Update (2135ET): The victims in today’s deadly helicopter crash into the Hudson River have been identified as Agustin Escobar, the CEO of Siemens’ Spain division, his wife, Merce Camprubi Montal, and their three children, aged 4, 5, and 11 years-old. The pilot, 36, was also killed in the crash according to ABC News.

The family was visiting NYC from Barcelona, Spain, two Spanish officials told the outlet.

The crash occurred at 3:17 p.m. off the coast of River Drive in Hoboken, New Jersey shortly after departing from the Wall St. Heliport. The craft reached the George Washington Bridge before turning south and crashing.

“Our hearts go out to the family and those on board,” said NYC Mayor Eric Adams during a briefing.

The helicopter was a Bell 206 helicopter, and had been on its sixth flight of the day.

*  *  *

A Bell helicopter crashed into the Hudson River on Thursday afternoon—shortly after 3:00 p.m. ET—near West Side Highway and Spring Street, closer to the Jersey City side of the river. Six people have been reported as deceased in the crash.

The Coast Guard halted all maritime traffic in the area to establish a safety zone around the crash site. The NYPD is on scene.

Hudson River Helicopter crash @fox5ny @ABC7 @NBCNewYork @CBSNewYork @njdotcom @News12NJ @CNN @cnnbrk

Credit: Bruce Wall pic.twitter.com/CVy249wApx

— SangriaUltra (@xpertcommander) April 10, 2025

“Due to a helicopter crash in the Hudson River, in the vicinity of the West Side Highway and Spring Street, expect emergency vehicles and traffic delays in the surrounding areas,” NYPD wrote in a statement on X. 

Footage of the accident area has been posted on X by several users.  

Reports that a helicopter has crashed into the Hudson River….@AirNavRadar

pic.twitter.com/biWCE4ATw8

— Flight Emergency (@FlightEmergency) April 10, 2025

Helicopter crash Hudson River pic.twitter.com/ffMVM9GFA0

— Luis Hernandez (@hernandezlg) April 10, 2025

“Helicopter crashing into Hudson River. You can see the propellers falling. So sad …” one X user said. 

Helicopter crashing into Hudson River. You can see the propellers falling. So sad … pic.twitter.com/6C6aWsS4Ay

— dinoshan (@dinoshanr) April 10, 2025

Another X user said, “The helicopter that crashed in the Hudson appears to be N216MH, a Bell 206 owned by Meridian helicopters. Radar shows it suddenly dropping to the water just north of the Holland Tunnel.” 

Parts floating to Hoboken pic.twitter.com/59I4H4oFn6

— Ryan Clapp (@ryandclapp) April 10, 2025

*Developing…

At a moment the whole world is closely following Trump’s tariff back-and-forth and the rapid impact on global markets, President Trump has again threatened the possibility of military action against Iran.

“If it requires military, we’re going to have military,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, responding to a question on whether US would attack if a nuclear deal isn’t reached with the Iranians.

This has also raised uncomfortable questions on Israel’s outsized influence on American foreign policy. Recall that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu back in September 2002 testified before Congress that there was ‘no question’ Saddam Hussein was working on nuclear weapons and other WMD.

This begs the obvious question of whether anyone should be listening to him now on the question of Iran and its nuclear program.

Trump addressed this in adding to his Oval comments: “Israel will obviously be very much involved in that — it’ll be the leader of that. But nobody leads us. We do what we want to do.”

However, this appears a clear admission that Israel would indeed ‘lead’ any such attack. Israel has for years threatened preemptive strikes on the Islamic Republic if it’s believed Tehran is close to producing a nuclear warhead.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian restated in Wednesday comments, “We are not after a nuclear bomb,” and emphasized: “You have verified it 100 times. Do it 1,000 times again.”

The US intelligence community at this moment actually agrees. “The IC [Intelligence Community] continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003,” Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard told a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing in March.

Netanyahu also exercised significant influence over US policy during Trump’s first term in office, as The Associated Press reviews:

With Netanyahu’s strong encouragement, Trump in 2018 unilaterally withdrew the United States from the agreement between world powers and Iran over its nuclear program. That deal, negotiated by the Obama administration, put curbs on Iran’s nuclear program. It was denigrated by Netanyahu because he said it did not go far enough to contain Iran or address Iran’s support for regional militant groups.

