Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The average age of women giving birth in the United States is now close to 30 years, with the percentage of first births falling among young females, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a June 13 National Vital Statistics report.

The mean age at birth for all mothers increased from 28.7 in 2016 to 29.6 in 2023, according to the report. For first births, the average age rose from 26.6 years to 27.5 during this period.

The percentage of first births rose by 12.6 percent in women aged 30-34 and by 25 percent for women aged 35 and above.

In contrast, the percentage of first births among women aged 20-24 declined by 9 percent, and for those younger than 20 by 26 percent.

“Higher maternal age is linked to smaller family size on average and may carry different health risks and benefits compared with younger maternal age,” the CDC said.

“The findings of this analysis suggest that U.S. women may be continuing to delay motherhood,” it added. “Motherhood is increasingly delayed across most races and Hispanic-origin groups.”

Asian mothers saw the largest increase in average age at first birth of 1.4 years. Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander mothers had the smallest increase at 0.4 years.

A 2023 study published by PubMed Central showed that women were delaying childbearing due to factors such as education, participation in the labor market, and shifting personal preferences.

“Access to safe, efficient, and reversible pregnancy prevention methods” has also contributed to delayed childbearing in women, it said.

While speaking to reporters on April 22, President Donald Trump indicated he was willing to consider financial bonuses to boost birth rates in the United States.

Earlier this month, the administration announced it was ending a Biden-era guidance that directed hospitals to provide women with emergency abortion services.

The guidance was issued in 2022 after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and returned decisions regarding abortions to the states.

Earlier this year, Vice President JD Vance said he wanted more babies born in the United States. The American society has “failed to recognize the obligation that one generation has to another as a core part of living in a society,” he said.

“We failed a generation not only by permitting a culture of abortion on demand, but also by neglecting to help young parents achieve the ingredients they need to lead a happy and meaningful life.”

Societal Threat

In addition to women delaying pregnancy, men’s interest in being fathers is also waning, according to a 2022 study published in the Journal of Marriage and Family.

Childless men make up over a third of all adult males in the United States, the study said, adding that a growing share of these men “do not want children and increasingly, a lack of children would not bother them at all.”

“Certainty in having children among childless men has waned over time, and fewer childless men are concerned with parental leave policies when evaluating their job options.”

A key issue contributing to childlessness is childcare costs, which are at an “almost prohibitive” level, the Department of Labor said in a Nov. 19 post.

American families spent between 8.9 to 16 percent of their median incomes on full-day care for just a single child, it said. Annual costs were at $6,552 to $15,600 in 2022.

“To put this into perspective, the median cost of a year’s worth of rent was $15,216 in 2022,” the post said.

In an interview with NTD’s British Thought Leaders in May last year, data scientist and demographer Stephen J. Shaw called population decline “the most serious crisis humanity is facing,” warning it could lead to societal collapse.

“In fact, there’s evidence that this is exactly how civilisations end,” Shaw said, citing the Roman Empire’s policies in its latter stages that sought to raise birth rates, including by imposing taxes on childless individuals.

“There are Roman experts who put demography as one of the reasons that the Roman Empire—well, it didn’t fall overnight—basically faded away. And that’s exactly what’s happening to us, now. We’re fading away. This is what it feels like to fade away,” he said.

Authored by Michael Clements via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Rural landowners say America’s farms have become dumping grounds for sludge from the wastewater treatment plants of larger cities. They complain of foul odors, contaminated soil, health problems, and stormwater runoff contaminating streams, lakes, and groundwater with possibly dangerous chemicals.

The treated sewage sludge—known as “biosolids”— is the solid matter left from the wastewater treatment process. The sludge is removed from the bottom of the sewage plant tanks then treated to reduce pathogens for use as a soil amendment or fertilizer.

The biosolids industry promotes the treated sludge as an environmentally friendly way to recycle waste that would otherwise end up in a landfill while saving farmers money on fertilizer. Critics believe the less tangible costs of the sludge far outweigh any benefits.

