By Thomas Kolbe

Now the cards are on the table. Amid the heated phase of trade talks with the U.S., Canada is introducing a digital tax that will burden American tech giants with billions in costs. In response, President Trump broke off talks with Ottawa and announced new tariffs.

Among poker players, you know the coldly calculating player: He calculates probabilities, weighs risks, and plays his hand with sober precision. Sitting beside him is the gambler – impulsive but not reckless. He acts spectacularly, yet within a strategic framework he masters with virtuosity. Now imagine a pathological exception alongside these archetypes: a player who reveals his cards before the round even begins, only to go all-in immediately after. Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney falls into this category.

Brussels’ Governor in North America

The former Governor of the Bank of England, a committed globalist and climate crusader, and following the spectacular failure of Justin Trudeau, the new enforcer of the European agenda in North America, has gotten himself entangled in a geopolitical game of va banque with the announcement of a digital penalty tax on foreign tech companies.

The tax is set to take effect on July 1, retroactive to January 1, 2022, and will squeeze foreign tech firms with over 20 million Canadian dollars in revenue at a rate of three percent. Ottawa is calling for payment — aiming its arrow at the heart of America’s economic powerhouse, Silicon Valley. U.S. giants like Apple, Meta, and X face penalty payments exceeding two billion U.S. dollars.

An affront at the worst possible time (or was the escalation planned?), staged by a prime minister playing a weak hand from a position of weakness. Much like in Germany, productivity and per capita income have declined since the devastating lockdowns — the EU-inspired agenda of climate regulation, migration chaos, and a socialist redistribution state is cutting a swath of economic paralysis through society.

Carney proves to be the ideal candidate for that globalist elite steering resource-rich Canada into the next phase of its decline. In negotiations with Donald Trump, he acts entirely in the style of Brussels’ negotiating school: making maximal demands, refusing any form of compromise, and publicly prioritizing ideological principles over a rational negotiation path.

Missing the Turning Point

But this time, the script seems to call for a turning point: the response from Washington was swift — and decidedly blunt. Trump called Canada’s political leadership a “copy of the EU” in reaction to Carney’s digital tax, warning that new U.S. tariffs will soon follow.

Indeed, Ottawa is faithfully following Brussels’ line: censorship laws, regulation of media platforms, fiscal grabs on U.S. companies — all aimed at breaking American dominance in the digital sphere and, as a side benefit, easing the overstretched state budget a bit. What drives a prime minister at this stage of trade talks to escalate to the maximum level becomes clear if one follows Trump’s hinted line and understands Canada as a resource-rich EU satellite. Carney is intimately familiar only with the scorched earth strategy.

Thus, Trump’s uncompromising response sends an unmistakable signal to Brussels: the era of fair-weather diplomacy is over. You will have to move.

Trump Exposes Brussels’ Lying Machine

As Europeans who claim free self-determination and individual sovereignty, we should be thankful to Donald Trump. As at the start of the trade dispute with the EU, he shines a glaring spotlight on Ottawa’s protectionism in Canada’s case. The public needs more evidence of Brussels’ often cleverly disguised protectionism and its Canadian branch office. Trump explicitly mentioned in his reply to Carney the tariff barrier of up to 400 percent Canada long imposed against American agriculture well before the tariff dispute.

Lies, moralizing manipulation of apodictic opinion, and cold-blooded protectionism — that most clearly describes the Brussels line.

In public discourse, EU Europe always portrays itself as the defender of free trade, as a liberal and open order power. Behind the scenes, however, they overwhelm non-European competitors with a web of harmonization duties, climate regulations, and rulebooks that kill fair competition in the cradle. A free trade with built-in entry barriers and a minefield to deter newcomers — technically well-packaged, morally justified, economically devastating.

Trump’s hard line on Brussels and Canada also makes him an enlightener of geopolitical reality. It is to be expected that in the trade dispute with Brussels, we will encounter more, hitherto undisclosed, instruments from the European protectionism toolbox. As said: the cards are now on the table.

Warning Signal to the “Five Eyes”

The clumsy escalation attempt by the Canadian prime minister has exposed a geopolitical fault line: on one side, the United States and its partners, committed to values of freedom. Think here of Argentina’s President Javier Milei. On the other side, a globalist cartel is forming, led by EU Brussels and its satellites like Ottawa. Thanks to the internal political turn of the Trump administration, this difference is now glaringly clear. While in Europe, politics, unions, churches, and the “cordon sanitaire” of the green-socialist agenda — consisting of a host of NGOs and state media — blindly defend the woke climate and redistribution agenda, the wind has already shifted in the U.S.

The violent clashes in heavily European-influenced strongholds of California underscore the growing pressure from the new U.S. administration on these milieus. The same goes for migration policy. Here, the chasm between the U.S. and the EU is so wide that even the trained eye, looking through the rose-colored glasses of European propaganda, can no longer hide reality: the U.S. is handling its migration crisis and returning to internal political seriousness.

Trump sends a clear signal to the Western world: whoever tries to siphon off America’s innovative strength or block it through regulation will be declared a pariah without hesitation. Delivered via Trump’s social media platform Truth Social, this message from yesterday is addressed to the EU, to Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom — and to the tech industry in Silicon Valley itself, which can now be assured of White House backing.

“We will let Canada know what tariff they must pay to do business with the United States of America,” Trump said. The U.S. president is not just imposing an economic sanction — he is putting the true power relations, visible to all, in the spotlight. Anyone who wants to do business on the world’s largest single market will have to accept the host’s rules. This is the new sound people will have to get used to — fast.