Netanyahu has long maintained that military pressure was the best way to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. Israel struck Iran last year in the countries’ first direct conflict ever. But it did not target Iran’s nuclear facilities, something Israel would likely need U.S. military assistance to do in order to strike targets buried deep underground.

President Trump:

“With Iran, if it requires military, we’re going to have military. Israel will be the leader of that. But nobody leads us, we do what we want to do” pic.twitter.com/sI6H5mIFJI

— The American Conservative (@amconmag) April 9, 2025

Still, the White House appears open to achieving a new deal that everyone can live with. ‘Indirect’ talks between Tehran and Washington are scheduled for this Saturday in Oman.

Netanyahu after meeting with Trump this week actually floated an ultra-provocative plan for Iran to ‘blow up’ its own nuclear facilities under US supervision, if it hopes to get sanctions dropped and end its international isolation (akin to the ‘Libya model’ – which didn’t work out too well for Gaddafi).

One month ago, when looking at the latest US Treasury income and spending, or as it is better known, deficit, data we found something shocking: the last months of the Biden admin were marked by spending unlike anything ever seen before, in fact, spending in the first six months of fiscal 2025 surpassed even the crisis 2020 and 2021 when the US injected trillions into the economy.

Then Elon Musk’s DOGE came on the scene… and thing changed quickly.

Earlier today the Treasury published its revenue and spending report for the month of March, the first month when DOGE was fully operational, and the results were interesting. As shown in the chart below, in March total US government receipts were $368 billion, while spending totaled $528 billion.

The difference between how much money the US brought in vs how much it spent, means that in March the US budget deficit was $161 billion. Which sounds like a lot (it is) until you realize that in February the deficit was almost twice as much, or $307 billion. And compared to the $236 billion deficit a year ago, 2025 was a solid 32% lower.

How come? Well, first of all receipts rose 10.7% to $367.6BN. Which is good. But what was great is that spending, which has traditionally been the real problem, actually shrank by 7.1% to $528.2BN.

And this is where DOGE came in. 

While various mandatory spending categories posted continued gradual increases – after all, these require an act of Congress to be revised – there was a huge, $45 billion drop in Income Security, from $105 billion in February to $60 billion in March, the largest one month decline since June 2021 as Elon ripped up much of the massive fraudulent fund flow network Democrats had established over the past few decades and covered up simply as ‘income security’ when it really was a giant slush fund used for everything from graft, to corruption, to bribes, to paying leftist media for favorable coverage.

The result: the March US deficit was the lowest since 2020 before the covid crash, and down $76 billion from a year ago.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that despite the sharp drop in the March deficit, the longer-term trendline in spending vs income remains unsustainable as the following chart shows.

And another way of showing it: yes, the blue line (income security), dropped but everything else continues to rise…

… and especially interest expense, which as of the end of Biden’s admin, at Dec 2024, hit a new record high of $1.124 trillion LTM, which is more than double where it was when Biden walked into the White House in Q1 2021.

Bottom line: While March was the first month in which we saw the budget-busting effect of DOGE finally come to the fore, the Sisyphean challenge for the Dept of Government Efficiency is just starting, because while a $50BN drop in “Income Security” and a $76 billion decline in the deficit YoY is a terrific start, the reality is that this is a mere drop in the bucket for the unsustainable trajectory which the US is on, and if Trump, Musk, DOGE and the majority of Americans truly hope to rightsize the US balance sheet, a lot more work – and as the last few days have shown – a lot more pain is coming. 

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Idaho Gov. Brad Little has signed legislation that bans businesses and schools from requiring customers, employees, and students to receive vaccines or other medical procedures.

On April 4, Little signed the Idaho Medical Freedom Act, or Senate Bill 1210.

The act states, in part, that a business “shall not refuse to provide any service, product, admission to a venue, or transportation to a person because that person has or has not received or used a medical intervention.”

