A federal appeals court on April 28 lifted its previous order that had allowed the Trump administration to carry out workforce reductions at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).
On April 11, the appeals court partially stayed a preliminary injunction issued by a district court, allowing the CFPB to proceed with laying off workers if a “particularized assessment” determined their roles were not essential to the agency’s statutory duties. However, the court barred the administration from enforcing a stop-work order at the agency.
In a divided ruling, a three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit lifted the partial stay amid arguments over the meaning of the “particularized assessment” requirement.
“The parties vigorously dispute whether this language permits judicial review of the questions whether the assessment at issue was ‘particularized’ and whether the employees subject to the RIF are ‘unnecessary to the performance of defendants’ statutory duties,’” the order stated, referring to the acronym for reduction in force.
According to the order, a “particularized assessment” is defined as a determination—made by an official responsible for the workforce reduction—that each division or office within CFPB will be able to perform its statutorily required duties without the employees who are subject to termination.
Judge Neomi Rao dissented, saying the district court’s injunction raises concerns about the “separation of powers” and that it interferes with the government’s management of federal agencies.
“The district court overstepped our stay. Rather than remedy the judicial error, today’s order hamstrings the Executive and prevents the CFPB from downsizing until the merits of the appeal are resolved,” Rao stated in her dissenting opinion.
The Epoch Times reached out to CFPB for comment but did not receive a response by publication time.
In February, the National Treasury Employees Union sued Russ Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget and acting director of the CFPB. The union accused the Trump administration of violating the nation’s separation of powers by moving to dismantle the agency without congressional approval. Several other groups joined the suit in an amended complaint days later.
On March 28, U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson issued a preliminary injunction, blocking the administration from laying off CFPB employees and from enforcing a stop-work order at the agency.
“If the defendants are not enjoined, they will eliminate the agency before the Court has the opportunity to decide whether the law permits them to do it, and as the defendants’ own witness warned, the harm will be irreparable,” Jackson wrote in her opinion.
The CFPB was established by a 2010 law in response to the 2008 financial crisis. According to the agency’s website, CFPB “implements and enforces federal consumer financial law and ensures that markets for consumer financial products are transparent, fair, and competitive.”
President Donald Trump’s senior adviser Elon Musk previously stated on the social media platform X that the agency is “duplicative” and should be eliminated.
Jacob Burg and Sam Dorman contributed to this report.
Dem Rep Who Filed Trump Impeachment Articles Under Fire For Dog, Monkey Abuse In Bankruptcy Scandal
On Monday, Democratic Rep. Shri Thanedar of Michigan announced that he’s filed seven articles of impeachment against President Trump, alleging that various actions such as deporting suspected MS-13 gang member Kilmar Barego Garcia, cuts made by the Department of Government Efficiency without congressional approval, and Trump’s tariffs are impeachable offenses.
“Donald Trump has repeatedly demonstrated that he is unfit to serve as President and represents a clear and present danger to our nation’s constitution and our democracy,” Theander said in a press release.
This congressman who can barely speak English is filing 7 articles of impeachment against our President.
We need to ban foreign born people from serving in Congress and in our judicial system.
But the India-born Thanedar – a chemist and business owner – is now under fire over resurfacedallegations of animal abuse in connection with a bankrupt animal testing lab he owned and operated.
According to a 2018 Huffington Post report, approximately 170 dogs and monkeys had to be rescued in 2010 from an abandoned pharmaceutical testing lab owned by Thanedar – who had to shutter the New Jersey testing facility, AniClin Preclinical Services, after its Thanedar-owned parent company, Azopharma, went bankrupt in April 2010.
Three months after the bankruptcy, local animal rights activists learned that 118 beagles and dozens of monkeys were still stuck inside the facility, with lab workers allegedly jumping the bankrupt lab’s fences to provide food and water to the animals.
Shri Thanedar left 100’s of dogs to die in cages after testing chemicals on them when his business went bankrupt. He can spare us on the moral outrage. https://t.co/3wWFR41yLKpic.twitter.com/0ZrOtHzrm3
The situation was sickening according to local accounts.
“We believe that they have never been outside, ever,” said an unnamed woman in a video report by the Times Herald-Record. “I don’t think they’ve actually had their paws on the grass. When I walked in here it looked like they were walking on eggshells. They were kind of afraid to walk on the grass.”
A few days after the report, California-based group, In Defense of Animals, rescued 55 long-tailed macaque monkeys that were abandoned in the shuttered AniClin testing facility.
