Indeed, on Friday Trump ordered the release of records related to legendary pilot Amelia Earhart and her ill-fated attempt to become the first female pilot to circumnavigate the world at the age of 39.
“I have been asked by many people about the life and times of Amelia Earhart, such an interesting story, and would I consider declassifying and releasing everything about her, in particular, her last, fatal flight,” Trump wrote on Truth social, instead of releasing the list of powerful Epstein associates who systematically raped young women, over and over.
“I am ordering my Administration to declassify and release all Government Records related to Amelia Earhart, her final trip, and everything else about her,” Trump continued (likely after watching some documentary the other night).
As the Epoch Timesnotes further, Earhart made history in 1932 as the first woman to fly nonstop and solo across the Atlantic. By 1936, she was preparing to fly around the world with navigator Frederick Noonan, but their first attempt ended in Hawaii due to technical problems.
In May 1937, the pair made a second attempt, flying East. After reaching New Guinea, they set off toward Howland Island, a tiny speck of land with an airstrip lying about halfway between Hawaii and Australia. They never arrived.
Earhart and Noonan’s disappearance sparked one of the largest government rescue missions of its time, involving an aircraft carrier with 54 aircraft, a Coast Guard ship, two destroyers, and a battleship.
Despite the massive operation, no trace of the aviators or their plane was ever found. On July 19, 1937, the U.S. Navy called off the search, and Earhart and Noonan were presumed dead.
The incident remains one of aviation’s enduring mysteries. Over the decades, teams of public and private expeditions have searched the Pacific in hopes of finding wreckage of Earhart’s aircraft, but none have succeeded.
Different theories about her fate have emerged, including the claim that she was captured by Japan—at a time of tense relations with the United States—and executed under suspicion of being a spy.
“Amelia made it almost three-quarters around the World before she suddenly, and without notice, vanished, never to be seen again,” Trump wrote in his Truth Social post.
“Her disappearance, almost 90 years ago, has captivated millions.”
Trump has shown a recurring interest in declassifying files connected to historical mysteries. In January, shortly after returning to the White House, he directed officials to prepare the release of documents related to the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr.
Oregon Governor Says There’s No Insurrection, Tells Trump To “Stand Down”
Antifa mob actions in Portland and Seattle have been a constant feature of the Pacific Northwest for years, ever since Democrat political leaders supported their operations during the BLM riots. Leftist riots, firebombings and assaults have been normalized in Democrat controlled regions, enabling activist groups to harass their opponents with impunity. They understand that within certain metros, the law does not apply to them.
NGOs also work to support these intimidation tactics by arranging legal representation and bail for those activists that do get arrested. The revolving door continues, charges are often dropped and officials refuse to prosecute.
Democrats in Portland claim that the violence has subsided and that videos of Antifa operations circulating online are from the BLM era. Andy Ngo, a journalist who has been carefully tracking Portland Antifa ever since he was almost killed by them in 2019, disagrees.
Andy Ngo has exposed numerous far-left actions in Portland over the years, including actions against ICE as they attempt to enforce Trump’s deportation policies for illegal immigrants. He has received numerous death threats for this reporting.
Trantifa are urging people to kill me to silence my reporting on Portland.
Leftists groups have been forming regularly outside the Portland ICE facility, threatening officers and attempting to impede vehicles. There have been similar attempts to violently thwart ICE in Seattle, Chicago, LA and New Jersey, to name a few. According to Oregon’s lesbian Governor Tina Kotek, however, there is no threat. Nothing to see here, folks, move along.
Kotek told reporters Saturday afternoon that she awoke Saturday morning to President Donald’s Trump’s announcement on social media that he will send “all necessary Troops” into Portland in order to protect U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities from “domestic terrorists.”
Kotek said she was attempting to understand Trump’s rationale, saying his view of Portland was based on “information that is not accurate today,” and though the city does have protests, they have remained peaceful, not like the ones in 2020. Trump also claimed that there were elements of “insurrection,” which Kotek denied.
Oregon Democrats spread disinformation about protests and mob activities, asserting that there is no Antifa presence and that ICE facilities are safe. Some have posted clips from these locations during the day after activists have gone home. Antifa surrounds the facilities primarily at night.
Taken just a few minutes ago outside the ICE facility in Portland that Trump claims is under siege. My message to Donald Trump is this: we don’t need you here. Stay the hell out of our city. pic.twitter.com/XV3NCir20G
Here is the scene in front of the ICE facility in Portland this week:
Portland (Sept. 27) — No games. Federal agents move in force to make an arrest as the far-left rioting begins following the President’s announcement of a surge of resources to the state to protect federal property. Video by @KatieDaviscourt: pic.twitter.com/dxxLE2Lg0k
Reports suggest that Antifa organizations in Portland are now scrubbing their online presence and they may very well disappear before Trump deploys the National Guard to the area. Trump has stated that troops would be sent specifically to protect ICE agents in their deportation efforts.
If local officials refuse to prosecute dangerous activists, or if they are actually giving aid to violent leftists within their own cities, this gives Trump a perfect rationale to deploy troops. The best way for Portland to avoid such an outcome would be to enforce their own laws and arrest protesters that cross the line into insurgency.
