Russia is warning that the Ukrainian capital could face unprecedented aerial bombing, and is taking the somewhat unprecedented step of issuing evacuation orders for bystanders in Kiev.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry said Wednesday it warned foreign diplomatic missions to evacuate staff from the Ukrainian capital ahead of a potential large-scale strike if Ukraine attempts to disrupt Russia’s May 9 Victory Day commemorations.

Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, speaking in a video posted on Telegram, called on diplomats to take seriously a Defense Ministry warning issued Monday about retaliation in response to any Ukrainian attack linked to the commemorations and the Red Square parade.

“The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs strongly urges the authorities of your country…to treat this statement with the utmost responsibility and ensure the timely evacuation from the city of Kyiv of the personnel of diplomatic and other representations in connection with the inevitability of a retaliatory strike on Kyiv by Russia’s Armed Forces,” Zakharova said.

Zakharova charged that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky recently made “aggressive and threatening statements” about disrupting the commemorations during Monday remarks at a European Political Community meeting in Armenia.

“Several EU countries were present,” she said. “None of them reprimanded the ringleader of the Kyiv regime.”

Here’s what Zelensky had said:

“It will be the first time in many, many years they cannot afford military equipment and they fear drones may buzz over Red Square. This is telling.”

Last year similar back-and-forth threats and rhetoric surrounded the lead-up to Russia’s V-day celebrations, but little in the way of direct threats or hostile drone activity over Moscow materialized at the time.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry is urging foreign countries to ensure the evacuation of diplomats from Kyiv.

Russia will strike decision-making centers in Kyiv if Ukraine disrupts the May 9 parade. pic.twitter.com/G7YmNUm3Kf

— Clash Report (@clashreport) May 6, 2026

At the moment, the warring countries have presented competing dates for ceasefire. Putin wants it to correspond with the major Russian holiday: May 8-9, while Zelensky had last week offered May 5-6, which has already come and gone.

Both sides have meanwhile continued attacking the other’s vital energy sites, and in some cases this has left significant casualties and destruction.

Authored by Michael Clements via The Epoch Times,

Denver is refusing to repeal its 37-year-old ban on certain types of firearms known as “assault weapons.”

Harmeet Dhillon, assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, sent a demand letter on April 28 to Denver Mayor Mike Johnston and City Attorney Miko Brown, requesting the city repeal the ordinance, which has been in place since 1989.

In a May 4 response letter, Brown stated that the ordinance has withstood legal challenges, kept violent crime low, and was democratically enacted.

Brown wrote that while Denver may consider various strategies to keep citizens safe, “Reversing a common-sense ban that has worked for 37 years and bringing assault weapons back into the City’s neighborhoods is not one of them.”

Johnston reiterated that sentiment in a statement released that same day.

“Denver’s law has stood for 37 years because it works, it saves lives, and it reflects the values of our community. No demand or lawsuit from Washington is going to change that,” Johnston said.

The ordinance—Denver Revised Municipal Code Section 38-121(c)—prohibits carrying, storing, keeping, manufacturing, selling, or possessing an assault weapon.

Denver Mayor Mike Johnston testifies before the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on Capitol Hill on March 5, 2025. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

The ordinance defines an assault weapon as “any semiautomatic pistol or centerfire rifle, either of which have a fixed or detachable magazine with a capacity of more than fifteen (15) rounds, and any semiautomatic shotgun with a folding stock or a magazine capacity of more than six (6) rounds or both.”

The definition includes firearms that have been modified to have these features to function as an assault weapon.

Dhillon wrote that the U.S. Supreme Court held in D.C. v. Heller that the Second Amendment secures “the right of law-abiding citizens to keep and bear arms for self-defense.”

She goes on to state that arms in common use may not be categorically banned.

Dhillon stated that the definition includes AR-15-style rifles, which are owned by “literally tens of millions” of people.

“The city has banned an arm in common use for lawful purposes by law-abiding citizens. Therefore, the Ordinance violates the Second Amendment,” Dhillon’s letter states.

Dhillon set a deadline of May 5 for the city to enter negotiations to repeal the ban. To avoid a lawsuit, the city would have to cease enforcing the ordinance, acknowledge the law is unconstitutional, and enter a consent decree to prevent enforcement of the ordinance.

“This ordinance has helped keep Denver safe for decades. Repealing it would put my officers and our residents at greater risk and violate our duty to protect and serve,” Denver Police Chief Ron Thomas was quoted as saying.

Add another vocal warning to the chorus singing about the dangers of private credit. 

DoubleLine CEO Jeffrey Gundlach, who has been especially critical of private credit for the past year warning last November that the space “has the same trappings as subprime mortgage repackaging had back in 2006,” raised fresh concerns about financial advisers and other principals who ushered retail investors into private credit and other so-called semi-liquid funds, suggesting they’ve been motivated by high fees as much as by their clients’ interests.

“It’s clear that prospectuses talked about the gating mechanism, but I have a feeling that the financial intermediaries, not all of them of course, but enough of them, didn’t explain,” he said Wednesday on a panel at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills.

The products have been “kept opaque and not granularly described,” he said according to Bloomberg. “That’s why everybody wants their money back: They’re starting to realize they might be the bag-holder.”

