President Trump in remarks to reporters Monday predicted that the war in Gaza will come to a “conclusive ending” within the next two to three weeks. 

He said in the Oval Office that “I think within the next two to three weeks, you’re going to have a pretty good, conclusive – a conclusive ending.” But the entirely difficult question of how this might come about was not addressed.

But Trump also seemed to hedge his bet, chalking up the Gaza crisis to rampant and long-running instability in the region: “It’s a hard thing to say because they’ve been fighting for thousands of years. But I think we’re doing a very good job,” he claimed.

He again reiterated, “But people can’t forget October 7” – identifying the initial Hamas attack as the cause of the ongoing war since 2023. On the question of admin efforts to achieve a peace settlement, Trump described that “There has been… a very serious diplomatic push.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio then chimed in during the Oval presser, saying, “We want it to end” – but “it has to end with no Hamas.”

So clearly the White House is at this moment still fully backing a military solution, after earlier this month essentially giving a greenlight for the new Israeli military assault on Gaza City.

It appears that Trump is predicting it will take two to three weeks to completely conquer and pacify Gaza, but he downplayed or ignored the brutality of it, and daily soaring death toll:

“Right now, they’re talking about Gaza City. They’re always talking about something,” and added, “At some point, it’s going to get settled… You better get it settled soon.”

He did say he’s “not happy” when he hears news of civilians, journalists, and medical workers being killed.

Trump also seems to be signaling Netanyahu to wrap up these high death toll miliary operations ‘soon’ – but while not threatening anything serious like cutting off the US arms pipeline or billions of dollars sent to Tel Aviv.

Below: Trump’s similar hawkish comments on Gaza in late July…

Trump on Gaza: “Hamas didn’t really want to make a deal. I think they want to die … they’re gonna have to finish the job … they’re gonna have to fight and they’re gonna have to clean it up. You’re gonna have to get rid of it.” pic.twitter.com/P8RvwnE0DT

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 25, 2025

One eyewitness to Monday’s deadly attacks which killed at least 5 journalists among 20 total people slain at Nasser hospital described seeing “bodies everywhere”:

Saber al-Asmar, a doctor in the Intensive Care Unit at Nasser hospital who witnessed the attack this morning, says staff members were continuing to help wounded Palestinians with the few supplies they have when the air strikes shook the facility.

“Patients were freaked out, and everything looked dark…we called the civil defence [teams] to go to the place that was targeted and then another big airstrike happened,” al-Asmar told Al Jazeera.

“We still can’t comprehend what happened now or next. The situation is horrible. We have seen bodies everywhere…they [Israeli forces] targeted the floor where the operating rooms are,” he added.

Meanwhile, the US Ambassador to Israel…

“You are the chosen people … if someone is angry at God, he’ll be angry at the people who represent him.”

US Ambassador Mike Huckabee tells rabbi in Israel that people are only anti-Semitic because they’re “against God.” pic.twitter.com/Y9cgeUCYJu

— Chris Menahan 🇺🇸 (@infolibnews) August 24, 2025

Monday’s events could see European nations impose harsher, punishing measures on Israel. Some governments are actually talking sanctions on Israel for the first time – but most European capitals remain deeply divided on the matter of what’s next, other than purely symbolic actions like acknowledging a ‘state of Palestine’.

Authored by James Howard Kunstler,

“Well, I mean, I’m talking about the… the… I had had, there was a…” 

– Ghislaine Maxwell

Did you happen to bother reading the transcript of Ghislaine Maxwell’s interview?

It’s tough sledding at times — both Ms. Maxwell and Deputy AG Todd Blanche tend to speak in choppy, incomplete sentences (as does, you might have noticed, President Trump) — but altogether the confab reveals that just about everything you think you know about the scandal might not be so, and her story is full of shocking surprises, assuming you can believe her.

For instance, Ms. Maxwell had exactly one night of actual sex with Jeffrey Epstein back in the 1990s, a few months after they met, and that was it. He had problems with straight-up sex, she says. At first, he claimed to have a heart condition. She says he had erectile difficulty “. . . which meant that he didn’t have intercourse a lot, which suited me fine, because I actually do have a medical condition, which precludes me having a lot of intercourse,” she added. (We never learn what that condition was, exactly.) Anyway, she never had sex with him again.

Huh. . .? There goes one pillar of the public perception of the scandal: that Ghislaine Maxwell was a sort of nymphomaniac consort of Mr. Epstein, while supposedly acting as chief procurer of his masseuse “victims” and that the whole decades-long saga was a cavalcade of threesomes and orgies.

She even claims at one point of being “a prude.”

So, what was her role in JE’s complicated life? Basically, a property manager, she says. You know, all those houses and compounds: the mansion on East 71st Street, the Palm Beach place, the ranch in New Mexico, Little St. James Island, a flat in Paris. It was a lot to manage. She had to hire architects, construction crews, interior decorators, servants. There were horses to care for at the ranch. It was a lot. She didn’t even have a key to JE’s New York City townhouse and was there only twice, she told Mr. Blanche.

