Manhattan Shooting: Border Patrol Agent Shot In Face, Suspects Described As “Hispanic Males”
An off-duty U.S. Border Patrol agent was shot in the face while walking through a park in New York City. Initial reports describe the suspects as “Hispanic males,” and one has been arrested. Authorities say the incident appears to have been a botched robbery, though, given the Democratic Party’s increasingly hostile rhetoric toward Border Patrol and ICE agents, a targeted attack cannot be ruled out. At this time, nothing is conclusive.
Local media outlet amNewYork’s Dean Moses reports that the off-duty Border Patrol agent was shot in the face inside Fort Washington Park in the early morning hours of Sunday.
Moses continued:
Officers from the 33rd Precinct rushed to the greenspace directly below the Washington Bridge after a 911 caller reported that a man had been shot.
Upon arrival at the scene, cops discovered the victim, a 42-year-old man, with gunshot wounds to his face and arm. One of the bullets entered his cheek, sources familiar with the case reported.
EMS responded and transported the victim to Harlem Hospital, where he is listed in stable condition and expected to survive.
X account Viral News NYC reported:
The suspects are described as two Hispanic males who fled on a scooter. In a shocking twist, one of the alleged suspects walked into the 44th Precinct with multiple gunshot wounds to the chest. That individual is now in custody. The second suspect remains on the run.
. . .
Meanwhile, chaos is erupting across the city tonight. Police scanners are flooded with reports of robberies, many involving suspects described as Hispanic males on scooters. The pattern suggests another violent crime wave may be hitting New York City.
🚨BREAKING NEWS🚨
A Border Patrol agent was shot in the face near the George Washington Bridge, sending NYPD and emergency units rushing to the scene. The suspects are described as two Hispanic males who fled on a scooter. In a shocking twist, one of the alleged suspects walked… pic.twitter.com/8tauCy2brH
NYPD scanner confirms the Border Patrol agent was shot in the mouth.
BREAKING: NYPD scanner confirms that a Border Patrol Agent was shot in face by two moped-riding Hispanic males just hours ago near the George Washington Bridge in NYC. pic.twitter.com/qIWxRWFF8m
Moses noted, “The victim was not in uniform at the time, and sources believe the shooting stemmed from an attempted robbery.” However, the investigation is still in its early stages.
More concerning, the Department of Homeland Security warned ICE agents faced an 830% increase in assaults from January 21st to July 14th compared with the same period in 2024. This is primarily because Democratic members of Congress have unleashed a dangerous anti-ICE propaganda campaign.
Jason Curtis Anderson from NYC-based One City Rising puts the chaos into perspective:
America is facing a multi-front war, and the safety of our borders is one of the most critical. Our nation’s sovereignty depends on it. Yet in recent years, an activist class has convinced too many Americans to oppose even the idea of border enforcement—without understanding the dark consequences of their virtue signaling.
The truth is staggering: over 500,000 children trafficked during this administration, 60% of women are sexually assaulted during the journey, 70,000 pounds of fentanyl flooding our communities from cartels fueled by Chinese precursors, and nearly 400 terrorists caught trying to cross—while thousands more slip through undetected. For every human life trafficked, cartels collect $8-12,000 in blood money, earning billions annually from human suffering.
If our borders were secure, fewer women and children would be brutalized, less poison would flow into our cities, and fewer terrorists would be plotting to kill us. But despite this, the hard left still sees law enforcement—not the cartels—as the only villain in this story. Last night’s shooting of a Border Patrol agent in New York is yet another reminder that when we vilify those sworn to protect us, we empower those who seek to destroy us.
Watch: Delta 767 Engine Erupts Into Flames After LAX Takeoff
Last month’s deadly Air India Boeing 787 Dreamliner crash remains very vivid in the public’s memory, especially after dramatic footage went viral on X. Those fears were reignited Saturday when a Delta Air Lines Boeing 767’s engine caught fire during takeoff from Los Angeles International Airport.
“The Boeing 767 engine caught fire shortly after takeoff around 2 p.m. Video from the ground captured the flames coming out from one of the engines. The flight landed safely after returning to the LAX runway,” aviation watcher account Breaking Aviation News & Videos wrote on X.
A Delta Air Lines flight bound for Atlanta made an emergency landing Friday at LAX after a reported engine fire, officials said.
The Boeing 767 engine caught fire shortly after takeoff around 2 p.m. Video from the ground captured the flames coming out from one of the engines.… pic.twitter.com/fm8ilJtzrk
— Breaking Aviation News & Videos (@aviationbrk) July 19, 2025
Data from the aviation tracking website Flightradar24 shows the aircraft was a 24-year-old Boeing 767-432 (ER).
Flightradar24 shows DAL446 initiated an emergency return to LAX and landed safely minutes later.
Delta told local media outlet ABC 7 that Flight DAL446 had 226 passengers and nine crew members on board and was en route to Atlanta. The airline said a mid-air incident occurred involving the left engine.
No details have been released on whether the incident was caused by a bird strike or a mechanical issue.
Catch up on the latest Air India crash information:
For many Americans, talk of a crackdown in Europe on “hate speech” and “misinformation” may seem a faraway issue, but legal experts say that Europe’s online censorship laws could affect Americans, too.
Starting July 1, social media companies and internet service providers operating within the EU that do not comply with laws that ban content deemed illegal there could be fined up to 6 percent of their global revenue, according to the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA).
The European Commission states that the DSA, originally passed in 2022, “protects consumers and their fundamental rights online by setting clear and proportionate rules.” On July 1, the DSA integrated its Code of Conduct into the act, requiring online platforms and search engines to comply with the censorship laws of all member states or face punitive fines.
Proponents of the DSA state that the law was passed in response to escalating cases of anti-Semitism and anti-Muslim statements in Europe.
Meanwhile, critics, like Virginie Joron, a French member of the European Parliament, have called it a “Trojan horse for surveillance and control.”
“What was sold as the Digital Services Act is increasingly functioning as a Digital Surveillance Act,” Joron told attendees at a May conference hosted by the Alliance Defending Freedom.
Joron accused the European Commission and some parliamentarians of having “seized upon the DSA as a political tool to control speech, particularly targeting platforms like X, Facebook, and Telegram.”
