Authored by James Bovard via The Brownstone Institute,

Almost one-third of government schools nationwide are now surveilling the mental health of students. Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker recently signed a bill to bring “universal mental health screening” to two million Illinois students as part of his Children’s Behavioral Health Transformation Initiative. But this rescue effort will ravage many students and is a warning shot to parents across the nation. Manhattan Institute fellow Abigail Shrier warned that the new Illinois law will mean “tens of thousands of Illinois kids get shoved into the mental health funnel and convinced they are sick. Many or most will be false positives.”

If politicians want to help kids, they must recognize how government schools systematically undermine students’ mental health. 

The Covid school lockdowns nuked the mental health of millions of young Americans. A 2024 JAMA Original Investigation found that between 2018 and 2021, young people saw an almost 300% increase in the number of hospital emergency visits for eating disorders and suicidal ideation. Suicide attempts increased 250% during that time. Depression and anxiety skyrocketed among youth from the start of the pandemic, but politicians and policymakers ignored the mental carnage that Covid policies inflicted.

A 2021 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention survey found that 44% of high school students said they “persistently felt sad or hopeless in the past year.” Females were almost twice as likely to be depressed, with 57% “persistently felt sad and hopeless” versus 31% of male students. School shutdowns dismally failed to thwart the spread of Covid. After schools reopened, students were hassled to comply with idiotic mask mandates that did nothing except multiply anxiety. 

 Schools are subverting students’ mental health by endlessly hectoring them to doubt or despise their own bodies. These school antics reached epidemic level even before the start of the Covid pandemic. In 2019, the state of Maryland issued regulations to promote “viewing each student’s” “gender identity and expression” as “valuable.” Government officials and political appointees arrogated to themselves the prerogative to redefine gender in the state of Maryland. Montgomery County, the largest school system in the state, announced that it would choose books for the curriculum “through an ‘LGBTQ+ Lens’ and ask whether books ‘reinforced or disrupted’ ‘stereotypes,’ ‘cisnormativity,’ and ‘power hierarchies,’” according to a brief filed at the Supreme Court by parents who successfully challenged the school system. That brief also noted that “teachers are told to frame disagreement with [pro-LGBTQ] ideas as ‘hurtful,’ and to counter with examples of ‘men who paint their nails’ or ‘wear dresses.’” The goal is to instill in children “a new perspective not easily contravened by their parents,” as the county school board admitted. 

The indoctrination produced a 582% increase in the number of kids self-identifying as “non-binary” in Montgomery County schools. “Disrupting children’s thinking” has been so successful that almost half of the students identified themselves as non-binary. But non-binary kids are far more likely to suffer mental illness. One survey found that more than half of transgender and non-binary youth considered committing suicide in 2022. That has not stopped other school systems from openly or covertly campaigning to sway children to repent or revolt from how they were born. 

Schools have bludgeoned kids with “Chicken Little – The Sky is Falling!” environmental propaganda for decades. The result, according to the American Psychological Association, is that 58% of American youth are “very or extremely worried about climate change” and 43% said “climate change impacted their mental health.” Harvard Medical Magazine reports that for many young people, “worry over threats of future climate change results in panic attacks, insomnia, obsessive thinking, and other symptoms.”

Schools hold up as a role model Greta Thunberg, the deranged Swedish teenager whose incoherent ravings against the modern world turned her into a saint. It is irrelevant to school masterminds that many of the environmental alarms have proven to be bogus or wildly exaggerated. Children have been taught to dread, and they have been taught to implore politicians to rescue them – two very bad outcomes for mental health. Surveys by Eco-America indicate that between 57% and 70% of teens aged 13 to 17 “report anxiety symptoms linked to climate.” Ella Emhoff, the stepdaughter of former Vice President Kamala Harris, recently lamented on TikTok: “I think everything with the environment is really f—ing getting to me, and it is — I experience a lot of climate anxiety, like all of us do.” Turning climate anxiety into virtue signaling guarantees there will be no shortage of angst. 

Schools are also subverting mental health by vastly exaggerating other perils that students face via bizarre school shooting drills. In Indiana, elementary school teachers were shot as part of a “safe schools” training program. According to the Indiana State Teachers Association, sheriffs’ deputies ordered teachers “into a room four at a time, told them to crouch down and then shot them execution-style with pellets in rapid succession,” leaving several of them bloodied and many of them screaming. The union complained, “The teachers were terrified, but were told not to tell anyone what happened. Teachers waiting outside that heard the screaming were brought into the room four at a time and the shooting process was repeated.”