During that time, JE had other girlfriends while in the early 2000s, Ms. Maxwell hooked up with the billionaire founder of Gateway Computers, Ted Waitt. He bought a big boat for them to start-up an oceanic research venture. The relationship foundered when, she says, a sketchy lawyer named Scott Rothstein, working for a crooked Florida law firm that was under a RICO investigation at the time, attempted to extract $10-million from Waitt to keep Ms. Maxwell’s name out of lawsuits brought by women claiming to be “victims” of Epstein’s massage shenanigans. Ms. Maxwell claims that Epstein’s masseuses, underage or otherwise, were recruited by the original masseuses, not by her (Ms. Maxwell).

Ms. Maxwell was out of Epstein’s life after 2009, when he got out of jail on state of Florida charges of soliciting prostitution and procuring a minor for prostitution. This was preceded by a sketchy federal case brought in the Southern District of Florida that ended with a peculiar non-prosecution agreement — when US Attorney Alexander Acosta was told to lay off on account of Epstein being an “intel asset.” Ms. Maxwell states in the new deposition that JE was not associated with any intel agency, claiming it would have been in his nature to brag about it.

It would help if FBI chief Kash Patel or CIA head John Ratcliffe could clarify that.

They would surely know, one way or the other.

Of course, the heart of all the salacious chatter about Epstein is the claim that he worked for Israel’s Mossad intel agency, and that many eminent global persons were recorded having sex with underage masseuses in order to blackmail them (and, supposedly, allow nefarious hidden parties to control world political affairs.)

Ms. Maxwell maintains that this is not so. She says there were no hidden cameras in bedrooms or elsewhere in the many Epstein properties or airplanes, and that she would know because she hired the electricians who installed everything else in them. There were only the usual security cameras on front entrances and gates. . . except for the Palm Beach house where local police installed a camera in JE’s office to catch a thief who was stealing cash stashed there. (Turned out to be JE’s butler, who was fired.)

Another thread at the center of the Epstein rumor mill is the notorious Epstein client list — supposedly of notables alleged to have cavorted with Epstein’s masseuses. Ms. Maxwell claims there was no such list, that a fake list was concocted by attorney Brad Edwards who represented women claiming to be Epstein “victims” in the lawsuit connected with the $10-million Ted Waitt blackmail caper. The list was composed from notes supposedly made off a computer by that same Epstein butler, one Alfredo Rodriguez. When interviewed in 2007, Rodriguez failed to produce the so-called “black book.” In 2009, he offered to sell it to attorney Brad Edwards (representing various “victims”) for $50,000. In 2010, Rodriguez was convicted of obstruction of justice and sentenced to 18 months in prison. He died in 2015.

A lot of monkey business in all this, wouldn’t you say?

Perhaps the most astounding point is Ms. Maxwell’s assertion that no government attorney (or any other official, including from the FBI) ever interviewed her, or even called her on the telephone, during all the years of legal wrangling that went on.

Say, what. . . ?

How could that possibly be?

Well, apparently it is so.

One has to wonder exactly how the case against Ghislaine Maxwell for “trafficking” girls back in the 1990s was finally brought in the notoriously corrupt Southern District of New York (federal court) on December 29, 2021. The lead prosecutor was Maurene Comey, daughter of you-know-who. Anything janky in this prosecution? You have seen enough jankiness in the New York courts, federal, state, and local, the past several years to destroy your confidence that they are in any way on-the-level.

Just sayin’. . . .

You are correct to observe that this hairball is a very complex, sometimes mystifying skein of stories, episodes, rumors, and, certainly, motives.

The big takeaway, of course, is Ms. Maxwell’s repeated statements that Donald Trump was not involved in any salacious activity around Jeffrey Epstein, his properties, his airplanes, or anywhere else. . . and that he “acted like a gentleman” at all times. She even states that she “admires” the president for winning back the White House. Ghislaine Maxwell is rumored to be seeking a pardon from the president. We’ll have to stand by on that. But you also might consider the possibility that, as Mr. Trump has said, in this whole fantastic alleged scandal there is a whole lot less there there than many of us have been led to believe. Except that GM does not believe that JE took his own life. Neither does Mr. Trump. I guess we’ll have to stand by on that, too. In the meantime, read the goshdarn thing yourself. It’s riveting.

Update(1615ET): Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has quickly offered confirmation that the Israeli military did indeed massacre at least 20 people at the Nasser Hospital complex in southern Gaza on Monday, which included the deaths of five journalists. He called it a “tragic mishap” and expressed deep “regret” – amid mounting international pressure and outrage.

Israeli media has since clarified that it was likely an attack by ground forces, as a tank fired on the group that was at the time responding to a prior strike (it’s widely being described as a double-tap).

Israel deeply regrets the tragic mishap that occurred today at the Nasser Hospital in Gaza.