The concern among policy experts is that Europe’s speech laws could compel online platforms to institute restrictive policies worldwide, in order to comply.
“The DSA generally cannot directly compel technology companies to censor American speech, but it creates an incentive to do so,” David Inserra, a fellow for free expression and technology at the Cato Institute, told The Epoch Times.
“At some point, companies may find it easier just to change their policies to align with more restrictive laws, thus having American speech effectively regulated by Brussels—thus the name the ‘Brussels effect.’”
Vague Laws Give Regulators Broad Discretion
Legal analysts say that the Digital Services Act is open to political manipulation because of its imprecise language regarding what is illegal for people to say, as well as a complex and ever-changing array of online speech prohibitions.
“Through very vague and loose definitions of illegal content and ‘hate speech’ and ‘misinformation,’ this becomes a blueprint for restricting speech online,” Adina Portaru, senior counsel for ADF International, told The Epoch Times.
“If you take the narrow definition of ‘hate speech—incitement to hatred—then you realize that, once again, whoever has the power to define ‘hatred’ is the one who defines if you are breaching the law or not.”
According to a September 2024 analysis by Therese Enarsson, a European attorney, “the DSA provides a very broad legal definition for illegal content,” which it defines as speech that does not comply with the laws of the EU or any member state.
“Similarly to illegal content, the DSA does not attempt to define what constitutes hate speech,” Enarsson states. “This is unfortunate, seeing that platforms must adapt their systems to combat such speech.”
This means that content posted by someone in Romania would have to be taken down if it conflicts with speech laws in France, creating a lowest-common-denominator threshold for suppressing content.
The DSA also states that it “specifically recognises the role of trusted flaggers to identify and flag hate speech online and to allow action against it”—a role that’s analogous to the collaboration between “fact-checkers” and social media companies in the United States to police online speech.
“We’re speaking about Europe, but of course we can also speak of situations whereby you have an American citizen posting something here in the U.S. and with the internet being an online environment globally, somebody can flag that in Europe, and according to the DSA, that speech will be removed from the entire platform,” Portaru said.
In addition, this process of flagging and fact-checking often includes a left-leaning bias, studies show. A 2023 survey of 150 “experts on misinformation” published in the Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review found that nearly 85 percent of the respondents were on the political left.
Germany Leads, Other EU Nations Follow
Within Europe, analysts say, Germany has led the charge against online “hate-speech” crimes.
In June, German police officers carried out early morning raids on 140 residents throughout the country who were investigated for such activities. The action was part of Germany’s 12th annual “day of action against hate-posts.”
The number of hate-speech prosecutions in Germany increased from 2,411 in 2021 to 10,732 in 2024, according to Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), which coordinated the “day of action.”
The Brownstone Institute, a conservative think-tank, reported in October 2024 that “Germany submitted by far the most reports on content entailing ‘negative effects on civic discourse or elections,’ yet another category of speech that is clearly not illegal per se but that is deemed ‘harmful’ enough under the DSA regime to require suppression.” The assessment was based on an analysis of periodic content suppression reports that are required to be submitted under the law.
Inserra stated in a July 3 Cato report that such an environment has resulted in Germans feeling increasingly “unable to express their opinions, with multiple polls finding around 44 percent of Germans expressing such concerns, up from 16 percent in 1990.”
Other countries in Europe have followed Germany’s lead. Periodic police sweeps similar to Germany’s “day of action” have taken place in at least a dozen other European countries, according to Europol, the EU’s law enforcement agency.
And in a high-profile case in Finland, Päivi Räsänen, a member of parliament, was charged with hate crimes for posting Bible verses online regarding human sexuality. Räsänen was first charged in 2021; the case is now before Finland’s Supreme Court.
Speaking to European leaders in February, Vice President JD Vance stated: “The threat I worry the most about vis-à-vis Europe is not Russia, it’s not China, it’s not any other external actor. What I worry about is the threat from within, the retreat of Europe from some its most fundamental values, values shared with the United States of America.”
Censoring Americans
Some experts say Europe’s speech laws could end up regulating Americans and beyond.
“The European Union has wielded its Digital Services Act (DSA) to restrict the speech not just of Europeans but especially of Americans and other English-speakers,” John Rosenthal, an analyst of European politics, wrote in an op-ed earlier this year.
In August 2024, European Commissioner Thierry Breton threatened Elon Musk, owner of X, with reprisal over Musk’s intention to broadcast an interview with then-presidential candidate Donald Trump, which Breton stated posed “a risk of amplification of potentially harmful content,” in violation of the Digital Services Act.
This followed the initiation of “formal proceedings” by the EU against X in December 2023, in which European officials charged that the American company had failed to sufficiently combat “illegal content” and “information manipulation.”
In January, Belgium’s French-speaking broadcaster RTBF chose to delay the live airing of President Trump’s inaugural speech by several minutes to give reviewers time to block any statements that they deemed “racist, xenophobic, or hateful.”
“Online speech is global, and if online platforms are restricting Americans’ speech to satisfy the demands of a foreign government, which is precisely what is happening under the DSA, then the First Amendment is a dead letter,” Rosenthal told The Epoch Times. “The U.S. government needs to take specific action against the DSA—to get it repealed or to ensure that U.S. companies do not comply with it; otherwise, free speech is dead.”
Inserra concurs.
“At the very least, American policymakers should condemn such censorship for what it is,” he said. “They should support American companies who find themselves facing increasing regulatory and censorial pressures.”
Rosenthal argues that controlling political speech was among the core motivations for passing the Digital Services Act.
“The initial impulse came from two shocks in 2016: first, the Brexit vote in the UK and then, four months later, the election of Donald Trump in the USA,” Rosenthal said. “The EU elites could not accept that either result was the product of rational choices on the part of voters; rather, in their view, they had to be the product of voters being ‘misinformed.’”
“It was at this point that they began to frame online ‘misinformation’ as a problem that online platforms would have to address,” he said.
Upon taking office in January, President Donald Trump issued an executive order prohibiting the U.S. government from restricting online speech, stating that the Biden administration had “trampled free speech rights” by pressuring tech companies to suppress online speech that the federal government did not approve.
“Under the guise of combatting ‘misinformation,’ ‘disinformation,’ and ‘malinformation,’ the Federal Government infringed on the constitutionally protected speech rights of American citizens across the United States in a manner that advanced the Government’s preferred narrative about significant matters of public debate,” Trump stated.
