Authored by Denes Albert via ReMix News,

According to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, his country needs more missiles and fighter planes than promised to defend its airspace.

“In order to ensure the full protection of Ukraine, in the opinion of our soldiers, we need 25 Patriot systems,” the head of state stressed at a press conference in Kyiv.

However, Zelensky did not mention how many Patriot air defense systems Ukraine currently has. He claimed that his country needs other weapons systems of different ranges and capabilities for comprehensive air defense; he also noted that at the NATO summit in Washington, Ukraine’s allies had offered five additional Patriot systems with similar capabilities.

A month earlier, during the G7 summit in Italy, he had said that at least seven Patriot systems were needed. One Patriot battery costs $1 billion, while missiles are at least $3 million apiece.

Since the start of the war on Feb. 24, 2022, Ukraine has received at least four Patriot systems.

However, according to press reports, several launch sites have been damaged or destroyed by Russian air strikes.

As for the F-16 fighter jets, Zelensky said they would be delivered in two waves, in the summer and by the end of the year. However, the Ukrainian leader acknowledged that the fighter jets alone will not change the course of the war, given the much larger Russian air force.

Zelensky also said that Russia should attend the second international peace summit, for which a date has not yet been set, after Moscow was not represented at the first such meeting in Switzerland.

Read more here…

Via Remix News,

In what may be the most aggressive move against press freedom since the Second World War, Germany has banned Compact Magazine and had over 200 police officers raid the office and home of the publisher, Jürgen Elsässer, along with the homes of other employees and financial backers.

At 6:00 a.m., masked German police officers raided the home of Elsässer and confiscated hard drives and assets. The magazine has a large readership in Germany and a Youtube channel with millions of views and over 300,000 subscribers. The website and its social media channels have now been erased from the web.

Far-left German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser took to X to celebrate the banning of the publication, which she says she personally ordered.

“Today, I banned the right-wing extremist ‘COMPACT Magazine.’ It agitates in an unspeakable way against Jews, against Muslims and against our democracy. Our ban is a hard blow against the right-wing extremist scene,” she wrote.

While speaking about the incident, she stated:

“We will not allow ethnic definitions of who belongs to Germany and who does not. Our constitutional state protects all those who are persecuted because of their faith, their origin, their skin color or their democratic stance.”

🇩🇪BREAKING NEWS:

Massive crackdown on the press in Germany

In what may be the most aggressive move against press freedom since the Second World War, Germany has banned Compact Magazine and raided the office of the publisher, Jürgen Elsässer.

The press was informed ahead of… pic.twitter.com/yLed1UkL7T

— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) July 16, 2024

The press was informed ahead of time of the raid, and was on hand to photograph Elsässer in his night robe while he was surrounded by masked police officers. In addition, his video production company, Conspect Film GmbH was also banned.

It also marked the first time a media outlet of this size has been targeted in such an extraordinary manner,

Alternative for Germany (AfD) co-leaders, Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla issued a joint statement on X, writing:

“The ban on Compact magazine is a serious blow to press freedom. We are watching these events with great concern. Banning a press organ means denying discourse and diversity of opinion. A ban is always the most far-reaching step. Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser is abusing her powers to suppress critical reporting. We call on the minister to respect press freedom.”

Alice #Weidel/Tino #Chrupalla: Das Verbot des #Compact-Magazins ist ein schwerer Schlag gegen die #Pressefreiheit

Bundesinnenministerin Nancy #Faeser hat das Compact-Magazin sowie die Conspect Film GmbH verboten. #AfD-Bundessprecher Tino Chrupalla und Dr. Alice Weidel äußert… pic.twitter.com/0Enl8z6n9x

— AfD (@AfD) July 16, 2024

According to Germany’s Welt, the ban came about because Compact allegedly violated the constitutional order in a “combative and aggressive manner.”

The private homes of various employees were also raided in Brandenburg, Hesse, Saxony, and Saxony-Anhalt, including the home of Elsässer in Falkensee near Berlin. In addition, financial backers of the outlet also had their properties raided and digital and personal assets confiscated.

The Nöbeditz manor of former AfD politician André Poggenburg in Stößen near Naumburg was also reportedly raided.

What is Compact Magazine?

Compact has described itself as a “magazine for sovereignty.” As Welt notes, on the magazine’s website, which has now been deleted from the web, along with its social media channels, it wrote that “It does not prescribe a political line, but rather an attitude: That is walking upright, that is the spirit of freedom and pride in our history.”

Welt, which is a mouthpiece of the rival Christian Democrats party, clearly is against the magazine, writing: “What the editors meant by this could be seen on the front pages. Compact presented its readers with doomsday scenarios and racism, conspiracy theories and agitation against politicians from the hated ‘old parties’ — and as a way out of all this misery: the AfD.”

