UK Parents Face Five-Year Jail Terms For Questioning Their Child's Gender 'Transition'

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity News,

While schools have been given the green light to socially transition four-year-olds and exam boards slip pro-trans propaganda into Spanish GCSE materials, the government has published a draft bill that threatens parents, teachers and doctors with up to five years in prison for so-called conversion practices.

The new legislation, unveiled by Equalities Minister Olivia Bailey, targets efforts to change a person's sexual orientation or gender identity.

Penalties include unlimited fines, five-year prison sentences, or both. The government frames it as protection against abuse, citing reports of beatings, rape, threats, manipulation and even exorcisms.

Parents, teachers and doctors risk up to five years in jail if they try to talk their children out of irreversible trans treatments under a "dangerous" new law, campaigners have warned. https://t.co/ENCm6forXg

— Toby Young (@toadmeister) June 25, 2026

Bailey stated: "Conversion practices are driven by the false belief that being LGBT+ is shameful and can be forcibly changed. No-one should face abuse just because of who they are. That's why we are delivering on our manifesto commitment to ban abusive conversion practices. Legal loopholes have left LGBT+ people vulnerable to these harmful acts which is why we must legislate."

?Unbelievable! British Parliament is currently drafting a bill that would criminalize any parents interfering in the gender transitioning of their own child.

The bill would make the offense punishable with fines and up to 5 years in prison.

The bill includes the key quote... pic.twitter.com/SSlONX3gpd

— Don Keith (@RealDonKeith) June 26, 2026

Critics warn the wording is dangerously vague. Normal parental concern, exploratory conversations, or even citing the weak evidence base for youth transitions could be twisted into criminal "conversion practices."

WARNING UK ??

The UK Government has brought in new laws for child gender transition ?

Parents that deny transgenderism, tell their child that they do not have a transgender identity or try to stop their child from transitioning gender could face 5 years jail in the UK.

So,... pic.twitter.com/bRCB3ED1Og

— Lozzy B ??? (@TruthFairy131) June 26, 2026

Recent approval of an NHS puberty blocker trial for children under 16 has only heightened fears that the bill arrives amid a broader push to lock in affirmation-only approaches.

9,000 children were treated by GIDS. NHS Gender Clinics have consistently refused to provide data about their outcomes.

On @GBNEWS asking why we're starting yet another puberty blocker trial, with no information about what happened to previous children on the drugs? pic.twitter.com/dQSc2b5tcY

— Lara Brown (@lara_e_brown) June 25, 2026

Official guidance for schools makes clear that primary-age children, including those as young as four, can socially transition at school by changing pronouns and names.

The document claims such steps "should happen very rarely" and that parents should be involved in the "vast majority" of cases. In practice, campaigners say activist influence on teachers has already created a culture where affirmation is the default and caution is suspect.

Helen Joyce of Sex Matters described schools as having "indoctrinated children" for a decade under pressure from groups like Stonewall and Mermaids. She said the government "has started a de-radicalisation programme but we actually need to de-radicalise a whole generation of teachers" and that "only total clarity will stop it."

Maya Forstater, chief executive of Sex Matters, called the notion that a child can start school as a girl and graduate as a boy "a dangerous fairytale." This guidance persists even after the Cass Review found the evidence for puberty blockers and medical pathways "remarkably weak" and led to restrictions on routine use for under-18s.

In a related revelation, campaigners have exposed how Pearson's GCSE Spanish revision guide inserts pro-trans messaging into language learning.

Students are taught phrases expressing that they "follow/admire" someone who "fights/fought" for transgender causes, turning vocabulary exercises into vehicles for ideological approval.

Pro-trans messaging shoehorned into GCSE Spanish lessons.

Gift token https://t.co/bs4oRuirLL

— ? ? Dr Lesley (Ancient Dyke) Semmens KPSS ? (@LesleySemmens) June 27, 2026

The exam board's own specification adds vocabulary for "trans" and "non-binary," instructs assessors to recognise gender-neutral pronouns and invented adjectival endings, and effectively rewards ideological conformity in speaking and writing tasks.

Parents and campaigners argue this is not language education. It is political indoctrination delivered through compulsory schooling, normalising contested ideas about identity while children are still mastering basic grammar.

As we have previously highlighted, more than 650 families represented by the Bayswater Support Group have complained to Ofcom about the BBC's systematic promotion of transgender ideology in children's output over nearly a decade.

Shows aimed at pre-schoolers and primary ages have featured non-binary characters, storylines presenting young children as transgender based on stereotypical play, and uncritical portrayals of medical transition.

A Bayswater Support Group spokesman said: "For the past decade, the constant stream of propaganda about gender and trans activism the BBC has transmitted has played a significant role in creating a dangerous culture for children. Specifically, non-conforming children who have been led to believe simplistic identity labels and extreme medical interventions can resolve complex feelings of adolescent and neurodevelopmental distress. The end result of this is a generation of teens and young adults who have come to severe harm, frequently self-diagnosed and self-medicated, estranged from families."

The group accused the BBC of breaching Ofcom rules on impartiality, accuracy and child protection, and of smearing concerned parents rather than examining its own output.

Meanwhile, children's poet and author Rachel Rooney saw her career destroyed after publishing My Body is Me!, a short book encouraging young children to accept their natural bodies. Trans activists branded it "terrorist propaganda" and "transphobic." She faced death threats, professional blacklisting, publisher distancing and event cancellations.

In an interview with The Telegraph, Rooney said: "This is the book that ended my career." She added: "You can't tell a child their body is wonderful while also encouraging them to believe they are the opposite sex. It's not rocket science." Rooney noted she expected activist attacks but was shocked by the response from industry colleagues who suddenly blocked her or apologised internally for her views. She has since announced she has given up writing children's books.

Her experience illustrates the chilling effect on anyone who states the obvious: no child can change sex.

In April 2025 the UK Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the terms "woman" and "sex" in the Equality Act 2010 refer to biological women and biological sex. Delivering the judgment, Lord Hodge stated: "The terms 'woman' and 'sex' refer to a biological woman and biological sex in the Equality Act 2010."

The case, brought by For Women Scotland, clarified that individuals holding Gender Recognition Certificates are not legally women for the purposes of single-sex protections, quotas or spaces. J.K. Rowling praised the "three extraordinary, tenacious Scottish women" who secured the victory, noting they had "protected the rights of women and girls across the UK."

That clear legal affirmation of biological reality has not slowed the institutional drive to embed gender ideology in schools, media, exam materials and now criminal law.

The through-line is unmistakable. While evidence of harm from social and medical transition of minors mounts, while the highest court has reaffirmed biological sex, and while ordinary parents simply want to protect their children from experimental pathways, the state is preparing to criminalise resistance. Exploratory talk or even polite disagreement risks being recast as abuse punishable by years behind bars.

Parents have the primary duty and right to safeguard their children's bodies and minds. Biology is not bigotry. Dissent is not conversion therapy. The government's approach inverts reality: it threatens jail for those defending children while actively enabling the spread of contested ideology to the youngest ages. That is not protection. It is state-backed ideological enforcement.

Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

Tyler Durden Sun, 06/28/2026 - 07:00

Avert your eyes! My Sunday morning look at incompetency, corruption and policy failures:

• The deadliest branch of al-Qaeda on earth runs the ground the United States walked away from. You’ve probably never heard its name: JAMA’AT NUSRAT AL-ISLAM WAL-MUSLIMIN A detailed open-source profile of the Sahel’s most potent jihadist coalition. Niche, sober, and a useful primer on a conflict that rarely makes the front page. ( (The Omission)

• A Generational Collapse in Reading: Reading in America has become deeply polarized. Most books are now read by a small minority of heavy readers, while a large share of Americans reads none at all. Neil Howe’s shop charts the steady disappearance of the habit. Pairs grimly with everything else competing for our attention spans. (Demography Unplugged)

• They Looked Like They Were Getting Rich on Polymarket—but None of It Was Real. WSJ on the influencer ecosystem fabricating Polymarket P&L screenshots to sell betting subscriptions. The Polymarket-content economy is its own scam category now. The prediction market has flooded social media with deceptive videos by paid creators, according to a Wall Street Journal investigation (Wall Street Journal)

• Visa and Mastercard: The Original Gangsters of Electronic Collusion: A pointed antitrust argument against the payments duopoly that taxes every swipe. The swipe-fee fight, made readable. Pending legislation would force Visa and Mastercard to compete for merchant business and crack the cartel they’ve formed with banks. (The Sling)

• The Deadly Rise of Giant Trucks and S.U.V.s. In the early 2000s, more than half of the passenger vehicles on American roads were traditional cars like sedans. Their hoods were low to the ground. NYT’s interactive on the pedestrian-fatality consequence of the ever-larger U.S. light-truck fleet. The visualizations do the heavy lifting. (New York Times)

• Tulsi Gabbard, her guru and the mysterious messages that helped shape her political career: I obtained hundreds of confidential memos detailing politics and policy guidance for Gabbard from her years in Congress, then embarked on a quest to identify who was behind them. (Washington Post)

• A Citizen’s Guide to Ken Paxton: Paxton’s victory was even more impressive considering the ethical controversies that have plagued his tenure as an elected official. As Attorney General, Paxton has been indicted on felony securities fraud charges, investigated by the SEC, impeached by the Texas House, and sued by the State Bar of Texas for professional misconduct. He was repeatedly accused of using his government position for personal gain — including by members of his staff. Judd Legum assembles the rap sheet on the Texas AG turned Senate hopeful. Dense, sourced, and the kind of accountability reporting that travels. (Popular Information)

• A Definitive History of Tucker Carlson’s Shapeshifting Politics: Carlson’s latest anti-Israel pivot is born out of a three-decades-long track record of shapeshifting and lying in accordance with one highest purpose: doing what is best for Tucker Carlson. From bow-tied pundit to populist firebrand, charted in full. A useful map of a man who has been many things to many audiences. Carlson’s latest anti-Israel pivot is born out of a three-decades-long track record of shapeshifting and lying in accordance with one highest purpose: doing what is best for Tucker Carlson. (Talking Points Memo)

• Supreme Court rules against Rastafarian man over religious rights claim against prison officials: Officials at a Louisiana prison cut off Damon Landor’s dreadlocks in violation of his religious beliefs. The case centered on whether he could seek damages. Guards shaved his dreadlocks; the Court narrowed his path to damages. A quietly consequential religious-liberty ruling that didn’t get the coverage it deserved. Officials at a Louisiana prison cut off Damon Landor’s dreadlocks in violation of his religious beliefs. The case centered on whether he could seek damages. SCOTUS supports religion, just so long as it’s THEIR religion… (NBC News)

Video of the day: What We Know About Billionaire Peter Thiel’s Secret ‘Dialog’ Society

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business this weekend with Carl Richards, a financial advisor who is also the creator of the Sketch Guy column, which ran weekly in New York Times for a decade. He hosts Behavior Gap Radio (1,300+ episodes) He co-hosts “Kitces & Carl — Real Talk for Real Financial Advisors” with Michael Kitces.” Richards latest book is Your Money: Reimagining Wealth in 101 Simple Sketches.”

