With the government shutdown in its third week, White House’s top economic advisor Kevin Hassett said on Monday that the government shutdown is “likely to end sometime this week,” and that if it does not, the Trump administration may impose “stronger measures” to try and force Democrats to cooperate.

Hassett told CNBC that he’s heard from the Senate that Democrats thought it would be “bad optics” to vote to reopen the government before this weekend’s nationwide “No Kings” protest.

“Now there’s a shot that this week, things will come together, and very quickly,” he said. “The moderate Democrats will move forward and get us an open government, at which point we could negotiate whatever policies they want to negotiate with regular order.”

“I think the Schumer shutdown is likely to end sometime this week,” he said, referring to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who Republicans have blamed for letting the government shut down.

If it doesn’t reopen, “I think that the White House is going to have to look very closely, along with [White House budget chief Russell] Vought, at stronger measures that we could take to bring them to the table,” Hassett continued – suggesting that Democrats are simply looking for a politically opportune time to fold. 

Watch:

HASSETT: There’s cracks in the Schumer armor. I think the Schumer Shutdown is likely to end sometime this week. But I can tell you that if it doesn’t… the White House is gonna have to look very closely… at stronger measures that we can take to bring them to the table. pic.twitter.com/Z13tK3nyfd

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) October 20, 2025

Hassett’s comments added to the market’s Monday morning momentum, and sent Polymarket betters into a frenzy as to when the shutdown will end. 

Hassett’s comments aside, the shutdown is currently in day 20 – with no obvious end in sight. 

The top issue is Affordable Care Act subsidies – which Democrats are demanding an extension of a Biden-era pandemic ACA expansion set to expire at the end of the year – arguing that failing to do so would increase healthcare costs for families. 

That said, maintaining the tax credit carries a big price tag – as permanently expanding the most generous benefits would increase the deficit by $350 billion from 2026 – 2035, according to the Congressional Budget Office. 

Lawmakers don’t have much time, however, as around a dozen states have published ACA heal insurance prices for 2026 which show many premiums skyrocketing unless Congress extends. By next week, dozens of other states will reveal pricing for next year.

Authored by Ken Silva via HeadlineUSA (emphasis ours),

U.S. Judge Bruce Reinhart, who issued the warrant for the FBI’s raid on President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in 2022, once shared office space with deceased sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, according to newly revealed records.

Some of Judge Reinhart’s links to Epstein have long been known. Reinhart worked for the U.S. Attorney’s Office Southern District of Florida while that branch was prosecuting Epstein for sex crimes in the mid-2000s, and he left that office to work for Epstein in January 2008—more than six months before the Justice Department’s plea deal with Epstein was finalized.

But that’s not all. On Friday, the House Oversight Committee released a transcript of its interview with former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida Alex Acosta, who signed off on the Epstein plea deal. That transcript reveals that Judge Reinhart not only worked as an attorney for Epstein; he shared office with the deceased sex trafficker.

🚨NEW: It’s been known for years that U.S. Judge Bruce Reinhart, who issued the warrant for the FBI’s raid on President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in 2022, once worked for Jeffrey Epstein — joining his legal team after serving at the U.S. Attorney’s Office that prosecuted… pic.twitter.com/67nQdIIRWv

— Headline USA (@HeadlineUSA) October 18, 2025

Indeed, Reinhart incorporated his private practice, Bruce E. Reinhart P.A., on Oct. 23, 2007, listing his address at 250 Australian Ave. South, Suite 1400, West Palm Beach, Florida. Exactly one week later, Epstein incorporated an organization called the Florida Science Foundation at the same address, which is also the office of his former lead attorney, Jack Goldberger.

Epstein would go on to work at the Florida Science Foundation on work-release while serving his 13-month sentence in 2008 and 2009—what’s widely been described as a “sweetheart” plea deal—for procuring a child for prostitution.

When House Oversight Committee investigators presented this evidence to Acosta last month, he expressed surprise.

“So you’ve just disclosed something that I did not know,” Acosta said. “I knew that he had left to work for Epstein while this case was pending. I did not know that he is the one that filed these articles of incorporation.”

Acosta also said it was unethical for Reinhart to have incorporated his private law practice while he was still working for the DOJ.