Dutch Cargo Ship Attacked, Set Ablaze Off Yemen Coast
Reports from earlier today indicate a Netherlands-flagged cargo ship is on fire in the Gulf of Aden near Yemen, after being struck by an unidentified projectile launched by the Houthis.
The UK Maritime Trade Operations has cited that “a vessel reported seeing a splash and smoke in the distance” and it’s as yet “unclear how severe the blaze was” – according to Bloomberg. The ship’s Amsterdam-based operator stated Monday, “Earlier today its general cargo vessel Minervagracht that was on passage in the Gulf of Aden, in international waters, has come under attack of an unidentified explosive device, inflictingsubstantial damage to the ship.”
“Security company Ambrey said the ship targeted on Monday was previously attacked on Sept. 23 when a French naval group reported an incident involving the Netherlands-flagged Minervagracht,” Bloomberg says further. “It’s a relatively small cargo vessel built in 2011 which can hold about 700 containers.”
Despite several rounds of attacks by Israeli jets in the past months, the Iran-aligned Houthis have remained undeterred in targeting any vessel deemed to have Israeli links, or bound for an Israeli port.
A Western warship is said to be heading to the scene of the distressed cargo ship to assess to the situation, and possibly commence with rescues.
The Amsterdam-based firm Spliethoff is the owner of the vessel. Additionally, the Joint Maritime Information Center, overseen by the US Navy, has said that the shipper had “no Israeli affiliations” – so this suggests the Houthis could be returning to a stance of willingness to attack any and all foreign vessels traversing the waters.
The Houthis have by and large respected the months-long US ceasefire declared by President Trump, but have said they have committed to continuing attacks on any Israeli-linked or Israel-bound vessel traversing the Red Sea.
As the US Navy stepped back from regional operations, Washington has pressured the Europeans to step up defense of the vital trade transit waters.
The Houthis are an Iran-aligned movement which has shown resiliency, given that for over a half-decade it was bombed by the Saudi-US-UAE coalition, largely to no effect, and now it is in a war with Israel, and has managed to effectively shut down international transit shipping through the Red Sea.
More than 8,000 traps have been deployed across Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico, targeting the New World screwworm (NWS) flies, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins said in a Sept. 26 post on X, adding that no additional NWS infections have been detected since last Sunday.
On Sunday, Sept. 21, an announcement was made by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), which said that Mexico’s National Service of Agro-Alimentary Health, Safety, and Quality had confirmed a new NWS infection in Sabinas Hidalgo, Nueva Leon state, less than 70 miles from America’s southern border. The infected animal was an 8-month-old cow.
Earlier in July, an NWS infection had been reported 370 miles south of the U.S.–Mexico border.
In her post, Rollins said that over 13,000 screening samples have been screened, and zero NWS flies have been identified thus far.
In addition, 750,000 sterilized NWS flies are being trucked in and dispersed in the Nueva Leon region twice a week, she said.
Mass-produced, sterile male NWS flies are often used to tackle the spread of wild NWS fly swarms. When these sterile flies are released into a swarm in large numbers, they mate with the wild female flies, which end up laying unfertilized eggs, thus lowering the swarm population.
Tackling NWS swarms is crucial since they pose a major threat to livestock. In an Aug. 15 statement, USDA called NWS a “devastating pest.”
“When NWS fly larvae (maggots) burrow into the flesh of a living animal, they cause serious, often deadly damage to the animal. NWS can infest livestock, pets, wildlife, occasionally birds, and in rare cases, people,” the agency said.
“It is not only a threat to our ranching community, but it is a threat to our food supply and our national security.”
Since May, U.S. ports have been closed to imports of cattle, horses, and bison from Mexico to prevent the spread of NWS flies into the United States.
Rollins accused Mexico of having “failed to enforce proper cattle movement controls and neglected to regularly maintain fly traps as agreed, undermining detection efforts.”
“This is unacceptable,” she said in the post on X. “Mexico must immediately implement agreed-upon protocols, expand surveillance, and restrict cattle movement in infected zones. For the foreseeable future the border will remain closed.”
In a Sept. 22 statement, Mexico’s Secretariat of Agriculture and Rural Development said that the Sept. 21 detection was of an NWS fly in its larval stage, “meaning there is no possibility of the fly emerging.”
Moreover, the trapping system set up throughout northern Mexico has so far not detected a single NWS fly, said the statement.
“Mexico has established an identification and communication protocol at approved feedlots in the north of the country to immediately detect and eliminate cases and prevent any further incidents.”
Last month, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. signed a declaration empowering the Food and Drug Administration to authorize drugs aimed at preventing or treating NWS infections among animals.
“Today we are taking decisive action to safeguard the nation’s food supply from this emerging threat,” Kennedy said in a statement.
“This authorization equips FDA to act quickly, limit the spread of New World Screwworm, and protect America’s livestock.”
Currently, no drugs have been approved by the FDA to prevent or treat NWS infections. According to the FDA, its Center for Veterinary Medicine is working with companies to identify drugs that can work against the parasite.
Meanwhile, a travel-related human case of NWS infection was detected last month in an individual from Maryland, the Department of Health and Human Services announced on Aug. 25.
The infection was detected after the individual returned to Maryland from El Salvador, Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson Andrew Nixon told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement.
“This is the first human case of travel-associated New World screwworm myiasis (parasitic infestation of fly larvae) from an outbreak-affected country identified in the United States,” he said, adding that the case posed a “very low” risk to public health in the United States.
