Authored by John Haughey via The Epoch Times,

Operation Epic Fury presents Russia and China with a “mixed bag” of potential opportunities, but neither appear poised to take advantage of the United States’ “distraction” with Iran, according to analysts with the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

That, however, could change if the United States cannot quickly degrade the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz to allow commercial shipping to resume, and secure with Israel a convincing victory in decimating Iran’s capacity to develop nuclear weapons, they concurred.

“Ultimately, this comes back to … the duration of the war being key,” CSIS Geopolitics and Foreign Policy Department Chief of Staff Will Todman said during a March 16 “State of Play” presentation in Washington, summarizing views from Russia expert Maria Snegovaya and China Power Project Director Bonny Lin.

Snegovaya said while Russia has accrued short-term benefits from the U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran, a battlefield advantage against Ukraine is not among them.

“Ukraine has passed through the worst, hopefully,  this winter,” she said. “It’s spring now, so it’s a little bit easier for them to survive Russian attacks. Also, Russian attacks have similarly slowed down somewhat in the recent weeks, although it doesn’t mean that they will not resume at high intensity quickly.”

President Donald Trump lifted sanctions on Russian oil when he issued a 30-day waiver on March 12. Moscow has pocketed more than $7 billion in increased oil sales since, Snegovaya said.

But that’s hardly “a game-changer” for Russia considering it has a $50 billion deficit in its 2026 budget and is still moving forward with plans to cut at least $25 billion from its annual spending plan, she said, an indication that “Russian officials do not really anticipate this to radically alter its economic situation” unless the strait remains hazardous for an extended time.

Snegovaya said it would take weeks, if not months, for Russia to boost oil production to truly profit from sanctions being lifted and noted banks in India, for instance, are hesitant to “make payments” for Russian oil that may not be delivered once the 30-day waiver expires.

Iran’s value to Russia, she said, is serving as a disruptive force against U.S. interests in the Middle East and, while it is providing intelligence to Iran, Russian President Vladimir Putin could threaten to send sophisticated weapons to Tehran as leverage in dealing with the Trump administration in extending the sanctions waiver or in sustaining support for Ukraine.

Snegovaya noted Russia, along with China, abstained from voting in the March 11 U.N. Security Council condemning Iran for attacking its Gulf state neighbors, adopted in a 13–0 vote.

But unlike China, Russia opted to participate in planned naval exercises earlier this year, she said, noting there are reports that newly minted Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, named to succeed his father—killed in the Feb. 28 decapitation strike that kicked off Operation Epic Fury—as Iran’s “supreme leader,” is convalescing from wounds in Moscow.

“I think it was a Kuwaiti paper that said that, and—maybe I shouldn’t say this—but they’re not always extremely driven by facts,” Todman said.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi with Djibouti’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation Mahamoud Ali Youssouf upon his arrival at the diplomatic institute in Djibouti on Jan. 9, 2020. -/AFP via Getty Images

China: It’s ‘Complicated’

Lin, who heads the CSIS China Power Project, said how the war affects China is “complicated” since it receives 25 percent of its crude oil imports from Iran, but she dismissed fears it will seize the moment to invade Taiwan while the United States remains in conflict with Iran.

“I think, usually, pundits are too quick to link whatever the United States does to Taiwan,” she said. “There is a link, but it’s important to remember China has its own set of calculations for Taiwan that isn’t just based off whether the United States can defend Taiwan or not.”

Lin said the planned late-March meeting between Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping is far more important to China than Iran. Trump said on March 16 that he’s requested the meeting be delayed “a month or so.”

“So I think the reason why China has not directly engaged with the United States on Iran is, I think, they want to keep these issues separate,” she said.

China has more at stake in the region than oil imports, Lin said, noting that “since 2019, it has invested nearly $90 billion in LNG facilities, ports, various different projects, power grids, petrochemical projects” across the region. Its exports to the Middle East grew nearly twice as fast as its exports to the rest of the world in 2025, according to the Institute for Energy Research.

“So as Iran is retaliating” in attacking Gulf state energy infrastructure, “it’s also impacting China’s overall investment in the region,” she said.

But it’s unlikely to send warships to aid a U.S.-led effort to shield commercial ships from attack in the strait, Lin said. Even though it has two destroyers stationed in Djibouti on the Bab el-Mandeb Strait linking the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, and is building a “dual-use” port in Gwadar on Pakistan’s Arabian Sea coast.

There are several reasons for this, she said, noting China has avoided formal defense commitments to Iran, has been “distancing itself” from the regime in Tehran, and continues to purchase 90 percent of the discounted, sanctioned oil Iran produces with Chinese flagged or contracted tankers still moving up to 12 million barrels of crude through the strait a day.