America’s New Role

Just as in monetary policy, where the U.S. succeeded in abandoning London’s City and the LIBOR mechanism controlled by European banks by introducing the SOFR system, a new American course is emerging geopolitically. Trump’s May trip through the Middle East also set a new tone: business took center stage, early attempts at a new mercantile order in the region are emerging. Whether Saudi Arabia, Qatar, or the United Arab Emirates — Trump convinced them all to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in the reindustrialization of the United States.

No European moralizing, no divisive politics to consolidate power locally — Trump is daring to reorder the Middle East.

Hectic Weeks Ahead

And Europe? Much like in the case of the elimination of Iran’s nuclear program by the U.S. military or the rare earth deal involving Ukraine, European politics no longer even plays a supporting role. It has become irrelevant. There are retreat battles and distractions, like Canada’s digital tax, which reveal the geopolitical weakness of the Old Continent. Europe is stuck on the defensive — dependent on third-party energy flows, entangled in the Ukraine conflict, and powerless in managing global trade.

Transferring this geopolitical loss of relevance of Europeans to the upcoming trade talks with the U.S., we can expect spectacular Brussels flips, media squabbles, and the usual vilification of the U.S. president in frenzied media. The Euro cartel and its allies have yet to intellectually or politically make the leap forward.

Just as Brussels mistakenly assumes that it has gotten off lightly with Trump accepting the NATO 2% goal as sufficient for now, hoping to slip back into familiar behavioral patterns and delay tactics, a bitter truth threatens in the trade dispute: the U.S. is serious, and it will solve its domestic problems by returning to American values of free-market economy, minimal state, and personal responsibility. And these values will be defended abroad with maximum severity.

* * * 

Thomas Kolbe is a German graduate economist. For over 25 years, he has worked as a journalist and media producer. As a publicist, he focuses on economic processes and observes geopolitical events from the perspective of the capital markets. His publications follow a philosophy that focuses on the individual and their right to self-determination.

For those who turned into the live debate last night, we apologize for the ”demonstration of Wirecast” mantra that played repeatedly. This was not a mass MK Ultra sleeper cell activation but a glitch with our streaming software. And, yes, we have an active Wirecast subscription. So… please direct your hate mail to support@telestream.net.

That aside — Keith Knight, Mike Benz, and Cenk Uygur — respectively the abolitionist, reformist, and proponent — had a great debate. Here were the highlights for those who missed it:

“I see a lot of bathwater and very little baby.”

Responding to Cenk’s defense of USAID’s HIV programs with the phrase, “Keep the baby with the bathwater,” Benz retorted sharply: “I see a lot of bathwater and very little baby,” citing forced sterilizations in Peru and aggressive abortion campaigns in Latin America and Africa as evidence that USAID is sometimes involved in “the opposite of saving babies… USAID is taking the lives of babies.”

Benz further detailed covert operations masked as health aid, referencing a CIA-backed, USAID-funded fake vaccine program in Pakistan that collected blood and DNA under the guise of counterterrorism. “Nobody would think [HIV prevention] would be where they would establish a recruiting office for regime change,” he noted on a similar program in Cuba. Even massive charity efforts like Band Aid and Live Aid come under fire, with Benz alleging that “of the 100 million raised, 95 million went to purchase weapons for rebels in Somalia.” In sum, Benz urges scrutiny: “We have to look at what USAID is doing vs. what they say they are doing.”

🔥🔥”Instead of throwing out the entire budget..THE ENTIRE BUDGET WITH BATHWATER” – Cenk@cenkuygur begins to “inform” everyone on HIV alone we have 25 million lives saved via USAID programs and how that have spread even further…”Keep the baby with the bath water”
Benz… pic.twitter.com/D5dSxssBtO

— Johnny St.Pete (@JohnMcCloy) June 29, 2025

“When it’s too dirty for the CIA…”

Benz’s view boiled down: USAID is a cover arm of U.S. foreign policy.

“USAID at its heart is a CIA function.” Even seemingly benign programs—whether about “food security, public health, independent media, [or] rule of law”—are, according to Benz, “secretly accomplishing some goal the State Department wants to achieve.”

These programs can also channel funds back home to prop up the “political apparatus” through kickbacks. Benz underscored the lack of oversight, warning that “USAID has only ONE METHOD OF ACCOUNTABILITY… The Inspector General,” and that it can “block Congress,” effectively bypassing legislative checks. Pointing to the Zunzuneo scandal—USAID’s secret attempt to incite an Arab Spring-style uprising in Cuba—Benz noted that when the operation was exposed, “Obama denied knowledge because he didn’t give a presidential finding & the Congress & Senate said we didn’t know this was happening.”

“Foreign aid has gone way too rogue,” he concluded, noting that USAID has now been expelled from eight countries. His prescription is one of reform: “USAID has to go into the shop for repairs before it is driven back out onto the road again.”

On the @zerohedge Foreign Aid Debate, Mike Benz briefly explains USAID is a vehicle used to employ covert tactics without requiring executive approval.
” IF IT’S TOO DIRTY FOR THE CIA..GIVE IT TO USAID” – BENZ
@MikeBenzCyber that “ USAID at its heart is a CIA FUNCTION & You… pic.twitter.com/qMxU5c36OS

— Johnny St.Pete (@JohnMcCloy) June 28, 2025

For the abolitionist perspective — i.e. no foreign aid whatsoever — tune into the full debate below for remarks by Keith Knight, editor at Scott Horton’s Libertarian Institute. Knight is one of the brightest young thinkers among modern libertarians:

https://t.co/A2uwg4HOYH

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) June 28, 2025
 

Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

While everyone has been preoccupied with the war in the Middle East and the anti-ICE protests going on around the nation, economic conditions in the U.S. have continued to deteriorate.  The housing market is in abysmal shape, consumer spending is down and layoffs are way up.   Meanwhile, fear of our seemingly endless cost of living crisis is preventing the Federal Reserve from cutting interest rates, and we shouldn’t expect any additional “economic stimulus” from our politicians in Washington any time soon because the federal government is already facing an unprecedented debt crisis.  In other words, our economy is a giant mess and the cavalry isn’t going to come riding along to save us.

