Authored by Frank Fang via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A Georgia man has been sentenced to 6.5 years in prison for his role in a scheme to launder millions of dollars in illicit drug proceeds for Mexican cartels.

Judge Claude M. Hilton of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia handed down the sentence to Li Pei Tan, 47, of Buford, Georgia, on April 11, according to a court statement. Tan pleaded guilty in October 2024 after he was arrested several months earlier.

Tan’s coconspirator, Chaojie Chen, a 41-year-old Chinese national living in Chicago, was sentenced to more than 7.5 years in December 2024.

Tan and Chen worked on behalf of foreign drug trafficking organizations, including the Sinaloa Cartel and the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generación. The two, along with other coconspirators, traveled throughout the United States to collect money gained from trafficking fentanyl, cocaine, and other illicit drugs.

The Drug Enforcement Administration said in its 2024 threat assessment report that the Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels “are at the heart” of the fentanyl crisis. The agency said the two cartels “rely on chemical companies and pill press companies in China” for precursor chemicals and equipment and “utilize Chinese Money Laundering Organizations to move their profits from the United States back to Mexico.”

According to a court document submitted days before the sentence was imposed, prosecutors said Tan and his coconspirators often received bulk cash amounts from drug trafficking organizations, and they transported the money across state lines so that the “funds could be transacted with and laundered several states removed from where the proceeds were generated.”

Tan and his coconspirators used encrypted messaging platforms for communication, such as the Chinese app WeChat, according to the court document.

They relied on bank accounts in both China and the United States for their scheme, the court document stated.

To further their money laundering conspiracy, Tan and his coconspirators also purchased bulk electronics in the United States and shipped them to coconspirators in China, according to the court document. In return, Tan received commissions for these shipments.

On March 3, 2024, nearly 12 weeks before being arrested, Tan was stopped by law enforcement officials during a traffic stop near Charlotte, North Carolina. He was found to have in his possession $197,700 in illicit drug proceeds.

Tan’s money laundering totaled more than $3.5 million, according to the court document.

Prosecutors explained in the court document that they had sought a sentence of more than 11 years for Chen, who admitted to laundering more than $14 million in illicit drug proceeds.

Considering Chen’s involvement in the scheme and that he received a 90-month sentence, prosecutors argued that the judge should sentence Tan to 108 months, or nine years, of imprisonment.

Prosecutors said that sentence “adequately reflects the seriousness of the defendant’s conduct,” and “will serve to deter the defendant and others from engaging in similar, potentially deadly criminal activity.”

“The defendant was a crucial member of an international money laundering conspiracy who enriched himself on the back of international drug trafficking, a ruinous and destructive trade that has brought untold suffering to communities throughout the United States and fueled instability and violence abroad,” the court document states.

Tan’s lawyer, Robert L. Jenkins Jr., said his client regretted his involvement in the scheme.

“Mr. Tan is a hard-working family man. He truly regrets becoming involved in this matter. He sincerely wishes to put it behind him and refocus his attention on his family,” Jenkins stated in an email to The Epoch Times on April 14.

In December 2024, a federal judge in Illinois sentenced Pan Haiping to 10 years behind bars for laundering $62 million in illegal narcotics proceeds on behalf of Mexican drug traffickers.

Pan, a Chinese national, collaborated with accomplices to launder as much as $3 million monthly in drug proceeds using “secretive money pickups” in several U.S. cities, including Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York, followed by currency swaps between the U.S. dollar and Chinese yuan, and the Chinese yuan and the Mexican peso, according to prosecutors.

A 61 year old man known as “Sushi John” and owner of Ya Ya Noodles in Montgomery Township, NJ, was arrested by ICE in Newark on March 24, according to the NY Post.

Ming Xi Zhang, 61, was convicted in April 2024 of “acting as an unregistered agent of the Chinese government” and sentenced to three years’ probation. He had pleaded guilty in 2021 to serving as a Chinese agent in 2016 without notifying the U.S. Attorney General.

According to ICE, Zhang legally entered the U.S. in 2000 but later “violated the terms of his lawful admission.” He is being held at the Elizabeth Detention Center awaiting immigration proceedings, following his recent arrest by ICE amid a broader deportation push under President Trump.

The NY Post writes that in 2016, Zhang met with Chinese security officials in the Bahamas and delivered $35,000 to an unnamed individual in New Jersey. He also admitted to hosting a Chinese government agent twice at his Princeton home that fall, according to NJ.com.

“He’s doing good, I mean, given the circumstances,” a worker at his restaurant told the Post. “But yeah, he’s just kind of waiting… to get let out.”

Since his arrest, local support in the blue state has accelerated. Apparently citizens of New Jersey are just fine with Zhang acting on behalf of the Chinese government.

“The whole town has been really supportive,” the worker added. “Everyone’s been coming in, offering phone numbers, talking to his family . . . everyone’s really supportive.”

No word yet on whether or not it was Eric Swalwell’s favorite place to eat when visiting New Jersey…

Authored by James Varney via RealClearInvestigations,

While limiting strings-attached grants and curbing federal regulation, President Trump’s efforts to dismantle the Department of Education also take aim at a key tool bureaucrats use to oversee schools in all 50 states: civil rights investigations.

Probes handled by the department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) against public schools, colleges and universities roughly doubled during the Biden administration, topping 20,000 last year. Investigations by hundreds of OCR lawyers and staff members – and responses to them by untold numbers of school officials and administrators – touched on everything from allegations of sexual violence and disability accommodations to website compatibility. 

Defenders of the office say it has been an invaluable protector of civil rights for America’s nearly 70 million students. They say eliminating or even downsizing the office, which has already begun, would kneecap thousands of ongoing investigations while abolishing a prime instrument of justice. 

“This reckless action strips students of vital resources and tears down statutorily mandated functions that are essential to addressing racial and economic inequality in education,” the ACLU declared last month. Trump, it said, has put “millions of students’ education and civil rights at risk.”