Israel values the work of journalists, medical staff, and all civilians. The military authorities are conducting a thorough investigation.

Our war is with Hamas terrorists. Our just…

— Benjamin Netanyahu – בנימין נתניהו (@netanyahu) August 25, 2025

Israeli media details the following based on military sources:

Tank shelling carried out by the Israeli military on Nasser Hospital in the Khan Younis area of the southern Gaza Strip on Monday morning killed at least 20 people, including five journalists, according to media reports and the Hamas-run health ministry.

The Israel Defense Forces, some three hours after the reports of the attack emerged, confirmed that troops had carried out a strike in the area.

Footage showed rescue workers, who had arrived at the site of an initial attack, engulfed in smoke and debris when a second strike hit. Witnesses said journalists and other people had also rushed to the site of the first strike.

A military official told The Times of Israel that the attack was not conducted by the Israeli Air Force, indicating it was likely carried out by ground forces.

President Trump weighed in earlier from the Oval Office, but didn’t have a lot to say on the specific attack, with many details still uncertain…

US President Donald Trump said he does not know about, and does not want to see, the massacre committed by Israel at Nasser Hospital, Khan Yunis, southern Gaza, today.

Instead, he boasted about how he returned Israeli captives from Gaza, while contradicting Israel’s claim of… pic.twitter.com/txGCxarQAd

— The Cradle (@TheCradleMedia) August 25, 2025

The attack has been taking over headlines throughout the day, and could result in Europe taking punitive measures against Israel.

* * *

More journalists with Al Jazeera have been killed in the Gaza Strip, the Qatar-based outlet has reported, in an Israeli airstrike which killed a total of 20 people.

Al Jazeera photographer Mohammad Salama is among the dead after a large Israeli aerial attack on Nasser Medical Complex in southern Gaza on Monday, with local sources describing it as a double-tap strike.

Also among the dead are Mariam Dagga, a freelance journalist for The Associated Press, and a Reuters contractor cameraman identified as Hussam al-Masri. Another with Hamas’ Quds Feed Network succumbed of his wounds.

The Hamas media office in a statement said, “The journalist colleagues were martyred when the Israeli occupation committed a horrific crime by bombing a group of journalists who were on a press coverage mission at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis Governorate and many martyrs fell victim to this crime.”

“We hold the Israeli occupation, the American administration, and the countries participating in the genocide crime such as the United Kingdom, Germany, and France fully responsible for committing these heinous brutal crimes,” it added.

The Associated Press has been among international outlets to say it was “shocked and saddened” by Dagga’s death (its freelancer). And Reuters detailed:

Cameraman Hussam al-Masri, a Reuters contractor, was killed near a live broadcasting position operated by Reuters on an upper floor just below the roof of the hospital in Khan Younis in an initial strike, according to Palestinian health officials.

Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed the attack but said it did not intentionally target journalists. 

“The IDF regrets any harm to uninvolved individuals and does not target journalists as such,” the military said in a statement. “The IDF acts to mitigate harm to uninvolved individuals as much as possible while maintaining the safety of IDF troops.”

Israel’s military has routinely accused Arab media outlets like Al Jazeera of being ‘pro Hamas’ or even at times cooperating with terrorists. Previously Israel has raided Al Jazeera offices in the West Bank and Jerusalem. 

Widely-circulating disturbing video purporting to show a strike which killed journalists and paramedics: 

⚠️⚠️⚠️
UNPRECEDENTED
Targeting Civil Defence officers and paramedics by Israeli jets while evacuating casualties following Israeli bombing of Nasser Hospital! pic.twitter.com/jHDlFANZqG

— Motasem A Dalloul (@AbujomaaGaza) August 25, 2025

In 2024 Israeli authorities confiscated office equipment and shuttered Al Jazeera’s operations in Ramallah and inside Israel.

This latest mass casualty attack will serve to keep Israel under international scrutiny and pressure. Currently a growing list of European countries plan to formally recognize a state of Palestine at the UN in September. PM Netanyahu has meanwhile articulated that alongside a ground war in Gaza, and wars in nearby Yemen, Syria, and Lebanon – Israel is fighting a ‘media war’.

Authored by Sandra Block via Kiplinger’s Perosnal Finance,

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed by President Trump on July 4, includes tax breaks for an expansive range of taxpayers, while scrapping credits for energy-saving vehicles and home improvements.

More broadly, the legislation makes the tax cuts in the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act permanent, which means tax rates won’t increase after 2025. Here’s a look at how other provisions in the bill could affect your taxes.

Older Adults

Larger Standard Deduction

Starting in the 2025 tax year, those who are 65 or older will be eligible for an additional standard deduction of $6,000. The bonus deduction comes on top of an existing increase in the standard deduction of $2,000 for single filers who are 65 or older; for married couples who file jointly, it’s $1,600 for each spouse 65 or older.

