Authored by Andrew Korybko via substack,

The US might go along with this though to accelerate the decline of Germany’s “peaceful” hegemony over the bloc in favor of a “multipolar EU” led by a combination of Poland, France, Italy, and others.

Germany’s likely next chancellor Friedrich Merz declared on Sunday after the snap elections’ results started streaming in that he envisages helping his country “achieve independence” from the US. This is a dramatic statement that few could have foreseen any German leader saying just several months ago but that just goes to show how fundamentally Trump 2.0 is revolutionizing International Relations. Here’s what he told a televised roundtable about his foreign policy plans:

“The interventions (meddling) from Washington were no less dramatic and drastic and ultimately outrageous than the interventions we have seen from Moscow. We are under such massive pressure from two sides that my top priority is to create unity in Europe.

My absolute priority will be to strengthen Europe as quickly as possible so that, step by step, we can really achieve independence from the USA.

I would never have believed that I would have to say something like that on television. But at the very least, after Donald Trump’s statements last week, it is clear that the Americans – at least this part of the Americans in this administration – are largely indifferent to the fate of Europe.”

That’ll be a lot easier said than done for several reasons. 

To begin with, Germany hosts around 50,000 US troops at five Army garrisons and two Air Force bases. The US also displaced China as Germany’s top trade partner last year. Moreover, the US became Germany’s largest LNG partner last year too, which covered around 9% of its total gas usage last December. These three factors make it difficult for Germany to “achieve independence” from the US but the US might also go along with this for its own purposes.

Many of its troops in Germany can be redeployed to Asia for containing China and/or to Poland as part of that country’s power play to replace Germany as the US’ top ally in Europe. While casual observers might interpret these outcomes as victories for the military dimension of Merz’s policy, they’d come at a huge economic cost to the local communities that are employed by these US bases and receive their troops’ business. This observation segues into the US’ trade leverage over Germany.

While some think that Trump’s threatened tariffs can create strategic openings for China, at present, the EU is actually working with the US to prevent Chinese “overcapacities” in steel and other products from flooding the bloc as they desperately search for new markets amidst Trump’s new tariffs. In other words, Trump’s tariffs have thus far created a domino effect where China tries to dump newly tariffed products onto the EU, which in turn considers tariffing these same products. This works to the US’ advantage.

Lastly, the only realistic way for Germany to “achieve independence” from the US in the energy sphere is to lead the EU in removing the bloc’s anti-Russian sanctions and agreeing to import pipeline gas from it once more, but the Baltic States and Poland stand in the way. Not only that, but the whole reason behind the latest transatlantic rift is Trump’s comparatively softer approach towards Russia, not him going harder on it than they are. It would therefore contradict their logic to lift sanctions on Russia.

Nevertheless, the past three years proved that Germany is willing to sacrifice its objective national interests in pursuit of ideological goals, which in the most recent context refer to signaling displeasure with Trump over his policies towards Russia (and to a lesser extent their domestic socio-legal affairs). Accordingly, it might therefore try to make good on Merz’s pledge to “achieve independence” from the US through the previously mentioned means, though this could be counterproductive as was explained.

Even so, the US might still go along with it by using this as the pretext for redeploying most of its troops in Germany to Asia and/or Poland, which could occur in parallel with targeted sanctions against Germany and the punitive curtailment of the LNG upon which around 1/10th of its gas industry now depends. The combined effect could be economically devastating enough to prompt snap elections or at the very least accelerate the decline of Germany’s “peaceful” hegemony over the bloc in favor of a “multipolar EU”.

What’s meant by that concept is the diversification of power from Germany to a combination of Poland, France, Italy, and others, each of which have strategic bilateral significances for the US such as controlling Central Europe, managing African affairs, and monitoring the Mediterranean. There’d be some collateral damage together with twists and turns along the way, but the processes that the US could set into motion in response to whatever Merz might do could forever change the EU to Germany’s detriment.

Authored by R. Jordan Prescott via RealClearDefense,

With unprecedented zeal, Special Government Employee Elon Musk and his DOGE team have descended upon multiple agencies to execute its cost cutting agenda. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has said DOGE will be welcomed at the department but simply accessing its accounting systems will not provide the visibility needed. The Department of Defense has failed seven consecutive audits, its financial information systems are a disaster, and solutions have been elusive.

Thou Shalt Be Audited

In 1990, Congress passed The Chief Financial Officer Act and one provision required every agency to be audited in full. Between 1991 and 2013, DOD only subjected itself to partial audits. In 2014, Congress required DOD to comply in full by 2018.

Unsurprisingly, DOD failed this first audit. The DOD Inspector General identified 20 material weaknesses, which are shortcomings that, in simple terms, means errors will occur but they won’t be caught or corrected before it is too late.

For the next seven years, audits never reported less than 25 material weaknesses. The associated “notifications of findings and recommendations” would average almost 2,500 reissued and 850 new NFRs every between 2019 and 2023.

Big Checkbook, Antiquated Calculators 

Two major deficiencies have persisted throughout — the Fund Balance with Treasury (the department’s checking account) and Information Technology.

In the former, the department can’t balance its $800 billion-plus checkbook and lacks the tools to research discrepancies or produce the receipts.