Advocates for handicapped students, who until recent years accounted for half of all complaints, are concerned they might get short shrift in the Trump administration and have gone to court to block cuts. “We have many members who file complaints, and it has left many of them in limbo, or distraught, thinking there will be no accountability,” said Selene A. Almazan, legal director of the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates, plaintiffs in a suit filed March 14. 

But backers of Trump’s effort to eliminate the Department of Education counter that the Office for Civil Rights is a symbol of how the federal government has expanded its reach into what they describe as chiefly local matters. They say its investigative arm has been designed to make it as easy as possible for the department to maximize its influence and oversight through investigations. 

A complainant does not need a personal connection to a school. Indeed, petitioners don’t even have to live in the same state, and legal standing is not a factor. They do not even need to identify themselves. They are not required to try to resolve their problems at the local level before notifying the feds – though many do. Consequently, the office’s operations sometimes function as a nationwide anonymous sounding board rather than a source of last resort, a place where anyone can make a federal case out of any slight, real or perceived.

Although OCR probes include many serious allegations, the system’s structure means the number of cases can be inflated through duplication, serial filers and ambitious bureaucrats.

“The numbers aren’t really what they first appear,” said Teresa R. Manning, policy director at the National Association of Scholars, a conservative counterweight in higher education to the liberal American Association of University Professors. “A lot of this was by design. If they didn’t have complaints, they wouldn’t have jobs, so a lot of federal bureaucrats and campus officers want any grievance to become a federal case.”

The numbers themselves are unclear. Neither the Department of Education nor its Office for Civil Rights responded to multiple requests for comment, and a listed phone number is no longer manned daily; voice messages left there were not returned. But it appears the administration has laid off some 240 people in the OCR, shuttering at least six of its 12 regional offices. Currently, eight of 22 “key staff” positions there are vacant, according to its website.

When Trump and Secretary of Education Linda McMahon first announced layoffs in February, reports mentioned 12,000 active investigations listed on the OCR database, which was last updated on Jan. 14. Last month, Sen. Bernie Sanders announced his own report on the office, claiming 6,800 cases would be shortchanged by the layoffs. 

But no matter which total is used, the claim that U.S. schools are teeming with incidents of overt racism or sexism, or bias against handicapped students, is misleading, according to experts familiar with the OCR and its work. 

In theory, every complaint is reviewed to determine if it constitutes discrimination on the basis of race (“Title VI”), sex (“Title IX”), or disability. If so, the Office for Civil Rights can open an investigation, or its attorneys can allege that there are “systemic” violations and trigger much broader investigations.

Such initiatives were highlighted in a glossy report the office released on Jan. 16, four days before Trump’s inauguration. The office appears to have published six such “special reports” since 2016, with half of those during Biden’s term. Two of them – the first and another in 2021 – dealt with alleged “racial disparities” or “equity” in school discipline.

This looks like a more proactive OCR following the age-old practice of boosting the cases on its books and then insisting it needs more funding, said Jim Blew, a co-founder of the Defense of Freedom Institute and a former assistant secretary of education in Trump’s first term.

“Skepticism is legitimate, because by declaring something is ‘systemic,’ then rather than resolve that one issue they can turn it into a federal case,” Blew said. “And if you’re going to interpret the discrimination on much different and broader levels than ever before, that’s going to increase the number of complaints, too.” 

RealClearInvestigations found that, despite claims that cuts to OCR will impede “prompt” action or justice for filers, the office did not always handle complaints promptly. Among the 12,000 ongoing investigations listed in the OCR database – half of which involved disability complaints – RCI found active investigations into alleged incidents that occurred in 2016 or 2017, long after any students at the schools in question would have departed. Many alleged incidents also triggered more than one investigation, meaning the “thousands” are fewer than they first appear.

The investigations can take years. Alabama A&M University, for example, is under investigation for “sexual violence” that allegedly occurred on Aug. 24, 2016. The university did not respond to requests for comments on this alleged incident or general compliance with OCR.

Similarly, on Aug. 2, 2017, an alleged incident in Mississippi’s Greene County School District sparked two investigations, one for racial harassment and another for “retaliation” that remain active, according to OCR’s website.

Also, totals were swollen by one unnamed individual. For example, in 2022 when OCR received 9,948 complaints of Title IX violations, nearly three out of four – 7,339 – came from this person. That same individual slipped a bit the following year, accounting for only 69% of the 5,590 complaints. RCI asked several people familiar with Office of Civil Rights work who this person might be, but none said they knew.

The number of complaints skyrocketed during the Biden administration, doubling the average that had held for more than a decade, records show. Last April, Biden regulators sought a radical expansion of Title IX sex discrimination protection to cover things like “gender identity.” That attempt was later blocked by the courts.  

Through President Obama’s two terms and Trump’s first term, the office received just under 10,000 complaints annually. In 2022, however, that figure shot up to a record 18,804 and did not stop climbing. It jumped 18% in 2023 before topping 20,000 complaints for the first time in 2024, according to OCR.

It’s not exactly clear what accounted for the big increases, according to experts. But the usual breakdown of classification of complaints changed. Instead of disability complaints comprising more than half of the total OCR received, 42% of those filed in 2023 concerned sexual discrimination, while disability complaints fell to a bit more than a third, according to the office’s figures.

Office for Civil Rights attorneys can launch investigations, or encourage schools to do so, via the well-known “Dear Colleague” letter that alerts administrators to how regulators plan to interpret federal laws. It was just such a “Dear Colleague” letter in 2011 from Catherine Lhamon, who headed the Office for Civil Rights under Obama and Biden, that urged schools to use the lowest possible level of evidence in sexual harassment or assault cases, to make it easier for people to request a remedy to perceived injustice.

“If you’re going to interpret the discrimination in much different and broader terms than ever before then you’re going to increase complaints,” Blew said. “It should be obvious there are certain interests that care about padding their Office of Civil Rights numbers.”

