed on the car rental giant’s earnings.

In the first quarter, Hertz upsized its EV disposition plan by 10,000 vehicles, for a total of 30,000 EVs intended for sale in 2024. Most of these EVs will be Teslas.

The company incurred a $195 million charge to vehicle depreciation to write down the EVs held for sale which were remaining in inventory at quarter-end to fair value and recognize the disposition losses on EVs sold in the period, Hertz said in a statement on Thursday

Vehicle depreciation in the first quarter of 2024 increased by $588 million, or $339 on a per unit basis. Of the $339 per unit increase, $119 was related to EVs held for sale, the company said. [if !supportLineBreakNewLine] [endif]

Hertz reported a much larger loss for the first quarter than analysts had forecast. Adjusted net loss stood at $392 million, or $1.28 loss per diluted share.

This compares with an analyst consensus estimate of a loss of $0.45 per share.

Following the earnings release on Thursday, Hertz’s stock crashed by 21% on the NASDAQ but ended off the lows, still down 19%...

Hertz was an early mover in buying EVs to rent to customers, but it and other car rental companies have recently started to sell the EVs they had previously purchased due to weaker customer demand for EV rentals. 

Hertz, unlike other rental firms, has a more risky approach because it fully owns all the EVs it has bought and is losing money if the resale value slumps.

As it did.

Earlier this year, Hertz said in a regulatory filing to the SEC it is selling roughly one-third of its electric vehicle fleet, highlighting the risk of its first-mover strategy when it comes to EVs.

Tyler Durden Thu, 04/25/2024 - 21:45

President With Crackhead Son Frees 5 Crack Dealers, Ditches Promise To Release All Pot Criminals

President Biden has granted clemency to five crack dealers, ordering their early release for dealing the drug in recognition of Second Chance Month.

Yes, this guy...

In honor of the new government crack pipe program, here's Joe & Hunter on crack pic.twitter.com/VWCBw9svai

— obedient worker (@lmazzeiphotos) February 9, 2022

Meanwhile, the Biden administration has made zero progress on a campaign promise to release "everyone" in prison for marijuana offenses, the NY Post reports.

"America is a Nation founded on the promise of second chances. During Second Chance Month, we reaffirm our commitment to rehabilitation and reentry for people returning to their communities post incarceration," whoever writes Biden's statements said on Wednesday.

"We also recommit to building a criminal justice system that lives up to those ideals and ensures that everyone receives equal justice under law. That is why today I am announcing steps I am taking to make this promise a reality."

Biden, who wrote or cosponsored some of the nation’s harshest federal drug laws in the 1980s and ’90s, said that he chose to issue commutations to the five crack offenders because they would have been given more lenient sentences today — continuing a long-running effort dating to the Obama administration to identify and retroactively reduce such sentences.

It’s unclear why Biden chose to free none of the estimated 2,700 federal marijuana-dealing inmates, as he promised to do at a Democratic primary debate in 2019. -NY Post

Biden has defended his broken promise to free all marijuana offenses, citing his 2022 mass pardon for people convicted of simple marijuana possession (none of whom were actually in prison), counts. Cannabis advocates call bullshit, however, saying that they understood "everyone" to mean incarcerated dealers as well.

Biden also pardoned 11 people who have already completed their prison sentences, allowing them to vote and own guns again.

"I am using my clemency power to pardon 11 individuals and commute the sentences of 5 individuals who were convicted of non-violent drug offenses," said Biden's writer. "Many of these individuals received disproportionately longer sentences than they would have under current law, policy, and practice. The pardon recipients have demonstrated their commitment to improving their lives and positively transforming their communities. The commutation recipients have shown that they are deserving of forgiveness and the chance at building a brighter future for themselves beyond prison walls."

Tyler Durden Thu, 04/25/2024 - 21:25

Senate GOP Must Seize Opportunity To Expand Trump Tax Cuts

Authored by Stephen Moore and Adam Brandon via RealClear Politics,

President Joe Biden came into office promising to repeal President Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act – a law that turbocharged American job growth and U.S. national competitiveness. In the first two years of the Biden administration, there was a chance that the president could have succeeded in undermining the law.

Yet, today, as Biden finishes his term, the Trump tax cuts are not only still standing but may be strengthened.

That is, if Senate Republicans seize the opportunity before them.