Thanedar defended himself at the time, telling HuffPost “I have no knowledge how well the bank took care of the animals,” and said that while the lab was in operation “No animal was harmed or subjected to any harmful conditions. No electric experiments were conducted,” which is oddly specific.
But wait, there’s more!
EXCLUSIVE VIDEO:
INDIAN SCAMMER DEMOCRAT CONGRESSMAN WHO FILED ARTICLES OF IMPEACHMENT AGAINST PRESIDENT TRUMP GETS CONFRONTED ON VIDEO
India Is Most Likely To Sign First Major Trade Deal With US, Here’s Why
During his closely-watched CNBC interview today, Trump’s Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said that he has a trade deal with an unnamed country, pending approval. Speculation promptly emerged who that country may be, with the most likely candidates named as India, South Korea and Japan.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick announces he has a trade deal done and he’s waiting for the country’s prime minister and parliament to give their approval.
This huge news has sent the US stock market soaring!
Of the three, India is the nation most likely to announce the first major trade deal with the Trump admin, not only because of Apple’s decision to shift all US-focused iPhone production from China to India, but because India and China have a bit of a regional superpower rivalry between them, with the former recently surpassing the latter as the world’s most populous country (China is facing a crippling demographic crisis in several decades that would rival Japan’s), and with ambitions to overtake China’s GDP over the next 2 decades.
Case in point, Indian trade negotiators are planning to showcase the country’s large pipeline of Boeing plane orders and the potential for more to come as they seek a favorable deal with the US, Bloomberg reported citing people familiar with the matter. In the absence of a deal, Indian goods exports to the US face up to 26% levies after Trump’s 90-day pause on implementation of reciprocal tariffs ends in July.
The plan is to get Indian carriers’ existing orders and under-negotiation deals with the American planemaker counted in discussions for a bilateral trade pact that could potentially shield the country from higher US tariffs.
Along with Air India, Akasa Air-operator SNV Aviation and SpiceJet have placed a combined order for 590 aircraft worth $67 billion with Boeing in recent years. With deliveries and payments for 506 of those planes staggered over several years, India wants to highlight how these private purchases would serve to narrow the more than $47 billion trade surplus New Delhi runs with Washington — a key gripe of President Donald Trump.
Underscoring how India hopes to use airplanes as leverage in the global trade war, Air India, the erstwhile state-owned carrier acquired by the Tata Group in 2022, is already looking to take deliveries of some Boeing planes that were rejected by Chinese carriers in a tit-for-tat move over Trump’s reciprocal tariffs. The airline is also discussing fresh orders with the American plane maker.
Indian carriers growing orders with Boeing is also boosting the American plane manufacturer’s share in the South Asian market. Of the nearly 900 commercial passenger aircraft registered in India, a majority 538 belong to the Airbus SE 320 family, according to data consultancy KnowIndia.net. Only 140 are Boeing 737s, with the rest made up of widebody, turboprops and other types of aircraft. While India’s largest carrier IndiGo operates an Airbus fleet, it last year decided to lease some Boeing 787 aircraft for a few international routes.
India is not alone in wanting to use aircraft orders as a leverage for trade negotiations. Vietnam is also employing a similar tactic to win favor with the White House.
Although Prime Minister Narendra Modi committed to buying more US goods, including crude oil, liquefied natural gas and defense items in a meeting with Trump in Washington in February, officials feel adding private commercial aircraft deals to the list could bolster New Delhi’s case for a trade deal with the US.
The Modi administration has already offered several concessions to the US, including overhauling its tariff regime to bring down levies on some 8,500 industrial goods including key American exports such as Bourbon whiskey and high-end motorcycles such as those made by Harley Davidson Inc.
Besides airplanes, India is also hoping to appease Trump by boosting the amount of oil the country imports from the US.
Indian refiners, who have relied largely on Russian oil in recent years, have been boosting US oil purchases before trade talks between the two nations next month. Around 11.2 million barrels of crude are set to arrive in India from the US in June, the highest volume since last August, according to data from analytics firm Kpler. That comes after a drop in prices in the West Texas Intermediate benchmark as the result of lower demand because of a refinery overhaul n Singapore, along with reduced appetite in China — the world’s biggest oil importer.
“WTI has to discount significantly more than usual to incentivize the rest of Asia to take in the barrels,” said June Goh, a senior oil market analyst at Sparta Commodities. “There is also a geopolitical element, where Asian buyers may seek more WTI as a negotiating tool with the US to reduce the reciprocal tariffs, per what we are observing with Indonesia and India.”