‘Administrative Bloat’

In the face of rising Office for Civil Rights investigations, letters and complaints, schools have been forced to add more layers of administrators and attorneys. Those offices also grew during Biden’s term, when an emphasis on “diversity, equity and inclusion” departments and offices swelled higher education payrolls.

“It has led to administrative bloat, too, as tuition goes to deanlets and bureaucrats,” Manning said. “They often partner together with other entities on campus, and you have many bureaucrats who feed complaints.” 

In its January report, OCR reported that it had received 71,385 complaints during Biden’s term and had resolved 56,383 of them. But the backlog of complaints has grown, and in the 13 years covered by the report it was only during Trump’s first term that the office reported resolving more complaints than it received. At least one person who has filed numerous complaints with the OCR suspects that some of the backlog results from an unwillingness to tackle cases that do not fit progressive orthodoxy.

Mark Perry, a professor emeritus at the University of Michigan, who specializes in complaints challenging race- and gender-based scholarships, fellowships and other programs, said OCR has opened 423 investigations into his complaints since he started filing them in 2019. 

“I currently have nearly 300 complaints backlogged at OCR, some going back to 2019 and 2020 that have either never made it through the evaluation stage to being opened for investigation and others opened for investigation back in 2019, 2020, and 2021, etc. that have never been resolved,” he said. “Now it’s possible I’m being targeted and slow-walked for being a repeat filer for complaints alleging discrimination against men and whites.”

Perry based that belief, in part, on a handwritten letter he received from an OCR employee in its Chicago branch in September 2023 in response to a Chronicle of Higher Education article about Perry’s filings. “OCR has no impetus, sadly, to advance your cases, total failure in HQ,” the letter said. “Your cases just sit with no activity.”

The delays are especially odd, in Perry’s opinion, given that he is a professional who accompanies his complaints with printed evidence of the specific grant or program he thinks should be curtailed or made available to all students. “My complaints are simple; they should only take a couple of months,” he told RCI.

Another more recent, consistent filer is the Equal Protection Project, launched by conservative Cornell Law School Professor William Jacobson, who runs the Legal Insurrection website. In 2025, the project has averaged an OCR complaint a week, and has filed 70 complaints since it began in February 2023.

Like Perry’s, the project’s focus is on clear violations of the plain language of statues, Jacobson said. On April 1, the project filed a complaint against the Pennsylvania College of Technology, an affiliate of Pennsylvania State University, for 12 scholarships that allegedly “discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, and/or sex in violation of Title VI and Title IX, respectively.”

For now, it’s unclear what will happen to the thousands of investigations on the office’s books, or to future complaints like disability grievances filed by Almazan’s group. The laws require a direct interference with a student’s education to validate a complaint, a distinction drawn more by the courts than administrators and bureaucrats who give themselves wide latitude to pursue their own enforcement goals, experts said.

“Biden and the Democrats tend to tinker with the language, creating ‘subjective’ offenses that are a moving target and raise due-process concerns,” Manning said. “The courts have tried to rein it in.”

Even as it appears intent on limiting the Education Department’s reach, the Trump administration has also signaled that it will not completely surrender the use of federal power to influence local schools. It has vowed  to root out antisemitism on college campuses, biological men competing against women in sports, and diversity, equity and inclusion programs the administration says violate the clear letter of discrimination laws.

On April 7, McMahon announced a special investigative office, staffed by the Education and Justice departments, to enforce “Title IX to protect female students and athletes.”

One of the primary platforms of Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign was the strict control of foreign elements entering into the United States.  American voters overwhelmingly supported closed borders as well as the deportation of illegal migrants and disruptive migrant elements including those that received visas and green cards under the Biden Administration.  The political left, not surprisingly, has refused to accept that this is the majority view of the population as they continue to interfere with the migrant clean-up using whatever methods are at their disposal. 

The question of constitutional legality has come up often.  The very same people who, only a few years ago, were trying to silence any and all dissent on the Covid mandates and vaccines are suddenly concerned with the free speech rights of people who are not American citizens or those that obtained green card status through convenient circumstances (marriage as a fast track for citizenship).

In a recent blow to their position, an immigration judge in Louisiana ruled that the Trump administration can deport Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate student and legal permanent resident who was detained last month for his role in violent campus protests against the war in Gaza.  Judge Jamee Comans said the government had “established clear and convincing evidence that he is removable”, supporting the determination that Khalil poses a national security risk for the United States.  Khalil was not charged with a specific crime. 

The leftist media maintains that the evidence against Khalil is “shaky at best” and that his green card, obtained in 2024 after his marriage to a woman out of Flint, Michigan in 2023 means he should have the same protest rights as any natural American citizen. 

Khalil is a Syrian born Palestinian, and it should be noted that according to Amnesty International protesters in Gaza are routinely arrested, tortured and executed by Hamas officials for crimes as minor as demanding that Hamas repair infrastructure or stop interfering with food deliveries.  In other words, the very government that Mahmoud Khalil is defending would murder him without a second thought if he tried the same thing in Gaza.  The hypocrisy of such immigrants fomenting unrest in the US is clear, but it’s not necessarily a violation of the law.

Technically it is true that green card holders and migrants in general have the same free speech rights as native born Americans.  This is why Khalil’s deportation is subject to due process.  However, just because an immigrant has free speech rights, it doesn’t mean they can’t be deported anyway.

According to the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, the US government has the right to “preserve the sociological and cultural balance of the United States” and deny foreign entry to the US based on a migrant’s political ideology.  This means that the Trump Administration does in fact have the power to remove foreigners, even those with green cards, if they are seen as an ideological threat to the west. 

That is to say, migrants have free speech rights but the federal government also has the right to kick them out.  Is this contradictory?  Maybe, but it’s also a fact of life for anyone wanting access to US soil.

