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

A doctor who was named to a federal advisory panel has decided not to serve, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said on June 24.

“Dr. Michael Ross decided to withdraw from ACIP [Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices] during the financial holdings review required of members before they can start work on the committee,” an HHS spokesperson told news outlets in a statement.

“The sacrifice to serve on ACIP varies from member to member, and we appreciate Dr. Ross’s willingness to go through this rigorous process.”

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. named eight members, including Ross, to the committee earlier in June, after dismissing all 17 members of the panel.

The committee advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on vaccines and is set to meet in Atlanta on June 25 and June 26.

The CDC website listing members does not show Ross as a member of the panel. Ross could not be reached for comment.

Ross, who holds a medical degree, previously worked as a professor at George Washington University and Virginia Commonwealth University, spokespersons for the schools confirmed to The Epoch Times. His résumé also includes time as a member of a CDC panel that offered advice on preventing cancer and research into breast cancer prevention.

Ross is listed as an operating partner at Havencrest Capital Management, a biotechnology company that has invested in companies involved in vaccine development and autism therapy.

Ross’s biography on Havencrest’s website describes him as “a serial CEO and physician leader with over 35 years of executive experience in leading private healthcare and life science companies.”

Kennedy, when announcing Ross as a new member, said that “his continued service on biotech and healthcare boards reflects his commitment to advancing innovation in immunology, reproductive medicine, and public health.”

Kennedy told members of a congressional panel in Washington on Tuesday that the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices was “rife with conflicts at the pharmaceutical companies.” An Epoch Times review found that some of the people removed by Kennedy voted on vaccines despite receiving or recently receiving money from firms that stood to benefit from the votes.

Kennedy also defended his new hires, telling lawmakers that “none of them are anti-vax” and highlighting the experience of the chair, longtime epidemiologist Martin Kulldorff, and a member, Dr. Robert Malone, who helped invent messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA), which is utilized in COVID-19 vaccines made by Pfizer and Moderna.

He added, “We have scientists, immunologists, toxicologists, every kind of medical discipline you would want on that committee.”

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) said earlier in the week that new members hold scientific credentials but that “many do not have significant experience studying microbiology, epidemiology, or immunology.”

“In particular, some lack experience studying new technologies such as mRNA vaccines, and may even have a preconceived bias against them,” he said.

Cassidy, the chairman of the Senate Health Committee, called for this week’s committee meeting to be delayed until more members are named.

Via Remix News,

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is leading an effort to ensure Ukraine, which is currently at war with Russia, does not join the European Union due to the high potential for a conflict that could spread to all of Europe.

In this regard, he is now confronting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky directly on X on the issue.

“President (Zelensky), with all due respect: the European Union was founded to bring peace and prosperity to its member states. Accepting a country that is at war with Russia would immediately drag the EU into a direct conflict. It is unfair to expect any member state to take this risk,” wrote Orbán.

Orbán had responded to a post from Zelensky, in which the Ukrainian leader thanked EU leadership after a meeting, stating that they discussed, among other things, Ukraine’s ascension into the EU.

President, with all due respect: the European Union was founded to bring peace and prosperity to its member states. Accepting a country that is at war with Russia would immediately drag the EU into a direct conflict. It is unfair to expect any member state to take this risk.

— Orbán Viktor (@PM_ViktorOrban) June 24, 2025

Citing his meeting with EU commission President Ursula von der Leyen, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, and European Council President António Costa, Zelensky called out Hungary.

“It is important that the leaders of the member states reach a common decision to open the first negotiation cluster. It is unfair when a single party blocks the Union’s decision. We also discussed in detail additional sanctions against the Russian Federation and the preparation of the EU’s 18th sanctions package.

This package must significantly increase pressure on Russia’s energy and banking sectors, as well as on the shadow fleet.

The key element here must be a strong price cap on Russian oil, and we count on the appropriate decisions. I thank the leaders for their support. Every step of assistance means lives saved,” he wrote.

Zelensky desires an accelerated process to gain EU membership, despite his country being the most corrupt country in Europe — a finding noted even before the war.

