Feb 25

Today’s News 25th February 2025

  • Born American? A Look At 'Birthright Citizenship'
    Born American? A Look At ‘Birthright Citizenship’

    Authored by Richard Samuelson via RealClearPolitics,

    Our political class is aflame, and our lawyer-ocracy is up in arms over President Trump’s executive order limiting the scope of “birthright” (or “soil-based”) citizenship to children of permanent legal residents. Children born to tourists, students from other countries, and others here on a short-term basis, plus people here illegally, are no longer to be regarded as citizens of the United States merely because their mothers happened to be on American soil when they were born.

    Is that constitutional? Does the U.S. Constitution demand that virtually everyone born on our soil (basically everyone except for the children of diplomats who, by convention, are under their home country’s laws) be considered a citizen by birth?

    Most lawyers and law professors think that the answer is yes. But is it quite so clear? The 14th Amendment reads: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” Most of the discussion of this question thus far has focused on the meaning of the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” and the prevailing view is that it was meant to include everyone who was, generally speaking, subject to American law. Although the Supreme Court has never ruled on the case of a child born to foreigners who are only here briefly, it has suggested that it would include them in the set of people who are citizens at birth.

    Critics of this position hold that the amendment applies to cases in which the U.S. has complete jurisdiction over the person and note that there are ways that the scope of American jurisdiction over citizens and permanent residents is different than for people who are merely passing through – in being subject to the draft (and there had been a draft shortly before the amendment was ratified), to jury duty, and to many taxes (particularly since the people increased American jurisdiction by adding an income tax to the constitution in 1913), among other ways.

    These discussions often turn to the debates in the Senate when they were drafting the amendment before sending it to the states so that the people, via their state legislatures, could decide if they wanted to add it to the Constitution. That’s a useful exercise, and it also would be helpful to see more discussion of what the people understood the amendment to mean when they had their state legislatures ratify it. Constitutional law is not legislation. The Constitution, including the amendments to it are the supreme law of the land because we, the people, made them so; so what we understood ourselves to be doing when we approved a text carries more weight than what senators understood themselves to be recommending to the people for approval. Our lawyers tend to think that’s too complicated. But it is not our job to make life easy for lawyers.

    As a logical and grammatical matter, the full sentence “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside” only applies to people who already reside in a state. “And” in a sentence, per basic rules of grammar and logical construction, means both parts must be true for the full statement to be true. A person who does not reside in a state is not included among the set of people described by the language of the sentence. That is the strict reading of the text. If we are to take the sentence as one having a coherent meaning as a sentence in the English language, it implies that “the jurisdiction thereof” is limited to the kind of jurisdiction that only applies to people who “reside” in a state. Thus far, our discussion has barely considered this aspect of the text. (As I was finishing up the essay, I finally happened upon one article by Andrew Hyman, hot off the press in late January, that takes this into account, but that’s a rare exception.) Can that be a logical reading? It’s actually a fairly clear line. Tourists and others here on a temporary basis are not subject to U.S. jurisdiction in many ways. They don’t have several of the responsibilities of citizens – being subject to the draft, jury duty, paying income taxes, etc. Full-time residents who live and work here are a much closer call. The Civil War era draft included aliens who intended to become citizens. They are subject to more jurisdiction than tourists. And those here in violation of our laws are yet another category.

    What is the implication of this? Can it be correct, given the lawyerly majority on the other side? Does it even make sense? Such a reading means that the text would not include people who resided in the Colorado territory before it became a state in 1876. The article Could they have meant that? Hyman finds that the issue was raised in debates over the text of the Amendment in Congress, and a change to include territories was rejected. It would not be unusual for judges, faced with the case of a person born in a federal territory, to decide that the text is imperfect and, therefore, to decide that those who reside in federal territory would also be included. (Implicitly, they would be adding “or territory” to the phrase “state wherein they reside.” Judges often do that sort of thing.) But when they do that, they are adding to the text, bringing what they take to be the spirit of the law, and using it to add to or modify the actual text. Adding those merely passing through the U.S. would be a much larger judicial edit to the text.

    As noted above, the key precedent on this subject is an 1898 case, U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark (decided 7-2 by almost exactly the same majority that gave us the execrable “separate but equal” doctrine of Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896), brought by the child of full-time residents of the U.S. who were Chinese nationals. They resided in California when Wong Kim Ark was born; hence the question of how far the line went and whether it included people who don’t reside in a state at birth was not under the court’s consideration in the decision.

    Since at least the middle of the 20th century, or perhaps the Civil Rights era of the 1960s, the 14th Amendment has been read to mean that everyone born in the U.S., except those born to diplomats, is a citizen by birth, and as noted, there is a strong consensus among our lawyers that that is the most natural, and therefore correct, reading of the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment. Interestingly, a Google search finds that the term “birthright citizenship” was almost completely absent from public discussion until roughly 1980. The term may very well have been brought into common use to rebrand the 14th Amendment, and did its work so well that it’s now taken as the common constitutional term. Before that, the law might not have been understood to apply to quite so many cases, and perhaps our language has followed.

    According to John Eastman – a leader of the move to limit the cases in which soil makes a U.S. citizen – when we ended a massive guest worker program in the 1920s at the beginning of the Depression, we sent children born to the temporary workers out of the country with their parents, and, apparently, no one said it raised a constitutional problem, implying that people in that era read the 14th Amendment as not including the children of temporary workers among the people who are citizens at birth due to the location of their mother when she gave birth to them.

    Lawyers also like to say that our law follows British common law in making all people born on our soil U.S. citizens. We, like the British, follow the Roman jus soli – the law of soil. Yet that term is entirely absent in Blackstone’s “Commentaries,” the leading British legal treatise of the 18th century. It’s also absent in the basic edition of writings of Edward Coke, the leading English jurist of the 17th century, even in Calvin’s Case (1608), a central precedent in this area of English law. To call it jus soli is likely a category error, imposing Roman law logic on Britain’s common law. British law is about allegiance, not citizenship. A Briton by birth has obligations to the king and has no right to choose to cease to be the king’s subject without the king’s consent. As all land in England belonged, per a legal fiction, to the king, being on the king’s soil was a sign that one was under the king’s protection. But location at birth was not the only such sign. Coke’s language in Calvin’s Case seems to deride the notion that soil is fundamental. It’s about being under the king’s protection, and therefore owing him personal allegiance, in a quasi-feudal sense. America, by contrast, began by rejecting that very concept. Recall that that case was about a person born in Scotland after King James VI of Scotland became King James I of England, making him king of two kingdoms at the same time. The court held that because allegiance was to the person of the king, not to England per se, a Scot born after James became King of England can inherit land in England.  In America we don’t begin with the premise that lands belong to the government first, and to individual owners second. Moreover, from the start, as a matter of principle, we have embraced citizenship instead of subjecthood, a change that includes the right to choose one’s nationality, the very right the king denied us. It was an act of treason to sign the Declaration of Independence. Someone born on the king’s soil did not have the right to do that without the king’s consent. America has always rejected the law of allegiance. Every American, unlike every Briton then, has had the right to choose not to be an American citizen anymore.

    Presumably, changes in the metes and bounds of who is a national by birth follow from that change from subject to citizen, meaning it’s wrong to assume we presumptively follow the common law of allegiance in all other regards. If the principle at the heart of our regime is republican, not monarchical, it follows that the law of citizenship will have a connection to free republican principles in a way that the king’s law allegiance did not. No one disputes that being born on U.S. soil is, generally speaking, an indication that someone is an American citizen by birth, and no one denies that being born on the king’s soil made one a British subject. Similarly no one denies that the child of an American citizen is generally a U.S. citizen. The question is how far the rules extend.

    Our first Naturalization Act, passed by the First Congress in 1790, declared that “the children of citizens of the United States that may be born beyond Sea, or out of the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural born Citizens: Provided, that the right of citizenship shall not descend to persons whose fathers have never been resident in the United States.” That’s very interesting language. It rejects allegiance and the false binary law of soil or law of blood (jus sanguinis) when constrained by republican principles that are equally “natural.” (In other words, when people tried to claim that Sens. John McCain, Ted Cruz, or Barack Obama were not eligible to be president due to the circumstances of their birth, real or imagined, they forget that the laws of the founding era suggest otherwise.) The child of any American citizen is, per the First Congress, a natural-born citizen, and eligible to be elected president. Note that it says citizenship only follows blood for one generation. It only applies to the children of active citizens, not those who have implicitly repudiated their nationality by living permanently abroad. It is a law for citizens in that sense, not a law based upon blood. That’s where “fidelity” comes in. A law of blood makes that irrelevant. The same logic would likely apply to the nature and extent of the case of soil – hence those who have chosen to “reside” in the United States.

    After drafting the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson returned to Virginia and worked on a comprehensive revision of the laws to make them accord with the change from monarchy to republic. His new law of citizenship, approved by Virginia’s legislature, ensured that all children born to current citizens are citizens, and he added, “and all who shall hereafter migrate into the same; and shall before any court of record give satisfactory proof by their own oath or affirmation, that they intend to reside therein, and moreover shall give assurance of fidelity to the commonwealth.” Note the language: Those who make it clear that they intend to reside in and who renounce their fidelity to other lands (not an explicit requirement of the king’s law, according to which the king made you an offer of subjecthood you could not refuse) are citizens, and their children are citizens at birth. That’s the very distinction the Civil War era draft law made, interestingly.

    In other words, ascertaining the limit of the law is not a question that can be addressed by the simplistic question of whether we follow a law of soil or a law of blood. The logic of the rule is itself part of the rule. Under the king’s law of allegiance, one set of metes and bounds follows to describe the set of people who are born his subject, and under a law of citizenship, it’s likely that there might be a different set of metes and bounds regarding who is a citizens at birth. It might be, however, that we never really worked through the full implications of that until we were working on the 14th Amendment.

    All of that might, on the other hand, have only a limited amount of relevance to the question of children of tourists and of others who don’t “reside” in a state or on U.S. territory (if we expand it to that). Why not? Because we are talking about an amendment, not a full statement of principles or of law. The 14th Amendment was designed to ensure that black Americans were U.S. citizens. In the Dred Scott decision of 1857, the Supreme Court ruled that black Americans, slave or free, were not and could not be U.S. citizens. The first sentence of the 14th Amendment overturned that decision. No one disputes that.

    Legal language is general. Did the language securing citizenship to black Americans also secure citizenship for a child born to people who are merely passing through the United States on a short trip? Or when working here on a short-term basis? How far does language guaranteeing citizenship to all who are “subject to the jurisdiction” of the U.S., even if only in the manner of those who “reside,” extend? And beyond that, nothing in the text says that’s a limit. If U.S. law in 1868, when we ratified the 14th Amendment, already held that children born to people in the U.S. as tourists or on a brief business trip were citizens at birth, the 14th Amendment would, obviously, not change that. If some states followed a broader rule and other states followed a narrower rule before then, it presents a complicated question. There is one case from New York state that declares that a child born to parents who were briefly in New York on a trip is a citizen by birth.

    But given how federal our republic then was, it’s likely there was no one single federal common law at the time on this subject, so one precedent from one state, or even a couple of states, would not be definitive. One or two precedents in one or two states in the decades between the founding and the Civil War is not enough to definitively prove much of anything. That is why the actual language that we the people approved when we ratified the 14th Amendment matters. It is not the last word on the subject, but the full first sentence of the 14th Amendment, read as a coherent sentence, is certainly worthy of more consideration than it has been given thus far.

