Authored by Victoria Friedman via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

One in 10 people say they have been harmed by the NHS, according to a study published in the BMJ Quality & Safety Journal.

Researchers surveyed over 10,000 people across England, Wales, and Scotland between 2021 and 2022 and found that 988 of them (9.7 percent) had reported experiencing physical or emotional harm caused by the health service in the previous three years.

According to researchers at the University of Oxford’s Population Health and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), 6.2 percent said they experienced harm owing to care they had received.

The remaining 3.5 percent blamed the harm on having a lack of access to treatment.

The study, published on Tuesday, found that just 17 percent of people chose to take formal action by making a complaint, with an even smaller proportion (2.1 percent) taking legal action.

Higher Rate

The reported harm rate exceeds that of previous surveys in 2001 (4.8 percent) and 2023 (2.5 percent). However, researchers suggest this increase may be down to a broader definition of “harm” that now includes mental distress and harm caused by lack of access to health care, alongside physical harm.

Researchers found that more women had reported harm than men, with there being higher rates among the unemployed and those with disabilities or long-term health conditions.

Men were also found to be less likely to share their experiences, along with older people and those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. Older people were also less likely to make a formal complaint.

Some Way to Go

Helen Hogan, associate professor at the LSHTM, said: “These findings indicate that healthcare harm affects a considerable number of members of the general public.

“Our study is the first to put a number on the harm that results from people having to wait for treatment as well as the scale of harm caused by the care itself. It shows that there is still some way to go to improve safety across the NHS.”

Hogan continued that while the vast majority of NHS staff prioritise patients’ needs, there are pressures within the system—such as a lack of time or staff—which can affect the quality of care they can deliver.

Scottish Health Secretary Neil Gray responded to the report by telling reporters that patient safety is paramount and that NHS boards must be open about mistakes and learn from them.

A Welsh Government spokesperson said that they are simplifying the complaints process to ensure thorough investigations and continuous improvement in health care.

An NHS England spokesperson added that the health service was making “significant progress in strengthening patient safety – including a nationwide programme of training and education – and we recognise there is still more to do to improve care for patients by providing better access to services and reducing health inequalities.”

‘Startling Collapse’ in Public Satisfaction

The public is reporting not only increased harm but also growing dissatisfaction with the NHS.

On Wednesday, the Nuffield Trust described the “startling collapse” in satisfaction, which plummeted by 39 percentage points since before the COVID-19 pandemic.

The British Attitudes Survey (BSA) study into satisfaction with the taxpayer-funded health service found that in 2024, 59 percent of people are “quite” or “very” dissatisfied with the NHS, which is up from 53 percent on the year before and at its highest rate on record.

The analysis, published by the Nuffield Trust and The King’s Fund, found that only one-fifth (21 percent) of respondents were happy with the NHS, down from 24 percent on the year before and at its lowest level since this survey first polled Britons on the matter in 1983.

The part of the service which people expressed most dissatisfaction with was A&E, with 52 percent dissatisfied, rising from 37 percent in 2023. Satisfaction with GP services has also fallen, dropping from 34 percent in 2023 to 31 percent last year.

Broken NHS

“We inherited a broken NHS and this survey shows patients agree,” Health Secretary Wes Streeting told reporters in response to the BSA poll, citing long waiting lists, the rise of corridor care, and Britons struggling to see their GPs.

He said: “Thanks to the necessary decisions we took in the Budget, we’ve invested a record £26 billion over two years, ended the crippling strikes, cut waiting lists for five months in a row and delivered 2 million extra appointments seven months early.

“There’s a long way to go but we are fixing our NHS to make it fit for the future.”

In January, the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) unveiled plans to create 2 million extra medical appointments next year, in a bid to bring down high NHS waiting lists.

The DHSC said up to half a million more appointments are expected to be created in total every year by expanding the use of Community Diagnostic Centres, which will be open seven days a week, 12 hours a day, so that patients can access tests and health checks closer to home and at times more convenient to them.

We suspect Goldman analysts Minami Munakata and Haruki Kubota will soon update clients on today’s report from The Verge. The report reveals that Nintendo is delaying preorders for the new Switch 2 due to the fallout from President Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff blitz and China’s retaliatory measures, which are roiling global markets and trade. 

Nintendo spokesperson Eddie Garcia told The Verge:

Preorders for Nintendo Switch 2 in the U.S. will not start April 9, 2025 in order to assess the potential impact of tariffs and evolving market conditions. Nintendo will update timing at a later date. The launch date of June 5, 2025 is unchanged.