She said in analyzing internal Chinese commentary on the war, contrary to being pleased to see the United States expending expensive air-defense munitions such as THAAD anti-ballistic missile systems and Patriot air-defense systems to knock down Iranian drones, many are “suspicious” that the Trump administration is sending Beijing a message.

“For example,” Lin said, “I’m seeing Chinese experts write, ‘Well, why did the United States and Israel have to [use] so many advanced capabilities against a medium-sized power like Iran? Well, maybe because the United States wants to exercise the capability so they can … demonstrate a real world exercise of it, so they can use it later against China.’”

Lin said other analysts in China are “saying, ‘This is the second major operation the United States has conducted this year, first against Venezuela, second against Iran. And for both of these countries, they are critical suppliers of oil to China.’ So, yes, it is not directly against China right now, but it could be used to indirectly contain China.”

From China’s perspective, “I don’t think they’re seeing these conflicts as completely separate. And as a result, I don’t think the first thing that comes to China’s mind, or leading Chinese experts’ minds, is, ‘How do we take advantage of the situation?’ It’s more of, ‘To what extent is this situation going to negatively impact China?’”

When a motley crew of private credit loans (mostly to software companies) are all mixed in and thrown together into a messy melange known as a Business Development Company, then quietly all go sour and spark a redemption run, what’s the frazzled investor to do? Why take them out of the melange, put them into a different wrapper, changing nothing except the name and pretending everything is now somehow different. 

That’s what Blackstone is about to do. According to Bloomberg, the firm’s flagship private credit fund is planning to sell bonds backed by a broad swathe of its $82.5 billion of assets. 

BCRED, the world’s largest business development company, is looking to finalize the collateralized loan obligation (CLO) deal early next week, the Bloomberg sources said. Proceeds will be used to repay some existing debt, they added which the company desperately needs at it was recently flooded with redemption requests which amounted to a whopping 7.9% of its flagship private credit fund, more than the statutory limit of 7%.

Regular readers are of course familiar with BCRED: the Blackstone fund earlier this month took the unusual step of asking some of its senior leaders to pitch in $150 million to help fund elevated redemption requests rather than cap investor withdrawals like some of its private credit peers. Still, BCRED is a regular CLO issuer, and the latest sale was planned months ago, one of the people said.

The transaction highlights an increasingly popular option for BDCs to raise debt from Wall Street investors. Last year, at least three BDCs issued private credit CLOs for the first time, including Apollo Debt Solutions BDC, Morgan Stanley Direct Lending Fund and Kohlberg & Co LLC. 

CLOs package up corporate loans into bonds of varying size and risk. The biggest bond in the BCRED deal, rated AAA, is expected to price at an interest rate premium of 1.3 percentage points, the people said. That’s a similar level to deals BCRED issued last year.

Of course, whether one calls it a BDC or a CLO, the assets are identical – in both cases private loans, many of which have been mismarked and/or gone source – and the only different is what are the liabilities wrapping them.

And since the appears to be lots of confusion, we will write a detailed primer on the topic this weekend. 

Authored by Scott Greer via American Greatness,

It was a case that captured the nation’s attention 20 years ago. In March of 2006, a black stripper accused three members of Duke University’s nearly all-white lacrosse team of rape. The only evidence for the crime was her own testimony, which changed repeatedly. It didn’t matter that every other eyewitness disputed the rape claim. An opportunistic district attorney, a vengeful cop, a feminist nurse, and a ravenous media were all ready to believe the Duke lacrosse rape, and that was enough to make it “truth” in the public eye for much of 2006.

The Duke lacrosse hoax offered a preview of America’s coming social conflicts in the age of woke. Imagined racial grievance, feminism, and belief in “white privilege” all fueled this story. The media was all too eager to buy it. Journalists wanted to believe it was true to show that white men are the real menace to society. It was a story too “good” to pass up. It was also a story too “good” to be true.

No lessons were learned from the Duke lacrosse case. We would see similar lies play out with Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and Rolling Stone’s infamous “A Rape on Campus” story. While District Attorney Mike Nifong paid a high price for his reckless pursuit of the case, the media and activists who aided him suffered no real consequences. Hate hoaxes would flourish as a result.

The story is best explained by the 2007 book, Until Proven Innocent: Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case by Stuart Taylor Jr. and K. C. Johnson.

The tale begins with a bored group of youth looking to entertain themselves while stuck on campus during spring break. The lacrosse team, unlike other Duke students, couldn’t vacation with the time off. They had games and practice during the holiday, leaving them in Durham. To blow off steam, the team decided to hire strippers for a party. Too many of their teammates were underage and couldn’t go to a strip club, so they decided to bring the entertainment to a house where a bunch of lacrosse players lived. They requested two strippers, one of whom was Crystal Mangum.