India’s trade deficit widened more than expected in March, as oil imports jumped more than 60% from a month earlier. The nation’s exporters have been urging New Delhi officials to seal a bilateral trade deal with the US as soon as possible, with in-person negotiations set to start in the second half of May, after President Donald Trump paused a proposed 26% tariff on the Asian nation this month.
State refiners including Indian Oil Corp and Bharat Petroleum have purchased at least 6 million barrels of June-arrival crude from the US across various tenders held this month, according to Bloomberg calculations.
Bharat Petroleum — which is also seeking spot supplies including grades from the US — bought 1 million barrels for the four months through September. Indian Oil has also started buying crude for July, including 3 million barrels from the US.
The student loan bubble is about to burst, and Zuckerberg knows it. He says there’s one huge problem with college today that no one can ignore anymore.
It started with a strange but telling moment. One that pulled back the curtain on the secretive world of Mark Zuckerberg.
On This Past Weekend podcast, comedian Theo Von joked about wanting to dig a tunnel underground. What he didn’t expect was for Zuckerberg to casually admit he had already done it.
“I do have an underground tunnel,” Zuckerberg said without hesitation.
Theo, caught completely off guard, asked, “Do you really? In the USA?”
Zuckerberg confirmed it was real and even bigger than Theo expected.
“I have this ranch in Kauai,” he said. “There’s this whole meme about how people are saying, I built this, like, bunker underground. It’s like more of underground storage.”
Theo, laughing, teased him: “Zucky got that bunky. What’s under the ground? Just more water, right?”
Zuckerberg brushed it off, but he didn’t deny the core of the rumor.
“It’s basically what you just said. It’s sort of a tunnel that just goes to another building.”
Not exactly a bunker, according to Zuckerberg, just an underground passage connecting parts of his remote island fortress. Well… Nothing to see here, right?
It started with a strange but telling moment. One that pulled back the curtain on the secretive world of Mark Zuckerberg.
On This Past Weekend podcast, comedian Theo Von joked about wanting to dig a tunnel underground.
As the interview went on, Zuckerberg shifted gears and dropped a much bigger bomb.
He admitted what millions of Americans are starting to feel: college isn’t preparing young people for the real world anymore, and the student debt crisis is heading straight for a reckoning.
It’s a personal subject for Zuckerberg, who famously dropped out of Harvard to build Facebook, and now sees the system he left behind collapsing under its own weight.
“I’m not sure that college is preparing people for, like, the jobs that they need to have today,” he said.
“I mean, I think that that’s like there’s a big issue on that. And like, all the student debt issues are like really big issues.”
He pointed to the crushing cost of a degree and the broken promises that come with it.
“I mean, the fact that college is just so expensive for so many people and then, like, you graduate when you’re in debt,” he said.
“If it’s not preparing you for the jobs that you need and you’re kind of starting off in this big hole, then I think that’s not good.”
In Zuckerberg’s view, the system isn’t just broken — it’s on borrowed time.
“There’s going to have to be a reckoning,” he warned.
“People are going to have to kind of figure out whether that makes sense.”
And the taboo around questioning college?
He says that’s starting to crumble too.
“It’s sort of been this taboo thing to say, like, maybe not everyone needs to go to college,” he said.
“Because there’s like a lot of jobs that don’t require that.”
“But I think people are probably coming around to that opinion a little more now than maybe like ten years ago.”
As the interview went on, Zuckerberg shifted gears and dropped a much bigger bomb.
He admitted what millions of Americans are starting to feel: college isn’t preparing young people for the real world anymore, and the student debt crisis is heading straight for a reckoning.
The conversation soon turned to another taboo—one that most tech CEOs wouldn’t dare touch: the role of media elites in misjudging, mislabeling, and underestimating ordinary people.
Strange coming from the man involved in censoring millions of Americans and the president himself, but nonetheless, Zuckerberg unleashed on the media.
He slammed the entire idea that the public is too dumb to make their own decisions, a belief quietly pushed by many in the media.
“Like, I’ve always been a person who really kind of believes that people are smarter than people think,” he said, “and, and I think in general, are able to make good decisions for their lives.”
The real problem, Zuckerberg argued, isn’t the people — it’s the media’s failure to understand them.
