Former President Barack Obama is doubling down on his push to curb free speech in America, urging the federal government to tighten its grip on what citizens can say online. 

“We want diversity of opinion. We don’t want diversity of facts,” claimed during an interview this week with historian and author Heather Cox Richardson. “That, I think, is one of the big tasks of social media.”

Obama then flat out called for government regulation of social media platforms to curb the amplification of of what he described as “hateful” and “polarizing” public figures, while respecting First Amendment rights, claiming that censorship is essential to addressing business models that purportedly erode public trust.

“By the way, it will require some government, I believe, some government regulatory constraints around some of these business models in a way that’s consistent with the First Amendment, but that also says, look, there is a difference between these platforms letting all voices be heard versus a business model that elevates the most hateful voices or the most polarizing voices or the most dangerous, in the sense of inciting violence, voices,” the president said. “And that, I think, is going to be a big challenge for all of us that we’re going to have to undertake.”

Obama then went on to bizarrely compare Russian President Vladimir Putin to former Trump White House aide Steve Bannon, claiming that there common goal is not to convince people of a specific truth but to overwhelm them with so much misinformation—”flood the zone with poop”—that they become cynical and stop believing in anything.

“You have to flood the zone with so much untruth, constantly, that at some point people don’t believe anything,” Obama said. “So it doesn’t matter if a candidate running for office just is constantly, just hypothetically, saying untrue things, or if an elected president claims that he won when he lost and that the system was rigged, but then when he wins, then it isn’t rigged, because he won. It doesn’t matter if everybody believes it. It just matters if everybody starts kind of throwing up their hands and saying, well, I guess it doesn’t matter.”

“That’s what’s happened in one of our major political parties. You have a whole bunch of people who know that’s not true, but we will pretend like it is,” the president added.
Obama first called for censorship during a high-profile speech at Stanford University in 2022—where the now-defunct Stanford Internet Observatory’s Election Integrity Partnership operated—arguing that misinformation poses a threat to democracy. Obama called for a reassessment of Section 230, a 1996 provision within the Communications Decency Act that generally protects online platforms from liability for user-posted content.

Obama told attendees, “These platforms are not like the old phone company.” The president further noted, “In some cases, industry standards may replace or substitute for regulation, but regulation has to be part of the answer.”

President Donald Trump has taken the opposite approach to Obama by emphasizing free speech in his second term, issuing a January executive order to safeguard Americans’ right to express themselves.

In April, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the closure of the Global Engagement Center, a State Department unit infamous for its role in suppressing Americans’ free speech.

In a Federalist op-ed, Rubio referenced a 2020 GEC report that labeled speculation about COVID-19’s origins, including a Wuhan lab theory, as part of a “Russian disinformation” campaign.

Rubio wrote, “Finally, as we recommit this country to its core constitutional free speech principles at home, we will remain vigilant abroad — not just against threats from adversaries such as Communist China but also from less expected countries where authoritarian censorship is gradually strangling true freedom of speech. We are not afraid. At her birth, America was a lone beacon of freedom to the world. If necessary, we will happily be that lone beacon once again.”

Authored by Larry Kudlow via RealClearPolitics.com,

The super big story is the Israel-Iran war, as we await President Trump’s decision on additional American assistance to Israel.

There’s another war, though.

As Breitbart’s John Carney put it, the Federal Reserve has gone to war against tariffs.

Unlike the Middle East, this is a phony war.

The Fed stubbornly refuses to lower its target rate, because it has decided that Mr. Trump’s tariffs will increase inflation.

So I ask, what exactly is your model of tariff inflation? Because so far, with a 10 percent baseline tariff in recent months, inflation rates have come down, not gone up.

Since January, the Consumer Price Index has eased down to only 1.4 percent annually, below the Fed’s 2 percent target.

So tariff inflation has been missing in action. Yet the Fed chairman, Jay Powell, does not refer to this.

Mr. Powell himself is not an economist. He’s essentially a bureaucrat being driven by several hundred economists on the Federal Reserve Board staff.

Again, though, we don’t know what their model is.

The whole Fed right now is guilty of groupthink.

And Mr. Trump has homed in on that problem by saying that the Fed board is complicit with the mistakes of Mr. Powell.

Groupthink is a bureaucratic disease.

All these Fed announcements have 12 to nothing votes.

So where are the Trump appointees? Where is the new vice chairwoman for supervision, Michelle Bowman? Where is the former Notre Dame economics professor, Christopher Waller?

Where is some diversity of thought and why aren’t these board members questioning Mr. Powell’s slippery and uninformed anecdotes of his new tariff war on inflation?

Fed policy is completely opaque and non-transparent.

We have no idea how they arrive at their conclusions.

So, here’s a thought: During Mr. Trump’s first term, he put on a number of tariffs. During the China trade talks, he implemented  a 25 percent tariff on China.  

Additionally, he put 25 percent tariffs on steel and aluminum, 30 percent tariffs on solar panels, and 20 percent on washing machines.