It states that a school “shall not mandate a medical intervention for any person to attend, enter campus or buildings, or be employed.” It also states that, unless required by federal law, state, county, and local governments cannot require a person to receive a medical intervention.

A medical intervention is defined in the legislation as “a medical procedure, treatment, device, drug, injection, medication, or medical action taken to diagnose, prevent, or cure a disease or alter the health or biological function of a person.”

State Rep. Rob Beiswenger, a Republican who co-sponsored the bill, wrote on social media platform X after the signing, “Idaho has the best health freedom laws in the country!”

State Rep. Todd Achilles, a Democrat, was one of the bill’s opponents. Speaking on the floor of the Idaho House of Representatives before the chamber passed the act, he said that the updated legislation, despite amendments, “remains deeply flawed,” partly because its definition of medical intervention is “overly broad.”

“Effectively, what this bill does is it ties the hands of Idaho businesses, who have the duty to protect their customers and their employees,” he said. “We’re telling them what they can and can’t do.”

Little, a Republican, had vetoed Senate Bill 1023, which contained similar language. He said that Senate Bill 1023 would remove “parents’ freedom to ensure their children stay healthy at school because it [would jeopardize] the ability of schools to send home sick students with highly contagious conditions.”

Senate Bill 1210, the bill that was signed into law, expanded on the section relating to schools by giving them the ability to prevent sick children from going to class.

“It took some twists and turns, but the Medical Freedom Act passed the Legislature just before adjournment, and this time, the governor has signed it,” the Idaho Republican Party said on Facebook.

Leslie Manookian, president and founder of Health Freedom Defense Fund, helped lawmakers craft the legislation. She welcomed the signing of the bill.

“Medical freedom is a basic and fundamental human right, and the Idaho Medical Freedom Act sets a powerful precedent not only for our state but for the entire country,” she said in a statement.

Authored by Ian Miller via The Brownstone Institute,

In a spectacular feat of reality-denying partisanship, the political left has convinced itself that they’ve somehow admitted wrongdoing on their extremist Covid policies. Nothing, absolutely nothing, could be further from the truth.

As a reminder, the left, thanks in large part to Anthony Fauci, shut down businesses, schools, playgrounds, sports, and live events. They used curfews, capacity limits, mask mandates, vaccine mandates, vaccine passports, created “tier-system” reopening charts based on nothing, dismissed the lab-leak hypothesis as a racist conspiracy theory, and labeled anyone who disagreed with them.

None of the politicians involved in this inexcusable, world-destroying, anti-science policy-making has apologized for any of it. Not one has admitted they were wrong. Fauci, a far-left politician himself, has not only never apologized or admitted wrongdoing, but had the audacity to say that criticisms of him and his policy positions were inexcusable criticisms of science itself.

The most that individuals like Gavin Newsom or other prominent members of the left will do is say that they didn’t know at the time what we know now. Except, of course, that’s also a complete lie.

NFL: NFC Championship-Detroit Lions at San Francisco 49ers. Jan 28, 2024; Santa Clara, California, USA; California Governor Gavin Newsom attends the NFC Championship football game between the San Francisco 49ers and the Detroit Lions at Levi’s Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kelley L Cox-USA TODAY Sports

Left-Wing Media Continues with Covid Reality Denial

The Atlantic published an article by Jonathan Chait revisiting Covid lockdowns around the fifth anniversary of “15 Days to Slow the Spread.” And it made the remarkably inaccurate case that the left has engaged in a far-ranging “searching self-reflection” on their failed policies.

“Liberals have engaged in searching self-reflection—on school closings, the lab-leak hypothesis, the political aftereffects, and other unanticipated lessons. Conservatives have used the occasion to engage in a round of self-congratulations and taunting of the libs,” Chait writes.

This is, of course, nonsense.

Where is the “searching self-reflection” on mask mandates? Where is the “searching self-reflection” on vaccine mandates? Or firing thousands of people, tens of thousands of people, for refusing to get a vaccine that did nothing to stop infection or transmission? Where is the “searching self-reflection” on the businesses that were shut down, in many cases, permanently, because Democratic governors and mayors turned into fanatical extremists for years on end?

Where’s the apology for letting it all continue well after it was clear that their mandates and lockdowns weren’t working?