Charlie Javice Gets 7 Year Jail Sentence For Defrauding JPMorgan
Charlie Javice, the founder of a startup company that sought to improve how students apply for financial aid and who is best known for defrauding the world’s largest commercial bank (to be fair a few banks in China are bigger but they areall state owned), was sentenced Monday to more than seven years in prison for cheating JPMorgan Chase out of $175 million by greatly exaggerating how many students it served.
Javice, 33, was sentenced in Manhattan federal court for her March conviction by Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein, who said she committed “a large fraud” by duping the bank giant in the summer of 2021. She made false records that made it seem the company, called Frank, had over 4.25 million customers when it had fewer than 300,000, Hellerstein found.
Frank, which JPMorgan shut down in early 2023 after spending shit ton of money on without doing any due diligence, pretended to offer a tool to help students fill out their Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or Fafsa, which is required by most colleges in making financial aid decisions. A JPMorgan executive testified that the bank mistakenly thought Bank of America was also bidding for Frank. In reality, Capital One Financial Corp. withdrew a $125 million offer over regulatory, marketing and technological concerns on the same day JPMorgan made its bid for Javice’s company.
JPMorgan executives testified at trial that they hoped to gain millions of new, young customers through the Frank Deal, which made Javice a managing director and head of student solutions at the bank. But the bank launched an internal investigation after an email marketing push to Frank users yielded only 10 new checking accounts, they said.
Jurors heard from a data scientist whom Javice paid $18,000 to create “synthetic” user data to provide to JPMorgan during her negotiations with the bank. Frank’s chief engineer testified that he had refused to create such data for Javice because he feared it might be illegal.
The judge said Javice had assembled a “very powerful list” of her charitable acts, which included organizing soup kitchens for the homeless when she was 7 years old and designing career programs for formerly incarcerated women.
“You’re a good person,” Hellerstein told Javice. “You’ve done a bad thing, and I have to punish you.” In addition to prison time, he ordered her to forfeit $22.4 million.
“I am deeply sorry, and I am asking with all my heart for forgiveness,” Javice said through tears before her sentencing. “If it were within my power, I would never make the same mistakes again, not for money, not for recognition, not for anything.” Family members in attendance in the front row of the courtroom also wept as Javice spoke.
In court papers, defense lawyers noted that Javice has faced extraordinary public scrutiny, reputational destruction and professional exile, “making her a household name” in the same way Elizabeth Holmes became synonymous with her blood-testing company, Theranos. Which, considering both women are criminals, is hardly a shock.
Defense attorney Ronald Sullivan told Hellerstein that his client was very different from Holmes because what she created actually worked, unlike Holmes, “who did not have a real company” and whose product “in fact endangered patients.”
In seeking a 12-year prison sentence for Javice, prosecutors cited a 2022 text Javice sent to a colleague in which she called it “ridiculous” that Holmes got over 11 years in prison.
Prosecutors asked Hellerstein in a court filing for a stiff sentence, calling the crime a “brazen fraud” that she undertook to get JPMorgan to pay far more for her company than it was worth in the September 2021 deal. Javice’s lawyers on Monday suggested a sentence “in the neighborhood of 18 months.” They had called her actions a “single lapse in judgment” and claimed the loss was “not consequential” to a bank as big as JPMorgan.
Hellerstein largely dismissed arguments that he should be lenient because the acquisition pitted “a 28-year-old versus 300 investment bankers from the largest bank in the world,” as Sullivan put it.
“A fraud is a fraud, whether you outsmart someone who’s smart or someone who’s a fool,” the judge said, adding that he was focused on “her conduct, not JPMorgan’s stupidity.” Still he said JPM “have a lot to blame themselves” after failing to do adequate due diligence. He quickly added, though, that he was “punishing her conduct and not JPMorgan’s stupidity.”
Sullivan said the bank rushed its negotiations because it feared another bank would acquire Frank first.
A prosecutor, Micah Fergenson, though, said JPMorgan “didn’t get a functioning business” in exchange for its investment. “They acquired a crime scene.”
Fergenson said Javice was driven by greed when she saw that she could pocket $29 million from the sale of her company.
“Ms. Javice had it dangling in front of her and she lied to get it,” he said.
Given a chance to speak, Javice said she was “haunted that my failure has transformed something meaningful into something infamous.” She said she “made a choice that I will spend my entire life regretting.”
Javice, who lives in Florida, has been free on $2 million bail since her 2023 arrest. It means she has been wisely spending the money she stole from JPM.
At trial, Javice, a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business, was convicted of conspiracy, bank fraud and wire fraud charges. Having attracted clearly clueless investors like Apollo CEO Marc Rowan (not to be confused with Apollo’s Leon Black who had a thing for even younger women), Javice was one of several young startup founders with elite backgrounds convicted of fraud in recent years. The group includes FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried and Theranos Inc.’s Elizabeth Holmes.
Her lawyers had argued that JPMorgan went after Javice because it had buyer’s remorse.
There has been a big increase in the number of Global Positioning System (GPS) spoofing or jamming attacks, aimed at messing with the GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) data, which is standard on all international shipping.