Democrats claim the law no longer has standing because it is “73 years old” (the Bill of Rights is hundreds of years old and the age of a law is irrelevant).  They also say that later civil rights policies make the law obsolete.  But is this really true?  Maybe strict immigration laws are more important than ever in light of efforts by leftist politicians and NGOs working hand in hand to flood the US with disruptive foreign elements.

The political left has been engaged in a guerrilla war in which civil liberties are used as a shield to protect astroturf activism paid for by NGOs, along with deliberately destructive third world immigration.  The strategy is classically Marxist; use the rules of the opponent against him, while you have no rules of your own.

The Gaza protests are in large part simply a convenient vehicle for wider leftist disruption.  The hilarious mixture of LGBT, feminist and race activists into the Palestinian plight showcases how the woke movement often rides the coattails of whatever issue is convenient in order to steal the spotlight for their own agenda.  Is Mahmoud Khalil being made into an example as a warning to the political left?  Probably.   

There is certainly the ongoing risk of a slippery slope of governmental overreach.  Do the deportations stop with people like Mahmoud Khalil, reportedly participating in high profile civil disturbances?  Or, will this power be used against people who merely engage in peaceful criticism?  The idea that constitutional rights don’t necessarily apply to everyone equally doesn’t sit well with many Americans, but at this time in US history a line in the sand when it comes to migrants is necessary.  

The bottom line is, not every foreigner is entitled to US access.  Not every foreigner is entitled to the same rights as native born American citizens.  American society is not a lump of clay to be molded by any and all foreign activists that happen to come along.  There are civilizational boundaries and rules of decorum.  Immigrants should probably keep their heads down and remain thankful that they were allowed into the country at all. 

A report released by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on April 15 showed that 1 in 31 children in America has autism.

The figures, which mark another jump in a long line of increases, stem from the CDC’s latest Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring (ADDM) Network survey published in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

The report prompted Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to say that “the autism epidemic is running rampant.”

“That’s up significantly from two years earlier and nearly five times higher than when the CDC first started running autism surveys in children born in 1992,” Kennedy said in an April 15 statement.

“Prevalence for boys is an astounding 1 in 20 and in California, it’s 1 in 12.5.”

“We need to move away from this ideology that the prevalence of autism increases are simply from better diagnosis, better recognition, or changing diagnostic criteria,” RFK Jr began his address this morning.

“This epidemic denial has become a feature in the mainstream media, and it’s based on an industry canard.” 

“There are people who don’t want us to look at environmental exposures.” 

“Doctors and therapists in the past were not stupid.” 

“They weren’t missing all these cases.”

The most important video on X today!

RFK Jr: “We need to move away from this ideology that the prevalence of autism increases are simply from better diagnosis, better recognition, or changing diagnostic criteria.”

“This epidemic denial has become a feature in the mainstream… pic.twitter.com/nHEHjikZCo

— End Tribalism in Politics (@EndTribalism) April 16, 2025

As Jeff Louderback reportsa for The Epoch Times, the previous ADDM report released in 2023 discovered that 1 in 36 8-year-old American children had autism in 2020. The April 15 survey reflects a 16.1 percent increase in two years.

The new ADDM report was conducted in 2022 across 16 sites in 14 states and surveyed 8-year-old children born in 2014.

The new autism prevalence is also 4.8 times higher than in the first ADDM survey 22 years ago, when 1 in 150 children had autism.

“The autism epidemic has now reached a scale unprecedented in human history because it affects the young,” Kennedy said in his April 15 statement.

“The risks and costs of this crisis are a thousand times more threatening to our country than COVID-19. Autism is preventable and it is unforgivable that we have not yet identified the underlying causes. We should have had these answers 20 years ago,” Kennedy added.

Autism Society of America spokeswoman Kristyn Roth told the Associated Press that more research is needed to find what causes autism, but she is alarmed about Kennedy’s approach.

“There is a deep concern that we are going backward and evaluating debunked theories,” Roth said.

Autism, or autism spectrum disorder (ASD), refers to a broad range of conditions characterized by challenges with social skills, repetitive behaviors, speech, and nonverbal communication, according to Autism Speaks.

“There are many different factors that have been identified that may make a child more likely to have ASD, including environmental, biologic, and genetic factors,” the HHS website reads.

The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 established the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP), a no-fault system for compensating individuals injured by certain vaccines.

This eliminated the potential financial liability of vaccine manufacturers due to vaccine injury claims.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is sworn in as Secretary of Health and Human Services in the Oval Office in Washington on Feb. 13, 2025. Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

In the early 1990s, just 1 in 10,000 children were diagnosed with autism. In the first decade of this century, the estimate rose to 1 in 150. In 2018, it was 1 in 44 before reaching 1 in 36 in 2020.

Last December, President Donald Trump said that he would also give Kennedy the freedom to investigate the potential link between vaccines and autism.

“When you look at some of the problems, when you look at what’s going on with disease and sickness in our country, something’s wrong,” Trump said in December.

“I think somebody has to find out. If you go back 25 years ago, you had very little autism.”

Kennedy has said for years that autism is likely tied to childhood vaccines.

The NIH supports and funds research into autism, as well as potential new vaccines.

Kennedy told The Epoch Times in September that he would revamp the NIH to focus on the causes of autism, autoimmune diseases, and neurodevelopmental diseases instead of developing drugs and serving as an incubator for pharmaceutical products.

In February, after the Senate confirmed Kennedy as health secretary, Trump established the Make America Healthy Again Commission, which the White House stated would investigate the “root causes of America’s escalating health crisis.”

At Trump’s April 10 cabinet meeting, Kennedy announced that HHS has “launched a massive testing and research effort that’s going to involve hundreds of scientists from around the world” to determine what has caused autism rates to spike in recent years.

“By September, we will know what has caused the autism epidemic, and we’ll be able to eliminate those exposures,” he noted.