In May, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the United States would impose visa bans on foreign nationals whom it deemed to be censoring Americans.
‘Hateful’ versus ‘Harmful’ Speech
The Code of Conduct in the Digital Services Act bans both “hateful” and “harmful” speech.
For the latter category, which includes speech that government officials deem to be “misinformation” or “disinformation,” the DSA allows online service providers to restrict the visibility of posts versus taking them down or suspending users.
“This is what Elon Musk is referring to when he says ‘freedom of speech is not freedom of reach’—i.e. you’re allowed to say it but the algorithm will prevent the broader public from hearing what you say,” Rosenthal said.
Musk posted in November 2022 on Twitter, which became X in 2023, that the “new Twitter policy is freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach.”
“Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted & demonetized, so no ads or other revenue to Twitter.”
In most cases where EU authorities have flagged posts on X as objectionable, X has responded by restricting visibility, rather than taking the posts down, Rosenthal said, based on his analysis of the “transparency reports” that EU officials publish periodically.
The prohibition of “harmful” speech has curtailed the information the public could see online regarding issues like the COVID-19 pandemic. According to performance reports required to be provided to EU regulators, X suspended 11,230 accounts under the company’s COVID-19 Misleading Information Policy between 2020 and 2022, the Brownstone Institute reported. This policy was discontinued in November 2022, shortly after Musk purchased the company.
One issue with this approach is that whereas users are generally aware that their content has been removed, they may not necessarily be aware that tech companies’ algorithms are simply blocking others from seeing it.
In line with Europe, Canada, another close ally of the United States, has also recently taken steps to curtail perceived hate speech.
Japan PM Ishiba Vows To ‘Stay On’ Despite Ruling Coalition Facing Major Loss; Exit Polls Show
Update (1015ET): The governing coalition of Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba is likely to lose a majority in the smaller of Japan’s two parliamentary houses in a key election Sunday, according to exit polls, worsening the country’s political instability.
Voters were deciding half of the 248 seats in the upper house, the less powerful of the two chambers in Japan’s Diet.
Ishiba has set the bar low, wanting a simple majority of 125 seats, which means his Liberal Democratic Party, or LDP, and its Buddhist-backed junior coalition partner Komeito need to win 50 to add to the 75 seats they already have.
That would mean a big retreat from the 141 seats they had before the election.
The LDP alone is projected to win from 32 to 35 seats, the fewest won by the party, which still is the No. 1 party in the parliament.
“It’s a tough situation. I take it humbly and sincerely,” Ishiba told a live interview with NHK.
He said that the poor showing was because his government’s measures to combat price increase have yet to reach many people.
“I will fulfill my responsibility as head of the No. 1 party and work for the country.”
Today’s vote comes after Ishiba’s coalition lost a majority in the October lower house election, stung by past corruption scandals, and his unpopular government has since been forced into making concessions to the opposition to get legislation through parliament.
It has been unable to quickly deliver effective measures to mitigate rising prices, including Japan’s traditional staple of rice, and dwindling wages.
A loss of control of the upper house would make Ishiba’s administration the first LDP-led government to rule with a minority in both houses of parliament for the first time since the party’s formation in the 1950s.
Finally, as AP reports, just as we have seen in other regions around the world, frustrated voters are rapidly turning to emerging populist parties.
The eight main opposition groups, however, are too fractured to forge a common platform as a united front and gain voter support as a viable alternative.
If the exit polls hold true (and it appears they are) then Scenario B (below) is in play.
* * *
Voting in Japan’s upper house election began Sunday at 7 am local time across more than 44,000 polling stations, in a ballot where tackling inflation and immigration policy have become key political issues and where simmering discontent over inflation and unresolved negotiations with the US on tariffs will could end the career of prime minister Shigeru Ishiba.
A total of 125 of the chamber’s 248 seats are up for election, including 50 seats allocated by proportional representation and one by-election for a vacant Tokyo seat.
Voting finishes at 8 pm, and results will start coming in late Sunday night and continue into early Monday morning. Japanese citizens aged 18 or older have the right to vote.
The Liberal Democratic Party, which has been the ruling party for most of Japan’s postwar history and coalition partner Komeito need 50 seats to maintain a majority in the upper house. But according to Nikkei and various local media outlets, that looks increasingly challenging, based on recent polls.
“I do not necessarily look for an immediate change of government, but I believe we need more ideas for the economy than just from the LDP,” Hiroyasu Kan, a 28-year-old male in Tokyo, told Nikkei Asia on Sunday. He cast his vote for a party that he believes offers “concrete policy proposals and has actually delivered on them.”
Having already lost its majority in the lower house election last October, another defeat would mean the ruling coalition losing control over the Diet and the legislative process. That raises myriad possible outcomes, including the resignation of Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba and a snap general election, which could lead to a change in government. This in turn would lead to a plunge in the yen, and could have profound consequences for both the Japanese and global bond markets (see “Will Japan’s Rice Price Shock Lead To Government Collapse And Spark A Global Bond Crisis“).
A loss for Ishiba, who has struggled with low approval ratings throughout his short tenure, will also complicate Japan’s trade negotiations with the U.S., with the Aug. 1 deadline to avoid a threatened 25% “reciprocal” tariff fast approaching. “A defeat of the LDP-Komeito coalition may raise concerns about no deal,” said economists at UBS.
In the run-up to the vote, the electorate has increasingly become disgruntled over soaring inflation – especially for rice – and stagnant wage growth. Core consumer prices, which do not include volatile fresh food prices but do include rice which has exploded higher due to poor planning and supplies, rose 3.3% in June from a year earlier, above the Bank of Japan’s 2% target.
The election is in some ways a competition of who can offer more “free shit”: the opposition parties have gained wide support for advocating a cut to the consumption tax, which is a form of value-added tax (VAT), to alleviate the cost-of-living crisis. The ruling coalition, by contrast, has offered a one-time cash handout, arguing that a one-off payment would be quicker to implement, and that revenue from the tax is needed to maintain the country’s social welfare system.
A man in his 20s on Sunday voted in Tokyo for one of the rising new political parties that advocates tax cuts. “Through social security reform, I expect to see an increase in take-home pay in our working generation.”