Luther, Oklahoma, property owners Walt and Saundra Traywick, say they were first introduced to biosolids by a sickening stench outside their home in 2018. They say they have been dealing with the impact of the treated sewage and the PFAS chemicals they carry ever since then.

“It’s that rotting carcass smell, but more metallic,” Walt told The Epoch Times.

Saundra Traywick said a neighbor was spreading biosolids from wastewater treatment plants in Oklahoma City and Tulsa on his land. She and some of her neighbors were able to get the practice banned in their town of Luther. And the company spreading the materials agreed to include buffer zones around their work area.

But, when she contacted the cities to complain, she was told “you shouldn’t have moved here if you didn’t like it, because we’ve been doing this for 40 years.”

Using biosolids as fertilizer has been controversial since the early part of this decade when per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), also called forever chemicals, were found in the sludge. The state of Maine has banned the practice over public health and safety concerns.

PFAS are called “forever chemicals” because they don’t degrade easily and can remain in soil, air, water, plants and animals even years after exposure.

The controversy was further heightened when the new head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced he was tapping the brakes on a regulatory process begun under former President Joe Biden.

On May 14, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said the agency is maintaining its current guidelines for levels of PFAS in drinking water.

The EPA set drinking water limits of 4 parts per trillion for Perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and Perfluorooctanesulfonate (PFOS) in March 2023. The agency also proposed a non-enforceable Maximum Contaminant Level Goals of zero for the chemicals because “there is no dose below which either chemical is considered safe.”

The EPA is also extending the deadline for water utilities to comply with the guidelines from 2029 to 2031.

“[Extending the deadline] will support water systems across the country, including small systems in rural communities, as they work to address these contaminants. EPA will also continue to use its regulatory and enforcement tools to hold polluters accountable,” Zeldin stated in the press release.

It is up to each state to regulate the use of biosolids using the EPA regulations as a guide. Only the state of Maine bans the practice.

Julie Lay, of Guntersville, Alabama, said she got her own rude awakening in June 1019.

That is when she and her family also noticed a bad smell coming from a neighbor’s property. The wife and mother had worked in agribusiness for years. She had never encountered an odor like the one surrounding her home.

“It was an awful smell,” her husband Keith told The Epoch Times.

As she researched the source of the odor, Lay found that state agencies and agricultural groups she thought would oppose spreading sewage on farms were supportive of the practice as a cost-effective alternative to commercial fertilizer.

She said the people she spoke with repeated the claim that the biosolids were “nutrient-rich” and beneficial to the soil. They shrugged off any possible danger because no one could say for certain there is a problem, Lay said.

She is concerned that by the time a solid link between biosolids and disease is found, the damage to the land and the people who eat the food grown on it will already be done.

“So they used the land as a guinea pig and they used all of us as guinea pigs,” she told The Epoch Times.

The EPA reports that PFAS are found in all 50 states.

The chemicals make their way from manufacturing plants, industrial sites, and military installations, to wastewater treatment plants where they mix with residential sewage and wastewater.

The chemical bond is so strong that they survive the wastewater treatment process and remain in the sludge that is eventually sold as fertilizer.

3M, one of the largest makers of PFAS, agreed to begin phasing the chemicals out in 2000. However, since the chemicals have been around since the 1940s, a majority of Americans have likely already been exposed, the EPA reported.

A 2016 study published by the Department of Health and Human Services found evidence that chemicals in the PFAS family could disrupt the human immune system. Research also shows possible links to cancer.

Read the rest here…

As President Trump reportedly considers issuing an unconstitutional order to commit the US military to Israel’s war on Iran, a new poll finds very little public support for an American attack on Iran — even among those who voted for Trump in 2024.   

According to an Economist/YouGov poll taken between June 13 and 16, only 16% of Americans “think the US military should get involved in the conflict between Israel and Iran. In an even more significant finding, only 19% of people who voted for Trump in 2024 support American military involvement. (23% of all self-identified Republicans support going to war.) Similarly, 56% of all Americans say the United States should engage in negotiations with Iran. That avenue has even greater support among Trump supporters — with 63% advocating negotiations. 