Chait’s delusional article only gets worse from there.

He claims that the shift in the lab-leak discussion shows how self-reflective the political left is on Covid. Praising Zeynep Tufecki for her intellectual honesty.

“Conservatives, who generally assume that the mainstream media are as ideologically rigid as the conservative media, appear not to have noticed any of this until Tufekci’s most recent contribution to the genre, which produced an onslaught of football-spiking. (Tufekci herself was skeptical of public-health guidance throughout the pandemic),” he writes.

Except Tufecki helped shut down self-reflection on masking by demanding that a prominent scientific institution contradict its own evidence showing that masks didn’t work. All because Tufecki herself, as a sociologist, had written an unjustifiable, inaccuracy-riddled paper with a software engineer demanding more masks.

She wasn’t skeptical of public health guidance, she contributed to it. The CDC had correctly avoided telling the public to wear masks early on in the pandemic, only changing their mind after another inaccuracy-riddled piece of misinformation Tufecki wrote in the Times in spring 2020.

Chait is, as he so frequently does, completely misleading his readers in order to support his political party. Though at least he admits that he and the Times are left-wing media.

As always, he defends the left’s historic atrocities during Covid by saying it was “an understandable bout of confusion in the face of fast-moving events.”

“I don’t want to suggest that the political left always followed the science. The initial response to COVID, after an understandable bout of confusion in the face of fast-moving events, was afflicted with ideological rigidity,” he writes.

“Liberals got some things about the pandemic correct and other things wrong, and over time, many of them have disavowed or at least moved away from their wrong beliefs.”

Nothing, absolutely nothing, could be further from the truth. This is an objective lie. A purposeful lie, to avoid responsibility and accountability for his party. The left, including the high priest of politically-minded pseudoscience and quack “cures,” Anthony Fauci, has done nothing to “disavow” or “move away from” their wrong beliefs.

Literally THIS YEAR, hospitals in the far-left Bay Area have been forcing hospital visitors to wear masks. This year. The head of public health in LA has threatened mask mandates every single winter since the start of the pandemic. Even after her own data showed they didn’t work.

There’s been no reckoning on vaccine mandates; it took a new administration, again, literally this year, to end vaccine-related discrimination for those seeking green cards.

Chait is, quite simply, lying.

And not just about the “self-reflection” nonsense.

We knew in 2020 that non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPI), the mandates left-wing media and politicians salivated over, did not work. Not just from observational data, which confirmed over and over again that mandates and lockdowns had failed. But from scientific research papers published in 2020 demonstrating that there was no noticeable effect from the incorporation of NPIs. Anywhere.

Here’s a sampling of just one example.

“Given the observation that transmission rates for COVID-19 fell virtually everywhere in the world during this early pandemic period, we are concerned that these studies may substantially overstate the role of government-mandated NPI’s in reducing disease transmission due to an omitted variable bias. Moreover, given the observation that disease transmission rates have remained low with relatively low dispersion across locations worldwide for the past several months as NPI’s have been lifted, we are concerned that estimates of the effectiveness of NPI’s in reducing disease transmission from the earlier period may not be relevant for forecasting the impact of the relaxation of those NPI’s in the current period, due to some unobserved switch in regime.”

Their conclusion is even more damning for Chait’s “argument.”

“One of the central policy questions regarding the COVID-19 pandemic is the question of which non-pharmeceutical interventions governments might use to influence the transmission of the disease. Our ability to identify empirically which NPI’s have what impact on disease transmission depends on there being enough independent variation in both NPI’s and disease transmission across locations as well as our having robust procedures for controlling for other observed and unobserved factors that might be influencing disease transmission. The facts that we document in this paper cast doubt on this premise.”

“Our finding in Fact 1 that early declines in the transmission rate of COVID-19 were nearly universal worldwide suggest that the role of region-specific NPI’s implemented in this early phase of the pandemic is likely overstated. This finding instead suggests that some other factor(s) common across regions drove the early and rapid transmission rate declines.”

Again, this is from August 2020. We knew then, as we know now, that government mandates and lockdowns were useless against the virus, and devastatingly harmful for society and the economy. Chait and his party refused to listen then, and refuse to listen now.