Gundlach took issue with private credit firms calling their funds “semi-liquid” in nature. “Semi-liquid is kind of a diabolical name,” Gundlach said. “Half the time it’s liquid. It’s liquid when you don’t want your money, and it’s illiquid when you do want your money.” A little bit like “half cash, half stock“, in the parlance of our times.

As documented extensively, private credit firms have been slammed with a wave of redemption requests, a jolt to an industry that had viewed retail investors as a new source of capital to complement institutions; instead it is scrambling to gate them as they seek their money back as cracks have emerged in the private credit architecture. At Milken and elsewhere, asset managers are now questioning the wisdom – or at least, the marketing message – of selling illiquid investments to the masses.

Gundlach also compared today’s private credit market to the boom-and-bust cycles in the dot-com era and in mortgage-backed securities and other derivatives. Risky credit might be able to hide in the private market, he said, noting that the quality in the high-yield public market is much better than it was before the global financial crisis.

“This is gonna be an interesting period because the data points aren’t as frequent as they were with the dot-coms and the mortgage market,” Gundlach said. “I don’t know what systemic means, but people are going to lose money here.”

They certainly are, and today the firm at the epicenter of the private credit crisis, Blue Owl, reminded us of that when two of its private credit funds bought back $85 million of shares as volatility in technology markets and a selloff in publicly traded loans brought down their value. 

The firm cut the value of its $14.1 billion technology-focused business development fund by about 5% to $16.49 a share in the three months ended March 31, according to a filing Wednesday. The value of its $15.3 billion Blue Owl Capital Corporation, fell almost 3% to $14.41 a share.

Ever a cheerful cheerleader for his struggling product, Blue Owl co-president Craig Packer said underlying credit trends remained sound for both funds. “We continue to see solid credit performance across our portfolio of durable, mission-critical businesses with many already taking steps to adapt to the evolving AI environment,” Packer said in a statement, referring to Blue Owl Technology Finance Corp.

Blue Owl noted that share buybacks had helped boost the net asset value of the funds in the quarter.  At the same time, the firm which has been facing a liquidity crunch, cut the dividend at the bigger fund to 31 cents a share from 37 cents, citing an “extended period” of declining rates and lower risk premiums. The total dividend for the technology fund was flat at 40 cents.

Blue Owl, which earlier this year precipitated the crisis in the $1.8 trillion private credit market and gated redemptions at two other private credit funds when faced with an unprecedented $5.6 billion in withdrawal requests sending shares to a record low last month, on Wednesday said it had reduced the leverage at its biggest publicly traded fund, giving it flexibility to act fast when buying opportunities come up in an improving market for lenders.

Blue Owl wasn’t the only one to suffer from mismarked loans. A private credit fund overseen by Apollo Global reported a quarterly loss, citing declining valuations amid market volatility and weakness in some specific deals. 

MidCap Financial Investment Corp., a business development company focused on direct lending, reported a net loss per share of 30 cents, compared to a 32 cent gain for the same period a year ago, it said in a statement. Net asset value per share fell to $13.82 compared to $14.18 at the end of December, missing analyst expectations.

BDC earnings are drawing sharper scrutiny as managers grapple with exposure to software companies confronting the disruptive potential of AI. Oaktree Capital Management said this week that it cut the value of one of its private credit funds by almost 4% as the firm marked down its software assets, while Sixth Street Specialty Lending reduced its dividend and reported a decline in net asset value per share.

“Our net loss for the quarter was driven by a combination of unrealized valuation adjustments reflecting broader credit spread widening, as well as credit weakness in certain positions,” MFIC Chief Executive Officer Tanner Powell said in a statement.

Loans marked as non-accrual – typically meaning the borrower missed debt payments – climbed to about $167 million on an amortized cost basis, from $48.5 million in the same period a year ago, according to a presentation. The firm said that its software portfolio had a fair value of $327 million, accounting for about 11% of its total holdings. MidCap is “highly selective” on those investments, avoiding categories where workflows are easily automated, it said. 

Meanwhile, in a sign even more pain is yet to come for the sector, Bloomberg reported that a group of banks led by JPMorgan is expected to shoulder paper losses of more than $500 million on a debt deal for software firm Qualtrics Internationa. The banks are preparing to use their own balance sheets to fund $5.3 billion of debt for Qualtrics’ acquisition of Press Ganey Forsta. That would make it the biggest “hung” deal in the leveraged finance market this year.

According to Bloomberg, the lenders decided not to launch a formal offering after pausing early discussions on the deal in March, when investors in the leveraged loan and junk-bond markets balked because of Qualtrics’ exposure to the software rout. Back then, the roughly $1.5 billion Qualtrics loan due in 2030 had fallen to about 86 cents on the dollar, down from near par levels just one month earlier. At those levels, investors would find it more attractive to buy existing debt rather than participate in a new issuance, which would also sharply push up borrowing costs for the company.

The financing effort, led by JPMorgan, was tied to Qualtrics’ $6.75 billion acquisition of Press Ganey Forsta, with the package expected to include a $3.3 billion leveraged loan and another $2 billion across junk bonds or private credit.