The rebuilding of Ukraine is expected to cost hundreds of billions of euros.

Currently, the country has no democracy or free press, as all elections have been suspended during the war.

Perhaps of greatest concern is that even if Ukraine is admitted to the EU during a ceasefire, hostilities could start again, which could drag Europe further into a new war.

Read more here…

By Thomas Kolbe

Bye-Bye Maastricht: Germany’s March into the Debt State

Political failure in a welfare state translates almost immediately into rising social expenditures. Their disproportionate increase shows one thing clearly: Germany is heading for troubled times.

“Budgetary policy is the sovereign right of parliament”—so goes the well-worn phrase when lawmakers gather for their annual budget debate. If that phrase ever held truth, then today the sovereign stands exposed: the king has no clothes.

The draft budget for 2025, finalized today by Germany’s federal cabinet and scheduled for adoption tomorrow, amounts to a fiscal policy capitulation. It foresees €81.8 billion in new net borrowing for the core budget—while an additional €60 billion is parked off the books in a so-called “special fund,” also debt-financed. The total federal budget climbs to approximately €503 billion, an increase of 6.1 percent over the previous year. For 2026, Finance Minister Christian Lindner is already planning a further expansion to €519.5 billion.

The real net borrowing, once this off-book spending is accounted for, reaches 3.2 percent of GDP—exceeding the long-abandoned Maastricht threshold of 3 percent. When even the eurozone’s former poster child no longer adheres to the rules, one thing becomes obvious: they were never worth the paper they were printed on. And the only natural brake on such excess—a free capital market—has long been neutralized by the European Central Bank’s perpetual interventions.

The path is now clear. Or rather: the floodgates are open. Debt-financed stimulus is once again the weapon of choice against recession.

As for Germany’s much-lauded “debt brake”—a constitutional clause requiring balanced budgets—it was always political poetry, never policy. A legal fiction on the verge of collapse, threatening constitutional confidence because no one in Berlin even pretends to honor it anymore.

Expensive Social Glue

If budget policy is about priorities, this one speaks volumes. It serves the dubious function of further expanding Germany’s welfare architecture. In 2025, social spending will rise by 6 percent to a staggering €210 billion. That growth does not merely signal the coalition’s political preferences—it exposes the structural failure of German governance.

Especially noteworthy is the increase in Bürgergeld (citizens’ benefit), which rises by €900 million to a total of €16.2 billion this year. Meanwhile, providing for migrants living in Germany without legal status costs states and municipalities over €10 billion annually. The welfare state has become an unrestrained transfer machine. It no longer acts as a safety net, but rather as an immigration magnet—exerting mounting pressure on German society from within.

War-Readiness Without Limits

Alongside the welfare sector and the ever-growing bureaucracy, Germany’s arms industry can also expect substantial fiscal generosity. The defense budget will rise by 3.5 percent next year—a first step toward NATO’s new 5 percent-of-GDP spending goal for defense and security. By 2029, Germany plans to allocate €152.8 billion to defense. Of that, 3.5 percent will go to traditional armaments, with the rest earmarked for cybersecurity, logistics, and military infrastructure. Naturally, these extra billions will be tucked away in the “special fund”—because Germany now keeps its books like the disreputable cousin of an honorable merchant. The truth is hidden; creditworthiness is merely simulated.

With the establishment of these special funds, Berlin has opened Pandora’s box. Over the next twelve years, it plans to bury €500 billion in spending for infrastructure, digitalization, and the failed green transition within them. This systematic obfuscation of costs—and their inflationary consequences—will increase public debt by at least twelve percent. It’s as if a child had been handed the key to the candy cabinet. The result is the end of any pretense of fiscal discipline.

Trickery, Smoke Screens, and Denial 

German budget policy has become a farce. What we’re witnessing are expertly staged accounting tricks, media distractions, and the desperate attempt to defer structural reform of the welfare state—whatever the cost.

The worn-out German economy will not breathe new life into an equally exhausted state through some unexpected economic miracle. If current trends continue—and all signs suggest they will—German public debt will surpass the 100 percent-of-GDP mark within the next decade.