For parents and vaccine safety advocates such as Scott Shoemaker and MaryJo Perry, extensively studying potential links between childhood vaccines and autism is long overdue.

Shoemaker told The Epoch Times that his son was diagnosed with autism at the age of 15 months.

“The bottom line is we want the truth,” said Shoemaker, who is president of Health Freedom Ohio. 

“We want safe products for our kids. We don’t want big pharma to just say vaccines are safe and effective.”

According to Children’s Health Defense, there has not been a double-blind placebo-controlled safety study on infant vaccines.

“That needs to happen,” Perry told The Epoch Times. “There is no liability and no accountability for pharmaceutical companies. That needs to change.”

Perry, who is president of Mississippi Parents for Vaccine Rights, said that all vaccines should undergo extensive safety studies and results should be “accurate and transparent.”

“If it’s good and safe, parents will use it,” she said. “You won’t have to coerce parents if it’s good and safe.”

Hard not to get emotional. We’ve got somebody who isn’t going to silence or shame mothers that don’t understand how their healthy child all of a sudden wasn’t anymore. Science is about following the facts and not ignoring inconvenient evidence that might disadvantage big…

— P.T. Ward (@HTWardish) April 16, 2025

Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

Pentagon officials have told their Israeli counterparts that the US will begin a phased withdrawal of its troops from Syria within two months, the Israeli news site Ynet reported on Tuesday.

A senior Israeli official said that the US withdrawal could be partial, meaning only some of the estimated 2,000 US troops in eastern Syria could leave. Reuters later reported that the US is planning to “consolidate” its presence in Syria and will likely reduce the number of troops in the country to about 1,000.

Israel is opposed to any drawdown or a full withdrawal of US troops from Syria, and the Ynet report said Israeli officials are working to prevent it over concerns related to Turkey.

Since the regime change that ousted former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, which Israel supported, the Israeli military has invaded southern Syria and has been bombing military targets across the country.

Israel now appears focused on keeping Turkish forces out of central Syria, warning it would impede the Israeli military’s “operational freedom” in the country.

Israel recently bombed the T-4 air base in Tadmur, central Syria, amid reports that Turkey is planning to establish a military presence there, and Israeli officials said the airstrikes were meant as a “message” to Ankara.

One Israeli security source told Ynet that the attacks on the T-4 base were part of “a race against time” before “the Americans pack up and leave.”

During the first Trump administration, Israel played a role in convincing President Trump to keep troops in Syria after he announced plans for a withdrawal. At the time, Israel didn’t want Iran or its allies, which included the Assad government, gaining a foothold in the areas currently occupied by the US, which include oil and gas fields.

The US backs the Kurdish-led SDF in eastern and northern Syria, which recently began handing over control of some areas in the northern Aleppo Governorate to government forces under an integration agreement with the Syrian government that’s led by the al-Qaeda offshoot Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.

It remains there have been many ‘false starts’ and premature headlines announcing withdrawal, such as this 2018 NBC story…

The deal has eased tensions in northern Syria, ending fighting between the SDF and the Turkish-backed SNA, and was seen as a potential path to a US withdrawal.

New high-frequency data on monthly store visits and consumer sentiment metrics reveal a slowdown in activity at retail giant Target. Interestingly, when the same data is applied across the broader retail industry, similar signs of softening are far less pronounced at other retailers, raising the question: Why is Target being hit harder?

One potential explanation lies in the political composition of Target’s customer base. Data from the research firm Morning Consult showed a strong tilt toward Democratic-leaning consumers, a group currently exhibiting apocalyptic views on the economy via the highly skewed and laughable UMich survey.

5Y inflation expectations: Market vs Democrats pic.twitter.com/h3o9CDHIpQ

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) April 11, 2025

This wave of negative sentiment among Democratic-leaning consumers – driven in part by conspiracy-laden stories on platforms like BlueSky, MSNBC, CNN, and the unhinged show The View – could very well be influencing the spending habits of the rudderless party’s consumer base. 

Goldman analysts Kate McShane, Mark Jordan, and others published a new note on Wednesday, “downgrading TGT to Neutral from Buy given concerns around seeing a recovery in growth for discretionary categories, more downside risk in EPS than upside given possible top-line deleverage and tariff risk, and recent data from HundredX and Placer indicating that TGT’s sales may be slowing.” 

We’re taking high-frequency data from HundredX and Placer.ai a step further than the analysts, injecting Morning Consult’s data to understand better who exactly shops at Target: “Walmart is more popular among Republicans, while more Democrats see Target in a favorable light.”

McShane explained: 

HundredX and Placer data indicate TGT’s sales may be slowing. We analyzed monthly visitation data using Placer for the broadlines category, including TGT, through mid April. As shown in Exhibit 1, while average visits per location (y/y) were largely positive in Apr’ 25-to-date, TGT came in at -5.4%. TGT’s trends have lagged behind select peers (BJ, COST, and WMT) since Aug ’24, with the gap widening sequentially in Apr’ 25-to-date: Goldman

Exhibit 1: Placer monthly visitation trends for broadlines came in largely positive in April-to-date, aside from TGT at -5.4%

We must note that Goldman analysts did not blend politics into their report. 

McShane then used NPI (Net Purchase Intent) and NPS (Net Purchase Score)—key consumer sentiment metrics – to find that both metrics declined significantly year over year. 

“Specifically, as of Mar ’25, TGT’s NPI is -9%, lower than its 3-year average of -2% and Mar ’24 NPI of -3%; TGT’s NPS is 30, lower than its 3-year average of 43 and its Mar ’24 NPS of 39,” McShane said. 

Notice HundredX’s NPI measured across BJ, Costco, Target, Walmart, and Dollar General showed that consumer sentiment at Target was the worst of all retailers—and this might only make sense given that we established earlier that Democrats make up the majority of shoppers at the retailer. 

Similar findings for NPS. 

Target’s NPI across three household income levels (<$50K, $50K-$100K, >$100K) aggressively tumbled, beginning with the election of Trump and into 2025. 