In January, the House overwhelmingly passed the Tax Relief for American Families and Workers Act (H.R. 7024), a major new tax relief package that builds on the successes of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Its relief targets the engines of American productivity including full deductibility for Research and Development costs, full and immediate expensing, as well as interest deductibility and restoration of deductibility of depreciation and amortization costs.

Passing this bill enhances American competitiveness with China, boosts job creation, increases wages for workers, and promotes new investment and innovation.

As Jay Timmons, CEO of the National Association of Manufacturers put it, “Remember the 2017 tax reforms? They were rocket fuel for our industry. We kept our promises to raise wages, hire workers, and invest in our communities. We would not be outpacing other countries without them.”  

But it also does something else: The bill extends important cost recovery provisions of the 2017 Republican tax cuts signed by President Trump, an essential step in achieving full permanency of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

Without congressional action, President Trump’s 2017 tax cuts expire at the end of 2025.

While Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Mike Crapo and some colleagues have raised objections about provisions of the bill that would expand the Child Tax Credit, Crapo and other GOP senators need to keep sight of the significance of this measure in a larger fight.

Passing the Tax Relief for American Families and Workers Act would vastly improve Republicans’ bargaining position going into the fight over the future of the Trump tax cuts.

And right now, advocates for job growth and competitiveness must be prepared for this fight.

At a March 12 hearing on the Tax Relief for American Families and Workers Act, Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden (D-OR) declared, “This set of policies isn’t going to be on the table in 2025 if this bill stalls out.” It’s understandable for Republicans to dismiss this as empty talk, given that the GOP faces a highly favorable Senate map in this year’s elections.

But, in politics, nothing is certain. Remember the “red wave” that wasn’t? Even if Republicans retake the Senate, Wyden and allies could follow through on their threat if Democrats retain the White House or take back the House.

Conservative Republicans have every reason to support the Tax Relief for American Families and Workers Act. The bill would be financed by repealing the employee retention tax credit, a COVID-era program that has been rife with fraud. Over 40 conservative and free-market organizations have urged lawmakers to pass the pro-growth legislation. Other organizations and leaders from across the conservative movement have strongly backed the bill. At the same time, far-left Democrats including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) have railed against the legislation.

If GOP senators want to save their signature economic success of the past decade, they must get to yes on this tax reform.

Stephen Moore is a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation and is the author of “Govzilla: How the Relentless Growth of Government Is Devouring America.”

Tyler Durden Thu, 04/25/2024 - 21:05

SEC Expected To Deny Spot Ether ETFs In May, Consensys Sues Over 'Security' Status

There are increasing doubts among industry insiders that the SEC will approved Spot Ether ETFs in May, according to a report from Reuters.

According to four people who participated, recent meetings between issuers and the SEC have been one-sided and agency staff have not discussed substantive details about the proposed products.

That is in contrast to the intensive and detailed discussions between issuers and the agency in the weeks before its landmark approval of spot bitcoin ETFs in January, said the people who declined to be identified because the talks are private.

As CoinTelegraph reports, before the historic approval, the SEC rejected spot BTC ETF filings for over a decade.

It only changed its stance after Grayscale Investments won a court victory against the securities regulator in August 2023.

Many analysts agree that the SEC is likely to further delay possible approval of Ether ETFs.

“It seems more likely that approval will be delayed until later in 2024, or longer,” VettaFi ETF data analyst Todd Rosenbluth reportedly said, adding that the regulatory landscape is still too “cloudy.”

Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas previously estimated chances of the SEC approving a spot Ether ETF in May at around 35% in March.

He also noted that he’d sourced “good intel” to suggest that the SEC may be giving the silent treatment to prospective fund issuers on purpose.

Price action has sown ETH relatively underperforming BTC from the initiation of the spot bitcoin ETFs as hope fades for ETH... for now...

Balchunas also mentioned that SEC Chair Gary Gensler’s stance on Ether could also impact the decision process as he has refused to give clarity on whether Ether was a security.

We have detailed the furore over the classification of Ether as a security (or not) a number of times (most recently here and here), but today saw the situation escalated as Consensys, a major backer of the Ethereum blockchain, filed a lawsuit against the agency in Texas federal court, asking the court, among other things, to resolve one of the biggest legal uncertainties hanging over the crypto industry by stating that Ethereum’s digital token, Ether, is not a security.

Fortune's Jeff John Roberts reports that in its 34-page legal filing, Consensys uses dramatic language to argue that the SEC’s efforts to exert jurisdiction over Ethereum is both illegal and a threat to blockchain technology more broadly.