Most of the House Oversight Committee’s interview with Acosta focused on the plea deal his office granted Epstein. Acosta served as Trump’s Labor Secretary from 2017 to 2019, resigning after his role in the plea deal was thrust back into the public spotlight when Epstein was arrested again in July 2019.

Acosta has defended the plea deal on the grounds that it did result in Epstein’s incarceration and registration as a sex offender.

By far the biggest revelation from the new Acosta interview: The judge who approved the Mar-a-Lago raid once shared office space with Epstein.
The judge also worked for the DOJ in Southern Florida while that office was prosecuting Epstein, then he went on to work for Epstein!!! https://t.co/WRX1c1wss1 pic.twitter.com/6b6En5VlMo

— Ken Silva (@JD_Cashless) October 18, 2025

During his interview with the House Oversight Committee, he said taking Epstein to trial would’ve been a “crapshoot.”

He also blamed Epstein’s work-release on local authorities.

“He obtained work release from the Palm Beach sheriff under a factual situation that’s sketchy at best,” Acosta said. “I don’t remember all the details, but I think his work release was at an institution that had just been incorporated, or something along those lines. That was the Palm Beach sheriff’s decision.”

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

Authored by Luis Cornelio via HeadlineUSA,

Disgraced former CNN host Don Lemon urged “black” and “brown” Americans on Wednesday to take up arms, warning they could be swept up in President Donald Trump’s ICE operations. 

He made the incendiary claim during a podcast interview with Wajahat Ali, citing the small number of cases involving U.S. citizens being briefly detained by ICE in cities like Chicago. 

“I just want to be very clear here. I am not condoning or promoting violence,” Lemon began, before invoking the Second Amendment. “Here’s what I’m saying to black and brown people, to Mexican people, to people who are here legally and who can go and buy a gun legally and have a license to carry legally: Go do it! Why not? Go do it! It is your Second Amendment right.” 

Don Lemon instructs illegal aliens “to go out and get a gun because when you have people knocking on your door and taking you away, isn’t that what the second amendment was written for?”

The left is trying to get ICE agents killed.pic.twitter.com/B1lMqM2CqS

— CJ Pearson (@thecjpearson) October 16, 2025

Lemon then urged “black households,” “Indian Americans,” “Mexican Americans,” and, as he put it, “whatever you are,” to purchase firearms legally, claiming the show of force could discourage the Trump administration from conducting immigration raids. 

“Get a license to carry legally,” he said. “Because when you have people knocking on your door and taking you away without due process as a citizen, isn’t that what the Second Amendment was written for?” 

He continued, “Go back and read what the Second Amendment says. And perhaps it will knock some sense … in the heads of these people who are saying: ‘Well, it’s all great. I don’t believe they’re doing it without due process. They’re asking people for papers. They’re not really beating people up. These people are doing things that are illegal.’”  

Lemon’s comments come amid the legacy media’s fixation on rare cases of American citizens briefly detained during ICE raids, most of which are quickly clarified or resolved. 

White House border czar Tom Homan has repeatedly clarified that ICE conducts only targeted operations focused on individuals with existing deportation orders. However, illegal aliens without such orders, as well as citizens lacking proper identification, may be temporarily detained if swept up during these raids. 

When reached by email, Lemon could not provide evidence of any widespread targeting of U.S. citizens by ICE by the time of publication. 

Watch Lemon’s full remarks below:

Submitted by Thomas Kolbe

In the German Bundestag, Friedrich Merz appealed to the EU to integrate the fragmented European capital market more deeply and reduce bureaucratic hurdles. His vision for the next step: a kind of Wall Street for Europe.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz used his government statement on Thursday to take a strategic look at what he called the “fragmented and over-bureaucratized” European stock and capital market landscape. His stated goal: the completion of the Capital Markets Union.

“We need a kind of European Stock Exchange, so that successful companies like BionTech from Germany don’t have to go to the New York Stock Exchange,” Merz said. “Our companies need a sufficiently broad and deep capital market to fund themselves faster and more efficiently.”

Keeping Value Creation in Europe 

The Chancellor linked this call to a strong appeal to the European Commission for consistent de-bureaucratization of the fragmented European capital market. Only in this way, he stressed, will the value created from German and European research truly remain in Europe. Only then can societal wealth grow via the capital market, Merz argued.