The expanded deduction means an eligible taxpayer with a filing status of single will be able to deduct up to $23,750 from taxable income, while a married couple will qualify for a deduction of up to $46,700, assuming both are 65 or older.

The deduction starts to phase out for couples with modified adjusted gross income of more than $150,000 and is fully phased out at MAGI of $250,000 ($75,000 and $175,000 for single filers). This new deduction is available for 2025 through 2028.

The legislation won’t eliminate taxes on Social Security benefits. But by lowering taxable income, it will reduce the number of beneficiaries who pay the taxes from 36 percent to 12 percent, according to the White House Council of Economic Advisers.

Estate Tax Exemption

As a result of the legislation, the vast majority of taxpayers won’t have to worry about paying federal estate taxes. The law increases the estate tax exemption, which is $13.99 million per person in 2025, to $15 million per person, or $30 million for a married couple, in 2026. The exemption will then be adjusted annually for inflation. Without congressional action, the exemption would have dropped to about $7 million after 2025.

Homeowners

Property Tax Deduction

Homeowners will be able to deduct up to $40,000 in state and local taxes, up from a cap of $10,000. The higher cap takes effect for 2025 and lasts through 2029, and it will be increased by one percentage point each year until returning to the $10,000 cap in 2030. The higher cap phases out for homeowners with MAGI above $500,000 ($250,000 for a married individual filing separately). Taxpayers with MAGI of $600,000 or more will be ineligible for the increase. You must itemize to claim this deduction.

Credit for Energy-Efficient Home Improvements

Planning to install rooftop solar panels? Get busy, because a tax credit for these improvements will expire at the end of 2025. The Residential Clean Energy Credit, which provides a 30 percent tax credit toward the cost of buying and installing solar panels, solar water heaters, or other energy-saving measures, was previously scheduled to phase out in 2033. To claim the credit on your 2025 tax return, you’ll need to start work by the end of the year.

Families

Extension of the Child Tax Credit

The bill permanently extends the child tax credit and increases the amount of the credit to $2,200 per child, up from $2,000.

Savings Accounts for Kids

The law creates a new tax-advantaged savings account for children. Until the child turns 18, parents, grandparents and others can contribute up to $5,000 a year to the account, where the money is invested in a fund that tracks a stock index and grows tax-deferred. Parents of children born between January 1, 2025, and December 31, 2028, will be eligible to receive $1,000 in federal seed money to start the account.

Car Buyers

Deduction on Car Loan Interest

Taxpayers will be eligible to deduct up to $10,000 in interest on loans for cars purchased between 2025 and 2028. You don’t have to itemize to claim this deduction, but it’s available only for loans taken out to buy new cars assembled in the United States. The deduction phases out for individuals earning more than $100,000 or married couples making over $200,000.

Credit for Electric Vehicles (EVs) and Charging Stations

The $7,500 tax credit to buy or lease qualified EVs, along with the $4,000 credit for eligible used EVs, will end September 30, 2025.

Workers

Tip Income

Eligible tipped workers will be able to deduct up to $25,000 in tips a year from 2025 through 2028. The tax break will decrease by $100 for every $1,000 of MAGI over $150,000 for single filers and $300,000 for joint filers. You don’t need to itemize to claim this deduction.

Overtime Pay

From 2025 through 2028, workers will be allowed to deduct up to $12,500 a year in overtime pay, or $25,000 if they’re married and file jointly. This phases out for single filers with MAGI of more than $150,000 and joint filers with MAGI over $300,000.

©2025 The Kiplinger Washington Editors, Inc. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

The views and opinions expressed are those of the authors. They are meant for general informational purposes only and should not be construed or interpreted as a recommendation or solicitation. The Epoch Times does not provide investment, tax, legal, financial planning, estate planning, or any other personal finance advice. The Epoch Times holds no liability for the accuracy or timeliness of the information provided.

A federal judge in San Francisco ruled on Friday that the Trump administration cannot suspend funding to 34 ‘sanctuary’ cities which limit or refuse cooperation with federal immigration enforcement.

US District Judge William Orrick  – a rich kid lawyer appointed by former President Barack Obama to the US District Court for the Northern District of California – ordered the extension of a preliminary injunction barring the administration from blocking funding or placing conditions on federal  funding for those jurisdictions. Orrick also prevented the administration from imposing immigration-related conditions on two particular grant programs. 

The Trump administration initially tried to block funding to dozens of cities and counties over sanctuary city policies – cutting off their Housing and Urban Development (HUD) grants due to noncompliance with federal immigration enforcement. 

The protected cities include; Boston, Chicago, Denver, Seattle, Los Angeles, Albuquerque, Baltimore, San Jose, San Diego and others – while major counties covered include Multnomah County in Oregon, which encompasses Portland; Allegheny County in Pennsylvania, which encompasses Pittsburgh; and Hennepin County in Minnesota, which encompasses Minneapolis, the Epoch Times reports, nothing further; 

The Trump administration has ratcheted up pressure on sanctuary communities as it seeks to make good on President Donald Trump’s campaign promise to remove millions of people who are in the country illegally.