Schools are “increasingly turning their hallways into an imitation of a real mass shooting, complete with police officers firing BB guns and drama students enlisted to play victims, made up with fake blood and bullet holes. Occasionally, the drills are sprung on teachers and students without warning,” as a student newspaper in Great Neck, New York, observed. A Pennsylvania teacher commented that she was “more traumatized than trained” after teachers were shot with airsoft guns by a fake active shooter. “We had colleagues shooting colleagues, we had people getting hit with [plastic] pellets.…People were screaming, trying to run. People were tripping over each other. It was just horrendous,” Elizabeth Yanelli recalled.

One of the primary beneficiaries of such antics is pharmaceutical companies that hustle anti-anxiety drugs to children. Former policeman Raeford Davis commented on lockdown/active shooter drills, “These simulated execution rituals are conducted for fear-based mass social control purposes to traumatize, instill fear, hopelessness, personal dis-empowerment, reliance on authority figures to save and protect you.” A 2021 study by Georgia Institute of Technology researchers “found that anxiety, depression and stress increase by around 40% after [school shooting] lockdown drills.” Such collateral psychic damage is especially unfortunate since the drills that schools compel students to perform are mostly useless in a real crisis. 

Plenty of students are bummed because they recognize they have practically no escape from surveillance. Schools boast of giving kids free laptops, but that becomes the equivalent of wearing an electronic ankle monitor to track everything a person writes or every step they take online. A recent study found that the vast majority of companies that schools hire to surveil students online actually track kids 24 hours per day, 7 days a week, using school-issued devices. The study found that 29% of the companies “generate student ‘risk scores’ based on online behavior.” (It is not known if such scores are skewed by visiting the Libertarian Institute website.) The Center for Democracy and Technology reported in 2023: “Student activity monitoring continues to harm many of the students it claims to help: Disciplinary actions, outing of students, and initiation of law enforcement contact are still regular outcomes” of surveillance of students’ computer use. 

A recent sea change in federal grant policy hints at how much damage Washington’s mental health interventions have already inflicted on students. In July, the US Department of Education proposed revising guidelines to prohibit federal mental health grants from “promoting or endorsing gender ideology, political activism, racial stereotyping, or hostile environments for students of particular races.”

The fact that a new guideline would be needed for such things is indicative of the follies previously propagated by federal bureaucrats. Will another regulatory change be necessary to stop using federal grants to make kids afraid of the dark? 

Politicians, psychiatrists, and public schools are the last places to trust to safeguard mental health. Young Americans are already suffering from a downward politico-psychological spiral thanks to decades of abusive, repressive policies. Curtailing political and bureaucratic power is a vital first step to make America sane again. 

An earlier version of this piece was published by the Libertarian Institute.

The covid pandemic was an exceptional example of the abuse of government power and the classic error of putting blind faith in scientific institutions that are vulnerable to political and corporate manipulation.  To put it simply, the hysteria over covid was entirely fabricated and the CDC played a primary role in perpetuating the fear.  

The CDC knew as early as October of 2020 that the median Infection Fatality Rate (IFR) of covid was a tiny 0.23% (meaning 99.8% of the population was not under threat).  The death rate was far below the 3% initially predicted by the World Health Organization.  The data also didn’t take into account the fact that the majority of deaths were people with comorbidities – Meaning many of them likely died of a different illness or long term health problems, but covid was officially assumed to be the cause. 

The CDC response should have been focused on caring for the older subset of the American population which was at greater risk.  Instead, the organization tried to terrorize the public with tales of hospitals “packed to capacity with the unvaccinated” while suffering on respirators (no evidence has ever been produced to support this claim).

The CDC joined with Democrats to fear monger over “mass deaths in the streets”.  They initially lied about the effectiveness of the shot (it is now well known that the covid vaccine does not prevent transmission).  They lied about the effectiveness of natural immunity.  They lied about the effectiveness of the masks.  They lied about the effectiveness of social distancing.  They defended the lockdowns (which were an abject failure). 

Almost every aspect of the pandemic response ended up being a farce.  The CDC and many of its employees act as a political propaganda mechanism, not as an objective scientific guardian of the public good. The organization functions like a cult that worships far-left bureaucratic leadership instead of adhering to the scientific method.

This has become even more apparent in recent months as the agency faces scrutiny.  After the firing of CDC Director Susan Monarez for refusing to institute Trump’s policy changes, the rush for the exits has begun.  The woke creatures are now slithering out of the weeds to escape RFK Jr’s lawnmower.  