“The SEC’s unlawful seizure of authority over ETH would spell disaster for the Ethereum network, and for Consensys. Every holder of ETH, including Consensys, would fear violating the securities laws if he or she were to transfer ETH on the network,” the complaint states.

“This would bring use of the Ethereum blockchain in the United States to a halt, crippling one of the internet’s greatest innovations.”

Gensler’s tactics have angered many in the crypto industry who have complained the SEC has failed to provide clear rules or to create a regulatory model that accounts for the distinct features of blockchain technology.

The controversy over Ethereum has been especially heated since the SEC has signaled repeatedly in the past that the blockchain’s tokens, like Bitcoin, are not securities and therefore outside its jurisdiction.

This includes a landmark 2018 speech where a senior official stated that Ethereum had become “sufficiently decentralized” as well as the agency’s decision last year to allow Ethereum futures trading—an implicit acknowledgement that Ether is a commodity. Meanwhile, video has surfaced of Gensler himself, in his role as a private citizen, telling hedge funds in 2018 that Ethereum is not a security.

However, as we detailed here, these precedents (and his own words) have failed to dissuade Gensler, who appears to be using a recent feature of Ethereum, known as staking, as grounds for the recent legal campaign.

As a reminder, the release of so-called 'Hinman documents' last June had revealed the role of network decentralization in the SEC's thinking on whether a digital token should be classified as security or not.

In particular, JPMorgan points out that SEC officials had acknowledged in the past that tokens on a sufficiently decentralized network are no longer securities because there is no “controlling group˙ in the Howey sense (the Howey Test relates to the U.S. Supreme Court case to determine whether a transaction qualifies as an investment contract).

"If there is no spot Ethereum ETF approval in May, then we assume there is going to be a litigation process after May," Panigirtzoglou told The Block earlier in the month.

"We believe that the most likely scenario is that the SEC eventually loses this litigation (similar to what happened with the Grayscale and Ripple legal battles last year), which means that eventually, the SEC will approve spot Ethereum ETFs (but not as soon as this May)."

In an interview with Fortune, Consensys founder Joe Lubin described as “preposterous” the theory that staking transformed Ethereum from a commodity into a security.

“The act of staking is really just posting a security bond so you can get paid to contribute labor and resources to help operate the Ethereum protocol. Now they’re trying to turn that into some sort of investment contract,” Lubin said.

Lubin also stated that Gensler’s legal position appeared to be an attempt to halt the overall growth of crypto, and to justify the SEC blocking pending applications by companies to launch spot ETFs for Ethereum following the huge popularity of Bitcoin ETFs.

“They are trying to regulate a technology on its merits, which the SEC shouldn’t be doing. They’re trying to stifle certain kinds of innovation. And they’re trying to do that because probably they see Ether spot ETFs as a floodgate that’s going to bring a lot of capital into our ecosystem,” said Lubin.

As Fortune notes, the Consensys lawsuit was filed in Texas, which dovetails with a broader strategy of the crypto industry to tee up eventual legal appeals in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

The circuit has shown greater skepticism of agency actions than other courts and, if the industry can win a favorable judgment, it would likely tee up an appeal for the Supreme Court.

Meanwhile, against that clearly politically-motivated push by Gensler (anything to placate Warren after he was forced to acquiesce over spot bitcoin ETFs); on April 24, Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) officially approved the first batch of spot Bitcoin and Ether ETFs, including three BTC and three ETH ETFs by China Asset Management, Harvest Global Investments and Bosera.

HK spot bitcoin/ether ETFs officially approved to begin trading on April 30th. Fees are 30bps, 60bps and 99bps which is on avg lower than we thought, good sign. We doing an Analyst Q&A in an hour on this w/ local HK team. Register here, bring your qs: https://t.co/GzzCZailx3 https://t.co/AvJ6dv2Xha

— Eric Balchunas (@EricBalchunas) April 24, 2024

Following approval, Hong Kong’s crypto ETFs are expected to start trading on April 30.

Tyler Durden Thu, 04/25/2024 - 20:45

How Hard Is It To Get Into An Ivy League School?

Ivy League institutions are renowned worldwide for their academic excellence and long-standing traditions. But how hard is it to get into one of the top universities in the U.S.?

In this graphic, Visual Capitalist's Marcus Lu details the admission rates and average annual cost for Ivy League schools, as well as the median SAT scores required to be accepted. The data comes from the National Center for Education Statistics and was compiled by 24/7 Wall St.