The debate is fueled by the growing trend of European innovative companies raising capital on U.S. exchanges. Recent examples include Linde, Birkenstock Holding, and BioNTech – firms that chose Wall Street listings over domestic options.

This discussion fits into a broader financial context: the integration of European financial and capital markets. A far-reaching harmonization of financial hubs and access to capital would not be a mistake. Currently, there are around 15 securities exchanges in the Eurozone. The two largest operators – Euronext N.V. and Deutsche Börse AG – together handle about 80 percent of the annual €8 trillion equity trading volume.

Ending Capital Flight 

Merz’ initiative stands not only for institutional reform but also as an attempt to free Europe’s financial markets from self-imposed regulatory constraints.

The Chancellor emphasized the importance of better financing for innovative startups in high-tech future industries. Experience shows, however, that these companies tend to rely on venture capital – and they have no difficulty listing on international exchanges like Frankfurt or London.

The real question for Brussels and Berlin is whether focusing on a new financial hub alone is enough to prevent visible capital flows from Europe to the United States.

Germany alone lost around €64.5 billion last year due to capital flight – a symptom of deeper issues: an overbearing regulatory framework from Brussels and EU capitals, excessive fiscal burdens, and an escalating energy cost crisis.

The Real Target 

These are fundamental economic imbalances that cannot be resolved simply by creating a European mega-exchange. They are homegrown design flaws – at the heart of today’s economic crisis.

In reality, the debate over the Capital Markets Union is about something else entirely: the European Commission’s strategic goal to consolidate member state debt under its roof. This would give Brussels greater financial clout through regular EU bond issuances. More centralization in Brussels, less national oversight – the dream of the Brussels power center.

The EU is gradually moving toward a paradigm shift in debt financing. Originally, the Commission was strictly prohibited from financing itself via market issuances. That red line has long been crossed.

The COVID lockdowns provided a lever to launch NextGenerationEU, an unprecedented €800 billion debt program. This money largely financed national deficits, with the Commission acting as a market borrower, backed by the European Central Bank.

Brussels Is Already Active in the Market 

It is no secret that Brussels wants to expand this model. The Ukraine conflict serves as a convenient pretext to issue new joint debt under the media-amplified threat of Russian aggression. Chancellor Merz has already indicated this spring that EU-wide borrowing for defense purposes is not off the table – but only for “absolute exceptional cases.”

Merz deliberately avoided the term “Eurobonds,” just like Ursula von der Leyen, who in her State of the Union speech on September 10 circumnavigated the term, instead proposing a common European budget for “European goods.”

The signal is clear: we are in a transitional phase where old debt rules are being gradually loosened, and the centralization of debt issuance in Brussels is systematically advanced.

Euroclear as an Anchor 

This aligns seamlessly with thinking about a shared European exchange – potentially hosted by Euroclear in Brussels, the central player in the safekeeping and settlement of Eurozone securities. A serious move would also consider relocating the European Central Bank to Brussels for fast debt issuance.

The EU’s response to the looming debt crisis is obvious: a much higher degree of centralization. Activating capital that can be leveraged to expand debt becomes strategic; the exchange consolidation is just a secondary concern.

This also ties into the debate over using frozen Russian assets at Euroclear. The goal: collateralize a portfolio worth around €200 billion, largely expired European sovereign bonds, to finance reparations loans to Ukraine. Brussels is searching for credit collateral, regardless of origin.

A massive internet outage is being reported at the start of the new workweek. The problem appears to be originating from Amazon Web Services (AWS), which provides infrastructure that powers much of the modern internet.

AWS’ Service Health Dashboard shows “operational issues” in its US-East-1 region (Northern Virginia), one of its largest data centers.

What’s happening:

• Several AWS services, including DynamoDB and others, are experiencing slow performance (high latency) or failures (high error rates).

Impact:

• Apps and websites that rely on AWS may be loading slowly, timing out, or not working at all.

• Users may be unable to create or update support cases through AWS’ help system.

• Widespread slowdowns and outages are being reported across major platforms that depend on Amazon’s cloud, including Snapchat, Roblox, Amazon Alexa, Fortnite, Ring, Robinhood, Venmo, Lyft, and many others.