Nintendo plans to launch the Nintendo Switch 2 (the successor to the Nintendo Switch) on June 5. There’s still no word from Garcia about when preorders will begin. 

There’s still no word on Switch 2 pricing following the new effective tariff rate of 24% on Japanese goods, as The Verge noted.

The Switch 2 costs $449.99 and comes with several upgrades, including a larger 7.9-inch 1080p display, 256GB of storage, and a C-button for in-game chats. We don’t know yet whether the Switch 2 or its accessories will go up in price in response to the tariffs. The Switch 2 is already significantly more expensive than its $299 predecessor, while its games have a steeper $69.99 to $79.99 price.

Last month, Goldman analysts Minami Munakata and Haruki Kubota were super bulls on Nintendo, noting that “the global games market re-entered a growth phase since 2024” and forecasted “the number of active consoles to continue renewing fresh highs globally from 2025.”

Their bullishness in the gaming industry was mainly because Switch 2 would “unlock dormant hardware and dormant users” and send “the number of active consoles to continue to renew record highs.” 

However, with tariffs in play, the Switch 2 and its accessories will likely be priced higher. That raises a key question for the analysts—likely to be addressed in a client note this weekend:

• Will the increased cost of the device prompt a revision to their active console forecast?

• And, in turn, could a downward revision in the forecast trigger a 12mo price target cut for Nintendo shares in Tokyo?

. . . 

Authored by Kyle Anzalone via The Libertarian Institute,

A combat unit of NATO-trained Ukrainian soldiers was photographed using a Flyer 72-LD tactical vehicle. The Department of Defense did not report that it had transferred the platform to Ukraine, which was previously operated primarily by American special forces. 

The Flyers’ presence in Ukraine became public when blogger Praise the Steph posted a photo of the vehicle with soldiers from Kiev’s 6th Separate Ranger Regiment. “Will and faith are our weapons. Victory is our only horizon!” the blogger reported the unit’s commander said.

The Flyer is designed to be a light-weight tactical vehicle that can operate in rugged terrain.

It can be carried to the front by a number of helicopters and can carry a 5,000-pound load. The Pentagon has not previously disclosed the transfer of the Flyer to Kiev. Only a limited number of NATO countries deploy the Flyer. 

While the New York Times’s Adam Entous described the Department of Defense’s transfer of weapons to Ukraine as occurring “with remarkable transparency,” this is not the first time that Ukrainian soldiers have received US military equipment before the American public became aware of the shipment. 

The 6th Separate Ranger Regiment is one of four Ukrainian military units trained by NATO troops that make up Kiev’s special operations force.

According to the Kyiv Post, they are designed to conduct “drone, reconnaissance, sabotage, and artillery targeting operations behind enemy lines.”

US and Ukrainian military leaders have presented the conflict as an opportunity to test Western weapons and tactics against the Russian military. 

Back in 2023, CNN wrote that “the war in Ukraine has also offered the United States and its allies a rare opportunity to study how their own weapons systems perform under intense use – and what munitions both sides are using to score wins in this hotly fought modern war.”

Ukraine is “absolutely a weapons lab in every sense because none of this equipment has ever actually been used in a war between two industrially developed nations,” an official was cited as saying. “This is real-world battle testing.”

Authored by Pepe Escobar,

Global Majority, rejoice! And step on the high-speed rail de-dollarization train.

Circus ringmaster Trump’s Tariff Tizzy (TTT), christened by himself as “Liberation Day”, is being largely interpreted around the world – Global North and Global South alike – as Slaughterhouse Day.

This de facto uncontrolled economic demolition gambit starts with the warped fantasy that launching a customs war on China is a bright idea. As bright as collecting a few trillion extra dollars in tariffs assuming the rest of the planet will be somewhat “encouraged” to sell to the Hegemon, while pretending that these tariffs will lead to the re-industrialization of the U.S.

The tragicomic mask of a self-appointed circus ringmaster of turbo-capitalism may be as pathetic as the European chihuahua rage boosting their “revenge” via Rearmament – with funds that they plan to steal from the savings accounts of unsuspecting citizens.

The indispensable Michael Hudson has configured the key problem. Allow me a little tweak: “Sanctions and threats are the only thing that the United States has left. It no longer can offer other countries a win-win situation, and Trump has said that America has to be the net gainer in any international deal it’s made, whether it’s a financial deal or a trade deal. And if America is saying, any deal we make, you lose, I win”, that Mafia extortion gambit does not exactly reflect the Art of the Deal.