Mangum was a disturbed woman with a rap sheet and a history of mental illness and substance abuse. She had even made up a gang rape allegation in the past. On the night of March 13, 2006, she showed up severely inebriated after a weekend of having sex with multiple men. She and the other stripper didn’t perform their duties well. The lacrosse men quickly became disgusted with their antics and regretted the $800 they had spent on the night’s entertainment. The guys argued with the other stripper, Kim Roberts, over what was happening. Tempers flared, and Roberts decided to leave with Mangum, who could barely stand on her own. Roberts called the lacrosse guys “short-dicked white boys,” which prompted one of them to call her the n-word. That action would be used to establish the entire lacrosse team as deranged racists.

Roberts would call the police on the lacrosse team over the slur, claiming she was just passing by the house when they began calling her names. She drove away with Mangum, who was too intoxicated to communicate properly. Roberts took her passenger to a local grocery store and got security to call 911 on the disturbed Mangum. When taken to the hospital, Mangum faced the possibility of being involuntarily committed. But she found her opportunity to avoid that fate when she was asked by a nurse if she had been raped. She replied yes, which gave her a ticket out of involuntary commitment.

Thus began the rape hoax. The examining nurse was a feminist activist who fully believed Mangum’s story and found enough evidence to support the theory due to evidence of sexual activity. However, there was no evidence of physical harm done to her. Her word, supported by the feminist nurse, was enough to get police involved. The case was taken up by Durham police sergeant Mark Gottlieb, an officer with a notorious reputation for going hard on Duke students. Administrators had even requested that Gottlieb be reassigned due to his harsh crusade against students.

But this would be the man who investigated the case, and he was committed to proving these privileged lacrosse players had committed an unspeakable crime. Gottlieb was even willing to rig the evidence to fit the picture he wanted to paint. He would later write “supplemental case notes” months after the event took place to make them seem like they were taken right at the beginning of the investigation. This is just one example of his dubious practices that would be used to crucify the lacrosse players.

Gottlieb’s behavior, however, looks like that of an Eagle Scout compared to DA Mike Nifong. Nifong is the true villain in this story. He was the interim Durham County DA in 2006, filling out the rest of the term of the previous officeholder who had been appointed to the North Carolina Supreme Court. He was given that appointment under the assumption he would not run for a full term. He instead decided to run for a full term anyway. Things did not look good for Nifong’s chances to keep the job in early March 2006. The Duke lacrosse case offered him a lifeline. The racially charged case allowed the white lawyer to win over black voters in the diverse district. He tied his political survival to Mangum’s tall tale. It would help him win the election, but at the price of his disbarment and removal from office in the following year.

Nifong immediately condemned the Duke lacrosse team in public, calling them a “bunch of hooligans” and saying it was his mission to prevent Durham from being known as a place where “a bunch of lacrosse players from Duke rap[ed] a black girl.” His over-the-top comments were taken as scripture by the press, which incited a frenzy to declare these young men guilty of rape. Nancy Grace was one of the worst offenders. Night after night, Grace and other cable news hosts would insist these lacrosse players committed an evil, racist act against an innocent black girl. Mangum went from a mentally ill, drug-addled criminal to a hardworking mom and model college student in the media.

There was a strong desire to believe that preppy white boys were out raping innocent black women. It’s a case one would find depicted regularly on Law & Order and other popular movies and TV shows. The myth mattered more than reality.

Several Duke professors and left-wing students embraced the story. In an ad in the student newspaper, 88 professors endorsed a message that claimed the elite university was a hotbed of racial and sexual violence. Many of these professors would go on to punish lacrosse players in their classes with bad grades and insulting comments. Faculty were at the forefront of decrying the “white privilege” and “systemic racism” that allegedly emboldened these white men to rape a black woman. Virtually none of these professors would apologize for their rush to judgment after the case fell apart.

Mangum’s story was fishy from the beginning. Roberts, her fellow stripper, called the story a “crock” when initially questioned by police. Mangum showed no signs of bruising and was only alone by herself in the house for a few minutes. Her description of her attackers didn’t match anyone on the lacrosse team. She claimed three short, chubby men assaulted her. The three who were eventually charged did not match her descriptions. Her story imagined the event was a bachelor party, complete with her assailants referencing a wedding the next day. None of that was true. She also kept changing the story, adding more participants, alleging more physical force on her, and other new details each time she retold the story. It was obvious she couldn’t keep her story straight. But Nifong, Durham’s black community, and the national media chose to believe her anyway.

Mangum could not even consistently identify the three suspects in photo lineups. The three charged players—David Evans, Collin Finnerty, and Reade Seligmann—were basically chosen at random. Seligmann and Finnerty had alibis putting them outside of the house when the alleged rape could have occurred. That didn’t matter. They were still charged with the bogus crime.