Qualtrics, which makes online survey tools, has emerged as one of the highest-profile examples of the pain plaguing software firms at the heart of the private credit crisis, as investors reassess business models across the industry given the rapid advances in artificial intelligence.

The reason why JPMorgan capitulated on laucnhing a formal offering is because the existing term loan is currently trading at about 84 cents on the dollar, creating a hurdle too big to overcome when pricing any new deal.

Banks typically provide bridge financing commitments to support acquisitions with the intention to sell the debt on to institutional investors as part of a syndication process, and earn a fee for doing so. They try to offload the borrowings quickly – before the transaction closes – because getting stuck with the debt on their balance sheets means they can’t commit that capacity to new deals.

In the case of Qualtrics, the company imploded much faster than anyone had expected, stiffing the bank syndicate with massive paper losses.

Qualtrics’ acquisition of Press Ganey, an online survey and data analytics business, is expected to close as soon as this month. Banks are discussing a number of potential structural changes with PE sponsor Silver Lake to make the deal more palatable to investors, and plan to bring the debt offering to the market at a later date, arguably in hopes that the current market euphoria lasts long enough to find a new, naive batch of buyers who would be willing to take on the banks’ balance sheet risk. Should that happen, it’s possible that some of the paper losses banks will have to book when funding the Qualtrics deal will be reversed once they bring the transaction back to market.

Qualtrics is the biggest deal to have run into trouble this year. In February, a Deutsche Bank-led group was unable to sell about $1.2 billion of loans supporting an acquisition by Thoma Bravo-backed Conga Corp., another software business. More recently, banks led by UBS financed the tie-up of two logistics firms after pausing early talks to offload a $765 million loan to investors.

And as more and more firms reveal just how badly they mismarked their books over the years in hopes of attracting retail investors with mark-to-model gains which have in retrospect turned out to be fictitious, some are taking proactive steps to restore confidence in the space. Apollo is one of them: the alternative asset manager plans to offer investors daily valuations for its private-credit funds by the end of September, a move that could help ease worries about the health of an opaque world of lending.

The private-market giant disclosed its plans Wednesday during a call with analysts after reporting its first-quarter results.

“This is the beginning of standardization across this marketplace,” Chief Executive Marc Rowan said on the call reported by the WSJ.

Since most private investment funds provide valuations of their assets to investors on a quarterly basis, the investing public has to wait at least three months to get an updated sense of how the portfolio is performing. The marks (or valuations) are used to calculate fees and give investors a sense of their unrealized returns. Unlike with stocks or public debt, investors don’t have real-time updates on how their investments are faring.

Rowan said the firm would observe other trades, comparable assets and market trends to produce a price for assets. Then again, if all Apollo does is merely spew out what some excel model thinks the loan book is worth daily instead of every three months, nothing at all will change unless the actual marking process is also fixed.

Authored by Rick Fisher via The Epoch Times,

As the United States pursues its goal of sending astronauts to the moon starting in 2028 to start building lunar bases—and China pursues its goal of sending its people to the moon by 2029 or 2030, also to start building lunar bases—it is necessary to consider a lunar political-military stability based on dual-use technologies.

Concern that China could behave aggressively on the moon is justified based on its behavior on Earth: an unwillingness to recognize the territory of neighboring states while mounting militarized aggrandizement against Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, and India.

This behavior does not bode well for China’s willingness to be transparent about its intentions on the moon, while being predisposed to defend claimed areas rather than seeking deconfliction should other countries pursue nearby lunar activities.

This becomes more of a concern for two additional reasons.

• First, both China and the United States are targeting lunar bases for the south pole of the moon due to the greater probability of finding water ice, but as National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Moon Base Program Executive Carlos Garcia-Galan noted in the agency’s March 24 “Ignition” briefing, this region is about the size of the state of Virginia.

• Second, while Virginia is not a small state, China’s early moon landing system will employ two stages: a manned or cargo stage that is decelerated near the moon by a second propulsion stage that detaches and then crashes into the lunar surface.

For China, use of the propulsion stage is needed because its initial Long March-10 lunar space launch vehicle (SLV) can only loft about 26 tons to the moon, thus requiring two Long March-10 launches to put people on the moon, and use of a propulsion stage lowers the weight of the lunar landing system.

So far, Chinese state-affiliated sources have revealed that their Lanyue manned lunar lander and a larger pressurized lunar rover will be transported to the moon using the crashing propulsion stage, but it is likely that other payloads will do so as well.

For decades, the Chinese regime has tolerated the crashing of SLV first stages into populated areas, so it is a legitimate concern that Beijing will be similarly cavalier about the potential dangers to other countries’ lunar settlements posed by crashing Chinese propulsion stages.

It is certainly preferable to deconflict lunar basing plans, something that could be done between NASA and Chinese space officials who attend the annual International Astronautical Congress, which brings together space officials and engineers.

But China’s decades-long refusal to consider transparency and controls over its nuclear weapons does not bode well for its willingness to ensure that other countries are not “bombed” by its 5- to 8-ton moon-crashing propulsion stages.

As such, it is necessary to have a backup plan that can “deter” China from aggressive behavior on the moon and to defend against potentially dangerous behaviors, such as refusing to prevent threats from its moon-based propulsion stages.