Prof. Hudson neatly describes Trump’s negotiation tactics: “When you don’t have very much to offer economically, all you can do is offer not to hurt other countries, not to sanction them, not to do something that will be against their interest.” Now, with TTT, Trump is actually “offering” to hurt them all. And they will certainly invest in all sorts of counter-tactics to “get away” from that “strategy” of American “diplomacy”.

A trade war on Asia

TTT attacks everyone, especially the EU (“born to hurt us”, according to the circus ringmaster. Wrong, because the EU was invented by the Americans in 1957 to actually keep Europe under control). The EU exports roughly 503 billion euros to the U.S. a year, while importing around 347 billion. Trump is fuming non-stop about this surplus.

So a counter-measure vendetta will be inevitably in store, as already advertised by the toxic Medusa von der Lugen in Brussels – incidentally the sponsor of every weapons producer in Europe.

Yet TTT is above all a trade war on Asia. “Reciprocal” tariffs – not exactly reciprocal – were imposed on China (34%),Vietnam (46%), India (26%), Indonesia (32%), Cambodia (49%), Malaysia (24%), South Korea (25%), Thailand (36%), earthquake-hit Myanmar (44%), Taiwan (32%) and Japan (24%).

Well, even before TTT, a first has been achieved: the circus ringmaster generated a once-in-a-lifetime consensus among China, Japan and South Korea that their response will be coordinated.

Japan and South Korea will import semiconductor raw materials from China, while China will be purchasing chips from Japan and South Korea. Translation: TTT will solidify “supply chain cooperation” among this triad that so far was not exactly too cooperative.

What the circus ringmaster really wants is an iron-clad mechanism – already being developed by his team – that unilaterally imposes whatever level of tariffs Trump may come up with on whatever excuse: could be to circumvent “current manipulation”, to counter a value-added tax, on “security grounds”, whatever. And to hell with international law. For all practical purposes, Trump is burying the WTO.

Even tariffed penguins in Heard island in the South Pacific know that the certified effects of TTT will include rising inflation in the U.S., serious pain on its – delocalized – corporations and most of all the complete collapse of American “credibility” as a reliable and trustworthy trading partner, adding to its certified reputation as “non-agreement capable” – as the Global South knows so well. > Ант: A rentier FIRE Empire (financialization, insurance, real estate, as masterfully analyzed by Michael Hudson), which offshored its manufacturing industries and was gobbled up by a pile of overleveraged hedge funds, Wall Street derivatives and Silicon Valley totalitarian surveillance in the end decides to strike…itself.

Poetic justice applies. Burning Down the House – from inside the house. As for the emerging, sovereign Global Majority, rejoice: and step on the high-speed rail de-dollarization train.

*  *  *

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

Yemen’s Houthis have claimed another shootdown of a US MQ-9 Reaper drone. The Thursday announcement, if accurate, would mark the second such Reaper drone downing by the group within 72 hours.

The country’s SABA news agency reported that the US drone was intercepted by an anti-air missile over the Hodeidah province, which has been subject of repeat US bombardment since President Trump ordered a renewed air campaign on March 15. 

Fox News’ Jennifer Griffin has offered some confirmation of the latest downing, writing on X “the Houthis shoot down 3rd MQ9 Reaper drone since March 3rd; 2nd since March 15th airstrike campaign began.”

“Another U.S. MQ-9 Reaper drone was shot down by the Houthis in Yemen, sources tell Fox News. This is the third MQ-9 Reaper drone shot down by the Houthis in the last month,” she continued.

“It is the second MQ-9 drone shot down over Yemen since U.S. Central Command began daily airstrikes on the Houthis on March 15th. The U.S. military has carried out 20 straight days of bombing, and yet the Houthis continue to fire missiles.”

The Fox correspondent continued in the Thursday statement:

The first MQ-9 drone was shot down on March 3rd. Days later the White House launched airstrikes against the Houthis. The second MQ-9 was shot down on Monday. And today the 3rd one was shot down. Overnight the Houthis said the U.S. carried out 36 airstrikes on Yemen.

The Pentagon has kept silent, offering no confirmation, however. US officials have in the past acknowledged only some drone downings over Yemen, but don’t announce each one lost as they likely don’t want to give the Houthis any acknowledgement of a successful battlefield action.

If accurate, this would mark the 17th Reaper drone shot down by the Houthis since 2023. Still, President Trump is touting ‘successful’ operations in Yemen, also as a second aircraft carrier is en route from the Pacific to Mideast regional waters.

“Many of their Fighters and Leaders are no longer with us,” Trump said earlier this week on Truth Social. “We hit them every day and night — Harder and harder. Their capabilities that threaten Shipping and the Region are rapidly being destroyed. Our attacks will continue until they are no longer a threat to Freedom of Navigation.”