A glaring example is the resignation of Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, a CDC director who has attacked Trump’s policies as dangerous and “unscientific”.  It is perhaps no coincidence that Daskalakis is a LGBT activist that promotes transgender treatments for children (a highly unscientific practice).  This is the kind of person that rises through the ranks at the CDC:

CDC … “Why doesn’t anyone believe us anymore.”

Hell, I don’t know … let’s ask your new spokesmen Dr. Demetre Daskalakis who was pushing 3 different vaccines on your official website, Friday. pic.twitter.com/QbxDgIWw2n

— Catturd ™ (@catturd2) January 23, 2023

Because of the CDCs behavior during the pandemic as well as the woke agenda of their staff, the American populace has demanded accountability and reform.  Trump’s decision to make RFK Jr the Secretary of the Department of Health was widely applauded because of the trespasses of the CDC and affiliated agencies during covid.  Only Democrats and Big Pharma are opposed to an audit of CDC policies. 

It’s no surprise that the agency is facing a wave of mass firings and a wave of mass walkouts.  Democrats seem to believe that the Trump Administration has no say in underlying federal operations.  After all, the system has functioned this way for generations.  Presidents come and go; the real power is among the unelected armies of bureaucrats.  The moment these people are faced with actual oversight, they become enraged.

Bernie Sanders has joined in the indignant chorus, recently demanding that RFK resign as Health Secretary.

It should be noted that Sanders was one if the biggest recipients of donations from Big Pharma sources in 2020 (over $1.4 million). The companies organize “rank-and-file” employee donations which they often subsidize, thereby bypassing limitations on corporate campaign financing.

Just as we witnessed with USAID, placing the CDC under a microscope has triggered some interesting responses from all the right people.  When woke rats jump ship, that’s a good thing.  When Democrats under the influence of Big Pharma get nervous, that means Trump is on the right track.

Authored by Andrew Korybko via Substack,

The recent Sino-Indo rapprochement, which was inadvertently brought about by the US, accounts for why this year’s Chinese host agreed to include this in the Tianjin Declaration unlike how it was conspicuously omitted from late June’s SCO Defense Ministers’ draft statement.

The Tianjin Declaration that emerged from this year’s SCO Leaders’ Summit in that namesake Chinese city included condemnation of the Pahalgam terrorist attack. Late June’s SCO Defense Ministers’ Summit ended without a joint statement due to India’s objection to there being no condemnation of that attack within the draft, however, so something significant must have occurred in the intervening two months.

What happened was that “US Pressure Inadvertently Brought India & China Back Together”.

Trump’s favoritism of Pakistan since its springtime clash with India had already soured many in Delhi on the US, but that wasn’t enough to prompt a serious foreign policy recalibration.

It wasn’t until after the SCO Defense Ministers’ Summit that the US began actively trying to derail India’s rise as a Great Power via punitive tariffs that it imposed on ridiculous pretexts. That dispelled any remaining illusions about the US’ reliability, at least throughout the rest of Trump’s term, and led to China being seen in a new light.

While their border, trade deficit, and tech issues remain, they’ve respectively stabilized, cross-border trade has resumed, and some previously banned Chinese apps have begun reappearing in India.

This thaw, while modest, was responsible for China starting to see India in a new light too.

Their leaders then declared after their talks during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s first trip to China in seven years that their countries are partners, not rivals, thus throwing a wrench into the US’ divide-and-rule plans.

It was hitherto popular to claim that the US was manipulating India against China, but Trump’s soft approach towards China on bilateral trade and his hypocritical reluctance to impose punitive tariffs on it for continuing to trade with Russia suggested that he was trying to manipulate China against India. Regardless of whichever variant of this grand divide-and-rule scenario one subscribes too, and it’s possible to believe both (whether in sequence or simultaneously), the fact is that these plans failed.

The Sino-Indo rapprochement that the US was inadvertently responsible for through its active attempts to derail India’s rise as a Great Power is also the reason why the SCO finally condemned the Pahalgam terrorist attack. As this year’s chair, China has extra influence over the SCO’s workings during the events that it hosts, so it could have therefore included condemnation of that attack in the draft statement accompanying late June’s Defense Minister’s Summit.

