A group of high-profile tech investors, including military tech entrepreneur Palmer Luckey and venture capitalist Joe Lonsdale, is preparing to launch a new bank designed to serve the niche left behind by the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank — and to do so with ambitions that extend deep into cryptocurrency, defense tech, and artificial intelligence.

The bank, to be called Erebor, has formally applied for a national banking charter in the United States, according to documents made public this week. Named after the “Lonely Mountain” in The Lord of the Rings, Erebor would aim to serve the “innovation economy” – start-ups and individuals in sectors often viewed as too risky for traditional lenders, including blockchain, AI, defense, and advanced manufacturing.

Erebor’s founders, who include backers of Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential bid, say their institution will fill a gap left by SVB’s 2023 collapse, which shook the tech sector’s financial infrastructure. That failure triggered panic among start-ups, many of which relied heavily on SVB’s tailored credit offerings. Though SVB’s remnants were absorbed by First Citizens and some staff migrated to HSBC, entrepreneurs and investors continue to complain of tightened credit access and fewer bank partners willing to underwrite emerging technologies, FT reports.

Erebor’s co-founders first discussed launching a bank after the collapse of SVB in 2023, according to a person close to the matter. SVB had been the main bank for US start-ups and their venture capital backers.

Its assets were sold to First Citizens, which has since relaunched SVB, and a number of its bankers moved to HSBC in the US. But investors and executives complain about a gap in banking services for fledgling tech companies since SVB’s demise — with some start-ups struggling to get the same access to capital. -FT

The application describes Erebor as “a national bank… providing traditional banking products, as well as virtual currency-related products and services, for businesses and individuals,” with a focus on customers underserved by both traditional and fintech institutions. It will also offer services to non-U.S. companies seeking access to the American banking system.

One of the bank’s major innovations, and potential regulatory flashpoints, is its plan to become a dominant player in stablecoin transactions, a controversial corner of the cryptocurrency world where digital tokens are pegged to traditional currencies like the U.S. dollar. Erebor’s filing describes its goal as becoming “the most regulated entity conducting and facilitating stablecoin transactions.”

Founders Luckey, best known for founding Anduril Industries, and Lonsdale, a co-founder of Palantir and managing partner of 8VC, are not expected to be involved in Erebor’s day-to-day operations. Instead, the bank will be led by co-CEOs Jacob Hirshman, a former adviser to crypto firm Circle, and Owen Rapaport, CEO of digital assets compliance company Aer. Mike Hagedorn, a longtime banking executive and former EVP at Valley National Bank, will serve as president.

Despite its tech-forward posture, Erebor will be headquartered in Columbus, Ohio, with a secondary office in New York City. In keeping with the start-up culture it hopes to serve, Erebor will be a digital-only bank, offering customer support and financial products exclusively through a smartphone app and website.

Much about Erebor remains under wraps. Portions of the application, including its equity structure, business plan, and shareholder identities, were submitted confidentially.

The Erebor venture underscores the ongoing realignment of financial services in the tech sector, as traditional banks grow more cautious and venture-backed firms look to build their own institutions. Whether Erebor succeeds where SVB fell — and whether its fusion of crypto, defense, and Silicon Valley politics finds regulatory favor — remains to be seen. For now, its founders are betting there’s a mountain of opportunity left to reclaim.

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

The vaccine advisory committee remade by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. plans to look at multiple other vaccines, after it voted to advise officials to stop recommending influenza shots that contain mercury.

Martin Kulldorff, the new chair of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), said on June 26 that one proposal is to tell the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to make clear that young children should not receive the measles, mumps, rubella, varicella (MMRV) combination immunization.

Instead, the CDC would recommend that children under the age of 47 months receive two separate vaccines: the measles, mumps, rubella shot, and the varicella, or chickenpox, vaccine.

The change would reflect data that indicate the MMRV combination vaccine causes more febrile seizures, he said. The CDC said the same thing in a background paper on the subject dated June 25.

A vote on the matter could occur as early as the next meeting, which is expected to take place in August or September.

2 New Subcommittees

Kulldorff, an epidemiologist who was fired by Harvard Medical School for declining a COVID-19 vaccine, also announced two new work groups, or subcommittees.

One will examine the impact of vaccines on the childhood immunization schedules.

“It is important to evaluate the cumulative effect of the recommended vaccine schedule,” Kulldorff said. “This includes interaction effects between different vaccines, the total number of vaccines, cumulative amounts of vaccine ingredients, and the relative timing of different vaccines.”

Researchers with the CDC and other institutions said in a 2022 paper that exposure to aluminum in vaccines was associated with asthma, although they said that additional investigation was required to confirm a link.

The second subcommittee will examine vaccines that have not been reviewed in more than seven years, including the hepatitis B vaccine, the first dose of which the CDC recommends at birth for infants.

“Unless the mother is hepatitis B positive, an argument could be made to delay the vaccine for this infection, which is primarily spread by sexual activity and intravenous drug use,” Kulldorff said.

Kulldorff declined in an email to The Epoch Times to say whether he’d been directed by Kennedy to look at the measles vaccines, or to reveal any other proposals the committee plans to take up at its next meeting.