 

 

The media business favors content provoking outrage, anger and/or fear, giving the audience a disproportionate sense of risk and reality

Source: Bruce Mehlman’s Age of Disruption

 

Sign up for our reads-only mailing list here.

~~~

To learn how these reads are assembled each day, please see this.

 

The post 10 Sunday Reads appeared first on The Big Picture.

The Shooting In The Strait Ain't Over, But...

Authored by Larry Johnson via Sonar21.com

A little over a week since the US and Iran signed the MoU, some ships that had been trapped in the Persian rushed to travel through the corridor, with many trying to use an alternative route on the southern side of the Strait along the Omani coast. The International Maritime Organization (IMO) had coordinated this alternative routing with Oman - hugging the UAE and Musandam Peninsula coastline, avoiding the central passage that Iran had mined. This route was significant because it bypassed Iran’s designated corridor entirely, which ran closer to Iranian territorial waters.

However, Iran and Oman agreed on a new framework (joint working group) for the future administration of the Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday, June 24, 2026. The two countries agreed to establish a joint working group between their foreign ministries to discuss:

• Future navigation rules and administration of the strait.
• Services provided (e.g., safety, pilotage).
• Associated costs (in accordance with international standards).

Both emphasized their sovereignty over their territorial waters in the strait.

The naval arm of the Revolutionary Guard issued a warning Thursday against using the new route. In a statement carried by Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency, naval officials said the route was established without notice or coordination with Iran, calling it “unacceptable and completely dangerous.” According to the IRGC:

The only authorized route for passing through the Strait of Hormuz is the one declared by the Islamic Republic of Iran. Vessel traffic outside these routes is extremely dangerous and prohibited. Violators will be dealt with.”

The day before, the Guard had threatened one tanker over the radio, with a soldier warning “You are in range of my missiles and maybe (I) fire on you,” according to the private security firm Ambrey.

Iranian military, file image

On Thursday the Ever Lovely, a Singapore-flagged ship operating in the fleet of Taiwan-based Evergreen Marine, attempted to transit the strait using a narrow channel near the coast of Oman in accordance with a route organized by the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) security monitor. The Ever Lovely was struck by a drone belonging to Iran’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Iran allegedly shot at least four drones at ships traveling through the Strait on Thursday. One of those hit the upper deck of the Ever Lovely.

On Friday, the US attacked Iran in ‘response’ to strikes on the commercial vessel in Strait of Hormuz a day earlier:

Iran’s IRIB reported that an explosion was heard at 11:15 pm at the Taheroui pier in Sirik. A military source said the blasts were caused by a projectile hitting the pier area, adding that around five hours earlier, several warning shots had been fired from Sirik toward violating vessels in the Strait of Hormuz. Reports also indicated that two warning missiles were fired earlier from around Karpan toward the strait.

US Central Command said its forces carried out strikes against Iran on 26 June in response to Iran’s attack the previous day on the Singapore-flagged cargo ship M/V Ever Lovely as it exited the Strait of Hormuz along the Omani coast. CENTCOM said US aircraft targeted Iranian missile and drone storage sites and coastal radar positions after the vessel was hit by a one-way attack drone.

Although CENTCOM presented this as a powerful strike on Iran, and the US media trumpeted it as an act of major retaliation, the US response inflicted little damage and could reasonably be interpreted as a symbolic gesture rather than a punishing attack.

The IRGC Public Relations department issued the following statement:

Following the Israeli regime’s violation of the ceasefire in southern Lebanon, the treaty-breaking US regime also violated its commitments once again. Under various pretexts, including the transit of a vessel accused of navigating through an unauthorized route in the Strait of Hormuz, the US launched an airstrike against the coasts of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

In response to this aggression, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy struck positions where the US terrorist military is stationed in the region. Under Article 5 of the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding, responsibility for regulating navigation through the Strait of Hormuz rests with the Islamic Republic of Iran.

However, the United States sought to violate this commitment by encouraging various parties to defy it. It received the necessary response, and the same will apply in the future. If the aggression is repeated, Iran’s response will be broader than this.

Instead of marking a return to war, this exchange of fire can best be categorize as military political theater. I believe that Iran, thanks to intel from the Russians or the Chinese, has learned that the US has issued orders that will initiate the return to CONUS of the aircraft, vehicles and troops that had been deployed to the region in preparation for the February 28 attack. Because of the limited damage inflicted by the US attack, I believe that Iran chose to respond in a limited fashion rather than escalate and run the risk of the US cancelling the redeployment order.

For now, Iran remains in control of the Strait of Hormuz and ships wanting to transit the Strait are adhering to Iran's new policy.

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/27/2026 - 23:20

The Shooting In The Strait Ain't Over, But...

Authored by Larry Johnson via Sonar21.com

A little over a week since the US and Iran signed the MoU, some ships that had been trapped in the Persian rushed to travel through the corridor, with many trying to use an alternative route on the southern side of the Strait along the Omani coast. The International Maritime Organization (IMO) had coordinated this alternative routing with Oman - hugging the UAE and Musandam Peninsula coastline, avoiding the central passage that Iran had mined. This route was significant because it bypassed Iran’s designated corridor entirely, which ran closer to Iranian territorial waters.

However, Iran and Oman agreed on a new framework (joint working group) for the future administration of the Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday, June 24, 2026. The two countries agreed to establish a joint working group between their foreign ministries to discuss:

• Future navigation rules and administration of the strait.
• Services provided (e.g., safety, pilotage).
• Associated costs (in accordance with international standards).

Both emphasized their sovereignty over their territorial waters in the strait.

The naval arm of the Revolutionary Guard issued a warning Thursday against using the new route. In a statement carried by Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency, naval officials said the route was established without notice or coordination with Iran, calling it “unacceptable and completely dangerous.” According to the IRGC:

The only authorized route for passing through the Strait of Hormuz is the one declared by the Islamic Republic of Iran. Vessel traffic outside these routes is extremely dangerous and prohibited. Violators will be dealt with.”

The day before, the Guard had threatened one tanker over the radio, with a soldier warning “You are in range of my missiles and maybe (I) fire on you,” according to the private security firm Ambrey.

Iranian military, file image

On Thursday the Ever Lovely, a Singapore-flagged ship operating in the fleet of Taiwan-based Evergreen Marine, attempted to transit the strait using a narrow channel near the coast of Oman in accordance with a route organized by the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) security monitor. The Ever Lovely was struck by a drone belonging to Iran’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Iran allegedly shot at least four drones at ships traveling through the Strait on Thursday. One of those hit the upper deck of the Ever Lovely.

On Friday, the US attacked Iran in ‘response’ to strikes on the commercial vessel in Strait of Hormuz a day earlier:

Iran’s IRIB reported that an explosion was heard at 11:15 pm at the Taheroui pier in Sirik. A military source said the blasts were caused by a projectile hitting the pier area, adding that around five hours earlier, several warning shots had been fired from Sirik toward violating vessels in the Strait of Hormuz. Reports also indicated that two warning missiles were fired earlier from around Karpan toward the strait.

US Central Command said its forces carried out strikes against Iran on 26 June in response to Iran’s attack the previous day on the Singapore-flagged cargo ship M/V Ever Lovely as it exited the Strait of Hormuz along the Omani coast. CENTCOM said US aircraft targeted Iranian missile and drone storage sites and coastal radar positions after the vessel was hit by a one-way attack drone.

Although CENTCOM presented this as a powerful strike on Iran, and the US media trumpeted it as an act of major retaliation, the US response inflicted little damage and could reasonably be interpreted as a symbolic gesture rather than a punishing attack.

The IRGC Public Relations department issued the following statement:

Following the Israeli regime’s violation of the ceasefire in southern Lebanon, the treaty-breaking US regime also violated its commitments once again. Under various pretexts, including the transit of a vessel accused of navigating through an unauthorized route in the Strait of Hormuz, the US launched an airstrike against the coasts of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

In response to this aggression, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy struck positions where the US terrorist military is stationed in the region. Under Article 5 of the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding, responsibility for regulating navigation through the Strait of Hormuz rests with the Islamic Republic of Iran.

However, the United States sought to violate this commitment by encouraging various parties to defy it. It received the necessary response, and the same will apply in the future. If the aggression is repeated, Iran’s response will be broader than this.

Instead of marking a return to war, this exchange of fire can best be categorize as military political theater. I believe that Iran, thanks to intel from the Russians or the Chinese, has learned that the US has issued orders that will initiate the return to CONUS of the aircraft, vehicles and troops that had been deployed to the region in preparation for the February 28 attack. Because of the limited damage inflicted by the US attack, I believe that Iran chose to respond in a limited fashion rather than escalate and run the risk of the US cancelling the redeployment order.

For now, Iran remains in control of the Strait of Hormuz and ships wanting to transit the Strait are adhering to Iran's new policy.

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/27/2026 - 23:20

Young Americans Expect To Buy A Home Later In Life (Or Not At All)

For decades, homeownership has been a key milestone of adulthood in the United States.

In recent years, however, the middle-class ideal of homeownership and suburban comfort, once an embodiment of the American Dream, has gotten out of reach for many families, as elevated home prices, high mortgage rates and a period of stagnant real wages have left many families unable to even consider it.

As Statista's Felix Richter shows below, only 25 percent of non-homeowners expect to buy a house in the next five years, according to Gallup – the lowest share since the question was first asked in 2013.

You will find more infographics at Statista

Among those aged 18 to 34, a key group of prospective buyers, intentions have also fallen sharply.

The share expecting to buy in the next five years dropped from 57 percent in 2013/2015 to 29 percent in 2025/2026.

At the same time, the share of non-owners who don’t see themselves buying a home in the foreseeable future has increased from 13 to 30 percent.

The rest expects to wait longer before buying a home, either to build up savings for a down payment or in hopes that prices and mortgage rates will come down from their current levels.

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/27/2026 - 22:45

Young Americans Expect To Buy A Home Later In Life (Or Not At All)

For decades, homeownership has been a key milestone of adulthood in the United States.

In recent years, however, the middle-class ideal of homeownership and suburban comfort, once an embodiment of the American Dream, has gotten out of reach for many families, as elevated home prices, high mortgage rates and a period of stagnant real wages have left many families unable to even consider it.