A Long March-2F carrier rocket, carrying the Shenzhou 20 spacecraft and a crew of three astronauts, lifts off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert on April 24, 2025. Pedro Prdoa/AFP via Getty Images

By now, it’s also possible to discern that both the United States and China are preparing to deploy “dual-use” systems to the moon that could serve defensive-military objectives, offering the possibility of a system of lunar deterrence.

Lunar Satellites: Both the United States and China plan to deploy small constellations of satellites around the moon for surveillance of the lunar surface and to enable lunar navigation and intra-lunar and Earth-moon communication.

Since 2024, China has deployed its Queqiao-2 communication relay satellite to the far side of the moon, supported by two small Tiandu navigation-communication development satellites.

By 2050, China intends that Queqiao will host a large number of communication, surveillance, and navigation satellites, enabling missions to the moon, Venus, and Mars, and even further into the solar system.

NASA intends to deploy two groups of five lunar satellites in 2027 and 2028 to perform surveillance, navigation, and communication missions.

Both China and the United States could use their lunar satellite constellations to support military objectives on the moon, and both are developing “combat” satellites for low Earth orbit operations, which, if needed, could also be deployed to lunar orbits.

Moon Hoppers: For its next Change-7 unmanned moon probe mission later this year to the far side of the moon, China will test a small “moon hopper,” an unmanned vehicle able to fly or hop into a nearby moon crater to search for water ice.

On March 24, NASA revealed that it intends to deploy three groups of four hopping vehicles to the moon in 2028, 2030, and 2032—a total of 12 such vehicles.

Even early, small hopping vehicles like China’s could swap out their small science payload for a small electromagnetic pulse grenade that could disable unshielded electronics at the target moon base. The fact that both could use their hopping vehicles as Earth-bound unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAVs) would add to deterrence.

Lunar Nuclear Power: On March 24, NASA revealed its intention to develop space nuclear-thermal power systems to propel a nuclear-thermal powered spacecraft to Mars in 2028, with that power system also serving as the basis for a lunar-based nuclear power system for U.S. bases on the moon, to compensate for the loss of solar power during the “lunar night.”

Co-developed with the U.S. Department of Energy, the plan is to deploy a 40- to 100-kilowatt fission power system to the moon by 2030 or 2031 to provide reliable power for U.S. unmanned and manned moon base systems.

Chinese literature also reveals the intention to develop space nuclear power, both to propel spacecraft into deep space and to generate electricity for Chinese lunar bases, with a prototype space reactor reported to have been completed in 2023.

As fear of retaliation is the basis for nuclear deterrence on Earth, there would be a similar fear of retaliation that would deter attacks against lunar nuclear power stations, which would threaten personnel and contaminate a lunar base, thus preventing recovery and rebuilding.

But as a lunar nuclear power station would power lunar habitats and lunar rovers, it could also power future lunar mining lasers, which may also be inherently “dual-use”—an early lunar “artillery.”

With the May 4 signature of Ireland and Malta, there are now 66 nations that have signed the 2020 Artemis Accords principles for transparent and peaceful behavior on the moon, which form the basis for future U.S. cooperation on the moon with all Artemis partners.

As the leader of the Artemis “coalition,” the United States should try to achieve lunar deconfliction with China, especially to prevent errant Chinese propulsion modules from posing a threat to Artemis coalition lunar activities.

However, inasmuch as the Chinese Communist Party may regard dominance on the moon as a necessary tool for achieving future hegemony on Earth, the United States may have to lead its Artemis partners in making sure that “dual-use” technologies are deployed in a way that creates a system of lunar deterrence.

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

One week ago, Microsoft expected roughly $190 billion in AI data center spending for this fiscal year, highlighting the massive scale of the hyperscaler capex cycle as Big Tech races to build out compute infrastructure. Across the tech space, hyperscalers are expected to spend nearly $700 billion in capex this year alone.

The incredible amount of capex being deployed this year has forced some tech giants to slash headcount and trim operating costs to free up capital for data centers. At the same time, Microsoft may now delay or abandon its ambitious 2030 “100/100/0” clean-energy target for data centers as costs continue to mount.

Bloomberg reports MSFT is set to nuke its pre-AI-era climate commitment, which aimed to match 100% of its electricity use, 100% of the time, with “green” energy by 2030, due to the mounting costs of going green.

MSFT wanted every hour of electricity used by its offices and data centers to be matched with clean energy purchases. The reality of saving the planet in a pre-AI era has collided with costs and power constraints as renewable energy struggles to keep pace with data center buildouts.

“The costly and energy-intensive buildout of data centers is affecting views on the feasibility of climate commitments made before the AI era,” according to the outlet, citing one person familiar with the matter.

MSFT is reportedly adding about 1 gigawatt of data center capacity every three months (enough to power 750k homes) and expects to spend about $190 billion on data center buildouts this year. The tech giant recently held talks with Chevron to fund a major natural gas plant in the West Texas Permian Basin.

“AI is an existential fight for survival for Big Tech, and so all and any funds at their disposal are being diverted to building as much AI as possible,” Alexia Kelly of the High Tide Foundation told the outlet.