Jeroen Pijpker, from NHL Stenden University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands, told The Epoch Times they had recorded 400 GPS spoofing and jamming incidents in their database—25 percent of which related to actual vessels—but he believed it was the “tip of the iceberg.”
Nir Ayalon, the founder and CEO of Cydome, a maritime cybersecurity firm based in Israel, told The Epoch Times that 95 percent of incidents caused by spoofing or jamming do not end up making the news.
He said Cydome had seen a 500 percent increase in GPS spoofing and jamming this year, with a 2,000 percent rise in the number of maritime blackspot areas.
GPS jamming was blamed for a collision in the Gulf of Oman in June 2025, between the Liberia-flagged tanker Front Eagle, and the Adalynn, which has been identified by Lloyd’s List—the bible of the shipping industry—as a “dark fleet” vessel.
Ayalon said that GPS spoofing is sometimes carried out by the operators of ships in order to disguise their location or identity, but it is also perpetrated as a hostile act.
He said that was believed to be the case with the MSC Antonia, which ran aground in May in the Red Sea, close to the southern end of the Suez Canal, en route to Malta from the Saudi Arabian port of Jeddah.
‘Manipulation of the Data’
“When we talk about GPS spoofing or jamming, we have several methods that organizations will use,” Ayalon said. “So there is the manipulation on the RF [radio frequency] data from the satellite to the vessel or to the antenna itself, but we have also manipulation of the data itself.”
He said spoofing or jamming could be carried out in two ways—by intercepting GNSS messages from the antenna to the transceiver, or by manipulating the AIS (Automatic Identification System) data, which all ships use.
An attacker will manipulate this data, which is easier because it’s on the web, Ayalon said. “It does not require any encryption or any authentication, so you can basically add any information that you want there.”
“It’s very easy to get into AIS data,” he said.
He said GPS spoofing could, in effect, render ships invisible—in other words, they would show up on the map in a certain location, but in reality, they would not be there.
Referring to the MSC Antonia incident, he said: “Basically, their location was manipulated and the ship autopilot tried to fix the path to the path that it thought was the right one … so the ship grounded.”
“If you would look at the place where the AIS is telling you that the ship is … there’s no ship there,” Ayalon said.
Sometimes, spoofing was carried out by bad actors who were trying to damage a specific vessel, he said.
There were also reports of Russian oligarchs using spoofing to hide the location of their megayachts in 2022, when sanctions against Russia kicked in.
“There was a case in Dutch waters, near Den Helder, there was a Russian oligarch with his superyacht, and there was a lot of spoofing around the superyacht,” Pijpker said.
Jamming and Spoofing
Ayalon said that in order to carry out GPS jamming or spoofing, a bad actor needs only a relatively small high-frequency antenna, which would usually need to be sited on a tall building or on a cliff or other high place, close to a port or a shipping lane.
“They will need an antenna,” he said, adding that it is not always something that can be seen.
“It can be quite a small device,” he said.
The Norwegian shipping insurance company Gard published an article recently about GPS jamming, which said navigation in the shipping lanes of the Middle East have been impacted by GPS interference which was used as “defensive measures used to protect against drone and missile threats targeting critical infrastructure include the Israeli coast and the Red Sea during the Israel–Hamas conflict as well as the Persian Gulf and Arabian Gulf.”
Ayalon said there were a number of GPS spoofing blackspots around the world where mariners knew they had to keep especially alert.
These areas included the Black Sea, the Red Sea, the South China Sea, the Persian Gulf, the eastern end of the Mediterranean, the Barents Sea, and the seas around North Korea.
There is also a small blackspot near Pensacola, Florida, which may be linked to a U.S. naval air station.
Ayalon said a lot of the satellite data for shipping around China was also not accurate because of spoofing.
Pijpker pointed out a case in 2019, when a British ship, the Stena Impero, drifted into Iranian waters in the Persian Gulf after apparently having its GPS spoofed.
He said the Iranians allegedly used GPS spoofing to get the ship to unintentionally enter their national waters, and they then seized it. It left Iranian waters later that year.
Ship Honeynet Created
But Pijpker said GPS spoofing remained an “under-researched topic,” and he said his own university had created a ship honeynet in an attempt to understand the “malicious traffic,” referring to a network setup with intentional vulnerabilities to attract hackers.
He said it was a “virtual ship” that was linked to the internet by a Starlink device and a decoy server and was designed “to see what kind of people are attacking ships.”
Ayalon said the increase in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites like Starlink had brought with it a lot of new maritime technology, but he said a lot of crew members trust what the computer and other semi-autonomous systems display.
“This means that we see more and more events like the MSC Antonia,” he said.
He said there were a lot of tools that enabled crews to check the integrity of their GNSS, and he said crews will need to start using these types of systems “in order to make sure that they’re in the right place.”
US “Looking At” Selling Tomahawk Missiles To Ukraine, JD Vance Says
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky last week revealed in an interview with Axios that he asked President Trump on to provide Ukraine with Tomahawk missiles, which would allow Ukrainian forces to strike deep into Russia, even as far away as Moscow.
Zelensky made the dubious argument that this would force President Putin to the negotiating table to make significant compromise and end the war. Zelensky suggested that the Ukrainians might not even have to use the Tomahawks it was given, only that the threat alone could be enough to scare Putin.