The Department of Health and Human Services, the CDC’s parent agency, did not respond to a request for comment, including on whether Kennedy directed the committee to vote on vaccines containing the mercury-based preservative thimerosal.

Kennedy, earlier in June, removed all 17 members of the ACIP and replaced them with Kulldorff and others.

Votes on RSV Antibody, Influenza Vaccines

During the committee’s first meeting since the replacements, it advised the CDC to add a second monoclonal antibody treatment against respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) for infants.

Dr. Robert Malone, a new ACIP member, told The Epoch Times that there was extensive discussion on the antibody at the subcommittee level and that one of the reasons he voted in favor was to provide another option against the virus, given how stock of the existing antibody ran low in the past.

Retsef Levi, another ACIP member, told The Epoch Times he voted against making the second antibody available to all infants because of concerns over a lack of granular data from clinical trials for both products. He would have supported letting high-risk infants receive the new antibody.

Kulldorff also voted in favor of the antibody. He participated despite being a paid witness in a legal case against Merck, which manufactures the new antibody, in January.

Dr. Joel Lexchin, a professor at the University of Toronto who has studied conflicts of interest, told The Epoch Times via email that Kulldorff “had a clear conflict and should not have voted.”

Kulldorff has not responded to requests for comment about potential conflicts of interest. He said during the meeting he did not have any conflicts related to the issues at hand.

Lexchin previously told The Epoch Times that some of the members ousted by Kennedy should have abstained from certain votes after they received money from pharmaceutical companies that stood to be affected.

The new advisers also voted to keep in place the CDC’s recommendation that virtually all individuals aged at least 6 months receive an influenza vaccine on an annual basis, before they advised the CDC to stop recommending thimerosal-containing flu shots.

About 5 percent of the flu shots administered in recent months contained thimerosal, according to the Food and Drug Administration.

Members who voted in favor of removing thimerosal said they wanted to cut down on controllable sources of mercury exposure. Dr. Cody Meissner, the only no vote, said he didn’t see a safety issue with the amount of mercury in influenza vaccines and that he was concerned the vote would imperil influenza vaccine access for some.

The FDA and Sanofi, an influenza vaccine manufacturer, said that the supply would be sufficient without the thimerosal-containing vaccines.

The meeting did not involve much debate or discussion on general influenza vaccination, according to Malone.

“We were presented with essentially language that was already approved and and had to make a decision about whether or not to endorse … a universal influenza vaccine recommendation, as has been the case for decades. The decision was that this was not the time to fight on that hill about the universal influenza vaccine recommendation,” Malone told The Epoch Times.

Panel member Vicky Pebsworth abstained from the vote, citing a lack of discussion.

Immune Imprinting

Malone said at the close of the meeting that he would be part of a subcommittee focused on influenza and that he anticipated considering “the long-standing issue of immune imprinting and original antigenic sin, which may or may not be a concern in the case of routine annual influenza vaccination.”

Immune imprinting refers to when previous vaccinations or infections leave behind an immune memory, causing the body to produce antibodies targeting that memory, even if a new variant or vaccine is introduced.

Vaccinating people annually against influenza may be counterproductive due to imprinting, Malone told The Epoch Times.

Read the rest here…

India’s Hindustan Zinc is moving into rare earths, but commercial production could take up to five years, underscoring the hurdles of building a domestic supply chain to challenge China’s grip on the sector. “This (rare earth) is of strategic interest (to India),” said CEO Arun Misra in an interview, according to Nikkei Asia.

The company was the only private bidder to win a monazite mining block in Uttar Pradesh in a government auction in May. However, exploration and reserve analysis will take three to four years. “The first part is exploration and mining, and that itself could take about three or four years, because we have to evaluate (the quantity and quality) of the reserves,” said CEO Arun Misra.

Global supply of permanent magnets is tight after China restricted exports of rare earths like terbium and dysprosium, both used to boost neodymium magnets’ heat resistance. Auto manufacturers have been hit hard, though China claims it is still processing export applications.

India holds 6% of global rare earth reserves but accounts for only 1% of production, compared to China’s 69%. China benefits from large bastnaesite reserves with low thorium content, reducing processing costs—a “huge difference” in operating expenses, Misra noted.

India has 12.73 million metric tons of monazite reserves, mainly in southern beach sands. However, private firms are barred from mining these due to their thorium content, which is reserved for nuclear energy under the Atomic Energy Act. Only state-run Indian Rare Earth Ltd. can mine these areas. “If monazite is decontrolled and allowed to be mined with private participation, and companies like ours participate, it will help India make magnets,” Misra said. “What is known is the (monazite content) in sea beaches, because rare earth mining has happened there for the last so many years.”

EY estimates China holds 44 million tons of rare earth reserves—40% of the global total. In a recent report, EY India’s chief policy adviser D.K. Srivastava stressed the need for more R&D and global partnerships. “Any shortage will serve as a substantiative bottleneck in growth and employment,” he warned.