Durham’s black community was incensed by the rape allegation. Numerous threats of violence were issued against Duke students, with even a few assaults occurring against white students by local blacks. One of the accused, Reade Seligmann, had to drive away from a local car wash after attendees recognized him and began violent gestures at him. Some local activists didn’t even care whether the players were innocent or not. They felt they should go to prison anyway as payback for all the allegedly innocent black men who went to jail. The NAACP was heavily involved in the case and pressured the judges to issue gag orders to prevent the truth from coming out about the players’ innocence.

But the truth finally did come out, slowly but surely. 60 Minutes, in contrast to much of the media, conducted a thorough investigation of the case in the fall of 2006, including interviewing the accused. The CBS show discovered that the case was filled with holes, and it was likely a hoax. But it still took months for the accused to be absolved. North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper eventually dismissed the case and declared the lacrosse players innocent in April of 2007.

While the players were accused of stonewalling investigators, they in fact did the opposite. Ever since the criminal investigation was launched, players fully cooperated, provided DNA, and even were willing to subject themselves to polygraph tests. Their story remained consistent and clear throughout the ordeal, unlike Crystal Mangum’s. But due to the motivations of others, it still took over a year to definitively rule that the players were innocent.

Fortunately, Nifong’s career was ruined by the case, and he even spent a short time in jail for his behavior. Mangum avoided charges of filing a false police report due to her mental illness, but would later serve a lengthy jail sentence for murdering a boyfriend. She was released from prison earlier this month. In 2024, she finally admitted she made up the whole thing.

The damage was already done when three innocent men were falsely accused and charged with a crime. The truth coming out only prevented further injustice. It didn’t wipe away what had already been done.

The worst part is how this story kept being repeated over the coming years. America bought the lie about Trayvon Martin and how he was an innocent black boy shot in the back. We experienced riots over the Michael Brown lie, with millions falsely believing he had his hands up when he was shot. Countless numbers of young men had their lives ruined during the 2010s campus rape hysteria, most notably culminating in Rolling Stone’s libelous “A Rape on Campus.” Our whole country was torn apart by the mythology surrounding George Floyd’s death.

Sometimes the truth emerged in these cases, just like it did with the Duke lacrosse hoax. But many still chose to believe the lies over the truth. The former supported their prejudices about our society, while the latter undermined them. It’s why hate hoaxes kept being perpetuated and believed. The Left and the media wanted to believe that evil white racists are doing terrible things to minorities on a regular basis. The demand for these cases far outstripped the supply of actual occurrences.

Thanks to social media and the decline of the establishment media, it’s harder for such a hoax to go unchallenged. But the desire to believe such nonsense is still present within our society. Belief in white privilege and systemic racism is much more mainstream than it was in 2006. We will still see hoaxes promoted to demonize middle America and support calls for change.

It’s up to conservatives to ensure these hoaxes are quickly debunked. We can’t trust the mainstream media to do the job.

The US declared Pakistan a major non-NATO ally all the way back in 2004, but relations have soured at various points since then. But given Pakistan does indeed remain a close regional ally, which is also nuclear-armed, the country is outraged at Wednesday’s Senate Intelligence hearing wherein Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard raised some eyebrows over a new ‘missile threat’.

She for the first named the South Asian country along with Russia and others in the 2026 Annual Threat Assessment Report, citing that Pakistan’s missile program could be a future threat to the Untied States.

“Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, and Pakistan have been researching and developing an array of novel, advanced, or traditional missile delivery systems with nuclear and conventional payloads, that put our homeland within range,” Gabbard told the intelligence committee.

She then specified: “Pakistan’s long-range ballistic missile development potentially could include ICBMs with the range capable of striking the homeland.”

While other countries listed – especially Iran and North Korea have long been named by US officials as ‘rogue’ actors or else part of an ‘axis of evil’ (going back to the Bush era) – this appears to be the first time Pakistan was openly named in such a high-level annual briefing before Congress. Perhaps Washington is thinking that the conservative Islamic country is just ‘one coup away’ from becoming highly dangerous.

Gabbard also described more broadly the South Asian region as a place of “enduring security challenges” – warning that India-Pakistan relations “remain a risk for nuclear conflict.” At the moment, Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan under the Taliban are in a state of active hot war, though there have been reports of a shaky ceasefire.

Pakistan is angry at being singled out, and has communicated its objections to Washington:

On Thursday, Tahir Andrabi, spokesman for Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said: “Pakistan categorically rejects the recent assertion by a United States official alleging a potential threat from Pakistan’s missile capabilities.”