One executive order issued by Trump directs Attorney General Pam Bondi and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to withhold federal money from sanctuary jurisdictions. Another order directs every federal agency to ensure that payments to state and local governments do not “abet so-called ‘sanctuary’ policies that seek to shield illegal aliens from deportation.”

In May, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released a list of more than 500 “sanctuary jurisdictions” and said that all of those municipalities and counties would be sent a formal notification deeming them to be noncompliant with the Trump administration’s orders. Those officials would also be informed by DHS on whether they were said to be in violation of any federal laws.

Orrick said in his order that the administration’s decisions to withhold federal funding in those jurisdictions are a “coercive threat” that he deemed to be “unconstitutional.”

“I determined that the Cities and Counties are likely to succeed on the merits of their claims that defendants’ actions with respect to the enjoined executive orders and related agency directives were unconstitutional violations of the separation of powers and spending clause doctrines and violated the Fifth Amendment, Tenth Amendment and Administrative Procedure Act,” he wrote.

In recent months, the Justice Department has ramped up pressure on several major cities over such policies. For example, the department filed a lawsuit against New York City and Mayor Eric Adams’s administration challenging the city’s laws on how it handles illegal immigrants.

“New York City has released thousands of criminals on the streets to commit violent crimes against law-abiding citizens due to sanctuary city policies,” Bondi said in a statement last month in announcing the legal challenge. “If New York City won’t stand up for the safety of its citizens, we will.”

Her office has also filed similar lawsuits targeting New York state, Colorado, Illinois, Los Angeles, several cities in New Jersey, and Rochester in New York, according to the statement.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

By Benjamin Picton, senior market strategist at Rabobank

Jerome Powell used his set-piece speech at Jackson Hole on Friday to execute a dovish pivot. The S&P500 closed within 2pts of an all-time high and 10-year Treasury yields fell 7bps after the Fed Chair said that recent weakening in the labor market that was highlighted by sluggish employment growth in the most recent non-farm payrolls report – including big downward revisions to jobs growth in April and May – meant that the balance of risks had shifted and that some reduction in the restrictiveness of monetary policy may now be appropriate.

That admission must have stuck in the craw for a Fed Chairman who has pushed back against the White House’s at times puerile lobbying for cheaper money. The risk now is that ‘Too Slow’ Jerome Powell – as he has been dubbed by Trump – is suddenly transformed into ‘MAGA Jay’ in the eyes of the commentariat as he bows to pressure to cut rates and perhaps raises questions in some quarters over whether he might have one eye on safeguarding his own seat on the FOMC.

Tired: TACO
Wired: PACO

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) August 24, 2025

To add insult to injury, Powell also admitted that the risks to inflation are to the upside while the risks to employment are to the downside. To any economics-trained ear, that sounds like stagflation – a scenario that Powell expressly said he couldn’t envision last year.

The President has been busy subverting his Fed Chair by appointing loyalist and Mar-a-Lago Accord author Stephen Miran to fill Adriana Kugler’s (a Biden appointee) seat on the Board of Governors, and also by threatening to anoint a Fed Chair-in-waiting to second-guess Powell’s every utterance before his contract expires in May next year. Recent attacks on Biden-appointed Lisa Cook over allegations of shonky mortgage applications further highlights how the Fed is now treated similarly to the Supreme Court in terms of the administration seeking to stack it with ideological fellow travellers and dispensing with the fiction of central organs of government being political silent blobs. This trend will doubtless cut both ways as California Governor Newsom’s recent behavior regarding Congressional redistricting in Texas amply illustrates.

The unabashed politicization of the supposedly independent and technocratic process of setting the price of money once again confirms that it is no longer the 1990s and that old ideas about optimal policy transmission, central bank credibility and the need to insulate important decisions from the influence of the popular will offers little protection against the new paradigm of raw power politics. Just as the interpretation of law is inherently political, the price of money is inherently political, and all aspects of national policy are being co-opted to support the MAGA vision of the United States and its place in the world.

The political nature of the price of money is, of course, a feature of other economies, too. Down Under in Australia the RBA has recently cut rates for the third time – sparking another wave of FOMO buying in the country’s already poisonously expensive housing market. Tellingly, UBS’s latest Global Wealth Report places Australia second behind only tax haven microstate Luxembourg in terms of the median household wealth. By far the largest driver of Australia’s household wealth is real estate, accounting for 53% of the total compared to just 30% in the United States. The relative proportions of Australia’s wealth composition vs others certainly raises questions about how much of that household wealth is illusory and liable to disappear when the housing market eventually reverts to fair value (as it always does).

Seemingly content to sacrifice their young to the Moloch of housing market speculation, the Australian government is continuing to do its best to ensure that fair value is never achieved and has this morning announced that they are ‘helping’ by bringing forward a scheme for the government to credit wrap first homebuyers with deposits as small as 5%. To put that another way, the taxpayer will be providing credit guarantees for buyers who are just 5% away from negative equity in a generationally expensive market.