If you find yourself deeply struggling in this difficult economic environment, you are definitely not alone.  

The following are 11 signs that the entire country is facing enormous economic challenges right now…

#1 Sales of new homes in the United States absolutely tanked last month…

Sales of new single-family homes dropped 13.7% in May compared with April to 623,000 units on a seasonally adjusted, annualized basis, according to the U.S. Census.

That sales total was 6.3% lower than May 2024 and well below both the six-month average of 671,000 and the one-year average of 676,000. It also lags the pre-pandemic average in 2019 of 685,000 units sold.

Wall Street analysts were expecting May new home sales of 695,000, according to estimates from Dow Jones.

#2 According to the latest numbers that we have been given, home prices in the U.S. have fallen for two months in a row…

After US home pries declined in March (the latest data) for the first time in over two years, this morning’s Case-Shiller Home Price Index data was expected to show another drop in the cost of buying a home.

And the consensus was right but way off in magnitude as prices in April tumbled 0.31% MoM (-0.02% exp) – the biggest MoM drop since Dec 2022…

#3 Last month, existing home sales in the U.S. were the worst that we have seen during the month of May since 2009.

#4 Retail sales fell even more than expected last month…

Consumer spending pulled back sharply in May, weighed down by declining gas sales and looming unease over where the economy is headed, the Commerce Department reported Tuesday.

Retail sales declined 0.9%, even more than the 0.6% drop expected from the Dow Jones consensus, according to numbers adjusted for seasonality but not inflation. The decline followed a 0.1% loss in April and came at a time of unease over tariffs and geopolitical tensions.

#5 The Federal Reserve Bank of New York is warning that the labor market “deteriorated noticeably” during the first quarter of this year…

Economic research from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York indicated the labor market “deteriorated noticeably” in the first quarter of 2025, with those just entering the workforce taking the hardest hits.

The Labor Department reported that employers added 139,000 jobs in May while unemployment held steady at 4.2%. The unemployment rate for all college grads was 2.7%, but the rate for those between the ages of 22 and 27 years old jumped to 5.8%, according to the New York Federal Reserve. That’s the highest reading since 2021.

#6 According to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, U.S. employers announced 47 percent more job cuts in May 2025 than they did in May 2024…

Layoffs of U.S. workers were nearly 50% higher in May than they were a year ago, with reductions attributed to the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) remaining the leading reason for job cuts this year, according to a new report.

Global outplacement Challenger, Gray & Christmas on Thursday released a report that said there were 93,816 job cuts announced by U.S. employers in May. That amounts to an increase of 47% from 63,816 announced last May, while last month’s figure was down 12% from 105,441 cuts in April.

#7 For the first five months of this year, U.S. employers announced 80 percent more job cuts than they did during the first five months of last year…

That brings the total number of job cuts announced this year to 696,309 — an increase of 80% from the 385,859 jobs cut in the first five months of 2024. This year’s total is just 65,049 job cuts away from matching the 2024 annual total.

“Tariffs, funding cuts, consumer spending, and overall economic pessimism are putting intense pressure on companies’ workforces. Companies are spending less, slowing hiring, and sending layoff notices,” said Andrew Challenger, senior vice president of Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

#8 Factories in California are permanently shutting down at a staggering pace…

All within a week, California lost Amy’s Kitchen’s San Jose plant (331 jobs), Anheuser-Busch’s Oakland warehouse complex (142 jobs), and several smaller plants, all for unsustainable prices and operational disruption.

Amy’s Kitchen, for example, was losing $1 million monthly, consumed by inflation, labor shortages, and supply chain problems. Anheuser-Busch’s exodus, conversely, left workers in suspense as the plant changed hands without a guarantee of employment.

It is not bad luck, evidence of a business environment where even legendary companies can’t survive the relentless fiscal squeeze.

#9 More than 3 percent of Paramount’s entire workforce will be hitting the bricks…

Paramount Global is trimming its U.S. workforce by 3.5% in a move to cut costs.

The company’s plans to cut jobs were announced Tuesday by its three co-CEOs in a company-wide memo viewed by FOX Business.

Co-CEOs George Cheeks, Chris McCarthy and Brian Robbins said in the message that Paramount was “taking the hard, but necessary steps to further streamline our organization this week.”

#10 Microsoft is cutting jobs in its gaming division for the fourth time in 18 months…

Microsoft is planning another round of cuts at Xbox as part of the tech giant’s ongoing reorganization.

Xbox managers are expecting substantial job cuts across the entire group as soon as next week, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg. This marks the fourth time Microsoft downsized its gaming division in the past 18 months, the outlet reported. Several video game studios at the company’s Xbox division were shuttered in 2024, too.

#11 At this point, things are so bad that even Google is reducing headcount…

Google on Tuesday offered buyouts to employees across several of its divisions, including those within its knowledge and information and central engineering units as well as marketing, research and communications teams, CNBC has learned.

Knowledge and information, or K&I, is the unit that houses Google’s search, ads and commerce divisions. The buyouts Tuesday are the company’s latest effort to reduce headcount, which Google has continued to do in waves since laying off 12,000 employees in 2023.

CNBC could not confirm how many employees were impacted by the latest round of buyouts. The Information reported earlier that the company offered buyouts to employees in the search and ads unit.

Our ongoing economic decline is just one element of the “perfect storm” that we are now experiencing.

Everywhere around us, chaos is erupting.

Unfortunately, I believe that conditions will become even more chaotic in the months ahead.

If you currently have a job that you value, I would hold on to it as tightly as you can.

We all remember what happened in 2008 and 2009, and now it appears that another very serious downturn has arrived.

