Authored by Ezra Reguerra via CoinTelegraph.com,

As Sweden reconsiders its push toward a cashless society, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin highlighted the fragility of centralized digital payments and the opportunity presented by decentralized payment alternatives. 

In recent years, Sweden has led the charge toward a cashless future, with digital payment platforms becoming widespread. However, as concerns over cyber-threats, civil defense and instability have emerged, Swedish authorities are now actively encouraging citizens to keep some cash. 

Buterin noted the reversal illustrates that while centralized solutions may be efficient, they may not be reliable during times of crisis. 

“Nordics are walking back the cashless society initiative because their centralized implementation of the concept is too fragile,” Buterin wrote, citing a March 16 article by The Guardian. “Cash turns out necessary as a backup.”

Source: Vitalik Buterin

How Ethereum can play a role in a crisis

A former central bank official predicted in 2018 that Sweden would be cashless after seven years. In 2025, the prediction mostly held, with only one in 10 transactions in the country being done in cash, according to The Guardian.

Still, while the Nordic country was an early adopter of digital payments, its government published a brochure encouraging citizens to keep a week’s worth of cash in case of war or crisis. Sweden’s reconsideration has revealed the issue of centralized digital payment infrastructure remaining reliable in times of instability, Buterin suggested. 

Buterin said Ethereum can be a decentralized financial fallback in times of crisis. “Ethereum needs to be resilient enough, and private enough, to be able to credibly play this kind of role,” Buterin said. 

When asked if fully offline zero-knowledge technology-secured private transfers were close to practical implementation, Buterin said the tech know-how is already there, but there are still limitations: 

“We basically know how to do it, but with the limitation that any solution depends on trusted hardware and/or post hoc enforcement against double-spenders.”

Crypto payments exec thinks crypto won’t replace fiat

While crypto payment solutions are becoming more common, Mercuryo co-founder and CEO Petr Kozyakov has said that crypto will not replace fiat. 

Kozyakov told Cointelegraph in an interview that crypto payments are seeing an increase in demand and adoption.

However, the executive said that instead of cryptocurrencies fully replacing fiat money as a payment method, the two payment options will coexist. 

Kozyakov told Cointelegraph that people will use crypto when it’s easier and more practical.

Germany is very openly stepping up its support to Ukraine, following a weekend of serious escalation in airstrikes on Kiev by Russia, which says this has been retaliation for hundreds of drones on its territory.

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine will travel to visit Berlin on Wednesday in his first time there since Chancellor Friedrich Merz took office earlier this month. It was only on Monday that Merz announced that Germany, France, the UK and US have lifted prior restrictions on how far the weapons they supply to Ukraine can reach. But Washington has not given public confirmation of this.

Just ahead of hosting Zelensky, Merz has warned that the Western allies must settle in for a long war yet to come, at a moment US-backed peace efforts appear to be faltering. Leading European hawks have criticized President Trump’s push for peace all along.

“Wars typically end because of economic or military exhaustion on one side or on both sides and in this war we are obviously still far from reaching that [situation],” Merz said at a joint press conference with Finish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo in Turku, Finland

“So we may have to prepare for a longer duration,” Merz added. He articulated his view that Russia’s Putin is just using ceasefire talks to string the West along while he intensifies strikes against Ukraine.

He said this is consistent with Putin viewing peace talks with Ukraine as a “sign of weakness”. The German leader was cited in European media as saying, “Putin obviously sees offers of talks as a sign of weakness,”

“After the last three weeks, no one can seriously accuse us of not having exhausted all available diplomatic means,” Merz continued. Merz then said as follows:

Short of “raising the white flag,” Merz said, Ukraine’s backers had “done everything” they could.

“If even an offer to meet at the Vatican does not get [Putin’s] approval, then we must be prepared for this war to last longer than we all wish or can imagine,” Merz warned.

But Russia’s foreign ministry had simply explained that it did not consider the Vatican to in fact be ‘neutral’ ground, and strongly suggested talks be hosted elsewhere.

Some independent analysts (echoing some statements of Trump) have pointed to Zelensky ‘sabotaging’ the talks at every turn by his repeat firm declarations that Ukraine will never make territorial concessions, even when it comes to the status of Crimea.

For example, the below op-ed snippet says that Western media has been intentionally misleading the public, in order to present the initial Istanbul talks as an utter ‘failure’. It begins:

Western leaders and Western media have given the first round of talks a failing grade. They have dismissed it for three reasons. They claim that Putin first suggested direct negotiations and then did not show. They claim that he sent an insultingly low-level delegation. And they claim that nothing was accomplished.

All three of these claims are false.

Putin did suggest direct negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, but he did not say that those talks would take place at the leadership level. Putin said, “We are proposing that Kiev resume direct negotiations without any preconditions… We offer the Kiev authorities to resume negotiations already on Thursday, in Istanbul.” Putin referred to the Kiev authorities and never to the two presidents.