Note that “average annual cost” represents the net price a student pays after subtracting the average value of grants and/or scholarships received.

Harvard is the Most Selective

The SAT is a standardized test commonly used for college admissions in the United States. It’s taken by high school juniors and seniors to assess their readiness for college-level academic work.

When comparing SAT scores, Harvard and Dartmouth are among the most challenging universities to gain admission to. The median SAT scores for their students are 760 for reading and writing and 790 for math. Still, Harvard has half the admission rate (3.2%) compared to Dartmouth (6.4%).

*Costs after receiving federal financial aid.

Additionally, Dartmouth has the highest average annual cost at $33,000. Princeton has the lowest at $11,100.

While student debt has surged in the United States in recent years, hitting $1.73 trillion in 2023, the worth of obtaining a degree from any of the schools listed surpasses mere academics. This is evidenced by the substantial incomes earned by former students.

Harvard grads, for example, have the highest average starting salary in the country, at $91,700.

Tyler Durden Thu, 04/25/2024 - 20:05

Note: Mortgage rates are from MortgageNewsDaily.com and are for top tier scenarios.

Friday:
• At 8:30 AM ET, Personal Income and Outlays, March 2024. The consensus is for a 0.5% increase in personal income, and for a 0.3% increase in personal spending. And for the Core PCE price index to increase 0.3%.  PCE prices are expected to be up 2.6% YoY, and core PCE prices up 2.7% YoY.

• At 10:00 AM: University of Michigan's Consumer sentiment index (Final for April). The consensus is for a reading of 77.9.

Judge Shoots Down Effort To Identify FBI, Undercover Police On Jan. 6

Authored by Joseph M. Hanneman via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A federal judge in Washington D.C. has denied seven motions from a defendant seeking to identify FBI agents in Jan. 6 crowds and gain access to undercover videos shot by Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) officers, at least one of whom incited the crowds at the U.S. Capitol.

Former FBI special agent John Guandolo (center) with two possible active FBI special agents at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (Illustration by The Epoch Times, U.S. Capitol Police/Graphic by The Epoch Times)

In a 22-page order, U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras ruled against William Pope on a range of motions filed in his Jan. 6 criminal case since May 2023.

Judge Contreras partially granted a government cross-motion to modify the evidence protective order in the case. “I now have the most restricted discovery access conditions of any Jan 6 defendant,” Mr. Pope wrote on X.

“All I’m asking for is a fair fight in court, but he’s denying me rights to defend myself Pro Se that aren’t denied to attorneys,” Mr. Pope told The Epoch Times in a statement. “Even though some January 6 attorneys have filed highly sensitive materials as public exhibits, or leaked them on social media, I have not released a single sensitive or highly sensitive file governed by the protective order.”

Mr. Pope, 38, publisher of the news website Free State Kansas, was at the Capitol on Jan. 6, covering the protest and subsequent violence.

Federal prosecutors charged him with civil disorder, corruptly obstructing an official proceeding, entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds, disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds, impeding ingress or egress in a restricted building or grounds, disorderly conduct in a Capitol building, impeding passage through the Capitol grounds or buildings, and parading, demonstrating, or picketing in a Capitol building.

He faces a July 22 trial.

Sought FBI Agents

Mr. Pope most recently asked the court to compel federal prosecutors to identify all FBI special agents or other employees who were “material witnesses” at the Capitol on Jan. 6 and produce “all photographs, videos, and records related to their presence.”

In that motion, Mr. Pope cited two suspected FBI agents who attended Jan. 6 events at the Capitol with former special agent John Guandolo, who once served as the Bureau’s liaison with U.S. Capitol Police.

Mr. Guandolo “has said in interviews that he was with several active-duty FBI agents on January 6, and that he and those agents have been interviewed by the FBI regarding their observations,” Mr. Pope wrote in his Feb. 12 motion.

One of the men was seen on security video clapping enthusiastically as a large crowd of protesters rushed up the east steps to the Columbus Doors. “Oh, oh, oh man, this is huge,” the man said, heard on Mr. Guandolo’s cell phone video that showed the crowd ascending the steps.

The other suspected agent was seen on Capitol Police security video meeting with an FBI SWAT team shortly after its BearCat tactical vehicle rolled onto the House Plaza at about 2:30 p.m. Twenty minutes later the SWAT team responded to the South Door after the shooting of Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt by Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd.

Federal prosecutors argued they have no obligation to investigate the identity or roles of FBI agents on Jan. 6. The judge concurred.