*  *  *

Michael’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

Socialists always rise to power in the midst of failed liberal leadership.  The assumption being that liberal policies accomplish nothing because they “don’t go far enough” to push the collectivist values of wealth redistribution and equity-based cultural engineering.  If only the political left asserted more control over people’s lives and property, all the ailments of American society would magically disappear.

In most cases socialism also fails to make people’s lives better.  Though one could argue that it does eventually achieve its goals of equal wealth – Socialism makes everyone equally poor.  In countries where socialism actually finds “success” a couple of factors are always present:  A small population that avoids multiculturalism and mixed demographics, and access to abundant natural resources.   

Wherever socialism in introduced into an otherwise prosperous economy, the standard of living automatically degrades.  When socialism is used as a bandage to stop the financial bleeding of a depressed market wounded by liberal management, it always makes things far worse.

The city of New York is on the verge of learning this lesson the hard way with the sudden popularity of mayoral candidate Zohran Mandani.  Zohran Mamdani, a 33-year-old assemblyman, democratic socialist and “rap music producer”, defied expectations when he pulled well ahead to presumed victory over former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in New York City’s June 24 Democratic mayoral primary. 

While there were 11 candidates on the ranked-choice ballot, preliminary polling named Cuomo and Mamdani the front-runners by a large margin. Cuomo frequently polled above Mamdani in the weeks leading up to voting day, but the former governor ultimately ended up calling his opponent on Tuesday night to concede.  Mamdani led Cuomo 44% to 36% among first-place votes, with 96% of ballots counted as of around 1 p.m. on Wednesday, June 25

A Muslim immigrant born and raised in Uganda, Mamdani only became a legal citizen in the US in 2018.  He supports communistic economic reforms and woke social engineering concepts.  If you thought NYC could not be any worse, get ready because if Mamdani becomes Mayor his policies will prove the progressive enclave has far further to fall.  A look at his campaign proposals reveals a disturbing list of childish ideas that would put the final nail in New York’s coffin.

Rent And Housing Controls

New York already made this deadly mistake during the covid lockdowns when they applied an eviction moratorium from 2020 to 2022.  Government property controls in any form tend to force owners out of rental markets, compelling them to sell their properties in order to avoid losing money in the future maintaining homes and apartment buildings that don’t bring in a profit.

As owners sell, renters are made homeless and the supply shrinks, causing rents to skyrocket even higher.  The vacancy rate for rental housing in NYC has dropped to 1.4%, (the lowest since 1968).

Mamdani has consistently called for multi-year rent price freeze and acts as if property owners are the source of New York’s rent inflation.  In reality, the prices are rising because of basic supply and demand.  A price freeze would not solve the the problem of diminishing supply for renters.  In fact, it would drive more owners out of the market and reduce the supply even further.  Prices might be suppressed by the government, but more and more people will have to leave New York or become homeless. 

The result would be a disaster for the city as the population shrinks and tax revenues decline, and Mamdani’s reforms require more taxes, not less. 

The candidate hopes to offset the supply problem with government subsidized housing, but this will mean billions in tax expenditures over the course of the next ten years.  Similar efforts in California have resulted in disaster along with billions in wasted taxes and their homeless problem has only increased.  Building housing is also expensive and socialists can’t make contractors work for free.  The solution would be for progressive politicians to drastically reduce regulations on construction and cut taxes, but they will never do this.

Defunding The Police

Mamdani has long been a proponent of defunding the police along with other woke notions of reducing crime by reducing enforcement.  He has recently changed his position, claiming he will not cut funding to police as New Yorkers grow increasingly fearful of theft and violence.  However, his policies remain suspect and he argues that criminal violence “is an artificial construct”.

Zohran Mamdani on why he wants to empty jails: “VioIence is an artificial construct” pic.twitter.com/N4G7jSmEDX

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) June 26, 2025

He plans to create a “Department of Community Safety”, a proposal that includes increased investment in mental health programs and crisis response, expanding “evidence-based gun violence prevention programs” and increasing funding to “hate violence prevention programs” by 800%. 

In other words, Mamdani is going to pursue strict gun controls that will disarm law abiding citizens, making them easier to victimize.  Furthermore, focus on mental health will likely come at the expense of actual prosecution and jail time for offenders, meaning repeat criminals will run rampant.  “Hate violence” is a non-issue in NYC unless one counts attacks on Asians, often committed by black perpetrators as video evidence shows.  This is not something that a leftist like Mamdani will acknowledge.

As we have seen in leftist cities like Seattle and Portland, overt restrictions on policing lead to a law enforcement exodus.  Cops quit in droves and move away, leaving the population with less protection and more crime.

City Owned Grocery Stores

Leftists are outraged by the fact that retailers are closing up shop in high crime neighborhoods, leaving residents with “food deserts” and less jobs.  The thing is, the residents are the problem, not the companies that are forced to leave to avoid constant theft. 

On top of this, grocery prices are incredibly high after the stagflation crisis struck under the Biden Administration, leaving Democrats struggling to find a way to reduce costs and avoid losing even more of their working class voter base. 

Mamdani’s solution is, of course, more price controls.  This time through government operated grocery stores. Mamdani has said he plans to address the cost of food by creating city-owned grocery stores that will pay no rent or property taxes, buy and sell at wholesale prices from centralized warehouses and partner with local vendors to keep prices down.  Meaning, the city would have to manage the entire supply chain to these stores in order to get the price cuts Mamdani wants.

Typically this leads suppliers to stop supplying as their profits shrink to nothing when dealing with socialist government buyers.  One must also ask why Mamdani doesn’t simply reduce taxes on existing retailers in exchange for helping food prices go down?  Government grocery stores with price controls might lower costs for consumers, but they would also destroy local competition, causing more and more companies to leave NYC, creating even more “food deserts”.