Pakistan’s strategic capabilities are “exclusively defensive” in nature, he said, and are “aimed at safeguarding national sovereignty and maintaining peace and stability in South Asia.”

The foreign ministry official further explained, “Pakistan’s missile program, which remains well below intercontinental range, is firmly rooted in the doctrine of credible minimum deterrence vis-a-vis India. In contrast, India’s development of missile capabilities exceeding 12,000 kilometres [7,460 miles] reflects a trajectory that extends beyond regional security considerations and is certainly a cause of concern for the neighborhood and beyond.”

At times in the last couple decades, the US has accused Pakistan of cooperating with terrorists, and for failing to reign in ISIS-type operatives in its restive northwest province – a region which has long proven a headache for the whole region.

Authored by ‘Fast Eddy’ via ‘The World according to Fast Eddy’ substack,

I’m an Australian Wholesale Fuel Trader

An insider’s explanation of what is going on…

The commentary below was lifted from a Reddit post.

Other than the issues I have already raised in previous articles How Is Iran Blocking and Mining Hormuz? And so it begins…. the question I am asking after reading this analysis is:

Why is Australia Not Already Rationing Fuel?

I’m the pricing, sales and trading guy at one of Australia’s fuel importers. It’s been an insane two weeks on the trading and supply front, but now it’s the weekend and my brain is still wired running at 150%.

My partner asked me last night in detail to explain the overall situation. I thought I’d share my knowledge here and happy to answer questions. I’ll respond when I can throughout this weekend!

Note we don’t have any retail sites so I can’t really speak for retail fuel. I also obviously can’t share anything proprietary.

1. Australian fuel is 90% imported these days, mainly from Asia.

The Asia refiners are more competitive and have economies of scale that compete Australian refineries, that’s why most of our have closed. Australia for over a decade has not met the internationally agreed 90-day buffer of fuel reserves in the country, we sit a roughly 32 days of stock. This is the fault of both Labor and Liberal governments in the past. Note: it’s easy to store crude oil but much more difficult to store refined products like diesel and petrol, they are flammable and go off after a few months of sitting in a tank. It is very expensive to build brand new storage tanks, which is why no commercial personal is doing it – this is why we import so much oil throughput.

2. Not all crude oils are the same.

The Asian refineries are set up to refine medium sour crude (far more experienced chemical engineers, or Google, can give you more info of the API and Gravity ranges of crude oil types). This is mainly produced by the Middle East. It is very hard to replace this crude oil into the refineries at short notice. So it doesn’t matter how many barrels the US releases from its crude stock piles as that is a “light sweet crude” (and is prohibitively expensive on the ocean freight component). Asian refiners have been cancelling contracts and governments like Thailand and China are banning diesel and petrol exports to keep these critical fuels in their own countries. Therefore, it has gotten very expensive to source alternative cargos to supply Australia (something called the MOPS Premia has skyrocketed. So has backwardation).

The best analysis I am reading is a soon as the Middle East waterway (Strait of Hormuz) opens up, it will still be 1.5 to 2 months before the Asian refiners are running at full capacity again.

Ed: Australia – and I am sure most countries – do not have stored fuel that will last this long even with rationing.

The critical mining industry in Australia runs on diesel…

If this situation does not urgently get resolved, we will soon be dead men walking.

Meanwhile, the world sits on it’s hands watching and refusing to act. 

Am I alone in thinking there is something wrong with this picture?

Note you can’t just shut down a refinery, these things are designed to run 24/7. Shutting down completely puts equipment at serious risk of damage, therefore refiners are choosing to run at say 50% capacity to delay to running out of crude oil feedstock and not damage refinery equipment.

3. While Brent crude has gone from say 70 to 100 USD/barrel (ie roughly 40%), refined products like diesel, petrol and jet fuel, have spiked far higher relatively speaking.

This mainly comes down to the regional supply and demand issues being experienced in Asia. Note Australian fuel is roughly priced as Singapore fuel + ocean freight + local costs. Therefore you can’t just take the increase in Brent crude (main type of crude oil) and assume that’s the increase in cost to the fuel that you buy. Diesel seems to be facing far worse supply constraints compared to petrol aka gasoline (and jet fuel even worse than that). I’ll link a great article at the end on why jet fuel is spiking so much more (it’s a free article on substack)

4. Regional Australia wholesale diesel All the oil majors (Mobil, BP, Ampol etc) are understandably holding onto their own product to keep supplying their own retail stations (this was the case last week at least).