MSFT’s emissions have already jumped 23% from the pre-AI chatbot era, while Meta, Google, and Amazon have seen similar spikes as well.

The possible move by MSFT to dial back its climate pledges comes as data center buildout costs mount, and the tech giant is doing everything possible to trim those costs to ensure it continues to lead the hyperscaler race. Most importantly, it wants to lead the AI race against China, where data centers are predominantly powered by coal.

The need for cheaper power costs by MSFT also comes at a very precarious time for the entire AI buildout narrative, as cracks are beginning to emerge. Read the full report here.

Authored by ‘Sundance’ via The Last Refuge blog,

Anyone who has ever dealt with a toxic narcissist understands the psychology behind their manipulative language, words and intents. 

What Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is doing here is very dangerous, particularly for the Canadian people.

After a year of increased provocative language intended to confront President Trump for U.S. nationalist policy changes on economics, trade and security, Prime Minister Carney travelled to Europe where he again delivered strong remarks saying that Europe is now the center of the “rules based international order,” the western government control mechanisms that have maintained economic and security relationships for the past one-hundred years.

Essentially, Carney, after saying the USA was no longer a reliable or obedient partner, emphasized the opposition to state nationalism must come from a collective decision to retain the old geopolitical structures.  President Trump must be opposed, and Europe -according to Carney- represents the assembly that will not permit state government nationalism (sovereignty) to replace their long-constructed globalist systems.

Earlier this week, Prime Minister Carney faced questions about those remarks. I don’t want to influence the audience, but with the context in mind, watch and listen closely to his response.

[NOTE: The question comes from the Toronto Star, the only ‘conservative’ media outlet permitted under the rules of the Canadian regime to ask questions.  All other outlets who might challenge the government viewpoints are strictly controlled and not permitted audience.]

Notice how Carney divides the world of opposition to President Trump, indicating the 5-Eyes nations of Canada, Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand are in opposition to Trump and in alignment with the old control mechanisms. 

Adding to this grouping, Carney pulls in the entire European continent and boldly proclaims his position as lead diplomat and representative for their effort against the USA.

This is a very dangerous game that Prime Minister Carney is choosing to play here. 

This is the behavior of a person who is toxically narcissistic and prepared to claim victim status as soon as his target hits back.  Carney has carefully and purposefully deceived his domestic audience, and things are about to get very ugly.

I must say something of a personal frustration….

In the bigger picture, expanding on the ancillary aspects that pertain to the geopolitical landscape that surrounds us, Carney is able to push this line this far because we have internal friction driven by people like Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens and other short-sighted “influencers, who do not recognize the scale of the moment.

President Trump is standing up to a globalist system that weakened the United States over several generations. 

The same voices who understand how toxic the United Nations, NATO, USAID and other international influences are to what remains of U.S. sovereignty, are the same voices attempting to divide Trump’s base of support while our President battles multinational influence operations; all because they have the same traits as Mark Carney underpinning their psychology.

You either affix your bayonet against these forces, or in our lifetime there will be nothing left to fight over.

A federal judge on Wednesday unsealed a purported suicide note attributed to Jeffrey Epstein, written before his first reported incident in July 2019 and discovered by his then-cellmate, Nicholas Tartaglione, tucked inside a graphic novel. The undated, unsigned document – released as part of Tartaglione’s unrelated criminal case docket – contains lines such as “They investigated me for month – found NOTHING!!!” and references to saying goodbye. It has been kept under seal for nearly seven years.

The note’s release comes amid a flood of Epstein-related document dumps in 2025–2026, yet it does little to quiet the persistent, deeply unsettling questions about how Epstein actually died on August 10, 2019, inside the Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) in Manhattan. Official ruling: suicide by hanging. Public consensus, reinforced by every major new tranche of files: something about that story has never added up – and the weirdness only multiplies with each disclosure.

The Official Timeline vs. Reality on the Ground

Epstein was found unresponsive in his cell shortly before 6:30 a.m. on August 10, 2019. Attorney General William Barr immediately called it an “apparent suicide.” The medical examiner ruled it a hanging. Case closed – or so the government insisted.

The facts on the ground were different:

• Less than three weeks earlier, on July 23, Epstein had been found semi-conscious with an orange cloth tied around his neck. He was placed on suicide watch for barely 31 hours before being removed, despite a psychologist’s note that he “needs a cellmate” for safety.
• On August 9, his cellmate was transferred out with no replacement – in direct violation of standing orders sent to more than 70 staff members.
• Hours before his death, Epstein was allowed a 20-minute unmonitored phone call from the SHU shower area using a non-inmate phone line, violating every Bureau of Prisons protocol. Logs omitted the call entirely.
• His cell contained a hoard of extra linens and blankets – material explicitly prohibited because it can be fashioned into nooses. No required cell search occurred that day.

Then there’s this…

When jail officials asked Mr. Epstein about red marks on his neck after the incident in July, he first said that Mr. Tartaglione had attacked him and that he was not suicidal. Mr. Tartaglione has long denied assaulting Mr. Epstein, who later told jail officials he “never had any issues” with his cellmate.