Could the Democratic Party’s infowar to sway their voter base about an imminent ‘Great Depression’ have an unintended consequence (dial back spending) of hitting retailers heavily frequented by Democrats? 

Update (1330ET): Key highlights from Powell’s prepared remarks:

Powell said: “tariffs are highly likely to generate at least a temporary rise in inflation.”

“The inflationary effects could also be more persistent. Avoiding that outcome will depend on the size of the effects, on how long it takes for them to pass through fully to prices, and, ultimately, on keeping longer-term inflation expectations well anchored.

Powell again stressed the central bank’s focus on preventing potential tariff-driven price hikes from triggering a more persistent rise in inflation.

“Our obligation is to keep longer-term inflation expectations well anchored and to make certain that a one-time increase in the price level does not become an ongoing inflation problem,” Powell said.

Powell added that policymakers would balance their dual responsibilities of fostering maximum employment and stable prices, “keeping in mind that, without price stability, we cannot achieve the long periods of strong labor market conditions that benefit all Americans.”

Powell raised the spectre of stagflation:

“We may find ourselves in the challenging scenario in which our dual-mandate goals are in tension. If that were to occur, we would consider how far the economy is from each goal, and the potentially different time horizons over which those respective gaps would be anticipated to close.”

This differs from Waller earlier this week: 

Should the Fed face both a rapidly slowing economy and still elevated inflation, “the risk of recession would outweigh the risk of escalating inflation.”

As they seek greater certainty about how President Donald Trump’s economic policies, especially on trade, will affect the US economy, Powell and other Fed policymakers have expressed support for holding rates steady.

“For the time being, we are well positioned to wait for greater clarity before considering any adjustments to our policy stance,” Powell said.

The remarks reinforce a message Powell has repeatedly emphasized, including most recently on April 4: Fed officials are in no hurry to change the central bank’s benchmark policy rate.

Neil Dutta at Renaissance Macro quipped:

“Recession odds are climbing even further as Powell pushes back the timing of cuts.”

Stocks tumbled on the prepared remarks:

*  *  *

Which economy will Fed Chair Powell choose to discuss this afternoon as, for the second time in less than two weeks, he will weigh in with his sense of what’s in store for Americans on inflation and jobs, and what the central bank may do about it if they veer off course.

Will it be the ‘soft’ survey based economy (with this morning’s collapse in the New York Business Leaders survey as the latest example) or the ‘hard’ data based economy (with this morning’s surge in retail sales and manufacturing production showing strength)…

The last time he spoke (on April 4th – 2 days after Liberation Day), Powell voiced essentially a wait-and-see approach, saying “it is too soon to say what will be the appropriate path for monetary policy.”

Marcin Kazmierczak, Co-founder & COO of RedStone:

“Markets will be hyper-focused on Powell’s inflation commentary and rate cut signals, with any acknowledgment of economic growth concerns potentially triggering significant market reactions.”

As Reuters reports, earlier this week Fed Governor Christopher Waller said that if Trump continues to peel back tariffs to a lower baseline, the central bank would do well to hang tight on interest rates in the first half of this year and perhaps cut gradually in the second half as tariff-elevated inflation subsides. 

If Trump sticks to higher tariffs, Waller said, the unemployment rate could jump and the Fed would need to cut more aggressively.

Other Fed policymakers have been more hawkish, focusing on signs that short-term inflation expectations have surged and could, as St. Louis Fed President Alberto Musalem put it, “seep” into longer-term expectations, potentially forcing the Fed to keep rates high or even raise them further.

It’s not clear which view is closer to Powell’s, or in how much detail he might articulate which way he leans.

“Besides the guidance on rates (where a probability close to 80% is discounted for a rate cut in June), the market will be looking for cues about the Fed’s possibilities to deal with market turmoil,” says Commerzbank’s head of interest rates strategy, Michael Leister in a note this morning.

Of course, President Trump has been very public about his views on what he thinks Powell should do… demanding rate-cuts to prop up markets/economy during the interregnum between tariff teror and tax-cut euphoria.

Watch Fed Chair Powell speak live before the Economic Club of Chicago here (due to start at 1330ET):

Read Powell’s Prepared Remarks here…

Thank you for the introduction. I am looking forward to our conversation, Professor Rajan. First, I will briefly discuss the outlook for the economy and monetary policy.

At the Fed, we are always focused on the dual-mandate goals given to us by Congress: maximum employment and stable prices. Despite heightened uncertainty and downside risks, the U.S. economy is still in a solid position. The labor market is at or near maximum employment. Inflation has come down a great deal but is running a bit above our 2 percent objective.

Recent Economic Data

Turning to the incoming data, we will get the initial reading on first-quarter GDP in a couple of weeks. The data in hand so far suggest that growth has slowed in the first quarter from last year’s solid pace. Despite strong motor vehicle sales, overall consumer spending appears to have grown modestly. In addition, strong imports during the first quarter, reflecting attempts by businesses to get ahead of potential tariffs, are expected to weigh on GDP growth.

Surveys of households and businesses report a sharp decline in sentiment and elevated uncertainty about the outlook, largely reflecting trade policy concerns. Outside forecasts for the full year are coming down and, for the most part, point to continued slowing but still positive growth. We are closely tracking incoming data as households and businesses continue to digest these developments.

In the labor market, during the first three months of the year, nonfarm payrolls grew by an average of 150,000 jobs a month. While job growth has slowed relative to last year, the combination of low layoffs and lower labor force growth has kept the unemployment rate in a low and stable range. Meanwhile, the ratio of job openings to unemployed job seekers has remained just above 1, near its pre-pandemic level. Wage growth has continued to moderate while still outpacing inflation. Overall, the labor market appears to be in solid condition and broadly in balance and is not a significant source of inflationary pressure.