“And when they do things that like the media or whatever thinks don’t make sense, it’s generally because the media doesn’t understand their life, not because the people are stupid.”
In one of the sharpest moments of the interview, he flipped the whole “misinformation” narrative on its head.
“Like if people are saying something that seems wrong, it’s not usually misinformation. It’s usually that you don’t understand what’s going on in that person’s life.”
And he didn’t stop there.
Zuckerberg called out the deep-rooted arrogance that still runs through legacy media outlets.
“I just think that there’s like a certain kind of paternalism in, in some of the, like, mainstream narratives and some of the media narratives,” he said.
But now, he hinted, the tide might finally be turning — because the so-called “experts” are losing their grip.
“I think it’s a little more receptive as maybe some of those cultural or media elite people are having a harder time predicting what’s going to happen in the world. Maybe there’s a little more humility of like, okay, maybe we don’t understand all of this.”
And he wasn’t done yet.
The conversation soon turned to another taboo—one that most tech CEOs wouldn’t dare touch: the role of media elites in misjudging, mislabeling, and underestimating ordinary people.
Finally, Zuckerberg ended with a brutal warning for the tech world—one rooted in hard experience.
The biggest mistake tech companies make?
Thinking they’re smarter than the people they claim to serve.
Zuckerberg explained why arrogance toward everyday users almost always leads to disaster.
“To me, the best predicting thing has always been like, all right, if you build something, do people actually think it’s good?” he said.
“Because like at some level, you know, it’s like, I just believe that people are actually very smart and understand their lives very well.”
He reiterated that the real test isn’t winning awards or impressing other executives. It’s whether real people actually find what you build useful.
“If you’re building something that is useful for them, then they will use it,” he said. “And if you’re building something that is not useful for them, then they have other options. They will do something else.”
Zuckerberg said trusting people’s judgment — not lecturing them — has been his greatest advantage.
“I don’t know, it’s always served me well to generally have faith in people and believe that people are smart and can make good decisions for themselves.”
But he also offered a serious warning.
Whenever companies start thinking they know better than their customers, it’s the beginning of the end.
“Whenever we try to, like, adopt some sort of like attitude of, oh, we must know better than them, it’s like—we’re like—we’re the people building technology. That’s when you lose, right?”
And when you lose touch for long enough, the fall is brutal.
“If you have that attitude for long enough, then you just become a shitty company and you lose and you lose and you lose and then you’re irrelevant.”
In the end, Zuckerberg said, it’s not the elites who shape the future, it’s the people.
“I tend to just think that at the end of the day, yeah, I mean, I think people are smarter than a lot of people think, and I think ultimately drive the direction that society goes in.”
Underestimate everyday people and you lose everything.
Finally, Zuckerberg ended with a brutal warning for the tech world—one rooted in hard experience.
The biggest mistake tech companies make?
Thinking they’re smarter than the people they claim to serve.
In a stunning display of misplaced priorities, Democratic lawmakers recently traveled to El Salvador—not to address the border crisis devastating American communities, but to advocate for MS-13 gang member Kilmar Abrego Garcia.
This disturbing development perfectly encapsulates how far the Democratic Party has strayed from protecting American interests.
The same Democrats who rushed to El Salvador to defend a gang member remained conspicuously silent when Laken Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student, was brutally murdered by an illegal alien on her college campus.
They offered no words of comfort when 18-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray was found dead in a San Diego canyon, raped and murdered by two illegal immigrants. And where were their impassioned speeches about “due process” when Rachel Morin, a mother of five, was murdered on a hiking trail by an illegal alien with a violent criminal history?
Border Czar Tom Homan and former Trump advisor Stephen Miller have both exposed the dangerous hypocrisy of these actions.
While Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) claims he’s merely defending “due process,” the facts tell a different story.
Garcia’s own wife has accused him of domestic abuse, and he’s been accused of MS-13 gang affiliation.
And then there are his connections to human trafficking.
“The Democrat Party has become the party of terrorists and illegal aliens,” Miller declared during a recent Fox News appearance.
“Who does it fight for? Who does it move heaven and earth to protect? Illegal alien gang members and foreign terrorists.”
The statistics are damning: Under the Biden administration, America witnessed a 600% increase in sex trafficking, while over 10.5 million people entered illegally. A quarter-million Americans have died from fentanyl flooding across our open borders. The brutal Tren de Aragua gang now plots assassinations on U.S. soil.
“Where were you when thousands of American parents buried their children?” Homan demanded of the Democrats during a recent appearance on Sean Hannity’s show.