“The Court agrees with the government and finds that defendant has failed to show that the government has an obligation to produce the requested material,” Judge Contreras wrote.

In another motion denied by Judge Contreras, Mr. Pope sought to compel the U.S. Department of Justice to inventory and provide access to all Capitol Police security video it has had in its possession.

Mr. Pope said footage is missing from some of the 1,800 USCP security cameras, and prosecutors have only produced 6,000 hours of security video in discovery. A U.S. House committee that oversees Capitol Police has released 20,000 hours of an expected 40,000 hours it will post publicly.

William Pope of Topeka, Kansas, carries an American flag just inside the Senate Wing Door at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (U.S. Capitol Police/Screenshot via The Epoch Times)

Mr. Pope wrote that the importance of the security video—thousands of hours of which are now available on Rumble—is underscored by an investigation suggesting two Capitol police officers perjured themselves in the first Oath Keepers trial in the fall of 2022.

Video obtained by Blaze Media showed that a supposed confrontation between Officer Harry Dunn and the Oath Keepers could not have occurred as he described under oath. Capitol Police Special Agent David Lazarus, who testified that he witnessed the confrontation, was in another part of Capitol grounds at the time.

‘Not Beneficial’

“While Pope asserts that the missing camera footage is ‘highly relevant to January 6 cases, including [his] own,’ … he does not explain what he expects the footage to show or why that footage would assist in his defense,” Judge Contreras wrote. “Much of the camera footage that Pope requests depicts areas where Pope never set foot. That footage is therefore not beneficial to Pope’s case.”

The judge also denied Mr. Pope’s Aug. 21, 2023, motion seeking video shot by more than two dozen members of the MPD Electronic Surveillance Unit on Jan. 6. He first requested access to the Electronic Surveillance Unit videos in March 2023.

Former FBI special agent John Guandolo with suspected FBI agents Colleague 1 and Colleague 2, along with an unidentified man labeled in court filings as Colleague 3, on the Southwest Walk of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (U.S. Capitol Police/Graphic by The Epoch Times)

The August 2023 motion cites MPD internal affairs investigations of MPD officers Nicholas Tomasula and Lt. Zeb Barcus. Hundreds of pages of documents on Mr. Tomasula were heavily redacted, Mr. Pope said, and “the two reports have led to more questions about misconduct by undercover police.”

Mr. Tomasula was identified as the MPD officer heard on video encouraging protesters on the Northwest Steps to keep going and enter the Capitol. He was heard participating in crowd chants such as, “Whose House? Our House!”

At the foot of the Northwest Steps, as a protester climbed up a makeshift ladder onto the balustrade, Mr. Tomasula shouted: “C’mon, man, let’s go! Leave that [expletive],” his video showed. Mr. Tomasula got help from a protester climbing onto the balustrade, then shouted to protesters moving up the steps, “C’mon, go, go, go!”

Federal prosecutors admitted in 2023 that Mr. Tomasula acted as a provocateur embedded in the crowd on Jan. 6.

Judge Contreras concluded Electronic Surveillance Unit video is only relevant to the extent Mr. Pope can identify an undercover officer whose path he crossed.

“While evidence of undercover officers instigating the riot on January 6 could—hypothetically—be helpful and material to Pope’s case, Pope’s motion ‘never identifies a single individual he interacted with whom he now suspects to be an undercover actor,’” Judge Contreras wrote.

“Pope does not say that he himself spoke with or was induced by any undercover officer,” the judge wrote. “Therefore, he cannot make an entrapment defense with the evidence he seeks from the government, and the material he seeks is irrelevant and immaterial.”

Mr. Pope complained that prosecutors restricted his access to some of the investigative materials, which he described as “highly explosive” and “exculpatory.”

In previous filings, Mr. Pope described several self-identified Antifa supporters who were intercepted by undercover MPD officers on Jan. 6, including one who was carrying a gun.

Metropolitan Police Department undercover detectives Ricardo Leiva and Michael Callahan were part of a three-man Electronic Surveillance Unit team at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (U.S. District Court/Screenshot via The Epoch Times)

MPD officers made a traffic stop at 10:15 a.m. on Jan. 6 of a vehicle containing three Antifa operatives: Jonathan Kelly, Logan Grimes, and Dempsey Mikula.

“Undercover officers who stopped their vehicle said they had received reports that the individuals were carrying weapons,” Mr. Pope wrote. “No footage of this incident has been produced by the government in discovery. However, Kelly live-streamed part of the police stop to Facebook.”