There’s no official statement yet on what sparked the outage at AWS’ Virginia data centers.

Developing.

Around 200 Shell outlets in Indonesia have run out of gasoline after domestic supply disruptions tied to state oil giant PT Pertamina and a sweeping corruption probe, according to Bloomberg.

Rivals such as BP AKR and Vitol’s Vivo have also been empty for weeks. Lines now snake through Pertamina’s own stations, the only ones still reliably selling fuel — though “neither drivers, nor private competitors, trust the quality of the product it offers.” Shell decided in May to leave the retail market altogether.

A century ago, Indonesia was among the world’s great petroleum producers. A deal between a London trader and a Dutch oilfield operator in Sumatra led to the founding of what became Shell in 1907. But the nationalization of its Indonesian arm in 1957 created Pertamina, which soon became a symbol of both wealth and graft. Under General Ibnu Sutowo, who ran the company until 1976, Pertamina collapsed under billions in debt and became shorthand for elite excess.

Bloomberg writes that since those glory days, output has fallen by two-thirds while the population has doubled to 283 million. Indonesia now imports much of its refined fuel, consumes more gasoline than Germany, and boasts one of the world’s largest vehicle fleets — mostly scooters. As ever, the profits have flowed toward insiders. Suharto-era cronies dominated oil trading in the 1980s, and protests over fuel prices helped bring down his regime in 1998.

Promises of reform have repeatedly failed. President Joko Widodo once vowed to dismantle the “oil-and-gas mafia,” but corruption endured. This February, President Prabowo Subianto’s government launched an investigation into allegations that $11.9 billion was siphoned from Pertamina between 2018 and 2023 — largely by diluting premium gasoline with lower-grade fuel, damaging countless engines in the process.

Distrust has driven consumers to private retailers such as Shell, BP, and Vivo. Yet import restrictions prevented these firms from meeting surging demand. They were forced to seek extra supplies from Pertamina — and, wary of contamination, often refused delivery. The result: a nationwide fuel drought.

The chaos is accelerating Indonesia’s quiet electric revolution. Battery-powered vehicles already command more than 14% of the market, thanks to cheap electricity and falling prices. The top-selling electric scooter, the Polytron Fox R, costs roughly two-thirds as much as its gas rival, Honda’s BeAT. Even with limited public charging, private swap stations and home outlets are filling the gap.

This could be a story of renewal: a vast, resource-rich nation pivoting toward clean, affordable energy. But that future depends on loosening the grip of a fossil-fueled elite that’s profited from dysfunction for decades. As long as Pertamina’s monopoly endures, innovation will struggle to breathe.

Indonesia’s gasoline crisis mirrors the public anger spilling into its streets — both driven by a collapse of trust in the state. If President Prabowo wants to get ahead of that, he should use the EV boom to open the market and curb Pertamina’s dominance, “acting as ruthlessly as his predecessor Widodo did in liquidating its scandal-plagued trading arm back in 2015.”

The kleptocratic habits of the Suharto years have no place in a modern democracy. The well has run dry; the future, unmistakably, is electric.

Authored by ‘eugyppius’ via A Plague Chronicle,

The firewall is making AfD the strongest party in Germany, artificially empowering the left and destroying the centre-right, who alone can lift it

There’s a subtle, little-discussed but very bizarre political phenomenon that has interested me ever since I started blogging and paying serious attention to politics.

I first noticed it during Covid. Back in those dark days, virus understanders sold measures like lockdowns and masking to the public first as a means of keeping hospitals at capacity by slowing virus infections, then as a means of slowing virus infections just because, and finally as rituals that we had to do more of whenever infections rose, regardless of what effect they had on anything. Mass vaccination followed a nearly identical arc. At first the vaccinators said everyone had to be vaccinated to stop the virus, but by late Autumn 2021 they wanted to vaccinate everybody as much as possible because reasons. In both cases you could see, in real time, the ends towards which we were striving regressing, until finally the means became unquestionable ends in themselves.

I propose to call this phenomenon endification, and I think it is very significant.

It seems to happen whenever you mobilise large, complex systems towards goals that sooner or later prove unattainable. As these goals pass out of reach but the system remains mobilised, basic understandings of what we are even trying to do shift. The erstwhile means become almost sacred, worthy of pursuing in themselves, often for moral reasons. This can go on for a very long time even though it makes no sense and is painfully retarded.