The White House has not yet officially rejected the possibility, but instead is actually mulling the proposed transfer. Vice President JD Vance indicated while speaking to Fox News Sunday that President Trump would make the final decision. He said the White House is “looking at” the issue:
“You asked this question about Tomahawks. It’s something the president is going to make the final determination on,” Vance told Fox News.
“What the president is going to do is what’s in the best interest for the United States of America,” he said. “I know we’re having conversations this very minute about the issue”.
“We’re certainly looking at a number of requests from the Europeans. And one of the things, again, that I think has really worked about the president’s policy in Ukraine and Russia is that it’s forced the Europeans to step up in a big way,” Vance continued. The Tomahawk missile has a range of approximately 1,550 miles and so could do serious damage deep into Russian territory, which President Putin has declared a bright red line (that is, utilizing US long-range missiles to attack Russia).
Allowing the Tomahawk transfer could spark the path to WW3 with Russia, but it’s a positive sign that Vance was very vague about it, only confirming ‘several’ requests have been made by European allies.
Trump has so far shown an unwillingness for such brazen escalation, and has yet to even pull the trigger on threatened secondary sanctions, to the chagrin of hawks in Europe.
However, Trump has also reportedly grown increasingly frustrated with Russian President Putin’s unwillingness to engage in peace negotiations without Kiev making clear first that it’s ready to make serious territorial and other concessions.
This is probably why Zelensky is utilizing his argument that Tomahawks would somehow force Putin to the negotiating table.
Meanwhile, Ukraine is still using long-range drones for strikes on the Moscow region. Overnight a Ukrainian drone strike killed a child and his grandmother in a town outside Moscow.
“Last night, air defense forces shot down four drones in Voskresensk and Kolomna,” Moscow region Governor Andrei Vorobyov stated on Telegram. “Unfortunately, a tragedy occurred in Voskresensk: two people died in a fire in a private home — a 76-year-old woman and her 6-year-old grandson.”
U.S. Vice-President JD Vance confirmed today on Fox News that the Trump Administration is seriously considering the sale of BGM-109 “Tomahawk” Land Attack Cruise Missiles (TLAM), which have a range of up to 1,500 miles, as well as other advanced weaponry, to Europe to provide to… pic.twitter.com/E9GmOMxZG1
Below are more Ukraine war related overnight developments & headlines via Newsquawk:
NATO
Russian President Putin is to deliver a major speech this week, according to multiple media outlets.
Belarus’s President said that if NATO threatens to shoot down Russian and Belarusian fighter jets, the response will come immediately, according to Reuters.
NATO will boost its presence in the Baltic region following drone incidents in Denmark, according to Reuters.
Denmark announced that unknown drones were spotted over several military facilities on Friday night, including the country’s main air base Karup, which houses Denmark’s F-16s and F-35s, according to Reuters.
RUSSIA-UKRAINE
Russian missiles and drones struck Ukraine in a “savage” 12-hour attack, according to Reuters.
Russian sources said the Russian army launched strikes targeting military sites in Kyiv and its surroundings, as well as weapons depots and air defence systems.
Poland closed its airspace after a “massive” Russian attack on Ukraine’s capital killed at least four people, according to Reuters.
Ukrainian President Zelensky said he expects new EU sanctions on Russia this week, according to Reuters.
Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov said no one expects a return to Ukraine’s 2022 borders, calling it politically blind, according to Reuters.
Ukraine said drones struck an oil pumping station in Russia’s Chuvashia region, according to Reuters.
The Kremlin said it has received no signals from Kyiv regarding the resumption of Russia-Ukraine talks, via RIA.
When the newly-formed Confederacy attacked Fort Sumter in Charleston Bay, April 1861, they ignited the Civil War. They, at least, had a clearcut goal: to maintain an economy (and society) based on slavery. It was patently evil, but it was firmly established and it was their engine for daily life, and they didn’t want it to end.
When Charlie Kirk was murdered in 2025, Civil War 2.0 kicked off. The enemy this time are not Confederates with a coherent command structure and a goal. They are an army of nihilists like the gang in The Big Lebowski, who, for one reason or another, have failed to launch lives of meaning and purpose, and so have adopted the purpose of destroying the country they cannot thrive in. Unlike The Big Lebowski, this is not a joke. But, it’s obviously a different sort of civil war than the first one.
It appears that many of these nihilists, especially the ones amalgamated as Antifa, are straight-up mentally ill – crazed young women too untamed to find a mate, many obese and self-mutilated like tattooed savages with steel bones in their noses. . . young men, hormones afire, likewise frustrated, escaping into sexual fetish and psychotic obsessions with demons, violence, blame, enmity. They are warriors for their own deformed ids.
There is, for sure, plenty to complain about in American life as currently organized. It abounds with swindles and ruses, and much of the ill effect falls on young people who were rooked into college loans, are drowning in unpayable debt, are unable to find meaningful work in an economy dominated by cruelly gigantic companies, are unable to afford a place of their own to eat and sleep in, and whose bodies and minds are ravaged by junk food and pharma products.
Do not overlook the deleterious effects of the everyday environment we have created: the world of American suburbia. Above all, it requires a reliable car to even begin to function in, and that is beyond the reach of many newly-minted adults with no job or a shit-job. The sheer ugliness of American suburbia is punishing to human neurology. It induces anxiety and despair to a degree we can’t begin to reckon. Try walking a mile down a six-laner between the Sam’s Club and the DMV sometime.