With the aging of the population in Japan, the burden of social security costs on workers has become heavier. If they have more spendable income, he said, the younger generation can spend more, and the economy would become more active. Alas, it would mean that Japan – which is already the world’s most indebted nation – would need to issue even more debt which would make another round of debt monetizing QE by the BOJ more likely.
The issue of taxation has reverberated beyond the traditional left-right political axis, with supporters of fringe parties like the left-wing Reiwa Shinsengumi and the right-wing Sanseito overwhelmingly favoring a cut, according to a Nikkei-TV Tokyo poll in June.
Kazuki Oikawa, a male voter in his 20s, told the Nikkei that he voted for an opposition party, supporting its economic policies. “I hope a change in government will bring a breath of fresh air to Japanese politics. I did not really like the way the LDP just went with handing out cash.”
On the other hand, Teruko Aoki, a 94-year-old female, said, “Opposition parties only talk about tax cuts and spending increases these days, such as more child care benefits. But where will the money come from for all those tax cuts and spending increases?”
Answer: The same place it will come to fund the cash handouts: more debt.
Among various age groups, those in their 60s and the over-70s strongly support holding the consumption tax rate – 10% for general goods and 8% on food items – steady. The LDP enjoys its strongest support among older voters, the poll showed.
Concerns that Sunday’s vote will force the LDP to make concessions to smaller parties touting policies that will strain public finances have led to a sell-off of Japanese government bonds and the yen. Yields on 10-year Japanese government bonds hit their highest level since the 2008 financial crisis last week. Yields on 20, 30 and 40 year JGBs are at or near all time highs.
Immigration policy also become a key topic of the campaign, especially since Sanseito, which advocates a “Japanese first” stance, won its first seats in the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly elections last month, in what could be a bellwether for the upper house. The party won its first national seat in the 2022 upper house elections and has three seats in the lower chamber.
While Japan has simultaneously promoted policies to accept more foreign workers and attract more overseas tourists, the resulting cultural friction has led to growing concerns over how the country can continue to absorb the influx in the future (a question politicians in Europe should certainly be asking too).
Many voters feel that they are being pushed aside as a result of the yen’s depreciation and rise in living costs over the past few years.
“This time, I wanted to vote for a party focused on policies more for the middle-class Japanese people,” said Yuki, a female voter in her 30s who did not mention her family name. “It is really hard for Japanese people to buy houses now, and our wages aren’t increasing.” Many in the US could sympathize.
Support for Sanseito, according to the Nikkei-TV Tokyo poll, is highest amongst those in their 40s, a group that makes up the bulk of the so-called lost generation. This cohort began job hunting between 1993 to 2004, during a time of economic stagnation and a glut in the labor market. Unable to find stable jobs, many ended up as part-time employees or freelancers.
“In Europe and in the U.S., widening inequality, immigration and the refugee issue, and high inflation, have led to declining government approval ratings and ruling parties losing elections,” said Goken Suezawa of Nikko Securities in a note. He said national elections in the U.K., France, Japan, the U.S. and Germany resulted in the defeat of ruling parties. “The situation in our country has begun to resemble that of Europe and the U.S.”
Election Scenarios
In today’s Upper House election, 125 of the 248 seats are up for reelection (half seats of 124, plus one vacancy). Looking at the number of Upper House seats and reelection/non-reelection seats, the ruling coalition has 75 non-reelection seats. Therefore, if the coalition were to secure 50 of the 66 seats running for reelection in this time, it would maintain a majority in the Upper House. If the ruling coalition were to win 49 or fewer reelection seats, it would lose its majority in the Upper House, as in the Lower House.
Initial assessments by media outlets, immediately following the election announcement on July 3, largely suggested that the ruling coalition of the LDP and Komeito would secure a majority, including non-reelection seats. However, in their recent analysis of the final stages of the election campaign, media outlets have taken a step back, with most now describing the LDP-Komeito coalition’s prospects for maintaining a majority as difficult or uncertain. Many outlets predict that the LDP will secure around 30-40 of the 52 seats up for reelection, and that Komeito will win fewer than its 14 contested seats.
Scenarios for government based on election outcome.
Below we present Goldman’s various scenarios for the Japanese government depending on the Upper House election outcome.
A. The ruling coalition maintains a majority in the election (wins 50 or more reelection seats)
Ishiba continues as LDP president, and the Ishiba administration continues.
B. The ruling coalition loses its majority (wins 49 or fewer reelection seats)
If the ruling coalition loses its majority by a small margin, the Ishiba administration may continue, but Diet management could require more revisions to bills incorporating opposition proposals than before (need to cooperate with opposition parties bill by bill).
Ishiba resigns as LDP president. A new LDP president is elected and becomes prime minister (as with 1 above, need to cooperate with opposition parties).
If the ruling coalition loses its majority by a large margin, a third party may join the LDP and Komeito to form a new administration, given the difficulty of controlling the Diet. In this case, the leader of the third party could become prime minister.
The Ishiba Cabinet resigns en masse, and a coalition government is formed by the current opposition parties.
Either the prime minister dissolves the parliament, or a no-confidence motion against the LDP/Komei Cabinet is passed by the opposition parties, and a Lower House general election is held. Depending on the result of the Lower House election, either the LDP/Komei ruling coalition could maintain power or the opposition parties could take power.
Post-election policies may have an expansionary fiscal bias
The Diet is already operating with a minority government, as the ruling coalition is short of a majority in the Lower House. Many bills, including the FY25 budget, have been passed after incorporating the opinions of opposition parties. If the LDP-Komeito coalition were to also lose its majority in the Upper House, cooperation with the opposition would become even more crucial for passing legislation, even if the LDP-Komeito administration were to continue.
One of the most pressing issues is inflation, which has been at the heart of debate during the Upper House election campaign. The LDP has stated that it will not cut the consumption tax, proposing instead cash handouts exceeding a total of ¥3 tn (c.0.5% of GDP) as its core inflation policy. These handouts would be funded by the increased portion of tax revenue in the FY24 budget.
On the other hand, almost all opposition parties call for a cut in consumption tax. However, the scale of the proposed cuts, their duration, and funding sources vary widely (Exhibit 3). Whereas the CDP and Japan Innovation Party suggest a temporary 1-2 year reduction limited to food and funded without relying on additional JGB issuance, the DPP proposes a uniform reduction in consumption tax to 5%, funded by JGB issuance.
