Authored by Omid Malekan,

Co-authored with Frank Cavallo of Motus Capital Management

Crypto treasury companies such as Strategy are all the rage right now. Seemingly not a day goes by without an announcement of yet another public vehicle whose primary purpose is to provide cryptocurrency exposure inside an equity wrapper. While there are benefits to this design, some of these companies lack a unique value proposition and are indistinguishable from each other. Their stocks might not attract a premium during a bear market.

A better approach is to offer a crypto ecosystem company, one that offers comprehensive exposure to the different facets of a specific blockchain by combining operating businesses with targeted and fluid investments. Whereas treasury companies are ultimately little more than crypto market beta, an ecosystem company can provide alpha.

Background

In retrospect, the equity markets and cryptocurrencies were always destined for each other. The stock market is large, liquid, and broadly accessible. Crypto is none of these things, but is an exciting new asset class with greater upside potential. Thus the appeal of putting a long crypto strategy inside a public company wrapper, particularly in markets without cryptocurrency ETFs.

Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) has executed the plan successfully. It currently holds almost 3 percent of all Bitcoin and trades at over 1.5x times the value of its Bitcoin holdings. As the first — and by far largest — Bitcoin treasury company, it has enjoyed a significant first-mover advantage. Its stock is highly liquid, accessible to institutions and retail investors on countless platforms, and now part of the prestigious NASDAQ 100. That liquidity — along with the premium to its NAV — allows it to keep issuing more shares to buy more Bitcoin. Strategy has also pioneered the use of convertible notes to extend its reach (and exposure to Bitcoin) to the debt market.

Compared to owning Bitcoin outright, the benefits of investing in a Bitcoin treasury company include:

• Simplification of dealing with crypto custody, tax treatment, and reporting

• Getting crypto exposure via equity market infrastructure (custodians, prime brokers, etc.)

• Accessibility by a wide range of accounts and investor types (retirement plans, RIAs, etc.)

• Better tax treatment of equities over spot crypto in certain countries

• Access to a more liquid options market than that of spot BTC

• Investment mandate arbitrage via issuance of convertible senior notes

• Monetization of flexible capital stacks for leverage

Many of these advantages are also provided by spot Bitcoin ETFs, with the added benefit of lower fees and cleaner pass-through structures. Others will be eliminated by greater maturation of the spot Bitcoin markets or new laws that eliminate regulatory loopholes.

The most likely driver of Strategy’s premium to NAV is the market perception that friendly debt markets will allow it to keep acquiring more Bitcoin without dilution. But there’s no guarantee debt demand will continue, and it can always reverse to due market saturation or a bear market. The inability to refinance could lead to existing debt holders being repaid via newly issued equity, forcing dilution at the worst possible time.

This is not to say NAV discounts are imminent or argue that companies shouldn’t engage in leverage, but rather to point out that treasury operations alone won’t necessarily command NAV premiums, therefore crypto equities should look to additional value propositions.

A More Sustainable Approach

One way to distinguish a crypto treasury company is to focus on alt coins that don’t have ETFs. Such a stock would be particularly appealing if the underlying asset is one that doesn’t yet have a liquid spot market. If it’s a coin that can be staked, the treasury company could do so to earn yield with minimal counterparty risk.

But simply buying and holding such a coin might not be enough to distinguish a treasury company as more ETFs come online — including ones that stake. Access advantages diminish as overall access grows.

A more lasting strategy is to turn the treasury company into an ecosystem play, one that represents an all-inclusive bet on an entire blockchain and whatever yield opportunities it presents, now and in the future.

Ecosystem companies can be deployed for any coin, even Bitcoin. They can offer a more comprehensive and diversified exposure to a platform and handle the operational complexity of deploying capital on a new chain. The larger surface area of activity also allows managers to distinguish themselves from competitors who focus on the same ecosystem.

Other advantages of being an ecosystem company include:

• Running operating businesses dedicated to a single chain, such as running validators, offering delegated staking, and launching an L2

• Going beyond simple staking to utilize liquid staking and restaking

• Participating in DeFi and yield farming opportunities

• Using leverage to increase returns on DeFi/yield farming

• Getting preferential treatment from protocol development teams

• Venture investing in new dApps building in that ecosystem

• Providing a one-stop shop for access to the totality of opportunities revolving around a native coin.

• Giving investors the ability to seamlessly move capital from being totally invested in one ecosystem to another, without delay or complexity and at minimum cost.

Ecosystem companies are designed to maximize the benefits of permissionless financial structures where capital can flow seamlessly from one yield-generating opportunity to another. There are countless opportunities on smart contract platforms like Ethereum and Solana, and more will emerge in the years to come.

The equity markets might find this feature of crypto uniquely appealing, given the lack of a TradFi equivalent. But capitalizing on this fluidity — and managing the risks — requires expertise and constant attention, especially for newer chains. Those who execute the strategy effectively can smooth out the inevitable market cycles.