Trump added: “The choice for the Houthis is clear: Stop shooting at U.S. ships, and we will stop shooting at you. Otherwise, we have only just begun, and the real pain is yet to come, for both the Houthis and their sponsors in Iran.”

Pentagon’s success in destroying Houthi missile and drone arsenal has been largely limited.

Pentagon spent roughly $200 million in munitions against Houthis in three weeks.

US strikes against Houthis could exceed $1 billion by next week.

Source: NYT

— Clash Report (@clashreport) April 4, 2025

The Iran-supported Yemeni militants have vowed to continue fighting so long as Israeli’s military is active in the Gaza Strip. So far there’s been no hint they’ll back down, even in the face of overwhelming US airstrikes.

Authored by Travis Gillmore via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

WASHINGTON—A panel of expert witnesses that included renowned filmmaker Oliver Stone told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform’s Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets on April 1 that more work is needed to uncover the truth about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

“Let us see past the lies, and let us hear what happened,” Stone told the task force. “The truth is the greatest treasure a Socratic soul can attain in this lifetime.”

The three-time Academy Award-winning director released a movie titled “JFK” in 1991 and followed that with a documentary in 2021 called “JFK: Revisited.”

He questioned the role played by the CIA, saying it “operates arrogantly outside our laws.”

A litany of motives for removing Kennedy existed at the time, including those related to expanding the Vietnam War and securing power for the military-industrial complex, among others, according to the director.

“He was changing things, changing too many things too fast. It was a major problem for some, and he was going to win a second election,” Stone told The Epoch Times after the hearing. “And he had a brother, a younger brother, and there was fear of a dynasty. They were terrified of that possibility.”

Expressing doubt about the Warren Commission’s findings in 1964, which fingered Lee Harvey Oswald as a lone gunman responsible for Kennedy’s murder, he asked the committee to reopen an investigation into the incident.

Some lawmakers on the dais acknowledged a need to follow up on questions regarding the chain of custody of evidence and discrepancies in testimony and records related to the crime, saying the lack of transparency over nearly 62 years has eroded trust in government.

“For over six decades, questions have lingered, shrouded in secrecy and speculation,” task force chairwoman Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) said during opening remarks. “What has been alarming to me is the amount of stonewalling the federal government put forth to hide this information from the American people.”

She said revelations in the approximately 80,000 pages of documents that were declassified by President Donald Trump on March 18 are “staggering” and raise “serious concerns.”

Task force members in both parties denounced what they called overclassification and called for increased transparency from the government.

“This is a known fact that we all should agree on. Federal agencies, obviously, have in the past obscured information and key facts from the public for too long,” Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) said during the hearing. “The CIA and [FBI], especially in this period of time, were deeply flawed institutions.”

Others on the panel, however, including Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas), used their allotted time to criticize the sitting president for what she described as a rush to release classified material that could result in the release of private information, such as Social Security numbers.

One witness called to testify, Jefferson Morley—an author and independent journalist who has researched the JFK assassination for 30 years and told the commission that he is a “liberal Democrat”—dismissed the line of inquiry.

He said some of the new files show that James Angleton, longtime counterintelligence chief for the CIA; Richard Helms, who was the director of the CIA; and agency liaison to Congress George Joannides all lied under oath about the killing.

“Obstructing Congress cannot be considered evidence of incompetence,” Morley said. “Three false statements by top CIA officers about Kennedy’s accused killer, that is a pattern. It’s a pattern of misconduct; it’s a pattern of malfeasance.”

Author James DiEugenio highlighted a document written by Arthur Schlesinger—special assistant to Kennedy—and long redacted by the CIA, as of paramount importance in understanding the context of the murder, as it reveals Kennedy’s intention to reorganize the agency and minimize its authority.

He called for a new investigation, warning that “secrecy is the enemy of democracy.”

“I really hope that people will learn from the past and learn from experiences,” DiEugenio told the task force. “The CIA and the FBI should not have the last word on JFK’s murder. You should.”

Sexual entrapment—often called “honey trapping“— has been a common espionage tactic, and intelligence agencies worldwide use it to extract information, compromise targets, and/or gain leverage through blackmail. 

New policies are being rolled out in Washington that prevent U.S. government personnel with security clearances in China from having romantic or sexual relationships with Chinese citizens, according to an AP report. This measure prevents Chinese Communist Party spies from honey-trapping U.S. diplomats. The ban also extends to family members and contractors. 