China didn’t do so due to the reasons explained here, namely to provoke India and signal its favoritism for Pakistan, so it follows that the Sino-Indo thaw which was inadvertently brought about by the US afterwards was why China reversed course and included it in the Tianjin Declaration. After all, failing to do so would have likely led to Modi only attending virtually on some “publicly plausible” pretext and possibly distancing India from the SCO afterwards, which would have weakened the group as a whole.

This “goodwill gesture” was thus mutually beneficial in terms of accelerating their incipient thaw and keeping the SCO on track to function as a complementary institution to BRICS for accelerating multipolar processes. To be sure, the Sino-Indo rapprochement is only in its opening stages while the SCO needs time to divide responsibilities with BRICS in order to avoid redundancy, so nothing game-changing is expected from either anytime soon. What was achieved in Tianjin, however, is still very impressive.

It has long been one of Wall Street’s unspoken rules that whoever controls Korea’s mob of momentum-chasing fanatics, controls price manipulation discovery. And in Korea (that would be South for those who are unsure, North Korean brokerages are… rather nonexistent yet), allegiances are rapidly shifting. 

South Korea’s retail investors are losing faith in Tesla’s stock, instead ramping up their selling last month amid growing disillusionment with the electric carmaker – or at least lack of the upward momentum – and rising interest in cryptocurrencies.

According to Bloomberg calculations, individual investors in Korea – which just like their retail peers in the US exert outsized control on price pressure, whether on the buy or sell side – and sold a net $657 million of Tesla stock in August, the largest outflow since at least early 2019. Instead of TSLA, local momentum chasers are now favoring even more volatile, but more momentum-heavy, bets such as Bitmine Immersion (BMNR), seen as a proxy for Ether, which drew $253 million of net inflows, having become the Ether version of MicroStrategy with its recently launched ETH treasury platform.

An analysis by Vanda Research found that BMNR was also the stock that attracted the most investor attention in the US, with a Vanda Flow sentiment score of 98.4%, surpassing every other stock in the list.

The $1.8 billion exodus from Tesla during the past four months signals waning enthusiasm among one of Elon Musk’s most loyal global retail investor bases, whose buying sprees once amplified the stock’s rallies. Korean traders, who had been drawn to high-profile US tech companies such as Tesla during the Covid era, are now putting their money elsewhere.

“Tesla used to offer a lot of inspiring narratives but it has failed to win people’s hearts,” said Han Jungsu, a 33-year-old individual investor who first bought Tesla the stock in 2019 but sold out earlier this year to focus on names he sees having more upside. “It has failed to lead with its own AI narrative.”

Still, Tesla remains the top foreign stock among Korean retail traders, who hold about $21.9 billion of the company’s stock, the data show. By comparison, Nvidia and Palantir ranked a distant second and third among Korean retail favorites. The exchange-traded fund TSLL, which offers double-leveraged exposure to Tesla, also saw its biggest monthly outflow since at least early 2024, with $554 million withdrawn in August, according to depository data.

In the US, retail interest in TSLA is still high, although as the latest retail flow tracker from Vanda Research shows, net retail purchases in the name are less than half of Nvidia’s which is the category leader. And while OTM call turnover in TSLA among retail investors remains the highest of all stocks, retail flow sentiment in the name has clearly soured with TSLA no longer appearing in the top 30 names.

Update(1831ET): More details of the military action against an allegedly drug-laden boat which departed Venezuela have been revealed by President Trump in a Truth Social post:

“Earlier this morning, on my Orders, U.S. Military Forces conducted a kinetic strike against positively identified Tren de Aragua Narcoterrorists in the SOUTHCOM area of responsibility,” Trump said. “The strike occurred while the terrorists were at sea in International waters transporting illegal narcotics, heading to the United States. The strike resulted in 11 terrorists killed in action.”

A sizeable U.S. armada currently sits afloat in the waters where the strike occurred. Four destroyers carrying Tomahawk cruise missiles and more than 4,500 Marines and sailors are deployed in the area.