A reduction in consumption tax is a tall order under an ongoing LDP-centered administration, according to Goldman. This is because consumption tax cuts require legislative amendments and other time-consuming procedures, making them unsuitable as an immediate action to address inflation, with implementation only possible from April of next year at the earliest. In our view, it would also be politically difficult to revert to the original higher tax rate after only a short period, while securing permanent alternative funding sources would likely prove challenging if the timeframe for a reduced consumption tax were extended.
That said, the economic package the LDP plans to formulate in the fall would likely incorporate some of the demands from opposition parties, such as the abolition of the provisional gasoline tax (¥1.5 tn), which many opposition parties are calling for, and increased spending on childcare and other areas, in addition to the ¥3 tn in cash handouts. Moreover, as seen with the FY25 budget, the LDP-Komeito coalition, as a minority government, would unlikely be able to pass the FY26 initial budget (to be formulated towards the end of 2025) without incorporating some of the opposition’s proposals related to social security (childcare, medical expenses, etc.). Thus, even under an LDP-centered administration, we believe future policy management will inevitably have an expansionary fiscal bias, while still taking heed to some extent of fiscal discipline.
In Japan, where the primary balance deficit has been shrinking on the back of rising tax revenues, and the burden of interest payments is small for the time being, a short-term tax cut or spending increase that leads to a larger primary balance deficit would be unlikely to cause a rise in the debt/GDP ratio in the near term. However, according to our model assuming various scenarios, permanent tax cuts exceeding 1% of GDP would lead to a continuous rise in the debt/GDP ratio, undermining the sustainability of government debt. If defense spending were to increase to 3% of GDP, there would be virtually no room for permanent tax cuts.
It is unlikely that the election results will significantly impact BOJ monetary policy. According to Goldman economists, it is unlikely that the outcome of the Upper House election will have a significant impact on the Bank of Japan’s (BOJ) monetary policy. The BOJ is concerned about the risk that higher tariffs, especially on automobiles, could put downward pressure on growth and inflation amid high uncertainty. Therefore, regardless of the election outcome, the BOJ should maintain a dovish stance from a risk management perspective and choose to keep interest rates on hold for a considerable period. Should higher tariffs come to pass, it is unclear if and when the BOJ would proeed with its next rate hike.
* * *
Suggested Trades, from Goldman’s trading desk:
SCENARIO 1: LDP/Komeito lose majority but hold PM seat (65% Probability)
In this most likely outcome, Goldman considers the scenario in which the LDP/Komeito lose majority but keeps the premiership 1) no opposition form a majority coalition or 2) a third opposition party joins the LDP/Komeito to form a new government. Although increased opposition influence suggests an expansionary fiscal bias, any changes to the administration could impair Japan’s ability to negotiate a trade deal ahead of the August 1st deadline. While our macro desk expects USDJPY to trade higher if LDP/Komeito lose its majority (which should in theory be equity market supportive), political uncertainty will likely weigh on markets near-term. In this scenario, we like putting on a broad index hedge in dual binary format (market lower and UDSJPY higher) with 13x max payoff:
TRADE IDEAS:
1/ BUY NKY LOWER/USDJPY HIGHER DUAL BINARY: 12Sep25 NKY<95% & USDJPY>100% @ 7.50% Offer, Max PO 13.3x. Max loss is premium spent.
If LDP/Komeito maintain a majority (“status quo”), we likely will see a reversal of MTD price action (chart below). We would expect a relief rally in equities on reduced political uncertainty. At a sector level, defense would likely be a key beneficiary (PM Ishiba supports increased defense spending). As for trade talks, this outcome should have relatively more positive/neutral impact as any change in leadership would be likely to cause further delays. Banks have outperformed in recent weeks and could correct.
MTD we have seen NKY, Defense, and Domestic Consumption lower vs Japan Banks higher
Source: Bloomberg data as of 16Jul25. Past performance is not indicative of future results.
TRADE IDEAS:
BUY NKY CALLS: NKY 45Sep25 105% Call: 1.25% offer, 19.43v, 22.5d; Max loss is premium spent.
BUY TPNBNK PUTS: TPNBNK 10Oct25 95% put 3.72% offer, 28.3v, 36d; Max loss is premium spent.
BUY GS JAPAN DEFENSE: GSXAJPDF; Max loss on Long TRS is notional + financing spent. Max loss on Short TRS is unlimited.
MTD we have seen NKY, Defense, and Domestic Consumption lower vs Japan Banks higher
SCENARIO 3: Complete change in administration (10% Probability)
Tail scenario where the LDP/Komeito lose its majority by a wide margin and the Ishiba cabinet is replaced. This scenario would likely have negative implications for tariff talks in near term, but would imply more expansionary fiscal policy in the future. In addition, Ishiba’s removal will have significant negative implications for Defense spending. In this case, the desk likes buying Domestic Consumption names that would benefit from fiscal expansion, paired with a short in Defense for a net market neutral implementation.
TRADE IDEAS:
BUY JAPAN DOMESTIC CONSUMPTION: GSXAJDCO (Max loss on Long TRS is notional + financing spent. Max loss on Short TRS is unlimited.
SHORT JAPAN DEFENSE: GSXAJPDF (Max loss on Long TRS is notional + financing spent. Max loss on Short TRS is unlimited.
Long Domestic Consumption vs Short Defense trade should see a reversal if we see a complete change in administration
A central bank digital currency (CBDC) will not be allowed in the United States, President Donald Trump said at a White House event on July 18, promising to take legislative action to prevent such a situation.
“I also remain fully committed to my pledge, never to allow the creation of a central bank digital currency in America,” Trump said. “My first week in office, I signed an executive order to ban the creation of a CBDC in the United States. And very soon, I look forward to signing legislation that will codify and make it a permanent law.”
Trump’s comments came amid the signing of the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act into law.
During a campaign event in January last year, Trump had said that once he became president, “I will never allow the creation of a central bank digital currency. Such a currency would give the federal government absolute control of your money,” which would be “a dangerous threat to freedom.”
On Jan. 23 this year, the first week after becoming president, Trump signed the executive order banning CBDCs.