Here’s more from AP News:

Four people with direct knowledge of the matter told the AP about the policy, which was put into effect by departing U.S. Ambassador Nicholas Burns in January shortly before he left China. The people would speak only on condition of anonymity to discuss details of a confidential new directive.

Though some U.S. agencies already had strict rules on such relationships, a blanket “non-fraternization” policy, as it is known, has been unheard of publicly since the Cold War. It’s not uncommon for American diplomats in other countries to date locals and even marry them.

The ban underscores the increasing threat Washington sees from honeypotting CCP spies targeting U.S. government diplomats and workers. Both countries remain locked in a global superpower race spanning military, AI, trade, and space. President Trump’s “Liberation Day” of new tariffs on China has exacerbated tensions. 

Some risks of modern honey traps include: 

• Cyber-espionage: fake personas on dating apps and social media

• Hidden surveillance: hotel room setups to record compromising situations

• Deep covers: long-term embedded agents posing as business partners or romantic interests

Let’s rewind history back to 2009. Britain’s MI5 circulated a 14-page intelligence briefing titled “The Threat from Chinese Espionage” to hundreds of banks, corporations, and financial institutions. The document warned about a Chinese intelligence campaign to blackmail Western businesspeople through sexual entanglements. It explicitly warned that Chinese spies were seeking to establish “long-term relationships” and had been known to “exploit vulnerabilities such as sexual relationships… to pressure individuals into cooperating with them.”

How can anyone forget U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) and his suspected relations with the Chinese spy “Fang Fang”?

🚨 #BREAKING EXCLUSIVE: Eric Swalwell PANICS when I ask about his Chinese spy girlfriend Fang Fang, and whether that’s a bigger “national security threat” than Elon Musk

I sat next to a drunk Swalwell at dinner for 90 minutes. He was IMMEDIATELY compromised by a group of… pic.twitter.com/DeZg3EJphW

— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) February 25, 2025

. . . 

Submitted by QTR’s Fringe Finance

It has been one whole day since President Trump implemented his tariff agenda.

With the amount of squirming and outright panic in the news media, markets, and on social media, you’d think we were 50 years into a 100-year bout of famine, plague, depression, and pestilence.

Let’s all just gather our heads for a second.

At a very basic psychological level, people are opposed to change. It doesn’t matter whether it’s changing their cable provider or taking a detour in traffic. Extrapolating from this, people are really opposed to bigger, more consequential change.

Extrapolating from this, in the world of finance, I have consistently argued that market participants have been falsely conditioned by our monetary and fiscal policy in this country to always expect comfort and never expect interruptions from the market moving higher, or the quality of life status quo that we believe we are entitled to here in the United States to suffer.

This concept was the basis for my article explaining why I thought the next market crash would “break the brains” of market participants.

Now let’s zoom out and think about what President Trump is trying to accomplish with his tariff agenda. He is essentially saying that the status quo in the United States isn’t working and large changes need to be implemented—changes that will shock the global economy—to remedy the issue.

“Who is the status quo not working for?” some of you will ask me from your Porsche, driving down PCH, or from your desk overseeing your millions in the market.

If I had to venture a guess, I’d say it’s not working for people in towns like this:

Or people whose grandparents used to work at places like this:

And the status quo definitely isn’t working for the bottom 50% of Americans here, represented by the yellow section that is so small you have to zoom in to see it:

Billionaires (other than Trump, it seems) have a difficult time answering questions like “What happens when we run out of middle American towns to gut?” and “How has your quality of life been negatively impacted by monetary policy over the last 20 years?”

The reason they can’t answer these questions is because they don’t have any idea. Monetary policy helps them accrue more wealth and power, and they don’t live in middle America. But if you take a trip to a place like Flint, Michigan, or Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, the answers to these questions become a lot clearer.

Abandoned Bethlehem Steel plant

The direction the country was heading in monetarily and fiscally was simply unsustainable. Deficits too big. Debt skyrocketing against GDP. Wealth gap accelerating. Drug and alcohol addiction ravaging cities.

We were walking a path that decimated the lives and the purchasing power of the people who need it most and took American jobs away from people who needed them the most.

Worse off, it made the United States dependent on adversaries like China to simply go about our day-to-day. When global supply chains were cut off during COVID, it was obvious that our quality of life was 100% dependent on imported goods—everything from consumer electronics to clothing to the ingredients used in pharmaceuticals.

Recalibrating the country away from being dependent on adversarial nations is not a simple and inconsequential thing to do. On the contrary, it’s about as consequential of a decision as we can possibly make, alongside of trying to get our fiscal house as a nation in order.