And yet the inflation rate during those years was basically 2 percent or even less. You can’t generate an economic model based simply on one variable.

The Trump tax cuts in the first term increased incentives on business investment and production, creating more goods on the supply-side, more productivity as well, and all of that helped keep inflation down while the economy was growing.

In fact, five-year productivity for nonfinancial companies is increasing at a 2.6 percent rate — which is spawning growth without inflation.

The Republican Congress is about to pass a tax cut bill that will include permanent immediate cash expensing for machinery, equipment, and factories.

That kind of long-lived capital deepening will spur much more growth without any inflation, according to a recent academic study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Now, I ask, has the Fed included that in its economic models?

We don’t know. It’s not saying.

It’s just clinging to this idea that Trump tariffs, which are actually aimed at lowering trade barriers and leveling the trade playing field, and opening up market access for American companies — all of which could actually reduce inflationary pressures by spurring even more supply-side growth.

And of course, Mr. Trump’s ambitious deregulation policy, another counter-inflationary move.

Yet Mr. Powell never talks about any of these tax and regulatory reforms.

Instead at his press conference this week, he blathered on saying “increases in tariffs this year are likely to push up prices and weigh on economic activity” and then he adds that “everyone I know is forecasting a meaningful increase on prices from tariffs because someone has to pay.” Huh?

I know a bunch of people who think exporters will pay.

I know other people who think our companies will pay.

In fact I know a whole bunch of people who don’t think tariffs can be inflationary because the money supply has dropped to only 4 percent growth from 30 percent.

Or even if a consumer has to pay more for one item, they’ll pay less for another item, leaving the price index flat.

So, I go back to Mr. Powell and the whole Fed groupthink. Somebody should tell him that he’s in charge of monetary policy, not trade policy. He has no idea about future trade deals or for that matter tariff rates. 

And somebody should tell him to please explain to the American public what the heck he’s doing to their mortgage rates and their credit cards and their car loans.

A primary nuclear facility in Iran’s Isfahan province was targeted by an Israeli airstrike, though local authorities have reported no radiation leaks.

Smoke was visible early Saturday morning near a mountainous area in Isfahan city following overnight Israeli strikes on the site, which activated the country’s air defense systems, amid continued tit-for-tat strikes between the Islamic Republic and Israel.

This is the second Israeli aerial attack on Isfahan, and as the Trump White House has vowed to not let Iran get a nuclear weapon.

“Within the compound, a centrifuge production facility was also targeted, along with additional military targets of the Iranian regime in the Isfahan area,” the IDF said Saturday morning.

“This is what the nuclear facility in Isfahan looks like, which is used to convert uranium, which is the stage that follows the enrichment stage on the way to producing nuclear weapons,” said Israeli Army spokesman Avichay Adraee in an online post.

“The air force struck the central facility along with buildings used to produce centrifuges. We continue to strike the Iranian nuclear project,” the statement said.

According to more: 

Iran’s Fars news agency reported that there was no leakage of hazardous materials from the Isfahan site following the latest strikes.

Meanwhile, four primed ballistic missile launchers were “neutralized” in strikes before a salvo was launched at Israel, the military said.

One UN-affiliated war monitor has alleged the following:

Israel illegally, criminally, and deliberately attacked a nuclear facility in Isfahan, Iran, creating this way the risk of a nuclear catastrophe with mass civilian casualties.

This is not just a violation of international law, it is terrorism. pic.twitter.com/SzKnAUciq8

— Mohamad Safa (@mhdksafa) June 21, 2025

Below is The Wall Street Journal on the significance of the Isfahan site:

The Israeli military has now hit several of Iran’s centrifuge production sites, including at Isfahan, Tehran and Karaj. While this represents a blow to Iran’s centrifuge production, questions remain over its uranium stockpile.

Iran’s large stockpile of enriched uranium was held in or around Isfahan. Safeguarding that stockpile, which has enough highly enriched uranium for around 10 nuclear weapons, would be crucial for any Iranian attempt to rush toward building a bomb. Tehran hinted last month it might disperse that material, which is held in barrels sealed by the International Atomic Energy Agency and regularly inspected. It isn’t known if Iran did so.

And here is Financial Times on Saturday after the Isfahan strike:

The Israeli military said on Saturday that it had launched an overnight assault involving 50 warplanes, with some targeting two centrifuge production facilities at Isfahan.

However, the crown jewel of the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program, a sprawling uranium enrichment facility built deep under a mountain in Fordow, remains out of reach of Israel’s conventional weapons.

Q: Your intelligence community says they have no evidence that Iran is building a nuke

TRUMP: Then my intelligence community is wrong. Who said that?