On the other hand, some of the poll’s findings illustrate the effectiveness of decades of government propagandizing about Iran that’s been echoed by establishment media. For example, 61% of Americans say Iran’s nuclear program poses either an “immediate, serious threat” or “somewhat serious threat” to the United States. In 2007, the US intelligence community issued a National Intelligence Estimate that concluded with “high confidence” that Iran was not developing a nuclear weapon. That same conclusion has been periodically reiterated by the intelligence community ever since, including just three months ago. Similarly, 50% of Americans and 68% of Trump voters classify Iran as an “enemy” of the United States. A quarter of Americans categorize Iran as “unfriendly.” 

Interestingly, the poll also asked respondents to characterize Israel in the same way. Here, 10% said Israel was unfriendly and 6% called Israel an enemy; 61% said Israel was either an ally or friendly, while 23% said they were unsure. Against the top-line finding of 16% of Americans saying Israel is either “unfriendly” or an “enemy,” some groups with above-average negative convictions about Israel include Hispanics (21%), 18- to 29-year-olds (21%), 30- to 44-year olds (20%), income under $50k (18%) and liberals (22%).  

There’s not a single demo in the country whose majority is not opposed to US involvement in Israel’s war of aggression against Iran! Check out these polling figures. Never seen anything like this before. This is HUGE!!! pic.twitter.com/9X98CoI3WS

— Connor Freeman (@FreemansMind96) June 18, 2025

The finding of broad unpopularity of another US war in the Middle East comes alongside a rising chorus of voices demanding that the decision should be made by the Congress, as required by the United States Constitution. On Monday, Republican Rep. Thomas Massie and Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna introduced the “Iran War Powers Resolution” that would prohibit the US military from “unauthorized hostilities in the Islamic Republic of Iran.” Also on Monday, Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine introduced a resolution in the upper chamber that would require a debate and vote before any use of force against Iran.  

“The Constitution does not permit the executive branch to unilaterally commit an act of war against a sovereign nation that hasn’t attacked the United States,” said Massie “Congress has the sole power to declare war against Iran. The ongoing war between Israel and Iran is not our war. Even if it were, Congress must decide such matters according to our Constitution.” A coalition that spans ideological lines is forming to back the resolutions, and the Ron Paul-affiliated Campaign for Liberty has posted a webpage that makes it quick and easy for citizens to urge their representative and senators to sign on.  

An Israeli official tells CNN that Israel’s war with Iran is “premised on the fact that the US will join at some point” pic.twitter.com/52uau9ya9g

— Dave DeCamp (@DecampDave) June 17, 2025

Speaking at an April event hosted by Bucknell University’s Open Discourse Coalition, Sen. Rand Paul elaborated on why America’s founders vested warmaking power in the Congress: 

The most important thing is — and it doesn’t sound that exciting — it’s the process. We have to have a vote. You get a vote through your representatives. It’s the dispersion of power. It’s trying to keep power from being centralized in one authority, and warmaking is probably the most important of that. And Madison, when he was writing about this in the “Federalist Papers,” said “the executive branch is the branch most prone to war. Therefore, with studied care, we have vested that power in the legislature.”

On Monday, President Trump posted a disturbingly religion-charged text sent to him by US Ambassador to Israel, zealous Christian Zionist and perpetual Iran hawk Mike Huckabee. In it, Huckabee likens Trump’s position to that of President Truman in 1945 — the year he ordered the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki against the convictions of America’s top military leaders. Appealing to Trump’s ego, Huckabee also said, “The decisions on your shoulders I would not want to be made by anyone else.”

There’s no doubting his sincerity on that point: Given the universally low public support of US military engagement in Israel’s war, neither Huckabee nor Israel want those decisions made by the people’s representatives in Congress. 

Terrifying shit. The religious fanaticism of Huckabee types, the psychos that run the Israeli govt, and Trump’s Messiah complex make this all even more dangerously insane. https://t.co/SfawzuIaSC

— Krystal Ball (@krystalball) June 17, 2025

Authored by Jeremy Portnoy via RealClearInvestigations,

Topline: Nashville spent $1.2 million to buy 108 quarantine housing pods in 2021 during the Covid-19 pandemic, but the shelters were never used. Now the city plans to give 25 of them away to local nonprofits to be used as homeless shelters while covering the cost of renovating them.