It was unlikely that Russia would resume talks for the first time at the presidential level. Customarily, before presidents meet, a great deal of preparation and negotiation takes place at lower levels. Then, typically, the foreign ministers would meet to iron out most of the details prior to a presidential meeting.

Zelensky has also been insisting on a 30-day ceasefire before agreeing to engage in top-level talks with Moscow. But Russia has repeatedly made clear there is no reason for a track which would only result in Ukrainian forces re-arming and bolstering their positions during a short-term truce interim.

Ukraine can now attack military positions in russia.

No longer any range restrictions, – Merz. pic.twitter.com/kcXnYiDGhF

— Jürgen Nauditt 🇩🇪🇺🇦 (@jurgen_nauditt) May 26, 2025

Moscow’s position is that this would in the end only prolong the war and not offer permanent solutions. Putin has rejected short-term ceasefires as a viable path forward. He has all along demanded that the West show it is serious about peace by halting the constant arms transfers to Ukraine’s military.

Authored by Guy Millière via The Gatestone Institute,

February 14, 2025. U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance delivers remarks in Germany, at the Munich Security Conference. 

The audience expects him to talk about foreign policy, geopolitics, and threats facing the world.

Instead, he says that the most worrying threat today is “the threat from within, the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values.” 

He adds that European countries and institutions are undermining democracy and freedom of speech — and gives examples.

“A former European commissioner,” Vance states, “went on television recently and sounded delighted that the Romanian government had just annulled an entire election.”

In fact, Thierry Breton, the European Union’s former internal market commissioner, admitted in a French television interview that the Romanian Constitutional Court had bowed to EU pressure and annulled the country’s presidential elections because right-wing candidate, Călin Georgescu, had a good chance of winning. “We did it in Romania,” Breton said, “and of course we will have to do it, if necessary, in Germany.”

On February 26, when Georgescu went to register as a candidate for the presidential election re-run organized a few months after the annulled election, he was arrested by the police and charged with “attempting to overthrow the constitutional order.” To date, the Romanian authorities have provided no evidence to substantiate that allegation.

“The very same thing could happen in Germany, too,” Vance said in his Munich speech.

The right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party which participated in the German parliamentary elections of February 23, came in second place with 20.8%. The center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), which won the plurality of votes (28.5%), however, chose to boycott the AfD and instead chose to form a government with the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) — which formed the previous government and which the Germans had just rejected, giving it only 16.4% of the vote.

Germany’s new chancellor, CDU leader Friedrich Merz, had declared during the election campaign, “We will not work with the party that calls itself Alternative for Germany — not before [the election], not after, never.”

Merz stuck to his word. Just after the election, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency designated the AfD an “extremist organization” and a “threat to democracy”. The reason given was that the AfD is “anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim”. The AfD could be banned by the government.

Vance continued:

“I look to Brussels, where EU commissars warn citizens that they intend to shut down social media during times of civil unrest, the moment they spot what they’ve judged to be ‘hateful content.'”

Indeed, in 2022, the European Union adopted the Digital Services Act (DSA), which is supposed to “protect the rights of social media users” and “provide a safer online environment” by “limiting the spread of illegal and harmful content.” What constitutes “illegal and harmful content” was not defined and could be anything the European Commission defines as such, along with the right to impose fines and shut the websites down.

Although Vance’s claims were indisputable, the officials present immediately expressed shock. Statements from European political leaders exploded:

Germany’s Former Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that Vance’s remarks were “not appropriate,” adding:

“Never again fascism, never again racism, never again aggressive war… Today’s democracies in Germany and Europe are founded on the historic awareness and realization that democracies can be destroyed by radical anti-democrats… we’ve created institutions that ensure that our democracies can defend themselves against their enemies, and rules that do not restrict or limit our freedom but protect it.”

France’s Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot stated that “Freedom of speech is guaranteed in Europe.”

Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer noted:

“We’ve had free speech for a very, very long time in the United Kingdom, and it will last for a very, very long time… in relation to free speech in the UK, I’m really proud of that—our history there.”

Christoph Heusgen, chairman of the Munich Security Conference Chairman, at the end of the conference, said that Vance’s remarks had made it “a European nightmare…. We have to fear that our common basis of values is not common anymore.” He then broke down in tears.

It is quite possible that the “common basis of values” ​​that once bound Europe and the United States is no longer common. If that is true, however, it is for the reasons listed by Vance: that European leaders and governments have moved away from what once bound Europe and the United States, such as freedom of speech and free and fair elections, the results of which are actually enacted.

Scholz’s argument about fascism, racism and the threat to democracy is simply unfounded, if not an inversion of the facts. Georgescu made no fascist or racist statements and has never threatened democracy. On the contrary, he has affirmed his desire to defend national sovereignty and Western civilization and has declared himself close to the positions of the Trump administration, which are neither fascist nor racist.

In 2018, AfD politician Alexander Gauland said that “Hitler and the Nazis are just a speck of bird poop in more than 1,000 years of successful German history.”

In 2017, Björn Höcke, the leader of the AfD in the German state of Thuringia, called the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin a “memorial of shame.”