They stopped selling in the wholesale market. The oil majors years ago largely exited regional Australia and delivery services to farms etc. Independent wholesale business filled in this gap. They do not import their own fuel, but rather buy on the wholesale spot market (where I sell to them), and therefore usually have no term supply guarantees from BP, Ampol etc. Given regional Australia still runs on diesel fuel for all farming, food transportation etc, this is why you hear regional Australia having a fuel crisis more than the cities. This is why I believe that the electrification of key transportation supply chains is critical for Australia’s future. So for Chris Bowen, our Energy Minister, saying he is working with the majors to secure more diesel that is dedicated/prioritised for regional communities, I have no idea how the government are practically going to pull that off (price caps? Allocated volume with some sort of government mandated fixed price? Who knows how it’ll work, but it sounds nice in a speech).

5. Conclusion/generic thoughts

This situation isn’t resolving itself anytime soon unfortunately. There is a saying commodity trading – “high prices cure high prices and low prices cure low prices”. When the price sky rockets, demand drops off where possible or supply is increased. When there’s super low prices, supply reduces as said suppliers can’t stay in business selling at those low prices. In this current high prices situation, supply can’t increase right now, so the only lever is to reduce demand. If the price is kept low by governments, demand would stay around, you would have no more supply coming into Australia, and you would eventually run out of fuel.

Neither is a good situation, but running out of fuel entirely is probably worse than having some fuel at a high price, which theoretically destroys some flexible demand.

Former FBI Director James Comey has been slapped with a subpoena as part of a wide-ranging case against Obama-Biden-era officials who helped frame Donald Trump is a Russian asset in a “grand conspiracy.” 

The grand jury subpoena, issued last week by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida, focuses on Comey’s role in the preparation of the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment that concluded Russia sought to influence the election in favor of Trump and against Hillary Clinton. The probe, which Trump allies have described as examining a “grand conspiracy” against the president, has issued more than 130 subpoenas in total, according to Axios, citing people familiar with the matter.

The investigation is being overseen by a grand jury in Fort Pierce, Fla., under U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee who previously presided over the classified-documents case against Trump that was dismissed in 2024. The U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, Jason A. Reding Quiñones, a Trump appointee, is leading the effort.

Representatives for Comey declined to comment on the subpoena. The Justice Department doesn’t typically confirm or comment on ongoing grand-jury proceedings.

The move marks a significant escalation in scrutiny of Obama-era officials who were involved in the early stages of the Russia investigation, including the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane probe and the special counsel inquiry led by Robert Mueller. Comey, who was fired by Trump in May 2017 amid the Russia probe, has long been a central figure in debates over those investigations.

Democrats and former officials are pissed, of course, and have described it as politically motivated retribution against adversaries from the 2016 election cycle. Supporters argue it addresses unresolved questions about potential abuses of authority or procedural irregularities in how the Russia inquiries were conducted.

The Intelligence Community Assessment, which Comey helped oversee as FBI director, has been a point of contention for years. Trump allies have questioned aspects of its sourcing and conclusions, particularly regarding the inclusion of material related to the controversial Steele dossier.

This development unfolds against a backdrop of heightened political and legal tensions in Trump’s second term, with the Justice Department under Attorney General Pam Bondi pursuing several high-profile reviews of prior administrations’ actions.

No charges have been announced in connection with the investigation, and it remains unclear what specific information prosecutors are seeking from Comey or how he intends to respond to the subpoena. Grand-jury proceedings are secret, and details are expected to emerge slowly, if at all, absent court filings or official disclosures.

The subpoena to Comey renews focus on one of the most divisive episodes in recent U.S. political and law-enforcement history, with potential implications for how past investigations are viewed and whether additional former officials will face similar demands.

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

The momentum behind President Trump’s drive to expose hidden UAP files continues to build, now underscored by fresh reminders of why such secrets have been buried for decades.

The Executive Office of the President has registered the aliens.gov domain, a quiet but unmistakable step toward a potential public portal for declassified materials on unidentified anomalous phenomena.

This follows Trump’s directive to release all related government files related to alien and extraterrestrial life, UAP, and UFOs.

The odds of aliens being confirmed this year are soaring.

16% chance.https://t.co/kTHTu8DkIZ

— Polymarket (@Polymarket) March 18, 2026

The New York Post has indicated that forthcoming disclosures “could include videos, photos of non-human craft proving we aren’t alone.”

Trump’s UFO release could include videos, photos of non-human craft proving we aren’t alone : source https://t.co/jSGeC8mtoG pic.twitter.com/J8glIjmIIH

— New York Post (@nypost) March 14, 2026

As we previously covered, filmmaker Dan Farah also predicted on Joe Rogan’s podcast that Trump could declare humanity is not alone, confirming recovered non-human technology amid a secret global race.

We also previously highlighted former Bank of England analyst Helen McCaw’s warning to prepare for potential economic shock from disclosure, including market volatility and loss of institutional trust.