Nikkei Asia writes that India’s rare earth oxide imports dropped 22% year-on-year in FY 2022-23, but China’s share of those imports rose from 17.5% to 25%. The supply crunch has highlighted India’s broader reliance on imports of key minerals like cobalt, graphite, lithium, and copper—vital for EVs and energy storage. Despite large domestic reserves, India imports 60% of its graphite and does not refine cobalt locally.

According to IEEFA, this reliance will likely persist as demand for critical minerals could more than double by 2030, while domestic production will lag. “This situation (dependence on imports) is likely to continue,” it noted in a 2024 report.

In response, India launched the ₹163 billion ($1.9 billion) National Critical Mineral Mission and tasked the Geological Survey of India with 1,200 exploration projects by 2030-31. The country also aims to secure lithium and cobalt reserves abroad.

Hindustan Zinc is expanding accordingly, having acquired potash and tungsten blocks. It targets 30% of its revenue from critical minerals in five years. While Misra didn’t disclose funding details, he stated, “money was not an issue,” citing a 33% jump in profits to ₹103.5 billion in FY 2024-25. “We would like to work in sectors which are apparently difficult to operate and hence not attractive enough for other big players,” he added.

Authored by Conrad Black via RealClearPolitics.com,

The Democrats are now implacably self-destructive. They resemble nothing so much as a slowly capsizing ship, but show by their frenzied skullduggery that America is not in decline — the opposition is rotten and hopeless but it still fights savagely. I hope readers will pardon a recitation of the party’s gradual foundering. They pushed the nation into Vietnam, mismanaged the war, and deserted their own president (Lyndon Johnson), and when President Nixon saved their war, they crucified him on what can now be seen as the utterly absurd Watergate nonsense.

President Carter was earnest and altruistic, but he helped push out the Shah of Iran to bring on the ayatollahs, a horrifying strategic blunder, and his weakness induced the USSR into Afghanistan. President Reagan uplifted the country and let America be America, and the Soviet Union and international communism collapsed. The Bushes and Clintons coasted on Reagan’s coat-tails for as long as they could.

In 2016 as it became clear that Secretary Clinton’s campaign was running into difficulties against President Trump, then a candidate, at whose nomination the Democrats had rejoiced, they tested the guardrails of American constitutional democracy by notoriously politicizing the intelligence agencies and the FBI. The National Intelligence Director, James Clapper, declared that Mr. Trump was being handled by President Putin as if the American were an intelligence “asset” of Russia.

The FBI director, James Comey, facilitated the transmission of a pastiche of lies and defamations assembled by a former intelligence agent on behalf of the Clinton campaign, as legitimate intelligence which because of its provenance did not require substantiation by the press to be published. Mr. Comey answered an inquiry, under oath, 245 times that he did not remember events he had participated in two years before.

Mrs. Clinton’s 33,000 destroyed emails on an improperly used server were naturally found by Mr. Comey not to be an obstruction of justice, but there was immediately launched the unmitigated fraud about Russian collusion in Mr. Trump’s election, to the full knowledge of then President Obama and then Vice President Biden. When this immense smear job finally collapsed, it was followed by a spurious impeachment of Mr. Trump on the grounds that he asked President Zelensky of Ukraine for the truth about the Biden family’s financial activities in Ukraine. He did not attempt to direct the answer. We now know that it was a legitimate question. 

The ludicrous impeachment proceedings had just failed as the early indications of the Covid pandemic became known and the Democrats demanded the total shutdown of the country with the evident purpose of promoting an economic depression they could then blame on the president. He was denounced as a racist for shutting off direct flights from Communist China and was denounced as being an “anti-science” Neanderthal deliberately risking the lives of the entire population, to the extent that he did not stop everything and isolate everyone.

As the election year 2020 unfolded, the death of George Floyd at Minneapolis, apparently mainly from drug-related causes but following his apprehension by a policeman who put his knee on Floyd’s neck, was seized upon by radical anarchists and anti-white organizations for so-called “peaceful protests” around the country and throughout the summer of 2020 killing dozens of people and causing billions of dollars of damage. The Democrats informally merged with the radical left that was inciting the riots and successfully demanding defunding of police in many cities. The national political press was thoroughly complicit in blaming all of the violence on “Trump chaos.” 

The Democrats recognized that Sen. Sanders could not win because of his extreme leftist views, so the party elders promised Mr. Sanders his left-wing program and substituted the innocuous old wheelhorse, Mr. Biden.  Even after all of this, it was necessary for the Democrats to distribute tens of millions of unsolicited ballots according to inevitably partially obsolete voters lists, raising concerns about the collection and casting of some millions of unverifiable and harvested ballots.

There were window-rattling ululations of joy at the invasion of the Capitol on January 6, 2021. We now know that the mayor of Washington, Muriel Bowser, declined Trump’s offer of national guardsmen to bolster security, and Mr. Trump contends that Speaker Pelosi turned down a similar offer of national guard reinforcements for the Capitol. Years of effort to wring evidence of Mr. Trump’s involvement have failed. 