Consequential means change. Change means discomfort. Discomfort requires courage. On a positive note, to me, it seems like the first time our government has taken more than a 10-day outlook on the future of our nation.

Time and time again, I have complained on this blog that monetary and fiscal policy in this country are run like an infant in a candy store. We do whatever we want, spend whatever we want, throw a tantrum when we don’t get what we want, barely think about the decisions we make, and sacrifice and mortgage anything not nailed down to ensure that our quality of life as it exists today can continue for just one more day (speaking of which, have we audited Fort Knox yet?).

The nearsightedness of our policymaking in this country has been breathtaking.

Trump’s tariff agenda scratches to a halt the record of complacency that’s been playing over the sound system of the United States for the last 50 years. It sends a signal to the world that things aren’t OK the way they’re going and, more importantly, it makes the decision to proactively arrest the problem in its tracks before it reaches a terminus on its own. If the country got into such a precarious position that we had to react to the problem instead of being proactive, we would lose any and all leverage we’d have to make deals to try to recalibrate our position.

🔥 50% OFF FOR LIFE: Using this coupon entitles you to 50% off an annual subscription to Fringe Finance for life: Get 50% off forever

Being proactive about the issue puts us in a position of strength. Yes, even when your precious Apple stock is down 7%.

There are going to be some consequences. Trump knew that in advance. Prices may go up near term, supply of goods may dwindle going forward, and we may go into a recession. But recessions can also create investment opportunities for people that have been priced out of the market for the last 20 years.

And the people bearing the brunt of the negatives of this policy are the same people who disproportionately benefited from the previous policies. The top 1% who got infinitely richer thanks to quantitative easing and now have to go through the horrifying exercise of watching their multimillion-dollar portfolio fall a little bit are going to take larger dollar and quality-of-life hits from this policy than the lower middle class, who likely have very little invested and who probably won’t even notice a difference in quality of life because of the squalor they are already living in.

And as I said at the beginning of the article, it has been one day. One goddamn day.

The shock of this event will eventually begin to wear off, and we will achieve a new level of homeostasis—just maybe with financial asset prices lower. Future volatility may come from a cascading deleveraging in the financial world, and I don’t see this as a negative either. Does Fartcoin still have a bid? Yes? Well then, all the excess that should have been carried out has not been carried out yet. And who knows—maybe at about the same time the lower and middle class starts to get their financial footing, stocks will actually return to somewhat of a reasonable valuation so that John Q. Public can get a chance to take a bite of the apple.

And lest we forget, before you piss yourself any further, many of these consequences are based on the assumption that these tariffs are going to be in place for a long time. Given how quickly Trump has shifted his stance on trade with other countries after negotiating, I don’t really find it probable these tariffs will stay in place for years, as many people are acting like.

Some people want to argue that the policy isn’t a net positive—it’s just generating other trade-offs that “aren’t worth it”. Even if on net balance that’s the case, I still think it’s worth it as a method of breaking the chains of the directional status quo in this country. If we have to rearrange the furniture to bring manufacturing back to the U.S. and give people in middle America something to do other than abuse fentanyl smuggled into our country, I’m for it. Bring manufacturing, not drugs, to Kensington. I’m ready to buy American and I know I’m not alone.

This sea change reverses the gears of a machine that has been in motion for decades. The discomfort in the market and in media means that it’s working. And the idea that we’re doing it proactively is a positive, not a negative.

The very same discomfort you feel that makes you want to cave in and just say tariffs are a bad idea is the same discomfort many foreign leaders will feel. Trump won’t be the only leader under pressure to try to resolve this issue, and so it then becomes a test of wills.

America was a country founded by rugged individuals, but there’s nothing rugged about throwing a fit because your NASDAQ investment, up 150% over the last 5 years, is down 5% today — especially when the “problem” likely will be resolved to some degree within a matter of weeks, if not months.

For the (strongly) opposing view, which I always suggest you consider, you can read this piece by my friend Anton Wahlman, with whom I usually agree on most things finance and politics.

QTR’s Disclaimer: Please read my full legal disclaimer on my About page here. This post represents my opinions only. In addition, please understand I am an idiot and often get things wrong and lose money. I may own or transact in any names mentioned in this piece at any time without warning. Contributor posts and aggregated posts have been hand selected by me, have not been fact checked and are the opinions of their authors. They are either submitted to QTR by their author, reprinted under a Creative Commons license with my best effort to uphold what the license asks, or with the permission of the author.