Key facts: The combined municipality of Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County bought the pods using federal funds from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Part of the $1.2 million price tag was for certified nursing assistants and 24-hour security at the pods — which was obviously unnecessary because the pods were never used, Nashville Scene reported.

Nashville started installing 25 of the quarantine pods in 2021 but could not use them until the Tennessee Fire Marshall’s Office gave its approval. The fire marshal told Nashville Scene they required a letter signed by an engineer declaring the pods were safe, but Nashville did not send the letter for almost a year.

The remaining 86 pods have been in storage in an unknown location. The Nashville Scene could not even confirm whether the pods are still in Tennessee.

Metro Nashville has been trying to find a way to repurpose the pods since 2023 and is currently accepting applications to give away the pods for homeless housing. The government will pay for the cost of transporting the pods, renovating them, buying replacement parts and installing thermal barriers.

Critics say the city is taking too long to put the pods into use, which were approved for use as homeless shelters in late 2024. Dede Byrd, a founding member of local nonprofit Reclaim Brookmeade Park, told FOX17 Nashville “It is unacceptable to me that it takes this long.”

Summary: Covid-related expenses cost the country more than enough without spending money on initiatives that did not even prevent the spread of disease, like Nashville’s unused quarantine pods.

The #WasteOfTheDay is brought to you by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com

The 2006 book Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone by Rajiv Chandrasekaran was among the first to document up close the chaos of post-Saddam Iraq and the attempt of American and coalition forces to hold the country together, and settle in for the ‘forever’ war and occupation.

Chandrasekaran observed that Bush’s Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) government, which ruled from Baghdad under Paul Bremer, was filled with young American officials who in many instances had never been out of the United States. Astoundingly, and illustrating the utter blind hubris of Bush’s ‘nation-building’ project, young State Department personnel were being sent to Iraq, where they would make fateful decisions over the future of the country and its day-to-day running, yet some were receiving US passports for the first time in their lives.

Further, so-called country ‘experts’ often couldn’t so much as speak a traveler’s level of Arabic, and officials had little clue what historical and doctrinal differences separated Sunni from Shia. Such ignorance while overseeing the destruction of an entire ancient society continues at the highest levels of US government. And now we are about to Iraq Iran.

Former Congressman Ron Paul even popularized the apt term Chickenhawk – as someone who strongly advocates for war but who has never served in the military. There’s also armchair generals, with a similar meaning. These things are problematic patterns in American public discourse, where survey after survey shows the biggest advocates for US military intervention in places like Ukraine, Syria, or Iran – often cannot find these places on a map.

Ultimately, there’s no skin in the game, and not even so much as a real interest for understanding blowback for both people on the ground and future generations of Americans. As Nassim Taleb pointed out:

But what we call “empty suits”, of the kind you see in think tanks or large corporations –those who want to increasingly run our lives or intervene in Libya — look like actors playing the part, down to their vocabulary and the multiplicative meetings. Talk is cheap and people who talk and don’t do are easily detectable by the public because they are too good at talking.

And this is why so many in the independent/alt media are getting such enjoyment out of seeing the biggest chickenhawk of them all – Texas Senator Ted Cruz – get mercilessly excoriated by Tucker Carlson in a foreign policy focused interview. The appropriately fiery exchange focused largely on whether the US should intervene in the recent aerial conflict between Israel and Iran.

Ahead of the interview, Cruz promoted the discussion – and still tried to play to Tucker’s immense audience – with a post on X, stating: “Yep, I stand with Trump. Iran can’t have a nuclear bomb. Make sure you tune in tomorrow.” Full interview:

Senator Ted Cruz demands regime change in Iran. He’s not interested in the details.