As Mr. Trump refused to vanish like a dreadful meteor as had been predicted, and retained the support of scores of millions of Americans, the Democrats resorted to the final assault on the integrity of the system and deluged him with four ludicrous political criminal indictments. The perfidy of the prosecutors combined with the skepticism of the public; Mr. Trump was effectively acquitted by 78 million of his fellow citizens in a close but decisive election, despite a partisan stonewall in the national political media and a large Democratic advantage in fundraising.

Mr. Trump returned to office much more knowledgeable about Washington and how to adopt his comprehensive program to end the massive illegal invasion by mainly destitute and frequently criminal migrants, to strengthen the market economy, roll back the green terror, and define America’s national interests in the world and credibly provide for the defense of them.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s acceptance of sharp increases in defense spending and the American and Israeli destruction of the military and terrorism-supporting potential of Iran and moves to eliminate America’s trade deficit of over $1 trillion are important accomplishments. Last week’s rejection by the Supreme Court of the Democrats’ latest obstructionist wheeze of judge-shopping to notoriously liberal federal district judges and inducing them to purport to injunct federal policies, is another Trump victory.

The great Democratic party of Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, and even up to a point Clinton, has given way to an unfeasible ragtag of superannuated tyros, influence peddlers, decayed servitors, and now completely unacceptable extremists personified by the likely nominee to be mayor of New York City, Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, an economic Marxist who does not accept the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state and expresses sympathy for calls to globalize the intifada.

The Democrats have no plausible opponents to Mr. Trump, no policy except Trump-hate, and have carried to its logical extreme the great liberal death wish. Having failed by an unprecedented series of illegalities to defeat Mr. Trump, they have practically destroyed themselves.

The tiny South Pacific archipelago country of Fiji has come out firmly against China establishing a military base in the Pacific Islands, according to a statement of Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka issued Wednesday.

He emphasized that China has no need for such a provocatively located base to demonstrate its military strength, citing its recent intercontinental ballistic missile test as evidence.

Rabuka provided clear acknowledgement that Pacific nations are grappling with how to respond to China’s growing efforts to expand its influence, in remarks given to the National Press Club in Canberra.

“Pacific leaders have consistently aimed for a diplomatic stance of being friendly with all and enemies to none — a challenging path, but one we believe is achievable,” Rabuka said.

The problem is that Pacific Islands have become a key area of geopolitical competition between US and Chinese naval power for regional security influence, especially over the last decade, and as tensions over Taiwan independence continue to boil.

Reuters reported the comments as follows:

Fiji opposes establishment of a military base by China, he said, in response to queries on Beijing’s security ambitions in a region where it already has a security pact with the Solomon Islands and a police presence in several nations.

“If they want to come, who would welcome them?” he said. “Not Fiji.”

Rabuka is proposing an “Ocean of Peace” treaty that would bind the region to unity, allow for common solutions to regional issues that arise, and which would reject coercion as a tool for for political dominance. But as Germany’s DW reviews:

Beijing has spent hundreds of millions of dollars constructing sports stadiums, government offices, hospitals and roads in Pacific countries such as Solomon Islands and Vanuatu.

The charm offensive has already borne fruit with Kiribati, Solomon Islands and Nauru severing longstanding diplomatic links with Taiwan in favor of China.

“We do not want superpower rivalries or big power rivalries to be played out in the Pacific,” Rabuka explained in his comments. He added, “China’s participation in our development should not affect how we interact with Australia, New Zealand and America.”

But these referenced countries have no only long been part of the ‘Five Eyes’ – English speaking nations which cooperate at the highest levels on intelligence – but there’s also the ‘AUKUS’ defense pact involving the US, Australia, and the UK. Beijing views that it is only legitimately reacting to this rising ‘Western threat’ in regional waters. China sees that Pacific as its own backyard.

Del Monte Foods, a major player in America’s canned food supply chain, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in New Jersey as part of a broader strategic restructuring effort. The company does not anticipate that the bankruptcy process will cause any disruptions to the canned food market. 

The 138-year-old food company, a U.S. unit of Singapore-based Del Monte Pacific, best known for its canned fruits and vegetables, entered into a restructuring support agreement with a group holding some of its term loan debt. The company stated it’s “pursuing a value-maximizing sale process as part of an overall strategic balance-sheet restructuring.” 

A filing with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of New Jersey states the company, whose brands include Del Monte, Contadina, College Inn, Kitchen Basics, JOYBA, Take Root Organics, and S&W, said it has both liabilities and assets estimated between $1 billion and $10 billion and secured $912.5 million in debtor-in-possession financing, including $165 million in new funding, from some of its current lenders. 

“This is a strategic step forward for Del Monte Foods. After a thorough evaluation of all available options, we determined a court-supervised sale process is the most effective way to accelerate our turnaround and create a stronger and enduring Del Monte Foods. With an improved capital structure, enhanced financial position and new ownership, we will be better positioned for long-term success,” said Greg Longstreet, President and CEO of Del Monte Foods.

Longstreet continued, “While we have faced challenges intensified by a dynamic macroeconomic environment, Del Monte Foods has nourished families for nearly 140 years, and we remain committed to our mission of expanding access to nutritious, great-tasting food for all. I am deeply grateful to our employees, growers, customers and vendors, as well as our lenders for their support in helping us achieve our long-term goals.”