On the latter, the department simply has too many obsolete systems; in 2021 the DODIG reported the department wouldn’t be retiring 140 legacy systems until 2036.

In 2017, the department’s Chief Financial Officer began using a data platform called Advana to build the missing universe of transactions so desperately needed to support auditability.

However, Advana is a data repository, not a tool for validating data; reliability is the responsibility of system owner from which Advana is drawing. Moreover, Advana does not have access to data across the entire department.

To overcome these challenges, the Deputy Secretary of Defense “decreed” in May 2021 that data sharing would be maximized. More pointedly, Advana would be the “single source of truth” for objective, informed decision-making.

Beginning with the 2022 audit, the DODIG began recommending the department use Advana to address the aforementioned Fund Balance with Treasury deficiency.

In May 2023, the Government Accountability Office credited the department with progress but noted its remedial plans still lacked basic details, such as interim dates to track the steps taken to achieve auditability.

Similarly, the DODIG identified problems with Advana. In October 2024, the DODIG examined whether billions of dollars in Ukraine assistance had been used in accordance with federal law.

The DODIG tersely reported “DOD did not.”

The DODIG found the department did not have documentation for $1.1 billion in outlays. More notably, the DODIG identified the amount as Questioned Costs, those transactions that may constitute legal or regulatory violations.

To date, Congress has appropriated $111 billion in Ukraine assistance

In 2025, the DOD budget totals $850 billion and the Senate Armed Services Committee Chair is aggressively pursuing a $200 billion increase.

Even a conservative (e.g. generous) projection of ten percent in questioned costs would mean almost $100 billion in transactions that could be violations of law or regulations.

Follow the Blockchain … 

To extract itself from its fiduciary quagmire, DOD should embrace blockchains.

Blockchains are a secure means of executing and recording transactions without the need for a central authority. Per its protocols, transactions are recorded transparently and permanently; the data is synchronized in real time and shared in full by all stakeholders.

Inherently immutable, blockchains ensure data integrity, transparency, and above all, auditability.

To its credit, Congress has encouraged DOD to use the technology. According to a 2018 congressionally-mandated study, adoption would improve cybersecurity, supply chain efficiency, continuity of operations, and, most importantly, auditability.

An Air Force Institute of Technology publication from 2022 also examined the advantages of employing blockchains.

First and foremost, the publication acknowledged DOD blockchains could not mirror Bitcoin, which permits anyone to have access and the ability to record transactions. Instead, the sensitivity of data and need to restrict user rights dictated that a DOD blockchain would be a “permissioned private” database, not Bitcoin’s permissionless public variant.

To demonstrate its effectiveness, the publication summarized its application by Walmart, a common comparison given the company’s size and logistical sophistication.

In 2020, Walmart launched the “world’s largest blockchain industrial application solution” to date.

Under its existing system, disputes over Canada-based invoices occurred in approximately 70% of deliveries and required labor-intensive investigations taking six and eight months to resolve. While Walmart found paying the disputed amount easier, it also meant paying a 38 percent overage.

The contracted provider configured a blockchain within eight months and conducted a two-month pilot. The results were such that Walmart swiftly moved all seventy of its Canadian suppliers on the blockchain by 2022. The blockchain reduced disputes to 1.5% of all deliveries, dispute resolution times shortened, and the company saved millions.

The provider was DLT Labs, a small Canadian company founded in 2017 – not a major prime charging hundreds of billions.

The blockchain was a distributed ledger architecture that had been developed by a non-profit launched in 2015 by the Linux Foundation — not a multi-year acquisition program.

The publication also demonstrated how the Walmart blockchain outperformed current DOD accounting systems in terms of lifecycle costs, transaction throughput, and error rates.

Lastly, the publication catalogued how blockchains satisfied existing regulatory regimes governing information technologies and would address its audit deficiencies.

While the confrontation between a trillionaire and a trillion-dollar entity will be epic, the brutal reality is neither will win because defense spending is the quintessential unknown unknown.

In the thirty-four years since the first required audit, DOD has lived down to the low expectations ascribed to government bureaucracies. Congress is now requiring the department to pass an audit by 2028.

The department’s financial systems are marred by unreliable data and archaic technologies. Blockchains constitute an elegant solution to these failings and more.

R. Jordan Prescott is a private contractor working in defense and national security since 2002. He has been published in The National Interest, Small Wars Journal, Modern War Institute, 19fortyfive, and RealClearDefense.

The global space economy reached $596 billion in 2024 and is projected to grow to $944 billion by 2033.

This graphic, via Visual Capitalist’s Bruno Venditti, illustrates the size of the space economy as of December 2024, based on data compiled by Novaspace.

The space economy includes government agencies and companies involved in the production and launch of satellites and spacecraft, data generation, Earth-based infrastructure, R&D programs, and more.

Over 10,000 Satellites Orbit the Earth

Space-based applications that are enabled by space, such as weather forecasting, remote sensing, satellite navigation systems, and satellite television, make up the largest portion of the market, representing $308 billion.

Satellite services are another major component of the space economy, generating $137 billion per year. Currently, over 10,000 satellites orbit the Earth, with SpaceX, led by Elon Musk, controlling half of the market.

Upward Trajectory

2024 set spaceflight records for the fourth consecutive year, with 259 launches worldwide—an average of one launch attempt every 34 hours, according to a recent analysis of the global space economy.