“They got separated from their children forever ’cause they were killed by illegal aliens. That’s preventable crime.”
The graves of Laken Riley, Jocelyn Nungaray, and Rachel Morin stand as stark testimonies to this preventable tragedy.
Even more shocking, Van Hollen spent taxpayer money to meet with Garcia while ignoring murders committed by illegal aliens in his own state—released despite ICE detainers.
During Biden’s presidency, Van Hollen never once visited the border to witness the catastrophe firsthand or spoke with the family of Rachel Morin, one of his actual constituents.
The American people face a critical choice.
We can either stand with those working to secure our borders and protect our communities or watch as radical Democrats continue dismantling our national security to protect criminals and terrorists.
We will continue to expose the radical left for their indifference to the safety and security of this country and its citizens.
Power Restored In Spain, Portugal But The Situation Reveals A Very Serious Underlying Problem…
Spanish power distributor Red Eléctrica announced on X early Tuesday that 99% of the country’s power capacity had been restored following a daylong, unprecedented blackout that plunged much of Europe’s Iberian Peninsula into chaos and darkness.
We continue working from the Electrical Control Center for the complete normalization of the system.
The outage paralyzed digital payment systems, disrupted communications, and brought various modes of transportation networks to an apocalyptic standstill. While a Spanish judge has launched an investigation into whether a cyberattack was responsible, early indications suggest the culprit is likely net zero.
Here’s an excerpt from Michael Shellenberger at PUBLIC, who provided an uncomfortable truth about the unhinged liberals in Europe who have been hellbent on retiring fossil fuel power and nuclear generation plants, swapping for unreliable solar and wind:
Despite all these warnings, political and regulatory energy in Europe remained focused on accelerating renewable deployment, not upgrading the grid’s basic stability. In Spain, solar generation continued to climb rapidly through 2023 and early 2024.
Coal plants closed. Nuclear units retired.
On many spring days by 2025, Spain’s midday solar generation exceeded its total afternoon demand, leading to frequent negative electricity prices.
The system was being pushed to the limit.
And today, at 12:35 pm, it broke.
…
Spain’s blackout wasn’t just a technical failure. It was a political and strategic failure.
…
Unless Spain rapidly invests in synthetic inertia, maintains and expands its nuclear fleet, or adds some other new form of heavy rotating generation, the risk of future blackouts will only grow worse.
Red Eléctrica has refused to speculate on the cause of the worst blackout in Spain’s history. However, REN, the Portuguese grid operator, said Monday that a rare atmospheric phenomenon in Spain caused by extreme temperature variations was the most likely cause.
Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez told reporters that the power blackout was caused by an issue in the European grid. He described it as a “strong oscillation” but did not provide further details.
Sánchez noted that power was pulled from Morocco and France to restore power in southern and northern parts of Spain. Local grids were adding the production of hydroelectric and combined cycle thermal power plants to stabilize the grid.
‘Critics of Net Zero are now questioning whether renewables were to blame’.@benleo444 reports from Madrid on the nationwide power outage that Spain experienced yesterday. pic.twitter.com/6RkGKkvsB4
Mark Nelson (@EnergyBants) posted the most detailed breakdown (and conclusion) on X:
SPAIN BLACKOUTS: AN ANONYMOUS EXPERT VIEW
From a deep groupchat, last night, translated from Spanish, written by an expert in transmission and distribution of power. Not my words.
“What has happened on April 28 has a well-located origin: the Aragón-Catalonia corridor, which is one of the most important electric highways in Spain. There is not only the electricity produced by our solar and wind farms in the northeast, but also the electricity that we import from France. This international interconnection, although weak (it can only contribute 3% of our demand, well below the minimum of 10% that marks the EU), in times of stress is essential to balance the network.
At 12:32 p.m., in that Aragón-Catalonia corridor there was an electric shock. What exactly does “shake” mean? It means that suddenly and abnormally, the power that flowed through those lines began to vary violently, rising and falling in a very short time.
Such abrupt variability can be due to three main causes:
That a relay or transformer on that electric highway detects an abnormal flow of current or voltage (higher or lower than expected) and automatically disconnected to avoid burning or destroyed. This is called that “opens” a relay or switch: it jumps and cuts the passage of electricity to protect itself.