Suburbia atomizes social relations, making everyone an isolated unit and it defeats any attempt to form real communities. Its schools function like minimum security prisons, generators of anomie and ennui. On top of all that, suburbia has entered its arc of economic failure. Even the gainfully employed middle-aged can no longer pay for it. It was built out of crappy materials that are falling apart now. A sane person would opt to not live in it, but since escape is so difficult from sea to shining sea, the other option is to go insane — especially if you’re just setting out in life.
All of this discontent gets converted, abracadabra, into political ideology. The old, reliable package of Marxism works whenever people feel cheated out of meaning, purpose, and a livelihood. And so, this anguished cohort of the young, defeated in making a life, driven mentally ill by their surroundings, hounded by the endless prompts of their beloved smartphones, wrecked by the things they put in their bodies, and broken by their demoralizing failures, become the useful idiots of their political elders.
And the Democratic Party, having become little more than a grifting machine of hustles and hoaxes, uses the young to generate ever more ill-feeling across the land over issues that self-evidently are against the interests of the young — so that the party can survive its present existential crisis.
It was not in young America’s interest to receive “Joe Biden’s” flood of illegal migrants across the border. Apart from their criminal histories, or the hidden agenda to form subversive cells for foreign enemies, the illegal migrants compete with young people in many realms of employment like the building trades, while they drive down wages generally. So why are the Antifas out there in front of the ICE facility affecting to “rescue” the deportees?
Because the mind-scrambling language of Marxian revolt has persuaded the Antifas that the illegal migrants are their “marginalized intersectional allies.” It’s bullshit, of course, but the mentally ill swallow it because they are desperate for meaning and filled with animus for all-and-any authority responsible for constructing and managing a system they have failed in.
Mr. Trump, the primary demon in their fantasies, and certainly the enemy of the Democratic Party’s corrupt grifting machine, attempts to restore an economy based on producing things of value, rather than financial flimflams. The catch is, he may not be able to do that using the old armature of gigantic corporate organisms operating on rollover debt. That phase of history is probably over.
We need a new armature, but one based on voluntary exchange, which is to say economic liberty, not top-town communist-type centralized planning. Everywhere that has been tried, it failed and blew up. Euro-style Socialism Lite is not a workable choice anymore, either, because we are leaving behind the cheap energy economy and the geopolitical deals that made six-week vacations, retirement at 60, and free medicine possible.
Neither the Democratic Party nor their Antifa foot-soldiers have a sane and coherent approach to this set of problems. The remaining option for them is to stay insane, to fight for crazy things like men in the women’s swim lane, and to act out their inchoate rage. If they keep escalating, the remaining sane sixty-percent or so of America will opt to put them down briskly and harshly, and it looks like that is about to happen.
The pain of a government shutdown won’t just be political: Millions of low-income women and children could be left hungry as soon as next week if congressional Democrats and the White House do not come to a deal.
The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children will soon run out of funding. If they don’t cut a deal to keep the government open, a senior White House official told RealClearPolitics, “Democrats would be turning their back on WIC recipients.”
Called WIC for short, the program provides vouchers for healthy food to low-income pregnant and postpartum women, their infants, and young children. The $7 billion program is funded entirely by the federal government, but that money is expected to be depleted on Oct.1. New beneficiaries will be unable to enroll, and current WIC beneficiaries will be unable to have their cards reloaded.
“The program would run out of money in October, and women and children could no longer receive benefits,” a senior administration official said. “The White House and Republicans in the House-passed CR added $600 million so there will be no loss of benefits – clearly Democrats are ok with women and children losing WIC benefits.”
The program has been increasingly strained in recent years as enrollment increased and as the cost of food continues to rise. A small contingency fund does exist, about $150 million, but that is not enough money to provide food assistance for the more than 6.7 million that rely on the program. The administration has searched for additional money to reprogram but come up short.
“There’s no more quarters in the cushions,” the official said. “It’d get us maybe another day.”
House Republicans advanced a continuing resolution to keep the government open until Nov. 20. Other than additional money for new security for members of the executive and judicial branches, and programmatic change to free up $1 billion for the D.C. city government, it does not make big new spending changes.
Under pressure from their base and led by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, congressional Democrats have balked at that deal and tried to open negotiations with the White House. They are seeking concessions on health care spending in exchange for their support. Late Tuesday, President Trump abruptly canceled a meeting with Democratic leadership.
“After reviewing the details of the unserious and ridiculous demands being made by the Minority Radical Left Democrats in return for their Votes to keep our thriving Country open, I have decided that no meeting with their Congressional Leaders could possibly be productive,” he wrote on Truth Social.
The blame game commenced shortly thereafter, with Schumer blasting the White House for refusing to talk. “Donald Trump is causing the shutdown,” Schumer said at a Tuesday press conference. “This is a Trump shutdown, and he is barreling right toward it right now, and he knows he is going to be blamed for the shut down.”
The White House then quickly turned up the pressure, threatening to use a government shutdown as an opportunity to further remake the federal workforce. If the lights go off, Russ Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, warned that thousands of government employees could permanently lose their jobs. On the home front, the White House now warns, millions of kitchen tables could begin to go bare.