“Agencies are hereby prohibited from undertaking any action to establish, issue, or promote CBDCs within the jurisdiction of the United States or abroad,” the order said.
Globally, various nations are at different stages when it comes to their approach towards CBDCs and introducing such currencies into their economy.
According to a July update from the Central Bank Digital Currency Tracker from the Atlantic Council, of the 137 countries or currency unions tracked by the group, three have already launched a CBDC—Nigeria, Jamaica, and the Bahamas.
Moreover, 49 nations or currency unions are piloting CBDCs, 36 are researching such a currency, and 20 are engaged in the development of such a currency.
In addition, 21 are in an inactive status, while two have canceled launching a central bank digital currency, according to the analysis.
GENIUS Act
Stablecoins are a type of crypto asset that tracks a reference asset, such as currency or commodities, on a 1:1 basis. For instance, if a stablecoin references the U.S. dollar, the issuer of stablecoins will offer one stablecoin for every dollar.
The GENIUS Act establishes a regulatory framework for stablecoins.
The Act requires stablecoins to have “100 percent reserve backing with liquid assets like U.S. dollars or short-term Treasuries,” according to a July 18 White House Fact Sheet. It also requires issuers of stablecoins to “make monthly, public disclosures of the composition of reserves.”
“Stablecoin issuers must comply with strict marketing rules to protect consumers from deceptive practices. Crucially, they are forbidden from making misleading claims that their stablecoins are backed by the U.S. government, federally insured, or legal tender.”
In case a stablecoin issuer becomes insolvent, the GENIUS Act will prioritize the claims of stablecoin holders over all other creditors, ensuring very strong consumer protection, the Fact Sheet said.
Since stablecoin issuers have to back their assets with U.S. Treasuries and dollars, the GENIUS Act is expected to generate higher demand for U.S. debt and “cement the dollar’s status as the global reserve currency,” according to the White House.
During the White House event, Trump said the Act unleashes the “immense power” of U.S. dollar-backed stablecoins.
“This could be perhaps the greatest revolution in financial technology since the birth of the internet,” the president said.
In addition to boosting demand for U.S. Treasuries, stablecoins can also bring down interest rates, according to Trump. “This revolution has the potential to supercharge American economic growth and empower billions of people to save and transfer U.S. dollars.”
Crypto czar David Sacks called the passage of the GENIUS Act a “historical legislative achievement,” with stablecoins estimated to create trillions of dollars in demand for U.S. Treasury securities.
Trump’s promotion of stablecoins while opposing CBDCs, despite both being crypto assets, comes from concerns over threats to freedom.
Green Agenda Fallout: Democrat-Led Northeast Now Has Highest Electricity Prices In Nation
Reeling from their 2024 election loss, Democrats are scrambling to reconnect with the working class—yet their brilliant strategy of embracing socialist and communist candidates, doubling down on un-American woke ideology, shielding criminal illegal aliens, and supporting dark-money NGOs that fuel insurrectionist behavior like the Los Angeles riots—isn’t a comeback plan but just political suicide.
The party of leftist social justice warriors is cracking under the weight of its own failures. Woke culture is imploding, “green” fantasies are backfiring, and nowhere is this more evident than in the Democrat stronghold states of the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast, where the retirement of stable, affordable fossil fuel power in favor of unreliable solar and wind is driving up energy costs to the highest in the nation this summer and breaking the pocketbooks of working-class families they claim to champion.
Energy policies should balance three key objectives: affordability, reliability, and environmental sustainability — often referred to as the “energy trilemma.” Yet Democrats rammed through climate policies that torched two objectives, affordability and reliability for the environment.
According to the latest EIA Short-Term Energy Outlook for July, the average summer wholesale power prices across the PJM, NYISO, and ISO-NE grids are the highest in the nation. These prices now far exceed those in Texas’ ERCOT, the U.S. average, and even the traditionally high-cost West Coast markets. The blame is squarely focused on the Democrats’ initiative to decarbonize power grids.
Whatever happened to the Biden-Harris regime’s Inflation Reduction Act (green new deal scam)??
The PJM grid, the operator of the largest U.S. power grid serving 65 million people across 13 states and D.C., has been transformed into an unstable mess:
The result of failed green policies and surging power demand is a crisis that’s hitting working-poor households the hardest. Democrats are now scrambling—especially in Maryland—to regain narrative control of mounting dissent among voters (read here) over skyrocketing electricity bills. The green agenda is backfiring, and the optics are brutal for crazed progressives. One alarming estimate suggests that nearly 20% of households in central Maryland are behind on their utility payments.
Voters should demand accountability for failed green energy policies that undermine grid reliability. It’s as if the whole climate agenda appears to be sabotaging the nation’s energy stability through unrealistic targets and premature fossil fuel phaseouts. Meanwhile, in the global superpower race, China is rapidly expanding coal-fired power generation to ensure base-load reliability. There needs to be accountability.
What will happen if Germany’s largest opposition party is prohibited and why it is in everybody’s interest for the centre-right CDU to bring down the firewall and normalise the populist right…
As all of my readers know, the Social Democrats (SPD) are fighting hard to force two hard-left justices onto the Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe. Although the vote failed last week because Friedrich Merz messed it up, the SPD remain determined to give Frauke Brosius-Gersdorf and Ann-Katrin Kaufhold the red robes. They might still succeed.
This matters because Brosius-Gersdorf and Kaufhold have both argued in favour of ban proceedings against Alternative für Deutschland. What is more, both candidates would be appointed to the second senate of the Constitutional Court, which is the division responsible for banning political parties. And as if that were not enough, the SPD nominated both candidates in the wake of their party congress, where SPD chairman Lars Klingbeil said that banning the AfD was his party’s “historical duty.” Many have therefore concluded that the SPD are trying to stack the court in advance of an application to prohibit Germany’s second-strongest political party, banish all of its elected politicians and seize all of its assets.
I’m far from a sensationalist, and I’ve repeatedly discounted the likelihood of an AfD ban – not least because the German establishment and the left in particular have good reasons to keep the AfD around. Lately, however, I’ve begun to appreciate that there are deeper, systemic forces working against the AfD in this case. These forces are beyond anybody’s control and if nobody does anything, they may well end in political catastrophe that is much bigger than any single party.