    Richard Samuelson is an American historian and associate professor of government at Hillsdale College, Washington, D.C., campus.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/24/2025 – 23:25

  • The Ukraine War Will Only End On Russia's Terms, Lavrov Says
    The Ukraine War Will Only End On Russia’s Terms, Lavrov Says

    It’s been three full years since the full-on Russian invasion of Ukraine kicked off on February 24, 2022. At this point, it’s become clear to all that Russian forces control the battlefield, amid steady ongoing gains in the Donbass region.

    Even as talks with the US progress, Moscow has made clear on Monday that it will only accept a peace settlement which “suits” its interests.

    Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov issued the words while on an official visit to Turkey, and warned that European countries are trying to sabotage Trump efforts at peace.

    Via TASS

    He he emphasized that Moscow stands ready and willing to negotiate with Ukraine, Europe or “any representatives who in good faith would like to help achieve peace.”

    “But we will stop hostilities only when these negotiations produce a firm and sustainable result that suits the Russian Federation,” he said alongside his Turkish counterpart Hakan Fidan.

    Among the proposals that might stymie progress on negotiations is the possibility of a European army of some 30,000 to patrol a buffer zone inside Ukraine. Moscow has consistently rejected that NATO troops would be present along the war-torn border.

    Trump himself has shown interest in such a peacekeeping force, especially as US troops would not be part of it. Put Putin will likely fear this is just recipe for another potential future showdown.

    In separate statements Monday, Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Monday charged Europe with obstructing good faith peace efforts.

    “The Europeans continue on the path of a sanctions nosedive, on the path of conviction in the need to continue the war,” Peskov said in reaction to the EU imposing a new round of sanctions on Moscow.

    “This conviction of the Europeans completely contrasts with the mindset of finding a settlement on Ukraine, which we are now doing with the Americans,” he added. Reuters reviews of the new punitive action:

    The European Union’s latest sanctions against Moscow include a ban on third-country airlines flying to the 27-nation bloc if they carry out domestic flights in Russia, the European Commission said, opens new tab on Monday.

    The EU’s 16th sanctions package against Russia includes a ban on primary aluminum imports and the sale of gaming consoles, while also listing a cryptocurrency exchange and dozens of vessels of the so-called shadow fleet used to evade sanctions.

    At this point both the US and Russian sides plan to continue conducting the talks which began last week in Riyadh. Presumably neither Ukrainian nor European representatives will be at the table for the next rounds.

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    Each side appeared satisfied with how the first engagement went, with the Kremlin hailing the ‘successful’ betterment of relations, which has involved more staff returning to each respective embassy.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/24/2025 – 23:00

  • Sex, Castration & Butthole Zapping: NSA, CIA Confirm Secret 'Kink' Chat Room After Chris Rufo Bombshell
    Sex, Castration & Butthole Zapping: NSA, CIA Confirm Secret ‘Kink’ Chat Room After Chris Rufo Bombshell

    While the left clutched pearls over one of Elon Musk’s DOGE employees who went by the name ‘Big Balls’ online a few years ago, they’ve been dead silent over a bombshell report from Chris Rufo revealing secret NSA “sex chats” that involved at least one CIA employee that go back two years – featuring discussions involving “sex, kink, polyamory, and castration.” And butthole zapping.

    Both current and former NSA employees “provided chat logs from the NSA’s Intelink messaging program,” revealing all sorts of insane shit.

    One popular chat topic was male-to-female transgender surgery, which involves surgically removing the penis and turning it into an artificial vagina. “[M]ine is everything,” said one male who claimed to have had gender reconstruction surgery. “[I]’ve found that i like being penetrated (never liked it before GRS), but all the rest is just as important as well.” Another intelligence official boasted that genital surgery allowed him “to wear leggings or bikinis without having to wear a gaff under it.”

    These employees discussed hair removal, estrogen injections, and the experience of sexual pleasure post-castration. “[G]etting my butthole zapped by a laser was . . . shocking,” said one transgender-identifying intel employee who spent thousands on hair removal. “Look, I just enjoy helping other people experience boobs,” said another about estrogen treatments. “[O]ne of the weirdest things that gives me euphoria is when i pee, i don’t have to push anything down to make sure it aims right,” a Defense Intelligence Agency employee added. –City Journal

    Yeah…

    Oh my…

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    Both the CIA and NSA have confirmed the authenticity of the report…

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    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsWhat in the cinnamon toast fuck?

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    Update:

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    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/24/2025 – 22:35

  • Gavin Newsom Wants $40 Billion In Federal Relief For LA Fires
    Gavin Newsom Wants $40 Billion In Federal Relief For LA Fires

    Only two months ago Governor Gavin Newsom proclaimed that he was going to “Trump proof” California with a $50 million “litigation fund” designed to frustrate the President’s efforts to deport illegal immigrants.  Today, Newsom is asking the federal government for over $40 billion in relief funds for aftermath of the Los Angeles wild fires.  The question is, should Newsom get those dollars no questions asked?  Or, should California be forced to make concessions on some of their more destructive policies?  

    The “Golden State” has a long history of gorging on federal funding, often with an attitude of entitlement.  California has the highest rate of debt in the nation – It tops the list with over $500 billion while the next closest state is New York with around $300 billion.  And though Newsom has often cited the state’s large tax revenues as a rationale for federal expenditures, the state still runs an average deficit of $30 billion per year and around 35% of the state budget is built on federal funds.  In other words, they are far more reliant on the federal government than they let on.

    Democrats love to claim that red states are “supported by California tax dollars”, but in reality California can’t even support itself. 

    Which is why Newsom is back and begging for money yet again; this time to fix a calamity that could have been avoided had Democrats listened to Donald Trump and others years ago and adapted their water management protocols to better prepare for fires.   

    Newsom sent a letter Friday addressed to House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.); House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.); Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), the House Appropriations Committee chair; and Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the lead Democrat on that committee, asking for their support. 

    “Los Angeles is one of the most economically productive places on the globe, but it can only rebound and flourish with support from the federal government as it recovers from this unprecedented disaster,” Newsom wrote.  A total of 16,251 structures were destroyed as the fires tore through a combined 37,400 acres of Pacific Palisades, Malibu, Pasadena and Altadena.

    Republicans have suggested linking aid to certain policy changes, such as altering California’s water policy or imposing new voter ID requirements. 

    As with the wildfires in Maui in 2023, Democrat leaders are full of excuses and deflections on the disaster in LA.  The strategy seems to work well for them – They simply stall for a few weeks until the issue is forgotten by the public, then beg for money.  Trump’s offer of federal funds in exchange for policy changes is perhaps the only accountability that could be squeezed from progressive governments without arduous litigation.

    Dems will argue that this kind of bargaining with government funds is “hurting the victims of the fires”; but the truth is that such bargaining is necessary to prevent future disasters.  Leftist state governments continue to make the same mistakes over and over again because they are always rewarded and never punished.  Changing this dynamic is the only way to convince them to reform.  

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/24/2025 – 22:10

  • Texas Wants To Be King Of Nuclear Power As Next AI Trade Unfolds
    Texas Wants To Be King Of Nuclear Power As Next AI Trade Unfolds

    Texas is positioning itself to aggressively install next-generation nuclear reactors on its electrical grid to power artificial intelligence data centers and other electrification trends meticulously outlined in “The Next AI Trade.” 

    *    *    * 

    Authored by Dylan Baddour of Inside Climate News (emphasis ours),

    The small West Texas city of Abilene is better known for country music and rodeos than advanced nuclear physics. But that’s where scientists are entering the final stretch of a race to boot up the next generation of American atomic energy. 

    Amid a flurry of nuclear startups around the country, Abilene-based Natura Resources is one of just two companies with permits from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to construct a so-called “advanced” reactor. It will build its small, one megawatt molten salt reactor beneath a newly-completed laboratory at Abilene Christian University, in an underground trench 25 feet deep and 80 feet long, covered by a concrete lid and serviced by a 40-ton construction crane. 

    Rusty Towell, the founding director of Abilene Christian University’s Nuclear Energy Experimental Testing, describes the workings of a molten salt testing device installed in the NEXT lab at Abilene Christian University. Credit: Ronald W. Erdrich/Abilene Reporter-News

    The other company, California-based Kairos Power, is building its 35 megawatt test reactor in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, the 80-year capital of American nuclear power science. Both target completion in 2027 and hope to usher in a new chapter of the energy age. 

    “A company and school no one has heard of has gotten to the forefront of advanced nuclear,” said Rusty Towell, a nuclear physicist at Abilene Christian University and lead developer of Natura’s reactor. “This is going to bless the world.”

    The U.S. Department of Energy has been working for years to resuscitate the American nuclear sector, advancing the development of new reactors to meet the enormous incoming electrical demands of big new industrial facilities, from data centers and Bitcoin mines to chemical plants and desalination facilities. 

    Leaders in Texas, the nation’s largest energy producer and consumer, have declared intentions to court the growing nuclear sector and settle it in state. The project at Abilene Christian University is just one of several early advanced reactor deployments already planned here.

    Dow Chemical plans to place small reactors made by X-energy at its Seadrift complex on the Gulf Coast. Last month, Natura announced plans to power oilfield infrastructure in the Permian Basin. And in February, Texas A&M University announced that four companies, including Natura and Kairos, would build small, 250 megawatt commercial-scale reactors at a massive new “proving grounds” near its campus in College Station. 

    “We need energy in Texas, we need a lot of it and we need it fast,” said state Sen. Charles Perry, chairman of the Senate Committee on Water, Agriculture and Rural Affairs. “The companies that are coming here are going to need a different type of energy long term.”

    During this year’s biennial legislative session, state lawmakers are hoping to make billions of dollars of public financing available for new nuclear projects, and to pass other bills in support of the sector. 

    “If we do what we’re asked to do from industry groups out here, if we do what we think we should do and we know we should do, we could actually put a stake in the ground that Texas is the proving ground for these energies,” Perry said, speaking this month in the state capitol at a nuclear power forum hosted by PowerHouse Texas, a nonprofit that promotes energy innovation. 

    But, he added, “Texas is going to have to decide: At what level of risk is it prudent for taxpayer dollars to be risked?”

    The first new reactors might be commercially ready within five years, he said; most are 10 to 20 years away. 

    Dozens of proposed new reactor designs promise improved efficiency and safety over traditional models with less hazardous waste. While existing nuclear reactors use cooling systems filled with water, so-called “advanced” reactor designs use alternatives like molten salt or metal. It enables them, in theory, to operate at a higher temperature and lower pressure, increasing the energy output while decreasing the risks of leaks or explosions.

    “Texas is going to have to decide: At what level of risk is it prudent for taxpayer dollars to be risked?” — State Sen. Charles Perry

    Before it can be built, each design is extensively reviewed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in a yearslong process to ensure they meet safety requirements.

    “We understand how much work we’re facing and getting that done means finding every appropriate efficiency in our reviews,” said Scott Burnell, public affairs officer for the NRC. 

    The commission is also reviewing a permit application by Washington-based TerraPower, founded by Bill Gates in 2006, to build a full commercial nuclear power plant in Wyoming. It expects to receive a construction permit application for the X-energy reactor at Dow in Texas this year, Burnell said.

    After construction, the companies will require a separate permit to operate their projects. None have sought an operating license for an advanced nuclear reactor, but Natura plans to file its application this year.

    For Towell, an Abilene native and the son of two ACU faculty members, this moment was a decade in the making. In 2015 he founded the NEXT Lab at ACU for advanced nuclear testing, got a $3 million donation from a wealthy West Texas oilman in 2017, entered into partnership with the Energy Department in 2019 and formed the company Natura in 2020. Construction finished in 2023 on NEXT’s shimmering new facility. And in 2024, the NRC issued a permit to build the first advanced reactor at an American university. 