“Israel Will Finish The Job” If Hamas Doesn’t Accept Trump’s 20-Point Gaza Plan & ‘Board Of Peace’
Summary: Having finished their lengthy remarks, Trump and Netanyahu took no questions as they left to another room to sign documents related to the 20-point peace plan for Gaza, which Trump has hailed as having the backing of key Arab allies across the region. One consistent theme of both Trump’s and Bibi’s in the Monday afternoon presser was that if Hamas doesn’t agree, then “Israel will finish the job” – meaning completely take over and occupy the Gaza Strip while seeking the total eradication of Hamas. “If Hamas rejects your plan, Mr President, or if they supposedly accepted and then basically do everything to counter it, then Israel will finish the job by itself,” Netanyahu made clear, echoing remarks Trump issued just prior.
Trump had made clear that all the hostages are going to be released, but several big, obvious question remain: after several assassinations of leading Hamas officials and commanders, who is left to speak for Hamas? Is Hamas on board with any of this whatsoever? Why would Hamas sign on to its own demise, given the 20-point plan calls for a ‘Board of Peace’ to oversee the disarming of all Hamas militants? Despite all this, Trump said the sides are “very close” to a deal and that he wants to see “eternal peace” in the Middle East. Again, one wonders whether Hamas militants deep inside the tunnels preparing to launch ambushes on IDF infantry columns are aware of any of this.
Interestingly, Trump said he was asked to be head of this Board of Peace, and also mentioned the high-level participation of ex-British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Trump described that “A gentleman known as President Donald J. Trump” will be in charge of something called the “Board of Peace” to oversee post-war Gaza. Tony Blair, “a very good man” will be on the board, others “will be named over the next few days” – Trump added. Does any neutral observer think Hamas or the Palestinians will actually buy into this?
But again, as Trump emphasized, if Hamas doesn’t accept then Israel will have the “absolute right and full backing… to finish the job of destroying the threat of Hamas.” In reality it seems this is all an elaborate scheme for the US to simply and fully greenlight to total and permanent military takeover of Gaza (see the details of the 20-point plan below) – and as a way to get Arab Gulf countries on board, while mitigating the ongoing international pressure, especially from Europe. As an aside, Trump frequently invoked the ‘successes’ of the Abraham Accords and even mused that Iran might join one day (which must have been met with chuckles and derision in Tehran).
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The full Trump 20-point plan for peace just issued by the White House below…
President Donald J. Trump’s Plan to End the Gaza Conflict
Gaza will be a deradicalized terror-free zone that does not pose a threat to its neighbors.
Gaza will be redeveloped for the benefit of the people of Gaza, who have suffered more than enough.
If both sides agree to this proposal, the war will immediately end. Israeli forces will withdraw to the agreed upon line to prepare for a hostage release. During this time, all military operations, including aerial and artillery bombardment, will be suspended, and battle lines will remain frozen until conditions are met for the complete staged withdrawal.
Within 72 hours of Israel publicly accepting this agreement, all hostages, alive and deceased, will be returned.
Once all hostages are released, Israel will release 250 life sentence prisoners plus 1700 Gazans who were detained after October 7th 2023, including all women and children detained in that context. For every Israeli hostage whose remains are released, Israel will release the remains of 15 deceased Gazans.
Once all hostages are returned, Hamas members who commit to peaceful co-existence and to decommission their weapons will be given amnesty. Members of Hamas who wish to leave Gaza will be provided safe passage to receiving countries.
Upon acceptance of this agreement, full aid will be immediately sent into the Gaza Strip. At a minimum, aid quantities will be consistent with what was included in the January 19, 2025, agreement regarding humanitarian aid, including rehabilitation of infrastructure (water, electricity, sewage), rehabilitation of hospitals and bakeries, and entry of necessary equipment to remove rubble and open roads.
Entry of distribution and aid in the Gaza Strip will proceed without interference from the two parties through the United Nations and its agencies, and the Red Crescent, in addition to other international institutions not associated in any manner with either party. Opening the Rafah crossing in both directions will be subject to the same mechanism implemented under the January 19, 2025 agreement.
Gaza will be governed under the temporary transitional governance of a technocratic, apolitical Palestinian committee, responsible for delivering the day-to-day running of public services and municipalities for the people in Gaza. This committee will be made up of qualified Palestinians and international experts, with oversight and supervision by a new international transitional body, the “Board of Peace,” which will be headed and chaired by President Donald J. Trump, with other members and heads of State to be announced, including Former Prime Minister Tony Blair. This body will set the framework and handle the funding for the redevelopment of Gaza until such time as the Palestinian Authority has completed its reform program, as outlined in various proposals, including President Trump’s peace plan in 2020 and the Saudi-French proposal, and can securely and effectively take back control of Gaza. This body will call on best international standards to create modern and efficient governance that serves the people of Gaza and is conducive to attracting investment.
A Trump economic development plan to rebuild and energize Gaza will be created by convening a panel of experts who have helped birth some of the thriving modern miracle cities in the Middle East. Many thoughtful investment proposals and exciting development ideas have been crafted by well-meaning international groups, and will be considered to synthesize the security and governance frameworks to attract and facilitate these investments that will create jobs, opportunity, and hope for future Gaza.
A special economic zone will be established with preferred tariff and access rates to be negotiated with participating countries.