Now, with aliens.gov secured in the registry, the administration appears intent on forcing transparency where predecessors allowed compartmentalization to persist. Skeptics have dismissed accounts, but pilots, radar data, and credible military witnesses continue to describe phenomena that defy conventional explanations.

Trump’s approach—declassifying UAP records—prioritizes the public’s right to know over entrenched secrecy. Whether the domain launches as a full disclosure hub or not, the barriers are eroding. Americans, and the rest of the world, deserves the full picture on what has been observed in our skies, especially when it involves potential interference with critical defenses.

JUST IN – Trump says he has directed the release of all government files related to “alien and extraterrestrial life, UAP, and UFOs.” pic.twitter.com/JLRFhBaRSq

— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) February 20, 2026

A former U.S. Air Force missile launch officer has reiterated claims that UFOs once rendered nuclear missiles inoperable at a key Cold War installation. Robert Salas, who served at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana in 1967, described the incident on the Danny Jones Podcast.

Salas urges that guards reported strange fast-moving lights that halted above the facility, followed by a craft with a reddish, pulsating glow hovering near the front gate. One guard was injured in the encounter.

Salas recounted how alarms then sounded in the underground control center: the launch panel showed one missile dropping offline, then the rest in rapid succession. “Within moments, all ten missiles at the site became inoperable,” Salas claims.

Security teams dispatched to the silos reportedly halted after seeing lights hovering overhead, too frightened to proceed. An official investigation could not identify the cause, despite the systems’ heavy shielding against external interference.

Salas and others were required to sign secrecy agreements afterward. He has spoken publicly in recent years, linking the event to similar reports of UAP interest in nuclear facilities.

This testimony aligns with patterns documented over decades: intrusions over restricted nuclear airspace that known technology could not match or explain. As Secretary of State Marco Rubio has noted in prior comments, there have been “repeated instances of something operating in the airspace over restricted nuclear facilities, and it’s not ours.”

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Authored by Janice Hisle via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A state agency erred when it blocked autism-services kickbacks from being investigated—a decision based on the agency’s flawed, decades-old definition of “fraud,” according to a Minnesota audit released March 17.

That was the key finding of the state’s Office of Legislative Auditor, a state watchdog that conducted a two-year special review. The autism-services program that auditors examined is among many health and welfare benefits that Minnesota’s Department of Human Services runs or oversees.

For months, Minnesota has been a focal point for government-program fraud that could total billions of dollars, with dozens of people, mostly Somalis, having been charged and convicted since 2022. Additional schemes emerged late last year and remain under investigation, with more charges expected, prosecutors have said.

Concerns about fraud have recently expanded nationwide. On March 16, President Donald Trump signed an executive order creating an anti-fraud task force. Saying that other states such as California and New York may have fraud problems that are worse than Minnesota’s, the president directed Vice President JD Vance and Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson to root out fraud in federally funded social services and welfare programs.

During the Minnesota audit, investigators told auditors that they believed they lacked “authority to investigate allegations of kickbacks” in the autism program without additional claims of “fraud, theft, abuse, or error.”

The department’s fraud definition, set in 1995, failed to specifically include “kickbacks.” Those are payments or “anything of value” to induce referrals to providers of federally funded health care—a practice that is illegal under federal law, the report noted.

Auditors opined that the department had misapplied or misinterpreted a rule that includes that fraud definition. The agency had the power to amend the rule and correct an erroneous federal-law citation “without any legislative action,” the report stated.

“Had [the department] done so at any point since 1995, it would have had clear authority to suspend payments” to providers who were strongly suspected in kickback schemes, according to the report.

Auditors recommended that the agency amend its fraud definition “to clearly include kickbacks”—or lawmakers should do so, the report says.

James Clark, inspector general for the state Department of Human Services, said the department agrees with that recommendation.

However, in his written response appended to the report, Clark said the standard rulemaking process could take a year or two to complete, unless officials or lawmakers agree to fast-track it.

The autism-services program, which has operated in Minnesota since 2013, aims to provide “early intervention” for autism-diagnosed patients who are under age 21.

Under the program, providers receive reimbursement for services rendered.

Federal prosecutors have brought charges against at least two people for alleged autism-services fraud in Minnesota.

Late last year, prosecutors also said that many more suspects remained under investigation for allegedly failing to provide autism services—or for allegedly paying kickbacks to parents who fraudulently enrolled their children for services they didn’t need or never received.

The number of Minnesota autism-service businesses grew from about 150 in 2020 to more than 500 in 2024. Similarly, the number of autism-service recipients nearly tripled during that period, from about 1,400 patients in 2020 to more than 5,600 patients in 2024.

During that same timeframe, the program’s cost burgeoned from about $38 million to nearly $325 million.

Faced with that dramatic expansion and other concerns, lawmakers strengthened state laws in 2025, the legislative auditor’s report noted.