“Compact specifically addressed right-wing extremists, conspiracy theorists and opponents of democracy with well-known narratives: of the ‘lying press’ and ‘high finance,’ of ‘corrupt politicians’ and ‘powerful puppet masters in the background’ who were deceiving them.”

However, Welt does not note how any of this is illegal or even factually incorrect, as high finance exists, there are corrupt politicians, and in the background, there are powerful people who call the shots in many different scenarios. Calling them “puppet masters” may be a theatrical take, and some may take the phrase “lying press” as a harsh term to use against journalists, but the fact that many journalists have lied or distorted the truth has been proven to be correct on many occasions.

It is hard to address many of these allegations, as the entire website has been erased from the web.

Welt also goes on to detail how Compact became highly successful during the pandemic, and was making substantial profit margins on its merchandise sales, which allowed the team to “professionalize” the media outlet’s operations.

The Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) placed the publication under monitoring in 2021, and was listed as a “confirmed extremist endeavor.”

The ban is sure to be met with legal challenges, and even some on the left are questioning the legitimacy of such a ban, as it appears to violate a number of provisions on free speech guaranteed in the constitution.

German media outlet Tichys Einblick writes that “The Compact magazine undoubtedly represents right-wing extremist positions and calls for the overthrow of the government. However, Article 5 of the Basic Law also protects these radical views.”

Speaking with constitutional lawyer and former Federal Minister of Defense Rupert Scholz, he said: “Freedom of opinion enjoys such a high constitutional status that it cannot simply be undermined by an executive decision. A medium can only be banned if it represents a revolutionary position, i.e., calls for the overthrow of the existing order by force. But that would then have to lead to criminal proceedings.”

In other words, Elsässer would first have to be prosecuted and convicted before his outlet could be shut down; however, there are so far no signs that he has even been charged with anything. Nevertheless, his entire publication was targeted for closure before any criminal proceedings even began.

Scholz also stated that in his opinion, the “ethnic concept of the people” that Compact uses, which makes a distinction between ethnic Germans and those simply with German citizenship, is also “not unconstitutional” and is protected constitutional speech. He added that “Faeser’s actions are clearly unconstitutional.”

Other top lawyers took to X to write about the unprecedented raid, including, Carsten Brennecke, a lawyer in the renowned Chancellor Höcker law firm. He stated that among other things, the presence of a press photographer for the raid was clearly a criminal act.

“The Compact magazine is banned and, strangely and of course purely by chance, there are images staged for press effect of the people being attacked, taken by surprise in their private lives and presented to the press. Such ‘coincidences’ are becoming more frequent. Just think of the Reich Citizens’ raid, the search of Zumwinkel or Cardinal Woelki. Of course, leaking search dates in advance by ministries or other authorities for the purpose of self-promotion is not only potentially punishable, it also represents an unlawful infringement of the general personal rights of those affected,” Brennecke writes on X.

Ist die Presse-Inszenierung der Durchsuchung zum Verbot des #Compact – Magazins eine Straftat?

Das #Compact Magazin wird verboten und es gibt komischerweise und natürlich rein zufällig pressewirksam inszenierte Bilder vom Zugriff auf die Personen, die in ihrer Privatsphäre…

— Carsten Brennecke (@RABrennecke) July 16, 2024

In addition, journalists are also pouring on the criticism, including from various mainstream papers. For instance, Zeit journalist Lars Weisbrod wrote on X. “Freedom of the press is so important. I think that in Germany a court should always decide first about banning a medium, not the Interior Minister or the Office for the Protection of the Constitution,” wrote Weisbrod. He also questioned whether such a ban is even constitutionally possible

Mal juristische Fragen beiseite: ich finde das kein gutes werbeFoto für einen liberalen rechtsstaat. Sturmhauben-cops klingeln morgens rechtsradikale Publizisten aus dem Bett und bringen gleich presse mit die möglichst peinliche Fotos davon macht? Finde ich komplett verkehrt pic.twitter.com/lrr0xw64gV

— @larsweisbrod@det.social (@larsweisbrod) July 16, 2024

Faeser herself famously wrote for Antifa Magazine, which was a publication supported by the VVN-BdA, which had been classified by the Office Protection of the Constitution (BfV) as “left-wing extremist.” She wrote the article shortly before she became interior minister.

As for the publisher of Compact, the 67-year-old editor, Jürgen Elsässer, originally aligned with the far left and supposedly coined the phrase: “Never again Germany,” a popular slogan shouted at Antifa events. He wrote for a variety of left-wing parties before he took on a far more right-wing oriented world view and founded Compact in the 2010s.

Authored by Tho Bishop via The Mises Institute,

For the second time in three weeks, a political event actually mattered. The attempted assassination of Donald Trump, evaded only by a short turn of the head, has created a rare moment of national reflection about the current state of American politics. Whether or not it is a moment that has true historical relevance beyond simply influencing a single election or canonizing a new iconic photo in future school textbooks will be decided by how seriously its lessons are internalized by the public.