As for our price-stability mandate, inflation has significantly eased from its pandemic highs of mid-2022 without the kind of painful rise in unemployment that has frequently accompanied efforts to bring down high inflation. Progress on inflation continues at a gradual pace, and recent readings remain above our 2 percent objective. Estimates based on data released last week show that total PCE prices rose 2.3 percent over the 12 months ending in March and that, excluding the volatile food and energy categories, core PCE prices rose 2.6 percent.

Looking forward, the new Administration is in the process of implementing substantial policy changes in four distinct areas: trade, immigration, fiscal policy, and regulation. Those policies are still evolving, and their effects on the economy remain highly uncertain. As we learn more, we will continue to update our assessment. The level of the tariff increases announced so far is significantly larger than anticipated. The same is likely to be true of the economic effects, which will include higher inflation and slower growth. Both survey- and market-based measures of near-term inflation expectations have moved up significantly, with survey participants pointing to tariffs. Survey measures of longer-term inflation expectations, for the most part, appear to remain well anchored; market-based breakevens continue to run close to 2 percent.

Monetary Policy

As we gain a better understanding of the policy changes, we will have a better sense of the implications for the economy, and hence for monetary policy. Tariffs are highly likely to generate at least a temporary rise in inflation. The inflationary effects could also be more persistent. Avoiding that outcome will depend on the size of the effects, on how long it takes for them to pass through fully to prices, and, ultimately, on keeping longer-term inflation expectations well anchored.

Our obligation is to keep longer-term inflation expectations well anchored and to make certain that a one-time increase in the price level does not become an ongoing inflation problem. As we act to meet that obligation, we will balance our maximum-‑employment and price-stability mandates, keeping in mind that, without price stability, we cannot achieve the long periods of strong labor market conditions that benefit all Americans. We may find ourselves in the challenging scenario in which our dual-mandate goals are in tension. If that were to occur, we would consider how far the economy is from each goal, and the potentially different time horizons over which those respective gaps would be anticipated to close.

Conclusion

As that great Chicagoan Ferris Bueller once noted, “Life moves pretty fast.” For the time being, we are well positioned to wait for greater clarity before considering any adjustments to our policy stance. We continue to analyze the incoming data, the evolving outlook, and the balance of risks. We understand that elevated levels of unemployment or inflation can be damaging and painful for communities, families, and businesses. We will continue to do everything we can to achieve our maximum-employment and price-stability goals.

Thank you. I look forward to your questions.

After last week’s basis trade collapse (which we now know has already claimed several relative value multistrat hedge funds), many were dreading the outcome of today’s 20Y auction, a reopening of 19-Year, 10-Month cusip UJ5. It turned out they have nothing to fear.

The $13BN auction priced at 1:01pm ET at a high yield of 4.810%, up sharply from last month’s 4.632% and the highest since February; more importantly it stopped through the When Issued 4.814% by 0.4bps, the second consecutive stop through (if fractionally weaker than last month) and 3rd in the past 4 months.

It wasn’t just the headline: the Bid to Cover was 2.63, which while down from last month’s 2.78 was comfortably above the six-auction average of 2.57.

But like last week, the internals were most closely watched because in a time when there was virtually no Direct demand for US paper (amid the basis trade unwind), the composition of today’s takedown distribution was sure to be a buzz if there were any outliers. In the end, there would be no buzz because there were no surprises: Indirects took down a decent 70.7%, the highest since August and naturally above the six-auction average; As for Directs, unlike last week’s collapse, today they took down a healty 12.3% – yes still the lowest since November, but hardly a single digit affair like we saw last week. Finally Dealers were left holding 17.0%, just fractionally above the 15.3% average, and in line with recent auctions.

Overall, this was a remarkable solid 20Y auction, and one which certainly brushed away concerns that foreigners are boycotting US Treasury auctions, if only for now. As for the secondary market, that’s a different story.

Update (1330ET): Key highlights from Powell’s prepared remarks:

Powell said: “tariffs are highly likely to generate at least a temporary rise in inflation.”

“The inflationary effects could also be more persistent. Avoiding that outcome will depend on the size of the effects, on how long it takes for them to pass through fully to prices, and, ultimately, on keeping longer-term inflation expectations well anchored.

Powell again stressed the central bank’s focus on preventing potential tariff-driven price hikes from triggering a more persistent rise in inflation.

“Our obligation is to keep longer-term inflation expectations well anchored and to make certain that a one-time increase in the price level does not become an ongoing inflation problem,” Powell said.

Powell added that policymakers would balance their dual responsibilities of fostering maximum employment and stable prices, “keeping in mind that, without price stability, we cannot achieve the long periods of strong labor market conditions that benefit all Americans.”

Powell raised the spectre of stagflation:

“We may find ourselves in the challenging scenario in which our dual-mandate goals are in tension. If that were to occur, we would consider how far the economy is from each goal, and the potentially different time horizons over which those respective gaps would be anticipated to close.”

This differs from Waller earlier this week: 

Should the Fed face both a rapidly slowing economy and still elevated inflation, “the risk of recession would outweigh the risk of escalating inflation.”

As they seek greater certainty about how President Donald Trump’s economic policies, especially on trade, will affect the US economy, Powell and other Fed policymakers have expressed support for holding rates steady.

“For the time being, we are well positioned to wait for greater clarity before considering any adjustments to our policy stance,” Powell said.

The remarks reinforce a message Powell has repeatedly emphasized, including most recently on April 4: Fed officials are in no hurry to change the central bank’s benchmark policy rate.

Neil Dutta at Renaissance Macro quipped:

“Recession odds are climbing even further as Powell pushes back the timing of cuts.”

Stocks tumbled on the prepared remarks:

*  *  *

Which economy will Fed Chair Powell choose to discuss this afternoon as, for the second time in less than two weeks, he will weigh in with his sense of what’s in store for Americans on inflation and jobs, and what the central bank may do about it if they veer off course.