Auditors examined complaints that the state Department of Human Services’ investigative division received between July 2017 and February 2024.

That sample included seven completed investigations that were handled appropriately, auditors concluded.

However, among 25 complaints that were dismissed without further investigation, three involved alleged kickbacks. The auditors concluded the agency should have done more in those instances.

The auditors’ report does not disclose dollar amounts of the alleged kickbacks, nor does it say whether the faulty definition of fraud could have affected other state-administered programs.

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A federal judge has struck down a law in Arkansas that required the display of the Ten Commandments in classrooms, finding it violated children’s rights.

U.S. District Judge Timothy Brooks (Obama) ruled on March 16 that not enjoining the law, Act 573, would violate the religious and Free Exercise rights of children in public school.

“Act 573’s purpose is only to display a sacred, religious text in a prominent place in every public-school classroom. And the only reason to display a sacred, religious text in every classroom is to proselytize to children,” Brooks wrote.

“Nothing could possibly justify hanging the Ten Commandments—with or without historical context—in a calculus, chemistry, French, or woodworking class, to name a few. And the words ‘curriculum,’ ‘school board,’ ‘teacher,’ or ‘educate’ don’t appear anywhere in Act 573. Accordingly, there is no need to strain our minds to imagine a constitutional display mandated by Act 573. One doesn’t exist.”

John Williams, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas, one of the plaintiffs, said in a statement that the ruling shows “Arkansas lawmakers cannot sidestep the First Amendment by mandating that a particular version of the Ten Commandments be displayed in every classroom.”

Brooks had on Aug. 4, 2025, preliminarily enjoined the law in certain districts. It went into effect statewide the day after.

Arkansas officials had argued that the law was legal and should not be struck down.

The act was approved by state lawmakers and signed by Republican Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders in 2025.

“The 10 Commandments aren’t just the foundation of our faith—they’re the foundation of every law and moral code in the West,” Sanders said in a March 17 post on X. “That’s why we are appealing this ruling.”

Several other states have recently enacted similar laws.

A different federal judge blocked Louisiana’s law requiring schools to display the Ten Commandments, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in February overturned that decision, finding that the case was not ready to be litigated yet because there were unresolved questions, including how the Ten Commandments would be displayed and whether teachers would reference them during classes.

Dissenting judges in that case pointed to the Supreme Court’s 1980 decision striking down a similar law in Kentucky.

Lawsuits are ongoing against a Texas law, signed in 2025, that required public school classrooms to feature the Ten Commandments. The Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments in one of the cases earlier this year.

On the one hand President Trump and Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth have declared that America is ‘winning’ against Iran, having destroyed its navy and air defenses, and having seriously degraded its missiles – but on the other the admin has put in for a more than $200 billion supplemental request to Congress to fund the war.

It seems Congress will likely eventually sign off on this gargantuan figure – for an ‘excursion’ which should end ‘soon’ we are told by Trump – given that even the effort to pass so much as a War Powers resolution gets repeatedly stymied. 

Still, the US administration is busy bypassing standard congressional review requirements, on Thursday approving a series of emergency arms sales across the Middle East, at a moment US regional allies are being pummeled by Iranian drones and ballistic missiles.

The argument is that Washington’s allies are in imminent danger, and given that indeed vital Gulf infrastructure is getting hit quite seriously – new arms have to be rushed over there on an emergency basis.

According to details in Saudi-owned Al Arabiya:

The largest package was approved for the United Arab Emirates, totaling more than $8 billion. It includes the $4.5 billion sale of a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), $2.10 billion for FS-LIDS counter-drone systems, $1.22 billion in Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missiles (AMRAAMs), and $644 million in F-16 munitions, including GBU-39 small diameter bombs and Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs).

In parallel, Washington approved an $8 billion deal for Kuwait to buy Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensor Radars, significantly enhancing the country’s missile detection and tracking capabilities.

Jordan was also included in the emergency approvals, with a $70.5 million package covering aircraft support and munitions to sustain operational readiness.

Notably, a US base all the way over in Jordan, the Muwaffaq Salti Air Base, was struck by Iran in the opening days of the war, satellite imagery showed.

This development of all these newly approved ’emergency’ arms and weapons shipments begs the question: is this more evidence that Washington is settling in for a ‘long war’?

Day 1: it’s going to take a couple of days
Day 20: ok we need 200 billion dollars

— Alon Mizrahi (@alon_mizrahi) March 19, 2026

After all, Trump has given no timeline despite being repeatedly asked, and Israel too is saying the anti-Iran campaign is not even halfway complete. In the end it’s certainly not the American people ‘winning’ here (and they are not going to think so especially at the gas pump either), but the major defense firms.