That the enormous concentration of renewable energy in that area (mainly solar and wind) has created an electrical resonance: electronic inverters, which synchronize current, can sometimes be amplified between them if a small voltage alteration (for example, due to clouds, strong wind or a slight failure) extends like an echo to all devices, causing widespread oscillations.
That a wrong control order has been sent (by mistake or attack) from the SCADA systems, disconnecting or reducing the generation of multiple hit plants. There is no confirmation of this possibility yet, but it is being investigated.
What is known is that as a consequence of that shake, the interconnection with France jumped: we were isolated just at the worst time, when the peninsula needed external support to stabilize.
Without that French help, the frequency of the peninsular network (which should always be 50 Hz exact) began to drop quickly. The frequency is like the heartbeat of the network: if it falls too much, the systems understand that the patient (the network) is collapsing and automatically disconnected so as not to self-destruct. Thus, in just five seconds, the solar and wind farms were turned off —very sensitive to frequency variations—, 15 GW of power was lost suddenly (60% of all the electricity generated at that time), and the network could not take it anymore: it was It collapsed completely, showing the Redeia Platform (REE) a “0 MW” nationwide. That does not mean that all the turbines were physically turned off, but there was no generator synchronized at the common frequency of 50 Hz. It was, for practical purposes, a country off.
To ignite a completely dead network again, one essential thing is needed: plants that can start in black, that is, without receiving energy from anywhere else. Spain has identified five large hydroelectric jumps capable of doing this. However, and here is one of the great negligences that are coming to light, three of those five groups were stopped in scheduled maintenance, by business decision supervised by the administration. Only two were operational. That made the recovery much slower and weaker than it should be in a normal contingency plan.
The result is that, after almost 10 hours, only 35% to 40% of the national supply has been recovered, and there are still large areas in the dark or under scheduled cuts.
The situation reveals a very serious underlying problem:
Spain is still an energy island: it only has 3% foreign exchange capacity compared to its total demand.
The network depends a lot on variable renewables, which are disconnected quickly in the face of any instability.
The lack of physical inertia reserves (i.e. large rotating masses such as thermal power plants or classic hydraulics) prevents the disturbances from damping.
And poor maintenance planning left without enough hydraulic muscle to respond to a crisis.
The most likely causes, with current data, are:
A combination of technical failure in protection or in synchronization, added to a serious lack of operational forecast and maintenance (probability ≈ 40%).
The possibility of an intentional cyber-physical attack remains in analysis (≈ 25% estimated probability).
Other factors such as human error, punctual atmospheric phenomenon or mixed causes complete the rest.
In short: an initial shake at the most sensitive point of the Spanish network —the Aragón-Catalonia corridor, door to Europe— left the peninsula isolated and vulnerable. The network could not sustain its own demand because it did not have sufficient assistance, nor stable physical reserve, nor enough bootable plants in black. Three of five hydroelectric jumps were out of service when they were most needed.
For this reason, Spain went out in five seconds, and that is why it still continues to light little by little, fragile, slow and exposed.
Great job, Western liberals, on the deranged march to net-zero, culminating in the implosion of part of Europe’s power grid. Meanwhile, China is adding record amounts of coal and nuclear power capacity. It’s almost as if the entire green movement is about de-growth — and, in some cases, seems like sabotage fueled by sheer stupidity.
The funniest joke at the White House Correspondent’s dinner Sunday came courtesy of Axios ‘journalist’ Alex Thompson, who suggested that the media didn’t report on Joe Biden’s obvious cognitive decline because his handlers ‘covered it up’.
Thompson claimed that “Biden’s decline and its cover up by the people around him is a reminder that every White House regardless of Party is capable of deception.”
“But being truth tellers also means telling the truth about ourselves,” he continued, adding “We, myself included, missed a lot of this story and some people trust us less because of that.”
NEW: Axios’ Alex Thompson blames the Biden administration for covering up his metal decline, says the media simply “missed a lot of this story.”
Anyone with eyes and ears could see Biden’s mental decline but now the media is trying to rewrite history by pretending they weren’t… pic.twitter.com/D5jF8kiFSi
“I don’t know how we missed it. It’s a great mystery.”
They didn’t just cover for Biden’s decline, they gaslit anyone that pointed it out.
Exhibit A: pic.twitter.com/BUfiOylDU3
“We bear some responsibility for faith in the media being at such lows,” Thompson further stated, adding “I say this because acknowledging errors builds trust and being defensive about it further erodes it. We should have done better.”
No shit.
Legacy Media: We missed a lot of the story about Biden being cognitively impaired for four years.