Since the end of the Merkel era, the German left has become thematically scattered, and so they have retreated to the only coordinating issue the German left has ever had, which is hating the right. As climatism started to fade, the social welfare state exceeded its limits and mass migration went sour, AfD bashing became the sole unifying principle for much of the SPD, Die Linke and the Greens. Hating the right is particularly important because it keeps leftist politicians and their activist class on the same page. Without a crusade against the right, a great chasm opens between the antifa thugs who want to smash the state and destroy capitalism on the one hand and the schoolmarm leftoid establishment functionaries in the Bundestag who want to mandate gender-neutral language for the civil service on the other hand. What is more, the firewall against the AfD splits the right and keeps the shrinking left in government. It is a win-win for leftoids everywhere.
Recent events, however, show why things cannot continue as they are now indefinitely. Over time, our Constitutional Court will begin to fill with leftist justices supported by the left parties, who like the rest of the left will also want to ban the AfD. Brosius-Gersdorf and Kaufhold are omens here. Right now the system is held in perfect balance; the left talks a big game about wanting to stamp out the AfD, but they can always justify their hesitation by saying the outcome of ban proceedings is too uncertain. When the necessary judicial majority for an AfD ban is finally secured in Karlsruhe, everything changes. At that point, there will be no excuse for not proceeding with a ban. The activists and the NGOs will take to the streets if their political masters in Berlin don’t begin the process. The CDU will be brought around by media smear campaigns and antifa intimidation.
Keep in mind that this is not about the AfD, but about imperatives within the left itself.
No amount of moderation, polite messaging or triangulation on the part of the AfD can get the left to stop or pursue other goals. Unless some exogenous force introduces a new unifying obsession for the left parties and their activists, they will never stop gnawing on this particular chew toy.
Practically, this probably means that the AfD has an expiration date. If they can’t get into government at the federal level and if nothing else changes, they will find themselves facing ban proceedings before a court stacked with leftists who hate them in the next 10 or 15 years.
The federal elections in 2029 seem like the last opportunity to normalise the AfD before this final escalation.
People in the CDU need to realise how serious this is, because their fate hangs in the balance as much as the fate of the populist opposition to the right of them. It is absolutely necessary that they break the firewall and enter some kind of arrangement with the AfD before it is too late. It doesn’t matter how much the press freaks out. It doesn’t matter how many violent antifa thugs take to the streets. It doesn’t matter how many party headquarters the leftists invade and vandalise.
The firewall will fail in one direction or the other, and if it fails with an AfD ban, we are all in very deep shit.
Once the AfD is gone – once all their assets are confiscated, all their representatives are driven out of the federal and state parliaments and the authorities have hunted down all plausible successor organisations – the left would turn on the CDU and the CSU. They have to, because as I said above the left in its present form is an anti-right machine.1 Everything that is happening to the AfD right now would begin to happen to the centre-right Union parties. Left parties would suddenly have a majority almost everywhere; all the tools of defensive democracy would be at their exclusive disposal. Leftist forces in the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution would begin infiltrating CDU party ranks, what remains of the right flank of the CDU would be hunted down and criminalised, CDU civil service members would be subject to official harassment and intimidation and a great part of the CDU party programme would be declared beyond the pale. There is very little the CDU could do to stop any of this.
The DDR was not a single-party state; rather, the governing Socialist Unity Party (SED) tolerated the existence of several “bloc parties” alongside itself. Only the SED was really in charge, but the bloc parties allowed the SED to claim a broader basis of social support and to integrate different groups who could not identify directly with the reigning communists. The forces unleashed by an AfD ban would very likely reduce the CDU to a bloc party of the German left, while also encouraging the closer integration of the left parties themselves. A clear leader might emerge, and if history is to repeat a second time as farce, that might even be Die Linke – none other than the rebranded SED. Whatever happens, the left would have an iron monopoly on all major political issues. A lot of these would be decided internally, at party congresses and in back rooms, without the public ever having to hear much about it.
This is an extreme nightmare scenario, but I think it’s more likely than not what happens in the event of an AfD ban. The problem is that the Federal Republic is in many ways a provisional country, which was set up to counteract the distant political threats of yesteryear, like lingering National Socialist elements and eastern Communism. Built into the constitutional fabric of the Federal Republic are a series of tools that permit parliamentary majorities to appropriate the entire political system for themselves, and when they use these tools there’s not much anybody can do about it. If the CDU want to have any kind of future, they need to normalise relations with the AfD and come to some kind of compromise that gets the left out of the federal government. Otherwise we may all face a totally legal coup followed by a leftist political revolution that will land us in a kritocratic equivalent of the DDR.
Beach, Nature, Or City Trip? Where People Vacation
Vacation preference varies among nations – while some prefer to head to the beach, other are more likely to book a city trip or spend their time off in nature.
As Statista’s Katharina Buchholz reports, the biggest preference for lounging by the ocean could be seen in Latin American countries Brazil and Mexico, while this type of trip was least widespread in Japan at just 8 percent of respondents saying they had taken a beach getaway in the past 12 months.
This was followed by Finland at 25 percent as well as the U.S. and Canada, both at 32 percent.
Travelers who prefer city breaks can meanwhile be found in Finland and China.
While Finns also have a strong preference for cruises, city, beach and nature trips had been taken by upwards of 40 percent of Chinese respondents in just the past 12 months, showing the travel prowess of a nations that has become a huge source of tourism revenue both domestically and internationally.
The biggest nature lovers, finally, are from China, India, Poland, South Africa and South Korea.
The Netherlands was the only country prefering camping to general nature or outdoors vacations. However, visiting friend and family remained the most popular type of trip in a majority of countries.
As part of the survey between 900 and 6,600 respondents per country from 21 nations were queried between April 2024 and March 2025.
British government figures have revealed that a whopping 1.3 million foreigners are receiving Universal Credit benefits at the taxpayer’s expense.
The stats from the Department of Work and Pensions show that in June 1.26 million people, out of a total 7.9 million claimants, received the welfare subsidies.
While Conservative MPs attempted to jump on the Labour government over the findings, Reform leader Nigel Farage noted that it was the Conservative government that introduced the Universal Credit system and facilitated mass immigration for years.
The figures also show that the average payment was £1,010 a month, and the overwhelming majority of migrant claimants are unemployed.