Bloomberg noted, “The development ends a challenging year for the borrower that saw its parent company Del Monte Pacific Ltd. in June elect to skip a payment to the unit’s lenders as part of a lawsuit settlement tied to a controversial debt restructuring.”

Del Monte’s operations date back to the mid-1880s, when California-based merchants began using the name “Del Monte” to market high-quality coffee for the Hotel Del Monte in Monterey. By 1892, it expanded to canned fruit and has since grown to control a sizeable portion of the U.S. canned food market. 

The good news is that Del Monte does not expect any supply shortages in the canned food market as a result of its bankruptcy proceedings.

Authored by Ron Paul via The Ron Paul Institute,

The US Senate worked through the weekend on the “Big Beautiful Bill.” The goal was to pass it quickly to ensure the House will then pass it and send it to President Trump’s desk before the July 4th holiday.

However, disagreements among Republican Senators over reductions in spending on programs including Medicaid and food stamps as well as language in the bill eliminating “clean energy” tax credits were preventing Senate Republican leadership from getting enough votes to pass the bill.

Also, some Republicans disagree with other Republicans in both the House and Senate on increasing the state and local tax (SALT) deduction. Many conservatives see this income tax deduction as encouraging states to maintain high taxes to fund big governments.

One item in the BBB that few Republicans are objecting to is the bill’s increase in military spending. The House version of the BBB added 150 billion dollars to the Pentagon’s already bloated budget. The Senate bill gave the military-industrial complex 156 billion dollars.

Increasing military spending contradicts President Trump’s promise to stop wasting money on endless wars that have nothing to do with ensuring the security of the American people.

Some of the BBB’s military spending will be used to put troops on the border. I support strengthening border security. However, I do not support using the military for domestic law enforcement, which includes enforcing immigration laws. Soldiers are trained to view people as potential enemies, not as innocent civilians to be protected. Introducing this mindset into domestic law enforcement will lead to abuses of liberty.

Increasing spending on militarism while cutting spending on programs that help low-income Americans is bad politics and bad policy. Polls show that the majority of Americans, including many Republicans, do not support overseas intervention.

The growing opposition to our hyper-interventionist foreign policy is easy to understand. The US has engaged in numerous military actions in many countries including Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria since the beginning of the 21st century. The American people pay for this militarism in several ways. One is the “inflation tax” imposed by the Federal Reserve in order to monetize the debt incurred by the US government for endless wars. President Trump has turned his back on his antiwar supporters by bombing Iran and by increasing military spending to over a trillion dollars.

The Republican insistence on increasing military spending is the main reason Congress cannot cut taxes without increasing the debt, making cuts in domestic welfare programs, or both. If the Republicans want to be the Make America Great Again party, they need to embrace a true America First foreign policy. This means no more regime change wars or US taxpayer supported “color revolutions.” Instead, America should return to the Founders’ vision of a country that, in the words of John Quincy Adams, does not go “abroad in search of monsters to destroy” and instead is “the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all” while “the champion and vindicator only of her own.”

A return to a noninterventionist foreign policy is the only way we will be able to begin to pay down the national debt and restore a government that adheres to the constitutional limits on its powers and respects all the people’s rights all the time.

Last week, we sparked a stir within the financial community when we were the first to show, clearly and without doubt, that contrary to months of false narratives by the liberal “expert” class, the costs of Trump’s tariffs are actually not borne by either US companies or US consumers, but rather by the exporting nation and its manufacturers. In this particular case, we showed that Japan’s passenger car export prices to North America had plunged since Liberation Day, making it abundantly clear that it was indeed the Toyotas and Nissans of the world that were footing the bill of those extra $20 billion or so in month tariff revenues generated by the Trump admin.

well would you look at that: guess who is eating all those tariff costs (hint, it’s not US consumers) pic.twitter.com/iwdKyeqTII

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) June 22, 2025

We were referencing Japan’s May trade data, which showed that car exports to the US declined 24.7% by value in May, but only 3.9% by volume, as Japanese carmakers took a big hit to their profits by slashing prices to maintain shipments and market share.

Yet this data was so very much against conventional wisdom and the fake mental models the TDS crew had constructed, that virtually not a single member of the anti-Trump echo chamber believed the findings, even when our discovery was presented by Congressman Bernie Moreno to the Fed chair a few days later as evidence that contrary to his fears, US inflation isn’t soaring for the simple reason that costs are not being borne by domestic consumers (fast forward to 5 minutes in).

Powell didn’t comment when Dems sent inflation soaring with Covid lockdowns, vaccine mandates, LNG export bans, and massive tax hikes.

But he’s all too happy to attack President Trump’s trade agenda. He’s costing America 100s of billions and should resign. pic.twitter.com/GXPmQBcIPM

— Bernie Moreno (@berniemoreno) June 25, 2025

Yet still the TDS echo chamber would deny what was presented to them clear as day.

But fast forward to today, when we can finally lay this matter to rest.

This morning, none other than Japan’s Nikkei, admitted that for the past three months it was none other than Japan’s car industry that had been footing all the tariff-related costs following Trump’s Liberation Day announcement.