Metropolitan Police arrested Mr. Grimes—who identifies as a woman and uses the name Leslie—for carrying a pistol without a license and being in possession of a high-capacity magazine and unregistered ammunition, according to Mr. Pope. The charges were dropped on Jan. 7, 2021.

In a previous filing, Mr. Pope identified undercover MPD officer Ryan Roe, who encountered a still-unidentified protester seen cutting down green plastic temporary fencing on Capitol grounds. Mr. Roe said to #FenceCutterBulwark, “Appreciate it, brother,” according to his video.

Tyler Durden Thu, 04/25/2024 - 19:45

Luxury DC Apartment Building Replaces Front Desk Staff With Amazon Lockers, Sparking Tenant Protest 

Tenants of a luxury apartment building blocks from the White House were furious this week after they discovered the building's management company fired all front desk workers and replaced them with Amazon delivery lockers.

Journalist Samuel Breslow of the media outlet The Forward wrote on X about tenants of CityCenterDC, a mixed-use development consisting of two condominium buildings, two rental apartment buildings, two office buildings, and a luxury hotel, on 10th St NW, or about a five-minute walk to the White House, "protested the surprise decision to fire front desk staff, replacing them with Amazon delivery lockers."

Tenants of the @CityCenterDC luxury apartments are protesting a surprise decision to fire front desk staff, replacing them with Amazon/@minnowpod delivery lockers.@Hines management prepared a presentation to try to appease; they didn't get beyond the first slide.#CityCenterDC pic.twitter.com/Zx4wK0Ov8I

— Samuel Breslow (@sdkb42) April 23, 2024

The building described the move to replace human workers with Amazon lockers as a "technology advancement aimed at enriching your stay." 

Apartments.com shows that CityCenterDC's rent ranges from $2,500 a month for a studio to $15,300 for a luxury apartment. 

On Instagram, user washingtonianprobs posted Breslow's story. Folks there weren't thrilled: 

"All the crime and violence goin around the last thing they should do is leave the front desk unattended," one Instagram user said. 

Someone asked: "How did the property management company think that replacing the front desk ppl with lockers is the same?"

"Goes to show how disconnected they are with people outside of their status. They don't realize that replacing front desk staff with storgage boxes is taking away jobs from people and altering folks livelihood," another user said.

 For ZH readers, this example of AI automation job loss is not surprising. Recall this Goldman note: "AI Will Lead To 300 Million Layoffs In The US And Europe." 

Tyler Durden Thu, 04/25/2024 - 19:25

Saudi Arabia's Massive Futuristic Vanity Projects Falter Amid Gaza War

Authored by Giorgio Cafiero via The Cradle

Launched in 2017, Saudi Arabia’s NEOM, a sprawling high-tech development on the northwestern Red Sea coast, was introduced as the crown jewel of Vision 2030. This futuristic desert megaproject, extending over some Jordanian and Egyptian territory, was cast as a bold leap toward economic diversification under the leadership of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS). But, recent geopolitical setbacks have raised significant concerns about the viability of some of NEOM's components.

Initially celebrated for its revolutionary design, The Line, a linear city within NEOM, was to redefine urban living. Yet, recent reports suggest a dramatic scaling back. Earlier this month, Bloomberg revealed a massive reduction in the metropolis’ scope – from 105 to 1.5 miles – and a decrease in likely inhabitants from 1.5 million to fewer than 300,000 by 2030. Furthermore, funding uncertainties and workforce reductions indicate a project in jeopardy.

While this adjustment does not signify a wholesale failure of Vision 2030, it does prompt a re-evaluation of the project’s most ambitious elements. 

Experts suggest that The Line’s original scale was overly optimistic, lacking the necessary urban infrastructure for such an innovative endeavor. Financial and geopolitical challenges, including regional instability and insufficient foreign direct investment, further complicate NEOM’s future.

Not so straight-forward 

The drastic downsizing of The Line “appears to be a reassessment of timeline feasibility,” Dr Robert Mogielnicki, a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, tells The Cradle. “There are many experimental, world-first dimensions within the NEOM gigaproject, and some are eventually going to need rightsizing or rethinking.”