There are diminishing returns to levering up pure treasury companies, and there is no guarantee of being able to raise debt and equity, particularly in difficult markets. Also, tax and access moats are unlikely to persist.

However, ecosystem development companies have features that offer something more valuable (and sustainable) than simple price exposure or leverage. They offer ecosystem convexity. Done right, that is a service the market would be justified to pay a premium for.

Authored by David Thunder via The Brownstone Institute,

I propose that we accompany physical detox with a verbal detox: we need to purge our bloated vocabulary of several concepts that are poisoning our understanding of ourselves and the world.

These concepts have been elaborated by people who would describe themselves as “self-aware,” “progressive,” and “liberated,” but they are actually terms more fit for a society of slaves than a society of free persons. Indeed, these concepts, at least as they are typically employed by “progressives,” could be described, without exaggeration, as a species of slavespeak. By this, I simply mean that they are used disingenuously, to rationalise political oppression and slavery.

Let’s name them and shame them, one by one:

1. Misinformation/disinformation: On its face, this means false or misleading information that could be harmful to citizens. But in slavespeak, while it parades under this apparently innocent meaning, it actually means information that some individuals find disagreeable or inconvenient, and therefore want censored or banished from the public square.

2. Far right: On its face, this means political positions that border on the insane, the pathological, and the irrational, and have violent and oppressive tendencies, with affinities to Nazism, white supremacism, and other dodgy political movements. In slavespeak, “far right” retains these connotations, but the term is applied arbitrarily to any position that disrupts the official narrative of the political Establishment.

3. Xenophobia: Xenophobia usually means blanket dislike or prejudice against foreigners. But in slavespeak, xenophobia is applied to anyone who affirms the value of national ties or national identity, defends the idea that immigrants should adapt to the their host culture, or dissents from open border policies.

4. Hate speech: On its face, this means speech that targets particular groups in society with vitriolic language and insults of various sorts, seeking to portray such groups as intrinsically detestable. In slavespeak, hate speech just means any strongly worded discourse that dares to speak critically of any protected cohort of society or its behaviour or opinions. So heated political discourse is treated as insidious hate speech, especially discourse that threatens the reigning ideology.

5. Tolerance: On its face, this means a disposition to peacefully put up with people, behaviour, or opinions one finds abhorrent or offensive. In slavespeak, tolerance means the uncritical celebration of every conceivable lifestyle under the sun, the anaesthesisation of one’s critical faculties. So verbally expressing disapproval or criticism toward a way of life, which used to be permitted by freedom of expression, is now condemned as intolerance.

6. Safe online experience: On its face, this means an internet that is protected from pornography, extreme violence, and child abuse. In slavespeak, it means an internet that is purged of political commentary that might disrupt officially sanctioned narratives.

7. Health equity: On its face, this means a health system that expands people’s access to opportunities to improve their health. In slavespeak, it parades publicly under this innocent interpretation, but really means extending a web of bio-surveillance and coercive vaccination across an ever widening web of nations.

8. Digital inclusion: On its face, this means allowing an ever greater number of citizens access to empowering digital technologies. In slavespeak, it carries this meaning for the undiscerning public, but in reality, it means the consolidation of an international web of digital censorship and financial control, copperfastened by a government-controlled “digital identity wallet.”

9. Environmental sustainability: On its face, this means achieving a stable, positive relationship between nature and human civilisation. In slavespeak, it parades under this innocent banner, but really it means demonising economic production and industrialisation, and putting the purity of “nature” and the minimisation of carbon output ahead of any possible gains that could come from modern agriculture, industry, or travel by air or by car.

10. Transphobia: On its face, this means hatred of individuals who suffer from some form of confusion about their gender or sexual identity. But in slavespeak, transphobia attributes hateful motives to anyone who believes in the social relevance of biology or rejects the idea that gender dysphoria or confusion about sexual identity should be uncritically reaffirmed and reinforced legally and socially.

11. Conspiracy theorist: The natural interpretation of this term is someone who builds far-fetched connections between events in an attempt to prove implausible conspiracies to advance nefarious secret agendas. But in slavespeak, “conspiracy theorist” refers to anyone who actually makes a plausible, evidence-based case that powerful actors are cooperating to advance harmful projects at the public’s expense. So people who suggest Big Pharma and government cooperated to impose a coercive vaccination programme on the public – an undeniable fact – would be dismissed as “conspiracy theorists.”

Republished from the author’s Substack

Authored by Adrian Zmudzinski via CoinTelegraph.com,

Bitcoin miner BitMine Immersion Technologies has secured a $250 million private placement to jumpstart its Ether treasury.

BitMine signed a private placement for the purchase and sale of 55,555,556 shares of common stock for $4.50 per share, yielding gross proceeds of approximately $250 million before expenses, the company said in a Monday announcement.