As Statista's Felix Richter shows below, only 25 percent of non-homeowners expect to buy a house in the next five years, according to Gallup – the lowest share since the question was first asked in 2013.

You will find more infographics at Statista

Among those aged 18 to 34, a key group of prospective buyers, intentions have also fallen sharply.

The share expecting to buy in the next five years dropped from 57 percent in 2013/2015 to 29 percent in 2025/2026.

At the same time, the share of non-owners who don’t see themselves buying a home in the foreseeable future has increased from 13 to 30 percent.

The rest expects to wait longer before buying a home, either to build up savings for a down payment or in hopes that prices and mortgage rates will come down from their current levels.

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/27/2026 - 22:45

Beijing's Trojan Horse Rolls Into Canada: National Security Expert Warns Carney's Chinese EV Deals Embeds Sabotage Risk

Submitted by The Bureau's Sam Cooper (emphasis our own), 

China keeps finding inventive ways to burrow into the West, and Canada's new appetite for Chinese electric vehicles may be the most consequential opening yet.

That is the warning at the center of a report published this week by the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and written by Brenda Shaffer, an energy and national-security specialist who teaches at the United States Naval Postgraduate School.

China, she writes, "continues to find creative ways to infiltrate and influence the West," embedding in its exports the capacity to surveil citizens, disrupt transportation and ports, and trigger blackouts and grid damage.

Shaffer situates the electric-vehicle question inside a wider argument about hybrid warfare. China, Russia and Iran, she notes, have each written attacks on Western domestic energy infrastructure into their war doctrines, erasing the old line between the home front and the battlefield. Even brief disruptions to electricity or transit, she argues, could spread public panic and erode support for a distant conflict — the defense of Taiwan being the obvious test.

The cars began arriving in June, the product of a strategic partnership Prime Minister Mark Carney signed in Beijing in January. Ottawa cut its tariff on Chinese electric vehicles from 100 percent to 6.1 percent, opening an initial quota of roughly 49,000 vehicles in the first year. Carney has cast the imports as a low-cost route for Canadians switching to electric, and analysts cited by Shaffer expect Chinese brands to capture a fifth of the Canadian market.

Shaffer leans on an internal Public Safety Canada memo, obtained under access-to-information law, warning that opening the market to "high-risk vendors" invites connected cars that "collect significant amounts of data on Canadians, which can have intelligence value." Her account of the official response is withering. Asked how Canada would protect drivers, the chief of the defense staff, General Jennie Carignan, told reporters only that "we don't have a lot of Chinese vehicles so far," and Defense Minister David McGuinty said he would raise the question with base commanders.

The danger, in her telling, runs well past cars.

A congressional probe found hidden communications equipment inside Chinese-made cranes at major American ports; the same cranes are common in Canadian harbors, where Transport Canada began assessing the risk in 2023. More worrying still are solar power inverters — the devices that feed renewable energy into the grid — of which China supplies about 70 percent worldwide. American investigators have identified undeclared communication components inside some Chinese inverters that experts warn could be used to switch them off remotely and destabilize power grids.

Lithuania has banned Chinese inverters outright and the European Union has moved to bar them from public funding, while Canada, Shaffer writes, has imposed no comparable limits — even as the January partnership commits Ottawa and Beijing to deepen cooperation on solar, wind and battery storage.

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre's auto policy would prohibit Chinese-made vehicles from proximity to Canadian Forces bases and other sensitive or strategic infrastructure.

In Washington, where opposition to Chinese electric vehicles is one of the few genuinely bipartisan positions, President Donald Trump has called the deal a disaster for Canada, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Canada would live to regret it, and the U.S. ambassador, Peter Hoekstra, vowed the cars would never reach American roads: "We're not going to open the floodgates to have Chinese cars coming into the US from Canada."

Shaffer's alarm is echoed, from a different vantage, by Michael Kovrig, the former Canadian diplomat held in China for more than 1,000 days. In testimony to Parliament this spring, Kovrig described the deal as a "trifecta of risks" — structural dependence, unfair competition that erodes industrial capacity, and systemic pressure on government policy — and warned that the People's Republic "weaponizes technology, supply chains and market access" to force acquiescence to its agenda.

Commenting this week on his own testimony, Kovrig wrote on social media that opening Canada's market to Chinese electric vehicles "should be assessed not as a normal trade agreement, but as a tactical gamble that risks deep entanglement." The Chinese Communist Party, he wrote, "pours enormous resources into the sector to build scale and sustain overcapacity." He went on: "The pattern is to flood, consolidate and weaponize. We've seen China do this before with solar panels, steel, ships and drones, and EVs are now moving through the same stages in global markets."

The warnings have not slowed Carney's government, which is pressing ahead at full speed. Industry Minister Mélanie Joly spent much of last week in China, courting BYD, Chery, Geely and Shanghai Launch Automotive Technology to build electric vehicles on Canadian soil, and confirmed that the import quota will keep climbing — rising by 6.5 percent a year from 49,000 vehicles in 2026 to roughly 67,000 annually by 2031. Carney, caught on a hot microphone with Trump at the Group of Seven summit in France, defended the arrangement as "less than 3 per cent of our market, 49,000 cars," telling the president, "It's a cap, we capped, a hard line."

Beijing is pleased.

Geely Holding Group's Lotus-brand electric vehicles will reach Canada next month — the first such models sold under the 49,000-vehicle quota — China's ambassador to Canada, Wang Di, told Reuters on Friday. The cars would arrive, he said, "and they will be holding a ceremony when the cars are delivered in Montreal," a milestone in the trade pivot Carney has pursued to move Canada away from dependence on the United States.

On June 26, the Chinese Communist Party's state-run China Daily approvingly reported Canada's pledge to lift its exports to China by 50 percent by 2030. At a Canada Day reception at the Canadian embassy in Beijing, the mission's chargé d'affaires, Mark Richardson, called Canada "a stable, reliable partner — a partner that builds and values relationships for the long term," adding, "That includes with China." Of Carney's January visit, he said: "To say this has been a significant year for Canada–China relations would be an understatement. In many ways, it has been a turning point."

He noted that Canada had become a major energy exporter to China and observed that "the first shipment of Chinese-made electric vehicles has arrived in Canada under a new quota that was agreed in January."

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/27/2026 - 22:10

Beijing's Trojan Horse Rolls Into Canada: National Security Expert Warns Carney's Chinese EV Deals Embeds Sabotage Risk

Submitted by The Bureau's Sam Cooper (emphasis our own), 

China keeps finding inventive ways to burrow into the West, and Canada's new appetite for Chinese electric vehicles may be the most consequential opening yet.

That is the warning at the center of a report published this week by the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and written by Brenda Shaffer, an energy and national-security specialist who teaches at the United States Naval Postgraduate School.

China, she writes, "continues to find creative ways to infiltrate and influence the West," embedding in its exports the capacity to surveil citizens, disrupt transportation and ports, and trigger blackouts and grid damage.

Shaffer situates the electric-vehicle question inside a wider argument about hybrid warfare. China, Russia and Iran, she notes, have each written attacks on Western domestic energy infrastructure into their war doctrines, erasing the old line between the home front and the battlefield. Even brief disruptions to electricity or transit, she argues, could spread public panic and erode support for a distant conflict — the defense of Taiwan being the obvious test.

The cars began arriving in June, the product of a strategic partnership Prime Minister Mark Carney signed in Beijing in January. Ottawa cut its tariff on Chinese electric vehicles from 100 percent to 6.1 percent, opening an initial quota of roughly 49,000 vehicles in the first year. Carney has cast the imports as a low-cost route for Canadians switching to electric, and analysts cited by Shaffer expect Chinese brands to capture a fifth of the Canadian market.

Shaffer leans on an internal Public Safety Canada memo, obtained under access-to-information law, warning that opening the market to "high-risk vendors" invites connected cars that "collect significant amounts of data on Canadians, which can have intelligence value." Her account of the official response is withering. Asked how Canada would protect drivers, the chief of the defense staff, General Jennie Carignan, told reporters only that "we don't have a lot of Chinese vehicles so far," and Defense Minister David McGuinty said he would raise the question with base commanders.

The danger, in her telling, runs well past cars.

A congressional probe found hidden communications equipment inside Chinese-made cranes at major American ports; the same cranes are common in Canadian harbors, where Transport Canada began assessing the risk in 2023. More worrying still are solar power inverters — the devices that feed renewable energy into the grid — of which China supplies about 70 percent worldwide. American investigators have identified undeclared communication components inside some Chinese inverters that experts warn could be used to switch them off remotely and destabilize power grids.

Lithuania has banned Chinese inverters outright and the European Union has moved to bar them from public funding, while Canada, Shaffer writes, has imposed no comparable limits — even as the January partnership commits Ottawa and Beijing to deepen cooperation on solar, wind and battery storage.

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre's auto policy would prohibit Chinese-made vehicles from proximity to Canadian Forces bases and other sensitive or strategic infrastructure.

In Washington, where opposition to Chinese electric vehicles is one of the few genuinely bipartisan positions, President Donald Trump has called the deal a disaster for Canada, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Canada would live to regret it, and the U.S. ambassador, Peter Hoekstra, vowed the cars would never reach American roads: "We're not going to open the floodgates to have Chinese cars coming into the US from Canada."

Shaffer's alarm is echoed, from a different vantage, by Michael Kovrig, the former Canadian diplomat held in China for more than 1,000 days. In testimony to Parliament this spring, Kovrig described the deal as a "trifecta of risks" — structural dependence, unfair competition that erodes industrial capacity, and systemic pressure on government policy — and warned that the People's Republic "weaponizes technology, supply chains and market access" to force acquiescence to its agenda.

Commenting this week on his own testimony, Kovrig wrote on social media that opening Canada's market to Chinese electric vehicles "should be assessed not as a normal trade agreement, but as a tactical gamble that risks deep entanglement." The Chinese Communist Party, he wrote, "pours enormous resources into the sector to build scale and sustain overcapacity." He went on: "The pattern is to flood, consolidate and weaponize. We've seen China do this before with solar panels, steel, ships and drones, and EVs are now moving through the same stages in global markets."

The warnings have not slowed Carney's government, which is pressing ahead at full speed. Industry Minister Mélanie Joly spent much of last week in China, courting BYD, Chery, Geely and Shanghai Launch Automotive Technology to build electric vehicles on Canadian soil, and confirmed that the import quota will keep climbing — rising by 6.5 percent a year from 49,000 vehicles in 2026 to roughly 67,000 annually by 2031. Carney, caught on a hot microphone with Trump at the Group of Seven summit in France, defended the arrangement as "less than 3 per cent of our market, 49,000 cars," telling the president, "It's a cap, we capped, a hard line."