While every conservative was for years screaming about Biden’s brain turning to mush, the media was amplifying Democrats calling him “sharp as a tack.”
If you watched the legacy news media, you’d have no idea how bad he was.
If you scrolled X or even watched Fox News – you’d know there was significant cognitive decline.
The Trump / Biden debate was eye opening for those with their head in the sand.
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“We Are Refilling The Reserve Now”: Energy Secretary Wright Confirms SPR Refill After Biden’s Reckless Drain
The effort to refill America’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve, depleted under President Biden in 2022, is progressing slowly under the Trump administration, Energy Secretary Chris Wright said in a CNBC interview this week.
“We are refilling the reserve now, and we will continue to refill the reserve the whole time I’m in office,” Wright stated, warning it could take years. He criticized Biden’s decision to release oil from the SPR as “such an irresponsible action to drain that reserve so quickly for electoral reasons.”
The Biden administration authorized a historic sale of 180 million barrels over six months to fight surging gasoline prices and inflation, and in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, according to Newsmax.
Wright added that the rapid drawdown damaged infrastructure: “It was drained so fast, it did some damage to the facilities. And so, right now, we only can fill two of the four major salt caverns we have, so we are doing repair work on the other two.” He said he’s pushing for more funding to speed up the repairs and refill effort.
Recall back in March we noted that Wright told Bloomberg in an interview that the Energy Department was preparing to purchase $20 billion worth of crude oil as the first step in refilling the nation’s depleted SPR to a sufficient level.
At the time, he said the initiative, which may take years, would restore holdings “just close to the top.”
The initiative, which may take years, would restore holdings “just close to the top” to maintain efficient operating status, Wright said in an interview on Thursday in Louisiana after touring a natural-gas export plant. Trump said he planned replenish the Strategic Petroleum Reserve during his inaugural address in January, part of a broad embrace of conventional energy that’s also included pledges to boost domestic oil production and roll back regulation. The storage facility — the largest of its kind — is meant to provide a cushion to guard against crude supply disruptions. “Ultimately, that’s what it was built for — to have the maximum security for the American people,” Wright said. -BBG
Currently trading at approximately $61 per barrel, WTI has decreased by about 13.76% since the beginning of the year andthe re-escalation of trade disputes, particularly between the U.S. and China, has dampened global economic outlooks, leading to reduced demand projections for oil
Recall, under Biden’s first term, the reckless administration dangerously drained the SPR from around 650 million barrels to about 395 million.
Bloomberg noted back in March: “Congress will need to approve funding to refill the system, which isn’t guaranteed. Energy Department funds for purchases ran out after the Biden administration bought about 60 million barrels.”
President Donald Trump issued an executive order on Monday to enhance national security and enforce federal immigration and criminal law in so-called sanctuary jurisdictions and take a range of actions against those obstructing enforcement, including eliminating their federal funding.
Trump’s “Protecting American Communities from Criminal Aliens” executive order directs the departments of Justice and Homeland Security to publish a list of state and local jurisdictions that obstruct federal immigration enforcement and take action against them.
“Federal supremacy with respect to immigration, national security, and foreign policy is axiomatic,” the order states, citing Article II and Article IV, Section 4, of the U.S. Constitution, vesting the federal government with the power to protect national security and “protect each of [the States] against Invasion.”
The invasion argument was first made by 55 Texas counties that declared an invasion citing Article IV, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution, The Center Square exclusively reported.
“The prior administration allowed unchecked millions of aliens to illegally enter the United States,” the order states, creating a public safety and national security crisis, exacerbated by transnational criminal organizations, terrorists and others intent on harming Americans.
Trump’s latest executive order, as many of his previous ones, is likely to be challenged in court.
Citing an invasion at the southern border, which Trump officially declared on his first day in office, his administration is now responding to some state and local officials who “violate, obstruct, and defy” federal immigration enforcement, the order states.
Local jurisdictions who obstruct federal deportation efforts are engaging in “a lawless insurrection against the supremacy of Federal law and the Federal Government’s obligation to defend the territorial sovereignty of the United States,” it states.
In addition to creating “intolerable national security risks,” the order states sanctuary jurisdictions’ “nullification efforts often violate Federal criminal laws, including those prohibiting obstruction of justice, … unlawfully harboring or hiring illegal aliens …, conspiracy against the United States …, and conspiracy to impede Federal law enforcement.”