MOZAYYX led the raise, with participation from Founders Fund, Pantera, FalconX, Republic Digital, Kraken, Galaxy Digital, DCG, Diametric Capital, Occam Crest Management and Thomas Lee.

The transaction is expected to close on Thursday, provided that conditions, including the authorization of the Supplemental Listing Application by the NYSE American, are met.

Thomas Lee, chairman of BitMine, said that stablecoins are “the ‘ChatGPT’ of crypto” and that he expects Ether to appreciate thanks to their adoption.

“Ethereum is the blockchain where the majority of stablecoin payments are transacted […] and thus, ETH should benefit from this growth,” he said.

🟣 JUST IN: Tom Lee says Ethereum could be the next Bitcoin. 🚀#Crypto #Ethereum pic.twitter.com/cF80INljgu

— Narendra Singh (@Narendra24x7) June 30, 2025

Corporate Ethereum treasuries are on the rise

BitMine’s announcement follows a series of recent moves by publicly traded firms to establish ETH-focused treasuries.

A couple of weeks ago, sports betting platform SharpLink Gaming acquired 176,271 Ether for $463 million. This made the firm the world’s largest publicly traded holder of ETH.

The announcement followed SharpLink’s launch of its Ether treasury in late May. The firm also nominated Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin as chairman of its board of directors.

With this announcement, BitMine, with its Bitcoin-themed logo, is at least partially pivoting to Ethereum. Until this month, the firm’s treasury strategy focused on accumulating Bitcoin.

BitMine website’s homepage. Source: BitMine

“BitMine is a Bitcoin and Ethereum Network Company with a focus on the accumulation of Crypto for long-term investment,” the company’s description in the announcement reads. BitcoinTreasuries.NET data indicates that BitMine currently holds 154 BTC worth roughly $17 million and is the 62nd largest corporate Bitcoin treasury.

BitMine is not alone in making the pivot. Last week, shares in Bit Digital fell by nearly 4% after the crypto mining firm announced it would wind down or sell its Bitcoin mining infrastructure and use the proceeds to buy more Ether. Shares then fell almost 19% over five days — with a 15% drop in 24 hours — soon thereafter.

“MAKE THE DEAL IN GAZA. GET THE HOSTAGES BACK!!!” President Trump wrote on social media early Sunday, pivoting from a month dominated by large-scale Iran strikes to seeking more peace and stability in the long-running Israel-Palestine conflict.

Naturally, the Palestinian side remains doubtful that any real progress will be made, given especially that the Netanyahu government has repeatedly refused to steer away from its primary war aims in the Gaza Strip of utterly destroying Hamas, and ensuring it can never come back to lead.

Ron Dermer, a senior adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is expected to travel to Washington this week for discussions on a possible ceasefire, also amid reports that the Israeli leader himself will soon be hosted in the White House. 

President Trump was quoted in The Washington Post last Friday as saying, “I just spoke with some of the people involved. It’s a terrible situation that’s going on in Gaza … We think within the next week we’re going to get a ceasefire.”

Following this, Netanyahu held a secretive meeting with his security Cabinet on Sunday as pressure builds to re-enter negotiations with Hamas.

“They promised to stop the war if the hostages were released,” one Palestinian resident, Abdel Hadi Al-Hour, was quoted in The Associated Press as saying. “But the war never stopped.”

Ceasefire negotiations have not gotten anywhere largely over the question of whether a truce should bring an end to the war entirely. This is as Hamas insists on a full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza in exchange for the release of all hostages; however, Israel has consistently demanded that all Hamas militants disarm and leave the Strip completely.

These are non-starters for both sides at this point, even if their respective populations put pressure on leadership to achieve a deal which would bring relief from war.

Israeli warplanes have continued pounding various areas of Gaza, including more Monday airstrikes on Gaza City. Al Jazeera details the latest as follows:

• Israel has launched dozens of air strikes across Gaza with northern Gaza City in its crosshairs after the military issued forced evacuation threats, raising fears of an intensified ground assault.
• Israeli forces killed at least 80 Palestinians in Gaza since dawn with dozens wounded including in an attack on Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir el-Balah.
• Israel’s opposition leader Yair Lapid urged an end to the war, saying there was “no longer any benefit” for Israel to continue.
• Egypt’s foreign minister says his country is working on a new Gaza deal that includes a 60-day ceasefire in exchange for the release of some Israeli captives.

Palestinian sources have said that over 56,000 Gazans have been killed since the war began, with an additional more than 133,000 wounded. 

And the Israeli side has tallied some 1,139 people were killed in Israel during the October 7 attacks, with more than 200 taken captive after that. Possibly less than 20 living hostages remain, based on prior indications given by Israeli sources.

Authored by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,

On June 25th, the Federal Reserve quietly announced a significant change to the Supplementary Leverage Ratio (SLR). While the headlines were muted, the implications for the U.S. Treasury market were anything but.