Raising Minimum Wage To $30

The minimum wage debate is built on naivety.  Socialist think they can dictate one aspect of the free market without negative consequences on all other aspects of the free market.  Mamdani’s plan to raise New York City’s minimum wage to $30 would be devastating to the economy, driving employers out of the area.  The same thing that happened when Seattle raised their minimum wage to $20, and California is experiencing an exodus of fast food jobs after they raised wages to $20.  

The only way this idea would not end with businesses fleeing the city is if the government forced a tax as punishment for companies that relocate (as California tried to do). 

Higher Taxes On “Richer And Whiter” Neighborhoods

Mamdani is fully onboard with DEI initiatives including race based wealth redistribution.  In his “Soak The Rich” proposal, Mamdani states:  

“Shift the tax burden from overtaxed homeowners in the outer boroughs to more expensive homes in richer and whiter neighborhoods…”

While many New Yorkers support the idea of balancing property taxes, the candidate’s calls to target “white neighborhoods” has raised concerns that he is seeking to implement hidden reparations through race-based taxation. 

At bottom, Mamdani’s campaign is rooted in an even more extreme version of the platform that led to the defeat of the Democratic Party in 2024.  As mayor in NYC, it’s inevitable that these policies would destroy what remains of New York’s already struggling economy and trigger a capital flight the likes of which the city has never seen before. 

By Brian Martucci of UtilityDrive

Utilities, energy system analysts and ERCOT expect exponential growth of data centers and other large loads in Texas over the next several years. ERCOT forecasts 138 GW of large loads on its grid by 2030, up from 87 GW this year.

Even if only a fraction of proposed data centers get built, the boom could threaten grid reliability during the spring and fall months, when many thermal generators go down for planned maintenance, Aurora Energy Research said earlier this month. Reliability is already a concern in some parts of ERCOT — including the San Antonio area, where ERCOT is deploying more than 400 MW of mobile generation units and inked a costly “reliability must run” agreement with an aging 400-MW gas plant. 

Aurora models suggest data centers will be the largest single source of load flexibility available to mitigate Texas’ reliability risk. By 2030, up to 50% of the expected 35 GW of ERCOT’s data center capacity could provide some degree of emergency reliability support, Aurora said.

S.B. 6 authorizes the Public Utility Commission of Texas to develop two demand management programs — one mandatory and one voluntary — to ensure Texas data centers and other non-critical large loads help rather than hinder reliability.

The law’s intent is “to make sure [large loads] pose as little reliability risk to the system as possible and [are] not drinking the milkshake of all other Texas power customers,” NRG Vice President of Regulatory Affairs Travis Kavulla said in an interview.

S.B. 6 could avoid a future scenario like Winter Storm Uri, the dayslong freeze in February 2021 that saw millions of residential customers cut off from the grid as nearby industrial loads hummed along, Kavulla added.

The mandatory demand management program applies to loads of 75 MW or greater that interconnect to ERCOT from January onwards. It allows utilities to disconnect eligible loads during firm load shed events and mandates the installation of shutoff equipment as a condition of grid interconnection.

The voluntary program is a competitively procured reliability service active during specific times of the year, subject to a minimum 24-hour notice period and off-limits to any large-load customer that “curtails in response to the wholesale price of electricity … or that otherwise participates in a different reliability or ancillary service,” the law says.

The advance warning period is key for this sort of voluntary program, especially one counting on participation from hyperscale data centers with sensitive IT equipment worth billions, Kavulla said.

“This should not be the kind of demand response where you’re calling it with no notice and curtailing the customer straight off,” he said.

The mandatory program will surely alleviate stress on the ERCOT grid during extreme weather events but the jury is still out on customer uptake for the voluntary program, Kavulla said. Some data center operators have sounded open to voluntarily curtailing their loads or switching to onsite backup generation when needed, while others have been more resistant, he noted.

Kavulla credited Texas legislators for “calling the question,” however. 

“They have decided to create a market and test [customers’] willingness to participate,” he said. “Nothing gets people thinking like offering them money.”

Kavulla and Texas Blockchain Council President Lee Bratcher cheered other S.B. 6 provisions, like a $100,000 minimum initial interconnection fee for large load customers and a requirement that such customers disclose to utilities any potentially duplicative interconnection requests elsewhere in Texas. 

Both provisions could mitigate the “phantom loads” gumming up utility and grid operator forecasts in Texas and elsewhere, Bratcher said in an email.

“The Texas Blockchain Council and our member companies are glad to see that Senate Bill 6 tackles the phantom load challenge associated with the interconnection queue [and gives ERCOT] a more accurate picture of future load growth,” Bratcher said.

Some experts say 80% to 90% of proposed data centers in the U.S. interconnection queue will never get built, in part because they duplicate requests made in other utility territories.

The next step for ERCOT and its continental counterpart, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, is to “develop a non-firm load category for modeling purposes [that] would greatly increase the efficient utilization of transmission infrastructure and properly signal load behavior expectations to the transmission/distribution service providers,” Bratcher said.

And while Texas’s intrastate electricity market makes it something of a special case, some core S.B. 6 provisions are transferable to other states in the restructured Eastern markets, Kavulla said.

For example, states in the PJM Interconnection “could certainly precondition or accelerate interconnection of large loads on the basis of their willingness to participate in demand response,” he said.

Foreign-owned globalist meatpacking giant JBS—labeled a “modern-day monopoly” by Republican Senator Josh Hawley—has acknowledged that the U.S. cattle industry is in the beginning stages of rebuilding its decimated herd from seven-decade lows. While the move to rebuild is underway, the company warns that meaningful increases in beef supply—and any relief for consumers facing record-high retail prices—aren’t expected until at least 2027.