Q: You director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard

TRUMP: She’s wrong pic.twitter.com/RI9Jzouagh

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 20, 2025

There are also emerging Saturday reports that Iran has killed another Iranian nuclear scientist:

As Israeli jets struck military targets, high-ranking officers and nuclear-related facilities in Iran during the opening salvo of Operation Rising Lion, there was another extremely high-stakes clandestine mission taking place. Code-named Operation Narnia, Israeli operatives reportedly used a “secret weapon” to simultaneously kill nine of Iran’s top nuclear scientists as they slept in their beds, according to Israel’s N12 news outlet. It was the latest move in Israel’s long-time effort to blunt Iranian nuclear ambitions by killing off the people capable of advancing the program.

Officials declined to say what this special weapon, “which remains under censorship and has not been disclosed publicly,” was, the Times of Israel explained. The War Zone cannot verify these claims. However, as we have previously reported, Israel hit residences of high-value individuals with smaller munitions and Mossad used drones and anti-tank guided missiles inside Iran (more on those later) on the first night of its attack. These targeted assassinations continue today, although not in the same volume seen during the opening acts of the war. It remains possible that some of these systems were used in the assassination of the scientists.

After testifying before the Senate weeks ago that Iran is not actively pursuing a nuclear bomb, Gabbard has since said US intelligence showed Iran is “at the point that it can produce a nuclear weapon within weeks to months.”

Meanwhile, the head of the leading intergovernmental watchdog for nuclear energy and atomic weapons, IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi, has said that it is possible that there are operations being kept secret from nuclear monitors.

The IDF releases footage showing the aftermath of its airstrikes on Iran’s Isfahan nuclear facility.

A first strike on Ishafan on June 13 destroyed several critical sections, including uranium conversion infrastructure and labs, according to the IDF.

Strikes overnight were… pic.twitter.com/pJ3J5H5FkP

— Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian (@manniefabian) June 21, 2025

But at the same time, the United States’ own intelligence community has indicated the Islamic Republic is not seeking a nuke. The BBC reports in response to some of DNI Tulsi Gabbard’s latest comments:

Disagreement has been building within Trump’s “America First” movement over whether the US should enter the conflict.

On Saturday morning, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said his country was “absolutely ready for a negotiated solution” on their nuclear programme but that Iran “cannot go through negotiations with the US when our people are under bombardment.”

“President Trump has been clear that can’t happen, and I agree,” she added in a new public statement. Trump has said he will make a decision on striking Iran within ‘two weeks’ – but there remain many variables, no the least of which has been a perceived public rift between DNI Gabbard and the White House.

Authored by Ken Silva vi Headline USA,

The man accused of shooting two Minnesota lawmakers and their spouses reportedly wrote in a letter to the FBI that Gov. Tim Walz also wanted him to assassinate Sen. Amy Klobuchar, according to a bombshell report from the Minnesota Star Tribune. A Walz did not deny the allegation when commenting on the report.

Citing two people familiar with letter’s contents, the Star Tribune reported Friday that Boelter claimed “Gov. Tim Walz instructed him to kill U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar so that Walz could run for the U.S. Senate.”

Boelter does have a loose link to Walz, who ran for Vice President last year on Kamala Harris’s ticket. Boelter was appointed to the workforce development board by then-Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton in 2016 and then reappointed in 2019 by Walz to a four-year term that expired in 2023.

MINNESOTA MAN: According to dicuments found in the Tim Walz-appointed assassin’s car, Vance Boelter was secretly trained by the military and instructed by Tim Walz himself to assassinate Rep. Amy Klobuchar so Walz could claim her Senate seat. pic.twitter.com/R6r8D26Jt2

— @amuse (@amuse) June 21, 2025

However, the Star Tribune reported that Boelter’s letter reflected the ramblings of a mentally ill man, downplaying the likelihood that what he says about Walz is true.

“The letter is the clearest evidence yet of Boelter’s mindset after the targeted violence against Minnesota politicians last week. It is incoherent, one and a half pages long, confusing and hard to read, according to two people familiar with the letter’s contents,” the newspaper reported. “It includes Boelter alleging he had been trained by the U.S. military off the books, and that Walz, who is not running for Senate, had asked him to kill Klobuchar and others.”

Hennepin County Attorney spokesperson Daniel Borgertpoepping reportedly responded to the letter, saying that “due to the seriousness of the allegations it contains, we will state only that we have seen no evidence that the allegations regarding Governor Walz are based in fact.”

Instead of denying the allegation, a Walz spokesman reportedly gave a rambling non-answer.

“This tragedy continues to be deeply disturbing for all Minnesotans,” said the spokesperson, Teddy Tschann

“Governor Walz is grateful to law enforcement who apprehended the shooter, and he’s grateful to the prosecutors who will ensure justice is swiftly served,” Tschann said.

I’m no PR expert, but if someone accused me of conspiring to assassinate a sitting Senator — and if that accusation was going wildly viral — I would actually DENY THE ACCUSATION instead of issuing a BS non-response. pic.twitter.com/z9Dza6N34G

— Ken Silva (@JD_Cashless) June 21, 2025

However, the Star Tribune reported that Boelter’s letter reflected the ramblings of a mentally ill man, downplaying the likelihood that what he says about Walz is true.