For sophisticated investors, this technical shift marks a subtle but powerful pivot in monetary mechanics. It could create demand for Treasuries, improve market liquidity, and push yields lower at a time when the economy is slowing. As shown in the Economic Output Composite Index (EOCI), which comprises nearly 100 data points, recent reports suggest the economy is weaker than headlines imply. The same is confirmed by the 6-month rate of change in the Leading Economic Index, which remains in contractionary territory.

Historically, such readings have coincided with economic recessions. However, this has not been the case since 2022 due to the massive amounts of monetary stimulus that have kept the economy growing. That support is quickly fading, potentially putting the major banks at risk, which brings us to the SLR.

Understanding the SLR and Why It Matters

The Supplementary Leverage Ratio was initially implemented as a post-GFC (Global Financial Crisis) safeguard. The idea was simple: limit the amount of leverage banks could take on by tying it to their capital base, regardless of the riskiness of the assets. That meant a Treasury bond and a junk loan were treated equally for leverage purposes. Unsurprisingly, the rule disincentivized the major Wall Street banks from holding low-risk assets like U.S. Treasuries, particularly in periods of balance sheet stress, in exchange for debts with higher yields.

In a welcome reversal, the Fed announced on June 25th that it, the FDIC, and the OCC are easing that constraint by recalibrating the SLR to reflect a more nuanced risk-based approach. Specifically, the new rule adjusts the enhanced SLR (eSLR) add-on to 50% of the Method 1 Global Systemically Important Bank (G-SIB) surcharge, harmonizing it more closely with international standards. This reduces the leverage burden across the largest U.S. banks and opens up substantial balance sheet capacity.

What does this mean in practice? According to Goldman Sachs’ Richard Ramsden, the proposed changes could unlock between $5.5 and $7.2 trillion in bank balance sheet capacity.

To put that number into perspective, the increase in balance sheet capacity for the banks is equivalent to roughly 25% of GDP.

Unsurprisingly, the Federal Reserve’s member banks, JP Morgan, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Citigroup, stand to benefit the most. Most importantly, this opens the door for increased repo financing and direct Treasury purchases, particularly during periods of market dislocation.

While repo and Treasury investments offer modest returns, their low-risk nature makes them ideal candidates for bolstering liquidity and meeting capital requirements. Banks can pivot toward these safer assets in an environment where credit spreads are tight and loan demand remains uncertain without incurring regulatory penalties.

SLR Implications for the Treasury Market

So, what does the SLR have to do with the bond market? We discussed this recently in our Daily Market Commentary when this rule change was first mentioned. To wit:

“Yes, I believe we will. I have, for a long time, like others, been somewhat concerned about the levels of liquidity in the Treasury market. The amount of Treasuries has grown much faster than the intermediation capacity has grown, and one obvious thing to do is to lower, is to reduce the effective supplementary leverage ratio, the bindingness of it. So that’s something I do expect we will return to and work on with our new colleagues at the other agencies, and get done.” – Fed Chairman, Jerome Powell.

Following the 2020 COVID pandemic, bonds have been in a bear market as yields have risen with inflationary pressures and increased Fed funds rates. That yield rise was also compounded by increased Treasury debt issuance in recent years to fund the massive stimulus and spending programs during the Biden Administration. However, the largest Wall Street banks have been reluctant to step in due to regulatory capital constraints. That reluctance keeps yields higher, particularly at the long end of the curve.

With the SLR reform, banks can deploy excess capital into Treasuries without running afoul of leverage rules. This newfound demand could absorb a meaningful portion of net new issuance. The result? A downward pressure on yields, particularly during market volatility when banks typically pull back. In effect, this reform could smooth Treasury market functioning and reduce the risk of another episode like the September 2019 repo blow-up or the March 2020 liquidity crisis.

Furthermore, another underappreciated impact of the SLR change is its effect on the Total Loss Absorbing Capital (TLAC) and Long-Term Debt (LTD) requirements. These rules, intended to ensure that large banks can be wound down in an orderly fashion, also tie into leverage ratios.

Under the new proposal, TLAC and LTD requirements would be reduced by ~5% and ~16% respectively, freeing up roughly $95 billion in wholesale debt across the five largest U.S. banks. In a rising rate environment, that’s not just regulatory relief—it’s a cost-saving measure. Lower funding costs will flow through to margins, providing yet another reason for banks to reallocate capital into U.S. Treasuries and repo financing.

Portfolio Strategy: What Investors Should Do Now

From a portfolio management perspective, this shift is another reminder that the regulatory structure matters as much as monetary policy.

While most investors focus on the Fed’s interest rate decisions, regulatory plumbing like the SLR plays a significant role in shaping asset flows, risk preferences, and liquidity conditions. With banks now likely to increase Treasury holdings, investors should prepare for downward pressure on long-term yields, especially during risk-off periods when the bid for safety intensifies.