According to the Nikkei, “Japanese automakers kept prices unchanged at first after the tariffs were imposed.” It then goes on to state what our readers already knew, namely that “the unit price of Japanese automobile exports to the U.S. in May fell about 20% on the year, according to Japan’s Ministry of Finance, indicating that Japanese automakers have been trying to absorb the cost of tariffs.”

One correction to the esteemed Japanese media outlet: not “trying”, but succeeding, simply because automakers have had no choice: sure, they could have hiked prices long ago but the outcome would be a collapse in demand for Japanese cars, with market share taken over by domestic producers and other, cheaper, foreign automakers. 

All of this is taking place as trade talk negotiations between the US and Japan are going nowhere, and in fact, Tokyo had gotten so emboldened by the theatrical standoff between Washington and Beijing, it thought it could get away with simply demanding away US tariffs. As a result, despite weeks of negotiation, the US-Japan teams have gotten nowhere with just one week left to go until the July 9 deadline, which is why Trump lashed out – in a very polite fashion – at the “spoiled” mercantilist Japan, which refuses to make any compromises.

“We dealt with Japan. I’m not sure if we’re going to make a deal. I doubt it with Japan — they’re very tough. You have to understand, they’re spoiled. I love Japan. I really like the new prime minister, too. Abe was one of my closest friends, as you know,” Trump said on Tuesday, referring to former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe who died in a 2022 assassination, explaining why there likely won’t be a trade deal with Japan.

Trump noted this week that Japan has a rice crisis that has elevated prices, arguing the country should turn to the U.S. for rice. 

“But they and others are so spoiled from having ripped us off for 30, 40 years that it’s really hard for them to make a deal. You know, it’s very hard. As an example with Japan, they won’t take rice, and yet they desperately need rice,” he said. “They won’t take any cars, but they’ll sell millions. So, we told them, ‘Sorry you can’t do that.’”

The president said Japan will likely get a letter that would set the tariff rate ahead of the July 8 expiration of the 90-day pause on country-specific tariffs. Trump has said he will send letters soon to trading partners who haven’t struck deals.

“So what I’m going to do is I’ll write them a letter, say, ‘We thank you very much. We know you can’t do the kind of things that we need, and therefore you’ll pay a 30 percent, 35 percent or whatever the numbers that we determine,’” he said. “Because we also have a very big trade deficit with Japan, as you know and it’s very unfair to the American people.”

In other words, Trump has effectively assured Japan would be hit with across-the-board tariffs of up to 35% on its exports to the US, beyond the 24% penciled in on July 9. 

In response, Japan prime minister Ishiba said that American cars “are a tough sell in Japan” adding that his government needs to discuss with the US how to boost car imports from America.

“We can’t sell left-hand drive, huge, fuel-inefficient cars made in the US,” Ishiba said Wednesday, and he probably wasn’t wrong. “We’ll discuss with the US how to produce better products and bring them into Japan, while considering Japan’s safety.” 

In a Fox News interview on Sunday, Trump lashed out at Japan over cars: “So we give Japan no cars. They won’t take our cars, right? And yet we take millions and millions of their cars into the United States. It’s not fair.”

So what does Japan do now? Well, after eating billions of dollars in losses for months, the local carmakers are literally on the verge of collapse, and they are now trial ballooning that they have no choice but to do what everyone assumed they would do from day one: raise prices.

According to the Nikkei, Subaru and Mitsubishi Motors have started to raise prices while Mazda Motor is exploring doing so (none of this is actually reflected stateside yet). According to the Nikkei, “they have little choice but to raise prices, having reached their limit in absorbing cost increases.”

Which is precisely what we warned back in March when we said that “Japanese Carmakers Face Catastrophic Profit Hit From Trump’s Auto Tariffs.” Well, the profit hit is here, and in a few weeks it will translate into one of the biggest recessions Japan has ever faces in modern history, forcing the BOJ to unleash an unprecedented stimulus, while pushing rates back to zero or negative.

And since Tokyo will be back to resorting to the oldest trick in the book, namely sending the yen crashing to offset the tariff costs – we fully expect USDJPY to hit 160 in the next 6 months – Trump is about to get a whole lot angrier at Japan and its soon-to-crash currency, at which point the world will finally move on from trade wars to currency wars and capital controls.

Authored by José Niño via Headline USA,

Hackers claiming ties to Iran say they possess 100GB of emails from President Donald Trump’s inner circle and may soon leak or sell the trove, after previously distributing a batch to the media before the 2024 U.S. election.

In online conversations with Reuters on Sunday and Monday, the hackers—who use the pseudonym “Robert”—claimed to possess about 100 gigabytes of emails from the accounts of “White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Trump lawyer Lindsey Halligan, Trump adviser Roger Stone and porn star-turned-Trump antagonist Stormy Daniels.”

Robert mentioned the potential of selling the material but did not provide further details about their plans or the content of the emails.

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi described the breach as “an unconscionable cyber-attack.”