Farage added “for the first time the Department of Work and Pensions have given us some figures that many have wanted for years. The result? There are 1.3 million migrants on Universal Credit, and over half of them don’t do any work at all.”
“This goes completely against the lie we’ve been told for 25 years that immigration’s fine because everyone’s working and everyone’s contributing,” Farage continued.
🚨 BREAKING NEWS 🚨
1.3m migrants are on Universal Credit and 750k of them don’t work at all.
“We can see from this that it’s not… some of this has happened since Labour came to power but nearly all of it happened during 14 years of Conservative government,” he further urged.
“And if they dare say a word about these numbers today don’t take them seriously and frankly they should be in hiding for what they’ve done to this country,” Farage asserted.
The stats indicate that the overall monthly cost of Universal Credit to migrants could be as high as one-and-a-quarter billion pounds ($1.6 billion), or £15.2 billion a year.
The number of migrants claiming the welfare is just exponentially increasing month on month.
We are funding a rapidly growing number of lazy foreigners to do sod all.
As we’ve repeatedly highlighted, many of these migrants get to spend their time in lavish hotels at taxpayer expense.
Or they’re sent to quaint villages where residents don’t know what has hit them.
Earlier this week it was also revealed that a British version of DOGE instituted in areas where Farage’s Reform won seats in the last round of elections has found that local government is spending hundreds of thousands in taxpayer money on unnecessary perks for illegal immigrants, including fast food, subscriptions to Netflix, outings to the circus and free Amazon vouchers.
Respondents to Farage on X mostly had one question about exactly what he would do about this if he were elected as Prime Minister.
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During the Cold War, Soviet communists reportedly referred to American liberals as “useful idiots.”
Although the origin of the quote has been challenged (and attributed to both Lenin and Stalin), it captured many of the adherents of communism after World War II. From higher education to Hollywood, dilettantes on the left embraced Marxism with little real understanding of the philosophy or its implications.
We are now seeing the rise of a new generation of armchair revolutionaries who are calling for everything from the overthrow of the U.S. government to the seizure of factories and homes.
Democratic New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani personifies this new movement of young people lacking any memory of the failure of socialist and communist systems in the 20th Century.
Mamdani is perfect for this rising movement of Latte Leninists and trust-fund baby Trotskyites. The privileged son of a radical Columbia professor and a Hollywood producer, Mamdani went to the elite Bowdoin College, which charges over $70,000 annually in tuition. He is part of the “radical chic” of American higher education, where extreme views are fully mainstream.
Mamdani shows the appeal of mouthing Marxist manifestos as manifest truths. It is Marxism-lite — promises of everything from rent control to making “Halal eight bucks again.”
In one speech before the Young Democratic Socialists of America conference, Mamdani even stated matter-of-factly how one of the goals is to “seize the means of production” in America.
“Right now, if we’re talking about the cancellation of student debt, if we’re talking about Medicare for all, you know, these are issues which have the groundswell of popular support across this country,” he said.
“But then there are also other issues that we firmly believe in, whether it’s [boycott-divestment-sanctions against Israel] or whether it is the end goal of seizing the means of production, where we do not have the same level of support at this very moment.”
Mamdani offers few details of what it would mean to seize all industry in this country or how such a system would work in the United States after failing in literally every nation where it has been attempted.
He has also called for the seizure of unoccupied luxury condos in New York to turn over to the homeless.
With pledges of state-run grocery stores and other proposals, many are thrilled by the prospect of Marxism coming to America.
Polls show increasing support among young people for socialism and even communism. That is reflected in the New York primary, where Mamdani received significant support from wealthy and young college-educated voters.
Like Mamdani, these young voters have no inkling of what life was like under socialist and communist governments. They were not alive when radical shifts to socialism in Great Britain and France destroyed their economies and had to be reversed. They did not see the collapse of the Soviet Union or the move toward capitalism by China to avoid economic meltdowns.
Yet, as Mamdani stated, the radical left has to wait to seize such powers until it has “the same level of support at this very moment.” Unfortunately, socialist programs can produce the very dire conditions that lead to even greater consolidation of state controls and power.
Notably, most of Mamdani’s proposals would violate the Constitution or bankrupt the city. For example, efforts to seize multimillion-dollar luxury condos would constitute unconstitutional takings unless he was prepared to buy the units at their market value — a virtually impossible proposition.
Such considerations are rarely raised, let alone resolved, in radical conferences.
Earlier this month, University of Minnesota liberal arts professor Melanie Yazzie joined others for a “teach-in” in which she delighted the audience with calls for the overthrow of the country by “people who come from nations who are under occupation by the United States government.”
She added, “it’s our responsibility as people who are within the United States to go as hard as possible to decolonize this place because that will reverberate all across the world. Because the U.S. is the greatest predator empire that has ever existed.”
That includes forcing “[the] U.S. out of everywhere,” including “Turtle Island” (the Native American name used to describe North America). Yazzie insisted that “the goal is to dismantle the settler project that is the United States for the freedom and the future of all life on this planet. It very much depends on that.”
Yazzie is an example of how most faculties in this country now run from the left to the far left. Applicants who espouse center-right viewpoints are often rejected as lacking “intellectual rigor” or depth. However, you cannot be too far left to secure a position in many departments that do not have a single Republican or conservative.
Take University of Chicago Assistant Professor Eman Abdelhadi, who used her recent appearance at the Socialism 2025 conference to denounce the University of Chicago as an “evil” and “colonialist” institution. Nevertheless, she insisted that she wanted to remain at the evil institution — not for its intellectual community, but to “organize” and “leverage” to build a political coalition.
Keep in mind that the faculty not only decided that Abdelhadi was worthy of a faculty position in the university’s Department of Comparative Human Development, but then also made her the Director of Graduate Studies.
For some, the calls of professors like Yazzie to “dismantle” the U.S. constitute the ultimate virtue signal. Like demands to seize factories and homes, the willingness to burn down the system is a cheap and easy way to establish your bona fides as one of the enlightened — something to brag about with your other 20-something fellow travelers as you order your $7 latte on the way to your Hyrox workout.
Lenin once mocked many in the West as idiots who would “transform themselves into men who are deaf, dumb and blind [and] toil to prepare their own suicide.” What he never imagined was how some would still be transforming themselves decades after the revolution failed.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University and the best-selling author of “The Indispensable Right.”