The substantial short position against US Treasury bonds could amplify the downward pressure if an event forces a rapid unwind. As we discussed previously:

“Short positions in TLT, the popular 20-year US Treasury Bond ETF, have spiked to over 130 million shares, up from 107 million last month. TLT has 541 million shares outstanding. Consequently, the short interest has risen from 20% to 24% of the float. Furthermore, TLT’s days to cover ratio (short position/average trading volume) is nearly 3.5 days. As the graph below shows, that is far and away the most prominent short position in the ETF in at least the last 15 years.”

This doesn’t necessarily guarantee a bond rally, but it significantly tilts the risk-reward back in favor of duration, particularly in high-quality fixed income. For equity markets, lower long-term yields are a mixed bag. Lower yields are historically bullish for growth stocks, UNLESS yields are dropping rapidly due to slowing economic momentum or recession risk.

Portfolio construction should always remain anchored in risk management, and the risk of being short Treasury bonds is clearly on the rise.

Bottom Line

The Fed’s proposed SLR reforms are not just regulatory housekeeping—they’re a targeted effort to shore up the financial plumbing of the Treasury and repo markets. The Fed is engineering a quiet but meaningful boost to Treasury demand by giving banks more flexibility to hold safe assets.

For investors, that means better liquidity, lower yields, and perhaps a more stable financial system, as long as the unintended consequences stay in check.

As we’ve said before, the devil is always in the details. And sometimes, those details make all the difference.

Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times,

The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has overturned a lower court ruling that had prevented the Trump administration from restructuring the leadership at the Institute of Peace (USIP), according to a June 27 order.

The issue stems from a Feb. 19 executive order from President Donald Trump declaring USIP “unnecessary” and calling for its activities to be “eliminated to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law.”

USIP was set up by Congress as an independent nonprofit corporation, received federal and private funding, and was tasked with promoting peace via diplomacy and education. USIP’s board of directors is made up of 15 members, three of whom are “ex officio”—they hold their seats due to their positions in the federal government. The remaining 12 are appointed members of the board, designated by the president, and confirmed by the Senate.

On March 14, Trent Morse of the White House Presidential Personnel Office terminated all appointed members. The same day, the three ex officio members signed a resolution removing the board’s president.

On March 17, the Department of Government Efficiency took over USIP headquarters. The administration eventually fired most of the USIP staff and canceled all of its programs. Later, the General Services Administration took control of USIP headquarters.

The next day, USIP and several of its terminated board members sued the government over the firings.

On May 19, District Judge Beryl Howell blocked the federal administration from restructuring USIP, replacing the organization’s leadership, and assuming control of the agency’s office building.

Later that week, Howell rejected the administration’s request for a stay, upholding her decision. The matter then went to the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

However, on June 27, the appeals court sided with the administration, lifting the district court judge’s blockade.

Plaintiffs in the case had argued their terminations were unlawful and that all federal government actions taken after their removal were invalid, according to the appeals court order.

Plaintiffs argued that USIP was a fully independent entity and not part of the government, or at least the executive branch, and that board members can only be removed by the president under limited circumstances, such as for felony or malfeasance in office.

The federal government argued that USIP was a part of the executive branch as it carried out diplomatic functions, thus entitling the president to fire its board members.

The appeals court ruled the president has the authority to remove executive officers “at will.” And since USIP exercises “substantial executive power,” the government is likely to succeed on its claims that protecting the board against removal by the president is unconstitutional, it said.

USIP has engaged in “extensive activities within the domain of the President’s foreign affairs powers,” the appeals court said.

For instance, USIP has taken part in peace deals involving Israel and the Palestinians and fielded requests from the Philippine government to facilitate a cease-fire with a rebel group, according to the court. The institute also “shapes foreign affairs in the interest of the United States through the exercise of soft power,” it said.

“The President’s inability to control the Institute’s exercise of these ‘significant executive power[s]’ undermines his ability to set and pursue his foreign policy objectives,” the court said, adding that the president is the “sole organ of the federal government in the field of international relations.”

“The President faces irreparable harm from not being able to fully exercise his executive powers,” the appeals court ruled. “That harm outweighs any harm the removed board members may face.”

Courts Backing Trump

In its order, the appeals court cited a ruling made by the U.S. Supreme Court last month in a similar case.

In the case, a district court had blocked the Trump administration from removing a member of the National Labor Relations Board and another member from the Merit Systems Protection Board, according to the May 22 ruling from the Supreme Court.

The plaintiffs said the president was “prohibited by statute from removing these officers except for cause, and no qualifying cause was given,” it said.

However, the Supreme Court lifted the district court blockade, writing that “because the Constitution vests the executive power in the President, he may remove without cause executive officers who exercise that power on his behalf.”

Meanwhile, the Trump administration secured a critical legal victory on Friday after the Supreme Court issued a ruling restricting federal judges from imposing nationwide injunctions against the federal government’s executive policies.

Trump praised the decision in comments during a press conference at the White House.