“The letter is the clearest evidence yet of Boelter’s mindset after the targeted violence against Minnesota politicians last week. It is incoherent, one and a half pages long, confusing and hard to read, according to two people familiar with the letter’s contents,” the newspaper reported. “It includes Boelter alleging he had been trained by the U.S. military off the books, and that Walz, who is not running for Senate, had asked him to kill Klobuchar and others.”

Hennepin County Attorney spokesperson Daniel Borgertpoepping reportedly responded to the letter, saying that “due to the seriousness of the allegations it contains, we will state only that we have seen no evidence that the allegations regarding Governor Walz are based in fact.”

Instead of denying the allegation, a Walz spokesman reportedly gave a rambling non-answer.

“This tragedy continues to be deeply disturbing for all Minnesotans,” said the spokesperson, Teddy Tschann

“Governor Walz is grateful to law enforcement who apprehended the shooter, and he’s grateful to the prosecutors who will ensure justice is swiftly served,” Tschann said.

🚨Tracking Connections to MN Assassin
We geofenced Boelter’s family farm and found a unique device. We followed that device for the last 3 years – located in places like Africa, Nepal, and Washington, DC.

We are releasing our data to the public in the interest of transparency. pic.twitter.com/B5d6VWCX9c

— Oversight Project (@ItsYourGov) June 17, 2025

Boelter is accused of killing former House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, in their Brooklyn Park home last Saturday, before travelling to also shoot and injure Sen. John Hoffman, also a Democrat, and his wife, Yvette, at their Champlin address about nine miles away. Police responded to reports of gunfire at the Hoffmans’ home shortly after 2 a.m., Champlin police said, and found the lawmaker and his wife, Yvette, with multiple gunshot wounds.

Boelter remained on the lam for over the next 24 hours before he crawled to officers in surrender Sunday after they located him in the woods near his home.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Ken Silva is the editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/jd_cashless.

As the Israel–Iran conflict enters Day 9, President Trump has publicly stated he will wait two weeks before deciding whether to authorize U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear infrastructure. In parallel, U.S. Air Force B-2 Spirit stealth bombers are being repositioned to forward operating bases in the Indo-Pacific—possibly Andersen Air Force Base in Guam or Diego Garcia in the Chagos Archipelago—indicating a deliberate show of force and strategic signaling of U.S. readiness for multi-theater operations.

Fox News confirmed six B-2 stealth bombers have taken off from Whiteman AFB in Missouri and are likely to be staged at Andersen AFB in Guam.

🚨BREAKING: 6 U.S. B2 stealth bombers appear headed towards Guam

— Fox News (@FoxNews) June 21, 2025

Plus air tankers. 

BREAKING: U.S. Air Force B-2 stealth bombers appear to have taken off from their base in Missouri. These are the exact aircraft needed to hit the heavily fortified Iranian Fordow Nuclear Site.

Eight tankers are in flight, headed the same direction, refueling the B-2 bombers… pic.twitter.com/an8Z2xlKJJ

— Hunterbrook (@hntrbrkmedia) June 21, 2025

There is no official confirmation regarding the current force posture or final destination of the stealth bombers. For months, the USAF has staged these nuclear-capable bombers at Diego Garcia (in range of Iran)—often referred to as America’s “unsinkable aircraft carrier“—located between Africa and Indonesia, approximately 1,000 miles south of India.

“President Donald Trump, who has said he will make a decision on U.S. involvement in the Israel-Iran conflict, is expected to return to the White House on Saturday afternoon. The president is expected to receive intelligence briefings with the National Security Council on Saturday and Sunday as he considers possible actions against Iran,” Fox News noted. 

The island provides strategic access for stealth bombers to the Middle East, Central and South Asia, and across the Indian Ocean.

Previous staging of B-2s at Diego Garcia:

• Stealth Bombers Reportedly Deploying To America’s “Unsinkable Carrier”

• Satellite Imagery Confirms Stealth Bomber Buildup At America’s “Unsinkable Carrier”

• If Everything Is Going To Be Okay, Why Are The U.S. & The EU Feverishly Preparing For World War III?

Staging B-2s at Guam or Diego Garcia is a clear signal of deterrence to adversaries, whether that’s Iran in the Middle East or China and North Korea in Asia. The mere presence of these stealth bombers can be both preemptive and psychological. 

More force posture: This week, the USAF has repositioned additional fighter aircraft and aerial refueling tankers across key regional bases in Europe, coinciding with Israel’s Operation Rising Lion targeting Iranian assets. The moves come amid growing speculation that President Trump may authorize direct U.S. military involvement within the next two weeks unless Tehran makes a deal with the U.S.

Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Epoch Times,

When the transgender issue presented itself decades ago, most people felt a sense of politeness and deference to the preferences of another person, however surprising or odd. It all seemed rather harmless, the habits of eccentrics for whom Western society offers remarkable tolerance.