Mr. Tartaglione said he gave the note to his lawyers because he believed it could have been helpful if Mr. Epstein continued to claim that he had tried to hurt him. Mr. Tartaglione was convicted in 2023 and is now serving four life sentences. He has maintained his innocence and has appealed his conviction. -NYT

Then came the night itself.

The Orange Shape, the Missing Noose, and the Sleeping Guards

Newly released footage and DOJ admissions confirm that at approximately 10:39 p.m. on August 9, an “orange-colored shape” moved up the L Tier staircase toward Epstein’s isolated, locked tier. The observation log initially described it as possibly “an inmate escorted up.” The DOJ’s Office of Inspector General later called it an unidentified corrections officer carrying orange “linen or bedding.” Officers on duty insisted no linen exchange happened that night. Forensic video experts reviewing the pixelated clip concluded it was far more likely a person in an orange jumpsuit.

No one was supposed to have access. The tier was supposed to be under constant visual monitoring. Instead, guards Tova Noel and Michael Thomas – both later fired – falsified more than 75 entries on count sheets and round logs. They were asleep or idle for hours. Required 30-minute checks were never performed after roughly 10:40 p.m. Noel had googled “Latest Epstein jail” at 5:42 a.m. and 5:52 a.m. the morning Epstein was found; she had also made multiple large cash deposits in the preceding months.

The ligature itself – the actual noose – has never been properly accounted for. Guards gave conflicting statements about removing it. One collected item was later ruled not to be the ligature used. It simply vanished from the official record.

Autopsy Oddities That Still Haunt the Case

Pathologist Dr. Michael Baden, hired by Epstein’s brother Mark, examined the autopsy photos and reached a stark conclusion: the neck fractures (bilateral thyroid cartilage plus left hyoid) were “more consistent with ligature homicidal strangulation” than suicidal hanging.

He noted he had reviewed over a thousand jail hangings and had never seen three fractures like these in a suicide.

👀 Newly surfaced surveillance footage from the night of Jeffrey Epstein’s death … and it appears to show prison guards hanging out just steps away from his cell during the suspected timeframe he had taken his own life.

🎥 DOJ pic.twitter.com/BP6ksnChCi

— TMZ (@TMZ) March 21, 2026

Additional red flags from the released medical files and autopsy:

• Epstein’s prostate was described as enlarged – yet prison and prior medical records indicated he had undergone a radical prostatectomy years earlier.
• A documented 6 cm lipoma in the left supraclavicular fossa (visible on multiple prior MRIs) was never mentioned in the neck dissection.
• Differences in ear shape, nose contour, and other features between the body and known Epstein photographs have fueled persistent body-swap speculation.
• Ruptured capillaries in the eyes and other trauma patterns aligned more closely with manual strangulation.

The cell was never treated as a crime scene. No fingerprints were lifted from the ligature area. No fabric analysis was performed on the actual material used.

Post-Death Shredding and the 4Chan Anomaly

Less than a week after Epstein’s body was removed, MCC staff conducted a frantic shredding operation. An inmate ordered to help dispose of the bags later told investigators he had “never seen this amount of bags of shredded documents.” A corrections officer called the FBI’s National Threat Operations Center on August 16, 2019, reporting the suspicious volume. Count slips for all dates prior to August 10 were later reported “missing” when requested by prosecutors.

Separately, a 4Chan post appeared 38 minutes before the official announcement of Epstein’s death, claiming he had been “switched out.” The FBI subpoenaed Apple, AT&T, and others in connection with the post.

Meanwhile in January, the DOJ released roughly three million pages, 180,000 images, and 2,000 videos. Additional tranches followed. A July 2025 joint DOJ-FBI memo declared there was “no vast human trafficking or sexual blackmail network,” no client list, and definitively ruled the death a suicide. Yet the same files contain inmate testimony of guards saying “Dudes, you killed that dude” and “If he is dead, we’re going to cover it up,” plus references to “Miss Noel killed Jeffrey.”

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer subpoenaed guard Tova Noel in March 2026. FBI officers have gone on record raising alarms about document destruction and potential obstruction. ZeroHedge’s March 2026 coverage documented how the cover-up suspicions have only deepened with each new release.

Bottom line – Epstein had dirt on some of the most powerful people in the world. He died in federal custody under circumstances that read like a textbook case of how not to run a high-profile prisoner’s watch. Cameras failed at the exact moment they were needed. Guards falsified records. Evidence disappeared. Documents were shredded while investigators watched. A mysterious orange figure moved through restricted space. The noose vanished. The autopsy doesn’t match the medical history. And now, in May 2026, we finally see a suicide note from weeks earlier – a note that says “they investigated me for a month and found NOTHING.”

This whole thing has been a joke from the beginning…

Authored by Frank Miele via RealClearPolitics,

The Supreme Court decides cases. But it also decides when to decide them – and that timing can be just as consequential as the ruling itself.

Now we have a real-world example.

In a closely watched decision last week, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that Louisiana’s creation of a second majority-black congressional district violated the Constitution, holding that race cannot be used too heavily in drawing political maps, even to comply with the Voting Rights Act.

Reasonable people can agree with that conclusion. The Constitution promises equal protection under the law, and the idea that race should not dominate redistricting decisions is consistent with that principle. For years, the court has struggled to reconcile the Voting Rights Act with the Equal Protection Clause. This ruling moves that balance in a more colorblind direction.