What consequences has Anthony Fauci faced? Or Gavin Newsom? Or Rochelle Walensky, who lied to the public about vaccine efficacy, repeatedly, on left-wing media?

Instead, they find it more mentally tolerable to lie, deflect, misinform, and revise history. Acknowledging the role they played in a historic disaster is too difficult for them to accept. But no matter what they say now, that’s exactly what they caused. With zero accountability for any of it.

Republished from the author’s Substack

“Volt Typhoon” is the name assigned by U.S. cybersecurity officials to a state-sponsored cyber operation linked to the Chinese Communist Party that has quietly penetrated critical infrastructure networks across the U.S., apparently with the aim of unleashing disruptive or destructive cyberattacks. 

In a previously closed-door meeting held in Geneva last December, Chinese officials offered what top U.S. officials interpreted as a tacit admission of responsibility for the cyberattack campaign against U.S. critical infrastructure, including computer networks at U.S. ports, water utilities, airports, and other targets, according to the Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar with the matter.

The report of the Chinese acknowledgment, cited by WSJ sources, comes amid escalating trade tensions between Washington and Beijing, as the Trump administration raises tariffs on Chinese goods. A White House official confirmed to CNBC earlier that the effective tariff rate will soon exceed 145%. Sources characterized the Volt Typhoon not as traditional espionage but as a means to sabotage capabilities inside civilian infrastructure in the event of a future conflict. This is directly tied to the U.S.’ increased support for Taiwan, the people added.

The people said the Biden-Harris regime and the Trump transition team were briefed about the Geneva summit in December. 

Here’s more color on the report from WSJ:

The first-of-its-kind Signal at a Geneva summit with the outgoing Biden administration startled American officials used to hearing their Chinese counterparts blame the campaign, which security researchers have dubbed Volt Typhoon, on a criminal outfit, or accuse the U.S. of having an overactive imagination. 

U.S. officials went public last year with unusually dire warnings about the uncovered Volt Typhoon effort. They publicly attributed it to Beijing trying to get a foothold in U.S. computer networks so its army could quickly detonate damaging cyberattacks during a future conflict.

The Chinese official’s remarks at the December meeting were indirect and somewhat ambiguous, but most of the American delegation in the room interpreted it as a tacit admission and a warning to the U.S. about Taiwan, a former U.S. official familiar with the meeting said.

Last year, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), National Security Agency (NSA), and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) confirmed that Volt Typhoon compromised the IT systems of multiple critical infrastructure organizations, primarily in the communications, energy, transportation systems, and water and wastewater systems sectors across the U.S.

“Volt Typhoon’s choice of targets and pattern of behavior is not consistent with traditional cyber espionage or intelligence gathering operations, and the U.S. authoring agencies assess with high confidence that Volt Typhoon actors are pre-positioning themselves on IT networks to enable lateral movement to OT assets to disrupt functions,” CISA warned in February 2024.

In addition to the Volt Typhoon, another cyber espionage operation linked to the CCP is the ongoing Salt Typhoon, aimed at deep surveillance and long-term intelligence collection. Hence why, U.S. Gov’t officials have been instructed to use end-to-end encrypted communications, Apple iMessage, and Signal.

Top Trump administration officials need to clean house across the federal government’s cybersecurity workers for allowing such attacks to occur without a proper response.

The previous administration took little to no action against the Communists—could this be why? Was Biden China’s Manchurian Candidate all along?

*  *  *

Authored by George F. Tidmarsh via RealClearPolitics,

Is the WaPo journalistically challenged when it comes to science? You decide.

An April 6 article in the Washington Post, one of the most recent attacks of the NIH as it undergoes administrative changes, claims that “A big step forward in cancer therapy has been slowed by layoffs and new restrictions at the National Institutes of Health, where it was developed.” The focus is on a Nature Medicine article[1] published on April 1 that is presented as a crucial advancement in “utilizing a patient’s own immune cells to combat gastrointestinal cancers.” The Washington Post article delves into the study’s background and theory rather than its results, which allows it to conveniently obscure the fact that the therapy is anything but a breakthrough. Distressing instances of continuing patient treatment despite evidence of the therapy’s ineffectiveness, alongside an unprecedented 355 modifications to the study protocol over 14 years, reveal serious oversights requiring thorough investigation by the NIH into its intramural research practices.