Sure, people might have felt private revulsion and even disgust, viewing this as a strange form of playing dress-up—maybe like Corporal Max Klinger on M*A*S*H—but publicly hardly anyone would have defended cruelty or invidious discrimination.

All of this is true as regards adults.

But of course the movement did not stop there. It sought to force everyone to go along with affirmative approval and full credulity.

Everyone was expected to suppress all doubts. When it became a quasi-crime to “misgender” someone, we really reached the point of absurdity.

The application of the civil-right paradigm to the denial of core biological realities, ones that relate directly to the survival of the species, became too much.

Then the movement went straight for the kids and young adults. This strongly suggested to many, including me, that there was more roiling beneath the surface. Our tolerance was being abused.

Beneath the cross-dressing exterior, there was an agenda, a political one, maybe worse, likely to be forced on people against all tradition and biological evidence of the existence of embedded differences between the sexes that extend far beyond genitalia. (This speaks to the weirdest feature of the trans ideology: its single-minded focus on gender cosmetics to the exclusion of every other pervasive difference.)

Here is where the debate became contentious. It has forced people to go into corners and come out fighting. It’s not a fight that any nonpolitical person particularly wanted but when the trans movement started denying biology and forcing men into women’s sports, even attempting to blot out the intrinsic core of such things as women and men, it really became too much. You have to draw the line.

Thus have states weighed in with legislation.

Tennessee passed a law against “gender-affirming care” for children, including pharmaceuticals and surgeries, following the crazed fashion for pretending to change the sexual identity of underage kids. The law is sadly necessary given the way things are unfolding in our time but some people objected. They took the case to the courts, claiming that transgender people of any age deserve special protection under the 14th Amendment.

It’s hard to imagine what kind of world would have been born had they prevailed. Kids could have been medicated in unimaginable ways and contrary to parents’ wishes, all blessed by the Constitution and forced on the voters of every state.

Fortunately, the plaintiffs did not prevail.

In the important decision United States v. Skrmetti, the majority opinion is a brilliant defense of common sense and Constitutional law. The dissenting opinion by the three usual suspects on the court (Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson) included preposterous citations of the American Academy of Pediatrics, American Medical Association, American Psychiatric Association, American Psychological Association, and American Academy of Child Adolescent Psychiatry, all of which are trying to normalize the unscientific and preposterous idea that a person can change one’s sex with hormones and operations.

Ah yes, the experts speak again! We’ve been there and done that.

The experts told us that climate change is an existential threat.

They told us that we all had to hide under our sofas from a virus and let the peasants deliver groceries to us.

And now the experts are telling us that the best way to deal with adolescent gender dysphoria is with drugs and surgery.

Just a few days ago, I heard an interview with a famous “expert” on vaccines repeatedly refer to “pregnant people” as if getting pregnant had nothing to do with biological sex. This is a guy who seeks the mantle of science in creating and recommending shots for the kids!

Sadly, the courts have been overly deferential to the experts inhabiting the realm of science, as if science has a firm, fixed, and universal point of view on all matters. That is emphatically untrue. People can squawk about “settled scientific consensus” all they want but science is a process of discovery, always subject to falsification and hence the necessity of debate. Law deals with something different: settled principles on how we must treat each other and what the state should do about it.

This is where Justice Clarence Thomas offers a much-needed corrective in his opinion concurring with the majority.

“There are several problems with appealing and deferring to the authority of the expert class. First, so-called experts have no license to countermand the ‘wisdom, fairness, or logic of legislative choices.’

“Second, contrary to the representations of the United States and the private plaintiffs, there is no medical consensus on how best to treat gender dysphoria in children.

“Third, notwithstanding the alleged experts’ view that young children can provide informed consent to irreversible sex-transition treatments, whether such consent is possible is a question of medical ethics that States must decide for themselves.

“Fourth, there are particularly good reasons to question the expert class here, as recent revelations suggest that leading voices in this area have relied on questionable evidence, and have allowed ideology to influence their medical guidance.

“Taken together, this case serves as a useful reminder that the American people and their representatives are entitled to disagree with those who hold themselves out as experts, and that courts may not ‘sit as a super-legislature to weigh the wisdom of legislation.’ By correctly concluding that SB1 warrants the ‘paradigm of judicial restraint,’ the Court reserves to the people of Tennessee the right to decide for themselves. The views of self-proclaimed experts do not ‘shed light on the meaning of the Constitution.’ Thus, whether ‘major medical organizations’ agree with the result of Tennessee’s democratic process is irrelevant.”

Finally: “This case carries a simple lesson: In politically contentious debates over matters shrouded in scientific uncertainty, courts should not assume that self-described experts are correct.”

There we go: The opinion of major medical organizations in this case is irrelevant.