But the words of Gauland and Höcke do not represent the AfD party line. Gauland clarified his remarks only days later, saying:

“Many saw the expression as an inappropriate trivialization… nothing could be further from me than to allow such an impression to arise…. I regret the resulting impression. It was never my intention to trivialize or deride the victims of this criminal system.

The reason given by Germany’s domestic intelligence agency for designating AfD an “extremist organization” is neither fascism nor racism. In fact, not a single AfD leader advocates fascist or racist positions, and, what actually may be objectionable to many Europeans, is that AfD is “the most pro-Israel and philo-Semitic” party in Germany.

“That’s not democracy,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said about the German domestic intelligence agency’s decision, “it’s tyranny in disguise.”

Ironically, in the United States, Democratic National Committee (DNC) this month voided the election of David Hogg and Malcolm Kenyatta as DNC vice-chairmen, ostensibly on “procedural grounds.” Following his election, Hogg had said he planned to raise funds to support challengers in the primaries of incumbent Democrat officeholders. In June, the DNC will be considering a re-do of the election, presumably in the hope of get a pre-determined outcome. Meanwhile, many Democrats endlessly criticize the Republican Party for “destroying democracy.”

Contrary to what the French foreign minister claimed, freedom of speech is declining in Europe, particularly in France. Former journalist and presidential candidate Éric Zemmour has been convicted countless times and handed heavy fines simply for criticizing Islam and Muslim immigration. His most recent sentencing took place on March 26, 2025. After the murder of a young Frenchman by a gang of Muslims, Zemmour spoke of the presence in France of criminals who are “Arab-Muslim scum.” He was found guilty of delivering a “racist insult.”

Novelist Renaud Camus was convicted in 2014 of incitement to hatred for saying that France was being “invaded” by Muslim immigrants.

The French television channel C8 was shut down by the Regulatory Authority for Audiovisual and Digital Communication (Arcom), for “lack of diversity and pluralism.” CNews, another French television channel, was fined heavily by Arcom for the same “crime” and remains at risk of being shut down. Any television station similar to America’s Fox News would not be allowed to exist in France.

Freedom of speech in the United Kingdom, contrary to what Starmer said, is very much in danger. In recent months, British citizens have been sentenced to prison for posting messages critical of Islam on social media, and for even praying near an abortion clinic.

This anti-democratic drift has taken hold in several European countries. Politicians and parties who disagree with the worldview of the officials in power are increasingly being excluded from any possibility of running for an official position:

In Germany, as mentioned, Merz chose to shut out the AfD.

In France, Marine Le Pen, who polls show is in first place for the 2027 presidential election, was sentenced to five years of election ineligibility and four years in prison for allegedly embezzling public funds. The sentence was supposed to go into effect immediately, without a temporary suspension of the conviction pending appeal. After that decision caused a scandal, the Paris Court of Appeal said it would examine the case and issue a final judgment in the summer of 2026.

Le Pen did not embezzle public funds. The judge defined as a crime that assistants to the National Rally’s Members of European Parliament who worked in Strasbourg also worked in Paris for the party. The Democratic Movement, a centrist party led by French Prime Minister François Bayrou, did exactly the same thing as the National Rally with its MEPs’ assistants, but Bayrou was acquitted by a judge.

In the Netherlands, when the Party for Freedom (PVV) won a plurality of the votes in November 2023 parliamentary elections and its leader, Geert Wilders, attempted to form a government, all the other political parties joined forces to prevent him from doing so until he was forced to withdraw.

In Austria, in September 2024, the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) won a plurality of the votes in the parliamentary elections, and its leader, Herbert Kickl, was prevented from forming a government.

In Italy, on the other hand, when Brothers of Italy (FdI) — a party with policies similar to those of the French National Rally, the Dutch PVV, and the Austrian FPÖ — won the 2022 Italian parliamentary elections, its leader, Giorgia Meloni, was able to form a government and is now prime minister. The reason? Fdl happened to be part of an alliance with other right-of-center parties. Now, Meloni is the only politician disparagingly labeled by the European mainstream media as “far right” and able actually to enjoy the result of her election.

Most European leaders today refer to the parties and politicians they wish to exclude as “far right.” The term is used to refer to racist, xenophobic and authoritarian parties. None of the parties mentioned above shows the slightest tendency toward racism, xenophobia and authoritarianism half as much as their opponents do. The parties being elbowed out, according to historian and author Daniel Pipes, are not “nationalist,”, but patriotic, “defensive, not aggressive.” Pipes describes them as “civilizationist”:

“They cherish Europe’s and the West’s traditional culture and want to defend it from assault by immigrants aided by the left…. Civilizationalist parties are populist, anti-immigration, and anti-Islamization. Populist means nursing grievances against the system and a suspicion of an elite that ignores or denigrates those concerns.”