The order also notes that “assisting aliens in violating Federal immigration law could also violate the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act,” an argument made by America First Legal, The Center Square reported. In January, AFL launched a resource to help Americans fight sanctuary policies and sent letters to more than 250 elected officials demanding that they comply with federal law or expect to be sued.
“Concealing, harboring, or shielding aliens could also trigger liability under the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) statute,” AFL said.
“Civil RICO remedies are available to ‘[a]ny person injured in his business or property by reason of a violation’ and shall recover threefold the damages he sustains and the cost of the suit, including a reasonable attorney’s fee.’”
Trump’s order also states that those who assist illegal foreign nationals might be violating federal laws that prohibit discrimination against Americans and might be violating Americans’ civil rights.
In order for the federal government “to restore the enforcement of United States law,” Trump directed the attorney general and Secretary of Homeland Security to publish a list of states and local jurisdictions that obstruct the federal immigration enforcement. Each jurisdiction is to be notified of its alleged violation of federal immigration and criminal law.
Those that remain in defiance will lose all federal funding, the order says. The AG and DHS secretary are directed to work with the Director of the Office of Management and Budget to identify, suspend and terminate all federal funds allocated to sanctuary jurisdictions, including grants and contracts. They are also directed to “pursue all necessary legal remedies and enforcement measures to end these violations and bring such jurisdictions into compliance” with U.S. laws.
The order also prevents all federal benefits from being spent on illegal foreign nationals living in sanctuary jurisdictions, including through private entities. It requires federal agencies to create a mechanism “to ensure appropriate eligibility verification is conducted for individuals receiving federal public benefits” under Title 8 of federal immigration law.
It also creates provisions for the AG, DHS secretary and agency heads to “identify and take appropriate action to stop the enforcement of state and local laws, regulations, policies, and practices favoring aliens over any groups of American citizens that are unlawful, preempted by federal law, or otherwise unenforceable.”
This includes state laws that provide in-state higher education tuition “to aliens but not to out-of-State American citizens that may violate” federal law or “that favor aliens in criminal charges or sentencing.”
The order was issued after the Trump administration already warned sanctuary jurisdictions like Massachusetts, whose officials remained steadfast in their policies to protect illegal foreign nationals. They continued to do so after federal authorities arrested alleged terrorists tied to the murder of U.S. troops and hundreds of criminal illegal foreign nationals were charged or convicted of committing violent crimes against Massachusetts residents, The Center Square reported.
Lawmakers in the Arizona House of Representatives passed two bills that could allow the state to adopt a reserve using Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies.
In a third reading on April 28 of Senate Bill 1025 (SB1025), a proposal to amend Arizona’s statutes to allow for a strategic BTC reserve, 31 members of the Arizona House voted in favor of the bill, with 25 opposed. A similar bill, SB1373, to establish a state-level digital assets reserve, passed with 37 lawmakers in favor and 19 voting nay.
“This bill basically takes the approach that probably 15 other states are considering the same legislation nationwide that allows the treasurer to invest up to 10% into, probably mainly Bitcoin but other things as well,” said State Representative Jeff Weninger on SB1025.
“I think this probably would start as a ‘may’ for the foreseeable future, but as things continue to pivot towards Bitcoin and these things, would have that already in place in the future.”
Voting for SB1025 in the Arizona House of Representatives on April 28. Source: Arizona State Legislature
The approvals bring the bills closer than any other state-level initiative in the US to getting a cryptocurrency or Bitcoin strategic reserve signed into law. Similar legislation proposed in New Hampshire passed the state’s House in April and is expected to head to the Senate for a full floor vote soon.
Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs announced on April 17 that she intended to veto any bill until lawmakers had a “serious, bipartisan funding solution that protects healthcare for Arizonans with disabilities.” However, with the passage of such legislation on April 24, the governor could be more open to signing SB1025 or SB1373 into law.
Federal plans to establish a national crypto reserve
The state-level efforts to create Bitcoin reserves come amid a push from US President Donald Trump and Republican lawmakers to do the same in the federal government.
Trump signed an executive order in March with a proposal for a “Strategic Bitcoin Reserve” and a “Digital Asset Stockpile.”
Wyoming Senator Cynthia Lummis, a crypto advocate, proposed that Congress pass legislation that could allow the US government to hold more than 1 million BTC, in part through crypto seized through civil or criminal forfeiture. Some lawmakers have suggested Lummis’s bill was an attempt by Congress to codify Trump’s executive order into law.