Eleven deaths in the US military action in the south Caribbean is quite significant, and if they are found to be Venezuelan citizens, it will certainly raise tensions much higher with Caracas. Trump has released footage of the strike:

🚨 BREAKING: President Trump just released the video of the U.S. military STRIKING a drug boat from Venezuela heading to America carrying ELEVEN Tren de Aragua narcoterrorists, who were kiIIed in the strike

TRUMP: “Earlier this morning, on my Orders, U.S. Military Forces… pic.twitter.com/axQAWxjJhm

— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) September 2, 2025

As for President Maduro, he alleged on Monday that Trump is “seeking regime change through military threat.” As for the US claim that these slain narco-“terrorists” were directly under Maduro or were state-linked, this is still anything but proven. In fact, there could be evidence to the contrary…

Trump claims that the strike targeted members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. He also claims the gang is “under the control of Nicolas Maduro,” but that contradicts a declassified US intelligence memo that says Maduro’s government doesn’t control TDA (link in reply) pic.twitter.com/9S0uYMOEvi

— Dave DeCamp (@DecampDave) September 2, 2025

* * *

Geopolitical fireworks have erupted in the Caribbean amid the tense showdown that’s ensued with US Navy warships moving into the region with an eye on Maduro’s Venezuela. Maduro has in the last days been engaged in his own ‘show of force’ – sending extra troops into Venezuelan border areas.

The White House has confirmed Tuesday that the US military carried out a strike in the southern Caribbean against a drug-carrying vessel that earlier departed Venezuela’s coast. President Trump announced the surprise development from the Oval Office: “When you leave the room, you’ll see that we just, over the last few minutes, literally, shot a boat – a drug-carrying boat,” he told reporters, describing that there were “a lot of drugs” on the vessel.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio separately announced on X that the vessel was being operated by a “designated narco-terrorist organization” – calling it a lethal strike.

The ship had “departed from Venezuela and was being operated by a designated narco-terrorist organization,” Rubio wrote. The Pentagon has not offered any initial comment in the immediate strike aftermath, and few other details are known of the incident. According to newswires:

• US CONDUCTED STRIKE AGAINST DRUG VESSEL FROM VENEZUELA
• VENEZUELA BONDS HIT SESSION HIGH AFTER US DRUG BOAT STRIKE

Venezuela has clearly been back in Trump’s crosshairs, after last month it was first reported that some eight US Navy vessels were en route to patrol Caribbean waters near Venezuela.

Trump will surely come under criticism from some sectors of his base, after he repeatedly promised to not start new wars. However, the administration is selling this fresh action and the naval deployment as part of drug enforcement.

This is what Tulsi Gabbard had to say the last time the Trump Administration was running a regime change op in Venezuela. Now they’re doing it again — except with much more firepower this time — and she’s part of it. Kind of like how she did a complete 180° on her Iran views pic.twitter.com/5ib4TmWiGl

— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) September 2, 2025

Last Friday, Stephen Miller, deputy White House chief of staff, described that the fresh military build-up off Venezuela and in regional waters is to “combat and dismantle drug trafficking organizations, criminal cartels and these foreign terrorist organizations in our hemisphere.”

Analysts have questioned just how a larger military presence will disrupt the drug trade, as opposed to conventional law enforcement mechanisms which have for decades been involved. According to a Reuters backgrounder:

Among other things, most of the seaborne drug trade travels to the United States via the Pacific, not the Atlantic, where the U.S. forces are, and much of what arrives via the Caribbean comes on clandestine flights.

Venezuelan officials believe their government might be the real target. In early August, the United States doubled its reward for information leading to the arrest of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to $50 million over allegations of drug trafficking and links to criminal groups.

Maduro, Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello and the country’s ambassador to the United Nations Samuel Moncada have said the U.S. is threatening the country with the naval deployments, in violation of international treaties. They have also scoffed at U.S. assertions that the country and its leadership are key to major international drug trafficking.

Trump strike on a Venezuelan drug boat is more than a naval operation…

it’s a political message reshaping the Caribbean scene 🇺🇸🌍🇻🇪#US #Venezuela #Trump pic.twitter.com/f0DNAuET1z

— سيف الدرعي (@saif_aldareei) September 2, 2025

Venezuela’s Defense Minister General Vladimir Padrino said last Friday: “Venezuelans know who is behind these military threats by the United States against our country.” He emphasized, “We are not drug traffickers, we are noble and hard-working people.”

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is fuming after the Trump administration blocked Palestinian Authority (PA) leaders from attending the upcoming United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York scheduled for later this month.

PA leader Mahmoud Abbas is not being issued a visa to enter US soil (along with his delegation), as retribution for his leading the charge in support of a Palestinian state, and for waging a ‘lawfare campaign’ against Prime Minister Netanyahu and other Israeli officials. Erdogan said this only plays into Israel’s hands, which is busy conducting “massacres” and “cruelty” in Gaza.

The move “does not fit the United Nations’ raison d’etre,” Erdogan told reporters on a flight after leaving China, where he attended the SCO Tianjin Summit 2025. “The decision needs to be urgently revised. The United Nations General Assembly exists for the issues of the world to be discussed and for solutions to be found,” he said.