But the substance of the ruling is only part of the story.

The timing matters too.

The case was argued twice – first in March 2025 and again in October – and for months it sat undecided, even as the justices’ questioning during oral arguments suggested that a conservative majority was likely to strike down race-driven congressional districts. Some observers questioned whether the delay reflected more than ordinary deliberation, given how the timing of the ruling could affect the current election cycle. But whatever the reason, states were left waiting, unsure how the law would ultimately be interpreted.

Meanwhile, political calendars did not stop. In an unusual step, both Republican- and Democrat-led legislatures have been working to redraw congressional maps mid-decade, partly in response to political pressure from President Trump. But they could not know whether the court’s interpretation of the racial component of redistricting would change – or how.

Each state was left without certainty as the midterm elections approached. Louisiana was already in the middle of absentee voting for congressional elections when the court’s ruling invalidated its district map. The governor said he had no choice but to suspend the House elections in response. Even prior to the ruling, Mississippi’s governor signed an executive order calling for a special legislative session to redraw districts 21 days after the much-anticipated decision. And in Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis had already positioned lawmakers to act, placing redistricting on the agenda of a special session, ensuring the state could move quickly once the court ruled.

Most other states are scrambling to determine how the court’s ruling impacts them, especially during the current election cycle. For the most part, redistricting is not instantaneous. It requires legislation, legal review, and often additional litigation. Every week that passes reduces the number of states that can realistically redraw maps before the midterms. A decision handed down earlier in the term might have produced one set of outcomes. A decision handed down now may produce another.

That is not a criticism of the ruling itself. It is a recognition that timing is not neutral.

Most Americans focus on what the court decides. Far fewer consider the significance of when those decisions are released. But in a system where legal rulings intersect with political processes, timing can shape outcomes just as surely as legal reasoning.

Whether intentional or not, the court’s discretion over timing creates an opportunity for influence that extends beyond the law. A delay – even one rooted in ordinary deliberation – can affect elections, legislative agendas and, ultimately, who holds power. But what if the delays are intentional? Might the minority justices in the Voting Rights Act decision knowingly have withheld their dissents as a tactic to postpone the ruling’s impact? We will probably never know, but even the possibility suggests the need for reform.

But how could reform occur? In most areas of our government, the people hold the key. Members of Congress must answer to voters. Presidents face elections and constant political pressure. When procedures break down or public confidence erodes, those institutions are pushed – sometimes reluctantly – to adapt.

The Supreme Court is different.

Its members serve for life. Its internal processes are self-governed. Congress can shape the court at the margins – including aspects of its jurisdiction – but it does not and realistically cannot control the internal mechanics of how and when the court issues its decisions. Nor can the president. That is a function of the separation of powers.

The result is an institution largely insulated from the kinds of external pressures that force reform elsewhere in government.

Within that insulation lies a vulnerability.

Timing, left entirely to internal discretion, can become a form of influence. A majority controls when a decision is issued. But the minority, through the drafting of concurring and dissenting opinions, can affect how long deliberations continue. A chief justice may have procedural tools that shape the pace of the court’s work, but up until now, most chief justices have given court minorities considerable discretion to determine their own timelines.

We have seen how that discretion operates under pressure. In the Dobbs case, a draft majority opinion overturning Roe v. Wade was leaked weeks before the final decision was issued. During that period, the court faced intense public pressure, protests at the homes of justices, and heightened security concerns. If a majority justice had been removed from the court before the decision was finalized, through intimidation or even assassination, the result would have been a tie, effectively nullifying the ruling as a national precedent. Yet the court did not accelerate its timetable.

That is not a judgment about the justices’ motives. It is a reflection of the reality of the court’s process. A final decision does not emerge until the full cycle of majority, concurring, and dissenting opinions is complete. That means the timing of a ruling is not controlled by the majority alone. It is shaped by the pace of the court as a whole.

The power to affect that timing – even under extraordinary circumstances – rests entirely within the court itself.

That is precisely why a clock is needed. It would not assume bad faith. It would remove the opportunity for timing itself to become a form of influence.

If timing can shape outcomes, then timing should be governed.

The solution need not be complicated. Chief Justice John Roberts could adopt a formal internal rule requiring that opinions – both majority and dissenting – be finalized within a defined period. That period could be measured from oral argument or from the circulation of the majority draft. It could allow for limited extensions in extraordinary cases.

But it would establish a principle – that decisions will be issued within a reasonable and predictable timeframe.

Critics will say that such rules could rush deliberation. That concern is real. But delay has costs as well – costs that are now visible.

A court that wields immense power over the direction of the country should not also wield unlimited discretion over when that power is exercised. It’s time the Supreme Court recognized this reality – and governed itself accordingly.

Frank Miele, retired editor of the Daily Inter Lake in Kalispell, Mont., is a columnist for RealClearPolitics. His book “The Media Matrix: What If Everything You Know Is Fake” is available from his Amazon author page. Visit him at HeartlandDiaryUSA.com or follow him on Facebook @HeartlandDiaryUSA and on X/Gettr @HeartlandDiary.