The attacks on freedom of speech target statements warning that mass, unvetted migration might bring about a demographic “great replacement” of native Europeans, whose values are Judeo-Christian, by migrants from the Middle East, whose values are basically Islamic. The general apprehension about Islamic values eventually overwhelming European ones is a view condemned by most politicians, the media and the judiciary in Europe, even though the Muslim birthrate is vastly higher than the European one. This apprehension also stems from the fact that the majority of Muslims living in Europe neither integrates nor seems to wish to, and that the proportion of Muslims among criminals in Europe today is far higher than their share of the general population.

Many European leaders today appear blind to the consequences of ever-increasing immigration, and a growing Muslim presence in Europe. They are dismissive of the Muslims’ continuing mass-migration, enthusiastic birthrate, and they remain stubbornly deaf to the concerns shouted by their non-Muslim citizenry.

These leaders seem to refuse to see that a serious demographic shift is taking place, even though it is highly visible. They also seem to refuse to see that this demographic shift is swiftly eroding Europe’s traditional cultures.

Out-of-control immigration from the Muslim world continues year after year throughout Western Europe, while Germany’s birthrate is 1.35 per woman. The figure for Austria is 1.58. For Italy, it is 1.31. For Spain, it is 1.41. The figure for France is 1.85. All of these are significantly far from replacement level, which is 2.1 per woman.

In every country in Western Europe, the birthrate of Muslims is significantly higher than that of the general population.

Even if many Europeans are not aware of the statistical data, they can see with their eyes that a population change is taking place, along with the corrosive destruction of their values and traditions. Voting for “civilizationist” parties, Zemmour has said, is the “reaction of people who do not want to die.”

The key question for the future of Europe seems to be: Will “civilizationist” parties remain excluded from any access to power, or will they succeed in overcoming the barriers being put up in their path?

In Romania, George Simion, a presidential candidate whose ideas are close to those of Georgescu, won more than 40% of the vote in the first round of the presidential election and had a strong chance of being elected on May 18. Unexpectedly, he lost. The winner, who had the full support of the European Union, went from 21% in the first round to 53.6% in the second round, an extraordinary performance that probably needs to be analyzed.

In Germany, the AfD has now become the country’s most popular party. The German intelligence agency mysteriously decided to walk back AfD’s extremist label. In France, polls show that if Marine Le Pen cannot run, Jordan Bardella, the president of the National Rally, has a good chance of being elected in 2027 despite being only 29 years old. In the United Kingdom, Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party recently made large gains in English local elections. If Britain’s general elections were held soon, would likely win.

The question at the heart of these issues is: Can the anti-democratic drift that has gripped several large European countries be stopped?

“European elites,” wrote the American columnist Michael Barone, “seem to have convinced themselves that they must destroy democracy in order to save it.”

Will it be possible to save democracy in Europe?

In a recent article, Manhattan Institute fellow Heather Mac Donald wrote:

“Across the West, citizens are rebelling against demographic replacement. A battle is under way between their will and the will of the elites. If Germany’s leaders continue to tell a quarter of the German population—decent, law-abiding individuals—that they are at best Hitler-adjacent and at worst Hitler-worshippers for wanting Germany’s cultural identity preserved, if those leaders continue to suppress voices and votes, either there will be a massive upset in the halls of power and the people will be liberated, or the mechanisms of repression will grow more sweeping.

“Americans should hope for the former course.”

Authored by Corinne Clark Bannon via AmericanGreatness.com,

President Donald J. Trump has officially announced plans to build a next-generation missile defense system. He’s calling it the “Golden Dome,” and I, for one, could not be more thrilled to see American tax dollars going toward defending America for a change.

Unveiled this week, alongside Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the Golden Dome is a $175 billion project aimed at doing something the Biden regime never prioritized: protecting the U.S. homeland from a foreign attack. And get this—it’s expected to be fully operational by the end of Trump’s term. That’s what real leadership looks like.

According to Trump, this dome will be able to intercept anything—hypersonic missiles, ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, even missiles launched from the other side of the world or from space. That’s not just national defense. That’s next-level deterrence.

If the idea sounds familiar, it’s because Ronald Reagan once dreamed of it. His Strategic Defense Initiative—mocked by the left as “Star Wars”—was a bold vision that never got the full support it deserved. Trump is finally making that dream a reality.

The name is a patriotic play on Israel’s Iron Dome, which has saved countless lives. Trump’s version? Bigger, better, and focused on our homeland. The first $25 billion to fund this project is tucked into Trump’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill” currently being debated in the House.

That’s a lot of money up front, but in the long run, it’s a great deal, because it will inevitably cut down on the need for foreign intervention. For decades, Washington has funneled trillions into foreign wars based on the idea that “we have to fight them over there, or we’ll fight them here.” That logic has cost us far too many American lives, plagued our economy, and demolished public trust in nearly every institution in Washington. But with Trump’s Golden Dome—and his rock-solid border policies—it’s hard to imagine a hypothetical war that could reach our soil from a foreign land. The DC sales pitch for endless war has been dismantled!

Predictably, the usual suspects are upset. China says they’re “seriously concerned” and warns that the Golden Dome could “undermine global strategic balance.” 

Good! Maybe they should be more concerned about not launching missiles in the first place.