At that point, there will be no way back from the fiscal trap. It’s only a matter of time before the portion of the bond market not artificially suppressed by the European Central Bank begins to price in Berlin’s fiscal camouflage. The unholy alliance of expansionary fiscal policy and monetary manipulation will keep interest rates under control through bond purchases, but redirect the monetary damage elsewhere.

In the end, this unsound budget policy translates into one thing: inflation. The erosion of purchasing power is knowingly accepted by the political class. It is, in fact, a feature—not a bug—of the redistribution mechanism

Immigration has not delivered the economic benefits long promised in France and may, in fact, be dragging down the country’s economy, according to a report by the Observatory of Immigration and Demography (OID), according to Le Figaro.

Rather than boosting growth, the think tank claims immigration is costing France the equivalent of 3.4 per cent of its GDP due to a significant mismatch between the taxes immigrants contribute and the services they consume.

Le Figaro reports that, according to OID, taxes collected from immigrants cover only 86 per cent of their fiscal cost, creating what it calls a “budget deficit.” This imbalance is largely due to low employment rates among immigrants: only 62.4 per cent of working-age immigrants in France are employed—one of the lowest rates in the European Union, just ahead of Belgium. The French native population, by comparison, has a 69.5 per cent employment rate.

The OID argues that if immigrants were employed at the same rate as native-born citizens, French GDP would be 3.4 per cent higher, and taxable income would rise by 1.5 percentage points.

“Immigration maintains a vicious circle which harms employment and the French economy: it aggravates the structural problems of employment in France, degrades public accounts and indirectly penalizes exposed sectors of the economy,” said Nicolas Pouvreau-Monti, director of the Observatory.

He acknowledged that the public debate often focuses on short-term labour needs in industries like hospitality, construction, and food service, but warned this is a narrow perspective. “The short-term vision prevents us from thinking about the best way to make these professions more attractive for people looking for work,” he said.

Pouvreau-Monti also criticized the system for importing mainly low-skilled workers rather than high-skilled migrants who could drive innovation. He warned that the economic drag created by this model forces the government to raise taxes on businesses, compounding the economic strain.

“In other words, encouraging immigration to avoid shortages in certain sectors in tension amounts to sacrificing the growth of our strategic sectors for the benefit of only a few corporate interests,” he said.

According to the report, a major driver of France’s immigration pattern is family reunification, or chain migration, which prioritizes familial ties over professional skills. As Pouvreau-Monti put it, “finding work is more difficult for an immigrant when professional integration is not at the root of the decision to emigrate to France.”

Worryingly, this economic inactivity appears to extend into the next generation. Drawing on OECD data, OID noted that 24 per cent of young people born in France to immigrant parents were not in employment, education, or training (NEET) during 2020–2021. This was the second-highest NEET rate in Europe and the broader Western world, just behind Belgium.

OID links this trend to rising ethnic self-segregation, arguing that failure to integrate economically is contributing to increased sectarianism in France and Belgium, in contrast to other European nations.

The report adds to growing skepticism across Europe over the idea that mass migration is an economic benefit. Even Britain’s Labour Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer recently stated that the assumption that immigration automatically leads to economic growth has been “tested” and “doesn’t hold.” Starmer added a stark warning: unless migration policy is reevaluated, Britain risks becoming “an island of strangers.”

Via Remix news,

The case of German pensioner Stefan Niehoff became a major international story after police raided his home for calling Robert Habeck an “idiot” while Habeck was serving as Germany’s economy minister at the time. Now that Niehoff has been convicted — for sepearte offenses – it has become clear how far the German media has gone to create the perception that Niehoff is a Nazi to smear his name, when the exact opposite was true all along.

Elon Musk tweeted about the case. The Economist included the incident in a long list of items showing Germany was walking all over free speech, and Niehoff was publicly outspoken over what happened to him.

Niehoff suffered a house raid early in the morning at his home in Burgpreppach, while his disabled daughter was home, all because Habeck filed a complaint against him for Niehoff calling him an “idiot” in an internet post.