“This morning, the Supreme Court has delivered a monumental victory for the Constitution, separation of powers, and the rule of law,” he said.

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

The end is nigh.

That seems to be the message this week from the three liberal justices at the Supreme Court when faced with the nightmarish prospect of parents being able to remove their young children from mandatory classes on gay, lesbian and transgender material.

The decision in Mahmoud v. Taylor was a roaring victory for parents in public schools. The Montgomery County, Md. school system fought to require the reading of 13 “LGBTQ+-inclusive” texts in the English and Language Arts curriculum for kids from pre-K through 12th grade. That covers children just 5-11 years old.

The children are required to read or listen to stories like “Prince & Knight” about two male knights who marry each other, and “Love Violet” about two young girls falling in love. Another, “Born Ready: The True Story of a Boy Named Penelope,” discusses a biological girl who begins a transition to being a boy.

Teachers were informed that this was mandatory reading, which must be assigned, and that families would not be allowed to opt out. The guidelines for teachers made clear that students had to be corrected if they expressed errant or opposing views of gender. If a child questions how someone born a boy could become a girl, teachers were encouraged to correct the child and declare, “That comment is hurtful!”

Even if a student merely asks, “What’s transgender?,” teachers are expected to say, “When we’re born, people make a guess about our gender and label us ‘boy’ or ‘girl’ based on our body parts. Sometimes they’re right and sometimes they’re wrong.”

Teachers were specifically told to “[d]isrupt” thinking or values opposing transgender views.

Many families sought to opt out of these lessons. The school allows for such opt-outs for a variety of reasons, but the Board ruled out withdrawals for these lessons. Ironically, it noted that so many families were upset and objecting that it would be burdensome to allow so many kids to withdraw.

The Montgomery County school system is one of the most diverse in the nation. And Christian, Muslim, and other families objected to the mandatory program as undermining their religious and moral values.

The majority on the Supreme Court ruled that, as with other opt-outs, Montgomery County must allow parents to withdraw their children from these lessons. The response from liberal groups was outrage. Liberal sites declared “another victory for right-wing culture warriors,” even though the public overwhelmingly supported these parents.

However, the most overwrought language came not from liberal advocates but liberal justices.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor declared that there “will be chaos for this nation’s public schools” and both education and children will “suffer” if parents are allowed to opt their children out of these lessons. She also worried about the “chilling effect” of the ruling, which would make schools more hesitant to offer such classes in the future. It was a particularly curious concern, since parents would like teachers to focus more on core subjects and show greater restraint in pursuing social agendas.

The majority pushed back against “the deliberately blinkered view” of the three liberal justices on dismissing the objections of so many families to these lessons. Nevertheless, even though such material was only recently added and made mandatory, the liberal justices declared that “the damage to America’s public education system will be profound” and “threatens the very essence of public education.”

The truth is that this decision could actually save public education in the U.S.

Previously, during oral argument, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson had shocked many when she dismissed the objections of parents, stating that they could simply remove their children from public schools. It was a callous response to many families who do not have the means to pay for private or parochial schools.

Yet, it is a view previously expressed by many Democratic politicians and school officials. State Rep. Lee Snodgrass (D-Wis.) once insisted: “If parents want to ‘have a say’ in their child’s education, they should homeschool or pay for private school tuition out of their family budget.”

Iowa school board member Rachel Wall said: “The purpose of a public ed is to not teach kids what the parents want. It is to teach them what society needs them to know. The client is not the parent, but the community.”

These parents still harbor the apparently misguided notion that these remain their children.

Today, many are indeed following Jackson’s advice and leaving public schools. The opposition of public-sector unions and many Democratic politicians to school vouchers is precisely because families are fleeing the failing public school systems. Once they are no longer captive to the system, they opt for private schools that offer a greater focus on basic educational subjects and less emphasis on social activism.

Our public schools are imploding. Some are lowering standards to achieve “equity” and graduating students without proficiency skills. Families are objecting to the priority given to political and social agendas to make their kids better people when they lack math, science, and other skills needed to compete in an increasingly competitive marketplace.

This decision may well save public schools from themselves by encouraging a return to core educational priorities.

It may offer some cover for more moderate school officials to push back against such demands for mandatory readings to young children.

What the majority calls “the deliberately blinkered view” of the dissent could just as well describe the delusional position of public school boards and unions. Schools are facing rising debt and severe declines in enrollment, yet unions in states like Illinois are demanding even more staff increases and larger expenditures.

The liberal justices are right about one thing: This is a fight over “the essence of public education.” However, it is the parents, not the educators (or these justices) who are trying to restore public education to meet the demands for a diverse nation.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University and the best-selling author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”

The Senate version of President Trump’s Big, Beautiful Bill (BBB) will add nearly $3.3 trillion to US deficits over a decade, according to the latest estimate from the Congressional Budget Office, half a trillion more than the $2.8 trillion in deficit expansion under the House version of the same bill.