    What are Advanced Nuclear Reactors?

    Towell, a former instructor at the U.S. Naval Nuclear Power School, said these new projects represent the first major advancement in American nuclear power technology in 70 years. While layers and layers of safety systems have been added, the basic reactor design has remained unchanged. 

    It uses a cooling system of circulating water to avoid overheating, melting down and releasing its radioactive contents into the atmosphere. The system operates at extremely high pressure to keep the water in liquid state far above its boiling point. If circulation stops due to power loss or malfunction, a buildup of pressure can cause an explosion, as it did at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan in 2011. 

    In contrast, new “advanced” reactor designs use alternatives to water for cooling, like liquid metal or special gases. 

    Natura’s design, like many others, uses molten salt. It’s not table salt but fluoride salt, a corrosive, crystalline substance that melts around 750 degrees Fahrenheit and remains liquid until 2,600 degrees under regular pressure.

    As a result, the reactor can operate at extremely high temperatures without high pressure. If the system ruptures, it won’t jettison a plume of steam, but instead leak a molten sludge that hardens in place. 

    “It doesn’t poof into the air and drift around the world,” Towell said. “It drips down to a catchpan and freezes to a solid.” 

    Rather than solid fuel rods, Natura’s design also uses a liquid uranium fuel that is dissolved into the molten coolant. According to Towell, a former research fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory, that decreases the amount of radioactive waste produced by the reactor and makes it easier to recycle.

    The Kairos reactor design uses molten salt coolant with hundreds of thousands of uranium fuel “pebbles,” while the X-energy design uses fuel pebbles with a gas coolant. 

    Critically, many new reactor designs are also small and modular. Instead of massive, custom construction projects, they are meant to be built in factories with assembly line efficiency and then shipped out on truck trailers and installed on site. That will allow large industrial facilities or data centers to operate their own power sources independent from public electrical grids. 

    Natura president Doug Robison, a retired oil company executive who worked 13 years as an ExxonMobil landman, said small reactors could run oilfield infrastructure in the Permian Basin, from pumpjacks to compressor stations.

    “By powering the oil and gas industry, which uses a tremendous amount of power for their operations, we’re helping alleviate the grid pressure,” he said. 

    He also wants to power new treatment plants for the enormous quantities of wastewater produced each day in the Permian Basin. In January, Natura announced a partnership with the state-funded Texas Produced Water Consortium at Texas Tech University aimed at using small reactors to purify oilfield wastewater, most of which is currently pumped underground for disposal.

    “It Always Gets Back to the Funding”

    The new reactor projects fit into plans by state leaders to establish Texas as a global leader of advanced nuclear reactor technology. In 2023, Gov. Greg Abbott directed the state’s Public Utility Commission to study the question and produce a report. 

    “Texas is well-positioned to lead the country in the development of ANRs,” said the 78-page report, issued late last year. “Texas can lead by cutting red tape and establishing incentives to accelerate advanced nuclear deployment, overcome regulator hurdles and attract investment.”

    Rusty Towell explains to Sen. John Cornyn about the molten salt technology that will be employed in Abilene Christian University’s forthcoming nuclear research reactor. The pit is where the reactor will be installed. Credit: Ronald W. Erdrich/Abilene Reporter-News

    The report made several recommendations, and state lawmakers this year have already filed bills to enact several of them, including the creation of a Texas Advanced Nuclear Authority and a nuclear permitting officer. Most significantly, the report also recommended two new public funds to support nuclear energy deployment, including one modeled after the Texas Energy Fund, which was created in 2023 and made $5 billion in financing available for new gas power plants.  

    “When I talk to folks, it always gets back to the funding,” said Thomas Gleeson, chairman of the Public Utility Commission, during the PowerHouse forum. “All of those issues are somewhat ancillary to: How are we going to fund this?”

    Gleeson said developers will expect the state to put up at least $100 million per project through public-private partnerships in order to help reduce financial risk. 

    “Given the load growth in this state that we’re projecting, if you want clean air and you want a reliable grid, you have to be in favor of nuclear,” he said.

    Critics of the plan oppose the use of public money on private projects and worry about safety. 

    “We don’t use tax dollars to fund a bunch of experimental and pie-in-the-sky designs that should be the responsibility of private industry,” said John Umphress, a retired Austin Energy program specialist who is evaluating the nuclear efforts on contract for the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen. “Nobody has really penciled out the cost because there’s still a lot of proof of concept that’s going to have to be pursued before these things get built.”

    Umphress raised concerns over materials in development to withstand the astronomical temperatures and extremely corrosive qualities of molten salt coolants. 

    He also noted that the U.S. still lacks a permanent repository for nuclear waste following decades of unsuccessful efforts. Most waste today is stored on site in specialized interim facilities at nuclear power plants, which wouldn’t be possible if small reactors were deployed to individual industrial projects. 

    “That’s the big issue that we still haven’t solved, but it’s not stopping some of these developers from pushing forward with their designs,” he said. “They’re hoping the federal government will take ownership of the waste and be responsible for its storage and disposal.”

    During the PowerHouse forum, officials expressed hope that the private sector would develop a solution after new reactor projects create demand for waste disposal. 

    The Energy Proving Ground

    Those reactor projects are still many years away. So far, the NRC has only authorized advanced reactor construction for university research. Next it will issue permits for larger commercial reactors before they can be deployed. 

    Perhaps the largest early deployment of commercial advanced reactors is set to take place at Texas A&M University. In February, the school announced that four companies had committed to install their commercial reactor designs at a new 2,400-acre “Energy Proving Ground” near its College Station campus. 

    The site is an old Army air base, currently home to vehicle crash test facilities and an advanced warfare development complex. 

    The university will build infrastructure there and help streamline permitting for the reactor projects, said Joe Elabd, vice chancellor for research at the Texas A&M System. The university is requesting $200 million in state appropriations to help develop the site, he said.

    “We’re providing a little bit more of a plug-and-play site for these companies, as opposed to them going to a true greenfield and having to do everything for themselves,” he said. 

    Reactors on the site will be connected to Texas’ electrical GRID, Elabd said. 

    A&M began seeking proposals from companies to build at the site last August, and a panel of university experts selected the four finalists, which include Natura and Kairos. 

    A Kairos spokesperson, Christopher Ortiz, said the company is building a manufacturing facility in Albuquerque, New Mexico, which will produce the reactors deployed to Texas A&M. He said the company is currently working to identify sites for future commercial reactors, evaluating factors like workforce availability, existing infrastructure and community support. 

    “The Texas A&M site presents a unique opportunity to site multiple commercial power plants in one location, which makes it particularly attractive,” he said.

    The site will also include Terrestrial Energy, a Canadian company. And it will include Aalo Atomics, a two-year-old investor-funded startup that is currently building a 40,000-square-foot reactor factory in Austin, which it plans to unveil in April. 

    More than modular reactors, Aalo plans to produce entire modular power plants, called Aalo Pods, including several reactors, a turbine and a generator, which are designed to be installed at data centers.

    “It’s made in the factory, shipped to the site and assembled like Legos,” said Aalo CEO Matt Loszak. 

    He estimated five to 10 years for deployment at the A&M site but said that depended on continued financial support from investors. Aalo is developing its reactor design at the Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory, a 70-year-old national nuclear research center. 

    But Loszak, a former software engineer from Canada, decided to locate his factory in Texas, he said, to be close to massive incoming energy demands and to take advantage of the state’s business-friendly approach to regulation. 

    “Politicians here are really pro-nuclear, they want to see nuclear get built, and that’s not the case in other places across the country,” he said. “From a regulatory and permitting perspective, it’s a great place to build stuff.”

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/24/2025 – 21:45

  • US Flies Stratofortress Nuclear-Capable Bomber, F-35 Jets Near Russian Border
    US Flies Stratofortress Nuclear-Capable Bomber, F-35 Jets Near Russian Border

    On Monday the Pentagon sent a US Air Force B-52H Stratofortress strategic bomber and a formation of supporting fighter jets over Estonian airspace, very close to Russia’s doorstep.

    Crucially the large bomber is capable of carrying nuclear weapons, and reports say the accompanying F-35A Lightning II fighter jets approached the Russian border during the flight. Watch the provocative flyover of Baltic territory below:

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    The air traffic monitoring site FlightRadar24 confirmed and tracked the bomber flight group’s path, also at a moment NATO has been sending increased air patrol missions over the Baltic region, which Moscow has complained about.

    These flights have been supported by NATO’s Joint Expeditionary Force, and come amid months of controversy over allegations that Russian ‘shadow fleet’ tankers are damaging telecom cables under the Baltic Sea.

    This also appears a response to Russian aircraft buzzing the Alaskan air defense identification zone (ADIZ) just days ago.

    North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) tracked Russian aircraft off Alaska on February 19. It was an unspecified amount and type of Russian aircraft, according to a NORAD statement, but typically Russia sends its own long-range bombers on such flights.

    As part of the aforementioned NATO integrated mission, the US recently deployed a pair of B-52H Stratofortress strategic bombers to Mihail Kogălniceanu Air Base in Romania, which is not far from the Ukrainian border.

    Via FlightRadar

    This means that even as the Trump administration rapidly pursues a peace deal with Moscow related to the Ukraine war, tensions between Russia and the Western alliance continue to soar and be on edge.

    While Russia semi-regularly flies bombers off Alaska in international airspace, it has not actually stationed bombers on the ground at bases in the vicinity of North America. Certainly the US parking bombers in NATO ‘eastern flank’ member Romania has set off alarm bells at the Kremlin.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/24/2025 – 21:20

  • Multiple Shooters Were At The July 4 Highland Park Massacre, Bombshell Research Suggests
    Multiple Shooters Were At The July 4 Highland Park Massacre, Bombshell Research Suggests

    Authored by Ken Silva via Headline USA,

    Jury selection started Monday for the man accused of slaughtering seven people at a suburban Chicago Independence Day parade nearly three years ago. But a day before trial proceedings began, a trustworthy researcher released compelling evidence suggesting there were multiple shooters at that July 4, 2022, massacre.

    FILE – Robert E. Crimo III attends the hearing on motions before Judge Victoria A. Rossetti at the Lake County Courthouse in Waukegan, Ill., Thursday, Nov. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh, Pool, File)

    The research comes from Becca Spinks, whose past work has helped put child predators behind bars. Spinks is working on a multi-part series on the Highland Park shooting, which she’s generously allowed Headline USA to run in its entirety.

    Spinks’ full series is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand the entire context of the Highland Park shooting and its alleged perpetrator, Robert Crimo III, also known as Bobby.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    However, perhaps the biggest revelation from her series is worth emphasizing in a standalone article: It looks like there were multiple shooters at Highland Park.

    Indeed, Spinks noted that the official story has Crimo committing the entire shooting from atop the Ross Cosmetics building, a local store on the northwest corner of Central Avenue and 2nd Street. While the evidence clearly shows that Crimo was certainly near Ross Cosmetics armed with an AR-15, two of the shooting victims were totally out of his vantage point, as well as that of the Ross Cosmetics rooftop, according to Spinks.

    “The two victims at the far back of Port Clinton Square were completely obscured by the side of Walker Bros,” she noted, also publishing a photo of the scene she described. “Both victims were grievously injured and covered in massive quantities of blood, indicating they died on the spot. This theory was further supported by the absence of blood trails that might indicate they were dragged.”

    A photo taken at the approximate position of one of the deceased victims. Ross Cosmetics, where Bobby Crimo is alleged to have been shooting from, is across the street and to the left, completely obscured by Walker Bros restaurant.