The Golden Dome is proof that America First isn’t just a slogan. It’s a strategy. It’s a shield. And it’s the very definition of peace through strength (and yes, I have that tattooed on my arm in Latin, because I’ve always loved that.)

Via Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com,

Journalist Alex Newman, author of the popular book “Deep State” and the recent best-selling book called “Indoctrinating Our Children to Death,” is warning people to pay attention to the genocide of white farmers in South Africa.  

What is happening there is something the Deep State wants to take global in their tyrannical takeover of all life and property on Earth.  

Newman, who once lived in South Africa, warns, “What’s happening down there to them is a microcosm, and that’s what they have planned for you, your country, your family and what’s left of the Christian West…”

“What I have documented (in 2012) very clearly and very unambiguously is this racist, murderous, communist program taking place in South Africa was backed by the highest levels of Deep State power.  This includes the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the US State Department, including their allies and partners in Great Britian, and they all knew the Soviet Union was behind this and other communist governments were behind this.  This is a monstrosity piled on a monstrosity and, again, what they are doing to the Afrikaners (white farmers) now, they plan to do to you as soon as they get the opportunity. Instead of amalgamating all these nations under a South African government, they want to amalgamate all these nations under a one world system.  Barack Obama has said over and over again that he was inspired to get into politics because of what they were doing in South Africa.  This all comes together here–and you are next.  That’s why it’s important to watch what is happening in South Africa.”

What are the tools the Deep State uses to gain total control?  Look no further than the new global UN pandemic treaty and the huge push for climate change laws to give control to a few people at the top.  

Let’s start with the recently passed UN pandemic treaty, which President Trump cancelled for America.  Newman says, 

“They have a clause about ‘misinformation,’ which means you can’t speak out or ask questions about what injections they demand you and your children take.  

It’s got digital infrastructure . . . . So, they will track everything, which will pave the way for international vaccine passports. . . . It gives exemptions (to drug makers) and fast tracks the same outrageous process that we have seen before in emergency use authorization (EUA).  

That is whatever crazy concoction they come up with and then tell us all what we need.  It is everything that was wrong with Covid on steroids enshrined into international law.”

The Climate Change hoax is equally disturbing.  

Newman says, “It’s not just our wealth that they are taking.  They are taking from us our ability to produce wealth…”

”  This dawned on me in Paris.  I was at the climate summit there around 2015.  

You had Barack Obama pledging to slash American CO2 emissions by a third over the next decade.  This is essentially chopping American economic activity down.  Meanwhile, the Communist Chinese were pledging they were going to keep increasing their CO2 emissions.  To their credit, they absolutely lived up to that. . .. 

So, what happened was as we were shutting down our power plants and stopping energy production in this country . . . 

…this was making manufacturing and business uncompetitive if you were operating in a global market.  You could not continue doing business in the United States with energy prices skyrocketing while energy prices in China were stable or going down.  They hollowed out our productive capacity and moved it over to Communist China under the scam of ‘Saving the Climate’. . ..  That’s what is going on here, and Trump got us out of this whole thing.  You cannot overstate the significance of this.”

Newman fears America is much closer to a violent takeover attempt by the Deep State.  Newman says, 

“The Leftists, the totalitarians, the people that want to do to us what they are doing to the South Africans right now want a civil war in this country.  

A lot of people on our side don’t see this…

They don’t realize very dangerous forces are being unleashed across our country.  They are preparing for an uprising, a violent revolution and violence in the streets.  They are deliberately trying to do this.

… We just saw this guy shooting a couple of embassy workers, and I think this is just the beginning for what they are preparing.  They brought in special operators from Communist China.  They brought in intelligence assets and gangsters from Venezuela and Cuba.  They are preparing to stir up domestic conflict that we have never seen before…

…I think we are in very grave danger as a nation, and I don’t say this to scare anybody.  The Lord does not give us the spirit of fear.  I say this so we can understand it and prepare better for it and, hopefully, prevent it. . .. Sun Tzu, the Chinese military expert, said, ‘If you know yourself and you know your enemy, you are going to win every battle.’  We have to have a good understanding of the enemy, or we are not going to win.”

There is much more in the 50-minute interview.

Join Greg Hunter of USAWatchdog.com as he goes One-on-One with hard-hitting journalist Alex Newman, founder of LibertySentinel.org and author of the runaway best-selling book called “Indoctrinating Our Children to Death,” for 5.24.25.

Newman’s website is called LibertySentinel.org.  There is lots of free information and articles.

To order Newman’s recent best-selling book called “Indoctrinating Our Children to Death,” click here.

For a copy of Alex Newman’s popular book “Deep State,” click here.

Authored by Matthew Vadum via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The U.S. Supreme Court on May 27 declined to accept a student’s challenge to a Massachusetts school’s decision to ban his “there are only two genders” T-shirt.

The court’s decision in L.M. v. Town of Middleborough took the form of an unsigned order. The court did not explain its ruling.

Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented, writing that lower courts in the case had distorted the First Amendment to the Constitution.