Concurrently, the ABC reports that thousands of houses purpose-built for the disabled on city fringes (where services for people with disabilities are thin on the ground) through the promise of turbocharged returns underwritten by a massive government honeypot for the investors who stumped up the capital are sitting empty – because not enough people with disabilities want to live there. Totally not 2008 vibes at all.

This sort of silliness is common in Australia where there is apparently no problem that a big dose of financialization can’t ‘fix’ by creating new and bigger problems (just look at Australia’s energy market – once a source of competitive advantage, but no longer). Such thinking was again on display through a three day productivity summit last week where the usual neoliberal tropes of “it’s a supply issue” and cutting red tape were again rolled out and there was further inching towards financial repression as all agreed that it should be easier for private pension savings to be redirected into government priority areas. Australia’s government also committed to another round of cuts to “nuisance” tariffs right at the time where the rest of the developed world is realising that – with the benefit of hindsight – such moves in the 1980s might have been a bad idea and the ability to make stuff in your own country is actually a very useful thing sometimes.

Contrast that thinking to what is happening in the USA, where Intel has apparently just agreed to allow the US government to take a 10% stake in the company to ensure that strategically important semiconductor manufacturing occurs inside the United States and is treated as a national security priority. Thinking from first principles, economics is the study of scarcity and it is the job of national governments to arrange the scarce factors of production (land, labor and capital) to best ensure the prosperity and security of their people.

Very clearly we are seeing two very different approaches to this problem of scarcity emerging. Is the wealth of nations best employed to bid up the housing stock, making do-nothing speculators and ticket-clipping middlemen (real estate agents, mortgage brokers, banks etc) in the rentier economy fat? Or is it better employed to ensure supremacy of real production and the dominance of strategic supply chains vis-à-vis potential adversaries?

France has summoned the US ambassador in Paris over a diplomatic row and surprisingly blunt accusations involving Israel-Gaza policy. The spat started when Ambassador Charles Kushner published open letter to President Emmanuel Macron in The Wall Street Journal on Sunday.

Ambassador Charles Kushner accused the French government of not taking sufficient action to curb anti-Semitic violence, and further that its policies have been essentially rewarding Hamas and emboldening antisemitic violence. Kushner’s elder son Jared is the husband of Ivanka Trump, and President Trump has previously given Charles full legal pardon after he was convicted of past illegal campaign contributions, tax evasion, and witness tampering in connection with his real estate business, Kushner Companies.

Kushner’s open letter condemned France’s recent declaration that it will recognize a Palestinian state at the upcoming UN General Assembly meeting in September. It accused the Macron government of fostering policies which “endanger Jewish life in France.”

“Public statements haranguing Israel and gestures toward recognition of a Palestinian state embolden extremists, fuel violence, and endanger Jewish life in France,” he wrote. “In today’s world, anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism– plain and simple,” he claimed.

Kushner then listed off a series of actions President Trump has taken to push back on antisemitism in American society, and then said: 

Today, many French Jews fear that history will repeat itself in Europe. Parents encourage their children to emigrate; surveys show most French citizens believe another Holocaust could happen in Europe. Nearly half of French youth report never having heard of the Holocaust at all. What are children being taught in French schools if such ignorance persists?

But Paris has not bowed to these arguments, but swiftly summoned the US ambassador to lodge formal complain.

“France firmly refutes these latest allegations,” a Sunday Foreign Ministry statement said. “The allegations from the ambassador are unacceptable.” It added that France is “fully committed” to fighting anti-Semitism and that it is not tolerated.

The Foreign Ministry’s further accused Kushner’s comments over-reach and potentially damaging US-France relations, as they went “against international law, and in particular the duty not to interfere in internal matters of states” by diplomatic personnel.

“Furthermore, they do not live up to the quality of the transatlantic relationship between France and the United States and the trust that should result between allies,” it added.

But it appears Kusher’s op-ed, or open letter to Macron was approved at the highest levels of the Trump administration. This should come as no surprise given the hardline pro-Israel supporters in Trump’s cabinet and the White House.

US Ambassador to France Charles Kushner marked the 81st anniversary of Paris’s liberation by warning President Emmanuel Macron of a “surge of antisemitism,” declaring “anti-Zionism is antisemitism, period,” and urging France to “enforce hate laws without exception.”

He pointed… pic.twitter.com/cmnNK0jSEp

— AF Post (@AFpost) August 25, 2025

When asked about it, US State Department spokesperson Tommy Pigott replied, “Ambassador Kushner is our US government representative in France and is doing a great job advancing our national interests in that role.”

Kushner in his letter had at one point directly appealed for the following: “Mr. President, I urge you to act decisively: enforce hate-crime laws without exception; ensure the safety of Jewish schools, synagogues and businesses, prosecute offenders to the fullest extent; and abandon steps that give legitimacy to Hamas and its allies” – in the statement addressed to Macron.