🇩🇪🚨German police raided the house of this pensioner, pictured with his daughter Alexandra, for calling Green Economics Minister Robert Habeck an “idiot.”

Habeck personally filed the criminal complaint against Stefan Niehoff.

Welt reports that Habeck has a team of lawyers that… pic.twitter.com/b0zyNe7GCa

— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) November 16, 2024

The case looked exceedingly bad, so the German establishment went into damage control.

Numerous news outlets started publishing articles that the main focus of the investigation against Niehoff — the “idiot” comment — had quietly been sidelined. Now, the courts were focusing on “unconstitutional” symbols that Niehoff shared. In other words, after the Niehoff case blew up in their faces, they needed to find an ad hoc justification after the fact to justify their witch hunt against him.

In Germany, any kind of “unconstitutional symbol” basically means you were sharing swastikas or other symbols associated with the Nazi regime. Most people suddenly thought Niehoff was some kind pro-Nazi activist.

The reality is that he was comparing the left-liberal traffic light government, which was in power at the time, to the era of National Socialism. In other words, he was criticizing the Nazis, not praising them.

🇩🇪 JUST IN: Police raided a German pensioner’s house and arrested him after he retweeted a meme of Green Economy Minister Robert Habeck, which described Habeck as an “idiot,”

The meme has been recorded as a “politically motivated right-wing crime.”

On Tuesday, police officers… pic.twitter.com/BGQLSQVBd8

— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) November 14, 2024

Now that the trial ended last week, it has come to light that these charges were related nearly entirely to retweets — specifically, five retweets and one actual tweet. Given what was actually in those tweets, it is clear that the German media lied through omission, leaving out the exact context of how these tweets were used.

In one case, he retweeted Bavaria’s Green Group leader Katharina Schulze in a Nazi salute with her arm raised upwards. It contained the line: “The Green Empire.”

In another post, he retweeted a photo of Hitler shaking hands with a Church official, which he used to criticize the positions of the church — again, not a post in support of Nazism.

In the end, he was found guilty for four out of six tweets and now has to pay a fine, with the judge’s reasoning that it was not immediately clear he had used the meme of Schulze in a negative manner rather than a “glorifying” manner, according to reporting from Janina Lionello.

Amazingly, the media did not end their misleading headlines with a conviction.

Instead, as German media outlet NIUS reports, major newspapers all ran headlines that largely suggested Niehoff was convicted for sharing pro-Nazi content.

“Pensioner convicted of Hitler salute on the Internet,” wrote Bild newspaper, while FAZ wrote: “64-year-old receives fine for X posts with ‘Hitler salute’.“ The Süddeutsche Zeitung wrote: “Pensioner sentenced to a fine for Hitler salute posts on X.”

Double standard

Following the verdict, free speech advocates, lawyers, and organizations reacted with outrage. Many pointed out that the left routinely uses “unconstitutional symbols” to attack its critics.

“‘Our democracy’ is now also being defended on ‘our internet,’ and the greatest threat to ‘our internet’ are citizens like Stefan Niehoff who criticize the Green Party. This is then ‘use of symbols of unconstitutional organizations’ and costs €825 plus legal costs. While below, you also see the use of symbols of unconstitutional organizations, which is legitimate because it is directed not against the Greens, but against the right. This is how ‘our democracy’ works, and anyone who doesn’t understand that is a Nazi,” Pauline Voss wrote on X.

“Unsere Demokratie” wird jetzt auch in “unserem Internet” verteidigt, und die größte Gefahr für “unser Internet” sind Bürger wie Stefan Niehoff, die die Grünen kritisieren. Das ist dann “Verwendung von Kennzeichen verfassungswidriger Organisationen” und kostet 825 Euro plus… https://t.co/3qDG5WZ3yy pic.twitter.com/y86PpL7FrZ

— Pauline Voss (@Pauline__Voss) June 18, 2025

During the trial, the judge in the case stated: “I realize that our internet is full of this kind of thing, and we can’t control it. The internet is not a lawless space. We will continue to pursue such cases.”