No one will be forced to leave Gaza, and those who wish to leave will be free to do so and free to return. We will encourage people to stay and offer them the opportunity to build a better Gaza.
Hamas and other factions agree to not have any role in the governance of Gaza, directly, indirectly, or in any form. All military, terror, and offensive infrastructure, including tunnels and weapon production facilities, will be destroyed and not rebuilt. There will be a process of demilitarization of Gaza under the supervision of independent monitors, which will include placing weapons permanently beyond use through an agreed process of decommissioning, and supported by an internationally funded buy back and reintegration program all verified by the independent monitors. New Gaza will be fully committed to building a prosperous economy and to peaceful coexistence with their neighbors.
A guarantee will be provided by regional partners to ensure that Hamas, and the factions, comply with their obligations and that New Gaza poses no threat to its neighbors or its people.
The United States will work with Arab and international partners to develop a temporary International Stabilization Force (ISF) to immediately deploy in Gaza. The ISF will train and provide support to vetted Palestinian police forces in Gaza, and will consult with Jordan and Egypt who have extensive experience in this field. This force will be the long-term internal security solution. The ISF will work with Israel and Egypt to help secure border areas, along with newly trained Palestinian police forces. It is critical to prevent munitions from entering Gaza and to facilitate the rapid and secure flow of goods to rebuild and revitalize Gaza. A deconfliction mechanism will be agreed upon by the parties.
Israel will not occupy or annex Gaza. As the ISF establishes control and stability, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) will withdraw based on standards, milestones, and timeframes linked to demilitarization that will be agreed upon between the IDF, ISF, the guarantors, and the Unites States, with the objective of a secure Gaza that no longer poses a threat to Israel, Egypt, or its citizens. Practically, the IDF will progressively hand over the Gaza territory it occupies to the ISF according to an agreement they will make with the transitional authority until they are withdrawn completely from Gaza, save for a security perimeter presence that will remain until Gaza is properly secure from any resurgent terror threat.
In the event Hamas delays or rejects this proposal, the above, including the scaled-up aid operation, will proceed in the terror-free areas handed over from the IDF to the ISF.
An interfaith dialogue process will be established based on the values of tolerance and peaceful co-existence to try and change mindsets and narratives of Palestinians and Israelis by emphasizing the benefits that can be derived from peace.
While Gaza re-development advances and when the PA reform program is faithfully carried out, the conditions may finally be in place for a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood, which we recognize as the aspiration of the Palestinian people.
The United States will establish a dialogue between Israel and the Palestinians to agree on a political horizon for peaceful and prosperous co-existence.
Map offered by the White House, showing a proposed IDF ‘partial withdrawal’:
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President Trump is once again hosting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House on Monday, in order to mull the US president’s Gaza peace proposal amid mounting support among Western nations for Palestinian statehood. It remains that of course neither Washington nor Israel is on board with such recognition, but Trump has wanted to see a swift resolution as the war approaches its two-year mark next week.
This will be Netanyahu’s fourth White House visit since Trump returned to office in January. Despite the red carpet constantly being rolled out for him in Washington, he faces growing international isolation, especially in Europe.
During his last Friday speech before the UN General Assembly in New York, he lashed out at the leaders of France, Great Britain, Australia, Canada, and other countries for “unconditionally” recognizing a Palestinian state. At the same time he thanked America for its firm pro-Israel stance.
But Trump is optimistic that a deal with Hamas to secure the release of all hostages can be salvaged. He told Reuters on Sunday that he hopes to gain Netanyahu’s support for a peace framework that would end the conflict in Gaza. “We’re getting a very good response because Bibi wants to make the deal too,” Trump said in a phone interview. “Everybody wants to make the deal.”
Regional powers have reportedly been involved, including including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, Jordan, and Egypt – in planning and backing the agreement, which is crucial for its chances of success.
“It’s called peace in the Middle East – more than Gaza. Gaza is part of it, but it’s peace in the Middle East,” Trump said. Per the published schedule for Monday:
The meeting is scheduled to begin at 11 a.m. local time (6 p.m. in Israel), when Trump will greet Netanyahu, according to the itinerary. The two men will then hold a meeting and sit for a meal together, followed by the press conference, scheduled for 1:15 p.m.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt has previewed to reporters that “both sides have to give up a little bit and might leave the table a little bit unhappy.” But it seems this conversation is only being had with one side, given no signs of direct Hamas involvement in these discussions.
The reality is that this month’s Israeli attack on Hamas officials in Doha was likely the straw that broke the camel’s back in terms of ending the possibility of negotiations. Hamas says its negotiating team was lured to Qatar precisely with the promise of a new deal on the horizon, only to be attacked in a brazen Israeli operation, leaving five dead, as as well as a Qatari security guard.
So despite Trump’s optimism for the future, chances aren’t great, also at a time the IDF is pursuing the total takeover of Gaza City.
Hamas has meanwhile made clear that it won’t negotiate its own demise, while also wanting a full Israeli military withdrawal before all remaining hostages are released, but Netanyahu is still pledging to not end IDF operations until the complete eradication of Hamas is realized.
Trump reportedly wants to see an immediate halt to all military operations, but will Israel comply? Will Hamas comply? Both seem remain locked in a zero sum fight at this point, so it seems increasingly unlikely.