This opinion is a breath of fresh air, and one can only hope that such thinking pervades all of American jurisprudence. It will solve so much. We could get away from the intimidation of the judiciary by science, real or fake. Vaccine mandates, for example, rely entirely on the pushes of compromised medical experts who work directly with industry. That is no basis of law.

It’s the same in the area of climate change or transgender issues. No expert should be permitted to override the reality of biological sex.

This decision comes as a major relief to many Americans who have had it up to here with the claims of this movement, which have tested the patience, liberality, and tolerance of the American people. At some point, it all became too much. When men in costume are beating up women in boxing or winning top awards in track and field and clobbering women in volleyball, or crashing the restrooms in public spaces, a civilized people has to speak up.

Fortunately in this case, the law has been decided correctly. There will be no abolition of eccentricity and some people will forever be confused about issues of identity and so on. This is no argument for cruelty and invidious attacks. What we need is simple common sense and deference to reality. It’s the least we can ask from the law governing a free and civilized people.

The United Nations has warned that the Iran-Israel war could trigger a new refugee crisis in the Middle East, saying that if things keep escalating and people flea, there is no quick way back to their home countries.

UNHCR, the UN’s refugee agency, says ratcheting tit-for-tat attacks are already triggering population movements in both countries, and that this could easily slide into a worse crisis.

Iran has already seen many of its citizens cross into other countries, at a moment much of Tehran’s streets have remained largely empty on fear of Israeli warplanes, which have control of skies over Western Iran.

And Iranian ballistic and hypersonic missile attacks on Israel have caused people to seek a way out of the country, whether air, sea, or land borders.

“This region has already endured more than its share of war, loss and displacement. We cannot allow another refugee crisis to take root,” says Filippo Grandi, the UN high commissioner for refugees, in a statement issued Saturday.

“The time to de-escalate is right now. Once people are forced to flee, there’s no quick way back — and all too often, the consequences last for generations,” Grandi added.

According to more from the newly published UN statement:

As highlighted in our Global Trends 2024 Report last week, Iran is the largest refugee-hosting country in the world with some 3.5 million refugees, mainly from Afghanistan. If the conflict persists, existing refugee populations would also face renewed uncertainty and yet more hardship.

UNHCR is present in Iran, Israel and many neighboring countries, and is arranging emergency humanitarian relief supplies in different locations, readying a response in case needed.

This fact of such a large Afghan refugee population inside Iran is cause for deep concern, amid fears that the 2015 European crisis could be repeated.

At that time, the Syria proxy war was at its height of death and destruction, and the Libyan government had a few years prior been overthrown. Still, US and European officials don’t tend to do much self-reflecting on how their regime change policies in the Middle East have largely created wave after wave of refugees inbound for Europe.

Images showing bumper-to-bumper traffic out of Tehran has widely circulated this week:

The leaders of Iran didn’t listen to Trump, but the people of Tehran are. Bumper to bumper traffic of people leaving. pic.twitter.com/pXbnT0SBmw

— Paratrooper Brady™ (@ParatooperBrady) June 17, 2025

The Economist says that to some extent, it’s already happening:

Thousands of terrified people are fleeing Tehran and other cities that are under attack, turning them into ghost towns. With airports closed, the only exits are by road. Social-media posts show vast traffic jams. Neighboring countries are considering how they might respond if the outflow of people spills across Iran’s borders. Many remember the crisis caused by Syria’s civil war, which saw 6m refugees leave. So far the exodus from Iran has been tiny, but that could change.

Large movements of people are currently focused on seeking at Iran’s northern border:

Many of those fleeing Tehran are heading north, to the less urbanized areas near the Caspian Sea, some 100km away. Even that journey is arduous. The roads are clogged and petrol is scarce, reflecting panic buying and, perhaps, Israeli strikes on oil facilities. Mobile signals are no longer reliable. One person outside the country says it has taken his family inside it more than 12 hours, instead of the normal four, to get to the mountainous Gilian area by the coast. He says that as they drove they saw “artillery in the sky and fires in the background”. Their plan is to stay in the country. “They do not want to leave Iran, it is home for them.”

Should the Israel-Iran conflict worsen, the war could spread to Iraq – where militias aligned to Tehran are predominate. They’ve warned that if the US gets involved, American forces at regional bases could come under retaliatory attack.

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

Corporate / private equity / STVR investors are all fair-weather owners of housing.

Let’s indulge in some basic logic:

1. All credit-asset bubbles burst.

2. U.S. housing is a credit-asset bubble.

3. The U.S. housing bubble will burst.

The only variables are how and when Housing Bubble #2 will burst. That’s today’s topic.

I’ve been writing about housing since 2005, as Housing Bubble #1 was inflating. I’ve participated in / observed housing rising sharply in the late 1970s and the late 1980s, followed by deflation / stagnation. Housing Bubble #1–circa 2003-2008–was characterized by all the classic signs of a mania:

1. Participants denied it was a bubble. When greed displaces prudence, this isn’t a bubble doomed to pop, it’s the New Normal.