(0:00) Why Does Cruz Want Regime Change in Iran?
(6:28) Is the US Currently Acting in Its Own Best Interest?
(7:49) Was Regime Change in Syria Beneficial to the US?
(12:31) Was the Iraq War a… pic.twitter.com/iIdENogQ2T

— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) June 18, 2025

Below are a few of our favorite select highlights and most viral clips from the interview…

* * *

Ted Cruz doesn’t know the population size or ethnic make-up of the country he wants to bomb to smithereens, and probably doesn’t care. And even more alarming there was this moment:

Ted Cruz: “We’re carrying out military strikes, today.”

Tucker: “We?”

Ted Cruz says he has no idea what the population or ethnic mix of Iran is. He wants the US to help Israel bomb and destroy the country anyway.

pic.twitter.com/LiRmkrPr2Q

— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) June 18, 2025

NeoCons like Cruz have presided over foreign policy disaster after disaster, and remain unrepentant… 

And they still are largely ignorant of the impact of their disastrous decision-making:

Ted Cruz immediately regretted asking Tucker Carlson this question.

Cruz: “What foreign policy failures have I presided over?”

Tucker: “You’ve been spending the last three years telling us that Vladimir Putin is evil and we’re gonna beat him with other people’s children, and a… pic.twitter.com/YHLaymCHOY

— George (@BehizyTweets) June 18, 2025

America first or Israel first?

Carlson several times held the Texas senator’s feet to the flames on this one:

TUCKER CARLSON TO TED CRUZ: “You asked me why I am obsessed with Israel three minutes after telling me that when you first ran for Congress you elucidated one of your main goals which was to defend Israel, and I am the one who is obsessed with Israel—I don’t see a lawmaker’s job… pic.twitter.com/2ALHAdRZAo

— Liam McCollum (@MLiamMcCollum) June 18, 2025

Cruz essentially shrugs when asked if its okay for Mossad to spy in the United States.

He seeks to justify by saying “Friends and allies spy on each other” all the time. Critics have pointed he’s allegedly taken some $1.8 million from the Israel lobby…

Ted Cruz is so pro-Israel he’s totally okay with Mossad spying on the US

‘Friends and allies spy on each other’, he tells Tucker

Wonder if it’s anything to do with the $1.8 million he’s taken from the Israel lobby? https://t.co/jhC929Ga2B pic.twitter.com/4VV3hsITAu

— RT (@RT_com) June 18, 2025

Foreign influence and sabotage in American politics? 

Tucker: My understanding is that AIPAC lobbies on behalf of the Israeli government.

Cruz: Wrong.

Tucker: When was the last time AIPAC took a position that deviated from Netanyahu’s?

Cruz: All the time.

Tucker: Name one.

Cruz: pic.twitter.com/fOD2WeILKP

— Acyn (@Acyn) June 18, 2025

The Bible, Evangelical End-Times Dispensationalism, and giving Israel a blank-check to wage war:

“BIBLICALLY we are commanded to support Israel.”

INTERVIEW:

Ted Cruz: Those who bless Israel will be blessed.. That’s in the Bible.

Tucker Carlson: Where is that?

Cruz: I don’t have the scripture…

Tucker: So you’re quoting a Bible phrase—you don’t know where in the Bible it is but that’s your theology? pic.twitter.com/bE0BSDMy4X

— Insider Paper (@TheInsiderPaper) June 18, 2025

But we should return to one of the best, simplest, and most iconic lines from the brutal take-down of an interview.

Tucker to Cruze: “YOU DON’T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT IRAN! You’re a U.S. senator and you don’t know anything about the country you want to topple.”

* * *

Clearly, with President Trump possibly about to order direct US military involvement in the Israel-Iran war, and with Congress making some minimal effort to push back with several War Powers resolution initiatives, Trump’s MAGA base is fracturing over the issue. Trump tried to address that, and even claimed that Carlson has since apologized – though we remain highly dubious as to the accuracy of the apology part…

President Trump says Tucker Carlson called to apologize.

Tucker did acknowledge they spoke Monday night but didn’t say anything about apologizing. pic.twitter.com/PASY2uyuUv

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) June 18, 2025

Authored by Mark Bauerlein via The Epoch Times,

As one state and school district after another bans cellphones in classrooms, we should pause for a moment and appreciate what a remarkable reversal has occurred.