In oncology, when there are no effective treatments available for patients, researchers often conduct non-comparative studies focusing on one treatment group. To ensure patient safety, Simon’s 2-stage study design[2] is employed (the researchers cited this as the design that they were following). The idea is simple: researchers want to see if there’s any positive effect, like tumor reduction, from the new therapy while minimizing patient exposure to ineffective or risky treatments. In the first stage, thirty patients are enrolled, aiming for a minimum response rate of 20% to justify further enrollment (indicating a significant improvement compared to leaving patients untreated). If fewer than 20% of patients respond, the study halts immediately to avoid harm to patients without proof of treatment benefit[3], a practice that has been standard since the 1980s.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the potential of neoantigen-specific tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) as therapies for solid tumor cancers, specifically focusing on gastrointestinal cancer. The researchers aimed to compare patient responses between standard TILs and neoantigen-specific  TILs (which they called “selected TILs”). While standard TILs showed a negligible clinical response, the novel selected TILs demonstrated a mere 7.7% response rate, falling short of the 20% threshold for a “modest response.” These patients showed only partial improvement; no patient saw a complete elimination of their tumor, which only further supports the notion that this therapy’s activity was not significant. To make matters worse, the patients received chemotherapy and FDA-approved biological therapy in addition to the experimental cell therapy, which could, on their own, be entirely responsible for any tumor shrinkage that was observed.

At this point, had the investigators adhered to the principles of their trial design, they would have terminated the study, preventing further patient exposure to a therapy with no clear benefit. However, they proceeded, administering selected TILs along with the commonly used immune checkpoint inhibitor pembrolizumab. The addition of pembrolizumab, which is already known for blocking the PD-1 protein on T-cells and enhancing their activity against cancer cells[4], resulted in a 23.5% patient response rate. The researchers used this to claim that their trial demonstrates that “TILs selected for neoantigen reactivity can mediate tumor regression even in treatment-refractory metastatic GI cancers that are not thought to be sensitive to immunotherapy.”

The logical error here is astounding: the new intervention alone failed to trigger a notable patient response, yet the conclusion was erroneously drawn that the intervention was responsible, disregarding the marked impact of a known-effective drug. In addition to a grave violation of basic clinical reasoning, this study displays alarming disregard for standard clinical trial ethics. As mentioned previously, this “breakthrough” therapy uses a highly toxic conditioning regimen of chemotherapy and high-dose biologic therapy (another FDA-approved biologic therapy called interleukin-2). Not only could individualized responses of patients to chemotherapy significantly influence the effectiveness of the novel selected TIL therapy, but all patients also experienced severe toxicity, with 10% requiring hospitalization. More specifically, “seven patients required escalation of care for critical support: three for mechanical ventilation…one for continuous renal replacement therapy…three required both modalities…” and there was even “one treatment-related death attributed to adenoviral hepatitis 49 d after TIL infusion.”

The Washington Post’s sensationalistic and poorly informed journalism has inadvertently exposed disturbing negligence on the part of NIH investigators. A gross lack of adherence to basic clinical trial study design and ethics resulted in significant harm to patients without any discernible benefits. We call upon the NIH to investigate this trial thoroughly and use its findings to install necessary oversight mechanisms across its clinical research activities.

George F. Tidmarsh, MD, PhD, Stanford University School of Medicine, is an Adjunct Professor, Pediatrics and Neonatology. He is the Founder, M-TRAM, and Senior Advisor, Center for Advanced Pediatric and Perinatal Education.

Arman Sharma, a recent graduate of Stanford University, helped in writing and research for this article.

Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via American Greatness,

The real trade war wasn’t Trump’s – it was decades of lopsided deals, deficits, and double standards America tolerated while others profited…

1.Trump’s So-Called “Trade War.”