Beijing is pleased.

Geely Holding Group's Lotus-brand electric vehicles will reach Canada next month — the first such models sold under the 49,000-vehicle quota — China's ambassador to Canada, Wang Di, told Reuters on Friday. The cars would arrive, he said, "and they will be holding a ceremony when the cars are delivered in Montreal," a milestone in the trade pivot Carney has pursued to move Canada away from dependence on the United States.

On June 26, the Chinese Communist Party's state-run China Daily approvingly reported Canada's pledge to lift its exports to China by 50 percent by 2030. At a Canada Day reception at the Canadian embassy in Beijing, the mission's chargé d'affaires, Mark Richardson, called Canada "a stable, reliable partner — a partner that builds and values relationships for the long term," adding, "That includes with China." Of Carney's January visit, he said: "To say this has been a significant year for Canada–China relations would be an understatement. In many ways, it has been a turning point."

He noted that Canada had become a major energy exporter to China and observed that "the first shipment of Chinese-made electric vehicles has arrived in Canada under a new quota that was agreed in January."

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/27/2026 - 22:10

Newsom Scrubs '$100 Million' Slippery Slope From National 'Billionaire Tax' Pitch - And He's Coming After Inheritance Too

California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) on Friday called for a national tax on billionaires. Except, in the original version, it was anyone with a net worth of at least $100 million - as quoted by multiple outlets, citing a post from Newsom's Substack account. 

As originally reported by Politico:

His plan to address the country’s yawning wealth gap includes “a true minimum tax on billionaires and those with a net worth of $100 million” and creating a national public equity fund to give all Americans a stake in the economic gains created by artificial intelligence companies. 

The post now reads:

"So here is what I support: A national billionaires’ tax. A true minimum tax on billionaires — a modern Buffett Rule — that ensures the people at the very top pay at least the tax rate their own workers pay."

Bitch please. 

Newsom also wants to tax inheritance - writing "We also need to rewrite our inheritance rules. Over the next twenty years, this country will live through the largest intergenerational wealth transfer in human history, with roughly $124 trillion changing hands. If we do not act, that transfer of wealth among the ultra-wealthy will lock in a permanent American aristocracy of inherited wealth, with all the political consequences the founders warned us about."

Notice he cites the massive wealth transfer, but not the level of inheritance he's targeting - as most slippery slopes begin.

Newsom's proposals come after he failed to stop California's legislation from with placing a state-level wealth tax on the November ballot. 

Newsom’s proposal follows a failed attempt by the governor, billionaires and progressive groups of persuading the union behind the California tax, SEIU-UHW, to withdraw the measure before Thursday evening’s deadline. Newsom had even privately expressed assurances about an agreement, telling a wealthy donor he expected to negotiate the measure off the ballot, Bloomberg News previously reported. -Bloomberg

"For Newsom, it’s the worst of all worlds, because it puts him squarely in the middle of a national Democratic debate about equity, taxation and affordability," said Steven Maviglio, a veteran Democratic strategist in the state. "His announcement might deflect from that a bit."

Newsom also suggests creating a public equity (slush) fund that would 'take a stake in the artificial intelligence economy.'

Anti-Billionaire-Tax-Billionaires

Shockingly, California's billionaires aren't exactly excited about all this tax malarkey. In fact, while the anti-tax coalition has been most prominently linked to billionaire Sergey Brin (who's funding other ballot measures that could nullify a wealth tax), Planned Parenthood of California and several labor unions are weirdly also against taxing billionaires - arguing that the proceeds from the tax would benefit select groups, while potentially damaging the entire state's budget because wealthy residents will flee. 

Even they know it's just a slush fund. 

"We are ready to defeat this convoluted nightmare of a measure in November," a spokesperson for Golden State Promise, a group backed by billionaire Chris Larsen, told Bloomberg, while a different coalition linked to doctors and school boards called California's proposal a threat to "vital funding for education and schools, healthcare and clinics, public safety, and infrastructure projects."

Either way, Democrats continue to actively scheme for ways to extract more money from capitalists. 

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/27/2026 - 21:35

Newsom Scrubs '$100 Million' Slippery Slope From National 'Billionaire Tax' Pitch - And He's Coming After Inheritance Too

California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) on Friday called for a national tax on billionaires. Except, in the original version, it was anyone with a net worth of at least $100 million - as quoted by multiple outlets, citing a post from Newsom's Substack account. 

As originally reported by Politico:

His plan to address the country’s yawning wealth gap includes “a true minimum tax on billionaires and those with a net worth of $100 million” and creating a national public equity fund to give all Americans a stake in the economic gains created by artificial intelligence companies. 

The post now reads:

"So here is what I support: A national billionaires’ tax. A true minimum tax on billionaires — a modern Buffett Rule — that ensures the people at the very top pay at least the tax rate their own workers pay."

Bitch please. 

Newsom also wants to tax inheritance - writing "We also need to rewrite our inheritance rules. Over the next twenty years, this country will live through the largest intergenerational wealth transfer in human history, with roughly $124 trillion changing hands. If we do not act, that transfer of wealth among the ultra-wealthy will lock in a permanent American aristocracy of inherited wealth, with all the political consequences the founders warned us about."

Notice he cites the massive wealth transfer, but not the level of inheritance he's targeting - as most slippery slopes begin.

Newsom's proposals come after he failed to stop California's legislation from with placing a state-level wealth tax on the November ballot. 

Newsom’s proposal follows a failed attempt by the governor, billionaires and progressive groups of persuading the union behind the California tax, SEIU-UHW, to withdraw the measure before Thursday evening’s deadline. Newsom had even privately expressed assurances about an agreement, telling a wealthy donor he expected to negotiate the measure off the ballot, Bloomberg News previously reported. -Bloomberg

"For Newsom, it’s the worst of all worlds, because it puts him squarely in the middle of a national Democratic debate about equity, taxation and affordability," said Steven Maviglio, a veteran Democratic strategist in the state. "His announcement might deflect from that a bit."

Newsom also suggests creating a public equity (slush) fund that would 'take a stake in the artificial intelligence economy.'

Anti-Billionaire-Tax-Billionaires

Shockingly, California's billionaires aren't exactly excited about all this tax malarkey. In fact, while the anti-tax coalition has been most prominently linked to billionaire Sergey Brin (who's funding other ballot measures that could nullify a wealth tax), Planned Parenthood of California and several labor unions are weirdly also against taxing billionaires - arguing that the proceeds from the tax would benefit select groups, while potentially damaging the entire state's budget because wealthy residents will flee. 

Even they know it's just a slush fund. 

"We are ready to defeat this convoluted nightmare of a measure in November," a spokesperson for Golden State Promise, a group backed by billionaire Chris Larsen, told Bloomberg, while a different coalition linked to doctors and school boards called California's proposal a threat to "vital funding for education and schools, healthcare and clinics, public safety, and infrastructure projects."

Either way, Democrats continue to actively scheme for ways to extract more money from capitalists. 

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/27/2026 - 21:35

DOJ Asks Supreme Court To Approve No-Bond Immigration Detention Policy

Authored by Matthew Vadum via The Epoch Times,

The Trump administration has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to approve its policy of detaining illegal immigrants who have been in the country for years without releasing them on bond.

D. John Sauer, then the U.S. solicitor general nominee, testifies during his confirmation hearing in Washington on Feb. 26, 2025. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

The petition in Raycraft v. Lopez-Campos was docketed on June 24, but at time of publication did not appear on the court's website because of a sensitive-filings rule. The court's public information office provided The Epoch Times with a copy of the filed petition on June 26.

Adopted last year, the policy represents a change from how previous administrations interpreted a specific provision of the federal Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). It also led to a flood of lawsuits from immigrants challenging detention.

Legal experts previously told The Epoch Times they expected that the justices would at some point intervene after several appeals courts issued conflicting interpretations of the law's detention provisions.

Three federal courts of appeals have rejected the policy, while two have upheld it. The result has been uneven enforcement across the country, raising questions about how millions of illegal immigrants would be detained.

The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, which amended the INA, required detention without bond for illegal immigrants seeking entry into the country.

The provision at issue, Section 1225 of the INA, says individuals seeking admission "shall be detained" if an immigration officer determines they are "not clearly and beyond a doubt entitled to be admitted."

In President Donald Trump's second administration, the government said this detention mandate applied to individuals who had already entered the United States. Multiple illegal immigrants have argued that portion of the INA didn't apply to them because they were already in the country and therefore no longer seeking admission or undergoing a formal admissions process.

Instead, they said another provision of the INA - Section 1226 - applied and allowed them to receive bond hearings.

Trump's interpretation introduced a dramatic change in federal policy, David Super, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center, previously told The Epoch Times.

The position that illegal immigrants apprehended in the interior of the United States may be held without bond "has not been the policy of any prior administration, including the first Trump administration," Super said.

The policy is part of the administration's broader immigration strategy, which includes ending so-called catch-and-release efforts, or releasing migrants as they await hearings after being apprehended at the border.

In the new petition, U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer states that the case is about "eleven aliens who entered the United States illegally and are now present in the country without having been admitted."

The respondents, who were apprehended between June and September 2025, were put into removal proceedings and charged with being inadmissible and being present in the United States without being admitted or paroled. To be paroled is to be allowed into the country subject to a later decision on immigration status.

Several of the respondents were also charged with not possessing valid immigration documents.

Sauer said the U.S. Department of Homeland Security ruled that the respondents should be detained under Section 1225 for the duration of their removal proceedings. Several respondents asked for bond hearings before an immigration judge. The immigration judges eventually found that Section 1225 deprived them of authority to grant bond.

The respondents filed habeas petitions with federal district courts in Michigan seeking release. All the release requests were granted. In three of the four cases, the district court also found that detaining respondents without conducting a bond hearing violated their due process rights.

Sauer said the government released the respondents without holding a bond hearing and appealed to a panel of the Cincinnati, Ohio-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. In a divided opinion, the appeals court affirmed.

The panel found Section 1225 does not apply to noncitizens already present in the country because they are not "seeking admission." The panel also determined that the detention of the respondents without bond hearings violated their due process rights.

Sauer urged the Supreme Court to accept the government's appeal.

The legal question is "whether aliens present in the United States after an illegal entry must be detained while their removal proceedings unfold.

"The correct answer is yes: 8 U.S.C. 1225(b)(2)(A) mandates detention for such aliens pending their removal proceedings, and there is no due-process problem with that result," he said.

The Sixth Circuit's holdings are "incorrect," he said, and given the 3-2 split among appeals courts, there is now "an unworkable patchwork of inconsistent immigration enforcement, where aliens present without admission are subject to mandatory detention in some circuits but are entitled to bond hearings and often released in others."

"Immigration enforcement should not depend on geographical happenstance," he said.

It is unclear when the Supreme Court will take up the petition.

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/27/2026 - 21:00

DOJ Asks Supreme Court To Approve No-Bond Immigration Detention Policy

Authored by Matthew Vadum via The Epoch Times,

The Trump administration has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to approve its policy of detaining illegal immigrants who have been in the country for years without releasing them on bond.

D. John Sauer, then the U.S. solicitor general nominee, testifies during his confirmation hearing in Washington on Feb. 26, 2025. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

The petition in Raycraft v. Lopez-Campos was docketed on June 24, but at time of publication did not appear on the court's website because of a sensitive-filings rule. The court's public information office provided The Epoch Times with a copy of the filed petition on June 26.

Adopted last year, the policy represents a change from how previous administrations interpreted a specific provision of the federal Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). It also led to a flood of lawsuits from immigrants challenging detention.

Legal experts previously told The Epoch Times they expected that the justices would at some point intervene after several appeals courts issued conflicting interpretations of the law's detention provisions.

Three federal courts of appeals have rejected the policy, while two have upheld it. The result has been uneven enforcement across the country, raising questions about how millions of illegal immigrants would be detained.

The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, which amended the INA, required detention without bond for illegal immigrants seeking entry into the country.

The provision at issue, Section 1225 of the INA, says individuals seeking admission "shall be detained" if an immigration officer determines they are "not clearly and beyond a doubt entitled to be admitted."

In President Donald Trump's second administration, the government said this detention mandate applied to individuals who had already entered the United States. Multiple illegal immigrants have argued that portion of the INA didn't apply to them because they were already in the country and therefore no longer seeking admission or undergoing a formal admissions process.

Instead, they said another provision of the INA - Section 1226 - applied and allowed them to receive bond hearings.

Trump's interpretation introduced a dramatic change in federal policy, David Super, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center, previously told The Epoch Times.

The position that illegal immigrants apprehended in the interior of the United States may be held without bond "has not been the policy of any prior administration, including the first Trump administration," Super said.

The policy is part of the administration's broader immigration strategy, which includes ending so-called catch-and-release efforts, or releasing migrants as they await hearings after being apprehended at the border.

In the new petition, U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer states that the case is about "eleven aliens who entered the United States illegally and are now present in the country without having been admitted."

The respondents, who were apprehended between June and September 2025, were put into removal proceedings and charged with being inadmissible and being present in the United States without being admitted or paroled. To be paroled is to be allowed into the country subject to a later decision on immigration status.

Several of the respondents were also charged with not possessing valid immigration documents.

Sauer said the U.S. Department of Homeland Security ruled that the respondents should be detained under Section 1225 for the duration of their removal proceedings. Several respondents asked for bond hearings before an immigration judge. The immigration judges eventually found that Section 1225 deprived them of authority to grant bond.

The respondents filed habeas petitions with federal district courts in Michigan seeking release. All the release requests were granted. In three of the four cases, the district court also found that detaining respondents without conducting a bond hearing violated their due process rights.

Sauer said the government released the respondents without holding a bond hearing and appealed to a panel of the Cincinnati, Ohio-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. In a divided opinion, the appeals court affirmed.

The panel found Section 1225 does not apply to noncitizens already present in the country because they are not "seeking admission." The panel also determined that the detention of the respondents without bond hearings violated their due process rights.

Sauer urged the Supreme Court to accept the government's appeal.

The legal question is "whether aliens present in the United States after an illegal entry must be detained while their removal proceedings unfold.

"The correct answer is yes: 8 U.S.C. 1225(b)(2)(A) mandates detention for such aliens pending their removal proceedings, and there is no due-process problem with that result," he said.

The Sixth Circuit's holdings are "incorrect," he said, and given the 3-2 split among appeals courts, there is now "an unworkable patchwork of inconsistent immigration enforcement, where aliens present without admission are subject to mandatory detention in some circuits but are entitled to bond hearings and often released in others."

"Immigration enforcement should not depend on geographical happenstance," he said.

It is unclear when the Supreme Court will take up the petition.

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/27/2026 - 21:00

Military Depoliticization, Hegseth, And DEI

Authored by 'Cynical Publius' via American Greatness,

As I read and hear the usual cavalcade of woke, retired Democrat generals and admirals like McRaven, McCaffrey, Franken, and others falsely claiming that Pete Hegseth is “politicizing” the senior ranks of the U.S. military, inside my head, I am screaming in rage at the impunity with which they spread this pernicious and wholly inaccurate falsehood.

Hegseth is doing EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE as he depoliticizes our military’s ranks by eradicating the very most political doctrine to ever infect the U.S. military since the U.S. Civil War: so-called “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion,” or “DEI.”

DEI is an expression of Marxism by way of the Frankfurt School. Instead of building Marxist systems based on economic class, the Frankfurt School’s teachings build systems based on grievance classes. Known also as “critical theory,” DEI espouses the concept that there is no such thing as objective truth, that all truth is instead subjective, and that such truth is subjectively decided by whoever is in power at the moment.

This philosophy is in stark contrast to the Constitution, which stands on the shoulders of natural law—the idea that profound truth is objective, ordained by God, and that all men are created equal, with certain unalienable rights.

DEI instead claims that there is an inherent imbalance in society driven by race, ethnicity, religion, sex, and sexual preference. Since “truth” is what you make of it via power, DEI uses force and power to strip individuals of autonomy and individuality in favor of their skin color or what is between their legs. DEI is a form of Marxism, and it is the ultimate expression of bigotry in modern society.

(By the way, given the manner in which DEI seeks to destroy the natural law principles underpinning the Constitution, it effectively sits in defiance of the sacred oath of U.S. service members to “support and defend the Constitution.”)

The U.S. military long had rudimentary forms of DEI in its promotion systems, with promotion board results constantly reworked to reflect the “correct” racial and gender balances. However, with the advent of DEI as a more formal, society-altering structure, under the Obama and Biden administrations, the wholly political DEI doctrine was massively forced on the military like a dog shoved into a car on its way to the veterinarian’s office for neutering.

White service members were told they are inherently evil based solely on their skin color. Combat arms professions were opened to women who, on average, were manifestly physically unqualified to perform required duties. Pressure mounted for 18-year-old females in the barracks to be forced to live with biological men play-acting as women. “Pride” celebrations were rampant. Racist DEI books became mandatory professional reading for officers and senior NCOs. The United States Air Force decided skin color was the basis for being an Air Force officer.

It went so far that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (“CJCS”), Mark Milley, said before Congress, “I want to understand white rage. And I’m white. And I want to understand it.” In doing so, he racially slandered every white troop under his command (yes, I know CJCS is not a command position, but you get my drift), and the political Left and the other woke generals rejoiced.

Where we once only saw red, white, and blue and the color of our uniforms, suddenly, the only color we were allowed to see was the color of human skin.

In the field and afloat, white male commanders learned to be very circumspect in disciplining wayward black, female, or gay troops, because it was just too easy to be labeled a “racist” or a “misogynist” or a “homophobe” in career-ending fashion.

Good order and discipline broke down.

Combat effectiveness declined as a result.

All thanks to politics—the politics of DEI.

And the retired admirals and generals you hear moaning today to Goebbelsesque propaganda rags like The Atlantic? Not only did they not object, they embraced it because that is how these wholly political officers were able to advance. Now that Pete Hegseth is purging our hallowed military halls of the diseased, racist, misandrist, bigoted, hate-mongering, Christophobic, intolerant, diversity-destroying, inequitable, exclusionary, expressly political doctrines of DEI, these political animals are OUTRAGED. They see their Brutalist, Marxist spiritual edifice in tatters, and they don’t much like it, so they lie and say it’s all “political.”

DEI is the worst thing that has happened to the U.S. military in any of our lifetimes. It was the ultimate expression of a political acid test shoved down the throats of everyone serving in a U.S. uniform. It was Marxism on a massive scale, specifically designed to polarize the ranks and make our military less combat effective.

DEI was and is an abomination.

And Pete Hegseth has unraveled this monster in a mere two years. We are rebuilding our military on top of the ruins of the failed DEI experiment.

In all of U.S. history, no one has done more to DEPOLITICIZE the U.S. military than Pete Hegseth.

So, when you see the legacy media and the usual generals and admirals who would not take Douglas MacArthur’s advice to just “fade away” screeching that Hegseth is “politicizing” the military, know that they are angry only because he is doing exactly the opposite. The star-laden critical theorists are losing, and they will not go down without a fight.

But losing they are, and so long as the 2026 and 2028 elections stay the course, they have already lost.

Do not buy the fabulistic “Hegseth is politicizing the military’s senior ranks” narrative. Exactly the opposite is true.

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/27/2026 - 20:25

Military Depoliticization, Hegseth, And DEI

Authored by 'Cynical Publius' via American Greatness,

As I read and hear the usual cavalcade of woke, retired Democrat generals and admirals like McRaven, McCaffrey, Franken, and others falsely claiming that Pete Hegseth is “politicizing” the senior ranks of the U.S. military, inside my head, I am screaming in rage at the impunity with which they spread this pernicious and wholly inaccurate falsehood.

Hegseth is doing EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE as he depoliticizes our military’s ranks by eradicating the very most political doctrine to ever infect the U.S. military since the U.S. Civil War: so-called “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion,” or “DEI.”

DEI is an expression of Marxism by way of the Frankfurt School. Instead of building Marxist systems based on economic class, the Frankfurt School’s teachings build systems based on grievance classes. Known also as “critical theory,” DEI espouses the concept that there is no such thing as objective truth, that all truth is instead subjective, and that such truth is subjectively decided by whoever is in power at the moment.

This philosophy is in stark contrast to the Constitution, which stands on the shoulders of natural law—the idea that profound truth is objective, ordained by God, and that all men are created equal, with certain unalienable rights.

DEI instead claims that there is an inherent imbalance in society driven by race, ethnicity, religion, sex, and sexual preference. Since “truth” is what you make of it via power, DEI uses force and power to strip individuals of autonomy and individuality in favor of their skin color or what is between their legs. DEI is a form of Marxism, and it is the ultimate expression of bigotry in modern society.

(By the way, given the manner in which DEI seeks to destroy the natural law principles underpinning the Constitution, it effectively sits in defiance of the sacred oath of U.S. service members to “support and defend the Constitution.”)

The U.S. military long had rudimentary forms of DEI in its promotion systems, with promotion board results constantly reworked to reflect the “correct” racial and gender balances. However, with the advent of DEI as a more formal, society-altering structure, under the Obama and Biden administrations, the wholly political DEI doctrine was massively forced on the military like a dog shoved into a car on its way to the veterinarian’s office for neutering.

White service members were told they are inherently evil based solely on their skin color. Combat arms professions were opened to women who, on average, were manifestly physically unqualified to perform required duties. Pressure mounted for 18-year-old females in the barracks to be forced to live with biological men play-acting as women. “Pride” celebrations were rampant. Racist DEI books became mandatory professional reading for officers and senior NCOs. The United States Air Force decided skin color was the basis for being an Air Force officer.

It went so far that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (“CJCS”), Mark Milley, said before Congress, “I want to understand white rage. And I’m white. And I want to understand it.” In doing so, he racially slandered every white troop under his command (yes, I know CJCS is not a command position, but you get my drift), and the political Left and the other woke generals rejoiced.

Where we once only saw red, white, and blue and the color of our uniforms, suddenly, the only color we were allowed to see was the color of human skin.

In the field and afloat, white male commanders learned to be very circumspect in disciplining wayward black, female, or gay troops, because it was just too easy to be labeled a “racist” or a “misogynist” or a “homophobe” in career-ending fashion.

Good order and discipline broke down.

Combat effectiveness declined as a result.

All thanks to politics—the politics of DEI.

And the retired admirals and generals you hear moaning today to Goebbelsesque propaganda rags like The Atlantic? Not only did they not object, they embraced it because that is how these wholly political officers were able to advance. Now that Pete Hegseth is purging our hallowed military halls of the diseased, racist, misandrist, bigoted, hate-mongering, Christophobic, intolerant, diversity-destroying, inequitable, exclusionary, expressly political doctrines of DEI, these political animals are OUTRAGED. They see their Brutalist, Marxist spiritual edifice in tatters, and they don’t much like it, so they lie and say it’s all “political.”

DEI is the worst thing that has happened to the U.S. military in any of our lifetimes. It was the ultimate expression of a political acid test shoved down the throats of everyone serving in a U.S. uniform. It was Marxism on a massive scale, specifically designed to polarize the ranks and make our military less combat effective.

DEI was and is an abomination.

And Pete Hegseth has unraveled this monster in a mere two years. We are rebuilding our military on top of the ruins of the failed DEI experiment.

In all of U.S. history, no one has done more to DEPOLITICIZE the U.S. military than Pete Hegseth.

So, when you see the legacy media and the usual generals and admirals who would not take Douglas MacArthur’s advice to just “fade away” screeching that Hegseth is “politicizing” the military, know that they are angry only because he is doing exactly the opposite. The star-laden critical theorists are losing, and they will not go down without a fight.

But losing they are, and so long as the 2026 and 2028 elections stay the course, they have already lost.

Do not buy the fabulistic “Hegseth is politicizing the military’s senior ranks” narrative. Exactly the opposite is true.

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/27/2026 - 20:25

California's $20 Million Attempt To Silence Medical Speech

Authored by Danielle White via RealClearPolitics,

In a trial set to begin June 24, California's Attorney General Rob Bonta is asking a court to do something that should alarm every American, regardless of where they stand on abortion: punish nonprofit organizations with ruinous fines for speaking about a lawful medical treatment.

The target is not fraud. These charities offer their services for free.

It is not patient harm. There is no evidence of any patient being harmed.

It is not even illegal conduct. The underlying treatment remains perfectly legal.

The target is speech.

Heartbeat International and Real Options are pro-life nonprofits that provide information and care to women who first take the abortion drug but regret that choice and want to continue their pregnancies. California wants to impose penalties approaching $20 million because these charities have dared to tell women that another option may exist.

Twenty million dollars. That number alone should tell us what this case is really about.

No reasonable observer can believe that bankrupting charities is a proportionate response to truthful and non-misleading statements about a free service designed to help a woman exercise her constitutional right to continue her pregnancy. This is not consumer protection. It is political warfare conducted through the machinery of a government that wishes to silence speech it does not like.

What's most remarkable is what California cannot prove.

After years of investigation, subpoenas, discovery, and litigation, the attorney general has failed to identify a single woman harmed by APR treatment. Not one. No parade of victims. No evidence of widespread deception. He set up a website practically begging for complaints and still could not muster a single woman claiming she was misled or harmed.

Instead, seven women have publicly shared the stories of how Heartbeat International and Real Options helped them successfully reverse their abortions. Three mothers are slated to testify from the stand about their joy at reversing their unwanted abortions.

Still, the state asks the court to punish the very charities who helped these women continue their wanted pregnancies simply because government lawyers disagree with their viewpoint on the scientific evidence regarding APR.

That is a dangerous precedent.

Scientific disagreement is not fraud. If it were, much of modern medicine would not exist. Medical consensus is not handed down from on high. It evolves. Researchers debate. Physicians challenge prevailing views. Studies are published, criticized, replicated, and revised.

The proper response to disputed science is more debate, more research, and more evidence - not government censorship backed by eight-figure penalties.

Yet that is precisely what California seeks.

The state is asking the court to declare that one side of a scientific debate may speak freely while the other side risks financial destruction. Today, the target happens to be pro-life organizations. Tomorrow, it could be anyone whose views fall out of favor with those holding political power or anyone who dares to innovate in the medical field.

And make no mistake: This lawsuit did not emerge in a vacuum.

Since the Dobbs decision, officials across the country have openly pledged to target pregnancy centers and pro-life organizations. California's attorney general has repeatedly attacked what he calls "crisis pregnancy centers." Against that backdrop, it is fanciful to view this lawsuit as a neutral effort to protect consumers. It looks exactly like an attempt to silence disfavored viewpoints through the coercive power of the state.

The irony is impossible to miss. Politicians who routinely invoke the language of "choice" now seek to suppress information that women are seeking in order to exercise their choice to withdraw their consent to their in-progress abortions and continue their wanted pregnancies.

This lawsuit demonstrates that AG Bonta does not stand for reproductive choice. He stands for abortions - wanted or unwanted.

In fact, according to AG Bonta in his trial brief filed last week, "That Defendants [Heartbeat International and Real Options] provided hope to these individuals only underscores the seriousness of their misconduct." California argues that merely providing hope to women who wish to continue their pregnancies after they start an unwanted abortion is damaging.

A government confident in its position does not need censorship. It does not need speech codes. It does not need multi-million-dollar penalties for those who hold different views. It does not ask a court to issue a financial death penalty for charities whose mission is to provide free services and preserve life.

California has chosen suppression over science and punishment over persuasion.

The court should reject that effort. Not merely to protect Heartbeat International and Real Options, but to protect the principle that government officials do not get to decide which side of a scientific or moral debate is allowed to speak.

Especially when a woman's right to continue her pregnancy and her unborn child's life hang in the balance.

Danielle White, Esq., is general counsel for Heartbeat International.

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/27/2026 - 19:50

California's $20 Million Attempt To Silence Medical Speech

Authored by Danielle White via RealClearPolitics,

In a trial set to begin June 24, California's Attorney General Rob Bonta is asking a court to do something that should alarm every American, regardless of where they stand on abortion: punish nonprofit organizations with ruinous fines for speaking about a lawful medical treatment.

The target is not fraud. These charities offer their services for free.

It is not patient harm. There is no evidence of any patient being harmed.

It is not even illegal conduct. The underlying treatment remains perfectly legal.

The target is speech.

Heartbeat International and Real Options are pro-life nonprofits that provide information and care to women who first take the abortion drug but regret that choice and want to continue their pregnancies. California wants to impose penalties approaching $20 million because these charities have dared to tell women that another option may exist.

Twenty million dollars. That number alone should tell us what this case is really about.

No reasonable observer can believe that bankrupting charities is a proportionate response to truthful and non-misleading statements about a free service designed to help a woman exercise her constitutional right to continue her pregnancy. This is not consumer protection. It is political warfare conducted through the machinery of a government that wishes to silence speech it does not like.

What's most remarkable is what California cannot prove.

After years of investigation, subpoenas, discovery, and litigation, the attorney general has failed to identify a single woman harmed by APR treatment. Not one. No parade of victims. No evidence of widespread deception. He set up a website practically begging for complaints and still could not muster a single woman claiming she was misled or harmed.

Instead, seven women have publicly shared the stories of how Heartbeat International and Real Options helped them successfully reverse their abortions. Three mothers are slated to testify from the stand about their joy at reversing their unwanted abortions.

Still, the state asks the court to punish the very charities who helped these women continue their wanted pregnancies simply because government lawyers disagree with their viewpoint on the scientific evidence regarding APR.

That is a dangerous precedent.

Scientific disagreement is not fraud. If it were, much of modern medicine would not exist. Medical consensus is not handed down from on high. It evolves. Researchers debate. Physicians challenge prevailing views. Studies are published, criticized, replicated, and revised.

The proper response to disputed science is more debate, more research, and more evidence - not government censorship backed by eight-figure penalties.

Yet that is precisely what California seeks.

The state is asking the court to declare that one side of a scientific debate may speak freely while the other side risks financial destruction. Today, the target happens to be pro-life organizations. Tomorrow, it could be anyone whose views fall out of favor with those holding political power or anyone who dares to innovate in the medical field.

And make no mistake: This lawsuit did not emerge in a vacuum.

Since the Dobbs decision, officials across the country have openly pledged to target pregnancy centers and pro-life organizations. California's attorney general has repeatedly attacked what he calls "crisis pregnancy centers." Against that backdrop, it is fanciful to view this lawsuit as a neutral effort to protect consumers. It looks exactly like an attempt to silence disfavored viewpoints through the coercive power of the state.

The irony is impossible to miss. Politicians who routinely invoke the language of "choice" now seek to suppress information that women are seeking in order to exercise their choice to withdraw their consent to their in-progress abortions and continue their wanted pregnancies.

This lawsuit demonstrates that AG Bonta does not stand for reproductive choice. He stands for abortions - wanted or unwanted.

In fact, according to AG Bonta in his trial brief filed last week, "That Defendants [Heartbeat International and Real Options] provided hope to these individuals only underscores the seriousness of their misconduct." California argues that merely providing hope to women who wish to continue their pregnancies after they start an unwanted abortion is damaging.

A government confident in its position does not need censorship. It does not need speech codes. It does not need multi-million-dollar penalties for those who hold different views. It does not ask a court to issue a financial death penalty for charities whose mission is to provide free services and preserve life.

California has chosen suppression over science and punishment over persuasion.

The court should reject that effort. Not merely to protect Heartbeat International and Real Options, but to protect the principle that government officials do not get to decide which side of a scientific or moral debate is allowed to speak.

Especially when a woman's right to continue her pregnancy and her unborn child's life hang in the balance.

Danielle White, Esq., is general counsel for Heartbeat International.

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/27/2026 - 19:50

Tehran Retaliates Against Bahrain, Kuwait After US Bombing Campaign Along Iranian Coast

Update(2300ET): Earlier the IRGC warned: "If any aggression is repeated, the response will be broader." That broader response has come in the overnight into Sunday hours: Tehran attacks Bahrain, Kuwait after US bombs Iranian coast, Al Jazeera reports:

Air raid sirens blare in Bahrain as Kuwait’s military says its air defenses are responding to "hostile missile and drone threats."

Iranian state media is also confirming the fresh 'retaliation' for limited US airstrikes over the last two days, triggered initially by the Iranians seeking to enforce 'control' of the Strait of Hormuz, by attacking no less than two foreign vessels in as many days.

Latest via the same publication:

• The US has bombed Iran for a second day, hitting the city of Sirik, Bandar-e Lengeh and Qeshm Island, following a drone attack on a commercial vessel near the Strait of Hormuz.
• Israel has bombed southern Lebanon, killing at least one person, a day after signing a framework agreement with the Lebanese government to end hostilities.
• Lebanese President Joseph Aoun asks Trump to help prevent Israeli violations, as Hezbollah rejects the agreement with Israel, describing it as “a surrender of sovereignty”.

Some unconfirmed emerging video showing some of the latest US action along Iran's coast, in a widening tit-for-tat:

US launched a fresh wave of attack against IRGC targets in Iran after Iran attacked Bahrain

A massive explosion struck Shahid Rajaee port in Bandar Abbas, southern Iran, shaking the ground and echoing through nearby towns. pic.twitter.com/RaPdGkVSsi

— IRGC NEWS (@IRGC_IRAN_News) June 28, 2026

Iran is threatening to walk away from the peace deal if the bombings continue: 

The IRGC is saying that the enemy – the United States – should know that violating the ceasefire is against the first clause of the MoU and will lead to a complete halt to the process.

It is clearly warning the United States that if these attacks continue, the MoU and the ongoing negotiations are going to come to a halt.

CENTCOM released footage from its earlier Saturday wave of attacks on Iran:

U.S. Navy and Air Force fighter jets conducted strikes tonight on 10 Iranian military targets at multiple locations in and near the Strait of Hormuz for Iran's drone attack on M/T Kiku. pic.twitter.com/Z0TLZRqmF6

— U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) June 28, 2026

*  *  *

Update1930ET): The Pentagon has sought to level the score once again, after Iran had attacked a second commercial vessel in the Strait of Hormuz in under 48 hours on Saturday.

Late in the day, the US military conducted more air strikes against "multiple targets in Iran". According to a fresh CENTCOM statement:

After yesterday’s U.S. strikes in response to the Iranian attack on M/V Ever Lovely, Iran was given a chance to honor the ceasefire agreement but elected not to when its forces launched a one-way attack drone that hit M/T Kiku this morning at 4:30 a.m. ET. The Panama-flagged tanker was transiting near the Strait of Hormuz with more than two-million barrels of crude oil.

CENTCOM forces launched strikes today in direct response to continued Iranian aggression against commercial shipping. U.S. military aircraft targeted Iranian military surveillance infrastructure, communication systems, air defense sites, drone storage facilities, and minelayer capabilities.

Commercial vessel transits through the Strait of Hormuz continue. U.S. forces remain vigilant, lethal, and ready.

While each side has accused the other of violating the ceasefire, neither has yet shown itself ready to just walk away from the signed US-Iran Memorandum of Understanding - even if commitments are slipping.

*  *  *

A lot of escalation has ensued in the last 48 hours, starting when Thursday Tehran struck a commercial ship in the Strait of Hormuz, after which by the end of Friday US CENTCOM confirmed a series of fresh attacks on Iranian missile and drone storage sites as well as coastal radar installations, reportedly on Sirik Island located near the Strait of Hormuz.

Referring to Thursday's attack on a vessel off Oman, the Pentagon called it a "powerful response to yesterday’s attack," in the Friday statement. By early Saturday, Iran had re-retaliated and launched a fresh drone attack on Bahrain. Additionally, another ship in the Strait of Hormuz separately came under attack Saturday.

The Ever Lovely, via Marine Traffic

The Associated Press points to the obvious potential US-Iran deal (MoU) unraveling: "The attacks across the Persian Gulf show the danger of the Iran war again spinning out of control, even after Iran and the U.S. reached an interim deal to try and agree on a final accord to end the conflict" - though neither side has as yet indicated they are walking away from the deal at this point.

According to more details from the Saturday developments:

• Bahrain said it was targeted by "a number" of Iranian drones on Saturday, accusing Tehran of "undermining peace efforts" in the region. In a statement, the country's foreign ministry said it expressed "Bahrain’s condemnation in the strongest terms of the targeting of its territory at dawn today," adding that the attacks were a "blatant threat to the security of citizens and residents".
• US Central Command announced that American aircraft had hit Iranian missile and drone storage locations as well as coastal radar sites in response to Iran striking the M/V Ever Lovely ship with a one-way attack drone as it navigated the Strait of Hormuz.
• "The Singapore-flagged cargo ship was exiting the Strait of Hormuz along the Omani coast at the time of Iran’s attack," CENTCOM said, adding that Iranian forces had "clearly violated" the ceasefire agreement.

But it remains that Iran is now firing warning shots at ships that haven't cleared permits to transit the Strait of Hormuz under Iran's own protocol, which highlights that deep divisions remain over each side's interpretation of the terms. The latest via Reuters:

• IRAN WEIGHS WALKING AWAY FROM SWISS TALKS AFTER US STRIKE
• IRAN MAY HALT SWISS TALKS AFTER US STRIKE ON SIRIK

Gulf states have newly condemned "in the strongest terms the treacherous Iranian attacks" on Bahrain, after drones hit the country's territory. The GCC statement further alleged that the Iranians targeted "civilian infrastructure and properties".

Other nations weighed in separately, with for example Kuwait's foreign ministry saying "The continuation of these aggressions, amid regional and international efforts aimed at de-escalation and reducing tensions, represents a dangerous undermining of efforts for peace and stability and a threat to the security and stability of the region," on X.

Amid all the tit-for-tat, Iran's IRGC is blaming the US for breaking it commitments under the signed Memorandum of Understanding (MoU). A Saturday statement described:

According to Article Five of the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding, arrangements for monitoring maritime traffic in the Strait of Hormuz are carried out in coordination with the Islamic Republic of Iran.

However, according to the statement, the United States sought to violate this commitment through various movements and received an appropriate response, and the same will apply in the future. If any aggression is repeated, the response will be broader."

Laden Panama-flagged VLCC KIKU (IMO: 9329796) carrying Qatar Energy oil was struck during outbound transit of the Strait of Hormuz.

This is the second vessel struck by Iran since Thursday after the PGSA reiterated that the SoH is closed to those ships that do not have… pic.twitter.com/tWqPbTswaD

— Martin Kelly (@_MartinKelly_) June 27, 2026

Al Jazeera has meanwhile reported Saturday that that IRGC ‘targets’ US military sites in region after attacks - and so the response could be ongoing.

Independent journalist and pundit Michael Tracey points out sarcastically but aptly that Indefinitely bombing Iran sounds a lot like what you might call "endless war". And so the weekly tit-for-tat escalation might grow more regular until there simply is no more MoU deal to reference back to at all.

Ironically this comes just as Israel, Lebanon, and Israel hailed the signing of a 'trilateral peace framework' in Washington - and as Hezbollah is being pushed out of a political solution in south Lebanon, while the IDF occupation of significant territory remains.

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/27/2026 - 19:30

Tehran Retaliates Against Bahrain, Kuwait After US Bombing Campaign Along Iranian Coast

Update(2300ET): Earlier the IRGC warned: "If any aggression is repeated, the response will be broader." That broader response has come in the overnight into Sunday hours: Tehran attacks Bahrain, Kuwait after US bombs Iranian coast, Al Jazeera reports:

Air raid sirens blare in Bahrain as Kuwait’s military says its air defenses are responding to "hostile missile and drone threats."

Iranian state media is also confirming the fresh 'retaliation' for limited US airstrikes over the last two days, triggered initially by the Iranians seeking to enforce 'control' of the Strait of Hormuz, by attacking no less than two foreign vessels in as many days.

Latest via the same publication:

• The US has bombed Iran for a second day, hitting the city of Sirik, Bandar-e Lengeh and Qeshm Island, following a drone attack on a commercial vessel near the Strait of Hormuz.
• Israel has bombed southern Lebanon, killing at least one person, a day after signing a framework agreement with the Lebanese government to end hostilities.
• Lebanese President Joseph Aoun asks Trump to help prevent Israeli violations, as Hezbollah rejects the agreement with Israel, describing it as “a surrender of sovereignty”.

Some unconfirmed emerging video showing some of the latest US action along Iran's coast, in a widening tit-for-tat:

US launched a fresh wave of attack against IRGC targets in Iran after Iran attacked Bahrain

A massive explosion struck Shahid Rajaee port in Bandar Abbas, southern Iran, shaking the ground and echoing through nearby towns. pic.twitter.com/RaPdGkVSsi

— IRGC NEWS (@IRGC_IRAN_News) June 28, 2026

Iran is threatening to walk away from the peace deal if the bombings continue: 

The IRGC is saying that the enemy – the United States – should know that violating the ceasefire is against the first clause of the MoU and will lead to a complete halt to the process.

It is clearly warning the United States that if these attacks continue, the MoU and the ongoing negotiations are going to come to a halt.

CENTCOM released footage from its earlier Saturday wave of attacks on Iran:

U.S. Navy and Air Force fighter jets conducted strikes tonight on 10 Iranian military targets at multiple locations in and near the Strait of Hormuz for Iran's drone attack on M/T Kiku. pic.twitter.com/Z0TLZRqmF6

— U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) June 28, 2026

*  *  *

Update1930ET): The Pentagon has sought to level the score once again, after Iran had attacked a second commercial vessel in the Strait of Hormuz in under 48 hours on Saturday.

Late in the day, the US military conducted more air strikes against "multiple targets in Iran". According to a fresh CENTCOM statement:

After yesterday’s U.S. strikes in response to the Iranian attack on M/V Ever Lovely, Iran was given a chance to honor the ceasefire agreement but elected not to when its forces launched a one-way attack drone that hit M/T Kiku this morning at 4:30 a.m. ET. The Panama-flagged tanker was transiting near the Strait of Hormuz with more than two-million barrels of crude oil.

CENTCOM forces launched strikes today in direct response to continued Iranian aggression against commercial shipping. U.S. military aircraft targeted Iranian military surveillance infrastructure, communication systems, air defense sites, drone storage facilities, and minelayer capabilities.

Commercial vessel transits through the Strait of Hormuz continue. U.S. forces remain vigilant, lethal, and ready.

While each side has accused the other of violating the ceasefire, neither has yet shown itself ready to just walk away from the signed US-Iran Memorandum of Understanding - even if commitments are slipping.

*  *  *

A lot of escalation has ensued in the last 48 hours, starting when Thursday Tehran struck a commercial ship in the Strait of Hormuz, after which by the end of Friday US CENTCOM confirmed a series of fresh attacks on Iranian missile and drone storage sites as well as coastal radar installations, reportedly on Sirik Island located near the Strait of Hormuz.

Referring to Thursday's attack on a vessel off Oman, the Pentagon called it a "powerful response to yesterday’s attack," in the Friday statement. By early Saturday, Iran had re-retaliated and launched a fresh drone attack on Bahrain. Additionally, another ship in the Strait of Hormuz separately came under attack Saturday.

The Ever Lovely, via Marine Traffic

The Associated Press points to the obvious potential US-Iran deal (MoU) unraveling: "The attacks across the Persian Gulf show the danger of the Iran war again spinning out of control, even after Iran and the U.S. reached an interim deal to try and agree on a final accord to end the conflict" - though neither side has as yet indicated they are walking away from the deal at this point.

According to more details from the Saturday developments:

• Bahrain said it was targeted by "a number" of Iranian drones on Saturday, accusing Tehran of "undermining peace efforts" in the region. In a statement, the country's foreign ministry said it expressed "Bahrain’s condemnation in the strongest terms of the targeting of its territory at dawn today," adding that the attacks were a "blatant threat to the security of citizens and residents".
• US Central Command announced that American aircraft had hit Iranian missile and drone storage locations as well as coastal radar sites in response to Iran striking the M/V Ever Lovely ship with a one-way attack drone as it navigated the Strait of Hormuz.
• "The Singapore-flagged cargo ship was exiting the Strait of Hormuz along the Omani coast at the time of Iran’s attack," CENTCOM said, adding that Iranian forces had "clearly violated" the ceasefire agreement.

But it remains that Iran is now firing warning shots at ships that haven't cleared permits to transit the Strait of Hormuz under Iran's own protocol, which highlights that deep divisions remain over each side's interpretation of the terms. The latest via Reuters:

• IRAN WEIGHS WALKING AWAY FROM SWISS TALKS AFTER US STRIKE
• IRAN MAY HALT SWISS TALKS AFTER US STRIKE ON SIRIK

Gulf states have newly condemned "in the strongest terms the treacherous Iranian attacks" on Bahrain, after drones hit the country's territory. The GCC statement further alleged that the Iranians targeted "civilian infrastructure and properties".

Other nations weighed in separately, with for example Kuwait's foreign ministry saying "The continuation of these aggressions, amid regional and international efforts aimed at de-escalation and reducing tensions, represents a dangerous undermining of efforts for peace and stability and a threat to the security and stability of the region," on X.

Amid all the tit-for-tat, Iran's IRGC is blaming the US for breaking it commitments under the signed Memorandum of Understanding (MoU). A Saturday statement described:

According to Article Five of the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding, arrangements for monitoring maritime traffic in the Strait of Hormuz are carried out in coordination with the Islamic Republic of Iran.

However, according to the statement, the United States sought to violate this commitment through various movements and received an appropriate response, and the same will apply in the future. If any aggression is repeated, the response will be broader."

Laden Panama-flagged VLCC KIKU (IMO: 9329796) carrying Qatar Energy oil was struck during outbound transit of the Strait of Hormuz.

This is the second vessel struck by Iran since Thursday after the PGSA reiterated that the SoH is closed to those ships that do not have… pic.twitter.com/tWqPbTswaD

— Martin Kelly (@_MartinKelly_) June 27, 2026

Al Jazeera has meanwhile reported Saturday that that IRGC ‘targets’ US military sites in region after attacks - and so the response could be ongoing.

Independent journalist and pundit Michael Tracey points out sarcastically but aptly that Indefinitely bombing Iran sounds a lot like what you might call "endless war". And so the weekly tit-for-tat escalation might grow more regular until there simply is no more MoU deal to reference back to at all.

Ironically this comes just as Israel, Lebanon, and Israel hailed the signing of a 'trilateral peace framework' in Washington - and as Hezbollah is being pushed out of a political solution in south Lebanon, while the IDF occupation of significant territory remains.

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/27/2026 - 19:30

Trump Signs Regenerative Agriculture Order To Boost Food Supply

Authored by Aldgra Fredly via The Epoch Times,

President Donald Trump signed an executive order on June 25 to promote regenerative agriculture practices in an effort to support farmers and boost the nation's food supply security.

President Donald Trump arrives to speak during a Rose Garden Club dinner with American farmers at the White House on June 25, 2026. Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

Regenerative agriculture is a holistic farming approach designed to restore degraded soils.

Trump said in his order that such practices can "strengthen soil health, lower input costs, improve chemical efficiency to reduce overall use, improve farm profitability, maintain yields, increase market value, expand access to new markets, and strengthen rural economies."

The order directs the Department of Agriculture (USDA), the Health and Human Services Department, and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to research the effect of cumulative exposure of chemicals in the food supply.

It also instructs USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins to expand the reach of the Regenerative Agriculture Pilot Program, share its results with stakeholders, and build public-private partnerships to support farmers seeking to adopt regenerative practices.

Trump also directed EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin to prioritize the registration of alternative crop protection tools and review data on pre-harvest desiccation uses to ensure they meet safety and labeling standards, according to a White House fact sheet.

The order was announced the same day Trump hosted a dinner for farmers in the White House Rose Garden, during which the president revealed that he had asked Congress to approve a supplemental funding bill with $11 billion in relief payments for farmers.

"It was my honor to sign an executive order directing federal agencies to accelerate agricultural innovations that give farmers and ranchers the necessary resources to ensure American crops are the healthiest, and the most abundant, and the most affordable," Trump said at the dinner. "And we're always working for the farmer. We want to make it better and easier for you."

Shortly after the order was issued, the USDA released its final Regenerative Feedstock Rule designed to help farmers generate new value from regenerative agricultural practices through biofuel markets.

Rollins said the rule creates a framework connecting regenerative agriculture practices to new markets within the biofuel supply chain for corn, soybeans, sorghum, and spring canola.

"Instead of mandates, we're creating market opportunities. Farmers who choose to implement regenerative practices will have new opportunities to earn premium prices, lower their input costs, improve soil health, and strengthen the long-term profitability of their operations," Rollins said in a statement.

The Regenerative Pilot Program, a $700 million initiative launched by the USDA last year, has completed more than 67,000 whole-farm conservation plans covering more than 49 million acres and over 1,500 conservation contracts valued at more than $200 million, according to the USDA.

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/27/2026 - 18:40

Trump Signs Regenerative Agriculture Order To Boost Food Supply

Authored by Aldgra Fredly via The Epoch Times,

President Donald Trump signed an executive order on June 25 to promote regenerative agriculture practices in an effort to support farmers and boost the nation's food supply security.

President Donald Trump arrives to speak during a Rose Garden Club dinner with American farmers at the White House on June 25, 2026. Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

Regenerative agriculture is a holistic farming approach designed to restore degraded soils.

Trump said in his order that such practices can "strengthen soil health, lower input costs, improve chemical efficiency to reduce overall use, improve farm profitability, maintain yields, increase market value, expand access to new markets, and strengthen rural economies."

The order directs the Department of Agriculture (USDA), the Health and Human Services Department, and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to research the effect of cumulative exposure of chemicals in the food supply.

It also instructs USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins to expand the reach of the Regenerative Agriculture Pilot Program, share its results with stakeholders, and build public-private partnerships to support farmers seeking to adopt regenerative practices.

Trump also directed EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin to prioritize the registration of alternative crop protection tools and review data on pre-harvest desiccation uses to ensure they meet safety and labeling standards, according to a White House fact sheet.

The order was announced the same day Trump hosted a dinner for farmers in the White House Rose Garden, during which the president revealed that he had asked Congress to approve a supplemental funding bill with $11 billion in relief payments for farmers.

"It was my honor to sign an executive order directing federal agencies to accelerate agricultural innovations that give farmers and ranchers the necessary resources to ensure American crops are the healthiest, and the most abundant, and the most affordable," Trump said at the dinner. "And we're always working for the farmer. We want to make it better and easier for you."

Shortly after the order was issued, the USDA released its final Regenerative Feedstock Rule designed to help farmers generate new value from regenerative agricultural practices through biofuel markets.

Rollins said the rule creates a framework connecting regenerative agriculture practices to new markets within the biofuel supply chain for corn, soybeans, sorghum, and spring canola.

"Instead of mandates, we're creating market opportunities. Farmers who choose to implement regenerative practices will have new opportunities to earn premium prices, lower their input costs, improve soil health, and strengthen the long-term profitability of their operations," Rollins said in a statement.

The Regenerative Pilot Program, a $700 million initiative launched by the USDA last year, has completed more than 67,000 whole-farm conservation plans covering more than 49 million acres and over 1,500 conservation contracts valued at more than $200 million, according to the USDA.

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/27/2026 - 18:40