Lawyer Marcus Pretzell responded to the judge by also pointing to the media’s extensive use of swastikas on their magazine covers. “This is an abstract endangerment offense, dear Bamberg Public Prosecutor’s Office. We don’t want this to become normalized! Editorial offices are not a lawless space!”

Es handelt sich um ein abstraktes Gefährdungsdelikt, liebe StA Bamberg.
Wir wollen nicht, dass das normalisiert wird!
Redaktionsräume sind kein rechtsfreier Raum! pic.twitter.com/MuJBH47g2J

— Marcus Pretzell 🥨 🇦🇷 (@MarcusPretzell) June 19, 2025

Other constitutional experts chimed in, noting that the judge’s ruling was a twisted departure from what many expect to be a society founded on free speech and the acceptance of satire.

“Sections 86 and 86a of the German Criminal Code (especially the use of symbols of banned organizations) lead to sometimes grotesque results in criminal law practice, which, in my view, are untenable in a free state. For example, expressions of opinion that are clearly critical or satirical in nature and reveal that the author is distancing themselves from the symbolism by criticizing a current issue are classified as punishable use of Nazi symbolism. It is evident that such convictions violate the fundamental right to freedom of expression. The criminal law norms urgently require revision, specifically one that narrows the scope of criminal liability,” wrote Josef Franz Lindner, who writes on constitutional law.

It is also worth mentioning that Alice Weidel was graphically portrayed with a swastika at a Carnival event. The image of Weidel was circulated across the entire country, all the way from newspapers to the main public news television stations. The organizers behind the float were never charged with “unconstitutional symbols.”

Notably, Niehoff had little power and reach, while these magazine covers and news outlets have infinitely more reach. The court still had to make an example out of Niehoff.

Ultimately, only the tiniest minority of people are actually promoting any kind of Nazi ideology with their political memes, and in Germany, the number of people doing this is almost zero, as it is illegal to openly promote National Socialism or any type of symbol associated with it.

Niehoff is far from the only victim of this double standard, though. During the coronavirus crisis, for example, one American journalist, C.J. Hopkins, learned the hard way that only the left can use these symbols to attack opponents. He was convicted for putting a swastika in a surgical mask on the cover of a book in order to criticize Covid-19 policy. He details his insane journey through Germany’s legal system, which resulted in his conviction despite numerous appeals.

It remains clear that Germany’s establishment will continue to punish political opponents through the courts while turning a blind eye when their opponents are being attacked.

Read more here…

Submitted by Issues & Insights Editorial Board,

For a brief window this week, President Donald Trump was out of the running for a Nobel Peace Prize, after a Ukrainian lawmaker withdrew his nomination on Monday for not ending the war there, and before Rep. Buddy Carter, R-Ga., nominated him on Tuesday for the ceasefire between Israel and Iran.

You can imagine the guffaws and hair-pulling from the Trump-is-Hitler crowd at the thought that anyone would see him as a suitable candidate for this prize.

But as much as we’d love to watch their heads explode as he walked up to accept the award, we think Trump should take himself out of the running.

Sure, he probably did more for world peace when he bombed Iran’s nuclear sites than any president since Ronald Reagan did when he left Michael Gorbachev high and dry at Reykjavík and sparked the end of the Soviet Union.

But why in the world would Trump want to join the ranks of other Nobel Peace Prize winners?

This is an award that was given to Yasser Arafat, a man once described as the “Father of Modern Terrorism” and who, two years after taking home the prize money, declared that:

“We plan to eliminate the State of Israel and establish a purely Palestinian state. We will make life unbearable for Jews by psychological warfare and population explosion … We Palestinians will take over everything.”

It was given to Jimmy Carter, now the second-worst president in U.S. history after Joe Biden, whose weakness led to the Iranian revolution, a year-long hostage crisis, and Soviet Union advances around the world.

And does Trump really want to share an honor bestowed on Al Gore, whose only real claim to fame is getting fabulously rich by spreading lies and misinformation about “global warming”?