Here’s something that could go incredibly well or spectacularly wrong: The Trump administration’s flagship program for American children – the so-called Trump accounts – could soon get a dramatic upgrade. White House and Treasury Department officials are in internal discussions about letting the world’s wealthiest individuals donate shares of their companies directly into the accounts, a move that would transform the program from a conservative cash-and-index-fund vehicle into a potential magnet for high-growth tech stock.

The accounts, formally known as Section 530A accounts, are scheduled to begin accepting contributions on July 4. They were created as part of last year’s major domestic policy legislation and have already attracted billions of dollars in philanthropic pledges. Until now, the rules have been strict: only cash, invested exclusively in diversified index funds. That restriction may soon change, according to the NY Times. 

Brad Gerstner, founder of Altimeter Capital and the architect behind the 530A program, has been leading the push. Gerstner, who received a public shout-out during the president’s State of the Union address in February, has been meeting with administration officials to explore the idea. The proposal would allow ultra-wealthy donors to contribute appreciated stock – for example, Elon Musk donating Tesla or SpaceX shares, or Nvidia’s Jensen Huang contributing Nvidia stock – without triggering capital-gains taxes.

Proponents see two major upsides:

• Children could gain exposure to tomorrow’s biggest winners. Instead of modest, steady returns from broad index funds, millions of young Americans might own slices of high-growth companies for decades.
• Donors could give more, and more efficiently. By donating stock at its current fair-market value, billionaires would receive a full charitable deduction while avoiding the capital-gains tax they would owe if they sold the shares first.

Interest is already surging. At this year’s Milken Institute Global Conference, multiple ultra-wealthy individuals and companies signaled they are preparing to give. The $6.25 billion pledge from Michael and Susan Dell in December is seen as a bellwether; many others are now expected to follow.

Internal Debate and Risks

Not everyone inside the Treasury Department is comfortable with the idea. The original design deliberately limited investments to diversified index funds precisely to shield children from the volatility of individual stocks. Allowing direct donations of single-company shares – especially highly valued, concentrated tech holdings – could expose millions of young account holders to wild market swings over 18-year horizons.

Critics inside the building are also raising longer-term concerns:

• Will today’s hottest stocks still be dominant decades from now?
• Could Trump accounts become a de facto “lock-up” vehicle for billions of dollars’ worth of founder shares that cannot be sold for years?

Changing the rules would almost certainly require legislation to amend the statute. Some officials are exploring whether new Treasury guidance or even an executive order could achieve a similar result, but legal experts say a statutory fix is the cleaner path.

The conversations are still at an early stage, but momentum is building quickly. With July 4 rapidly approaching and billions already pledged, the White House faces a clear choice: keep the program simple and conservative, or open it up to the full force of private-sector wealth creation – and risk.

Either way, the Trump accounts have already succeeded in one important respect: they have turned children’s long-term investing into a national conversation. The question now is whether that conversation will include the world’s most valuable stocks.

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

Researchers have proposed a theoretical approach that could allow messages to be sent into the past using principles from quantum mechanics. Indeed, it could be happening right now already!

The concept does not enable physical travel through time but focuses on information transfer through causal loops at the quantum scale.

The work, accepted for publication in Physical Review Letters, builds on ideas from general relativity and quantum entanglement. 

A technique inspired by the film Interstellar suggests a new way of communicating backwards in time, but it could help improve conventional communication systems as well https://t.co/FXQTvhE6uE

— New Scientist (@newscientist) May 2, 2026

It draws a parallel to the causal loop depicted in Christopher Nolan’s film Interstellar, where a message is sent to the past via a watch.

Co-author Dr Kaiyuan Ji, a researcher at Cornell University, told New Scientist: “The father remembers how the daughter decodes his future message. So he can instruct himself on what is the best way to encode the message.”

Professor Seth Lloyd of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) described an earlier related experiment from 2010: “It was the equivalent of sending a photon a few nanoseconds backwards in time, and having it try to kill its former self.”

Lloyd noted the practical challenges: “Nobody’s built an actual physical, closed time-like curve, and there are reasons to think it’s very hard to make one. But all channels are noisy.”

The paper explains how prior knowledge of how a message was decoded could improve encoding in the future: “The father, who is in the future, may retrieve his memory of past events he has witnessed, even including the daughter’s decoding of the message which he is about to send! It would thus not be surprising that he will consult his memory of the daughter’s decoding when encoding his message, so as to maximize the efficiency of the communication.”

According to the research, this approach could make backward time messages clearer than those sent forward in normal time, even over noisy channels. 

The team suggests the idea could be tested experimentally at the quantum level and may offer insights into communication through noisy systems.

The concept relies on closed time-like curves (CTCs), paths allowed by general relativity where something could theoretically return to its own past. 

On macroscopic scales, creating such curves would require immense energy, but quantum systems may permit analogous effects through entanglement.

Quantum entanglement links particles so that the state of one instantly influences the other, regardless of distance. 

The research explores whether this “spooky action at a distance,” as Einstein called it, could be interpreted as information moving backward in time.

While the proposal remains theoretical, it highlights that nothing in current physics strictly forbids certain forms of time communication at the quantum scale. 

Future experiments could help clarify how information behaves in such systems and potentially improve real-world technologies.

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