“The Palestinian delegation not being at the General Assembly would only please Israel,” he added. “What is expected from the United States is to say ‘stop’ to Israel’s massacres, cruelty.”

Turkey has throughout much of the conflict been hands down the most vocal global critic of Israel, denouncing what Erdogan has called the mass murder of Palestinians and Israel’s “genocidal policies”. A trade war has also ensued. Many products from Israel have been banned from entering Turkey.

Meanwhile, one of the things that Washington and Tel Aviv fear most is the growing trend of recognition of Palestinian statehood among the West.

Belgium is the latest EU nation to announce it will recognize the State of Palestine at the UNGA. Belgian Foreign Minister Maxime Prevot announced, “Palestine will be recognized by Belgium at the UN session! And firm sanctions will be imposed against the Israeli government.”

The statement said that “Belgium had to take strong decisions to increase pressure on the Israeli government and Hamas terrorists.” It added, “This is not about sanctioning the Israeli people but about ensuring that their government respects international and humanitarian law and taking action to try to change the situation on the ground.” It previewed that “firm” sanctions are coming.

France has meanwhile been leading the way on this, and it’s somewhat unprecedented that significant European countries one by one would also be bringing sanctions against Israel. Canada, Australia, and Britain have made similar declarations – ramping up the pressure on Israel. But these sanctions have been limited mostly to products coming from illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs welcomed Belgium’s announcement, urging other nations to also “intensify practical efforts to stop the crimes of genocide, displacement, starvation, and annexation, and to open a real political path to resolve the conflict.”

A statement on X said the PA considers Belgium’s right actions “to be in line with international law and United Nations resolutions, and protective of the two-state solution and supportive of achieving peace.”

Via Headline USA,

Democratic Rep. Jerry Nadler of New York says he will not run for reelection next year, according to an interview published Monday night by The New York Times.

Nadler told the Times that watching then-President Joe Biden’s truncated reelection campaign last year “really said something about the necessity for generational change in the party, and I think I want to respect that.”

He suggested a younger Democratic lawmaker in his seat “can maybe do better, can maybe help us more.”

Nadler, 78, is serving his 17th term in Congress. He was chairman of the House Judiciary Committee from 2019 to 2023, then served as ranking member on the panel after Republicans won House leadership. He stepped down from that role late last year.

Nadler’s decision to relinquish that spot came a day after fellow Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin announced his bid for the job and quickly amassed support from colleagues.

“I am also proud that, under my leadership, some of our caucus’s most talented rising stars have been given a platform to demonstrate their leadership and their abilities,” Nadler wrote then in a letter to Democrats that was obtained by The Associated Press.

Without naming names, Nadler suggested to the Times that some of his Democratic colleagues should also consider retirement.

“I’m not saying we should change over the entire party,” Nadler said in the interview posted Monday. “But I think a certain amount of change is very helpful.”

In April, the Washington Free Beacon reported that Nadler was dubbed by his colleagues as the “worst-smelling” man in Congress.

Nadler, who stands at 5-foot-4 and underwent weight-loss surgery in 2002, has been the subject of ongoing criticism and mockery. For instance, President Donald Trump once dubbed him “Fat Jerry.” 

Former Rep. Anthony D’Esposito, R-N.Y., said that Nadler “barrels through everyone” when making his way through the House floor. However, sometimes, he “doesn’t really need to barrel through because his stench kind of clears the way and it equates to his personality, which is nasty and most people want to keep away from.” 

A fellow House Democrat added, “Members of Congress don’t want to sit next to him because of it. Yeah, he smells. I don’t know what he does. Maybe he doesn’t take a bath, I don’t know what it is.” 

A New York congressman echoed these remarks, declaring that Nadler “reeks” before adding: “It’s not just like a guy who didn’t take a shower. I don’t know if it’s surgery or a colostomy bag, but it’s bad.” 

President Vladimir Putin while in China vehemently denounced and condemned Western assertions that Russia seeks to expand its special military operation into other European states. He described such statements and assumptions coming out of European officials as either a provocation or a sign of utter incompetence. He said this at a meeting with Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico in Beijing on Tuesday.

“They are constantly stoking hysteria that Russia is allegedly nurturing plans to attack Europe. I think that it is clear for same people that this is either a provocation or a sign of utter incompetence,” Putin said, as translated in TASS. He appeared to be directly responding to recent words of German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.