He’d also be joining the likes of Rigoberta Menchú, whose autobiography was later attacked as fraudulent and who the Center for the Study of Popular Culture described as a “Marxist terrorist now exposed as an intellectual hoax.”

But more embarrassing than all of these (as well as other dubious winners such as Le Duc Tho, Henry Kissinger, the European Union, Mikhail Gorbachev – not Reagan – etc.) is that Trump would be accepting a prize that was given to Barack Obama nine months into his presidency on the basis of …. absolutely nothing.

Like Carter before him and Biden after him, Obama showed the dangers to peace from weakness. On his watch, Russia invaded Crimea, ISIS ran wild, and Iran used his sweetheart deal to advance its nuclear ambitions. And it was this “champion of peace” who would go on to authorize more than 560 missile attacks in Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen, one of which killed a U.S. citizen, for which he apologized. Others hit a wedding party and a funeral.

Human Rights Watch concluded that two Obama-authorized attacks “were in clear violation of international humanitarian law – the laws of war – because they struck only civilians or used indiscriminate weapons.” Four others “may have violated the laws of war because the individual attacked was not a lawful military target or the attack caused disproportionate civilian harm.”

Nobel-Peace-Prize-winning Obama would later be accused by Cornell West and others of being a war criminal.

Why would anyone want to be associated with this crowd?

If Trump were to turn down the award and call the Nobel Prize committee out for its wretched history of lionizing leftist terrorists, liars, and imbeciles, he’d do even more to advance world peace than any of its recipients.

On Wednesday morning, ground zero of global capitalism woke in a cold sweat from a nightmare that had previously made its way across the world countless times, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake… only to find out it was all too real: Wall Street will soon have a socialist mayor…. or as Trump put it, a “communist lunatic.”

Democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani’s stunning win over former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the New York City Democratic primary for mayor shocked Wall Street, and pretty much everyone else including those Gen Zers who voted for him, who were then shocked to learn what socialism means after googling the term. 

People in New York started Googling what Socialism was after the polls closed

Lol. Lmao even. pic.twitter.com/xqyerSgUhD

— Inverse Cramer (@CramerTracker) June 25, 2025

And with Polymarket putting the socialist’s odds of winning the final vote at 73%, Wall Street’s panic is completely justified.

As the WSJ reports, some of the world’s most influential and powerful financiers were left grasping to understand what Mamdani’s victory would mean for their industry, and whether when they would leave the city.

“It’s officially hot commie summer,” Dan Loeb, chief executive of hedge fund Third Point, and a major Cuomo backer, wrote on X.

It’s officially hot commie summer.

— Daniel S. Loeb (@DanielSLoeb1) June 25, 2025

Mamdani’s campaign was, up until a few weeks ago, a long shot. On Polymarket, which successfully predicted the outcome of the 2024 presidential election, Cuomo had odds as high as 92.5% on May 27. Negative ads against Mamdani paid for by Wall Street-funded super political-action committees, as well as also-ran candidate Whitney Tilson, himself a failed investor and now selling get rich quick scams on CNBC and anyone else who will accept his ads, blanketed airwaves and filled residents’ mailboxes. 

Mamdani’s platform includes sharply increasing taxes on those making more than $1 million a year, making the city “more affordable” by freezing rents on rent-stabilized apartments, investing $70 billion in publicly subsidized housing (that’s $70 billion in other people’s money of course), providing free bus service and opening government-operated grocery stores (similar to the government operated grocery stores in 1985 USSR).

In his inimitable style, Matt Taibbi described Mamdani’s ascent as follows: 

New York City’s mayoral race has been won by Zohran Mamdani, no Bernie Sanders-style imitator but the real thing — son of a famed socialist scholar and Marvel superhero to every Jacobin-reading, keffiyeh-wearing student activist huddled in Judean People’s Front-type confabs, between bell hooks readings and visits to Mom and Dad on the Upper West Side. In this country, it’s the most significant movement victory in a century, almost certainly presaging in the near future an epic clash at the summit of American politics between socialism and, well, anything else. As Michael Buffer would say, “Let’s get ready to rum-m-m-ble.”