This is not a recommendation to buy or sell any stocks or securities, just my opinions. I often lose money on positions I trade/invest in. I may add any name mentioned in this article and sell any name mentioned in this piece at any time, without further warning. None of this is a solicitation to buy or sell securities. I may or may not own names I write about and are watching. Sometimes I’m bullish without owning things, sometimes I’m bearish and do own things. Just assume my positions could be exactly the opposite of what you think they are just in case. If I’m long I could quickly be short and vice versa. I won’t update my positions. All positions can change immediately as soon as I publish this, with or without notice and at any point I can be long, short or neutral on any position. You are on your own. Do not make decisions based on my blog. I exist on the fringe. The publisher does not guarantee the accuracy or completeness of the information provided in this page. These are not the opinions of any of my employers, partners, or associates. I did my best to be honest about my disclosures but can’t guarantee I am right; I write these posts after a couple beers sometimes. I edit after my posts are published because I’m impatient and lazy, so if you see a typo, check back in a half hour. Also, I just straight up get shit wrong a lot. I mention it twice because it’s that important.

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

A mob of roughly 30 masked protesters at UC Davis attacked a tent for a conservative student group, the UC Davis chapter of Turning Point USA. It proceeded to destroy the tent and displays without any intervention from campus police, who were shown standing nearby.  The police followed the rampaging mob and did not attempt to detain anyone. The mob appears to have been led by Antifa members, a violent anti-free speech group.

Dressed in their signature black with masks and umbrellas, the group tore down the tent and assaulted some of the students by shoving and grabbing them. They actually returned to finish the job. The protesters carried a large banner with the words “ACAB,” which stands for all cops are bastards.

The university said in a news release that it is investigating. 

However, the university insisted, “The event with the guest speaker took place on schedule and was completed without further incident. The university protected the free speech rights of the campus community throughout the event.”

“Without further incident” has the “other than that, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln?”

One question is whether Davis will look into why the campus police stood and watched these protesters assault students and tear down a tent without trying to detain a single person. They merely walked behind the mob as it carried off the bits and pieces of the displays and tents.

The student group was about to host Brandon Tatum,  a black conservative and former police officer.

Our “Prove Me Wrong” tabling event with @TheOfficerTatum at UC Davis was completely destroyed by violent protesters.

They stole the canopy, ripped down banners, smashed foam boards, and even tried to steal the iPad and laptop of a @tpusastudents field rep.

TPUSA students were… pic.twitter.com/VlBVOxX6ZU

— Turning Point USA (@TPUSA) April 3, 2025

TPUSSA stated that the “Our ‘Prove Me Wrong’ tabling event was utterly destroyed:

“They stole the canopy, ripped down banners, smashed foam boards, and even tried to steal the iPad and laptop of a @tpusastudents field rep. TPUSA students were shoved and had objects thrown at them—while police did nothing,” the organization stated. 

“Only after the damage was done did law enforcement finally form a perimeter. This is the reality of free speech on campus.”

Political violence from the left is on the rise across the nation, fueled by the rage rhetoric of Democratic leaders and commentators.

As I discuss in my new book, “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” Antifa began as a movement that began in Germany:

“Antifa originated with European anarchist and Marxist groups from the 1920s, particularly Antifaschistische Aktion, a Communist group from the Weimar Republic before World War II. Its name resulted from the shortening of the German word antifaschistisch. In the United States, the modern movement emerged through the Anti- Racist Action (ARA) groups, which were dominated by anarchists and Marxists. It has an association with the anarchist organization Love and Rage, which was founded by former Trotsky and Marxist followers as well as offshoots like Mexico’s Amor Y Rabia. The oldest U.S. group is likely the Rose City Antifa (RCA) in Portland, Oregon, which would become the center of violent riots during the Trump years. The anarchist roots of the group give it the same organizational profile as such groups in the early twentieth century with uncertain leadership and undefined structures.”

Despite the denial of its existence by figures like Rep. Jerry Nadler (D., N.Y.), I have long written and spoken about the threat of Antifa to free speech on our campuses and in our communities. This includes testimony before Congress on Antifa’s central role in the anti-free speech movement nationally.

As I have previously written, it has long been the “Keyser Söze” of the anti-free speech movement, a loosely aligned group that employs measures to avoid easy detection or association.  Yet, FBI Director Chris Wray has repeatedly pushed back on the denials of Antifa’s work or violence. In one hearing, Wray stated “And we have quite a number” — and “Antifa is a real thing. It’s not a fiction.”

We have continued to follow the attacks and arrests of Antifa followers across the country, including attacks on journalists.