2. Fraud, malfeasance, misrepresentation, speculation and leverage were all rampant. In the euphoric ascent to ever higher valuations, why let foolish little things like income, risk management and credit ratings stand in the way of reaping more profits?

Housing Bubble #2 has rolled over into the decline phase, but this is discounted by the consensus which holds that higher mortgage rates dented the market; once they drop a bit, housing will resume its ascent to ever-higher valuations.

I see a different set of dynamics in play:

1. The 40+ year cycle of interest rates / bond yields has turned. Rates will not go back to zero and stay flatlined for years. Risk and inflationary forces have changed and are not returning to The Great Moderation.

2. The Federal Reserve / federal government effectively nationalized the mortgage industry post-2009 Global Financial Meltdown as the means to stop the decline of housing valuations and re-inflate them via super-low mortgage rates. The Fed bought a staggering $1.2 trillion of mortgage-backed securities in 2009-2010, up from zero–a monumental manipulation of the mortgage market that soon exceeded $1.6 trillion.

How the housing/mortgage market managed to survive without Fed nationalization prior to 2009 remains a mystery.

For its part, the federal government effectively nationalized the quasi-governmental mortgage agencies (Fannie Mae, Freddy Mac), using these agencies to guarantee most mortgages in the U.S.

3. The incentive (lower mortgage rates) to commit fraud by claiming to be an owner-occupant rather than an investor has pushed mortgage fraud to levels that Federal Reserve researchers declare “rampant.” Owner-Occupancy Fraud and Mortgage Performance (A 46-page PDF report is available on this link.)

The study’s authors found that “in most years, fraudulent investors make up roughly one-third of the total pool of investors.” Fraud rates in excess of 13% were found in some states states.

The frenzy to buy and convert houses to short-term vacation rentals (STVRs) took off in the post-pandemic “revenge travel” boom. Corporate purchases of houses as rental properties had taken off in the post-2009 era of mass foreclosures, a trend that accelerated as private equity sought new markets to exploit.

Combine corporate / private-equity buyers with small investors flooding into STVRs and the post-pandemic panic-buying frenzy, and it’s little wonder that investors–declared and fraudulent, large and small–now own huge swaths of housing in the U.S.:

Investors Bought 26% of the Country’s Most Affordable Homes in the Fourth Quarter–the Highest Share on Record

An estimated 26% of Fort Worth’s single family homes are owned by companies, city says

(Yes, family trusts and households can own housing as LLCs, but the study linked above paid no attention to the type of ownership; it paid attention to A) if the owners have multiple first liens, and B) whether they moved following the origination of their new purchase mortgage or not.)

4. The risks created by this preponderance of investor ownership are high. The Federal Reserve researchers found that fraudulent investors pose a much higher risk of default than declared investors and real owner-occupants.

As “revenge travel” shrivels up, property taxes and insurance rise and inflation ravages household budgets, STVRs are quickly shifting from income-producing assets to loss-generating liabilities. Investors either sell before they’re under-water or the risk of default rises accordingly.

Professionally managed corporate and private-equity owners will start unloading properties as rents sag and vacancies rise. STVR owners who realize the tide has reversed will also rush to sell before the price slide gathers momentum.

Let’s look at some charts for context. Here is a chart of total housing units. Confounding the conventional narrative of a “housing shortage,” the U.S. added 7.6 million housing units in the five years 2020-2025, a rate far higher than the 8.6 million units added over 10 years 2010-2020.

Here is a chart of owner-occupied housing. Note that the number of owner-occupied homes was flatlined for 12 years–from 2005 to 2016. Then it suddenly leaps up by 10 million in a few years–from 76 million to 86 million. Did 10 million households all win the lottery, or is the bulk of this astounding increase the result of fraudulent investors posing as owner-occupant buyers?

This map shows the extent of investor mortgage -fraud.

This chart of Federal Reserve ownership of mortgage-backed securities (MBS) overlays neatly with each leap higher in valuations. Pump “free money” into the financial system and keep rates at historic lows, and voila, you can inflate a bubble for the ages.

The post-pandemic buying frenzy pushed the cost per square foot of houses listed for sale up 57%.

Unsurprisingly, this bubble pushed housing affordability to record lows.

The Case-Shiller Index offers a long-term view of how far valuations could drop once the bubble bursts. A 40% decline would be the norm, and a 50% drop would be well within the typical range of bubbles bursting.

The Fed’s mass manipulation of mortgage rates in 2010 “saved” Bubble #1 from playing out in a free-market manner, but the Fed won’t be able to engineer an equivalent “save” this time around, as the mortgage market has already been nationalized and the Fed already owns a stupendous $2.1 trillion of MBS.

Corporate / private equity / STVR investors are all fair-weather owners of housing. Once the profits shrink or reverse into losses, investors push the “sell” button. And since housing is priced on the margins, it only takes a handful of get-me-out sales to push valuations down 10%, then 20%, then 30% and eventually to a bottom between 40% anf 50%.