Recent books by Jonathan Haidt and Christine Rosen, among others, have succeeded so well by saying what only a few years ago would have pegged them as alarmists and reactionaries. Haidt has chronicled the emotional damage the smartphone has done to kids, while Rosen details the damage screens have done to the habits of daily life, habits which humanize and enlighten us. To have said so in 2012 would have run up against a tidal wave of enthusiasm for social media, Wikipedia, texting, Google, etc. Now, they receive praise and agreement, as they should.

What happened? What made the cellphone in a 12-year-old’s hand slip into disfavor? I remember educators treating those “Digital Natives” as pioneers and innovators. The tool was a knowledge producer, they believed, a window into art, history, politics, current events, and economics. Finally, the kids had a means of independent inquiry, we were told, a machine that was customized to their individual curiosity and aptitude, enabling them to escape the homogenizing routines of the 25-person classroom and to pursue their intellectual passions freely. Learning would take off. People who warned about other uses of the tool in the hands of the young—pornography, peer pressure, bullying, daily hours of video games, pictures passed back and forth at midnight, and so on—had no traction, not when everything seemed so new and promising.

No longer. Schools have been wired, 8th-graders given laptops, and reading and math scores have dropped. High school kids have had the universe of knowledge at their fingertips, and college teachers nonetheless complain that entering classes are ever more ignorant and a-literate (that is, they know how to read but don’t do it much). The promise has not been realized, though mountains of money have been spent. At this point, teens on the bus, in the restaurant, and at the mall with one another, all eyes fixed on little screens, have the opposite identity—not active intellects searching the world, but adolescents bantering and scrolling, gaming and filming, liking and disliking one another.

I wonder what those cheerleaders of old think now, the ones who pushed screens on schools with assurances of future miracles, now that a lot of those schools are saying, “Wrong!” I have yet to hear of a school that banned the phones admit three months later, “Uh-oh, things are worse, learning is slipping, bring back the handhelds.” That’s not going to happen. What Haidt and Rosen et al. document is a real problem empirically observed, not an ideology merely asserted (Haidt is a liberal, Rosen’s a conservative).

What phones have done and continue to do to the hearts, minds, and souls of the young is ever more distressing as the years pass. The bans are going to become universal, I predict, because the advantages of doing so will prove quick and decisive. I would wager that a lot of the fistfights that break out at the end of the day began with nasty messages. The young girl in the back corner, quiet and morose, knows that other girls are saying things about her at that very moment. The kids near the front trying to pay attention to the teacher can’t help fidgeting and looking down because they’re sure that the phones in their backpacks contain stuff more interesting than the math formulas on the whiteboard.

This is the problem. The teenager’s phone was never going to be an intellectual tool, at least not primarily. It’s a teen’s tool, a source and a mouthpiece for what teens care about most: one another. To have believed otherwise was to be utterly naive. This is no longer a debate. The verdict is in.

When I’m on the subway and spot every young face squinting or smiling or frowning at the little screen in hand, it’s depressing. When a kid with a little paperback book held up appears, it’s a happy exception. Does he know that he is escaping one of the evils of our age? Is he aware that his banal book habit marks him as a great refusal? Is it only the book that draws him, or does he realize that the other option, selected by all his peers, is a creeping addiction and must be resisted? Let us press the latter point as firmly as we did with cigarettes 50 years ago.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell was found liable last week for defamation by a federal Jury in Colorado in a case brought by Dominion voting machine company former security and product strategy director Eric Coomer.  However, the court did not award Coomer his expected damages. 

Lindell and his online media platform, formerly known as Frankspeech, are ordered to pay Coomer $2.3 million, far less than the $62.7 million Coomer had asked for to help send a message to “discourage attacks on election workers”. 

The CEO accused Dominion of helping to rig the 2020 elections in favor of Joe Biden and suggested Coomer was a traitor.  Lindell said he would appeal the financial award, asserting that Coomer’s lawyers did not prove Coomer had been harmed. He also said he would continue to speak out about election security, including criticizing the makers of election equipment like Dominion.