“We are into herd rebuild right now,” said Wesley Batista Filho, CEO of JBS North America, in an interview quoted by Bloomberg. He added, “The economic incentives are there, the weather is helping.”

Batista pointed out that a decline in female cattle slaughter suggests that ranchers are retaining more cows for breeding, signaling herd rebuilding has commenced. However, he warned that recovery time will be slow, with no significant increase in beef supply expected until 2027. 

Batista’s analogy to the rebuilding cycle is this: “It’s more like taking the stairs than the elevator.”

Which means ground beef prices at the supermarket will remain high through this year and into 2026. 

Batista’s comments come days after Goldman Sachs analysts Leah Jordan and Eli Thompson told clients that beef cycle indicators suggest a rebuilding cycle has begun:

Beef cycles typically last about twelve years on average, looking at trough-to-trough in the cattle herd. The prior trough in the herd occurred in 2014, while the prior trough in beef packer margins occurred in 2015. The current herd liquidation cycle began in 2019, with the herd tracking at ~86.7mm as of January 1, 2025, the lowest level since the 1950s. Herd rebuilding may already be underway, or is likely soon, noting supportive industry conditions (high calf prices and low feed costs), which should further constrain supply in the near-term, partially offset by record weights for cattle on feed.

Analysts posed the question: “When will the beef cycle turn?” — a question we’ve been asking at ZeroHedge as well.

Here’s a visual breakdown of the beef industry’s turning point…

The rebuilding phase will be rocky for the four mega-corporations (JBS, Tyson Foods, Cargill, and National Beef) that control 80% of beef processing in America because, as Senator Hawley warned on Wednesday at an antitrust hearing on Capitol Hill, scrutiny on the meatpacker “monopoly” has begun, calling for the urgent need of more competition.

A total of 4 companies control a whopping 80% of the entire beef-processing industry. That’s a modern-day monopoly.

The winners here? The monopolists – like Tyson Foods. The losers? Farmers & grocery shoppers.

We need more industry competition in America pic.twitter.com/UxZc7eoAOZ

— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) June 24, 2025

The path to rebuilding starts with reviving regional microprocessing plants across the country—creating a more resilient, decentralized food supply chain that’s less vulnerable to disruptions.

Just as important, Americans need to rethink how they buy beef: skip the globalist mega-supermarkets and instead support local ranchers directly.

What the Globalists Don’t Want You to Have…

That keeps dollars in the hands of mom-and-pop ranchers, not globalist Wall Street, which has stripped the Heartland of wealth for decades. Now, the pendulum swings the other way as MAHA begins.

For readers waking up across the Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York City metro areas, conditions remain gloomy with overcast skies and mild temperatures hovering in the mid-70s°F—quite a change from triple-digit heat that gripped the region earlier last week, straining power grids and sending electricity prices soaring. 

However, a new outlook from private weather forecaster BAMWX warns that the heat dome may return in force next month.

“I would recommend none of us sleep on this trend ahead into next week, esp heading into Holiday markets,” said BAMWX meteorologist Kirk Hinz.

Hinz noted, “Simply put – the global circulation/momentum has HALTED … Translation – there will be a stout Heat Dome in July, question is just “where”…stay tuned.” 

I would recommend none of us sleep on this trend ahead into next week, esp heading into Holiday markets.

Simply put – the global circulation/momentum has HALTED.

Translation – there will be a stout Heat Dome in July, question is just “where”…stay tuned.#AGwx #OATT #natgas https://t.co/S1P5oY2UfB pic.twitter.com/Cr79w4LESP

— Kirk 🇺🇸 Hinz | BAM ⚡️Weather (@Met_khinz) June 27, 2025

The meteorologist’s forecast comes as average temperatures in Washington, D.C., typically peak during the heart of summer—mid-July through early August—before gradually declining heading into late August and September.

“Energy markets watch very closely for weather trends like this heading into the 4th of July holiday as naturally there will already be an uptick in energy demand due to increased festivities etc. has everything to do with supply vs demand,” Hinz explained. 

Revisit the latest natural gas note from Samantha Dart, Goldman Sachs’ co-head of Global Commodities Research, where she updated her bullish summer price target of $3.90/mmBtu. 

Via Remix News,

Hungary has every right, as a sovereign state, to block what it views as harmful to children. However, the ban on the Pride Parade could prove a headache that is not worth the risk for the Hungarian government.

Remix News often takes the position that the government in Hungary is making the right move in a variety of areas, including seeking peace in Ukraine, and above all, its principled stance in 2015/2016 that helped stem the migration crisis. Orbán was far ahead of his time, with EU leaders across the bloc increasingly coming around to his view on the issue — in many cases out of sheer political survival rather than any principled reevaluation of their damaging open borders policies.

The issue of the Pride Parade may play well with many Hungarians, but Hungary, even if it views itself as being in the right, must also always pick its battles. It just, for example, vetoed the accession of Ukraine into the EU, which was not only the right move for Hungary, but the right move for all of Europe. Nevertheless, Hungary’s fighting a multi-front war on many issues.

It is also fair to say, and Viktor Orbán has said this many times, that Hungary is a small power in the European Union, even if it does punch well above its weight. Focusing on handling the migration crisis, which has proven a threat to LGBT people due to an influx of people from cultures that are hostile to this community, should be tantamount — along with ending the war in Ukraine.

The law has only created a lose-lose situation for the government. Enforce the law and look “authoritarian” or back down and let the march happen and look weak. Hungary is setting itself up for what could be some ugly images if the Budapest Pride Parade moves forward, as the mayor of Budapest is looking to do. Are the police going to block the parade? Are protesters going to push through? The left would love to see a confrontation of some sort. The best solution may be to simply allow the parade to move forward, noting it was conducted illegally, and it will all be forgotten in a week anyway on both sides.