Germany seems especially prone to endification, probably for cultural reasons stemming from our pathological commitment to thoroughness.

We have to do things longer and harder than everybody else, always with an aura of breathless moral urgency and self-importance. Imagine shades of Covid idiocy happening in many different political domains all the time. Our climate policies have long since become endified, the nuclear phaseout was endified and many aspects of mass migration have been endified.

The brings me to the crazy and ridiculous firewall against the AfD – the unending Antifa-enforced political tabu upon achieving anything with AfD votes at the state or federal level. AfD support is held to be contaminating, regardless of whatever it is the AfD happen to be supporting. It can turn even the most ordinary routine legislation into dark evil malicious fascism.

The firewall against the AfD splits the right and so it is a great gift to the left.

For example, it’s the only reason the SPD has a say in the federal government after their disastrous showing in the traffic light coalition. It’s the only reason the left is still a force in East Germany outside Brandenburg at all. Should we get new elections, the firewall will probably bring the Greens into government too. If it didn’t exist, the left would have to invent it, that is how well the firewall is working out for them.

The AfD also benefits enormously from the firewall, even though it’s not of their making. The last ten years of German politics have been one unending nightmarish festival of failure and stupidity.

All the establishment parties have taken turns implicating themselves in this amazing shitshow, while religiously sparing the AfD any association with their unprecedented failures. The firewall lends truth to the AfD’s name; it has allowed Alternative für Deutschland to become the only conceivable political alternative in Germany. As things get worse and voters grow more desperate for alternatives, the AfD just becomes stronger. The firewall is an AfD-maximising machine.

The firewall is only really bad for the people who invented it and who alone have the power to end it. I speak here of the centre-right Union parties, the CDU and the CSU. They maintain the firewall not because it helps them or because it is a good idea or even because the AfD are evil fascists, but because the firewall has been endified.

In 2018, when the CDU first set up the firewall, it had a coherent purpose. It was supposed to be a means of keeping the AfD small by dissuading CDU supporters from defecting to their upstart rival. CDU leadership had seen how the rising Green Party ate into the support of the SPD after reunification, and they thought they could prevent the same thing from happening to them. They would have been better off doing nothing at all, because after seven years of firewall the AfD are stronger than the Greens ever were. The whole thing has become a lesson in why you should avoid heavy-handed interventions in complex systems and just govern pragmatically with whatever majorities are at hand.

Let us survey the damage: The firewall has helped the AfD supplant the CDU as the standard right-of-centre party across the entire East. In Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Sachsen-Anhalt, the Evil Hitler Fascists are within striking distance of outright majorities. Ballooning AfD popularity is fuelled by the failures of Merz’s federal government, where the firewall has locked the Union into a doomed coalition with the radicalised and hostile Social Democrats. The SPD have so far obstructed all major federal initiatives, probably for the purpose of hurting the CDU still further and driving them into the arms of the AfD. It is a strategy the left first tried during the federal election campaign, and one they have so far refused to abandon.

Various preeminent Union personalities, eager to stop the destruction of their party, have demanded a change in course. These firewall-rethinkers include former CDU General Secretary Peter Tauber – the very man who played a leading role in devising the firewall strategy in the first place. Shortly after Stern published Tauber’s mild and very careful dissent, a series of CDU politicians from East Germany lined up to say that they, too, would desperately like to see a new approach to the AfD. As I type this, CDU leadership have withdrawn for a highly secret meeting to discuss this dilemma and how they will deal with the AfD in the future.

Alas, endification is a powerful force. You can’t just turn it off. Chancellor Friedrich Merz, whose political instincts rival those of most earthworms, has used the days and hours ahead of this meeting to sing the praises of the firewall. In response to a journalist’s question last Tuesday, Merz intoned absurdly and for no reason at all that “We are the firewall!” And yesterday, at some political event in Sauerland, he ruled out cooperation with the AfD in any form – “at least not under me as party leader of the CDU.” Merz further claimed that “there is no common ground between the CDU and the AfD” and complained that AfD opposition to the European Union, NATO and the European Monetary Union means that the party “is against everything that has made the Federal Republic of Germany great and strong over the past eight decades.”