“I will not stop talking until we don’t have voting machines in this country…”

The greatly reduced damages came as a surprise to most commentators following the case, with progressives hoping for a scorched earth decision that would make Lindell into a political example.  The legal costs have reportedly sunk Lindell into debt, though he does receive support through crowdfunding and still operates his MyPillow business. 

The lawsuit has similarities to the railroading of Alex Jones and Infowars over charges of Sandy Hook defamation and was part of an avalanche of lawfare executed by Democrats to silence dissent among prominent conservative “conspiracy theorists”.  

In the midst of the Democrat war on free speech, absurd punitive damages were levied against political commentators for what amounts to opinions.  Big Tech platforms and social media worked to silence public discourse through censorship, but civil cases were used as a weapon against influential conservative personalities.

While the digital voting issue might have been a smaller part of the overall debate on rigged elections, there has been considerable evidence of information rigging by progressive leaders from 2019 onward.  This includes the censorship of the Biden Laptop story by government officials working directly with media and Big Tech, the censorship of Joe Biden’s diminishing mental faculties, the censorship of the Covid lab leak theory which is now widely accepted as legitimate by intelligence agencies, the censorship of information debunking Russiagate claims, censorship of information that debunked claims of “insurrection” on January 6th, etc. 

There was a clear effort to rig the 2020 elections and the 2024 elections by controlling information that could harm the optics of Democrats and the Biden Administration.

Then there is the notorious discrepancy of millions of votes for Joe Biden in the 2020 election vs democrat candidates in all other elections.  There is still no concrete explanation from progressives for the extra votes and where they came from.

Keep in mind, some leftist officials hypocritically argued that the 15 million missing votes in 2024 were due to rigging on the part of the Trump Administration, just as they claimed Trump “stole” the 2016 election.  Democrats rarely get successfully sued for such claims.

The finale of Lindell’s civil trial highlights the closure of a dark chapter in American free speech and the rise of lawfare.  Though he was found liable, the dramatic reduction of damages hopefully marks a return to sanity and an end to the use of lawsuits as a tool to destroy prominent conservative figures for going against the establishment narrative.   

Authored by Matt Lamb via The College Fix,

A federal judge on Monday upheld the rule of law and the separation of powers amidst a lawsuit by the American Association of University Professors which sought to undermine the executive branch.

The AAUP, along with the American Federation of Teachers, sued the Trump administration for canceling federal grants to Columbia University over antisemitism concerns. The teachers’ unions were represented by a left-wing group called “Protect Democracy.”

However, the faculty unions should go back to school and learn about the executive branch and the separation of powers, as Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil gave them a lesson on “our democracy.”

The plaintiffs, who are not directly harmed at all by the decision, asked for a preliminary injunction against the funding cuts to Columbia.

Of course no university has a legal right to federal taxpayer dollars. But furthermore, as Judge Vyskocil explained, the unions cannot prove they are directly harmed.

President Trump nominated her to the Southern District of New York federal court in his first term with the backing of Democratic New York Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand.

Judge Vyskocil wrote:

With no apparent sense of irony, lawyers for an organization called ‘Protect Democracy’ insist that a district court judge should order the Executive Branch immediately to restore the flow of taxpayer dollars to an elite university, which funding Defendants represent is inconsistent with the priorities of the duly elected President of the United States. Our democracy cannot very well function if individual judges issue extraordinary relief to every plaintiff who clamors to object to executive action.

She pointed out the plaintiffs have not received the grants themselves from the federal government. Columbia, she notes, can sue, but they are not a plaintiff in this lawsuit.

The judge also ripped into the AAUP and the AFT for their “sensational rhetoric about the ‘transcendent value’ of academic freedom, and ‘the Trump administration’s’ effort to ‘control the thought’ of ‘faculty and students’ (though Plaintiffs do not purport to represent any students) by placing a ‘gun to the head’ of non-party Columbia University.”

The judge furthermore noted Columbia and the Trump administration are in talks to reach an agreement on antisemitism on campus. Yet, the AAUP is “inserting themselves into a quarrel.”

Since taking office, President Trump has sought to restore commonsense to the distribution of hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars. He also is doing what he sees as the best way to protect Jewish students from antisemitic harassment on campus.