There is a reason the government takes issue with the parade though, and the EU should recognize the government’s concerns. Pride Parades have become a spectacle featuring some very disturbing, overly sexualized displays in the last 10 to 20 years. In many cases, actual naked men and also women have walked directly in front of children. This is not the behavior typically seen at any other parade, so why this one? In addition, there are people dressed in BDSM bondage gear, and other extremely sexualized displays have been put forward as “totally normal.” These are not exceptions, but routine displays at many Pride Parades. The LGBT community should be policing these kinds of sexualized displays themselves, as it only alienates people who see these images. In Budapest itself, there have also been some questionable displays in the past.

Orbán should move to ban all overtly sexual behavior at the parade, as this is perfectly in line with public ordinances seen across Europe. People cannot walk around naked on the streets of most European capitals, just as they cannot walk up to children on a playground and display themselves naked. The same rules should apply in Budapest as well. Orbán’s government could make a point that such displays will not be tolerated, while allowing for the Parade to move forward otherwise.

Orbán has often proven a maverick, and even the left respects him from a purely political point of view. Domestically, he remains the most popular ruling politician in Europe, and the longest-serving current prime minister. His political instincts have served him well, and much of the decision-making process that drives his Fidesz party is based on relentless polling to gauge what the Hungarian people want. As much as the European elite scream about a lack of democracy in Hungary, Orbán is a populist, which means that he generally follows what his people want on nearly all the biggest issues. That is probably a large reason he is so hated by the politicians in Europe, who do the exact opposite on many of the biggest issues, including immigration.

Europe should also meet Hungary halfway to some extent. There needs to be an understanding that in the East of Europe, not everyone is receptive to a certain brand of LGBT in their face, especially in the form of Pride Parade BDSM costumes. Even in the West of Europe, such displays are not welcome. It was also not so long ago that the West was conservative on these issues as well.

It is also important to note that Fidesz is not the only party ruling Hungary, but has a junior partner, the Christian Democratic People’s Party (KDNP). For that party, the issue of the Pride Parade may be even more relevant for its voting base.

Ultimately, LGBT people in Hungary live, almost universally, in peace. There is LGBT nightlife and culture, and LGBT people can walk the streets far more freely in Hungary than they can in many neighborhoods across the most “progressive” liberal capitals.

🇫🇷 In France, a group of gay men were attacked during the Music Festival 2025 (Fête de la Musique).

“I was going back upstairs with my friends, we’d had a great evening, and these brutes jumped me. I felt my (LGBT) flag, which I had hung around my neck, being pulled.” pic.twitter.com/BbiOYkyIuT

— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) June 26, 2025

Although it remains a point of contention among the European right, many within the Western right see right-wing policies, such as immigration restriction, as a bulwark that will openly protect gays and lesbians in European countries. Alice Weidel, the lesbian co-leader of the AfD, who Orbán has a warm relationship with, is a case in point. We cannot say whether Weidel’s stance towards what she deems “LGBT ideology” is the view of a “silent majority” in the LGBT community, but it certainly represents a fair amount of people.

Orbán himself may estimate that, as the leader of Hungary, political opinions from all the newspapers and politicians aligned against him anyway do not matter anymore. He is now forging ahead, and only time will tell if he is once again proven right. However, tension between Hungary and Brussels seems to be only on one trend line — towards more conflict — unless there is a major change of power at the top.

It is too late to phase out this ban on Pride this year, but next year offers a new opportunity to.

Read more here…

Across the country, Americans are being forced to rethink major financial decisions in the face of rising costs, high interest rates, and ongoing economic uncertainty, according to Guardian Service.

In a recent survey of 1,000 people, 35% said they’ve delayed or canceled a big purchase this year—most commonly a home (22%) or a car (8%). Millennials (40%) and Gen Z (32%) were especially likely to put plans on hold. The leading causes? Widespread anxiety about the economy (63%), high interest rates (57%), and unaffordable prices (55%).

Some are shifting expectations entirely—12% have scaled back their “dream home” goals, and nearly 1 in 4 now see renting as a better financial move than buying in 2025.

These shifting priorities extend beyond big-ticket items to everyday protections like insurance. When budgets are stretched, even essential coverage can feel expendable. Nearly 1 in 4 Americans (24%) said they’ve reduced coverage for a home or car to save money, and 29% reported downgrading or canceling at least one type of insurance over the past year.

Car insurance saw the largest cuts, with 15% scaling back and 8% switching from full coverage to liability only—moves that reduce costs but also increase financial risk.

The decisions behind these changes often stem from a desire to create short-term financial relief, even at the expense of long-term security. “A third of Americans said they would temporarily go without insurance to cover essential expenses,” and 1 in 5 would consider dropping coverage entirely if premiums continue to rise.

Guardian Service writes that at the same time, insurance is still widely valued—77% said car insurance is essential, and 57% said the same for renters or homeowners insurance. Trust, however, remains an issue, with only 37% saying they fully trust insurers to come through when something goes wrong.

The study is clear: as Americans adjust their budgets and weigh tough trade-offs, they’re showing a clear willingness to prioritize immediate needs over long-term plans.

Authored by Charles Rotter via WattsUpWithThat.com,

It comes as little surprise that yet another grandiose techno-utopian vision has ended not with a triumphant march toward Net Zero, but with a flick of the off-switch. Last week, Britain’s energy secretary quietly announced that the government “has pulled the plug on a £24 billion plan to bring Moroccan wind and solar power to Britain via the world’s longest subsea electricity cable, citing concerns over security and costs” .

In other words, after years of hype, headline-grabbing simulations and talk of “reliable clean power for 19 hours a day,” the reality of risk and expense finally intruded – and the dream of Sahara sun for all has been consigned to the scrapheap.