“Any sane person clearly realizes that Russia has never had, does not have, and will never have any intention to attack anyone,” he added.

The Russian leader reiterated that Russia only seeks to protect its legitimate security interests in Ukraine, and that the conflict started with the West and NATO’s own behavior. “As for ‘Russia’s aggressive plans regarding Europe,’ I’d like to emphasize once again that this is unfounded nonsense,” Putin emphasized.

His words come as hawkish European leaders continue to speak in terms of Cold War-era domino theory, with the assumption that Russia aims to take over European countries one by one.

This is exactly how Chancellor Merz sounded in telling German public broadcaster ZDF on Sunday that Ukraine has to be defended, and not compromise, or else Germany could be next to be at risk of Russian invasion. He also said on this basis that the Ukraine war is likely to drag on with no end in sight.

While he described he hasn’t lost hope of a Trump-brokered ceasefire – he said he still “harbors no illusions” and that backing Ukraine’s defense remains an “absolute priority”.

“We are trying to end it as quickly as possible. But certainly not at the price of Ukraine’s capitulation. You could end the war tomorrow if Ukraine surrendered and lost its independence,” Merz said.

“Then the next country would be at risk the day after tomorrow. And the day after that, it would be us. That is not an option,” the German chancellor stated.

Putin in Beijing had some further interesting commentary on Ukraine and its security:

In his remarks, Putin said that that Moscow had never opposed Ukraine’s potential membership of the European Union, and dismissed claims that Moscow was somehow planning to attack Europe.

He argued, in comments reported by Reuters, that with Nato expanding eastwards, the alliance wanted to absorb the entire post-Soviet space, and Russia simply had to defend its interests. He also repeated that Ukrainian membership of Nato would have been unacceptable to Russia.

Fico has been receiving severe pushback from other EU countries for attending events in China hosted by President Xi.

Fico tells Putin an ancient Chinese parable.

“As EU and NATO members were talked against coming here. But many in the EU are like the frog in a well. They sit at the bottom, and they cannot see what is happening in the world.

So I would like to say openly – we are interested in… pic.twitter.com/rPG9vUHld9

— Margarita Simonyan (@M_Simonyan) September 2, 2025

The Slovak PM is expected to attend China’s big military parade on Wednesday. Putin told him Tuesday that Russia “highly values the independent foreign policy that you and your team, your government, are pursuing.”

Meanwhile, on the battlefield Russian forces continue to make gains in the east, with Moscow’s Defense Ministry announcing Tuesday the capture of the village of Fedorivka in Donetsk region.

Authored by Roger Kimball via American Greatness,

Writing elsewhere last month, I suggested that Donald Trump end the National Endowment for Democracy once and for all. Like most so-called “non-governmental organizations,” the NED is in fact an all-governmental organization. It depends absolutely on a subsidy from the state department, i.e., from the federal government, i.e., from the taxpayer, i.e., from you.

The NED began life in the Cold War as a way of projecting “soft power” against our Communist adversaries. But as James Piereson noted in February of this year, the NED has undergone a familiar process of mission creep and moral and political entropy.

“With the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union,” Piereson wrote, “the NED adjusted its mission to support democratic reforms in countries in non-communist countries with authoritarian governments, many of which were never adversaries of the United States in the first place.”

Over the years, the NED adopted a view of democracy that held that nationalist and populist leaders campaigning for office around the world were, in fact, authoritarians and a threat to democracy. Many foreign leaders were tossed into that bucket—not only Russia’s Vladimir Putin, but also Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, Poland’s Mateusz Morawiecki, and others. Many of these leaders were popularly elected but were nevertheless branded by the NED as authoritarians. It surprised no one when NED officials deemed Donald Trump, too, an authoritarian, lumping him together with these leaders.

The bottom line is that for some $315 million of taxpayer pelf, the NED has been busy fomenting a foreign policy that was not just separate from that articulated by the duly elected president of the United States but actively opposed to it.

So it was no surprise when Trump and his cost-cutters at the Department of Government Efficiency took aim at the NED. Earlier this summer, NED’s subsidy had been zeroed out in Congress’s proposed budget.

But no NGO goes gentle into that good night. When politicians get together to haggle over budgets, lobbyists tag along. Members from interest group A whisper in Congressman X’s ear about their pet—and usually lucrative—project. Words like “constituents” and “donations” are bandied about. Often as not, that line item that had been zeroed out is fully restored. The lobbyists go home happy. The Congressman feels reassured. Only the taxpayers suffer. And the voters, too, whose feelings in the matter are usually completely ignored.