The CBO score for the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill reflects a $4.5 trillion decrease in revenues (i.e. tax cuts relative to the pre-TCJA baseline) and a $1.2 trillion decrease in spending through 2034, relative to a current law baseline. 

The Senate bill, by Republican request, was also scored as saving $508 billion over a decade relative to a current policy baseline. The party’s lawmakers have sought to use the accounting maneuver to permanently extend President Donald Trump’s 2017 income-tax cuts, and score them as costing nothing.

While this approach is expected to pass, it effectively dooms the US to debt collapse as every subsequent administration will use the same tactic from now on and pretend that trillions in incremental spending every 4 years are really just an extension of the baseline. Meanwhile, the US is set to hit $40 trillion in debt in less than 2 years.

What does this mean? It means that Senate Republicans slapped a price tag on their tax package that is nearly 90% lower than the version that recently passed the House. They didn’t bring the price down by changing the policies in the One Big Beautiful Bill. Instead, the Senate simply changed the way they did the math.

Senate Republicans are using a new method to estimate the costs of their tax package that ignores the price of continuing any tax policy in effect when the bill is passed. That method of accounting, called the “current policy” baseline, lets the Senate advertise President Donald Trump’s tax package at one-tenth of its impact on the nation’s finances as estimated by Congress’s usual way of counting costs. If the costs were estimated in the traditional way, the Senate’s proposed tax package would add $4.2 trillion to the national debt, according to preliminary estimates from the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

“This would be the biggest and maybe most economically costly gimmick in American history,” said Marc Goldwein, vice president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, in a post on X.

As a result, Senate Republicans have moved forward with a plan to mask the $3.8 trillion cost of extending expiring tax cuts.  GOP senators voted Monday in favor of the plan to count the extension of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts as costing nothing, over objections from Democrats and despite concerns raised by economists about the US debt trajectory. 

Republicans argue that using this accounting method, known as “current policy,” would allow them to include more tax cuts in Trump’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill.”

The cost of extending Trump’s first-term tax cuts, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation, totals $3.8 trillion. The other tax provisions in the bill cost nearly $693 billion, and only that smaller figure is considered in the official price tag for the bill.

Use of the current policy baseline is unprecedented for the reconciliation process the Republicans are using to approve the massive legislation with a simple majority. The cost of a bill is normally measured according to what effect it would have on the federal budget under current law. But the Republicans want to revise the process by assuming that current policies remain in place indefinitely. 

The reason for this accounting gimmickry is that the bill’s staggering cost – which ends up adding substantially to the deficit instead of cutting it as some had expected as recently as weeks ago – has been a big problem for fiscal conservatives. It has faced several obstacles in the Senate as lawmakers have demanded conflicting changes. Then a number of spending cuts included in the package were changed as they did not comply with Senate rules for the reconciliation process. 

Democrats and some economists argue that use of the current policy baseline allows GOP lawmakers to circumvent rules that would otherwise limit the bill’s fiscal effects. That, they say, imperils the nation’s fiscal trajectory although with the US already facing guaranteed debt collapse, may as well go full throttle. 

“Republicans can use whatever budgetary gimmicks they want to try and make the math work on paper,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Sunday. “But you can’t paper over the real life consequences of adding tens of trillions to the debt.”

As noted above, the cost of the Senate bill is higher than the CBO’s $2.8 trillion projected cost of the version passed by the House last month, which also accounts for economic effects and higher interest rates spurred by larger debt loads.

As Bloomberg notes, the legislation encompasses much of Trump’s economic agenda: in addition to the 2017 tax break extension, effectively making it permanent, it would make make various spending cuts to safety net programs, including Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or food stamps.

The Senate version made three business tax breaks permanent, limits deductions on new tax breaks on workers’ tips and overtime and includes changes to some of the Medicaid provisions.

House and Senate Republicans have also reached a deal to alter the cap on federal deductions for state and local taxes. That limit will remain at the $40,000 limit set in the House bill, but it will be limited to a five-year period, rather than 10 years.

Of course there is a simple way to keep track of how much is being spent by the US government, and that’s simply to add up US federal government spending, using operating cash withdrawals from the Treasury’s cash balance as proxy. It hardly needs to be explained. 

All accounting gimicks aside, at the end of the day just one number matters, and it’s pretty clear: the House version of the BBB seeks to add $4 trillion to the debt ceiling, pushing it to $40 trillion. The Senate version: $5 trillion. 

In retrospect, Andrew Yang’s take that the Big Beautiful Bill should be called the BBB Act because that’s what the US Credit Rating will be in a few years, will end up being optimistic.

The Big Beautiful Bill should be called the BBB Act because that’s what the US Credit Rating will be in a few years.