An inability to articulate why we have to keep doing a senseless thing, and the proliferation of obviously fake reasons for said senseless thing, are among the most telltale symptoms of endification. Thus I invite you to appreciate how dumb Merz’s arguments are:

Whatever they got us in the past, EU initiatives and NATO-driven foreign policy are killing German industry. EU rules are presently blocking our attempts to increase natural gas power generation, without which our electricity grid will become totally unstable. The EU’s expanded Emissions Trading System (ETS2) from 2027 is set to make heating and transportation wildly more expensive than they have to be for zero reason. None of this is making Germany strong, but that’s not even the half of it. Lest you hope too hard that the AfD can fix any of this, you must remember that they can only govern federally with the CDU, and the Union will never go along with dropping the Euro, withdrawing from the EU or leaving NATO, even if the AfD were clearly demanding these things (which they’re mostly not). Merz’s objections are entirely moot.

The firewall has caused an enormous amount of potential energy to accumulate in the German political system. Only three resolutions are conceivable:

1) The CDU convinces the SPD or other partners on the left to implement some bare minimum of the reforms necessary to slow or even stop deindustrialisation, rein in the runaway costs of the social welfare state and do something about mass migration. This would reduce AfD support, particularly in the West, and ease pressure on the party system more generally.

2) The left parties goad the Union into successfully requesting that the Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe ban the AfD. In an instant, the SPD, the Greens and Die Linke would have de facto majorities not only in the Bundestag but across the state parliaments. After this judicial revolution, we would probably find ourselves in a second DDR-style regime, ruled by an unpopular, threatened and highly repressive left.

3) The firewall breaks down and after a substantial internal struggle, the CDU pursues some form of cooperation with the AfD federally. The left parties would turn on the Union across Germany, and the CDU would have to seek outright coalitions or toleration arrangements with the AfD in many state parliaments too. The political realignment would happen suddenly, in less than a few months.

Of these three possibilities, 1) seems stupid and inconceivable. If the left were committed to governing with the Union, they would already be doing that. The nightmare disaster of 2) can only happen if the Union are dumb enough to let it, which indeed is possible, but I still favour 3) as the most likely outcome. At some point, in a way that is as yet unimaginable to us, the firewall will probably come down. The sooner this happens, the better it will be for the CDU. As the Union dithers, they are losing ground they may never regain and all the while more explosive energy is accumulating in the party system.

If Union leadership were minimally rational, they would stop making public statements about how bad the AfD are and begin preparing this strategic shift behind the scenes, with all the bullying, bribing, threatening and coaxing that will require. Ten years of AfD demonisation have made this a mammoth task. But they are not doing that, because endification has made them stupid. They have to make things much, much worse for themselves first, only to end up in the same place two or three years later than they would’ve otherwise – poorer, weaker and worse off.

Submitted by Thomas Kolbe

In his government statement on October 16, Chancellor Friedrich Merz criticized European overregulation. He cited his own program for cutting bureaucracy in Germany. In reality, however, new layers of bureaucracy are being created domestically. Once again, Merz engaged in political shadow-boxing with his party colleague Ursula von der Leyen.

Chancellor Merz is proving to be a master of shadow-boxing and diversionary tactics. In his Thursday address, he used the EU Commission as a rhetorical punching bag, airing his frustration amid growing criticism of his government’s course.

He stated explicitly, referring to Ursula von der Leyen’s regulatory agenda: “Enough of the regulatory frenzy, faster procedures, open markets, more innovation, more competition. These are the goals we must achieve.” He added: “We don’t need more rules; we need fewer rules, better rules.”

The EU as Punching Bag 

And there it was again: the EU Commission as the punching bag for domestic failures. Merz is certainly correct in substance. Brussels is a regulatory leviathan, a bureaucratic mold suffocating economic processes across the European Union and stifling any hope for growth and innovation.

Yet it would be facile to blame Germany’s economic malaise solely on Ursula von der Leyen. Bureaucracy champion Germany has, through the adoption of grotesque EU regulations and on its own initiative, built a bloated administrative apparatus that costs the economy roughly €60 billion annually in direct costs. Including lost profits and other opportunity costs, the ifo Institute calculates a staggering €146 billion per year – a catastrophe.