As for his policies…

It’s a yummy pu-pu platter of rent freezes, free bus rides, free child care, and subsidized city-owned grocery stores that will “buy and sell at wholesale prices” and “centralize warehousing and distribution,” clamping down on those evil bodega owners and private supermarkets that force overpriced Fritos and soda on the poor. This will be the AOC theory of inflation caused by “price gouging” deployed in life, via a program to reverse ongoing harms of colonialism by liberating humans and non-human food animals from industry-driven food myths that compel us to harm our bodies, and — have you stabbed yourself in the face yet? ¡Viva la revolución!

Meanwhile, Cuomo’s lock on Wall Street was all but taken for granted. He had the loud backing from billionaire figures such as Bill Ackman, Loeb and former Mayor Michael Bloomberg. In the end, it wasn’t enough and on Tuesday night, Mamdani’s win became apparent immediately after polls closed: A nine-point lead in early votes held about steady as the day-of voting results came in. Cuomo conceded before the end of the night, leaving open questions of whether he will run in the general election in November.

But while trust fund socialists like this lot were delighted at the outcome – and why not, when NYC turns into a communist shithole they can just flee to their daddy’s mansion in Florida…

Young socialists go wild while celebrating Zohran Mamdani winning the NYC Mayoral Democratic Primary.

pic.twitter.com/xD7eaE6U5b

— Oli London (@OliLondonTV) June 25, 2025

… Wall Street quickly started to worry: “There are a lot of warning signs flashing here. The next mayor here is going to have his hands full,” said Ed Skyler, a former deputy mayor under Bloomberg, who is now an executive at Citigroup.

Some financial executives spoke to the WSJ of backing Mayor Eric Adams, who is expected to run in November election under party lines he created: “Safe&Affordable” and “EndAntiSemitism.” Financial titans had found Adams an early improvement from his predecessor Bill de Blasio.

Corporate leaders held a flurry of private phone calls to plot how to fight back against Mamdani’s primary victory and discussed backing an outside group with the goal of raising around $20 million to oppose him, according to people familiar with the matter. 

The calls also discussed efforts to coalesce behind Adams and working to keep Cuomo out of the race, the people said. They also discussed trying to get Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa, to drop out by getting the White House to offer him a job in the Trump administration, the people said. 

Not everyone was downbeat about the primary results, though. On CNBC, Philippe Laffont, founder of hedge fund Coatue Management, said the city would likely continue to thrive, arguing that it withstood the tenure of disgraced corrupt socialist de Blasio, who embraced Marxist policies that many in the business community opposed.

“We had Mayor de Blasio for eight years, New York is really strong, I’m hopeful the same will happen,” he said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” “And there’s still an election.”

Still, Mamdani’s wide support exposed how Wall Street has changed in recent decades. There were more individual donors from major banks to Mamdani than there were to Cuomo, according to city campaign-finance records where donors listed their employers. But many of them were among the increasingly large ranks of tech staff and other non-finance employees (read: foreigners). The WSJ found that three Goldman Sachs software engineers were listed as donating directly to Mamdani, for instance (most of them probably from India). Only one financier at Goldman publicly gave directly to Cuomo, according to the records. 

Other bankers who quietly supported Mamdani wouldn’t talk to the Journal on the record. One tried to use a fake name. 

The level of support for Cuomo among the moneyed set was so high that viral TikTok videos skewered the phenomenon in recent weeks, as Election Day neared. “You seem like such an alpha,” a woman says in one video to her fictional date with a finance bro. “So, you’re voting for Cuomo, right?”

Dating in NYC summed up wtf 😒 pic.twitter.com/v3R9937zTk

— Murray Hill Guy (@MurrayHillGuy1) June 25, 2025

But even with high support, Cuomo’s campaign lacked the kind of enthusiasm that rocketed Mamdani to his primary win, even among bankers and traders. “Confidence is a great trait, but it didn’t get his supporters out to vote,” Skyler said.

Wednesday, bankers and traders were trying to figure out the repercussions of a Mamdani mayoralty, should he win the general election. 