— Andrew Yang🧢⬆️🇺🇸 (@AndrewYang) June 4, 2025

By Benjamin Picton, Senior Macro Strategist at Rabobank

US equities closed higher on Friday, the Dollar fell and Treasuries bull-steepened as markets extended the risk rally sparked by the Israel-Iran ceasefire. The NASDAQ and S&P500 both reset record highs. The latter is now up almost 5% for the year after being flat YTD as recently as the final week of May. Equity futures point higher again today on anticipation that this week could see Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill clear Congress, and trade deals concluded with India and Japan.

It’s not all good news though. Last week’s third read of US Q1 GDP saw growth revised down from an already bad -0.2% to -0.5%. The negative print is largely courtesy of surging imports as firms sought to front-run tariffs, but the latest downgrade is mostly due to a lower read for growth in consumer spending. That was revised down from 1.2% to 0.5% for the quarter on softer services spending.

Meanwhile, the GDP price index and core PCE price index were both revised one-tick higher to 3.8% and 3.5% respectively and May core PCE figures released later in the week posted a slight upside surprise to print at 0.2% MoM and 2.7% YoY, despite consumer spending recording a 0.3% monthly decline. Earlier in the week the Conference Board’s consumer confidence index fell from 98.4 to 93, new home sales and building permits underperformed expectations and the advance goods trade deficit for May widened to $96.6bn.

There were some bright spots in last week’s data – May durable goods orders rose 16.4% and weekly jobless claims were lower than expected – but the overall impression is of an economy losing steam. Donald Trump is happy to lay the blame for this at the feet of “stupid” and “too slow” Fed Chair Powell, who he says has done a lousy job by not cutting the Fed Funds rate to somewhere between 1-2%.

As noted in this Daily last week, Trump has said that he is “very close” to announcing a successor for Powell. The only problem with that is that Powell still has 11 months left to run as Fed Chair, so announcing a successor now would effectively allow Trump to armchair quarterback monetary policy decisions as Trump himself has said that he won’t appoint anyone who isn’t totally onboard with cutting the Fed Funds rate. For a President who revels in slaying the sacred cows of neoliberal economics, central bank independence looks like an easy target.

Trump is often accused of a lack of interest in details, but it surely wouldn’t have escaped his notice that the Congressional Budget Office just said that the Senate-approved version of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act will add $3.3trn to cumulative US deficits over the next 10 years. That’s from a starting point with debt to GDP already in excess of 120% and the fiscal deficit sitting close to a peacetime record. Andrew Yang facetiously Tweeted earlier this month that the bill “should be called the BBB Act because that’s what the US Credit Rating will be in a few years.”

The Big Beautiful Bill should be called the BBB Act because that’s what the US Credit Rating will be in a few years.

— Andrew Yang🧢⬆️🇺🇸 (@AndrewYang) June 4, 2025

With an economy starting to slide and financing pressures everywhere you look, it’s really no wonder that Trump is so keen to bring interest rates under executive control. Sniffing the wind, Martin Sandbu warns in the Financial Times to “get ready to embark on a new era of financial repression.” Private capital for state aims (whether you like it or not!) is a theme we have been pointing to for some time as a logical extension of the fact that the math ain’t mathin’ on policy ambition vs fiscal headroom. At least not under neoclassical assumptions of budget constraints, inflation targets and independent central banking.

You can see examples of creeping financial repression everywhere, whether it be the prevalence of negative real rates, bank liquidity rules creating a forced bid for government debt, a possible Mar-a-Lago Accord to devalue the Dollar and hold borrowing costs low, ex-Chancellor Jeremy Hunt pushing British pension funds to invest in private equity, or Aussie Treasurer Chalmers pushing pension funds to invest in housing, renewable energy and infrastructure. China, as Sandbu points out, has adopted financial repression as policy for years.

Globalized capital markets is an article of faith on Wall Street, but with Trump remaking international trade and international relations in a more nationalist and more realist image, does anyone really believe that free movement of international capital will escape the zeitgeist? Does Mark Carney believe that after Trump just abandoned trade talks with Canada over the latter’s imposition of a digital services tax (now rescinded)? Will Pedro Sanchez believe it as Spain is threatened with double tariffs over its recalcitrance in meeting NATO defense spending targets? Spare a thought for Australia, who is imposing non-tariff barriers on US tech AND refusing to play ball on defence spending while simultaneously crossing fingers and toes that the US will honor a Biden-era commitment to sell the Aussies scarce nuclear submarines.

For a vibe check on how quickly things can change you need only look to the Middle East, where the unique capabilities of US power (and the willingness to use those capabilities) have just been demonstrated. This has left Iran’s Axis of Resistance in tatters, Israel confirmed as a regional power, Syria set to join the Abraham Accords, China and Russia taking another strategic L in West Asia, and oil continuing to be priced in Dollars.

So, while financial repression seems inevitable and we might ordinarily be tempted to get short the US Dollar because of it, or because TACO, it might be worth considering whether it makes sense to be short US B-2 bombers and carrier strike groups, and whether the appropriate acronym for the Dollar might actually be TINA.