While opponents may argue that professors should not have grants taken away for unrelated campus activity, it is proper for the federal government to use the levers of money to effect change.

Thankfully, this judge stood up for “our democracy” against the attacks by the faculty unions to undermine Trump and his authority through the executive branch to pressure Columbia to make changes to protect all students.

Having been accused of being “stupid” and “too late”, Fed Chair Powell’s decision to hold rates (not cut as Trump is demanding), will likely prompt more abuse from The White House, especially as US macro data is significantly weakening.

And despite all the tariff derangement anxiety, the worse they expect is PCE at 3.1% this year before fading back next year…

In fact, Powell may have to explain why he cut rates by 50bps the last time the US Macro Surprise Index was this weak…

Source: Bloomberg

What’s different this time?

As Trump said: “I guess he’s a political guy…”

Let’s see if the reporters in the room are brave enough to ask.

Watch the press conference live here (due to start at 1430ET):

Authored by Andrew Korybko via Substack,

Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Agency (SVR) warned that the Brits and Ukrainians are preparing two false flag scenarios in the Baltic Sea.

The first one would see Ukrainian-transferred Soviet/Russian torpedoes explode near a US ship there and a supposedly malfunctioning one will then be found to implicate Russia in the alleged attack

The second, meanwhile, will involve Ukrainian-transferred Soviet/Russian mines fished out of the Baltic Sea and presented as proof of a Kremlin plot to sabotage international shipping.

These perfidious provocations are being employed to manipulate Trump into escalating against Russia after Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced in mid-February that the US won’t extend Article 5 mutual defense guarantees to NATO countries’ troops that might deploy to Ukraine. That scenario was the initial one that was planned for getting him to pull out of talks with Putin and then double down on support for Ukraine, but his team preemptively scuttled it through Hegseth’s announcement.

That’s why efforts are now underway to organize a false flag attack against a US ship in the Baltic and/or frame Russia as a threat to international shipping through the fishing out of its mines there. The Baltic has already been a so-called “NATO lake” since even before Finland and Sweden’s joined NATO given their prior shadow membership in the bloc, however, so it’s unrealistic that Russia could really carry out either of these two operations undetected even if it wanted to.

Here are some background briefings:

* 11 March: “Russian Spies Warn That The UK Is Trying To Sabotage Trump’s Envisaged ‘New Détente’”

* 24 March: “Putin’s Senior Aide Patrushev Shared Some Updates About The Arctic & Baltic Fronts”

* 22 April: “Estonia Might Become Europe’s Next Trouble Spot”

* 1 June: “Russia’s Military Build-Up Along The Finnish Border Will Likely Be The New Normal”

* 3 June: “The Russian-Ukrainian Talks Are At An Impasse That Only The US Or Brute Force Can Break”

To summarize, they detail the contextual evolution of this scenario from SVR’s prior warnings of the UK’s intent to sabotage the Russian-US talks on Ukraine to the motives of regional actors (Estonia and Finland) in going along with this, ending with the diplomatic impasse that defines today’s state of affairs. About that, if the US doesn’t coerce Ukraine into the concessions that Russia demands for peace but also doesn’t wash its hands of this conflict, then it might very well double down on its involvement instead.

The reasonable speculation that Trump knew about Ukraine’s strategic drone strikes against Russia in advance coupled with the latest speculation that he deceived Iran with duplicitous diplomacy doesn’t do much to inspire confidence in him personally since he could possibly be in on these false flag plots too. Despite Putin’s bonhomie with Trump, which was recently expressed through their most recent call, some in Russia are beginning to suspect Trump of double-dealing.

It’s therefore imperative that he preemptively commit to not escalating against Russia if either of these two false flag scenarios transpire just like Hegseth preemptively averted the deployment of NATO countries’ troops to Ukraine (at least for now) by declaring that Article 5 won’t extend to them. It’s unclear whether Trump read SVR’s warning or if he can rely on his advisors to inform him (unless Putin told already him), however, so he might not even be aware of this and could thus be manipulated.