The study, published by The Space Report, also predicts that the pace of launches will continue to rise this year.

The U.S. dominated the launch cycle in 2024, outpacing China by more than 2-to-1, according to the report. Meanwhile, Russia significantly increased the number of satellites it deployed into Earth orbit, rising from 21 in 2023 to 98 in 2024.

If you enjoyed this post, check out Visualized: Every Moon in the Solar System on Voronoi, the new app from Visual Capitalist.

Authored by Thomas DiLorenzo via The Mises Institute,

Ludwig von Mises called the universities of his day “nurseries of socialism” because of the inevitable socialist bias of all government-funded universities. He also said that there is always a remnant of students, however, that does not buy into the endless drumbeat about the alleged wonders of socialism and the “imperfections” of free-market capitalism. It is this remnant that the Mises Institute devotes so much effort to educating and inspiring in the Misesian/Rothbardian tradition. 

The vast majority of today’s American universities have become incubators of socialism to a far greater extent than anything Mises experienced. They have produced generations of students who are well versed in all the left-wing platitudes about just about everything even if they lack the most elementary critical thinking skills. (So-called “critical theory,” invented by Marxist law professors, is not about critical thinking but criticizing the critics of socialism and all the institutions of Western civilization). The unique incentive systems in American universities have made this possible.

Almost all universities are either government funded state universities, or private nonprofit sector universities that receive significant amounts of government subsidies, making them de facto state universities. (Remember: He who takes the king’s shilling becomes the king’s man). As such, they have no real customers in a business sense. Students do not think of themselves as customers in the sense that they are customers of say, Starbucks or a pizza joint. They rarely pay the tuition bills for one thing; mom and dad or the taxpayers do, or the banks that extend to them student loans. Parents may pay the tuition bills but it is the children who receive the primary benefits of higher education, if such benefits even exist. Thus, consumer pressure that leads to consumer sovereignty is very weak.

There are no stockholders in government or private, nonprofit universities, so neither is there stockholder pressure as with private competitive businesses. On top of that there is supercharged rational ignorance. When we acquire information during the course of our lives it is mostly to get through school, get and keep a job, raise a family, buy houses and cars, etc. Private affairs. We spend relatively little informing ourselves about government policy. Besides, government at all levels is so gargantuan that no human mind could possibly comprehend a tiny fraction of one percent of what governments do. We are rationally ignorant of it for the most part. Universities are the same way, but in addition, many people are intimidated by people with Ph.D. degrees in the same sense they are somewhat worshipful and intimidated by medical doctors. So they don’t question them very often. Rational ignorance is supercharged when it comes to universities and doctors. 

The boards of directors of universities are primarily composed of yes men and women who rubber stamp the decisions of the administrators for the most part. To oppose them might jeopardize the main reasons they are on the board of trustees in the first place: to improve their social lives, local reputations, and business connections. University boards were easily intimidated into acquiescing in the latest synonym for socialism, “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” with its threats of calling critics racists or sexists. 

At some universities the university president can fire board members rather than the other way around.

When yours truly first arrived at Loyola University Maryland in the early 90s a senior faculty member recalled how Loyola alumnus Tom Clancey, the famous author, was not invited back to the board after he complained too much that the son of a mail man like himself could no longer afford the tuition. 

So-called peer-reviewed research is not all that it is made out to be. So much university research is government funded, that “peer reviewers” are often very careful not to allow the publication of much literature (if any) that criticizes the state. Try having a career as an environmental scientist who criticizes the EPA, or as an agricultural economist who criticizes the massive interventionism of the Department of Agriculture. Even modern physics is almost entirely devoted to military applications. Economist Larry White published a research article that revealed that almost three fourths of all peer reviewed articles in monetary economics were authored by economists with some connection to the Fed. As Milton Friedman once said, if one wants a career as a monetary economist, it is best not to criticize the major employer in your field. 

Let’s not forget also that the Italian communist Antonio Gramsci’s theory about “the long march through the institutions” to turn a country communist was first spread in universities, and is still metastasizing there. The extreme left-wing bias among university faculty is proof, moreover, that most faculties are enemies of academic freedom despite all their false claims otherwise. 

Because of the near absence of customer and stockholder pressures – or even elections as with government – university administrators often behave like dictatorial tyrants who answer to no one. This causes younger conservative or libertarian faculty members to cower in fear that the university administrators might discover that they have politically unacceptable ideas like respect for property rights, the rule of law, or God forbid, free enterprise.

University faculties are mostly paid like government bureaucrats with rigid pay scales that go by seniority rather than merit. Faculty committees are typically controlled by the least scholarly faculty members due to the fact that to the more productive scholars the opportunity cost of spending endless hours sitting in unproductive committee meetings is too high. It’s the low opportunity cost faculty who make university policy by committee. 

Ever since the American economy moved from being dominated by sole proprietorships to corporations the Left has complained about the separation of ownership from control. In corporations the stockholders are the owners and management is composed of their agents who are entrusted to earn profits for them. Who, but the taxpayers, are the “owners” of a state-funded university? And what control do they have over what goes on? 

Universities are incubators of socialism because they are themselves socialist institutions funded by taxpayers with Rube Goldberg style incentive systems. 

This article is adapted from a talk delivered at Educating for Liberty: Mises Circle in Tampa.

The Kremlin has pointed out on Wednesday that there appears as yet no actual US-Ukraine mineral deal, even as President Zelensky is expected at the White House Friday to sign a finalized agreement.

Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow hasn’t been confirmation that anything on this front has been reached. “So far, there are no official statements on this matter. We have only heard that Zelensky seemed to be going to Washington on Friday,” Peskov told reporters.

He expressed doubt that anything final and with substance will be signed, saying “There will probably be attempts to make this visit somewhat substantive.”

Zelensky’s own words strongly suggests he’s headed to Washington even though details have not been agreed to or fully worked out.

“This is a start, this is a framework agreement,” Zelensky told reporters in his latest remarks. “This deal could be a great success or simply disappear. Whether it’s a big success, I think, depends on our conversation with President Trump. We’ll draw conclusions after.”

Trump has articulated the minerals deal in a way that has raised fears of deep future US entanglement in Ukraine…

Trump says the Ukraine minerals “deal” means the US will be “on the land” in Ukraine, and this gives Ukraine “automatic security” because no one will be “messing with our people.” He also backs deploying French and British “so-called peacekeeping” troops (NATO troops) to Ukraine pic.twitter.com/NdqGjmSNAv

— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) February 26, 2025

Zelensky wants security guarantees, but that’s not what the draft says, only that the US “supports Ukraine’s efforts to obtain security guarantees needed to establish lasting peace,” without making explicit commitments.

A Tuesday FT headlines said an agreement had been reached, and soon after Trump touted that Zelensky would be at the White House Friday to ink a final deal on rare earths and mineral access.

Most international reports agree that though Zelensky’s visit to Washington looks certain, a final singed deal is still anything but certain, and remains up in the air:

Reports suggested a US request for $500bn (£395bn) in potential revenues from using Ukraine’s natural resources had been dropped. But we also learnt that Ukrainian security guarantees had not made their way into the deal – something Kyiv has been pushing for.

Twenty-four hours later, little more is known. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenksy has said it’s important that at least a “sentence” about guarantees is included, but US President Donald Trump reiterated his stance that such assurances should be made by Europe, Ukraine’s “next door neighbor”.

We do, however, know Trump and Zelensky will thrash out the terms of the agreement in a meeting in Washington DC on Friday. Trump said so during his first cabinet meeting – during which he also hinted at a possible Russia-Ukraine ceasefire, suggesting Russian President Vladimir Putin would need to make “concessions” for that to happen.

Journalist Michael Tracey has said, based on reviewing the draft, that the scope goes far beyond just minerals…

It’s not even really accurate to call this a “minerals” deal. Ukraine is obliged to turn over 50% of revenues from *all extractable natural resources* as well as physical infrastructure like ports and refineries! Trump wants to “own” a huge swath of the entire country’s assets! pic.twitter.com/7USI1R6IQr

— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) February 26, 2025

Tracey concluded, “This is sweeping enough that it could easily qualify as a Treaty requiring Senate Ratification but don’t hold your breath for that.”

Authored by Peter Jacobsen via the Foundation for Economic Education,

Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is signaling the end of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The USAID website is currently down, and employees have been locked out of computer systems.

USAID has a controversial history and has been accused of imperialism by the left and waste and corruption by the right. In a previous article discussing National Security Study Memorandum 200, I highlighted one of these issues: a government document that proposed utilizing USAID (among other levers) to lower the population in developing countries under the guise of providing aid.

Many defenders of USAID argue that the fiscal concern behind Musk’s offensive is overblown because the agency represents less than 1 percent of the federal budget.

However, the fact that USAID is a small part of the budget gives us no information on whether or not it should be removed. In fact, it’s likely one of the best places to start slashing government spending. Why?

1) Bigger Cuts Cost More

If your goal is to cut down on spending, whether personal or government, larger expenditures are better to cut, everything else held constant. If you cut an item that represents 15 percent of your expenses instead of 5 percent, you’ll be making a bigger impact with—in theory—the same amount of effort. However, some things are more expensive to cut than others.

For example, personal finance classes often suggest that people can save by cutting back on meals out or buying coffee. Yet for most people, the monthly cost of eating out or getting coffee is a tiny fraction of their overall budget (much like USAID). So why start there?

You start with that because it is easy to cut those things out of life relative to big-ticket items.

For most people, expenditures on rent and mortgage payments dwarf coffee spending; however, it’s very difficult to lower spending on housing and transportation! For someone who has very little income to go around, even cheap housing will be expensive relative to his or her whole budget, and transportation is necessary for most jobs.

In the long run, people may be able to cut housing expenditures by finding roommates or downsizing, but the point is that in the short run, these big-ticket budgets are hard to modify. As such, cutting Starbucks and restaurant meals may be the easiest first step when we are struggling to make ends meet.

The same goes for the U.S. government. The big-ticket items for the budget (Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security) will be very difficult to address. Since those benefits are so large, modifying them will be expensive, both politically and financially. As such, even if these categories ultimately need to be tackled, this doesn’t imply that the government should be financially irresponsible with small expenditures in the short term.

In deciding what to cut, it isn’t just the total expenditures that should be considered; so should the difficulty associated with cutting it. Saying USAID is too small to cut is ignoring this important consideration. I put it like this on X:

“1 [percent] of the budget does not sound like a big cut, until you realize that getting a budget under control usually involves making lots of small cuts since large cuts are often infeasible.”

Ultimately, to borrow a modern version of a phrase coined by Benjamin Franklin, a penny saved is a penny earned. Small progress is still progress.

2) 0.7 Percent Is Not 0.7 Percent

The other problem with the “It’s only 0.7 percent” argument is that this view is too simplistic. In an accounting sense, it’s true that USAID accounts for only 0.7 percent of total spending. However, USAID’s impact on spending is not limited to what the department itself spends. USAID is a part of a network that includes various federal agencies and bureaucrats. These agencies can sometimes act as a team that works to increase overall spending. To understand this dynamic, we need to look at the economics of team production.

Economists Armen Alchian and Harold Demsetz were the first to highlight the importance of team production in firm decision-making. Team production is based on a pretty simple idea: The sum is greater than the parts.

Let’s say Patrick and I start a moving company. Imagine I can move 15 things per hour by myself and Patrick can move 20 by himself. However, if we work together, we move 40 things. In other words, working together makes us more productive than each person working individually put together (40>15+20).

The reason for this is obvious—some objects are better moved by teams. It would take an individual a really long time to move a couch by himself. Working as a team is more than doubly fast.

Since some of the boxes are essentially being produced by “the team,” it’s hard to account for who’s responsible for them.

In for-profit business, teams work together to produce revenue. But in government bureaucracies, teams often work together to grow their budgets (see this article for more detail).

So when the Department of Defense puts together its budget proposal and they use studies conducted by USAID to justify it, who is responsible for the increase? Well, the whole increase will be attributed to the DOD, but clearly USAID is partly responsible.

In this sense, bureaucracy has the ability to feed on itself, thereby making the impact of a relatively small bureau such as USAID harder to account for.

3) Establishing a Precedent

The last reason shutting down USAID is important can be highlighted with the following question: What was the last standing U.S. government department to be shut down permanently?

Can you think of one? Congratulations if so, because I can’t. The closest thing I can find is departments being renamed (Department of War became Department of Defense) or temporary departments being shuttered (such as the National Recovery Administration). But even in the latter case, much of the department got turned into what is now the Small Business Administration.

Shutting down USAID would set an important precedent. Our government, and society, needs to build up experience with and infrastructure for shutting down government bureaus. Complaining that USAID should not be a target for cuts because it is small is like complaining that someone is going on a five-minute run in an attempt to train for a marathon.

Of course a five-minute run doesn’t solve your problem of getting ready for the marathon by itself. That isn’t the point. The point is that the five-minute run gets your body used to running for five minutes. You increase from there.

For my money, the shutdown of USAID will be an important bellwether, indicating that Trump’s administration has the power to take on the deep state. If he can’t remove USAID, there’s no chance he’ll take on anything bigger.

Furthermore, I see this as a bellwether for the country itself. If the deep state in the United States is so strong that it’s impossible to cut off even an agency established by executive order that makes up only 0.7 percent of the budget, how can we expect to deal with an exploding debt interest problem and an insolvent social security system?

Many in D.C. scoff when you talk about the national debt. After all, people have been warning about the debt for decades now. However, as one of my friends recently pointed out, countries are never in sovereign debt crises—until they are.

*  *  *

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

Attorney General Pam Bondi announced on Wednesday evening that she’s going to release DOJ files on dead pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

“You said last week that you had the Epstein files on your desk. When can we see them?” asked Fox News‘ Jesse Watters.

“Jesse, there are well over – this will make you sick, 200 victims. Well over… over 250 actually. So we have to make sure that their identity is protected, and their personal information. But other than that, I think tomorrow Jesse – breaking news right now, you’re going to see some Epstein information being released by my office.“

“What kind? Are we going to see who was on the flights? Are we going to see any evidence from what he recorded – because he had all of his homes wired with recording devices,” Watters asked.

“What you’re going to see, hopefully tomorrow, is a lot of flight logs, a lot of names, a lot of information… it’s pretty sick what that man did,” Bondi continued.

Watch:

BREAKING NEWS: US Attorney General @PamBondi says we can expect brand new Jeffrey Epstein details TOMORROW. Expect flight logs and names… pic.twitter.com/dMn4nkKefV

— Jesse Watters (@JesseBWatters) February 27, 2025

Epstein, a financier and convicted sex offender was found dead in a New York jail cell while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. While his death was rules a suicide, he was also good friends with the Clintons and several other high-profile figures such as Bill Gates, Britain’s Prince Andrew, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, former Barclays CEO and ‘Disney princess‘ aficionado Jes Staley, Larry Summers, Harvey Weinstein, and former Victoria’s Secret boss Les Wexner.

Here are the flight logs which have already been released.

Media Room?

Watters’ question about recordings stems from earlier reporting that the deceased sex trafficker’s homes were wired with recording devices.

In late 2019, Jeffrey Epstein victim Maria Farmer alleged that the deceased pedophile had a “media room” on the first floor where high-profile johns were allegedly recorded having sex with women and children.

“So if you’re facing the house, there’s a window on the right that’s barred – that’s the room, the ‘media room’ is what he called it,” Farmer said. “And so there was a door that looked like an invisible door with all this limestone and everything and you push it and you go in and I saw all the cameras.”

Maria said: “What it was – was like old televisions basically, like stacked.“

“They were monitors inside this cabinet and there were men sitting here and I looked on the cameras and I saw toilet, toilet, bed, bed, toilet, bed.

“And I was like I’m never going to use the restroom here and I am never going to sleep here.” –The Sun

The claim was supported in a 2024 lawsuit by two women – Danielle Bensky and Jane Doe 3, who said Epstein employed a sophisticated system involving constant CCTV surveillance within his New York mansion.

Bondi’s appearance came hours after the DOJ appeared to give Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) the brush-off, telling her in a Wednesday letter that they are “reviewing your requests and look forward to engaging further to accommodate your oversight and legislative needs.”

On the campaign trail, Donald Trump suggested that he would be open to releasing the Epstein list, while Bondi said in November that anyone named in the documents who are “still fighting to keep their names private, Sean, they have no legal basis to do so unless they’re a child, a victim or a cooperating defendant.”

My office just received a formal response from the DOJ on the Jeffrey Epstein, JFK, MLK, & RFK files.

Read below👇 pic.twitter.com/gooBBQRlAq

— Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (@RepLuna) February 26, 2025

Last week Bondi told Fox News that she had the Epstein files “sitting on my desk right now to review.”

*  *  *

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Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times,

A federal judge in Florida has ruled that video-sharing platform Rumble and Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), the parent company of Truth Social, are not required to comply with gag orders issued by a Brazilian Supreme Court justice.

The orders, issued by Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, had demanded the removal of U.S.-based accounts belonging to a prominent supporter of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, in a case raising concerns over international judicial overreach and free speech rights in the United States.

In a Feb. 25 ruling, U.S. District Judge Mary Scriven found that Moraes’s orders were unenforceable in the United States because they were not properly served under international law, including the Hague Convention and the U.S.–Brazil Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty.

“Under well-established law, Plaintiffs are not obligated to comply with the directives and pronouncements, and no one is authorized or obligated to assist in their enforcement against Plaintiffs or their interests here in the United States,” the judge wrote.

However, the judge denied without prejudice a request for a temporary restraining order filed by Rumble and TMTG, ruling that the case is not ripe for judicial review because no enforcement action had been taken against the two companies in the United States. This means the case could be revived if Brazilian authorities or another entity attempt to enforce the orders.

The lawsuit, brought by Rumble and TMTG on Feb. 19, accused Moraes of engaging in illegal censorship by issuing gag orders to suppress the U.S. accounts of a “well-known politically outspoken user” of Rumble, referred to in the complaint as “Political Dissident A,” later identified as Allan dos Santos. A supporter of Bolsonaro and a fugitive in Brazil, Santos is under investigation for allegedly spreading false information and hate speech.

Moraes’s orders required Rumble to suspend Santos’s accounts, block new ones, disclose user data, and appoint a legal representative in Brazil to submit to Brazilian judicial authority. The orders also imposed escalating fines and threatened to shut down Rumble’s operations in Brazil for noncompliance.

In their lawsuit, Rumble and TMTG argue that Moraes’s actions violated constitutional protections of free speech and contravened other U.S. laws, including Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which shields platforms from legal liability for user-generated content.

“The Gag Orders, as issued, censor legitimate political discourse in the United States, undermining fundamental constitutional protections enshrined in the First Amendment,” the plaintiffs said in the complaint. “Justice Moraes’s extraterritorial demands inflict immediate and irreparable harm on Rumble and TMTG by undermining lawful American political discourse, a right central to free speech under U.S. principles.”

After Rumble and TMTG filed their lawsuit, Moraes issued a demand that Rumble “immediately submit” to his authority or face consequences, according to the complaint. After Rumble failed to comply, Moraes ordered local telecommunications companies to shut it down in Brazil and imposed a daily fine of $8,700 on the U.S.-based company.

The two companies then filed a motion for a temporary restraining order on Feb. 22, warning that allowing foreign officials to bypass U.S. legal protections could set a dangerous precedent.

“If this type of end-run around U.S. law is allowed to stand, it will embolden other foreign officials to impose their censorship regimes on American companies without due process, suppress political discourse, and interfere with U.S. business operations without legal justification,” Rumble and TMTG wrote in the motion.

The Epoch Times reached out to the Brazilian Supreme Court with a request for comment on Scriven’s Feb. 25 ruling but did not receive a response by publication time.

Moraes has previously clashed with tech companies over censorship, most notably ordering a nationwide ban on tech billionaire Elon Musk’s social media platform, X, for refusing to remove certain accounts accused of spreading misinformation and failing to appoint a legal representative in Brazil. The ban was later lifted after X complied with the orders and paid millions of dollars in fines.

Last week’s Riyadh talks between the United States and Russia have led to another round of face-to-face bilateral negotiations, set for Thursday in Istanbul.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov confirmed the meeting while alongside the emir of Qatar in Doha. The oil and gas rick Gulf country remains a close ally of Turkey.

The Istanbul meeting is expected to focus on restoring diplomatic staff and full relations at each respective embassy. Both sides went through several rounds of expelling the other’s diplomats under the Biden administration, as relations hit a low-point during the Ukraine war, also amid US/EU-led sanctions on Moscow.

“Such a meeting will take place tomorrow in Istanbul. I think that its results will show how quickly and effectively we can move forward,” Lavrov said Wednesday.

The Turkish Foreign Ministry has also confirmed it is hosting the high-level talks. “As we have repeatedly stated, Türkiye is ready to provide all kinds of support to peace efforts, including hosting future talks,” a spokesperson said.

The Feb.18 meeting in Riyadh focused on kickstarting direct talks related to preparing for peace negotiations to settle the Ukraine war, but importantly this took place with either Ukrainian or European representation.

The meeting in Istanbul will make it clear “how fast and efficiently the sides can move forward,” Lavrov was cited in Russia’s TASS as saying.

Lavrov in a press conference was asked about reports that the West could permanently seize nearly $300 billion in Russian assets held abroad. “As for our assets, which have been stolen primarily by Europeans, no, you know, there has been no talk about it. But I have no doubts that this issue will not disappear as part of the settlement,” Lavrov responded.

The top Russian diplomat took the opportunity to blast European leaders for seeking to sabotage peace efforts involving the Trump White House:

Russia is waiting for Europeans to stop “lying that Russia blocks negotiations.” Europe is advancing a “hopelessly outdated and failed” policy on Ukraine and is pushing Kiev to continue fighting.

“When the political balance of power regarding Ukraine changes, as was evident in the United Nations vote, Europe immediately tries to undermine this trend, announcing new large military aid packages to Kiev, pushing it to continue fighting, and openly stating, as I think the Danish prime minister did, that peace is worse than war for Ukraine in this situation.”

Moscow believes that “the best aid from those who sincerely want to help resolve the conflict is to come to realize what caused it.”

He specifically called out the plans of some to create a European army to be sent to Ukraine. Russia has consistently rejected this as a real option for viable peace.

Despite positive momentum on peace from this White House, Trump occasionally reverts to hawkish talking points concerning Ukraine:

After Ukraine agrees to the mineral “deal,” Trump says in return Ukraine receives “the right to fight on.” He boasts that he was the one who first gave Javelins to Ukraine, which wiped out a lot of Russian tanks. He says US weapons could continue to flow to Ukraine “for awhile” pic.twitter.com/P1svBUrpmu

— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) February 25, 2025

“The approach that is being imposed by the Europeans, first of all France and the British, is aimed… at heating up the conflict further and stopping any attempts to calm it down,” Lavrov said.

Authored by Peter Berkowitz via RealClearPolitics,

The accusation that he seeks dictatorial power has dogged Donald Trump since before he was elected president in 2016. Yet President Trump’s salvo of executive orders commencing shortly after he returned to the White House one month ago includes many that impose limits on government. Prominent among them is his Inauguration Day Executive Order, “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing.”

Trump’s Jan. 20 anti-DEI executive order rescinded the pro-DEI Executive Order – “Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government” –  that President Joe Biden signed in January 2021 on his first day in the White House. The Trump directive withdraws from the federal government authority Biden granted it to prefer some individuals and disfavor others based on race. On. Jan. 22, Trump went further, issuing an executive order that abolished affirmative action in federal-government contracting. This one revoked President Lyndon Johnson’s landmark 1965 Executive Order 11246, which has been interpreted as mandating racial preferences.

By terminating federal diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and affirmative action initiatives, the Trump administration aims to advance the president’s Second Inaugural Address promise to “end the government policy of trying to socially engineer race and gender into every aspect of public and private life.” Instead, Trump stated, he would “forge a society that is colorblind and merit-based.”

On Feb. 12 in “Trump Is on the Wrong Side of History by Design,” New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie decried “the right-wing crusade against ‘diversity, equity and inclusion.’” Bouie acknowledged that “a certain set of well-meaning cultural liberals” along with “people of a more moderate or conservative persuasion” and even some critics of capitalism on “the political left” have respectable if not correct concerns about DEI’s excesses. But the Times columnist attributed thoroughly malign motives to Trump and his backers.

Coming from the Trump administration, argues Bouie, the terms “colorblind” and “merit-based” serve as dog whistles for racism and white supremacy. The Trump team opposes, Bouie contends, “the mere presence of a woman or nonwhite person or disabled or transgender person in any high-skilled, high-status position” (this will come as surprise to, among others, Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Attorney General Pam Bondi, US Ambassador to the United Nations nominee Elise Stefanik, HUD Secretary Scott Turner, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio). For Trump and the political right, the “alternative isn’t some heretofore unknown standard of merit; it is the reintroduction of something like segregation,” charged Bouie. Trump’s “attack on D.E.I. isn’t about increasing merit or fighting wrongful discrimination; it is about reimposing hierarchies of race and gender (among other categories) onto American society.”

In contrast to Bouie, on Feb. 14 in the Wall Street Journal, Rev. Corey B. Brooks, founder and senior pastor of New Beginnings Church of Chicago and CEO of Project H.O.O.D., welcomed Trump’s determination to terminate government classification of individuals, and intervention in social and political life, based on race. Nevertheless, in “Trump’s Colorblind Message Energizes Black Americans,” Brooks found “bittersweet” Trump’s inaugural-address promise to disregard race and focus on merit. Trumps words were sweet because, Rev. Brooks explained, “I live by them everyday as I minister to my community”; they were bitter because “I can only wonder where our community would be today if we had followed those words since the 1960s.”

Before then, a “culture of opportunity, self-reliance and meritocracy” enabled African Americans to build better lives despite racism. That changed when “far too many of us were seduced by post-’60s liberalism,” Brooks laments. “We were told by the federal government that bureaucrats would uplift us through social programs, housing, food vouchers, busing, racial preferences and one education plan after another.” Yet his “heart aches to see how a once God-fearing and hard-working people betrayed itself into poverty and, worse, into mental enslavement to the government.”

To restore his community’s culture of self-reliance, Brooks asks “only one thing from Mr. Trump – to come to my neighborhood and tell the people: ‘You are on your own.’” The president would “be echoing Frederick Douglass, who said after slavery, ‘I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us.’”

Bouie and Brooks advance fundamental alternatives. The New York Times columnist wishes to perpetuate government and private-sector discrimination to rectify America’s legacy of racial injustice. With decades of experience serving his beleaguered community in inner-city Chicago, the clergyman wants government to recede to give individuals, families, churches, and other voluntary associations the opportunity to organize and manage their lives.

Brooks’ view has several advantages. It conforms to America’s founding principles, which affirm equal rights under law. It fits with the limits on federal power built into the Constitution. It respects civil society as the domain where individuals take responsibility for themselves and one another. It is consistent with history: As Brooks argues, with the onset of government intervention in the 1960s, Chicago’s vibrant black communities of the 1940s and 1950s gave way to single-parent households, illiteracy, and crime. And it recognizes that government programs that treat people differently based on race promote dependency among the favored, resentment among the disfavored, and wariness among all.

Can the Trump administration dismantle the race-based programs that have been incorporated into American law? Thomas Powers addresses that question in “Trump and the DEI Counter-Revolution,” published in Quillette in early February. He gives reason to hope that the administration’s effort to rein in government’s power to allocate benefits and burdens based on race can restore respect for individual rights and equality under law.

Author of “American Multiculturalism and The Anti-Discrimination Regime” and professor and chair of political science at Carthage College, Powers identifies two principal accounts of the sources of DEI’s influence in American politics.

The first focuses on ideas and culture. It contends that DEI stems from variants on “radical progressive ideology.” These include “cultural Marxism (Christopher Rufo), postmodernism (James Lindsay and Helen Pluckrose), or social-justice activism manifested as some strange new Puritanism (Andrew Doyle) or other quasi-religious impulse (John McWhorter).” If these critics are correct, argues Powers, then “the actions of the Trump administration are superficial and doomed to fail unless accompanied by some broader intellectual and cultural movement to change Americans’ hearts and minds.”

The second view concerning the rise and entrenchment of DEI concentrates on law and public policy. It is “advanced by authors like Richard Epstein, R. Shep Melnick, and Christopher Caldwell” and maintains that “DEI is the consequence of the civil-rights revolution broadly construed and of the contours of anti-discrimination law in its particulars.” If DEI is a creature of law and public policy, argues Powers, then “we have every reason to think that the Trump administration’s actions are going to change the landscape of democratic life for the long haul.”

Persuaded that DEI arises out of transformations in American law, Powers believes that the Trump administration may well succeed in undoing the diversity, equity, and inclusion regime. But the stakes go well beyond the law because, Powers observes, DEI is bound up with an ideology at war with basic principles of American constitutional government. It “champions the identities of groups, not the rights of individuals; it obliterates the boundary between public and private; it harnesses the state to legislate morality, not to protect liberty; it demands respect and is dissatisfied with mere toleration; and it stirs people up where the liberal tradition tries to calm them down,” he writes. “It has upended our understanding of something as basic to human life as ‘sex’ or ‘gender,’ and in political initiatives like the 1619 Project, would make contempt for modern life a kind of virtue.”

Nevertheless, Powers argues, DEI is in the main a product of progressives’ radicalization of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The act “banned overt acts of discrimination by government in public gathering spaces (Title II, covering ‘public accommodations’) and in employment decisions like hiring, firing, and promotion (Title VII).” However, progressives reinterpreted the act to authorize government pursuit of equality of result based on group identity. The shift from equality of opportunity at which the Civil Rights Act originally aimed to equality of result pursued by its progressive interpreters – sometimes backed by conservatives – required dramatic expansion of state power. The ambition to achieve equal group representation in positions of prestige and power compelled government to practice affirmative action, redistribute wealth, and police thought and censor speech to root out “hostile environment harassment” in government, the workplace, and higher education.

Successful legal reform, however, will take the nation only so far in placing civil-rights law on a sound footing. That’s because the two accounts of the sources of DEI that Powers identifies – ideas, and law and public policy – are intimately connected. America’s elite undergraduate institutions and law schools saturate the nation’s future lawyers, judges, and policymakers in progressive ideology.

To restore respect for individual rights, equality under law, and limited government, substantial reform must be undertaken concurrently in law and public policy and in education.

Peter Berkowitz is the Tad and Dianne Taube senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. From 2019 to 2021, he served as director of the Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. State Department. His writings are posted at PeterBerkowitz.com and he can be followed on X @BerkowitzPeter.