So it was with the NED. What had been zero was suddenly restored to $315 million, with provision for additional contracts added in for good measure.

In olden days, that generally would have been it. A president confronted with such recalcitrance, not to say connivance, would simply have moved on. As usual, Trump’s response was something more aggressive. On Friday, the White House said, in effect, I’ll see your rescission and raise you two.

Employing a seldom-deployed, controversial maneuver called a “pocket rescission,” the White House promised to eliminate “woke, weaponized, and wasteful spending.”

Now, for the first time in 50 years, the President is using his authority under the Impoundment Control Act to deploy a pocket rescission, cancelling $5 billion in foreign aid and international organization funding that violates the President’s America First priorities.

CNN was joined by other dyspeptic chihuahuas—Senator Chuck Schumer, chief among them—to wail that “Trump bypasses Congress to cancel nearly $5 billion in foreign aid.”

Will the republic survive these cuts? Among the items to flutter to the dustbin of the unfunded are such critical enterprises as efforts to advance “inclusive democracy” in South Africa through the Democracy Works Foundation, which has published articles such as “The Problem with Whiteness” and “The Problem with White People.” That effort was done for $2.7 million, now gone.

Then there was $4 million for the New Alliance for Global Equality to advance “global LGBTQI+ awareness,” $3.9 million to promote “democracy” for LGBTQI+ populations in the Western Balkans, $2 million for “Organizing for Feminist Democratic Principles” in Africa, and $107 million for the International Labor Organization (ILO), “a group that works to unionize foreign workers and punish U.S. corporate interests abroad.” Your tax dollars at work.

Will the NED finally be cancelled if Trump’s “pocket rescission” succeeds?

From what I have read, it is not entirely clear.

Many of the cuts—totaling many hundreds of millions of dollars—are from State Department initiatives that are consanguineous, as it were, with the NED. But I have not seen the NED explicitly named in the cuts.

As I noted last month, what is needed to extinguish the NED is not some magic potion but the concerted attention of Donald Trump. Perhaps, I suggested, the President had thought he had gotten rid of the NED already. I am here to remind him once again that that essential piece of work is yet to be accomplished. It is time to finish the job.

The real ‘fear’ index – of fiscal folly – hit a new record high overnight following its breakout last week…

Finally https://t.co/WYqQNRtc0U pic.twitter.com/oJV68H2DRj

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) August 29, 2025

…topping $3500 for the first time as hedge fund billionaire Ray Dalio warned Donald Trump’s America is drifting into 1930s-style autocratic politics — and told The FT that other investors are too scared of the president to speak up.

The Bridgewater Associates founder told the Financial Times that “gaps in wealth”, “gaps in values” and a collapse in trust were driving “more extreme” policies in the US.

“I think that what is happening now politically and socially is analogous to what happened around the world in the 1930-40 period,” Dalio said.

State intervention in the private sector, such as Trump’s decision to take a 10 per cent stake in chipmaker Intel, was the sort of “strong autocratic leadership that sprang out of the desire to take control of the financial and economic situation”, Dalio said.

Dalio also warned about the threats to the Federal Reserve’s independence days after Trump launched an unprecedented move to sack one of its governors.

Dalio said a politically weakened central bank, pressed to keep rates low, “would undermine the confidence in the Fed defending the value of money and make holding dollar-denominated debt assets less attractive which would weaken the monetary order as we know it.” 

Dalio said he also believed many years of big deficits and unsustainable debt growth had brought the US economy to the brink of a debt crisis, although he noted “presidents from both parties” had overseen a worsening situation before Trump’s latest fiscal plan.

“The great excesses that are now projected as a result of the new budget will likely cause a debt-induced heart attack in the relatively near future,” he said.

“I’d say three years, give or take a year or two.”

The veteran investor also took aim at a rising impulse towards state control under Trump.

Dalio resisted calling the president’s model authoritarian or socialist, but described the mechanics bluntly:

“Governments increasingly take control of what is done by central banks and businesses.”

Read the full catastrophizing interview here at The FT.

Goldman Sachs notes that there was good re-engagement from Chinese specs overnight as LBMA approaches the all-time-highs.

Western macros appear under-positioned given price has ignored all perceived catalysts (US debt, Trump vs Powell etc) until last Thursday / Friday when we saw re-engagement

We’re still ~5% away from the SHFE gold ATH (which is arguably more important given Chinese volumes).