In the case, a seventh-grade student identified as L.M. donned a T-shirt at Nichols Middle School, a public school in Middleborough, that read, “There are only two genders.” The school principal and a school counselor removed him from class and directed him to take the shirt off.

After the student declined, school officials said that if he didn’t remove the shirt, he could not return to class. He left school and did not attend his classes for the rest of the day, according to a summary by the student’s lawyers at the Alliance for Defending Freedom, a public interest law firm.

L.M. wore the shirt after the public school promoted the idea that “sex and gender are limitless, based on personal identity, and have no biological foundation,” according to his petition filed with the Supreme Court on Oct. 9, 2024.

The school asked students to support this view, but L.M. disagreed and wore his shirt, according to the petition. After the school censored him, L.M. wore another T-shirt that read, “There are [censored] genders,” which was also banned.

The school’s decision was upheld by a federal district court in June 2023, based on the “rights-of-others” school disruption prong of the 1969 Supreme Court ruling in Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit affirmed, even after acknowledging that the shirts in question probably failed the rights-of-others prong, “applying a novel test for ideological speech alleged to demean characteristics of personal identity,” the petition said.

In his dissent, Thomas wrote that Tinker held that public school officials are not allowed to restrict a student’s freedom of speech “unless his behavior ‘materially disrupts classwork or involves substantial disorder or invasion of the rights of others.’”

The holding in Tinker is “without basis in the Constitution” and should be “dispense[d] with … altogether,” he wrote. “But, unless and until this Court revisits it, Tinker is binding precedent that lower courts must faithfully apply,” Thomas added.

In Alito’s dissent, the justice wrote that the First Circuit erred in holding that “the general prohibition against viewpoint-based censorship does not apply to public schools.” In the process, that appeals court “employed a vague, permissive, and jargon-laden rule that departed from the standard” the Supreme Court used in Tinker, he said.

Alito wrote he would grant the petition so that the Supreme Court could “reaffirm the bedrock principle that a school may not engage in viewpoint discrimination when it regulates student speech.”

By limiting the reach of the high court’s viewpoint-discrimination cases, the First Circuit’s ruling “robs a great many students of that core First Amendment protection,” the justice wrote.

School officials had argued in a Jan. 21 brief that the T-shirt ban safeguarded the mental health of students at the school.

School administrators provided evidence of “the severe mental health struggles of transgender and gender-nonconforming students (including suicidal ideation),” of young students at the Nichols Middle School, the brief said.

The school’s policy aimed to protect “gender-nonconforming students who had been bullied in other districts and had harmed themselves or were hospitalized due to contemplated, or attempted, suicide,” the brief said.

Car culture and America are two terms that have become inseparable.

The U.S. is a country shaped by sprawling highways, suburban spread, and a deep-rooted love for personal freedom behind the wheel.

But with the fascination—and reliance—on cars, comes the inevitable downside: crashes. And some states do a lot worse than others when it comes to accidents behind the wheel.

In this chart, Visual Capitalist’s Marcus Lu visualizes data from Insurify, which ranked U.S. states by their rate of car accidents.

This rate is based on the number of accidents per total drivers in the state. Figures are rounded to one decimal place.

Ranked: States with the Most Car Crashes

Massachusetts has the worst drivers in the U.S., with a 6.1% car crash rate in 2024, the highest of all 50 states.

Despite having fewer collisions than in the previous year, Massachusetts still ranked #1 for car accidents.

There have been efforts made to improve safety. A “hands-free” driving law was signed in 2020 to reduce distracted driving.

Another law signed in 2023 states that drivers can only pass vulnerable road users (workers, cyclists, pedestrians) at a safe distance and reasonable speed.

There are also restrictions on vehicles passing each other: only at the posted speed limit and passing when crossing a yellow line only when it’s safe to do so.

Interestingly, the next three states with the most crashes are also in the Northeast: New Hampshire (5.8%), Rhode Island (5.6%), and Maine (5.4%).

Meanwhile, Michigan had the lowest car crash rate at 1.7%. The state has invested heavily in road improvements and additional safety features on highways: widening shoulders, installing rumble strips, and adding flashing beacons.

However, Insurify notes that the accident rates have fallen between 2023–24 for all states except New York and Vermont.

While we’re on the topic of cars, which ones cause the least grief? Check out: Ranked: The Most Reliable Car Brands in 2025 for a quick overview.

Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via The Daily Signal,

Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for The Daily Signal. I’d like to talk about debt, debt, debt.

All during the last few days, we’ve heard some startling news. Moody’s, the bond evaluator, for the first time in its history, since 1917, has lowered the credit rating of the United States government from Aaa to Aa1.

It didn’t do that during the 2008 meltdown. It didn’t do that during the Great Depression. It didn’t do that during 9/11. It didn’t do that during the Biden years when we borrowed $7 trillion. But it did it now.