Authored by Larry Kudlow via RealClearPolitics.com,

If you take a careful look at the decision of a New York appellate court today to throw out the unconstitutional and disgraceful $500 million penalty on President Trump and his businesses…

And then you keep your nose in the newspapers and watch New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, getting busted for mortgage fraud…

And then you go back a bit and look at all the declassified documents released by Tulsi Gabbard and John Ratcliffe and Kash Patel that show the entire Russiagate hoax was quarterbacked by President Obama and Senator Hillary Clinton…

And then you just think about this whole rotten sequence — what you see is the collapse of the legal and Deep State forces against Mr. Trump.

In many ways, you could argue it’s the collapse of the Democratic Party.

Not only because the Deep State couldn’t bust Mr. Trump, and the forces of treachery and sedition couldn’t break Mr. Trump, and the prominent liars are themselves now facing criminal indictment, and making it all worse for that crowd — Mr. Trump himself was re-elected.

Which was the Obama-Clinton Deep State’s worst nightmare.

And as far as the Deep State goes, it appears that all of those people who participated in the Russian hoax and various other phony trials — well, they’re getting fired from their jobs. And they’re all lawyering up.

And on top of all that, here’s Mr. Trump running a vastly successful administration — in terms of economic policy, domestic policy, foreign policy, you name it.

Wait a minute, though, don’t forget the president is going to inspect Washington, D.C., this evening — so let’s add law and order to that list.

And he closed the wide open border.

So that adds to the Deep State’s nightmare.

Not only could they not put him in jail for 750 years… Or bust his businesses… Or throw him off the ballot… Or tie him to the so-called Russia hoax…

The worst thing of all for the lawyered up Deep State crowd, though, is that Mr. Trump is succeeding in virtually every initiative he’s put forward.

And, not to rub it in, but I want to quote Mr. Trump’s Truth Social post today: “a great win for America” — which describes his victory in the New York appellate court.

It’s a great win for America for many different reasons.

What comes to mind to me, though, is that it shows that eventually, the American judicial system works.

As bad, inept, and corrupt as some of these judges and spies have been, with all of their political biases and weaponization and lawfare against Mr. Trump…

As bad as they are — as the cases moved up the judicial totem pole, Mr. Trump has won them all.

Authored by John R. Lott Jr. via RealClearPolitics,

“I am going to lead a movement to get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS,” President Trump declared Monday in a Truth Social post. Later that day, he promised an executive order “to end mail-in ballots because they are corrupt. You know we are the only country in the world, I believe, I may be wrong, just about, the only country in the world that uses them because of what happened, massive fraud all over the place.”

Trump has remained consistent; even before the 2020 election, he warned: “There is a lot of dishonesty going on with mail-in voting.”

Trump doesn’t need to hedge about voting rules abroad. Poland was the one other country that considered conducting its 2020 presidential election by mail during the pandemic, but even it abandoned the attempt. Countries don’t use the kind of mass mail-in voting now used in eight states – where states automatically send ballots to all registered voters, who then mail them back. That system differs from absentee ballots, which require a request and traditionally demanded a reason, such as being out of town on Election Day.

The United States stands out not only for mail-in ballots but also for its unusually broad use of absentee ballots. Of the 47 European countries, 35 – including France, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden – ban absentee voting for citizens living inside the country. Ten others – including England, Ireland, Denmark, Portugal, and Spain – allow it only if voters pick up their ballots in person and present photo ID. Six of those restrict absentee ballots to the military or hospitalized voters, and they require verification from the military or hospital itself. The U.S., by contrast, lets anyone claim they will be out of town and receive a ballot by mail.

England once followed rules similar to America’s. But in 2004, officials uncovered a massive fraud in Birmingham city council races. Six winning Labour candidates had acquired about 40,000 fraudulent absentee votes, mainly from Muslim neighborhoods. England responded by ending the mailing of absentee ballots and requiring in-person pickup with photo ID.

France once had similarly loose rules. But in 1975, authorities exposed large-scale fraud on the island of Corsica, where dead people “voted” in the hundreds of thousands and widespread vote-buying flourished. France responded by banning absentee voting altogether.

Concerns over absentee ballots used to unite both Democrats and Republicans. “Absentee ballots are the largest source of potential voter fraud.” That warning doesn’t come from Trump, but from the bipartisan 2005 Commission on Federal Election Reform, led by Democratic President Jimmy Carter and Republican Secretary of State James Baker III.

Voters across the spectrum still share those worries. A Rasmussen poll at the end of last year found 59% of likely voters believe mail-in voting makes cheating easier. Majorities of black, Hispanic, and white voters agreed, along with both young and old. Only Democrats, liberals, graduate-school alumni, and those earning more than $200,000 disagreed. Earlier surveys reached similar results.