Also speaking to The Cradle, Dr Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, a Baker Institute Fellow at Rice University, believes the project’s contraction to be a good thing:

Reports that The Line may be scaled back significantly is actually a positive move if it injects greater realism into a project whose initial scale appeared fanciful and difficult to translate into reality. Greater pragmatism in designing and delivering the gigaprojects associated with Vision 2030 is a good thing and means there is a greater likelihood of the projects making it off the drawing board.

Given financial and economic factors, The Line was never feasible as initially presented. Ultimately, the amount of wealth the Saudis generate from oil is not enough to finance the most ambitious of MbS’ Vision 2030 projects. And Riyadh has not been able to lure the levels of foreign direct investment needed to make these extremely expensive vanity projects realizable. 

“The vast scope of [The Line] always struck me and many other observers as aspirational rather than realistic,” explains Gordon Gray, the former US ambassador to Tunisia. 

Some analysts have pushed back against the recent avalanche of negative media coverage...

All the gloating about NEOM getting scaled back misses the point.

NEOM is a “moonshot” that has already succeeded.

It totally shifted the parameters of acceptable ambition in Saudi Arabia and made people see the kingdom within a paradigm of development.https://t.co/UjAX5CSdfM

— Esfandyar Batmanghelidj (@yarbatman) April 20, 2024

Speaking to The Cradle, Ryan Bohl, a Middle East and North African analyst at risk intelligence company RANE, says: 

I’d argue that the goals for The Line were unrealistic from the start, given that there’s virtually no urban infrastructure in the area, and it’s very difficult for cities to be started from scratch like that, regardless of the amount of investment poured in. Even if Saudi Arabia had, for example, done something extreme like declare NEOM to be their new capital city, it would still probably struggle to attract residents as we’ve seen from other historical examples like Brazil’s shift of its capital to Brasília.

Nonetheless, The Line and other singular projects had a purpose that was not necessarily about actually implementing the projects themselves. “The point of The Line, in particular, was to create a raison de parler – for people to actually talk about Saudi Arabia, to create a massive public debate globally where people are saying there’s something amazing happening in the desert,” Dr Andreas Krieg, an associate professor at King’s College London, tells The Cradle. 

It attracts attention. That sort of discourse – positive or negative – creates a buzz. That buzz was supposed to attract investors who wanted to be a part of this, help Saudi Arabia build a city of the future, and try to do something completely outlandish and absolutely unconventional.

Gaza: a wrench in the works

The leadership in Riyadh has understood that the success of Vision 2030 heavily depends on attracting substantial foreign direct investment into the Kingdom. Ultimately, stability in Saudi Arabia and the wider West Asian region is crucial.

Consequently, Riyadh’s recent foreign policy has been less ideological, focusing instead on maintaining amicable terms with all major players in West Asia to advance Saudi business, commercial, and economic interests. 

Within this context, Riyadh has worked to reach a peace deal with Yemen’s Ansarallah resistance movement, made an effort to preserve the Beijing-brokered 2023 Saudi–Iranian détente, restored relations with Qatar and Syria, and mended fences with Turkiye.

Therefore, beyond financial and economic constraints that require a reassessment of the most ambitious Vision 2030 projects, such as The Line, Israel’s brutal six-month war on Gaza and the expansion of that conflict into the Red Sea have created headwinds for Saudi Arabia’s geoeconomic plans.

As Arhama Siddiqa, a Research Fellow at the Institute of Strategic Studies Islamabad, explains to The Cradle:

Given the current instability in the Red Sea region, investors may hesitate to support a large-scale project like NEOM due to perceived risks. Even if the direct security threat to NEOM is minimal, the overall instability in the area can deter investors from committing substantial resources to a long-term venture. Additionally, the broader [West Asia] conflict further complicates the situation, adding another layer of uncertainty. Addressing these security concerns could require Saudi Arabia to allocate more resources to regional security measures, potentially diverting funds from the NEOM project.

There is no denying that Saudi Arabia’s economic diversification agenda is vulnerable to naval operations in the Red Sea. NEOM and other Red Sea projects require vessels to be able to freely travel from the Gulf of Aden through the Bab al-Mandab and up to Saudi Arabia’s west coast. 

THE LINE, @NEOM ‘s groundbreaking vertical city, reimagines urban living: no roads, cars, or emissions – just 5 minutes to all you need. Powered by the world’s latest tech for sustainability, connectivity, lifestyle. pic.twitter.com/If1mGAM3wV

— Wyatt Roy (@MrWyattR) April 25, 2024

The Gaza war’s potential spillover into this vital waterway continues to raise concerns for Saudi officials about the impact on the Kingdom’s Vision 2030. These dynamics help explain Riyadh’s frustration with the White House for not leveraging its influence over Israel to negotiate a ceasefire in Gaza. It has led to Saudi Arabia’s decision to abstain from joining any US-led security initiatives and military operations in the Red Sea and Yemen.