The White House and FBI responded with a statement from FBI Director Kash Patel, who said:

“Anyone associated with any kind of breach of national security will be fully investigated and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) posted on X that “This so-called cyber ‘attack’ is nothing more than digital propaganda, and the targets are no coincidence. This is a calculated smear campaign meant to damage President Trump and discredit honorable public servants who serve our country with distinction”

A hostile foreign adversary is threatening to illegally exploit purportedly stolen and unverified material in an effort to distract, discredit, and divide. This so-called cyber ‘attack’ is nothing more than digital propaganda, and the targets are no coincidence. This is a… https://t.co/P30ZqhZMq0

— Homeland Security (@DHSgov) July 1, 2025

Robert first appeared during the final months of the 2024 presidential campaign, claiming to have breached the email accounts of several Trump allies, including Wiles, and subsequently distributed emails to journalists.

Reuters authenticated some of the leaked material, including an email that appeared to show a financial arrangement between Trump and lawyers for Robert F. Kennedy Jr., now Trump’s health secretary.

Other documents included Trump campaign communications about Republican candidates and discussions of settlement negotiations with Daniels. Although the leaks received some media attention, they did not fundamentally alter the outcome of the presidential race, which Trump won.

A September 2024 indictment from the U.S. Justice Department alleged that Iran’s Revolutionary Guards ran the Robert hacking operation.

After Trump’s election, Robert told Reuters that no more leaks were planned. As recently as May, the hackers said, “I am retired, man.” However, the group resumed communication after the recent 12-day air war between Israel and Iran, which ended with U.S. bombing of Iran’s nuclear sites. In recent messages, Robert said they were organizing a sale of the stolen emails and wanted Reuters to “broadcast this matter.”

Frederick Kagan, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, commented that Iranian spies may be seeking retaliation through means unlikely to provoke further U.S. or Israeli military action, stating, “A default explanation is that everyone’s been ordered to use all the asymmetric stuff that they can that’s not likely to trigger a resumption of major Israeli/U.S. military activity. Leaking a bunch more emails is not likely to do that.”

Despite concerns about potential digital attacks, Iran’s hackers maintained a low profile during the conflict, though U.S. cyber officials warned that American companies and critical infrastructure operators might still be at risk from Iranian operations.

Over the last year, American-Iranian relations has reached new lows. Headline USA has reported on multiple instances of alleged Iranian plots to assassinate Trump, all in an effort to get the United States into a direct confrontation with Iran.

Update (1450ET): Are we having fun yet? Major divisions within the House threaten to derail the Big Beautiful Bill, with Speaker Mike Johnson struggling to overcome resistance by fiscal conservatives. 

Earlier in the day the House appeared ready to hold a test vote, however several conservative Republicans raised objections – suggesting that Johnson might not have the votes to move forward, given that he can only afford a handful of defections on the measure. 

As of midday, at least two Republicans were a hard ‘no’ on the bill in its current form.

Meanwhile Rep. Thomas Massie says he has the votes to block it…

Thomas Massie enthusiastically tells me he has a “vote bloc of 10” Republican members who are NO’s on the Senate’s reconciliation bill.

— Reese Gorman (@reesejgorman) July 2, 2025

President Trump, meanwhile, met with holdouts at the White House as Democrats and Republicans argued over the merits of the bill on the House floor. 

At the end of the day, Johnson has little room for maneuvering – as any changes to the bill would send it back to the Senate for further deliberation that could drag on for weeks. 

Members of the House Freedom Caucus are livid over measures added to the Senate that increases costs. 

“The Senate doesn’t get to be the final say on everything. We’ve got to work this out,” said Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) Wednesday morning, adding that there are enough Republicans “right now” who wanted to reopen the bill and don’t care about the July 4 recess deadline. 

More moderate Republicans objected to Medicaid cuts approved by the Senate that went deeper than the House’s May iteration. 

Stay tuned… and maybe buy a hat or our personal favorite Anza knife?

*  *  *

After months of grinding negotiations, late-night Senate rewrites, and bruising intra-party fights, House Republicans are careening toward a moment of reckoning. Speaker Mike Johnson is pressing ahead this week with a vote on the party’s massive reconciliation package — a cornerstone of President Donald J. Trump’s second-term agenda — but signs of fracture within the Republican conference threaten to derail the plan just hours before the vote.

The legislation, a multi-trillion-dollar tax-and-spending overhaul, is the product of months of backroom dealing between House and Senate Republicans. If passed, it would represent the most significant domestic achievement of Trump’s presidency to date. But GOP leaders now face resistance from both flanks of their party, from hardline conservatives warning of fiscal betrayal, and moderates fearing political blowback over health care cuts.

“We’re working through everybody’s concerns and letting them know this is the best possible product we can produce,” Johnson told reporters Wednesday morning, conceding that he does not yet have the votes to pass even the procedural rule required to begin debate on the bill.