Even the New York Times once raised alarms. In 2012, the paper warned that the increased use of absentee ballots “will probably result in more uncounted votes, and it increases the potential for fraud.” But these days, that same newspaper insists voter-fraud claims for absentee ballots are “baseless” and “without evidence.”

American history reinforces these concerns. Between 1888 and 1950, widespread vote-buying led states to adopt the secret ballot. Once voters could no longer prove to buyers how they had voted, the payments stopped. As one state after another started using secret ballots, turnout immediately fell by 8% to 12%, according to my research with the late Larry Kenny at the University of Florida – evidence of just how rampant the practice had been.

The Carter-Baker commission also highlighted how absentee voting enables coercion: “Citizens who vote at home, at nursing homes, at the workplace, or in church are more susceptible to pressure, overt and subtle, or to intimidation. Vote-buying schemes are far more difficult to detect when citizens vote by mail.” The problem is that both the buyer and seller have an incentive to hide the purchase.

But recent cases confirm the risks. Earlier this year, prosecutors indicted six Texans for harvesting ballots and buying votes by collecting absentee ballots. Absentee voting lets sellers prove how they voted, and ballot harvesting lets buyers ensure the votes count – guaranteeing they get what they paid for. Just this month, investigators in Hamtramck, Michigan, opened a fraud case after surveillance video showed a city council candidate’s aide stuffing three stacks of ballots into a drop box. The candidate had won by only a few dozen votes.

Mail-in voting reopens the door to the fraud and vote-buying America worked so hard to eliminate a century ago. That’s why countries such as Norway and Mexico prohibit absentee ballots for citizens voting domestically. Americans deserve the same safeguard – a voting system they can trust.

John R. Lott Jr. is a contributor to RealClearInvestigations, focusing on voting and gun rights. His articles have appeared in publications such as the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, New York Post, USA Today, and Chicago Tribune. Lott is an economist who has held research and/or teaching positions at the University of Chicago, Yale University, Stanford, UCLA, Wharton, and Rice.

Vice President JD Vance appeared on Sunday’s Meet the Press on NBC where he presented a generally positive view of Russia-Ukraine peace efforts mediated by Trump, despite the broad consensus being that talks are stalled and neither side has budged from their maximal positions.

Vance claimed the US President still has “a lot of cards left to play to apply pressure” to end the war. “I think the Russians have made significant concessions to President Trump for the first time in three and a half years of this conflict,” he said.

Some observers have pointed out, however, that it’s a major concession for Moscow to even be engaged in peace dialogue at all, given that by pretty much all metrics it is dominant and winning on the battlefield. It’s a concession in its own right for the winning side to even be talking at all.

“They’ve actually been willing to be flexible on some of their core demands. They’ve talked about what would be necessary to end the war. Of course, they haven’t been completely there yet, or the war would be over. But we’re engaging in this diplomatic process in good faith,” Vance continued.

The vice president suggested that while Russia indeed has maintained the upper-hand, it has been unable to do everything it wants. “They’ve recognized that they’re not going to be able to install a puppet regime in Kyiv. That was, of course, a major demand at the beginning,” Vance described.

“And importantly, they’ve acknowledged that there is going to be some security guarantee to the territorial integrity of Ukraine.” And yet, the Kremlin has rejected outright the idea of deploying Western peacekeeping troops to Ukraine, or the deployment of NATO air power.

That’s when he said, “We, of course, have pushed for a ceasefire. But again, we don’t control what Russia does. … What we do believe though is that we continue to have a lot of cards. The president of the United States has a lot of cards left to play to apply pressure to try to bring this conflict to a close, and that’s what we’re going to do.”

This of course includes sanctions, which Vance made clear are not off the table. Days ago Trump said he’ll make a major decision in two weeks if talks don’t advance at all. 

The reality remains that Putin has made clear that he won’t meet with Zelensky unless it is to sign and full and final truce agreement, and not a mere temporary ceasefire.

Essentially a deal has to already be done, and only then would the two presidents meet directly, the Kremlin has said. Otherwise, it becomes a meeting just for the spectacle of having a meeting, the foreign ministry has previously explained. Clearly this scenario of a top-level bilateral meeting is still a long way off…

WELKER: So you don’t see Zelensky as legitimate leader of Ukraine?

LAVROV: We recognize him as DE FACTO head of regime

‘But when it comes to signing docs… need understanding that person signing is legitimate’

‘And according to Ukrainian Constitution, Mr. Zelensky is NOT’ pic.twitter.com/A6gup7sqS6

— RT (@RT_com) August 24, 2025

Zelensky has claimed this Kremlin stance is purposeful, to avoid achieving peace and press the battle forward. Zelensky asserted Friday “the Russians are trying to do anything to avoid the meeting” because “they do not want to end the war” on Ukraine.

But Russia’s top diplomat Sergei Lavrov had also stated Friday “Putin is ready to meet with Zelensky, when the agenda would be ready for a summit,” but underscored: “and this agenda is not ready at all.”