Many call the American effort to obtain either tariff parity or a reduction in the roughly $1 trillion trade deficit and fifty years of consecutive trade deficits “a trade war.” But then what do they call the policies of the past half-century by Europe, Asia, China, and others to ensure asymmetrical tariffs, pseudo-health and security trade restrictions, and large surpluses?

A trade peace? Trade fairness?

2. Do Nations Prefer Surpluses or Deficits?

Why do most nations prefer trade surpluses and protective tariffs?

Are Europe, Asia, China, and others stupid? Are they suicidal in continuing their trade surpluses and protective or asymmetrical tariffs?

Is the United States uniquely brilliant in maintaining a half-century of cumulative trade deficits? Do Americans alone discover the advantages of a $1 trillion annual trade deficit and small or nonexistent tariffs?

Why don’t America’s trading partners prefer deficits like ours—given we supposedly believe they are either advantageous or perhaps irrelevant?

3. Would Our Trade Partners Prefer to Trade Places With Us?

Would our trade partners prefer to have America’s supposed benefits of a $1-trillion trade deficit? 

Would the United States then “suffer” like they do by running up $200 billion annual surpluses?

4. What if Wages Went Up at the Rate of the Stock Market?

What would now be the reaction of the stock market if over the last decade wages had increased at the rate of stocks—and the stocks at the rate of wages?

5. Is Wall Street’s Panic Based on What Might Happen—Or What Is Happening?

Is Wall Street’s meltdown a fear of what might happen in the future? Or is it reacting to March’s latest jobs report that there were 93,000 more jobs created than predicted? Was the Wall Street panic predicated on reports of much lower oil prices? Did the furor arise over the March inflation report that the annualized inflation rate dipped to 2.6% per year?

6. Is the Frenzy Caused by the Trump Economic Agenda?

Is Wall Street’s worry that Trump’s impending tax cuts, more deregulation, greater budget cuts, and continued efforts to eliminate budget deficits and reduce national debt will stall economic growth?

7. What About North American Neighbors?

If the U.S. was running a $63 billion-plus trade surplus with Canada, refusing to meet its NATO requirements to spend 2 percent of GDP on defense, and instead spent only 1.37 percent, would Canada become concerned?

If Mexico were running a $171 billion trade deficit with the U.S., if Americans in Mexico were sending over $60 billion per year out of Mexico to the U.S., and if American drug dealers were making $20 billion by selling fentanyl and opioids to Mexico, would Mexico be angry?

8. Is the Trump Agenda Bad Economic News?

Is the current panic over tariffs amplified by Trump’s other policies?

Is the sudden end of 10,000 illegal entries a day bothering Wall Street?

Are the media furious that the Red Sea is suddenly navigable again, the Houthis in Yemen curtailing their attacks?

Is the outrage due to the targeting of approximately $200 billion in budget cuts or plans to shave off $500 billion from the annual budget? Does the conundrum arise because Trump is sanctioning Iran, unapologetically supporting Israel, and seeking an end to the Ukraine War?

9. Was the Biden Record Preferable?

Should Trump try to match Biden’s $7 trillion addition to the national debt? Should he return to allowing 12 million illegal aliens into the country? Was the 2021 Afghanistan pullout a good model? Is Wall Street worried that Trump may copy the Biden New Green Deal, his electric vehicle mandates, and more green regulations?

10. Why the Negotiations and Why Now?

Why are 70 countries now wishing to negotiate tariffs with America either down to zero or reciprocally to the same rate as ours?

Is that a good thing? If so, why did our trade partners not wish to lower their trade barriers far earlier?

Did they suddenly and spontaneously decide they were acting unfairly and, on their own prompt, now want to make amends?

What’s Next?

If there soon is a rush of nations to cut a deal with the U.S. and not to be left out of the American market, will there follow another hysterical Wall Street spasm—but not to sell, but instead to buy stocks at bargain prices?

A Bell helicopter crashed into the Hudson River on Thursday afternoon—shortly after 3:00 p.m. ET—near West Side Highway and Spring Street, closer to the Jersey City side of the river. 

The Coast Guard halted all maritime traffic in the area to establish a safety zone around the crash site. The NYPD is on scene, and a report from ABC News indicated there are fatalities, though the exact number has not yet been confirmed.