Some Democrats have played a dangerous game in supporting or excusing the work of Antifa. Former Democratic National Committee deputy chair Keith Ellison, now the Minnesota attorney general, once said Antifa would “strike fear in the heart” of Trump. This was after Antifa had been involved in numerous acts of violence and its website was banned in Germany.

Ellison’s son, Minneapolis City Council member Jeremiah Ellison, declared his allegiance to Antifa in the heat of the protests this summer. During a prior hearing, Democratic senators refused to clearly denounce Antifa and falsely suggested that the far right was the primary cause of recent violence. Likewise, Joe Biden has dismissed objections to Antifa as just “an idea.”

It is at its base a movement at war with free speech, defining the right itself as a tool of oppression. That purpose is evident in what is called the “bible” of the Antifa movement: Rutgers Professor Mark Bray’s Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook.

Bray emphasizes the struggle of the movement against free speech: “At the heart of the anti-fascist outlook is a rejection of the classical liberal phrase that says, ‘I disapprove of what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it.’”

Bray admits that “most Americans in Antifa have been anarchists or antiauthoritarian communists…  From that standpoint, ‘free speech’ as such is merely a bourgeois fantasy unworthy of consideration.”

The increasing political violence from the left continues on a daily basis with only cursory coverage from the media. Even a department head was shown this week destroyed a table of conservative students.

This is the sense of license that comes from an age of rage. The fact is that this video shows how these groups are enabled by the culture in higher education.

It is reminiscent of the defiance shown by arrested Antifa member Jason Charter, who declared “The Movement is winning” after his own arrest.

It is a movement that has been further enabled by government officials who rationalize their actions or offer little deterrence to their conduct. For example, molotov cocktail throwing lawyers in New York were given relatively light sentences under the Biden Administration.

Then there was Thomas “Tas” Alexander Starks, 31, of Lisbon, N.D., a self-avowed Antifa member took an axe to the office of Sen. John Hoeven’s in Fargo on Dec. 21, 2020. Federal sentencing guidelines suggested 10–16 months in prison but he was only sentenced to probation and fined $2,784 for restitution . . . he then reportedly mocked the FBI for returning his axe.  After his light sentence, Starks posted last month that it was all effectively a joke: “Look what the FBI were kind enough to give back to me!”

Scenes like the one on the campus of UC Davis will only encourage further attacks. The police acted as mere pedestrians as a mob engaged in political violence against students.

On Thursday US senators voted overwhelmingly to reject two resolutions of disapproval on Washington’s massive arms transfers and other military assistance to Israel. The Trump White House has greenlit an estimated $20 billion arms so far, and this is largely a continuation of prior Biden administration policy.

In particular the resolutions sought to block the sale of $8.8 billion in bombs and munitions to Israel, and were offered by Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

But they received the support of only 15 out of 45 Democrats in the Senate, with the final allies being 82-15 and 83-15 in the two votes.

“The United States must end our complicity in these atrocities, we cannot be part of this any longer,” Sanders said in a video statement released the day prior to the Senate vote. Liberal icon Sanders, it should be noted, is Jewish but has long criticized Israel for human rights abuses.

The “no” votes were as follows:

Among the four senators who voted in favor of Sanders’s resolutions in November and who who flipped their votes on Thursday to “No” was Senator Jon Ossoff of Georgia, who is likely to face an intense reelection challenge from Republicans in 2026.

The others were fellow Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock, New Hampshire Senator Jeanne Shaheen — who announced earlier this month she will not seek reelection next year — and Maine Senator Angus King, an Independent who caucuses with Democrats.

And further, “The other fourteen Democrats who voted in favor of blocking weapons to Israel were Mazie Hirono, Ben Ray Luján, Bernie Sanders, Chris Van Hollen, Jeff Merkley, Ed Markey, Tim Kaine, Elizabeth Warren, Martin Heinrich, Brian Schatz, Tina Smith, Dick Durbin, Peter Welch and Chris Murphy.”

The vote happened the same day that President Trump previewed a coming visit by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to the US. It would mark his second visit since the The Hague’s International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for him.

“I think he’s going to be coming to the country some time in the not-so-distant future. Maybe next week,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One.

It has now been 30 days with NO humanitarian aid getting into Gaza.

No food, no water, no medicine, no fuel.

That is barbaric. The U.S. must end our complicity in these atrocities. pic.twitter.com/Ix3IVrDHNg

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) April 3, 2025

Netanyahu has been in Hungary this week, which just pulled out of membership in the ICC, despite the country being a founding member. Prime Minister Viktor Orban complained that the court has become a “political tool” – a perspective which non-member Washington shares.