Will it be the ‘soft’ survey based economy (with this morning’s collapse in the New York Business Leaders survey as the latest example) or the ‘hard’ data based economy (with this morning’s surge in retail sales and manufacturing production showing strength)…

The last time he spoke (on April 4th – 2 days after Liberation Day), Powell voiced essentially a wait-and-see approach, saying “it is too soon to say what will be the appropriate path for monetary policy.”

Marcin Kazmierczak, Co-founder & COO of RedStone:

“Markets will be hyper-focused on Powell’s inflation commentary and rate cut signals, with any acknowledgment of economic growth concerns potentially triggering significant market reactions.”

As Reuters reports, earlier this week Fed Governor Christopher Waller said that if Trump continues to peel back tariffs to a lower baseline, the central bank would do well to hang tight on interest rates in the first half of this year and perhaps cut gradually in the second half as tariff-elevated inflation subsides. 

If Trump sticks to higher tariffs, Waller said, the unemployment rate could jump and the Fed would need to cut more aggressively.

Other Fed policymakers have been more hawkish, focusing on signs that short-term inflation expectations have surged and could, as St. Louis Fed President Alberto Musalem put it, “seep” into longer-term expectations, potentially forcing the Fed to keep rates high or even raise them further.

It’s not clear which view is closer to Powell’s, or in how much detail he might articulate which way he leans.

“Besides the guidance on rates (where a probability close to 80% is discounted for a rate cut in June), the market will be looking for cues about the Fed’s possibilities to deal with market turmoil,” says Commerzbank’s head of interest rates strategy, Michael Leister in a note this morning.

Of course, President Trump has been very public about his views on what he thinks Powell should do… demanding rate-cuts to prop up markets/economy during the interregnum between tariff teror and tax-cut euphoria.

Watch Fed Chair Powell speak live before the Economic Club of Chicago here (due to start at 1330ET):

Read Powell’s Prepared Remarks here…

Thank you for the introduction. I am looking forward to our conversation, Professor Rajan. First, I will briefly discuss the outlook for the economy and monetary policy.

At the Fed, we are always focused on the dual-mandate goals given to us by Congress: maximum employment and stable prices. Despite heightened uncertainty and downside risks, the U.S. economy is still in a solid position. The labor market is at or near maximum employment. Inflation has come down a great deal but is running a bit above our 2 percent objective.

Recent Economic Data

Turning to the incoming data, we will get the initial reading on first-quarter GDP in a couple of weeks. The data in hand so far suggest that growth has slowed in the first quarter from last year’s solid pace. Despite strong motor vehicle sales, overall consumer spending appears to have grown modestly. In addition, strong imports during the first quarter, reflecting attempts by businesses to get ahead of potential tariffs, are expected to weigh on GDP growth.

Surveys of households and businesses report a sharp decline in sentiment and elevated uncertainty about the outlook, largely reflecting trade policy concerns. Outside forecasts for the full year are coming down and, for the most part, point to continued slowing but still positive growth. We are closely tracking incoming data as households and businesses continue to digest these developments.

In the labor market, during the first three months of the year, nonfarm payrolls grew by an average of 150,000 jobs a month. While job growth has slowed relative to last year, the combination of low layoffs and lower labor force growth has kept the unemployment rate in a low and stable range. Meanwhile, the ratio of job openings to unemployed job seekers has remained just above 1, near its pre-pandemic level. Wage growth has continued to moderate while still outpacing inflation. Overall, the labor market appears to be in solid condition and broadly in balance and is not a significant source of inflationary pressure.

As for our price-stability mandate, inflation has significantly eased from its pandemic highs of mid-2022 without the kind of painful rise in unemployment that has frequently accompanied efforts to bring down high inflation. Progress on inflation continues at a gradual pace, and recent readings remain above our 2 percent objective. Estimates based on data released last week show that total PCE prices rose 2.3 percent over the 12 months ending in March and that, excluding the volatile food and energy categories, core PCE prices rose 2.6 percent.

Looking forward, the new Administration is in the process of implementing substantial policy changes in four distinct areas: trade, immigration, fiscal policy, and regulation. Those policies are still evolving, and their effects on the economy remain highly uncertain. As we learn more, we will continue to update our assessment. The level of the tariff increases announced so far is significantly larger than anticipated. The same is likely to be true of the economic effects, which will include higher inflation and slower growth. Both survey- and market-based measures of near-term inflation expectations have moved up significantly, with survey participants pointing to tariffs. Survey measures of longer-term inflation expectations, for the most part, appear to remain well anchored; market-based breakevens continue to run close to 2 percent.

Monetary Policy

As we gain a better understanding of the policy changes, we will have a better sense of the implications for the economy, and hence for monetary policy. Tariffs are highly likely to generate at least a temporary rise in inflation. The inflationary effects could also be more persistent. Avoiding that outcome will depend on the size of the effects, on how long it takes for them to pass through fully to prices, and, ultimately, on keeping longer-term inflation expectations well anchored.

Our obligation is to keep longer-term inflation expectations well anchored and to make certain that a one-time increase in the price level does not become an ongoing inflation problem. As we act to meet that obligation, we will balance our maximum-‑employment and price-stability mandates, keeping in mind that, without price stability, we cannot achieve the long periods of strong labor market conditions that benefit all Americans. We may find ourselves in the challenging scenario in which our dual-mandate goals are in tension. If that were to occur, we would consider how far the economy is from each goal, and the potentially different time horizons over which those respective gaps would be anticipated to close.

Conclusion

As that great Chicagoan Ferris Bueller once noted, “Life moves pretty fast.” For the time being, we are well positioned to wait for greater clarity before considering any adjustments to our policy stance. We continue to analyze the incoming data, the evolving outlook, and the balance of risks. We understand that elevated levels of unemployment or inflation can be damaging and painful for communities, families, and businesses. We will continue to do everything we can to achieve our maximum-employment and price-stability goals.

Thank you. I look forward to your questions.