The Israel–NEOM connection 

Israel’s geographic proximity to northwestern Saudi Arabia, its technological advancement, and its vibrant startup culture position the occupation state as a promising partner for Vision 2030 and the NEOM project, particularly in biotechnology, cybersecurity, and manufacturing. 

Writing in March 2021, Dr Ali Dogan, previously a Research Fellow at the Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient, went as far as arguing that “relations with Israel are necessary for Saudi Arabia to complete NEOM.” 

Dr Mohammad Yaghi, a research fellow at Germany’s Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, similarly stated that NEOM “requires peace and coordination with Israel, especially if the city is to have a chance of becoming a tourist attraction.” However, Saudi Arabia’s leadership role in the Islamic world, exemplified by the monarch’s title as the “Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques,” makes any formal normalization of relations with Tel Aviv highly sensitive. 

Initially, it was thought that while the UAE and Bahrain could establish overt relations with Israel, Saudi Arabia would continue to engage covertly, ensuring essential collaborations like those rumored in the tech sector could progress discreetly. 

An example being in June 2020, when controversy arose over Saudi Arabia’s alleged engagement with an Israeli cybersecurity firm, which the Saudi embassy later denied.

Yet, almost seven months into Israel’s campaign to annihilate Gaza, can Saudi Arabia still look to Tel Aviv as a partner in NEOM? It appears that amid ongoing crises in the region, chiefly the Gaza genocide, Riyadh must be careful to avoid being seen as cooperating with the Israelis in covert ways, and full-fledged normalization seems off the table for the foreseeable future. 

Nonetheless, after the dust settles in Gaza and the Red Sea security crisis calms down, Saudi Arabia will likely maintain its interest in fostering ties with Israel as part of an “economic normalization” between the two countries. This could be important to Vision 2030’s future, particularly in NEOM. But Israel’s unprecedented military campaign in Gaza will likely alter West Asia in many ways for decades to come. Even after the current war in Gaza is over, anger toward Israel and the US will continue.

Without a doubt, the Israeli–NEOM connection will be increasingly sensitive and controversial, both in the Kingdom and the wider region – a factor that the leadership in Riyadh cannot dismiss.

Tyler Durden Thu, 04/25/2024 - 19:05

Secret Service Agent Assigned To Kamala Harris Hospitalized After Fighting Other Agents

A Secret Service agent assigned to protect Vice President Kamala Harris got into a physical altercation with several other agents Monday morning around 9 a.m. near Joint Base Andrews, located near Washington DC.

The agent in question was immediately "removed from their assignment," the Secret Service told the NY Post.

"A US Secret Service special agent supporting the Vice President’s departure from Joint Base Andrews began displaying behavior their colleagues found distressing," said Anthony Guglielmi, chief of communications.

According to CBS News, "the agent spouted gibberish, was speaking incoherently and provoked another officer physically," and "pushed the special agent in charge while they were near the lounge of Joint Base Andrews."

They were immediately handcuffed and detained by other Secret Service agents who intervened, and ambulances were called to the scene. An initial medical evaluation concluded that there was no indication of substance abuse.

The USSS remains in a temporary holding pattern until further information becomes available, the sources said. After the agent receives additional medical attention and further evaluation, it will be determined if they can return to work. An internal review will be conducted and the USSS will assess if the agent's top secret security clearance will be removed for medical or disciplinary reasons, sources explained. -NBC News

Harris was at the Naval Observatory at the time according to the USSS, and the incident had "no impact on her departure from Joint Base Andrews" on the day in question.

According to RealClearPolitics journalist Susan Crabtree, "there are DEI concerns among the USSS community about the hiring of this agent," adding "Other agents and officers within the USSS are asking questions about the agent’s hiring process, whether the USSS did enough to look into the agent’s background and monitor the agent’s mental well-being…"

Other details: Sources say the agent in question was acted erratically upon showing up for a traveling shift at Joint Base Andrews. The agent ended up tackling the Senior Agent in Charge of the VP detail, got on top of him and started punching him. At this point, I'm told, the…

— Susan Crabtree (@susancrabtree) April 24, 2024

 

Tyler Durden Thu, 04/25/2024 - 18:45