“Due to a helicopter crash in the Hudson River, in the vicinity of the West Side Highway and Spring Street, expect emergency vehicles and traffic delays in the surrounding areas,” NYPD wrote in a statement on X. 

Footage of the accident area has been posted on X by several users.  

Reports that a helicopter has crashed into the Hudson River….@AirNavRadar

pic.twitter.com/biWCE4ATw8

— Flight Emergency (@FlightEmergency) April 10, 2025

Helicopter crash Hudson River pic.twitter.com/ffMVM9GFA0

— Luis Hernandez (@hernandezlg) April 10, 2025

“Helicopter crashing into Hudson River. You can see the propellers falling. So sad …” one X user said. 

Helicopter crashing into Hudson River. You can see the propellers falling. So sad … pic.twitter.com/6C6aWsS4Ay

— dinoshan (@dinoshanr) April 10, 2025

Another X user said, “The helicopter that crashed in the Hudson appears to be N216MH, a Bell 206 owned by Meridian helicopters. Radar shows it suddenly dropping to the water just north of the Holland Tunnel.” 

Parts floating to Hoboken pic.twitter.com/59I4H4oFn6

— Ryan Clapp (@ryandclapp) April 10, 2025

*Developing…

Authored by Olivia Murray via AmericanThinker.com,

In an article published today at the New York Post, journalist Emily Crane described the Darién Gap route as a “ghost town” after just four months of the illegal migration crackdown from the Trump administration.

Once-overrun Darien Gap migrant route to US virtually deserted amid Trump migrant crackdowns, before-and-after photos show https://t.co/x5yj5eTQOw pic.twitter.com/cNraH4EgxV

— New York Post (@nypost) April 10, 2025

The Associated Press reported the same:

In 2023, migration through the passage’s trenches smashed records with more than 500,000 people making the grueling crossing, according to Panama’s government…

[snip]

In the few months since U.S. President Donald Trump took office, with his tough stance on migration, his administration effectively cut off access to asylum along the U.S.-Mexico border. And while migration took a sharp dip under the final year of the Biden administration, it slowed to a trickle, with barely 10 people a week at Lajas Blancas.

And just like that, rates of sexual assault, rape, robbery, and kidnapping across the stretch of remote jungle, plunge into new lows.

As a reminder, the Gap has disturbingly high rates of sexual violence:

Doctors Without Border/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) medical teams in southern Panama provided care to 214 survivors of sexual violence in December 2023—more than a sevenfold increase compared with prior months despite a lull in migration through the dangerous Darién Gap in the same period.

Just take a look at this group of lecherous-looking men from last year during the exact same time those numbers were reported, with a little girl in tow, and no mother in sight:

Darien Gap, Panama — we constantly see men with young girls and no women. Maybe her mother was nearby. I did not ask. I should have asked the “Egyptian” if he is from Gaza. pic.twitter.com/T1t9ByKMgi

— Michael Yon: Callsign BIG HONEY (@Michael_Yon) January 8, 2024

But this is a “family” according to the Democrats, and upon illegal U.S. entry, it would be cruel and inhumane to separate these men from the child, and make sure that little girl isn’t in the hands of abusers.

And a few more “newcomers” who came through the gap on the way to our neighborhoods:

Tren de Aragua who came through Darien Gap — a small sample: https://t.co/73bePDd8IR pic.twitter.com/CiPMnMUjWd

— Michael Yon: Callsign BIG HONEY (@Michael_Yon) April 8, 2025

But the “ghost town” Darién Gap doesn’t just make for less violent crime in the world, but a cleaner environment too; the Gap and its people have suffered heavily under from astronomical levels of pollution and littering due to the amount of migration traffic. Remember when the indigenous tribes in the area decried the situation, sounding the alarm on the destruction to the jungle? From a blog I wrote in September in 2024:

[I]ndigenous communities, who have lived in the jungle for hundreds of years, reliant upon the local ecosystem to provide for all their material needs, are sounding the alarm on the unbelievable destruction brought by the roughly million people (at least) who have made the journey during the current administration’s tenure.

A secure border is undeniably, the most humanitarian-minded policy America can have.

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