At the same time, Jerome Powell, the head of the Fed, will not lower interest rates even though there’s been a good jobs report, a good inflation report, a good corporate profits report. Gross domestic product is gonna be evaluated, apparently, upward and there’s been low energy cost. That mortgage is still 4.25% Fed rate to 4.5%. And that means mortgages are still 6.5%, 7%. And that housing market is slowing as a result.

And this has got President Donald Trump very angry, that they’re doing this, given the prior administration borrowed $7 trillion and helped run up from $29 trillion in national debt to $37 trillion, and left Trump with a $3 billion-a-day interest payment. So, he’s jawboning all this and trying to get down. So, what is Trump trying to do? And is it working?

Well, he’s the first president since Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich, the speaker of the House at that time, who’s talking about reducing a $2 trillion budget deficit, a $1.2 trillion trade deficit, and addressing a $37 trillion national debt. But is he actually doing it?

On the plus side of the ledger, you’ve got the Department of Government Efficiency. And DOGE in the first 100 days has identified about $160 billion in cuts. That’s encouraging if two things are following: if they can keep up that rate of identifying cuts and get up to the $500 billion or even $700 billion and maybe make 25% or 30% reduction in the $2 trillion deficit. And if the Trump administration exercises fiscal discipline.

The problem is twofold: that while he’s addressing verbally, rhetorically the debt and the deficit, you look at the big, beautiful bill under consideration and it’s going to have to pass or the Trump administration will be completely humiliated.

They need to get it through reconciliation but there are sizable increases in the defense budget from everything that’s justifiable, from salaries, from an Iron Dome-like missile defense—you name it. More drones—good. But it’s more money. And there’s more subsidies to farmers. And there’s not a lot of cuts—at least when balanced with the increases.

So, the budget deficit, for all the talk of DOGE and for all the talk of fiscal sobriety, might not actually go down. And if it doesn’t go down, the Fed may not lower rates. And if it doesn’t lower rates, then you still are stuck with a trillion dollars a year in interest payments. That’s killing us.

So, you’ve got to get that down. And the way Trump has to do it is just two ways: Either cut the budget or raise taxes—which will strangle the economy—or continue the tax cuts. And hope two things: that the tax cuts—the extension—will prime the economy, along with cheap interest rates.

And the question that we all have now: Is cutting taxes on tips, is cutting taxes on Social Security, is cutting taxes on first responder, etc.—all of which Trump has mentioned—is that really stimulus as opposed to, say, accelerated depreciation investment for businesses?

I don’t know the answer. But I do know, as a historian, that if you do not cut the deficit and the national debt and you have bond raters like Moody’s or the Fed that will not lower interest rates, you’re going to be in a crisis.

And in the antiquity—from Greece and Rome, through the Middle Ages, to the Renaissance—there were three ways of dealing with unsustainable debt and are not good. They’re all civilizational killers.

No. 1: As the Weimar Republic did in Germany, you pay back what you owe in cheap dollars. They inflated the marks. And bankrupt really helped cause the depression. You can do that, pay back the $37 trillion in inflated dollars. It’s not a good option.

No. 2: You can confiscate private wealth. People do that all the time throughout history. That destroys the legitimacy of the government. And it makes private investors hide their money.

When I say confiscate wealth, you can already see articles in financial left-wing journals that say, well, maybe the trillionaire, billionaire, whatever term they use, oligarchical class will get credit, some Social Security or get some kind of credit for us taking some of their 401(k) money. Something like that. That never works. It never worked in Athens. It never worked in Rome. It never worked in Renaissance Italy.

The third is the most drastic and it’s a killer too and we’ve seen countries in South America try it. And that’s to renounce the debt. Just say: You know what? All you bondholders, you guys have U.S. savings bonds—40% of them abroad, you know, here in America—you have so much money anyway. We’re just not gonna pay you back—the government. We’re gonna renounce it and start from zero.

Who would ever buy a bond again if we were to do that?

So, bottom line is incumbent upon the Trump administration to make real cuts and show progress that you’re reducing the annual budget deficit and more importantly, you have mechanisms to grow the economy.

Final note. We have a lot of confidence—this administration—that tariffs will give revenue and maybe also help reduce the budget deficit. I’m not sure that’s happening. Only 1% or 2%, maybe 3% of the $5 trillion in federal revenue today is made up by tariff income. Even with these huge new tariffs, if they’re actually reified, you might get a trillion dollars. You might get a trillion dollars over 10 years. That’s $100 billion out of $5 trillion in revenue. So, I’m not sure we can count on tariff income at all.

What we should count on is cut, cut, cut. Seek a balanced budget and grow the economy with tax cuts that encourage investment and economic expansion.

We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.

Former State Department official and director of Foundation for Freedom Online Mike Benz sat down once again with Tucker Carlson, where he laid out a labyrinthine narrative about U.S. power and influence that should come as no surprise to those who have been paying attention. Benz described the role non-governmental organizations (NGOs), intelligence agencies, and private philanthropic empires have engaged in to quietly shape global and domestic affairs.

“NGOs are the stem cell of the government’s central nervous system,” Benz said, adding “They are this highly flexible tool…you can’t disentangle or really separate the government from the non-governmental organizations.”