For this reason, Merz announced a bureaucracy-cutting program: 25% of direct costs, or roughly €16 billion annually, should be saved, and 8% of public service staff reduced. In theory.

Theory vs. Reality 

In practice, the picture is different. One of the first acts of the new chancellor was creating a Ministry for Digital Affairs – an additional layer of superfluous ministerial bureaucracy. At the same time, the government is rolling out its mammoth debt package: a €500 billion special fund to be distributed over the next ten years.

These processes are not only costly but extremely personnel-intensive. Past state interventions illustrate the trajectory: the energy price brake – the infamous “double whammy” program under Chancellor Olaf Scholz – consumed around €200 billion and required more than 5,000 new administrative posts. The Climate and Transformation Fund, totaling €212 billion, added about 8,000 full-time positions across ministries, development banks, and partner institutions.

From these experiences, we know: every new state subsidy billion generates up to 25 new bureaucratic posts. With growing complexity, that number rises further. Accordingly, the government’s new debt initiative will likely create between 12,000 and 15,000 additional full-time public service positions. So much for bureaucracy reduction.

The Brussels Teflon Layer 

Of course, the chancellor’s critique of Brussels’ over-bureaucracy will simply slide off, like a Teflon coating. Brussels remains steadfast, defending its eco-socialist regulatory agenda and marching toward further centralization.

The explicit goal: concentrate political power in the hands of the EU Commission – at any cost. The EU has trapped itself in a centrally planned eco-socialism, losing the path toward a market-driven, decentralized allocation of power and economic processes.

In recent years, Brussels’ regulatory frenzy has only intensified, following a clear pattern. Laws like the Supply Chain Act exemplify how the sprawling Euro-bureaucracy permeates every level of economic activity with brute force and self-assuredness.

Only a bureaucrat could conceive forcing internationally competitive companies to meticulously document and align all processes with politically defined social and environmental mandates – irrespective of market competition or their limited pricing power.

Bureaucracy has taken on a life of its own, driven by power expansion. Bigger budgets, more subsidies – a self-reinforcing redistribution apparatus without political oversight, growing ever larger.

Continuing the Rhythm 

One recent example of grotesque, ideologically twisted EU regulation lies, unsurprisingly, in energy policy. Brussels has crafted, with a mix of hubris and detachment from reality, rules that are pushing the European gas market toward a geopolitical self-blockade.

At the center: new methane limits and the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), passed in May 2024. What sounds like climate protection on paper could, in practice, destabilize Europe’s most vital energy source. “The worst, most irresponsible piece of legislation I’ve ever seen passed anywhere in the world,” said ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods at the Energy Intelligence Forum 2025 in London.

The methane regulation will require all producers, exporters, and importers supplying gas to Europe to report annual methane emissions – even if the producing countries are outside the EU. By 2030, importers must prove compliance with as-yet undefined methane limits, or face hefty fines. The CSDDD simultaneously obliges companies to conduct comprehensive sustainability reporting – even if their exposure to the EU market is indirect.

Nothing New Under the Euro Sun 

For the U.S., currently Europe’s largest LNG supplier with 56% import share, this grotesque regulation feels like a de facto attack amid the ongoing trade frictions with the EU. Industry insiders openly admit the new rules are practically impossible to meet. The EU could see a sharp LNG import decline by 2026 – at a time when energy security, amid the chaos of renewables, has become a strategic survival issue.

In this context, we must conclude: the chancellor’s criticism of the EU and his bureaucracy-cutting program are nothing more than media smokescreens. In reality, Friedrich Merz shares the principle of central planning and state control of economic processes. Merz is, at heart, a supporter of the Brussels line. His supposed power struggle with Ursula von der Leyen is carefully choreographed theater.

Authored by Gordon Chang via The Gatestone Institute,

On October 17, China’s Ministry of National Defense announced that the Communist Party’s Central Committee and Central Military Commission had, after investigations, removed nine senior officers from their posts in the People’s Liberation Army.

Pictured: General He attends the opening ceremony of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference in Beijing on March 4, 2025.

The stunning announcement occurred on the eve of the long-delayed Fourth Plenum of the Party’s 20th Central Committee, scheduled to start tomorrow, October 20, and continue for four days. On the agenda are crucial economic matters, including the country’s 15th Five-Year Plan, which covers the rest of the decade, 2026-2030.

Analysts are also looking for hints whether the Party, at the plenum, will announce changes in its leadership.

If Xi Jinping, the Party’s general secretary and chairman of its Central Military Commission, was responsible for the just-announced removals of the flag officers, he will undoubtedly emerge from the plenum as strong as ever, perhaps even stronger.

If, as is more likely, Xi’s enemies arranged the removals, China will almost certainly have a new leader soon. Xi’s position would be untenable.

Who, then, was responsible for the announced changes?

Both the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times reported that Xi was the one who removed the nine officers.

That conclusion, at least at first glance, seems logical. After all, Xi has been powerful for a long time, so it is natural that journalists ascribe every significant action in China to him. In fact, at one time he had almost complete control over the People’s Liberation Army, which reports not to the Chinese state but to the Communist Party. Xi’s major reorganization of the PLA, conducted in the middle of last decade, and his periodic “corruption” purges gave him the opportunity to install loyalists.

“In most systems, repeated purges of senior military leaders would trigger crisis or resistance,” Craig Singleton of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies told the Times.

“Xi’s ability to churn and burn through top generals without sparking significant institutional pushback reveals the strength, not fragility, of his rule.”

Xi may be purging his own people, but that is not the most likely explanation. Beginning July 9, 2024, PLA Daily, the Chinese military’s main propaganda organ, ran a series of articles praising “collective leadership,” a clear criticism of Xi’s demand for complete obedience.

These articles were written by those aligned with the No. 1-ranked uniformed officer, Central Military Commission Vice Chairman Gen. Zhang Youxia, and could not have appeared if Xi were in complete control of the military. Zhang is known to be a political enemy of Xi.

Tellingly, the most senior of the nine officers axed on the 17th was General He Weidong, the second-ranked vice chairman of the Commission and Xi Jinping’s No. 1 loyalist in the PLA. The general had gained prominence as Xi’s top enforcer in the military.

Gen. He was last seen in public on March 11. On Friday, the Defense Ministry reported that he had been expelled from the Party pending ratification at a plenary session of the Central Committee, and his case had been transferred to a military procuratorate “for review and prosecution.”

On October 18, PLA Daily issued an editorial stating Gen. He and the eight others had been “disloyal.” The publication indirectly referred to them as “hidden tumors.”

Gen. He was not the only officer who backed Xi and has now been taken out of the military’s leadership ranks. Moreover, it is difficult to identify any Xi adversary who was purged in the last 18 months.

“The continuation of the purges is hard to explain if Xi dominates the political system because his supporters are now being purged,” Charles Burton of the Prague-based Sinopsis think tank told this author in July, after a previous round of firings.

“Sometimes the simplest explanations are the most credible. The simplest explanation is that Xi’s enemies—not Xi himself—removed Xi’s loyalists.”

The People’s Liberation Army is the most important faction in the Party. “Mao Zedong famously said, ‘political power grows out of the barrel of a gun,’ a principle that may now be turned against Xi Jinping,” Burton, also a former Canadian diplomat in Beijing, remarked on Friday.

“In the armed forces, dissent is growing amid his regime’s economic and social failures,” Burton continued, referring to Xi.

“The Fourth Plenum poses a direct threat to his leadership. Even if he survives this meeting, the internal pressures suggest his grip on power is more fragile than ever.”

Throughout this year, there have also been reports of continuing struggles in Communist Party civilian circles.

It is unlikely, at a time Xi Jinping appears to be fighting for political survival, that he would remove his most important supporter in the military. It is far more probable that Xi has lost control of the People’s Liberation Army, especially because the removals strengthen Gen. Zhang, Xi’s adversary.

“Party elders believe they cannot allow the leadership struggle to continue beyond the Fourth Plenum,” Blaine Holt, a retired U.S. Air Force general who follows Chinese politics, told Gatestone after the Defense Ministry’s announcement.

China, by Thursday, could have a new leader. Or a new round of purges.

Either way, there will be blood on the floor, at least figuratively.

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Gordon G. Chang is the author of Plan Red: China’s Project to Destroy America, a Gatestone Institute distinguished senior fellow, and a member of its Advisory Board.