🚨Speaker Johnson this morning acknowledges he doesn’t have the votes to pass the rule yet —

“we’re working on all that right now” he tells @nicholaswu12

“working through everybody’s concerns and letting them know this is the best possible product we can produce.” https://t.co/W4jOpQ2ldF

— Meredith Lee Hill (@meredithllee) July 2, 2025

Deepening Doubts, Tight Timeline

The House is scheduled to reconvene at 9 a.m. today, with leadership aiming to move the legislation before the July 4 recess. But on Tuesday night, Johnson and his team were still scrambling. Members of the GOP whip team expressed alarm over the number of “no” votes on their tally sheets — including from lawmakers they had assumed were in support.

Two conservative members of the Rules Committee, Reps. Chip Roy of Texas and Ralph Norman of South Carolina, voted against advancing the bill Tuesday night, a warning sign of trouble ahead. A procedural vote, initially slated for Wednesday, may be delayed to Thursday due to both political uncertainty and widespread travel delays caused by thunderstorms snarling flights into Washington.

“We have fifty-one-and-a-half million foreign born people in this country,” Roy told Punchbowl News. “You clamp down on illegal immigration, which is what the president is doing, but you need to limit, slash and refocus legal immigration… legal immigration is part of the problem.” 

Even Speaker Johnson admitted during a Fox News appearance Tuesday night that the vote might slip another day.

Hardliners Dig In

A cluster of House Freedom Caucus members are threatening to tank the bill, saying Johnson has abandoned the House’s original budget framework, one that paired $2 trillion in spending cuts with $4.5 trillion in tax cuts. The Senate-passed version, they argue, compromises too much.

Roy wrote on X Tuesady night;

FACT:  The Senate OBBB increases deficits and violates the terms of the budget deal in the House.

FACT: The Senate OBBB guts the strong provisions to terminate the “green new scam” subsidies in the House bill.

FACT: The Senate OBBB removes key provisions we put in the bill to stop illegal aliens from getting Medicaid.

FACT: The Senate OBBB removes key provisions we put in the bill to stop taxpayer funding of transgender surgeries.

FACT: We can amend it, send it back, fix it, & pass both the tax cut extensions AND border provisions we all want to pass.

Happy to stay here every day until we get it right.

Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) said publicly that the bill is unlikely to pass “as is” and expressed agreement with Elon Musk, who labeled the proposal “bad.” Roy, meanwhile, raised alarm over the bill’s deficit projections. Norman has signaled he will vote no on both the rule and the bill itself.

Adding to the drama is a pro-Trump super PAC now running attack ads against Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, a frequent critic of the bill. And Sen. Thom Tillis’ (R-N.C.) unexpected retirement announcement — after opposing the Senate version — sent a ripple of caution through GOP ranks.

Moderates Waver

It’s not just the right causing trouble for Johnson. Several moderates from swing districts are voicing concerns over the bill’s Medicaid cuts and repeal of clean energy tax credits from the Inflation Reduction Act.

Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, who represents a district Trump lost in 2020, is seen as a possible “no” vote due to Medicaid and energy concerns. Rep. David Valadao of California and Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska, both vulnerable members, are also being watched closely. Rep. Greg Murphy (R-NC), the only practicing physician in Congress, has demanded guarantees that the bill’s $50 billion rural hospital fund will benefit struggling institutions like those in his district. “I actually still practice and take care of patients,” Murphy said. “The district that I represent is one of the poorest in the country.”

NC Rep. GREG MURPHY airing big concerns w/ the reconciliation bill this morning:

“I’m having a hard time getting the point where I can support the Senate package”

MURPHY says he needs “real guarantees” on how $50B rural hospital fund will be spent & that money will go to poor…

— Laura Weiss (@LauraEWeiss16) July 2, 2025

Reps. Glenn Grothman and Derrick Van Orden of Wisconsin have also raised alarms over the bill’s impact on rural hospitals. And several newly elected members, including Rob Bresnahan and Ryan Mackenzie of Pennsylvania, have raised similar concerns about Medicaid provisions.

Leadership Strategy: Trump at the Center

With time running short, House Republican leaders, including Johnson, Majority Leader Steve Scalise, and Whip Tom Emmer, are leaning heavily on Trump’s influence to lock in support. The president is scheduled to meet privately today with key GOP factions, including members of the House Freedom Caucus, to try and close the deal, Bloomberg reports. Johnson will remain at the Capitol holding separate meetings with undecided members.

The message from leadership: This may not be the bill Republicans dreamed of, but it’s the only one that can pass. “Despite what House Republicans hoped to see in this bill, this is what they face now. And it’s time to put it up for a vote,” one senior aide said.

As Punchbowl notes further, inside leadership circles, some are questioning whether the rule, let alone the final bill. can be passed. 

Democrats, meanwhile…

House Democrats are unified in opposition and eager to tie the legislation to Republican vulnerabilities in the upcoming midterm elections.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told Punchbowl that the bill would haunt “every single swing-seat Republican” who votes for it. He pointed to steep Medicaid reductions and threats to rural health care access as political liabilities. “The American people do not trust the Republican Party with respect to health care,” Jeffries said. “The whole enterprise is a toxic scheme.”

On Thursday, Jeffries is expected to deliver a roughly one-hour speech on the House floor, a so-called “Magic Minute,” to lay out Democrats’ objections.

The stakes for Johnson and Trump could not be higher.