This vulnerability to the collapse of valuations is the bitter fruit of the Fed’s manipulation of rates and mortgages over the past 16 years. We love a “free market” when rapidly expanding credit inflates a bubble, but oh dearie-dearie me, we have to stop the “free market” from operating if it bursts the bubble.

Here’s how Housing Bubble #2 bursts: buyers of overvalued, money-losing properties vanish, those who waited too long sink underwater (sales prices are lower than what they paid), marginal investors default, owner-occupants who lose their jobs sell or default, private equity realizes their losses will only increase the longer they hold off selling, and the momentum of sellers far outnumbering buyers cascades.

Greed is replaced by fear, and then by the realization it’s too late to exit without losses. This is how bubbles burst.

*  *  *

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While much of global diplomacy as well as media coverage is currently focused on the now over week-long aerial war over the Middle East between Iran and Israel, President Vladimir Putin issued important remarks on the future of the ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine before the annual St Petersburg International Economic Forum.

He said in the Friday speech he does not “rule out” his forces taking control of Ukraine’s northeastern city of Sumy amid the military initiative of creating a buffer zone along the border.

“We have no objective to take Sumy, but in principle I do not rule it out… They pose a constant threat to us, constantly shelling the border areas,” Putin told the audience.

Starting in late May, Russian forces took control of the border villages of Novenke, Zhuravka, Veselivka, and Basivka, Hryhorov just inside Sumy Oblast as part of work on the buffer zone.

As for the city of Sumy, it lies just 18 lies from the Russian border and has suffered from intermittent aerial attacks and shelling since the war’s start.

Putin has also raised eyebrows in the West due to his speech when he said, “I consider Russians and Ukrainians to be one people. In that sense, all of Ukraine is ours,” he said, and added: “There is a saying: wherever a Russian soldier sets foot, that is ours.”

This is being taken in the West as more confirmation that the US-backed peace process is struggling and barely alive, given neither side is in the mood to compromise.

Currently Russian troops are up to 12km inside Sumy Oblast, putting them very close to the administrative capital of the oblast by the same name. German publication DW reviews:

Sumy, though not among the five Ukrainian regions Moscow claims to have annexed — Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, and Crimea — has been a frequent target of Russian attacks.

It also served as a launching point for a Ukrainian counteroffensive into Russia’s western Kursk region last August, during which Kyiv’s forces briefly captured dozens of settlements before being pushed back by Russian troops — bolstered by thousands of North Korean soldiers, according to reports.

Russian forces have also most recently pushed beyond the western border of Donetsk and into the Dnepropetrovsk Region, again which also part of the push establish a “buffer zone” on the front line. 

Russian media says troops advancing in Sumy, destroying NATO gear:

🚨🇷🇺RUSSIA EXPANDS BUFFER ZONE IN SUMY

Russian stormtroopers just wiped out a Ukrainian armored group packed with NATO gear. pic.twitter.com/p5VrCLY0pX

— Sputnik (@SputnikInt) June 21, 2025

April, May, and early June have seen thousands of drones launched from Ukraine onto Russia’s southern oblasts, with some drones targeting as far as Moscow, which has resulted in commercial flight stoppages at several area airports. Ukraine’s ‘Operation Spider’s Web’ did the most damage among these attacks, targeting airfields hosting parked heavy bombers.

The timing of Putin’s buffer zone plan was very significant, given that President Trump is increasingly being perceived as ‘stepping back’ from pursuit of a final peace settlement, perhaps content to ‘let them fight it out’.

Authored by Turner Wright via CoinTelegraph.com,

The government of Norway is considering a temporary ban on crypto mining in the country in an effort to “free up power, network capacity and area for other purposes.”

In a Friday notice, the Norwegian government said it would be conducting an investigation in autumn that could result in a temporary ban on crypto mining data centers. Officials said they had the authority to enforce such a ban under Norway’s Planning and Building Act, which includes provisions on allocating energy.

“It is uncertain how big a problem crypto mining will become in Norway in the future,” the notice reads.

“The registration requirement in the new data center regulations will provide increased knowledge about the scope of data centers that mine cryptocurrency.”

Like many countries in Europe, Norway’s residents have faced increasing costs on electricity amid Russia’s war with Ukraine and sanctions impacting the region’s supply of oil and gas.

Locals in Norway have previously petitioned for crypto mining operations to shut down over noise concerns. 

Mining bans proposed in response to environmental concerns, noise

Norway would not be the first country to consider a ban on cryptocurrency mining. In January, Russia began imposing a ban in 10 regions as part of efforts to limit blackouts and reduce energy consumption.

China, which had been one of the most significant sources of crypto mining before 2021, faced a blanket ban, which drove many operations to US states like Texas.

Though lawmakers in the US government have spoken out against mining due to concerns over energy use, the practice is still legal in most jurisdictions and states, making the country one of the biggest contributors to the global Bitcoin hashrate.