Some voiced concern about Mamdani’s plan to freeze the rent of millions of New Yorkers who live in rent stabilized apartments, saying it would deter new investment in housing, reduce supply and push up prices for everyone else. 

“I can’t believe I even need to say this, but socialism doesn’t work,” said Anthony Pompliano, CEO of Professional Capital Management, a bitcoin-focused financial services company. “It has failed in every American city it was tried.”

Then, there were renewed questions about whether the recent exodus from Wall Street to other states such as Florida and Texas would accelerate under Mamdani. Some executives cited concerns about taxes and crime under a potential Mamdani administration. Sander Gerber, chief executive of investment firm Hudson Bay Capital, said he fielded texts from some of his 170 employees who said they were “thinking of leaving.”

Just when you thought Palm Beach real estate couldn’t go any higher… https://t.co/FAUcV2OrYD

— Ron DeSantis (@RonDeSantis) June 23, 2025

In a midday note from Goldman’s trading desk, the bank noted that its NYC Office REITs basket tumbled 430bps amid the “big focus on the back of Mayoral Candidate Zohran Mamdani winning last night. Lot of inbounds on what this potential administration means for NYC exposed REITs, particularly across Office and Apartment REITs with exposure to NYC.”

Some developers and landlords said they are already making plans to exit New York and focus on more business-friendly markets like Miami, Dallas or Nashville.

“I’m depressed and sad,” said Ricky Sandler, who runs Eminence Capital, a Midtown Manhattan hedge fund, which employs 55 people. “If Mamdani becomes mayor, I will likely move my business and family out of New York.”

Last but not least, this tweet from Tyler Winklevoss lays it out best: it’s time to let New York burn.

A lot of people have asked me if I will get involved in the NYC mayor race by supporting a candidate that can defeat Zohran Mamdani. TBH, I’m torn and undecided. Like every other city run by democrats, NYC is a broken kleptocracy. Taxes are astronomical and services are pathetic…

— Tyler Winklevoss (@tyler) June 26, 2025

Authored by José Niño via Headline USA,

According to leaked documents, British and American academics advised the U.S. National Security Council to encourage Ukraine to adopt ISIS-style drone tactics against Russian railways.

In a report published by investigative journalist Kit Klarenberg for The Grayzone on Monday, Project Alchemy, a secret academic-intelligence cell whose mission was “to keep Ukraine fighting” by imposing “strategic dilemmas, costs and frictions upon Russia” was revealed as the network allegedly behind these plans.

The academic recommendations were delivered to Colonel Tim Wright, who served as the Biden administration’s Director for Russia at the National Security Council from August 2021 to July 2022. The proposals came from three key drone experts within a broader Ukraine Working Group composed of “approximately 60 experts hailing from states throughout NATO” who sought to “assist Ukraine’s defense (short of deploying combat forces).”

Zachary Kallenborn from George Mason University’s Schar School advocated for “two-stage attacks like ISIS did frequently” on Russian railways, recommending Ukraine “break the track, and wait for the engineers to come to fix it, then use the drone to kill them.”

An unnamed Durham University researcher identified as “M.E.D.” cited Islamic State’s “innovative” use of drones as documented in a July 2018 West Point paper, suggesting commercial drones could be “modified via a simple drop mechanism… to serve as effective munitions delivery platforms.”

Dominika Kunertova, formerly of ETH Zurich’s Center for Security Studies and currently directing drone warfare research at the Atlantic Council, recommended targeting “anything that uses” railroads as opposed to the infrastructure itself.

These academic blueprints proved prophetic when Ukraine launched Operation Spider Web late last month conducting bold drone attacks inside Russia that killed seven people and injured more than 30, including two children.

The timing proved particularly significant as these attacks took place “on the eve of scheduled negotiations between Russia and Ukraine.”

Ukrainian forces subsequently destroyed a Russian fuel train late last month using a DJI Mavic III drone, one of the specific models Kallenborn had recommended for modification.

The attacks continued through this month with Operation Spiderweb 2.0, demonstrating how the “British-born strategy has heavily influenced the thinking of Kiev’s increasingly desperate military.”