The scheme, championed by Xlinks and backed by big-name investors from Abu Dhabi’s Taqa to TotalEnergies, was unveiled in 2022 with a headline price tag of £16 billion. By the time official talks fizzled, project costs had ballooned to between £22 billion and £24 billion—and the fixed, subsidised price for UK consumers had climbed from a promising £48/MWh in 2012 terms to a sobering £70-80/MWh, on par with Hinkley Point C’s notorious £92.50/MWh deal from a decade ago . It was a textbook illustration of how techno-optimism meets political reality: grand ambitions crashing headlong into the twin walls of finance and geopolitics.

Perhaps the most telling line came when officials admitted this “first-of-a-kind mega project” carried “a high level of inherent, cumulative risk, delivery, operational, and security.” In plainer terms, nobody quite trusted a 3,800-mile subsea cable stretching from the Sahara to Devon to keep the lights on—or to fend off hostile actors, accidental damage or simple technical failure . For all the talk of homegrown power, the reality was a foreign-built supergrid running through disputed waters, vulnerable to every storm, saboteur or bureaucratic blunder.

And yet just a few years ago, this venture was presented as the ultimate win-win: millions of desert acres covered in solar panels and wind turbines, exporting 3.6 GW of “reliable” energy to 7 million homes and displacing imported gas. Xlinks even claimed it could reduce UK wholesale prices by over 9 percent in its first year of operation—implying that the very costs of this colossal scheme would pay for itself. Leave aside the challenge of storing or transmitting intermittent deserts-of-power and the gargantuan batteries needed to smooth out every dust storm, and one must ask: who was really buying into this fairy tale—investors or ideologues?

No doubt Sir Dave Lewis, Xlinks’s chairman and former Tesco boss, felt the sting of rejection when he spoke of being “hugely surprised and bitterly disappointed.” It is, after all, hard to maintain the sheen of global-scale green enthusiasm when home departments balk at underwriting your vision. One can almost hear the collective shrug from Westminster: enough with offshore daydreams—build some turbines in Yorkshire, drill holes for storage in the Midlands, train some electricians in Glasgow and call it a day. For all the vaunted “diversity of supply,” it appears domestic alternatives won the argument over exotic imports.

There is a delicious irony in the timing. As ministers tout an “accelerated path to net zero at least risk to billpayers and taxpayers,” they have effectively walked away from the single largest overseas renewable venture ever proposed . The very same people who once celebrated cross-continental cables as the crowning achievement of global cooperation now invoke security concerns and “national interest” as their exit ramp. One wonders how abruptly the narrative will shift next time a British-funded project in Kazakhstan or Canada hits a bump—will it be “not in the British interest” to proceed with those, too?

This turn of events also exposes the fundamental flaw of top-down climate technocracy: it treats citizens as passive units in a planetary control scheme, not discerning voters with budgets to balance. When the public wises up to the fact that imported Sahara sun arrives at a price rivaling home-grown nuclear—and carries with it a risk of outages, sabotage or diplomatic spats—they recoil. They learn that the cable would thread through multiple jurisdictions, remote islands and fierce currents, any one of which could jeopardize supply. At some point, scepticism ceases to be a political liability and becomes simple common sense.

Consider the broader lesson: no matter how enthusiastically globalists embrace “interconnected grids,” the strings always end back at national treasuries and war-rooms. The cable’s 1,500 square-mile solar-wind-battery complex in Morocco was to be the crown jewel of decarbonization, yet it was contingent on political goodwill in Rabat, cable-manufacturing in Asia, local security in the Sahara and stable undersea trench conditions for 3,800 miles—any of which could unravel faster than a hastily signed bilateral MoU. The government’s conclusion that “stronger alternative options” exist closer to home may be the most uncontroversial statement of 2025 .

Detach for a moment from the partisan fray and savour the schadenfreude: this megaproject was touted as the elixir to Britain’s energy woes, yet it collapsed under its own hubris. The very proponents who decried fossil-fuel inertia now cry foul when asked to stump up real money. The same voices that demand “global solidarity” balk when that solidarity requires underwriting risks in unstable deserts. And as for “green jobs” and “supply-chain opportunities”—it turns out that Asia still makes the cables and Morocco still controls the sun.

The demise of Xlinks’s Sahara venture may not end the net-zero narrative, but it does puncture a hole in the myth of techno-utopian inevitability. When a scheme promising 8 percent of Britain’s electricity—at a price echoing nuclear—and requiring unprecedented security guarantees is deemed “not in the national interest,” one must wonder: how many more exotic grand plans will be ditched before realism returns? The answer, for now, seems to be one.

Let us not pretend this was a minor failure. It represented the epitome of climate-policy excess: outsourcing critical infrastructure to distant deserts, bemoaning gas-price volatility while embracing solar-dust storms, and swapping local accountability for a vague vision of interconnected utopia. Watching it crumble offers a rare moment of clarity amid the Net Zero hysteria: true energy security still resides in domestic control, not pipelines and cables stretching half-a-continent away.

In the aftermath, expect Xlinks to regroup, rebrand and regroup again—perhaps pitching Canadian hydro next. But the core lesson stands: citizens will not subsidise fantasy-grid fantasies when they can invest in less risky generation at home. And bureaucrats will not ignore security and cost overruns when climate dogma collides with the hard calculus of budgets and ballots.

There is an understated joy in witnessing this particular techno-dream deflate. It reminds us that even the most elaborate green schemes are only as sound as their financial footings and geopolitical foundations. When those falter, the utopian narrative gives way to something far more earthy: the simple recognition that expensive, complex, and foreign-dependent projects rarely survive contact with reality. As the Sahara sun fades—quite literally—from policymakers’ agendas, one hopes the next set of proposals will be a little more modest, a bit less global, and anchored firmly within UK borders.