    Further supporting the multi-shooter theory are witness statements.

    “Some saw a person dressed in black on top of Ross Cosmetics, some saw a person dressed in white wearing a hat. More than one witness described a man with a yellow backpack running away from the scene (Bobby was not carrying, nor did he even possess, a yellow backpack.),” Spinks noted. “Some eyewitnesses were clearly wrong about their descriptions of the shooter and at least one seemed to be purposefully lying.”

    Spinks focused on someone she found to be particularly credible, witness and near victim Michael Schwartz.

    “I saw this guy shooting, I saw where he was, I saw his eyes, and there was no question this was the only shooter and he was on the ground. I don’t know where they’re getting this roof stuff,” Schwartz told the media, describing an athletic man positioned in a “true military crouch” and whose demeanor was “military style methodical.”

    “Mr. Schwartz is a uniquely reliable witness because of the amount of detail included in his testimony. Studies have shown that eyewitnesses who include the most detail are usually the most reliable. Strengthening his credibility even further was his refusal to adjust his memory of the incident, even under the influence of external suggestion,” Spinks noted.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    “But there’s another reason that his memory of the event felt like the most important one: it made the most sense. A shooter standing at the corner of 2nd Street and Central Avenue, directly in front of Port Clinton Square, would have had a direct line of sight to the two victims laying at the back of the plaza next to Walker Bros, a position that was completely obscured from Ross Cosmetics.”

    The Crimo trial is expected to last for months. Headline USA will continue to provide coverage as it develops.

    Ken Silva is the editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/jd_cashless.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/24/2025 – 20:55

  • Tuberculosis Outbreaks Emerge As Illegals Pose Biosecurity Threat For Nation
    Tuberculosis Outbreaks Emerge As Illegals Pose Biosecurity Threat For Nation

    Alarm bells are sounding over the biosecurity threat posed by the illegal alien invasion as concerns mount over the spread of infectious diseases across the Homeland. Millions of migrants were dumped into the country by the Biden-Harris globalist regime without proper vetting—leaving citizens to bear the burden of what a retired CIA officer describes as the “public health consequences of Biden-era open border policies.”

    Legal migrants and refugees must have a medical examination for US entry. Yet the Biden administration recklessly dumped millions of illegals into the US through open borders and a complex web of NGOs. These illegals have had no proper medical evaluation of skin test/chest x-ray examination for tuberculosis (TB). They may expose citizens in the first world to third-world diseases eradicated a generation ago. 

    “Put simply, the Biden administration’s actions allowed millions of individuals to enter the country illegally and bring with them all of the diseases to which they had been exposed. We invited every microbe on the planet onto our soil,” former CIA operations officer Sam Faddis wrote on his Substack. 

    “Now we are facing the consequences,” Faddis warned, pointing out: “Epidemics don’t start as roaring fires. They start slowly and then expand, gathering speed as they go. Multiple such epidemics are already underway, and we are far behind in our efforts to control them.” 

    What the heck is happening in Kansas? 

    And Texas! 

    Faddis continued:

    Tuberculosis, however, is not the only disease with which we need to be concerned. There are current outbreaks of measles and varicella (chickenpox) on both sides of the Texas-Mexico border. In Piedras Negras, Coahuila, the border city across the Rio Grande from Eagle Pass, Texas at least 60 young children have tested positive for varicella. In South Plains, Texas there have been at least 90 cases of the measles. That outbreak has apparently now spread to New Mexico.

    According to a Concho Valley News report, sixteen patients in Texas have been hospitalized. Five of the cases are reported to have been vaccinated against the disease. The remainder of the cases were unvaccinated or had a vaccination status listed as unknown.

    Keep in mind that this is what has been reported to date. We detect outbreaks of a disease when people seek medical care. That means they are already sick and they have likely already passed on the disease to others, who themselves have already infected yet more individuals. We are always running behind even as the rate at which the disease is spreading is increasing.

    Biden and his cronies opened the nation to attack by every disease on the planet. We are only now beginning to see how much damage they did. Deporting illegals is a good first step, but unfortunately, the microbes they brought with them will stay.

    A consequence of open borders is now being realized not just as a national security threat but also as a biosecurity threat, as once-eradicated diseases in the first world remerge at an alarming rate. This is unacceptable and was only made possible by globalist Democrats. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/24/2025 – 20:30

  • It's Time To Stop Giving The NFL Our Tax Dollars
    It’s Time To Stop Giving The NFL Our Tax Dollars

    Submitted by Samantha M of Sports and Nonsense

    “END RACISM.” The NFL has had these ridiculous two words displayed in giant font across every end zone in every stadium and at every game throughout the season since 2020. It has since decided to stop doing it after the 2024 season concluded. Remind me, what happened in 2020-2024 that stopped happening in 2025?

    In case you forgot, Donald Trump won the election in landslide fashion and the NFL made a business decision to once again go with the tide. “Biden bad. Trump good.” This is presumably how the NFL front office decide things based on how quickly they seem to change their entire ethos. They didn’t really change though. If a player openly supports President Trump, it is kind of quietly frowned upon instead of being outright cancelled as it would have been in 2020-2024.

    My question is if the NFL blanket agrees with and is seemingly subservient to a political party instead of what would be best for their fans and investors, then why are we the U.S. taxpayer having our money given to them? Why are we allowing them to maintain antitrust protections? Why is there no increase in oversight or contractual revenue sharing? Why are we not more selective in allowing them to choose who their sponsors are? Why are we not getting more for our money aside from unreliable economic models? Why are they not mandated to stay politically neutral? All of these are fair questions that you, the NFL investor, should have answered.

    Let’s look first at how ridiculously easy it was for the left to infiltrate the NFL, which is a multibillion-dollar organization by the way. “END RACISM.” Does anyone else find it absurd that the NFL is painting “end racism” in ten-foot-tall letters at stadiums filled with tens of thousands of white fans who paid an average ticket price of $216 each to watch teams that are 70% black play on one of the two days they have off from work? Does the NFL think these people are mostly racist and paid $216 dollars to show up and celebrate their racist ways with one another?

    They of course do not think that. They don’t really seem to think anything. They seem to allow influence from the left to decide what they think and what they tell their fans to think. This is where we start to get into a problem area. Like it or not the NFL has major influence over people, especially youth, in this country. I for one would like the NFL to stop telling all the kids in this country that white people are evil, and that racism is this very real monster that people of color face 24 hours a day 7 days a week in America. Stop telling everyone that because of white people and institutional racism, every black and brown person in America can’t get an education or be successful. A league that allowed “race norming” up until 2021 (that is the practice of assuming that blacks have a lower cognitive function than whites from birth,) to be used as a defense by the NFL to have to NOT PAY retired black players with head injuries (really, they did that) now wants to tell us that we are all racist? Doth protest too much, Mr. Goodell. Maybe the NFL does need to “END RACISM” …. in its own offices.

    Let us for a second put aside the 4 years of annoying marketing campaigns that the NFL spent tens of millions of dollars on (that could have helped a lot of inner-city kids go to college by the way,) and let us look at some quick stats. While the Democrat party and former President and leader of said party does not think that black and brown people know how to use the internet or (checks notes) know how to get to a Walgreens…

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    I actually do think all black and brown people know how to use the internet and go to Walgreens. If they would like they can go to census.gov and look at the stats I just found there. One stat in particular stood out to me. In 1940 the percent of black people with a high school diploma was around 7%. In the year 2000 that number had increased to 72%. Every decade it went up. The NFL has assured me that America does not care about black people, and they are left behind in institutions like the public school system because of institutional racism. This is objectively false, and we have metrics that prove it. Saying things are mostly fine doesn’t get hate clicks though. It doesn’t sell shirts that show your support for a problem that does not exist. If you are not wearing your BLM shirt to your kid’s game how will all the other upper middle-class parents know you are not a racist?!

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Why are you having your tax dollars handed over to these assholes? You are having BILLIONS of your tax dollars given to the NFL, even if you are not a fan. The NFL gets tax funding from the states they put teams in. They are given billions to build stadiums, but they also receive hidden subsidies in the form of heavily discounted utility services or police security services. They sell club boxes for millions of dollars to major companies who can write these purchases off at tax time. The rich get richer and continue to align themselves with the guy who said black people can’t get to Walgreens because they don’t know how to use google maps. What do you get? Oh, well you get called a racist bigot for wearing a red hat and told to go fuck yourself.

    Now let’s look at the antitrust protection.  Per a Bing search I did while in line at Walgreens: “The NFL has an antitrust exemption that allows it to operate under certain legal protections. This exemption was granted by President John F. Kennedy in the early 1960s, permitting the league to collectively negotiate television broadcast rights as a single entity, which is a significant advantage in the sports industry. However, the NFL has faced challenges regarding this exemption; for instance, the Supreme Court has ruled that the NFL must be considered as 32 separate teams when selling branded merchandise, indicating that the exemption is not absolute. Additionally, while the NFL has secured some limited antitrust exemptions, it does not have a blanket exemption, which has influenced its operational history. Overall, the antitrust exemption allows the NFL to classify itself as a “sports entertainment” business, which has implications for how it conducts its business.”

    The supporters of the NFL antitrust protection and tax money payouts will say “But the NFL will provide jobs and revenue to these cities.”

    The NFL adds five billion dollars annually to the U.S. economy. That is what the study conducted by the (checks notes) NFL players association has discovered.

    Now let’s look at a little thing I like to call reality. There are almost never actual profit-sharing agreements between an NFL team and the local economies they profess to care so much about. They instead rely on unreliable economic models of what the NFL team will in theory bring to the local economy by way of jobs and local business revenue increases during event day. They rely on local and state politicians to spread this message to their constituents in order to get the votes needed to secure the funding.

    “But Samantha surely the owners have good reasons for why the fans should pay them tax dollars for new stadiums?” you may be saying to yourself at this point in the story. Well, let’s ask billionaire and Panthers owner David Tepper. Hey Dave, why do you even need a new stadium? Your current stadium is not even that old. “You know, at some point that building will fall down,” Tepper said. “I said it before, and I’ll say it again. I’m not building a stadium alone. The community’s going to have to want it.”  That is a real quote by the way. Go and look it up. Tepper said that his stadium may just fall down. His reasoning for why it will fall down is “trust me bro.”

    I am sure that we can all trust the economic models used by the NFL as well as trust the local and state politicians the NFL has gotten to agree with them on said studies in order to get your vote and ultimately your tax money. I for one can never think of a time a politician lied to me. I am sure it is the same for you, dear reader. Now go quickly and vote for a new stadium before your house falls down!

    You work hard for your money, and you should not allow your political leaders to just give it away to whoever can make them wealthier and better off. Demand more of them and of the companies you choose to give you money to. If you don’t, who will? Why are we giving our tax money to an organization that has deep ties to a single party and who continue to spread that party’s message? It has to stop. I would suggest the next time the NFL wants to hit you up for some tax money to build a new stadium you tell them to agree up front for a full revenue sharing program and 3rd party oversight of all funding as well as 3rd party reviews of profit and loss. If they refuse kindly tell them to find the nearest Walgreens, go there, and then fuck all the way off.

    While the NFL and scam networks like MSNBC lie about racism day in and day out to profit off of hate and self-loathing, I think that it is important to recognize that racism and awful things like slavery did exist in this country and those things were awful. Racism in all forms is awful. There was a very real fight by very evil people to prevent civil rights for all in this country. Pretending that these atrocities are still the mainstay practice of everyday Americans so you can get hate clicks and sell t-shirts to retarded upper middle class wine moms is grotesque. Most all Americans are like me and think that racism, bigotry, and sexism are bad. We think that everyone no matter what color or gender they are should be afforded the same rights and constitutional protections. 99% of the time this is the case. So, can the two historically racist organizations, the NFL and the Democrat Party please stop telling all of us that we are racist? Oh, and stop taking our tax money for bullshit reasons to make yourselves richer.

    Thanks, signed every normal person in America

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/24/2025 – 20:05

  • "Waste Of Taxpayer Money": Trump Admin Looks To Sell Nancy Pelosi Federal Building In San Francisco
    “Waste Of Taxpayer Money”: Trump Admin Looks To Sell Nancy Pelosi Federal Building In San Francisco

    The Trump administration plans to sell two major federal buildings in San Francisco, including the recently renamed Nancy Pelosi Federal Building, according to Fox News.

    Formerly the San Francisco Federal Building, the 18-story tower sits in a crime-ridden area plagued by drug dealing and illegal markets.

    How apropos for a building named after a woman who helped oversee the decline of San Francisco. 

    Also up for potential sale is the 1930s-era federal building at 50 United Nations Plaza, home to the GSA’s regional headquarters.

    Local reports, citing a GSA document, list both properties as “non-core” assets.

    Federal employees at the Nancy Pelosi Federal Building were ordered to work from home in 2023 due to worsening safety concerns, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, had called for its closure over rampant drug dealing at its doorstep.

    Former Rep. Jackie Speier accused Trump of political retaliation, telling KGO, “It’s another example of how he is coming after Democrats. He’s coming after California, and it’s all about payback.” She warned that leasing the building could become more costly, as taxpayers would cover property taxes instead of benefiting from federal ownership.

    Originally opened in 2007 as a $144 million energy-efficient “green” project, the 7th Street federal building was labeled by Trump in a 2020 executive order as “one of the ugliest structures in their city.” Developer Andy Ball, who worked on the project, called it a “waste of taxpayer money from day one,” estimating costs were “50% greater” than if privately funded. “No investor would have built this building,” he added.

    The Fox News report wrote that the potential sale aligns with the Trump administration’s broader effort to shrink government bureaucracy through Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Meanwhile, San Francisco faces a commercial real estate crisis, with downtown vacancy rates hitting 37% last year, including 55% in the Mid-Market area.

    Security at the Pelosi building was increased after its December renaming, yet locals told KGO-TV that crime simply shifted a block away, leaving federal employees protected while ordinary citizens remained vulnerable. The 2,000-worker-capacity building houses offices for Pelosi, HHS, Social Security, Transportation, Labor, Agriculture, and HUD.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/24/2025 – 19:40

  • TSA Under Biden Focused On Speeding-Up Checkpoints For Illegal Aliens Without IDs, Not National Security
    TSA Under Biden Focused On Speeding-Up Checkpoints For Illegal Aliens Without IDs, Not National Security

    Submitted by Breanna Morello, author of Breanna’s Newsletter

    During the Biden Administration, expediting TSA security checkpoints took precedence over national security concerns. Through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit I filed after TSA stonewalled my initial request—I’ve exclusively obtained the protocols that allowed illegal aliens to board commercial flights with IDs under Biden’s watch. TSA officials claimed these documents didn’t exist during his tenure, but the Trump Administration has since granted me access to this information.

    On March 26, 2021, TSA issued “a revised Operations Directive to address a significant increase in the number of non-U.S. citizens at certain airports who do not have acceptable ID documents.”

    The OD added a series of DHS-provided documents that were suddenly acceptable for illegal aliens traveling without IDs. Here’s the list of those documents that were suddenly deemed acceptable:

    • Warrant for Arrest of Alien
    • Warrant of Removal/Deportation
    • Order of Removal on Recognizance
    • Order of Supervision
    • Notice to Appear
    • Arrival and Departure Form
    • Alien Booking Record

    These documents could be displayed electronically at TSA security checkpoints, meaning an illegal alien could present a photo or screenshot on their device, and TSA agents were permitted to grant them passage.

    On April 2021, TSA rolled out a CBP One Pilot program. That program was led by Director of Aviation Coordination Julian E Williams and Director of Capability Management and Innovation Requirements and Capability Analysis Melissa Conley.

    Source

    The primary goal of the pilot program wasn’t tied to national security but rather to reduce wait times at TSA security checkpoints. This focus is emphasized repeatedly throughout the Concept of Operations.

    In the document, TSA says the influx of illegals without IDs “places a severe burden on TSA checkpoints when attempting to vet multiple individuals.”

    The document goes on to brag about reducing the wait times since rolling this pilot program out, “use of CBP OneTM also resulted in an efficiency improvement in process cycle time over the IVCC procedures. The average cycle time for ID verification with CBP OneTMwas 1.48 minutes as compared to an average IVCC cycle time of 12.87 minutes, an 88.50% reduction of average cycle time per individual.““CBP OneTM, TSA partnered with CBP to investigate adapting the app for use by TSA as a viable, effective, and efficient operational alternative solution to validate travel documentation for adult non-U.S. citizens with valid boarding passes who are not in possession of acceptable travel documents and are subject to ID validation.”

    The pilot program allowed “TSA personnel use a TSA-issued smartphone equipped with the CBP OneTM app to take a photograph of that individual and transmit the biometric through the app for comparison with CBP records.”

    The CBP One Pilot also advised illegal aliens that the capturing of their facial biometrics was optional. According to the Patriot Act, all non-U.S. citizens must submit their biometrics to DHS.

    Here are a list of the airports that participated in the Pilot Program for CBP One:

    • Alexandria International Airport, Louisiana (AEX)
    • Austin – Bergstrom International Airport, Texas (AUS)
    • Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, Texas (DFW)
    • Denver International Airport, Colorado (DEN)
    • Fort Lauderdale – Hollywood International Airport, Florida (FLL)
    • George Bush Intercontinental Airport, Texas (IAH)
    • Miami International Airport, Florida (MIA)
    • Monroe Regional Airport, Louisiana (MLU)
    • Palm Springs International Airport, California (PSP)
    • Shreveport Regional Airport, Louisiana (SHV)
    • Yuma International Airport,Arizona(NYL)

    The Biden administration jeopardized national security by dispersing unvetted illegal aliens across the country. How many terrorists might now reside among us? We could learn the answer through harsh consequences if the Trump administration fails to swiftly locate those spread nationwide during Biden’s tenure.

    The CBP One Pilot program report can be found here.

    Without your support, I cannot file lawsuits and uncover stories like these. Please consider subscribing to my Substack page and supporting my work as an independent journalist.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/24/2025 – 19:15

  • "I'll Send You My Address": Tucker Carlson Responds After Dan Crenshaw Death Threat
    “I’ll Send You My Address”: Tucker Carlson Responds After Dan Crenshaw Death Threat

    Update (2055ET): Tucker Carlson responded to Dan Crenshaw’s threat to “fuckin’ kill’ him if he ever sees him.

    “Why don’t you come sit for an interview and we’ll see how you do? I’ll send you my address,” Carlson posted on X in response to Elon Musk asking why Crenshaw is “homicidal” over the journalist.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Journalist Steven Edginton, who interviewed Crenshaw, asked the same question…

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Of note, it appears that GB News has deleted the video of the interaction!

    Earlier:

    Noted neocon Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) threatened to kill journalist Tucker Carlson if the two ever cross paths.

    When asked by GB News correspondent Steven Edginton towards the end of an interview if he had ever met Carlson, Crenshaw – aka “Eye Patch McCain” replied: “If I ever meet him I’ll fuckin’ kill him,” adding “No seriously, I would kill him.“

    Watch:

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    *  *  *

    Last Chance! You can support ZeroHedge with the purchase of a ZeroHedge Multitool – on sale until midnight tonight first thing in the morning. Comes with ZH logo belt sheath.

    Click pic… add to cart (grab 2 for free shipping)… check out… receive high quality multitool…  Satisfaction guaranteed or your money back!

    *  *  *

    When asked by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) if he made the threat, Crenshaw lied – replying “lol, no.”

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Here’s Crenshaw discussing Carlson earlier in the interview:

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    Edginton confirmed it as well, posting on X: “After our interview I asked Dan Crenshaw if he had ever met @TuckerCarlson. He said: “I would kill him if I saw him” I laughed it off. He said: “No seriously, I would kill him“

    *  *  *

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    There’s longstanding animosity between Crenshaw and Carlson, with Crenshaw calling the former Fox News host a “click chaser” and “cowardly know-nothing elitist who is full of shit” last April over Carlson’s interviews with various polarizing figure. Carlson, meanwhile, has called out Crenshaw for giving Joe Biden the power to shut down news websites that challenge mainstream narratives – which Crenshaw said was nothing more than Carlson “lying for attention, as usual.”

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    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/24/2025 – 18:50

  • "Give Us Back Our F**king Money" – How Washington Stole Everything…
    “Give Us Back Our F**king Money” – How Washington Stole Everything…

    Authored by Elizabeth Nickson via ‘Welcome to Absurdistan’ substack,

    Every person in your family or community living on nuts and bolts and berries has had his life stolen by the bureaucratic blob.

    And, we are going to get it all back.

    So essentially the entire town of Washington, D.C. has been stealing. The anomalies are those who are not stealing. $4.7 trillion, almost impossible to trace, represents two-thirds of the annual U.S. budget. And if it’s happening in the U.S., it is happening everywhere: France, Canada, the U.K., Germany, where budgetary processes are probably even more opaque than those of the U.S.

    How does the Department of Defence have a $35 trillion black hole?

    I used to think of people who worked for the government with a kind of veiled contempt or, in a more benign mood, compassion. I thought of them as pity jobs for those without initiative, as jobs paying off lefty campaigners, as a warehouse for the barely competent. In my own dealings with them, I found them punitive and extractive, papering me with demands to spend more and more money to hire more and more of their pet contractors, to get approval. In my working life, looking at the results of their involvement in America’s rural areas, I hated them for the hell they visited on people unable to fight back. They forced bad science on good people, and refused to see reason. They ruined forests, water courses, fisheries, and township after township turned to dustbowl status. The misery in rural sitting rooms in every state in the U.S. was palpable, long lasting; the green Blob ruined families for generations.

    But I did not think of them as being embroiled in a theft so large as to be unparalleled in world history.

    The level of the theft has now to be dawning on everyone not living off the public purse which is, what, 60%, 70% of us? The anger setting in is soul-deep, and very very powerful. People who live straightened lives, the poorly pensioned, those living off the laughable social security stipend, those waiting for health care, those whose children can’t even dream of an education, of college, of a six-figure salary which is now subsistence in the ruined cities. Those facing cancer treatment because of the vaccine, and don’t have excess funds. Their families, despairing, hurting, broke.

    This isn’t going to go away. It affects everyone. Not addressed down to its deepest level, you are looking at a tax revolt, a national strike. A revolution. A real one, not a papered paid-for color revolution, which is what they have been doing to us.

    Those living on social security should have five times the pension they do.

    Can you count how many of those there are? Can you?

    And meanwhile this:

    Is this true? To this date, unknown; the digging continues. Look at this ghastly creature. She apparently has an account in the Cayman Islands. Look at her all compassionate and condescending. She started a war that killed 1.5 million people so far. And apparently got rich from it. A mass murderer celebrated at Upper East Side dinner parties.

    Memes like this rocket around, and every one is now suspect. At this point who cares if it’s true, it’s truthy, it makes sense that she made out like a bandit, that Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar have millions hidden somewhere. Ocasio can say “I only have $500,000!” all she wants, but we don’t believe her. If the Wall St Journal says it is false, we don’ t believe them. Do you actually think they’d have the money sitting in their savings account? No, it would be buried off-shore. The media is not only complicit, it is the principal actor in this scam. It built the fantasy world we live in, where people read The Guardian, the Times and the Globe and Mail and think they’re informed.

    No, they are being propagandized. And as a result, no one sane believes anything any legacy newspaper or television or media says anymore. They hid the theft. They did not report on it. No one trusts a thing they say.

    And this fellow, below, growling what every taxpayer is thinking: firing, disgrace, vitiation of not only the government pension, but your house, your savings, everything. You know what this guy is? Young. Strong. Determined. Imagine an army of them. It’s building. It is very satisfying to listen to him. No wonder they were creating beta-males, dumping hormones in the water supply, the food supply.

    DOGE will fire up the citizens of every country, and they all will demand their “fucking money back.” In every country. Every single country, this will grow and grow and grow. Within five years, ten at the outside, the entire world will be a different place.

    And as DOGE moves into Defence, State, the IRS, Health, the revealed thieving of the upper middle classes will change the world. No wonder they were trying to disarm us.

    Late last year, I thought I’d take a look at one of the papers I used to write for, the Globe and Mail, Canada’s long-time “national newspaper”. Fifteen years ago, I looked at its circulation because I wanted to sell my house, and the richest likely people lived in Calgary. The Globe had 5,000 subscribers in Calgary. It wasn’t worth the advertising dollar. Only three hundred thousand across the country, I noted, which made sense. The Globe at that point, was serious, worthy and dull. Since then it has become corrupt and bought and paid for by the state.

    Its number of pages have shrunk by 70%, the physical paper smaller in size by a third. It can’t afford writers like me. It has 35% fewer reporters – mostly desperate kids – and bureaus — but lo and behold, it now has 1,000,000 subscribers!

    How is that possible, I asked myself over and over, and it wasn’t until the Politico scandal broke that I realized what had happened.

    They had replaced actual people with government subscriptions.

    If you page through government accounts at dov.gov/savings, you can read $16,000 annual Politico Pro subscription line items many times in every agency, agriculture, defence, social security, you name it. The government is gaming the subscription numbers. Advertisers, knowing this, have fled, since there is no Return On Investment. If you look here, you will see the number of times various agencies paid subscriptions to Politico, the Washington Post, the Times, the Wall Street Journal, AP, the BBC.

    I am not saying that agencies don’t need subscriptions, but I’ll bet the reality of it is more like the discrepancy between the Globe and Mail when it was still thriving at 300K, and the Globe and Mail, now irrelevant, at one million. Did governments not subscribe until 2016?

    Thomson Reuters was granted $3,000,000 to effect a large-scale social engineering experiment by USAID/Defence, namely the Covid scam. I would imagine those millions are a fraction of what was actually paid.

    Ninety percent of media in Ukraine is funded by the American taxpayer, according to Mike Benz. Ninety percent.

    All of them have fake readers, subsidized by the tax payer. This is a moral hazard, obviously. As a reporter, you play for the one who hired you. So, no longer a viable private sector company, but a government granting office, selling government-approved ideas.

    Government grants probably push media out of the red; those grants represent profit. Which means the government calls the shots on everything printed. And when I say government I mean permanent bureaucracy. .

    Why would you believe anything you read from them?

    Equally, you will note in the DOGE records, the number of climate related grants, to places like the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Why? What do they do? Well, I’ll tell you what they do, they go round with power points scaring the pants off commodity investors and forcing them into wasteful green ‘programs’, which do absolutely nothing for the “climate”. I’d bet billions are wasted that way.

    Climate is a black hole of funding/theft. On Thursday, Lee Zeldin at the EPA reported a $2,000,000,000 grant from the EPA to a group associated with Stacey Abrams, a group whose 2023 donations totalled all of $100. What would they do? Stand up climate protestors, paid climate protestors. Go to schools and scare the kids. Rile up neighborhoods, glue themselves to paintings and sidewalks. The number of actual protestors, not counting the weak hysterics, is near zero. Heading every climate related group is a grim psychological operative, using every trick in the book to turn people into slavering maniacs.

    These grants are meant to stand up an army, turn out protestors, spur riots, destroy the Trump presidency. Destroy MAGA. Steal.

    DOGE in an initial look found that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid wasted $100 billion in 2023. They found that figure within a day. Where did that money go? To whom? Unknowable since 2/rds of the budget – $4.7 trillion – has no tracing.

    Thousands upon thousands of cases of vanishing money.

    This is my point: the whole culture, the entirety of the psychological space we walk around in, was manufactured and forced upon us using our money. The reason the ‘media’ failed is not because of digital, it’s because everything it produces is untrue garbage. Every time it took a government grant it lost more readership, because it played to the government. And as time went on, its content bore no relation to any lived reality beyond the subsidized. It became fake, falsified, demonic. So when people started to wake up, they stopped buying it, reading it, watching it. MSNBC and CNN’s audience dropped 50% again after November 5th, for the tenth year in a row.

    What replaced it was censorship.

    Michael Shellenberger has done the most detailed work on how the censorship apparatus was built. His series on the Censorship Industrial Complex is a must-read.

    Given the dank dark hole at the center of legacy media, the military stepped up. This, below, was one of the core meetings – please note that it has 625 views, but nonetheless, received billions of dollars to kill populism across the world. Please note too that the representatives from Google and Facebook oversee policy for Eurasia. You can hear the whole thing analyzed here:

    This is the head of the snake

    This was a meeting to brainstorm on how to stop “unfiltered alternative media”, and present official views in their place.

    Every former CIA head was involved, including retired Generals, Brookings, Homeland Security, CSIS, the universities, the Atlantic Council, the Aspen Institute, the Wilson Center, the National Endowment for Democracy (CIA), with Michael Chertoff as the Blob Monster in chief. USAID gave these jokers $800 million over the last eight years. And that was a fraction of their financing with our money.

    Mike Benz has done the best work deconstructing the money flow, its original purpose, its founding and its source. He has tracked it across the world, and only some of it is from the revealed USAID. It was built to attack us, and to fight populism across the world. Specifically. So, therefore, the Globe and Mail, or any paper, can’t afford to hire actual journalists, because what they are doing instead of reporting is manufacturing news aimed against us, as hostiles, on behalf of the regime. They are oriented entirely as follows. World-wide, no matter what.

    • Stop Trump

    • Stop 5 Star – Italy

    • Stop Brexit – UK

    • Stop Vox – Spain

    • Stop AFD – Germany

    • Kill all unfiltered news – treat it as a virus

    • Kill all accounts and narratives that support the above on Google and Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. The war on TikTok? It doesn’t consent to their filters. Or at least not 100%.

    And we are beating them. Independent media beat all that mustered intelligence and all that money to tell the truth and elect Trump. Populist movements are roaring across Europe, rejecting all the usual ideas. Populists are in power in the Netherlands, Italy, Austria, Hungary. This weekend Germany will turn out. I suspect, given what I know about election fraud, that fraud will be rampant, but German life is now so dire, AFD may overwhelm the polls.

    Here’s my question – What if it was all to hide the grand scale theft?

    What if this theft, the trillions a year flowing out to who the hell knows, was the entire purpose of the National Security State? Yes, these grants, the billions spent by USAID were designed to assemble army of dissidents, across the globe, to protect U.S. interests. Thousands of activists paid to agitate against any government going against the aims of the National Security State. USAID stood up LBGTQ groups, dancers, rap stars, theatre people, feminists, abortion activists, every conceivable activist group grubbing for pennies. Feminist groups were financially supported in every country in order to fracture the family.

    The purpose wasn’t “aid”, it was to make life in every country contentious, angry, divided against itself, and to guarantee that whenever the CIA wanted, tens of thousands would pour onto the streets to protest. It was rent-a-riot money. It was to put CIA/globalist puppets in charge.

    The money was also spent to quash any legitimate protest by populists angry about globalist policies of migration, eternal war, censorship, over-regulation and energy draw-down because of “climate”.

    The money was spent to obscure the DC Blobs advance on the wealth of Eurasia.

    For instance, the largest army base in the world is now being built in Romania, facing the Russian bear. Your money is building it. Romania refused to certify its election results because a populist anti-war-with-Russia candidate won the election. Which meant no honking military base, no hand over fist theft through the accounting.

    As Denz points out, Russia has $75 trillion in natural resources, meaning it is the richest country in the world and the Blob/WEF has their eyes on that prize.

    The above cited conference of the Global Censorship Project.took place in 2017. And while its stated purpose was foreign adventure ie censorship and overturning populism, it morphed quickly into a color revolution against Americans. It was easy to shift the algorithms from killing all populist accounts and narratives in western and eastern Europe to killing them in the USA.

    Art and Activism

    I, and others, have written extensively about the co-opting of popular culture by the CIA, by its seeding and deliberate corruption of the anti-war movement in the 60’s and 70’s, the creation of rap music to fracture the black community, the standing up of movie stars and pop stars to spout regime nonsense. Equally, in eastern Europe, Dua Lipa was sent out to squelch populism in the Balkans. Pussy Riot was stood up against Putin, and twenty-two African rappers were brought over to the States to learn how to fight populism in their own countries. Every election cycle, tired old celebrities do videos about their oh so compassionate vote. Turns out they are all paid by USAID. Can you imagine the tens of thousands of feminist organizations, here and abroad, set up by Hillary Clinton when she was Secretary of State?

    We beat the pants off all of them. Little people in their pjamas in front of laptops, reading, typing, and analyzing patterns and talking to each other, without any money, or power or organization, killed the most powerful army of power-mad supposed brainiacs in the world, wielding billions of dollars against us.

    We beat them.

    Not one more red cent goes out.

    And, we are going to get our money back.

    All of it.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/24/2025 – 18:25

  • Crime-Battered NYC McDonald's Starts Carding People At The Door
    Crime-Battered NYC McDonald’s Starts Carding People At The Door

    A notorious, crime-battered McDonald’s in Brooklyn is going to extreme lengths to defend itself and its patrons — prohibiting anyone who’s under age 20 from entering without a parent and proper identification. 

    The outlet at Nostrand and Flatbush avenues has long been the site of violence and bloodshed, but an incident last week seems to have been the last straw that prompted the age-and-ID requirement. Nineteen-year-old manager Amber Hussain tells the New York Post that a group of juveniles that swarmed into the restaurant after school assaulted a security guard and shattered a glass door. 

    Excluded teenagers raise their fists at the McDonald’s that’s been the focus of juvenile mayhem for years (Halayne Seidman/ New York Post)

    The location has prompted a staggering 324 calls to 911 in the last three years alone, but the location has been a crime hot-spot for more than a dozen years. In a notable 2011 incident captured on video, two thugs ambushed an 18-year-old as he entered, shooting him multiple times. The victim himself had five robbery arrests to his credit before narrowly dodging death at Ronald’s crib: 

    According to Hussain’s observations over her year of working at this mayhem-hammered location, here’s what you’d be in for if you visited during after-school afternoon hours: Upwards of 20 teens who come in and “trash the store,” hurl ice at patrons, rob Uber drivers of their bags of food, and fill the restaurant with marijuana smoke. 

    The 24-hour restaurant is using security guards to enforce the new policy (Halayne Seidman/ New York Post)

    “If you’re from that area, you know that McDonald’s is horrible,” New Yorker Sania Bolasingh told the Post. “People fight in there – it’s not just kids being kids. People get stabbed, a delivery worker got jumped, he passed out.” 

    To restore some semblance of order and dignity, the McDonald’s outlet is now barring entry to children and teenagers through age 19 who aren’t accompanied by a parent with proper ID. The Post observed a group of excluded teens standing outside the restaurant and shaking their fists in anger. “What do you expect a business owner to do?” Clyde Smith, a 48-year-old law clerk asked the Post. “This was always a place where kids would cause trouble.”

    A peaceful scene, via the no-teen regime (Halayne Seidman/ New York Post)

    The downward spiral of America’s cities first brought us merchandise locked behind plexiglass, and now McDonald’s outlets staffed with two security guards at a time barring unsupervised teenagers. TikTokker Sania Kaila toured the Brooklyn restaurant, asking her followers via video, “You see how peaceful this McDonald’s is? You see how there’s no kids, you see how there’s no turmoil, how there’s nobody fighting?” After showing the security guard posted at the door and the sign explaining the new policy, she said, “This is crazy [that it’s come to this]. Stop messing up other people’s place!” 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/24/2025 – 18:00

  • Is Trump Right About Negotiating The War In Ukraine?
    Is Trump Right About Negotiating The War In Ukraine?

    Authored by Daniel Lacalle,

    When we talk about the war in Ukraine, I agree with supporting the invaded country. 

    Let my position be clear. 

    However, to understand President Trump’s position, we must remember several factors.

    First: The war has stalled, and Russia is advancing, even if I don’t like it. 

    By early 2025, the Russian army controlled about 18% of Ukraine’s territory. It added 1,500 square miles over the course of 2024, almost twice the size of London.

    Second: Sanctions against Russia have failed. 

    I was the first to defend them, but I warned that if Asia didn’t join, they would fail. Between 2022 and 2024, Russia’s trade surplus has reached over $600 billion. Russian products are exported all over the world and in many cases, they are sold in the European Union via China or India.

    Third: The European Union’s position with the United States cannot be one of indignation when it maintains growing strategic ties with China, Russia’s partner and ally “without limits” or when EU leaders speak of Putin as a murderous dictator but treat him as an uncomfortable partner.

    The European Union’s position cannot be in confrontation with Trump. The EU excluded the import of Russian liquefied natural gas from sanctions. In 2024, EU imports of Russian liquefied natural gas reached a record $7 billion. France, Spain, and Belgium accounted for 85% of those. Spain has imported more than $8.9 billion of Russian liquefied natural gas since the beginning of the war, and the European Union nearly $21 billion.

    Fourth: Almost 18% of Ukraine’s population is Russian, about 8.4 million people.

    Fifth: President Trump’s position on Ukraine is not a shock or a surprise from a week ago. 

    He clarified his stance on Ukraine more than a year ago, specifically in February 2024, and reiterated it throughout the campaign. European Union leaders assumed he would not win the elections by a wide margin and that, if he did, he would not fulfil his promises. The war in Ukraine has cost the American taxpayer more than $350 billion, and in the United States, this war is not perceived as we see it in European media.

    Let’s not forget that the EU geopolitical “experts” told us that the war would be quick, that Ukraine would undoubtedly win it, and that sanctions would lead to Russia conceding defeat, and that the Russian people, with the help of the oligarchs, would oust Putin from power. Well, three years later, they must explain several things to us.

    What is the “position of the European Union”? On paper, the European Union supports Ukraine unconditionally, yet it continues to purchase billions of dollars’ worth of Russian liquefied natural gas and maintains privileged relations with China, Putin’s key strategic partner.

    The position of the European Union leaders seems to be to do nothing, let the United States pay for it, and complain because they are not considered in the decision process.

    Moreover, if the European Union’s position is that the only solution is a resounding victory for Ukraine, the actions of its member states betray them. Waiting for the media to forget and conceal the victory is insufficient if the EU desires an unappealable outcome.

    A total victory for Ukraine would only come with a continent-wide military and economic confrontation against Russia and China, and only if it ended in a victory for NATO.

    According to Byron York, “European leaders are upset about their exclusion from the Ukraine talks. They feel their no-ideas-no-agreement-on-how-to-proceed-but-plenty-of-platitudes perspective would be a valuable part of the negotiation.”

    The European Union policy is to entrench this war, stop talking about it, and have the US pay for it. Fascinating.

    President Trump is following the mandate of the American voters. 77 million votes, all swing states, Congress, and the Senate. Trump’s voters and many of Harris’s do not see this war as something the taxpayer should fund. Why? The EU’s own actions contradict the apocalyptic image they portray to us.

    European leaders talk about Putin as if he were Hitler but behave with him as if he were Brezhnev. And Americans don’t buy that narrative. In fact, politicians who accuse Trump of giving wings to Putin, which hasn’t happened, keep quiet in the face of evidence that they did give him wings and armour with their ductile sanctions.

    Former British diplomat John Foreman explains in The Spectator that “Europe is now in panic because it has become accustomed to the comfort provided by the United States in terms of security, has not paid attention to what Trump has been saying, and has not adequately prepared for his second presidency. The consequences of this strategic miscalculation are beginning to become clear.”

    While President Trump does not view Putin as a threat, he recognises China as one. Therefore, he understands the importance of halting the waste of taxpayer funds in a war that the EU ignores. He intends to use these funds to fortify the U.S. in other areas against China and to reach an agreement in Ukraine before the evidence threatens the country’s existence. Furthermore, he remains unflinching and understands that the failure to negotiate could lead to Europe’s downfall in the medium run. Chinese support shields Russia’s position. The indignant European leaders, who simultaneously embrace China, rarely mention that “small” detail.

    President Trump’s remarks about Zelensky sound very aggressive in Europe. However, we must remember that Zelensky stopped the efforts to investigate Hunter Biden’s businesses in Ukraine and rejecting new elections may be accepted by the constitution, but, as Thomas Di Lorenzo, president of the Mises Institute, points out, it can be seen as a “constitutional dictatorship.”

    “If Europe is obsessed with retreating to irrelevance through its local totalitarianism, economic stagnation, or getting into a continental war, American taxpayers are not obliged to help them,” Connor O’Keefe says in Mises, quite rightly.

    President Trump has not conceded or given away anything. What he has done is wake up the oligarchic bureaucracy and offer a door to a realistic peace solution. The alternative was nothing.

    The negotiation will be complex, tough, and, of course, it will be good for Ukraine, or it won’t happen. The alternative is the current condescension, incompetence, and inaction.

    If the European Union wants to think it’s winning the war and that it is relevant by sticking its head in a hole, making another summit of bureaucrats, and thinking that China is a friendly partner just passing by, that’s their problem. But Americans are not going to pay for it.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/24/2025 – 17:40

  • Watch: Joy Reid Breaks Down In Tears After Getting Fired From MSNBC
    Watch: Joy Reid Breaks Down In Tears After Getting Fired From MSNBC

    Update (1715ET):  After spending years as a race-baiting propagandist, now-former MSNBC host Joy Reid broke down in tears following her ouster from the network, insisting on a Sunday Zoom Call on the “Win With Black Women” podcast, that she “went hard,” and that her show “had value.”

    Watch:

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Needless to say, Reid can cry harder…

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

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    A major shake-up is underway at MSNBC as the network’s new president has canceled far-left prime-time host Joy Reid’s show, “The ReidOut,” multiple sources familiar with the changes confirmed to The New York Times.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Reid’s final episode is planned for sometime this week, according to sources, adding that her prime-time spot will be swapped out with several anchors, including political commentator Symone Sanders Townsend, former Democratic strategist and former chairman of the Republican National Committee Michael Steele, and journalist Alicia Menendez. 

    The move signals Rebecca Kutler’s effort to overhaul MSNBC after being named the network’s president earlier this month. Ratings have plummeted since Trump secured the White House in last November’s presidential election. Many hosts, including Reid, have been visibly struggling with severe cases of “TDS.”

    “Joy Reid’s show getting canceled is devastating news for the left. Now where will they go for their daily dose of race-baiting lies and far-left conspiracy theories?!” journalist Breanna Morello wrote on X. 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    The crazed TV host has been one of the loudest Trump bashers in corporate media and still does not have enough common sense to understand the Overton Window shifted last summer from artificially being held at the left to now center-right. 

    Yet, to this day, she continues to spread far-left misinformation and disinformation propaganda, even as ratings plummet—not just for her show, but for the entire network.

    Nielsen Media Research data shows that viewership for the ReidOut show has crashed 50% since Trump won the election. 

    The latest cable news ratings as of Feb. 20 show that MSNBC was ahead of CNN but well behind Fox News in the prime-time news race. 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Here’s some of the looney batshit crazy toxic propaganda the woke host (soon to be unemployed) pushed to the American people:

    And it gets worse:

    Oh – and remember when this happened?

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Back to Kutler, a former senior executive at CNN, who has made it very clear that MSNBC faces severe headwinds in the Trump era. 

    “Our jobs are hard on a normal day, and these are not normal times,” Kutler told MSNBC employees on her first day. This comes as the dying network is being spun off by cable giant Comcast, NBCUniversal’s parent company.

    More shake-ups at MSNBC are ahead. NYT explained: 

    Other major changes are expected at MSNBC. In January, Rachel Maddow, the network’s best-known anchor, returned to hosting her 9 p.m. show five days a week during the first 100 days of the Trump administration after having scaled back to only Mondays. At the time, the network said that Alex Wagner, who had hosted the 9 p.m. show four days a week, would return at the end of April.

    That is no longer the case. Instead, MSNBC is planning to appoint a new anchor to fill Ms. Wagner’s spot, the two people said. A likely candidate for that hour is Jen Psaki, a former White House press secretary in the Biden administration, who hosts shows on Sunday at noon and 8 p.m. on Mondays, the people said, though adding that this decision hadn’t been finalized.

    This comes as dying corporate media has spent the last 15 years pushing an info war of a woke agenda on the American people to divide the nation instead of actually reporting the news. The result has been not only a collapse in public trust but also a sharp decline in ratings.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Not even the government’s censorship blob could keep leftist corporate media alive, as alternative news media is set to flourish in an era under Trump’s executive order called “Restoring Freedom Speech and Ending Federal Censorship.”

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    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/24/2025 – 17:20

  • The American Rōnin: How Displaced "Disinformation Experts" Are Seeking New Opportunities In Europe And Academia
    The American Rōnin: How Displaced “Disinformation Experts” Are Seeking New Opportunities In Europe And Academia

    Authored by Jonathan Turley,

    President Trump’s election has brought about mass layoffs among federal employees and contractors, including some who have sued and others who have protested.

    But one group — that of America’s would-be censors — is taking its cause worldwide.

    During the Biden administration, a massive industry took root, sweeping up billions in taxpayer funds to research, target and combat those accused of misinformation, disinformation and “malinformation.”

    Although the exact number is uncertain, many trained censors are now facing unemployment. 

    These self-described “disinformation experts” have become the modern equivalent of rōnin, the Japanese samurai who found themselves without a master and wandered the land looking for a new use of their skill set. They are finding precisely that calling in academia, not-for-profit groups and, most importantly, Europe.

    A speech-regulation industry that was booming under Biden has gone bust under Trump. Over the last four years, massive amounts of money were poured into universities, non-governmental organizations and other groups in an unprecedented alliance of government, academia and corporations.

    The media lionized many in the industry as “saving democracy” by controlling, targeting and suppressing others’ political speech. Not only did federal agencies fund these efforts, but they also coordinated censorship of groups and individuals with opposing views, even objecting to jokes on the internet.

    Universities cashed in on this largesse as well. It was popular with most liberal administrators and lucrative for academics.

    The sudden shutoff of the federal spigot comes as a blow, but it does not mean the speech warriors will simply convert their censor-shields into plowshares. Many will follow in the footsteps of Nina Jankowicz, briefly the head of a now-defunct disinformation governance board. After the outcry over the board, Jankowicz quickly found her skills were in demand in Europe.

    Free speech has been in free-fall in Europe for decades. Germany has long enforced a robust system of speech criminalization that began with Nazi symbolism but steadily expanded to include inciteful speech, insults and merely “disinformative” statements. The United Kingdom and France showed the same insatiable appetite for the inexorable expansion of censorship and prosecutions.

    The European Union has also been ground zero for the anti-free speech movement’s aggressive use of the Digital Services Act, which bars speech that is viewed as “disinformation” or “incitement.”

    When it passed over the objections of free speech advocates, European Commission Executive Vice President Margrethe Vestager was perfectly ecstatic, declaring it is “not a slogan anymore, that what is illegal offline should also be seen and dealt with as illegal online. Now, it is a real thing. Democracy’s back.”

    That is why Vice President J.D. Vance’s recent speech in Munich was so historic. For the free speech community, Vance went into the belly of the beast and denounced the anti-free-speech movement in the heart of Europe.

    The response to the Vance speech has been nothing short of panic in the anti-free-speech community. Many are assembling in conferences in Europe, including the upcoming World Forum in Berlin. Bill and Hillary Clinton will be in attendance. (I will also be speaking at the conference.)

    It was Hillary Clinton who, after Elon Musk purchased Twitter with the pledge to dismantle the censorship system, called upon the EU to force him and others to censor her fellow U.S. citizens. She embraced the infamous Digital Services Act, which seeks to impose a global system of speech control. She has also suggested the arrest of those spreading disinformation.

    Immediately after the speech, familiar European and American voices denounced Vance and doubled down on the need for Europe to hold the line against dangerous free speech.

    For the free speech community, there could not be a better place for this debate to unfold. Germany has demonstrated the false claims of the anti-free-speech community over the years. Indeed, you might call their arguments “disinformation.”

    Vance and others who have challenged the European censorship systems have been attacked as Nazi enablers or sympathizers. Many of those who have fostered this attack are part of the regulator ronin. Others simply repeated the narrative without thought or support.

    Take CBS anchor Margaret Brennan, who confronted Secretary of State Marco Rubio over the outrageous fact that Vance was supporting free speech while “standing in a country where free speech was weaponized to conduct a genocide.” The claim is stupefyingly uninformed. The first thing that the Nazis did in coming to power was to crack down and criminalize free speech — just as many on the left have done in European countries.

    A few have insisted that the Nazis were brought to power by the lack of government controls over what views could be expressed. But this is not true either. The crushing irony is that Article 118 of the Weimar Constitution guaranteed free speech only “within the limits of the general laws.” It did not protect statements deemed by the government as factually untrue, and speech was actively regulated.

    Adolf Hitler, for example, was barred from speaking publicly. The Nazis did not use free speech because they did not have it. They did, however, use the denial of free speech to claim that the government was afraid to have certain views aired in public.

    Germany has replicated the old system that failed to stop (and perhaps even helped) the Nazis, doubling down on speech controls and criminalization. As I discuss in my book, there has never been a successful censorship system in the history of the world — not one. Germany is again a chilling example of the true record of such systems.

    Past polling of German citizens found that only 18 percent felt free to express their opinions in public. Only 17 percent felt free to express themselves on the internet. So the neo-Nazi movement is flourishing, even as average German citizens feel chilled in their own speech.

    Despite this history, the regulatory ronin are hard at work to scare the public back into empowering and especially into funding their efforts.

    The outgoing chairman of the Munich Security Conference spoke through tears as he expressed his “fear” that Vance’s call for free speech could take hold in Europe. He tellingly added, “It is clear that our rules-based international order is under pressure. It is my strong belief … that this multipolar world needs to be based on a single set of norms and principles.”

    This “international order” has striven to impose a single set of norms on speech, particularly through vehicles like the Digital Services Act. The effort stands at odds with the very essence of the American constitutional system and values.

    The only thing both sides agree on is that this is an existential fight. For those in the free speech community, it will determine the future of what Justice Louis Brandeis called “the indispensable right.” For the other side, it is the future of a European model of free speech, limiting the right to deter those with extreme or inciteful views.

    The recent successes in the U.S. at X and more recently at Meta are real. However, the displaced speech regulators are not just going to retool and learn to code or train to work in the hospitality industry.

    As Vance’s speech showed, we are more isolated than ever. Even Americans like Clinton have joined with the Europeans to fight for censorship. It is time to take a side and fight for freedom of speech.

    *  *  *

    Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/24/2025 – 17:00

  • NYC Mayor "Begins" Shuttering Roosevelt Hotel Migrant Intake Center
    NYC Mayor “Begins” Shuttering Roosevelt Hotel Migrant Intake Center

    A luxury hotel in Manhattan, which the globalist Biden-Harris regime had transformed into an illegal alien and migrant intake center under a controversial tax-payer-funded deal with its Pakistani owner, will soon close, according to New York City Mayor Eric Adams. The decision comes as Adams is attempting to restore law and order and national security in a metro area where Democrats used tax-payer-funded NGOs to dump migrants and drain the city’s resources. 

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    For two years, the Roosevelt Hotel served as a migrant intake center, processing more than 173,000 migrants in NYC. According to city data, it opened in 2023 and was funded by taxpayers. Mayor Adams noted that at the peak of the migrant crisis, the city received 4,000 migrants weekly. 

    CBS New York quoted Adams in a statement saying, “Now, thanks to the sound policy decisions of our team, we are able to announce the closure of this site and help even more asylum seekers take the next steps in their journeys as they envision an even brighter future, while simultaneously saving taxpayers millions of dollars.”

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    Adam is already preparing to close 53 migrant shelters by June. He said the number of migrants entering the city has dropped in recent weeks under President Trump’s new border policies. 

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    Earlier this month, Elon Musk’s DOGE found that FEMA recently sent tens of millions of dollars in taxpayer funds to luxury hotels in NYC housing migrants. 

    Musk said: “Sending this money violated the law and is in gross insubordination to the President’s executive order,” adding, “That money is meant for American disaster relief and instead is being spent on high-end hotels for illegals!”

    Shortly after the discovery, FEMA’s chief financial officer, two program analysts, and a grant specialist were fired over the payments, and the taxpayer funds were clawed back. 

    A previous report revealed that the government of Pakistan owns the Roosevelt Hotel. This raises concerns, as the Biden-Harris regime effectively paid a foreign government to support the migrant invasion. 

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    And it gets worse… 

    “FEMA was funding the Roosevelt Hotel that serves as a Tren de Aragua base of operations and was used to house Laken Riley’s killer. There will not be a single penny spent that goes against the interest and safety of the American people,” a Homeland Security spokesperson told CBS NYC. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/24/2025 – 16:40

  • No Way Out…
    No Way Out…

    Authored by James Howard Kunstler,

    “The job of the president, goes the message from all the insiders, is to PRETEND to be in charge but not actually do anything meaningful.” 

    – Jeffrey Tucker

    CBS’s 60-Minutes show was at it again Sunday night in the most prime primetime weekend news slot on the old broadcast spectrum — Sunday at 7:00, the power-hour of national mind-fuckery — with blob PR-agent Scott Pelley singing the blues over the systematic disassembly of the rogue bureaucracy. Trouble is, fewer and fewer minds are susceptible to the argument that the blob exists to “save our democracy.”

    You’re supposed to go boo-hoo because the Department of Justice is under new management. Now get this: since 2015 the Department of Justice and its step-child, the FBI, have devoted their vast and savage powers to manifold acts of sedition, treason, malicious political prosecution, obstruction of justice, suborning perjuries, and countless other abuses of law in an ever-widening gyre of ass-covering operations as year-by-year their crimes multiplied.

    RussiaGate was initially a cover-up op for the Clintons’ many acts of mischief and moneygrubbing when Hillary ran for President, just as the Mueller Special Counsel Investigation was a cover-up for the crimes committed by the DOJ and FBI after Hillary lost to Mr. Trump, just as Impeachment #1 was a cover-up for the Ukraine money laundry and its role in RussiaGate, and Impeachment #2 was a coverup for the 2020 election ballot hijinks that got rid of Mr. Trump, and just as the Mar-a-Lago raid was a cover-up to retrieve evidence of all-the-above that Mr. Trump had archived, and just as the flurry of Trump prosecutions in 2024 was the final (and amazingly inept) effort to put the Golden Golem of Greatness out-of-business forever.

    But somehow, perhaps an act of Providence, he prevailed over all that adversity, like some paladin out of the ancient myths, and is suddenly back in charge — to the abject horror of all those lawyers and spooks behind the aforesaid ops, now nervously awaiting subpoenas in their Beltway McMansions. You will learn shortly that there is a difference between “justice” based on fraud and fakery and justice served by way of fact-patterns and evidence.

    And so late Sunday evening after the 60-Minutes pity party, came the pretty astounding news that former Secret Service agent and now podcaster Dan Bongino is appointed Deputy Director of the FBI.

    Astounding because Mr. Bongino has documented the worst blob crimes of recent years in a series of books that comprehensively presents the entire tapestry of lawlessness in microscopic detail. He knows the whole sordid, epic story, all the names, and all the money trails in every obscure corner of the worst aggregate matrix of scandals in US history. 

    Believe me when I tell you, this is like a death sentence for the blob.

    For instance, Mr. Bongino is acutely aware of what went down on J-6, 2021, when a supposed pipe-bomb was “found” at the DNC headquarters, the part it was supposed to play in the larger J-6 op to rid Washington of Mr. Trump, and the lying confabulations of former FBI Director Christopher Wray afterward. Now he is in a position to compel current and former FBI officials to answer questions about that, and much more, from the Crossfire Hurricane scam to the shenanigans in Judge Juan Merchan’s court last summer.

    Those investigations will require a whole dedicated division of new FBI agents while Kash Patel attends to the latest grifts uncovered by the DOGE, the threats against public order and safety posed by countless military-aged illegal aliens ushered into the country by “Joe Biden” and Alejandro Mayorkas, the turpitudes of former AG Merrick Garland, and the crimes committed by officials in the CDC, FDA, and other public health agencies around Covid-19, and lingering monstrosities such as the Jeffrey Epstein capers, the huge fortunes mysteriously amassed by US senators and congressmen, the 1960s assassinations of the Kennedys and MLK, the censorship operations conducted by the combined FBI / CIA, State Department, and dark offices of the Pentagon, the theft of US largess given over to Ukraine, and the infiltration of American institutions by China.

    The Trump admin knows that it will have to strike hard and fast in all these matters and more. Cases will have to be prepared briskly and removed to federal courts outside the blob-controlled DC district. A great many political figures will have to be taken out of circulation. It will be helpful to finally understand the bizarre capture of the old legacy news media so, for instance, it becomes clear why an outfit such as CBS’s 60-Minutes ended up on the dark side, committed to burying the truth and distorting reality at every opportunity.

    The Democratic Party was the political enabling partner in all this sedition and treason and it is hard to see how it comes out of this alive. 

    Expect to see a lemming stampede of resignations out of Congress and the Senate. And some of them, like Sen. Adam Schiff, and Rep. Eric Swalwell could end up in prison. You saw the fear in their public antics the past two weeks as the cabinet confirmations mounted. They know what’s coming. They are desperate, but the power they once wielded is now in other hands. There’s no way out.

    On a bright note, it was heartwarming to see that Joy Reid got “axed” from her primetime perch at MSNBC over the weekend. 

    (Nobody axed me, but I approve!) She’ll be doing a must-watch farewell show this coming week. Don’t miss it!

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/24/2025 – 16:20

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