According to Benz, the US often wields power through unofficial channels – increasingly through a network of publicly funded and privately directed institutions Benz dubbed “the Blob,” a term originally coined by Ben Rhodes, a former deputy national security advisor to President Obama.

A History Rooted in Covert Strategy

According to Benz, the roots of this NGO influence structure go back to the early 20th century, with the 1913 introduction of the income tax and the subsequent 1917 law making contributions to charities tax-deductible. This opened a floodgate of elite philanthropy which, during World War II and the Cold War, merged with U.S. intelligence objectives.

“In 1948,” said Benz, “the CIA achieved its first covert operation: rigging the Italian election by working through trade unions, charity fronts, and other non-profits.” He cited a now-declassified memo by diplomat George Kennan, who described the need for a “Bureau of Political Warfare” and endorsed a system where covert influence would appear to originate from civil society.

Benz divided the “Blob” into three strata: official government actors (State Department, Pentagon, CIA, USAID), a network of NGOs funded and coordinated by these agencies, and the “donor-drafter class” – high-net-worth individuals like George Soros and Bill Gates, whose foundations shape U.S. foreign policy priorities.

“They don’t just donate into it. Like in a bike race, you always want to be not in first, you want to be right behind the guy in first… The Pentagon cuts the wind for companies,” he explained.

Soros, Mongolia, and Market Influence

A centerpiece of the discussion was George Soros, the financier and founder of the Open Society Foundation. According to Benz, the foundation frequently collaborates with the State Department and U.S. embassies abroad. In Mongolia, he said, Soros-affiliated organizations stymied a mining deal they deemed insufficiently favorable to the private sector. Soon after, the Soros Management Fund purchased a large stake in the mine’s corporate parent.

“In 2009, the George Soros Management Fund purchased an absolutely huge stake in that very company,” Benz stated, referring to Ivanhoe Mines (later Rio Tinto).

The U.S. Institute of Peace and the Shadow State

One of Benz’s more startling claims centered on the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP), a federally funded think tank chartered by Congress in 1984. Benz alleged that the organization had resisted oversight by Trump-appointed officials, deleted financial records, and was indirectly linked to funding Taliban networks.

“They deleted a terabyte worth of financial data,” Benz said. “Doge says it recovered [it] and showed payments to those very Taliban networks.”

“Now the peace people are stockpiling weapons,” Carlson replied.

International Peace has a funny history with US intelligence work. In the JFK files, for example, in the recent declassifications, it showed a group that the CIA infiltrated and directed called the Catholic Association of International Peace. And there are all these files that show that, yes, we have our assets in here, and they’re doing this for this. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, not the Catholic Association for International Peace, but a second international peace group, the Carnegie Endowment for International peace was run from 2014 to 2021 by Bill Burns, the guy who would leave the Carnegie endowment for international peace to run the Central Intelligence Agency. 

…

Now the Trump administration tried to assert control over the US institute of peace as it is statutorily entitled to do. And the response from the US Institute of Peace was to barricade the doors. To delete, Doge said a terabyte worth of financial data, which Doge says it recovered and showed payments to those very Taliban networks that they were saying keep the drugs flowing. Evidently, according to the Doge team, they found weapons caches inside, like a full military, you know. They found weapons. -Mike Benz

The CIA’s Role in Education

Benz described CIA influence in global education initiatives during the Cold War and suggested that those same frameworks have been repurposed to counter right-wing populism.

“All of this was repurposed against right-wing populism when Trump won in 2016,” he said.

He claimed that international teaching organizations such as Education International have roots in CIA-affiliated groups and are still active in political campaigns, such as opposition to Germany’s right-wing Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party.

Benz stressed the alignment of foreign policy objectives with corporate profit motives. For example, AT&T winning telecom contracts in Syria after the U.S. supported regime change.

The US National Police would not even allow the Trump-appointed board members or its president to even go in the building. That’s why the federal police had to, the FBI had to come in and in, but what happened was is that same lawyer also happens to represent the Wireless Trade Association in the US and AT&T in that whole network. So while they are working for regime change in Syria, while the US Institute of Peace is taking US taxpayer money, $55 million a year, to build up this network of paramilitary groups and all these economic assistance programs and midwifing the political negotiations. -Mike Benz

“AT&T just secured 25 million customers effectively…with the barrel of a gun,” said Benz.

Carlson added, “You know that we’re monitoring it,” referring to AT&T’s newly acquired user base.

Ukraine, BRICS, and the Limits of U.S. Power

Carlson and Benz then discussed the changing global order, noting the rise of BRICS and the decline of U.S. unipolar dominance.

“Trump is between a blob and a hard place,” said Benz, pointing to legislative resistance to defunding programs like USAID.

Carlson asked whether those in power “realize their 1980s assumptions have been overtaken by events.”

“I think they do,” Benz replied. “This is part of the global alliance structure. I don’t think the Biden administration moved unilaterally. They work in tandem with the EU on all things.”

Watch the entire interview below: