Trump Said To Be Weighing Direct Talks With North Korea’s Kim
During his first term in the White House, President-elect Donald Trump held three meetings with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. The First was in Hanoi, followed by a highly ‘controversial’ meeting at the Korean border, which was the first time in history that a sitting American president had stepped foot into the North Korean side of the border.
There was talk at the time of the two leaders falling “in love”—however, the past couple years of Biden’s Pentagon parking a nuclear submarine at a South Korean port has done much to undo these good will displays. Washington has requested that Pyongyang abandon its nuclear weapons development, while Kim has demanded nothing less than full sanctions relief.
What will the policy be under the second Trump White House?
“US president-elect Donald Trump’s team is discussing pursuing direct talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, hoping a fresh diplomatic push can lower the risks of armed conflict, according to two people familiar with the matter,” South China Morning Post and Reuters report Tuesday.
While Trump’s transition team has said nothing official on the issue as yet, insider sources say a return to direct diplomacy is hopeful:
Several in Trump’s team now see a direct approach from Trump, to build on a relationship that already exists, as most likely to break the ice with Kim, years after the two traded insults and what Trump called “beautiful” letters in an unprecedented diplomatic effort during his first term in office, the people said.
As for the North Korean side, it doesn’t seem in any hurry, or at least is building leverage in anticipation of potential near-future Trump overtures.
The Wall Street Journal summarized Kim’s reaction as of last week as follows:
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un appeared to rebuff the prospect of reviving his nuclear diplomacy with President-elect Donald Trump, according to his first public remarks about disarmament talks since the election.
North Korea’s state media reported Friday that the 40-year-old dictator called the U.S. a superpower that operated by force rather than a will to coexist and belittled the value that previous talks had for his cash-strapped regime.
Kim was quoted in a speech days ago as saying, “We have already explored every possible avenue in negotiating with the US.”
He cited Washington’s “unchanging aggressive and hostile policy” toward North Korea, which has included stepped-up joint US-South Korean military exercises on the peninsula.
It’s possible that if Trump is able to oversee peace in Ukraine, which he is pledging to begin in earnest from day one of entering the Oval Office, things could stabilize with US-North Korea relations as well.
But looming large as a complicating factor is North Korea’s sending some 10,000 of its troops to Russia, where they are reportedly assisting Moscow forces in pushing back Ukraine’s occupation of the southern Kursk region. Kiev has used this to decry the ‘internationalization’ of the war, despite NATO having injected billions of dollars and heavy weaponry on Ukraine’s side.
Gensler, a staunch critic of the digital assets industry, confirmed on social media platform X last week that he will resign from his role the day of President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration.
Trump and Gensler possess contrasting views of crypto.
Gensler has cracked down on the crypto industry since he was appointed head of the SEC in 2021.
Speaking at the Piper Sandler Global Exchange and FinTech Conference in New York City last year, the outgoing SEC chief said the crypto frenzy has been rife with “Hucksters. Fraudsters. Scam artists. Ponzi schemes.”
“The crypto securities markets should not be allowed to undermine the well-earned trust the public has in the capital markets,” Gensler said. “The crypto markets should not be allowed to harm investors.”
President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to herald a change in federal crypto policy.
While he promised to fire Gensler on his first day in the White House, Trump has also proposed a plethora of pro-Bitcoin measures.
He wants to establish a national Bitcoin reserve, create a presidential crypto advisory council, and ensure all remaining Bitcoin is mined domestically.
“For too long, our government has violated the cardinal rule that every Bitcoiner knows by heart: Never sell your Bitcoin,” Trump said during a keynote address at the largest industry conference this past summer.
This is a reversal from Trump, who has called it a scam and a threat to the U.S. dollar.
“I am not a fan of Bitcoin and other Cryptocurrencies, which are not money, and whose value is highly volatile and based on thin air,” Trump said in social media posts in 2019.
“Unregulated Crypto Assets can facilitate unlawful behavior, including drug trade and other illegal activity.”
Now that the new administration features pro-crypto officials, will the SEC’s regulatory pursuits change?
Winds of Regulatory Change
The agency’s fiscal year 2024 enforcement in the crypto industry resulted in fines and investor relief totaling $8.2 billion.
With the record-high penalties, the number of cases tumbled 26 percent compared to the previous year.
“The Division of Enforcement is a steadfast cop on the beat, following the facts and the law wherever they lead to hold wrongdoers accountable,” Gensler said in a statement attached to the announcement.
This comes as the SEC outlined its aims for the new year.
The report reiterated the SEC’s position to continue monitoring the crypto sector, including investment advisers, broker-dealers, and other financial intermediaries that sell digital assets or facilitate transactions.
“Examinations of registrants will focus on the offer, sale, recommendation, advice, trading, and other activities involving crypto assets that are offered and sold as securities or related products, such as spot bitcoin or ether exchange-traded products,” the report stated.
With a new regime set to take the reins, market watchers are bracing for change, especially with prominent crypto advocates leading various departments, including Scott Bessent as treasury secretary and Howard Lutnick as commerce secretary.
For now, industry experts are submitting recommendations in the suggestions box.
Stuart Alderoty, the chief legal officer of blockchain-based digital payment company Ripple, outlined several priorities the Trump transition team should consider when choosing the next SEC head.
On the new administration’s first day, Alderoty thinks the federal government should end non-fraud crypto litigation and ensure commissioners Mark Uyeda and Hester Peirce remain at the regulatory body, he said on X.
Uyeda and Peirce have been crypto’s allies at the SEC.
Uyeda, in an interview with FOX Business’s “Varney & Co.,” agreed with the president-elect that the “war on crypto needs to stop.”
“There are a number of things that we can do with respect to crypto to help make America one of the global leaders in crypto,” he said.
The SEC needs to provide clarity, produce safe harbors and regulatory sandboxes for investors, and advocate for a whole-of-government “cohesive and comprehensive approach to crypto,” Uyeda said.
“President Trump and the American electorate have sent a clear message. Starting in 2025, the SEC’s role is to carry out that mandate,” he said.
Peirce, speaking on the “CryptoCounsel” podcast this month, has touted more open dialogue between the crypto industry and SEC regulators.
The Ripple CLO has echoed this sentiment, supporting improved relations between lawmakers, regulators, and market participants.
“Collaborate with all financial regulators and Congress on clear and simple rules for crypto, but without presuming that those rules give the SEC primary jurisdiction over anything,” Alderoty wrote.
“Guarantee accountability and restore public trust by addressing past issues within the SEC by emboldening the Office of Inspector General.”
Alderoty also proposed rescinding the SEC’s 2019 Framework for Investment Contract Analysis of Digital Assets, which was published after the industry called for better regulatory clarity between securities laws and blockchain-based tokens.
This guidance, which is neither a rule nor a regulation, offers a blueprint for determining whether a digital asset possesses the characteristics of an investment contract (security).
With Republican control of Congress, lawmakers are likely to adopt a “principles and disclosure-based” approach to policymaking, says Dorothy DeWitt, a former director of market oversight at the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
Enforcement will also likely target high-risk areas of the crypto market, such as national security, fraud, and misconduct, she said.
“Finally, a path to regulatory clarity will almost certainly involve registration of exchanges, intermediaries and digital assets securities, and implementation of more extensive disclosure standards as well as formal compliance with agency-prescribed principles,” DeWitt said in a Nov. 18 post for the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum.
Despite the winds of change expected to blow through the crypto sector, industry parties should not anticipate significant policy and regulatory changes immediately.
Instead, DeWitt notes, these adjustments could “take place over a year or more, not months.”
Since Trump’s electoral victory, Bitcoin prices have rocketed to all-time highs and were a few hundred dollars short of reaching $100,000.
The growth in the chief cryptocurrency, which controls 58 percent of the market, has lifted other digital tokens, from stablecoins to altcoins.
A spokesperson for Securities and Exchange Commission declined a request for comment.
Niall Ferguson, Scott Horton To Debate Ukraine War Tomorrow Evening In ZeroHedge Exclusive
Despite Trump’s promises to bring a swift end to the war in Ukraine by negotiating with Russia, the war has escalated to a dangerous inflection point with long-range U.S., British, and French missiles being deployed deep in Russian territory and talks of deploying NATO troops in Ukraine. That… and anonymous officials in the New York Times saying what is impossible to believe:
“Several officials even suggested that Mr. Biden could return nuclear weapons to Ukraine that were taken from it after the fall of the Soviet Union. That would be an instant and enormous deterrent. But such a step would be complicated and have serious implications,” the newspaper wrote.
Amid the chaos, ZeroHedge will be hosting preeminent historians Sir Niall Ferguson and Scott Horton to debate the history of the conflict and U.S. policy in the region. They will be joined by the Hoover Institute’s Peter Robinson (if you’ve seen a Thomas Sowell interview, it was probably his).
Join us at 7pm ET right here on the ZeroHedge homepage (as well as Twitter/X and YouTube channels) for an epic matchup that you won’t find anywhere else.
Ferguson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University. He’s written over a dozen books on geopolitical and monetary history.
Horton is the founder of the Libertarian Institute and recently published his book, Provoked, on the history of the war in Ukraine and decades of rising tensions between the U.S. and Russia.
We hope you’ll join us on the eve of Thanksgiving. Recent war context included below:
***
Nukes for Ukraine?!
Days ago, The NY Times revealed that US and European officials have discussed a range of options they believe will deter Russia from taking more Ukrainian territory, including the possibility of providing Kiev with nuclear weapons. “US and European officials are discussing deterrence as a possible security guarantee for Ukraine, such as stockpiling a conventional arsenal sufficient to strike a punishing blow if Russia violates a cease-fire,” the report said.
The article then stated, “Several officials even suggested that Mr. Biden could return nuclear weapons to Ukraine that were taken from it after the fall of the Soviet Union.”
Former Russian president and current deputy chairman of the Security Counsel Dmitry Medvedev has responded by pointing out that if the West actually went forward with transferring nukes to Ukraine, this would be seen as tantamount to an attack on Russia. He explained that this is a key aspect of Russia’s newly expanded nuclear doctrine.
In a Telegram post on Tuesday, Medvedev specifically referenced the recent NY Times report, and said: “Looks like my sad joke about crazy senile Biden, who’s eager to go out with a bang and take a substantial part of humanity with him, is becoming dangerously real.”
Medvedev then stressed that “giving nukes to a country that’s at war with the greatest nuclear power” is so absurd that Biden and any of his officials considering it must have “massive paranoid psychosis.”
His biggest and most specific threat came as follows:
“The fact of transferring such weapons may be considered as the launch of an attack against our country in accordance with Paragraph 19 of the ‘Basic Principles of State Policy on Nuclear Deterrence’,” Medvedev wrote.
Talk of NATO Troops
Prominent French publication Le Monde on Monday followed by saying serious discussions over injecting Western troops into the war have intensified in the last days:
As the conflict in Ukraine enters a new phase of escalation, discussions over sending Western troops and private defense companies to Ukraine have been revived, Le Monde has learned from corroborating sources. These are sensitive discussions, most of which are classified – relaunched in light of a potential American withdrawal of support for Kyiv once Donald Trump takes office on January 20, 2025.
Britain is once again at the forefront of urging NATO’s deeper involvement in the war, which threatens at any moment to explode into WW3 among nuclear-armed powers. Enter Keir Starmer… in the hawkish footsteps of Boris Johnson:
However, it was relaunched in recent weeks thanks to the visit to France of the UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, for the November 11th commemorations. “Discussions are underway between the UK and France on defense cooperation, particularly with a view to creating a hard core of allies in Europe, focused on Ukraine and wider European security,” confided a British military source to Le Monde.
Jean-Noël Barro’s aforementioned words about ‘no options’ ruled out appears to have been a reflection on these continued ‘sensitive’ conversations.
There have been more reports of US-supplied ATACMS launches on Russian territory since their initial use last week:
Looks like Khalino airbase in Kursk, where Russia launches drones to attack Ukraine, just got a taste of ATACMS. The guy in the video seems pretty impressed! pic.twitter.com/ui8r0je74p
And so we end up back in MovieLand, where we vicariously experience having powers we do not possess in real life.
Films reflect the collective unconscious in ironic ways. During the Great Depression, films didn’t dwell on the miseries of real life; they were carefree concoctions making light of the idle rich (The Thin Man, 1934, My Man Godfrey, 1936), with the realistic (but still ending on a positive note) The Grapes of Wrath arriving a decade into the Depression in 1940.
In contrast, the boom years of the 1950s were the heyday of dark-themed Noir films that explored (and exploited) the underbelly of human nature and American life.
Cast in this light, what do we make of our multi-decade cultural embrace of Superhero films? We can try to write it all off as Hollywood’s happy discovery of an entire realm of “tentpole” franchises that can be milked for billions of dollars in reliable revenues, but this misses the undertow of cultural significances.
Is it coincidence that the decades of Superhero worship track the rise of our collective powerlessness over the shape of our future? I sense the outrage and indignation this ignites–how dare you say we’re powerless, we have more power over our lives than ever before.
For a contrarian view, let’s tap the 1964 classic by Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society (this link is to a free PDF of the book, with gratitude to correspondent Bruce M. for bringing this book to my attention). It is impossible to summarize a 500-page book dense with important ideas, but let’s start with Ellul’s insight into our collective powerlessness over the future course of the economy and our own daily lives.
In essence, Ellul explains how technology and the ever-expanding need for profitable investments control our collective future. Once the basic human needs have been met–shelter, food, water, education, medical care, etc.–then investment opportunities aren’t driven by human need, but by technology’s continuous advance.
Did humanity really “need” every appliance to have WiFi? No. Technology generated WiFi and the need for investment opportunities then generated The Internet of Things (IOT) which spawned vast new product lines–appliances with WiFi. Coupled with the the collapse of quality and durability, this technology led to water heaters having WiFi, just in case your phone doesn’t have enough apps, alarms, chirps and notifications.
That water heaters once cost $160 and now cost $500 is the financial payoff of advancing technology creating new opportunities to invest capital. For if capital can’t find new opportunities to invest and grow profits, the economy slides into Depression, and that ghastly prospect looms in the collective unconscious as the nightmare to be avoided at all costs.
And so microwave ovens now have a second “child safety button” that must be pushed first to open the door. Safety is a ready-made excuse for adding whatever technology has come up with, and as we scan the horizon, it’s already abundantly clear that the tens of billions of dollars gushing into AI will be followed by trillions of dollars seeking higher profits from putting some simulacrum of AI into every device, every appliance, every app and indeed every technology, not because it improves our well-being but because it’s the investment opportunity that we desperately need to avoid the cataclysm of Depression.
We are powerless to question this process, much less resist it, and so we revel in fantasies of super-powers that enable the defeat of powerful forces that threaten us. That AI will automate away entire sectors of human livelihoods–we’re powerless to resist that, just as we’re powerless to stop the collapse of durability and the Anti-Progress of useless complexity and the ever-greater demands on us to perform unpaid shadow work to keep all the complexity duct-taped together so we can maintain all the technologies that we are now dependent on, not by choice but because there is no choice.
The cavalcade of superheroes reflect our powerlessness and our yearning for actual control of our lives rather then the simulacrum of consumer choice of products and services that don’t serve our well-being, they serve the one true need, to expand opportunities to invest.
Ellul’s insights from 60 years ago also illuminate our desire for real-world political-financial Superheroes who will set the world right again. But political solutions are another form of fantasy, as I explained in Why Political “Solutions” Don’t Fix Crises, They Make Them Worse (10/2/24). Hoping that giving other mortals power will restore our own power over our own lives is akin to hoping that technology will magically transform itself from humanity’s Monster Id into a machine that oversees us with loving kindness, or as poet Richard Brautigan put it, All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace.
Sci-Fi movie fans know that the Monster Id is from the classic film Forbidden Planet: the limitless power of the planet’s immense technological machinery is guided by thoughts, and since there are no filters on what thoughts guide the technology, all the dark drives of the Id are amplified by technological powers, such that the Monster Id melts solid steel doors like butter in its quest to destroy the mind that created it.
And so we end up back in MovieLand, where we vicariously experience having powers we do not possess in real life. The power we still have is not a superpower; it is a merely human power to opt out, to choose not to participate, to limit our exposure to a world guided by investment opportunities and the moral vacuum of technology that is blind to all but its own advancement.
If all we believe boils down to “technology good, investment opportunities good,” then we’ve relinquished the ability to distinguish between truth and lies, and as Hannah Arendt observed, the difference between right and wrong.
This too is powerlessness, a black hole from which there is no technological escape.
Perhaps the only disappointment for those of us elated with the outcome of this month’s presidential election was the muted, downcast response from the Left at Donald Trump’s massive victory.
We’d expected angry riots from purple-haired Antifa goons; emotive demonstrations of impotent and self-righteous defiance by Handmaid’s Tale cosplayers; and, maybe best of all, delicious cable news highlight reels reminiscent of Hillary Clinton’s surprise defeat in 2016. The quiet sobbing we got instead came as somewhat of a surprise.
For the Left, it all seemed to end, as it did at Kamala Harris’s victory party at Howard University, with a whimper. There was no defiant or fiery speech that night; in fact, the candidate wasn’t seen at all, unwilling to face even the dedicated supporters who had worked hardest for her candidacy. Over the next few days, while there was some hissing and a few entertaining misfiring synapses at MSNBC and CNN — including some angry denunciations of elements of the Democrat coalition — the emotion seemed forced and perfunctory.
For many, though, the downbeat response to Trump’s victory seemed out of place, given the feverish severity of how Democrats had articulated the stakes of this election. In her final month, Harris’s campaign dispensed with messaging on any issues, leaning hard into explicit comparisons of Trump with Adolf Hitler, and of MAGA politics with fascism and Nazism, evoking the specter of American death camps in the event of the ex-president’s victory.
Using a strategically-timed news-hook from former Trump Chief of Staff John Kelly, Harris stared gravely into the camera outside her residence at the U.S. Naval Observatory, warning that her opponent was no longer simply a “threat to democracy” but, as a Hitlerian-Nazi-Fascist, was openly dedicated to its destruction. The setting, too, was significant: rather than simply reaching down into the rhetorical gutter at a campaign stop, she was using the trappings of her role as vice president to make an official pronouncement on a rival domestic political leader, using language usually reserved for foreign enemies with whom we are at war. The bloody result of a Trump victory, Harris and her media surrogates assured us, was certain.
While some in the press had never been shy of slandering Donald Trump as a “fascist,” the message coming from the candidate herself marked a serious escalation.
After all, when faced with an enemy that would extinguish all freedom in America and usher in a holocaust, procedural resistance in courtrooms or acts of civil disobedience are plainly inadequate. With the evil of a Hitler, there is no negotiation, comity, civility, or ordinary politics; only violent resistance is commensurate with the threat.
Some on the Left received the message clearly, as intended. Even before Harris herself began referring to him as a “fascist,” Trump had already been the attempted victim of two failed assassinations. Immediately following the first shooter’s very near miss, the New Republic all but endorsed this violent, final solution to the Trumpian problem, revealing a menacing, monochrome drawing of the former president on its cover complete with Hitler mustache. And below the image — subtle, in the color of dried blood — was the headline, “American Fascism: What It Would Look Like” in faux-Germanic typeface. Scandalously, law enforcement disappeared any information about the would-be assassins’ motives, saving the Democrats having to address the fact that their manifestos dovetailed too closely with the party’s messaging.
All this gathered momentum and intensity in the press until, on the evening of November 5, “our sacred democracy” simply ended. Donald Trump won the electoral college and the popular vote by wide margins, and his party was in control of every branch of the Federal government. The people had spoken with a clear and resounding voice. If you’d been following the speeches of Vice President Harris, you’d assume that what they wanted was Nazi Germany.
When the defeated Democrat finally emerged in public early the next evening, however, her tone had shifted. “Earlier today,” she told the crowd, “I spoke with President-elect Trump and congratulated him on his victory. I also told him that we will help him and his team with their transition…” Would she congratulate Hitler for his victory? Would she help Hitler’s team during their transition?
The Democrats had gone to the very edge of American discourse — beyond which is the disintegration of normal political life — and then, when they’d been repudiated by the voters, meekly pulled back. By stubbornly denying us our riots and hoped-for schadenfreude, the Left had us confused. We on the Right weren’t the only ones expecting immediate rage from Antifa and aligned groups in the event of a Republican victory; after all, half of downtown Washington, D.C., was boarded up in anticipation of election night. Why did nothing happen?
The surface explanation, of course, is that the Democrats didn’t really believe any of it; all that rhetorical venom was merely cynical election year politics at the final crunch of a close election. That theory certainly has some merit, based on the warm, smiling welcome with which Joe Biden received the victorious former president at the White House. And, while corrosive to social cohesion, the gambit made strategic sense: as Trump was gaining momentum in the final weeks, Democrats began to grow despondent. Harris’s campaign needed to raise the temperature to make sure her most committed voters got to the polls.
Even if the leadership of the Democratic Party and its surrogates in the media were simply generating outrage, millions of Americans in their audiences now believe, with conviction, that the long night of fascism has finally descended on America. The rhetoric naturally calls to mind Antifa, the bands of militant “Antifascists” who inflicted so much disorder on the country during the first Trump administration. For many on the Right, the trauma of the Black Lives Matter riots on the heels of Covid in 2020 — followed by Trump being turned out of the White House the next January — has made us understandably jumpy about black-blocs and cities ablaze in destructive, ideological rage.
Harris’s scurrilous rhetoric about Trump’s alleged fondness for Hitler, however, wasn’t aimed at bringing Antifa’s violent shock troops into the streets, but at radicalizing the far larger cohort of mainstream Democrats. (After all, Antifa believes both Biden and Harris qualify as “fascists” and, for good measure, “war criminals.”) But Antifa has always been more strategic than it is reactive, and it’s far more concerned with revolutionary politics than with the electoral variety.
For many of the senior Antifa thinkers and organizers, the model of 1968 continues to resonate: even as the protests against the Vietnam War had been gaining strength for a half-decade, it wasn’t until the election of Richard Nixon that the Left’s mass-movement exploded. Presented with the foil of a “law-and-order” Republican hate-object, the intensity of the anti-war protest movement ballooned, leading to the radicalization of militant groups like the Weather Underground into outright terrorism.
This was only achievable with the assistance of the media; unencumbered by the balancing act of having to defend a Democrat president, print and television journalists created a roar of grassroots anger that provided far-Left radicals with new recruits, funding, and energy. The parallels to Trump’s return to the White House are significant, and the opportunity for a replay of this dynamic has certainly not escaped Antifa’s strategic thinkers.
It’s a common misconception that Left-wing violent protest is a spasm of powerlessness. While a David and Goliath narrative is useful in many overseas conflicts, in the United States, violent protest is most useful when it can be used as an expression of majority frustration against an easily identifiable (and beatable) tyrannical minority. Regardless of income bracket, Americans like to think of themselves as middle-class, have a bourgeois investment in the continuance of society, and resent violent revolutionaries and anarchists.
Unlike in Europe, significant Left-wing violent riots in America don’t appear spontaneously in response to lost elections; they exist in the context of more sweeping political mobilizations that can plausibly be described by allied media as “largely peaceful.” As with Nixon and the anti-war movement, the media is the essential element in creating conditions for justifying the cause of unrest and ignoring or contextualizing violent excesses.
In this way, Antifa is useful as a fearsome tip of the spear, then melting away into a grander social justice narrative that is, on its surface, familiar and sympathetic rather than threatening. As such, all successful modern Left-wing movements in this country are framed in the language of civil rights. The successes of the Left’s modern race-oriented protest movements — Trayvon Martin (2012), Michael Brown (2014), and George Floyd (2020) — illustrate that the Left learned valuable lessons about the kind of topical triggers that work, and those that fail. The coming mass mobilization in response to Trump’s promises on immigration and deportation will be an obvious inciting event, and law enforcement needs to be prepared, especially in blue states.
In short,we didn’t see post-election violence or mass protests because the scale of Trump’s victory meant that such rioting would appear — at least temporarily — as the angry self-indulgence of a minority that had been legitimately beaten at the ballot box. But the riots will come soon enough, and Antifa will menace the streets once again. While it wouldn’t have served to activate them during or after the 2024 campaign, the Democrats’ rhetoric about fascism and Nazism is a boon to Antifa, which looks forward to being presented again (as it was memorably in 2020, storming the beach at Normandy) as “freedom fighters” in the media’s next just cause.
Transfer Of Nukes To Ukraine Would Be Tantamount To Attack On Russia: Medvedev
Days ago, The NY Times revealed that US and European officials have discussed a range of options they believe will deter Russia from taking more Ukrainian territory, including the possibility of providing Kiev with nuclear weapons. “US and European officials are discussing deterrence as a possible security guarantee for Ukraine, such as stockpiling a conventional arsenal sufficient to strike a punishing blow if Russia violates a cease-fire,” the report said.
The article then stated, “Several officials even suggested that Mr. Biden could return nuclear weapons to Ukraine that were taken from it after the fall of the Soviet Union.”
Former Russian president and current deputy chairman of the Security Counsel Dmitry Medvedev has responded by pointing out that if the West actually went forward with transferring nukes to Ukraine, this would be seen as tantamount to an attack on Russia. He explained that this is a key aspect of Russia’s newly expanded nuclear doctrine.
In a Telegram post on Tuesday, Medvedev specifically referenced the recent NY Times report, and said: “Looks like my sad joke about crazy senile Biden, who’s eager to go out with a bang and take a substantial part of humanity with him, is becoming dangerously real.”
Medvedev then stressed that “giving nukes to a country that’s at war with the greatest nuclear power” is so absurd that Biden and any of his officials considering it must have “massive paranoid psychosis.”
His biggest and most specific threat came as follows:
“The fact of transferring such weapons may be considered as the launch of an attack against our country in accordance with Paragraph 19 of the ‘Basic Principles of State Policy on Nuclear Deterrence’,” Medvedev wrote.
President Putin had formally approved a lowering of the threshold for nuclear weapons use on November 19. The change has been widely seen as in response to Ukraine being authorized by the Western allies to use US-made ATACMS and HIMARS systems, and British-made Storm Shadow and French Scalp missiles on Russian territory.
The aforementioned NY Times report did note that President Putin doesn’t appear ready to actually significantly escalate the war, giving a chance for the Trump administration to take office.
According to a recent New York Times Report, the Biden Administration has discussed the idea of handing nuclear weapons over to Ukraine as it prepares to leave office.
And France and the UK are discussing sending TROOPS into Ukraine! Do they really want WWIII?
“But the escalation risk of allowing Ukraine to strike Russia with US-supplied weaponry has diminished with the election of Mr. Trump,” the report said, and added: “Biden administration officials believe, calculating that Putin of Russia knows he has to wait only two months for the new administration.”
In the marketplace, competition empowers consumers. The more options you have for a particular product, the lower prices become. Moreover, having more options means you are more likely to find exactly what you want instead of just settling for something good enough.
In politics, competition empowers voters. However, unlike the marketplace, where consumers are accustomed to a variety of options, politics offers only two. Worse still, the two options available are so feckless that a plurality of voters choose neither.
When there’s little competition, power ends up in the hands of companies, not consumers. And that’s what we see with the Republican and Democratic parties. The lack of competition allows both parties to continue to be unresponsive to voters’ concerns.
According to recurring surveys by Gallup, beginning around 2010, independents have been the electorate’s plurality, with few exceptions. And since Obama’s reelection in 2012, independents have been the plurality without exception.
Put differently, voters have reported feeling disempowered for more than a decade.
It’s no wonder why. The parties set it up so they don’t have outside competition. A number of rules make it difficult – or impossible – for non-party voices to be heard. For instance, in 10 states, you can’t vote in a party’s primary unless you’re a registered party member. Another nine states allow unaffiliated voters but not opposing party members to vote in party primaries. Only 15 states allow for open party primaries where any voter can participate.
If you’re running for office as an independent, you don’t have access to the resources that a major party offers its candidates for statewide or national office. It’s hard enough to win political office even with the support of the duopoly; independents are forced to do the impossible.
While the election results suggest that voters found the Trump campaign more responsive to their concerns this time, that doesn’t mean Republicans will become better listeners going forward. And why should they? Without competition, there is no incentive for either party to take voters’ concerns seriously for longer than an election cycle.
With the Republican party the party of Trump now, attention has focused on his public and private lives, his various legal cases, and his influence over the Republican Party writ large. These distractions have taken attention away from good policy and effective governance. And while you might expect when one party takes its eye off the ball, it would allow the other party to flourish, but that hasn’t been the case.
Democrats are flailing because the shift in the Republican party led them to believe that it was enough to just not be Republicans. Since the rise of Donald Trump, their offering to voters has increasingly been, “At least we’re not those guys.” On a variety of issues, from the environment to health care to national defense, one party’s position is, “We should do this,” and the other’s is, “No, we shouldn’t,” and the result is a gridlocked Congress.
The Independent Center does the exact opposite. We are bringing competition back to politics by identifying, activating, and empowering independent voters.
These voters insist on effective government. They are the swing voters who went for Trump in 2016, Biden in 2020, and Trump again in 2024 because they value results over political allegiances. They expect the government to be fiscally responsible, but they don’t like the more extreme positions on social policies favored by Republicans. In short, they want government to live within its means, as they do, and respect the decisions of consenting adults.
The Independent Center believes that the best way to make government more responsive to voters is to bring more people into the political process, especially the people who don’t identify as Republicans or Democrats. By creating a movement of independent voters, we will have more voices about what people want and need, more ideas about effective policy responses, and more feedback about what the best policy solutions are.
By competing with Democrats and Republicans for voters, independents will push those parties to understand voters’ values and preferences better, develop better policy proposals, and actually pass legislation instead of devoting their energies to name-calling and obstructing the other side.
Lura Forcum is the incoming president of the Independent Center. A former professor and researcher, she conveys complex ideas and policy insights to engage independent voters who now comprise the plurality of the electorate.
So here’s the deal – remember when “experts” kept telling us what to do during COVID?
Turns out they got pretty much everything wrong. Like, spectacularly wrong.
We’re talking 19 major things they completely screwed up, from how the virus spreads to whether masks actually work (spoiler alert: those cloth masks were basically fashion accessories).
Dr. Fauci is the patron saint of TERRIBLE COVID policies.
He was wrong on SO MANY POINTS. It’s time to set the record straight…
Did he get anything right?
Origin of the disease—wrong
Transmission—wrong
Asymptomatic spread—wrong
PCR testing—wrong
Fatality rate—wrong
Lockdowns—wrong
Community triggers—wrong
Business closures—wrong
School closures—wrong
Quarantining the healthy—wrong
Impact on youth—wrong
Hospital overload—wrong
Plexiglass barriers—wrong
Social distancing—wrong
Outdoor spread—wrong
Masks—wrong
Variant impact—wrong
Natural immunity—wrong
Vaccine efficacy—wrong
Vaccine injury—wrong
Last year the Norfolk Group just dropped a bomb of a document laying out all these failures. And it’s not just Monday morning quarterbacking – they’ve got the receipts. Real studies showing how natural immunity was actually legit (while Fauci pretended it didn’t exist), data proving schools could’ve stayed open (looking at you, Sweden), and evidence that maybe, just maybe, locking healthy people in their homes wasn’t the brilliant strategy they claimed.
Listen, I’m not here to say “I told you so” (okay, maybe a little), but we need to talk about this. Because if we don’t learn from how badly our “experts” messed up, we’re just asking for a repeat performance next time around. And honestly? I don’t think any of us can handle another round of plexiglass theater and double masking.
Let’s break down exactly how they got it wrong, and more importantly, why they kept doubling down even when the evidence said otherwise. Buckle up – this is gonna be a wild ride through the greatest public health face-plant in modern history.
These are the questions WE want answered!
TRANSMISSION
Why did officials insist on surface transmission protocols when evidence showed primarily respiratory spread?
Why weren’t hospitals evaluating transmission patterns early to inform policy?
Why did the CDC not conduct studies on actual transmission patterns in schools and workplaces?
Why was outdoor transmission overemphasized despite minimal evidence?
Why weren’t transmission studies prioritized to guide evidence-based policies?
ASYMPTOMATIC SPREAD
What evidence supported the claim that asymptomatic spread was a major driver?
Why did health officials emphasize asymptomatic spread without solid data?
Why were resources wasted testing asymptomatic people when they could have focused on symptomatic cases?
How did the emphasis on asymptomatic spread affect public trust when evidence didn’t support it?
What data actually existed on true asymptomatic (vs presymptomatic) transmission rates?
PCR TESTING
Why did the CDC insist on developing its own test rather than using WHO’s?
Why weren’t cycle threshold values standardized or reported?
Why did labs use cycle thresholds up to 40 when this led to false positives?
Why wasn’t PCR testing prioritized for high-risk populations early on?
How did high cycle thresholds affect case counts and policy decisions?
FATALITY RATE
Why were infection fatality rates not properly stratified by age from the beginning?
Why were deaths “with COVID” vs “from COVID” not distinguished?
How did inflated fatality rates affect public perception and policy?
Why weren’t accurate age-stratified fatality rates clearly communicated?
How did misrepresenting fatality rates affect public trust?
LOCKDOWNS
Why were lockdowns implemented without cost-benefit analysis?
Why were lockdown harms (mental health, delayed medical care, etc.) ignored?
What evidence supported the effectiveness of lockdowns?
Why weren’t less restrictive focused protection measures tried first?
How many excess deaths were caused by lockdown policies?
Why weren’t regional/seasonal factors considered in lockdown decisions?
COMMUNITY TRIGGERS
Why were arbitrary case numbers used to trigger restrictions?
Why weren’t hospital capacity metrics prioritized over case counts?
How were community trigger thresholds determined?
Why weren’t triggers adjusted based on actual risk levels?
Why weren’t clear exit criteria established for restrictions?
BUSINESS CLOSURES
What evidence supported closing small businesses while keeping large retailers open?
Why weren’t occupancy limits tried before full closures?
How many businesses were unnecessarily destroyed?
Why weren’t economic impacts weighed against minimal health benefits?
What data supported effectiveness of business closures?
SCHOOL CLOSURES
Why were schools closed despite early evidence of low risk to children?
Why did the US ignore data from European schools that stayed open?
Why weren’t the developmental/educational harms to children considered?
How did school closures affect mental health and suicide rates in youth?
Why weren’t teachers unions’ influence on closure decisions examined?
What evidence supported claims that schools were major transmission vectors?
QUARANTINING THE HEALTHY
Why was mass quarantine implemented without precedent or evidence?
NYT & Bloomberg Bury Rutgers Study Showing DEI Makes People Hostile
Corporate media outlets haveburied, downplayed, or otherwise shelved a new study which reveals that “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) policies cause people to become ‘hostile’ – essentially seeing racism where none exists.
The new study from the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) and Rutgers University found that people exposed to DEI talking points about race, religion and gender form integroup hostility and authoritarian attitudes towards others.
“What we did was we took a lot of these ideas that were found to still be very prominent in a lot of these DEI lectures and interventions and training,” said NCRI Chief Science Officer Joel Finkelstein, a co-author of the study. “And we said, ‘Well, how is this going to affect people?’ What we found is that when people are exposed to this ideology, what happens is they become hostile without any indication that anything racist has happened.“
Researchers exposed 324 participants to two sets of reading material; a racially-neutral text about corn, or the writings of race-baiters Ibram X. Kendi or Robin DiAngelo. The participants were then exposed to a racially neutral scenario in which a student was rejected from college.
Those who were exposed to the writings of Kendi and DiAngelo injected racism into the scenario.
It gets worse… as X user Crémieux (@cremieuxrecueil) notes, those exposed to DEI wanged to punish the “offenders.”
These findings were so shocking and forceful that the authors immediately sought to replicate them.
They gathered a nearly three-times larger sample and found… the same results! pic.twitter.com/owOjCszEeQ
As Colin Wright of Reality’s Last Stand notes (h/t Mike Shedlock), the New York Times and Bloomberg “abruptly shelved coverage” of the study.
The implications of these findings cannot be downplayed. DEI programs have become a fixture in workplaces, schools, and universities across the United States, with a 2023 Pew Research Center report indicating that more than half of U.S. workers have attended some form of DEI training. Institutions collectively spend approximately $8 billion annually on these initiatives, yet the NCRI study underscores how little scrutiny they receive. While proponents of DEI argue that these programs are essential to achieving equity and dismantling systemic oppression, the NCRI’s data suggests that such efforts may actually be deepening divisions and cultivating hostility.
This context makes the suppression of the study even more alarming. The New York Times, which has cited NCRI’s work in nearly 20 previous articles, suddenly demanded that this particular research undergo peer review—a requirement that had never been imposed on the institute’s earlier findings, even on similarly sensitive topics like extremism or online hate. At Bloomberg, the story was quashed outright by an editor known for public support of DEI initiatives. The editorial decisions were ostensibly justified as routine discretion, yet they align conspicuously with the ideological leanings of those involved. Are these major outlets succumbing to pressures to protect certain narratives at the expense of truth?
Research cited in the report highlights how many DEI programs rely on untested theories or unverified self-reports, with little oversight or accountability. A 2021 meta-analysis found that some initiatives not only fail to reduce prejudice but actually exacerbate it, fueling resentment and perceptions of unfairness. The NCRI study’s findings echo these conclusions, suggesting that far from fostering inclusion, DEI programs may perpetuate a cycle of suspicion and punitive retribution.
Yet, as troubling as the study’s findings are, its suppression may be even more consequential. The decision to withhold this research from public discourse speaks to a larger issue: the growing entanglement of ideology and information. In a moment when public trust in institutions is already fragile, the media’s role as a gatekeeper of information becomes all the more worrying. When powerful outlets like The New York Times and Bloomberg withhold stories of such significance, they fracture trust with the American people.
The recent election produced an outpouring of anger and angst on the left, from pledging to leave the country to not having sex with men for four years. For others, the response was to retreat deeper into the echo chamber of the left. Many liberals are leaving X for a Bluesky, which promises the censorship and monitoring that was reduced after Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter.
Despite having most of the media and social media as allies, the opposing views of X have become intolerable for many after the election. One such aggrieved user appears to be New York Times tech reporter Kevin Roose, who wrote a column heralding the site as a deliverance for liberals left confused and afraid by the popular vote.Roose writes
“After an hour or so of scrolling through Bluesky the other night, I felt something I haven’t felt on social media in a long time: free.
Free from Elon Musk and his tedious quest to turn X into a right-wing echo chamber where he and his friends are the permanent, inescapable main characters.”
Because Musk dismantled the censorship system, the New York Times reporter now considers it a “right-wing echo chamber.” So, what does that make Bluesky?
Over at X, there is no shortage of trolls from the left and the right. However, it is hardly an echo chamber. Many liberals are among the most influential and criticize the right and others, including Musk and X. It also has its share of far-left trolls. However, it is the fact that it also allows such voices from the right that seems to produce the gasping, hypoxic response of liberals.
Back in the day of Twitter, it was just like the Allman Brothers song:
“BluebirdsSinging a songNothing but bluebirdsAll day long”
Many have shared their own “I can breathe now” take on Bluesky and how it is great to be again among friends — and watched over by social media guardians. Just like the old days. Notably, Roose admits that the site is no X and is unlikely to replace it. Roose admitted when he first joined Bluesky, it was more annoying than liberating:
“It was also, frankly, kind of annoying. The most active posters on my feed were all left-wing Twitter discontents, united in their hatred of Mr. Musk yet unable to stop talking about him. My account went dormant, and I moved on to other platforms.”
To his credit, Roose appeared to miss the diversity of thought in less “moderated” spaces. Nevertheless, it is now a godsend for those seeking greater insulation from opposing views.
Ironically, one lesson from this election is the danger of both the press and pundits in becoming increasingly out of touch with most of the country. The shock expressed by many is due to a lack of exposure to opposing views — not the need for further ideological isolation.
That cathartic effort is evident in many subscribers who are now boycotting the Washington Post and MSNBC. MSNBC contributor and Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin appears to support such efforts. Rubin is an avowed Marxist. Groucho Marxist, that is. Marx famously said, “I don’t want to belong to any club that would accept me as one of its members.” Before supporting resignations at her newspaper (for not endorsing a presidential candidate) or the boycott of Morning Joe (for the hosts speaking to Donald Trump), Rubin was the self-identified Republican columnist of the Post before she called for the party to be burned down.
Liberals would prefer to leave the Post if it is going to introduce opposing views. For the Post owner and publisher, the newspaper is facing an utter disaster after alienating over half of the country by becoming an echo chamber. Publisher and CEO William Lewis put it bluntly by telling the staff, “Let’s not sugarcoat it…We are losing large amounts of money. Your audience has halved in recent years. People are not reading your stuff. Right? I can’t sugarcoat it anymore.”
The response from the Post staff was calls for Lewis to be fired. These reporters and columnists would prefer to lose their jobs than their bias.
Obviously, Roose and others have every right to shelter in place within hardened liberal silos. However, it will do little to bring back readers to the media or voters to the Democrats by creating safe spaces for liberals to avoid being triggered by opposing views.
Now, it is different:
“Never saw the sun shining so brightNever saw things going so rightNoticing the days hurrying byWhen you’re in love, my how they fly”
Different except that things are not “going so right” on Bluesky.