First of all, the most noteworthy aspects of this attempted attack are precisely how unsurprising such an extraordinary act was. If one takes the regime’s opposition to Donald Trump seriously and recognizes how weakened, the regime’s hold on political opinion is, then the long expectation has been for some sort of black swan event to emerge to prevent a democratic process from dictating who holds the presidency of the next four years.

Acknowledging this does not require a belief that the shooter himself was some sort of regime asset.

The environment for violence has been stoked for years, with every major institution – from the corporate press to the Supreme Court – pushing into the zeitgeist the idea that Donald Trump, a relative political moderate, represented a fascist threat that would destroy all that is sacred in American politics.

If one sincerely believes that Trump is a modern Hitler, one has the moral obligation to attempt to kill such a figure if one has the chance.

From such a worldview, doing so would be a true act of righteous self-sacrifice, a rare incident of heroism in value in a time when such qualities are in low supply.

The problem, of course, is the absurdity of this comparison. It is Trump’s allies and supporters that have faced the brunt of prosecutions, not his enemies. It is Trump’s enemies that have actively worked to undermine political norms related to the conduct of elections, legislative procedure, and the treatment of courts. It is Trump’s greatest critics, in both parties, that have advocated for a more muscular America abroad, both via the military and the abuse of the dollar.

Trump’s failings, and there are many, have always been those areas where he most resembles his political critics.

A smarter regime would have been more successful at co-opting Trump’s populist appeal for their own. Instead, their refusal to ever embrace Trump has served to make him a symbol of radical rejection of the ruling class. His immediate response to a bullet tearing a hole in his ear is a reminder of why that is, his bravado and rhetorical patriotism are a constant and striking reminder of how unimpressive the regime’s leaders are and just how much they despise the public they plunder.

This unimpressive nature of the modern regime makes it all the more difficult to discern the true story about Trump’s potential assassination. Government agents have demonstrated they have no problem using assets to terminate pesky political figures. At the same time, it is equally believable that the regime simply lacks the competency to properly protect those they are charged to protect.

As such, it becomes difficult to figure out whether obvious questions, such as how was a young man with a rifle able to take a sniper position at an identified high-priority station, are answered best by incompetency or sinister conspiracy. Just as Trump’s bloodied fist pump illustrates why he inspires so much of America, the image of a female agent charged with his protection cowering behind the former president and struggling with her holster is the perfect illustration of the modern American state.

Thankfully for Americans, the FBI has been charged with doing a thorough investigation into the matter.

Going forward, the question is what lasting impact this brush with death has on the ever-more-likely second Trump Administration.

Going into the well-timed Republican National Convention, Trump has talked about his desire to “unify” the country.

Unity in the hands of most politicians is a word that should send shivers down one’s spine. Political unity means bipartisanship, the triumph of the regime. National unity gave us the New Deal, the Civil Rights Act, the Patriot Act, and the Iraq War, among other disasters. It is wrapped up in the state’s most powerful propaganda, usually some form of paternal patriotism.

If war is the health of the state, political unity has been the instrument for applying the medicine.

It should also give us pause that the closest Trump came to a “unity” moment during his first term was the nation’s response to covid-19, resulting in the canonization of Fauci and prompting the greatest wealth transfer in modern history.

A defense of this moment, however, would highlight that Trump’s response to covid, beyond the economic response, was largely a federalist moment in terms of state action. It was the ones who decried him as an authoritarian fascist who demanded a more robust unleashing of federal power to crush those who demanded medical freedom.

What Trump could mean by “unity” going forward is, however, still an open question. One suggestion he has already made is to drop criminal cases against him.

What national unity could look like is a consolidation of public resentment against the regime that has been so determined to destroy the likely next president. 

Already, Trump avoided a major pitfall by announcing J.D. Vance, not a “respectable” neoconservative such as Nikki Haley, as his Vice Presidential nominee, which is a step in the right direction. While some of Vance’s economic views are valid reasons for concern, he does better complement, as Daniel McCarthy has noted, the populist America First agenda that is so anathema to the worst elements of the Republican Party.

Similarly, to the extent that something resembling a substantial platform for Trump’s campaign exists, there is a consistent drumbeat of attacking the administrative state, undermining federal agencies, and even providing greater monetary freedom. It is noteworthy that along with Trump’s newfound appreciation for Bitcoin (or at least, political donations from the industry), the infamous Project 2025 has even suggested the need for considering “alternatives to the Federal Reserve.”

The great value of these reforms is that they are all necessary to striking at what is ultimately the root of the toxic nature of modern politics: the consolidation of power in the hands of a decadent and delusional imperial city. So long as moments of crisis result in political unity, these moments will only serve to continue to fuel the cancer that plagues the nation.

It is quite likely that the attempted assassination of Donald Trump will be viewed as a defining moment in the re-establishment of a Trump Administration and whatever lasting impact on American politics that comes with it. Should Trump’s call for “unity” result in further moderation of his politics, the result could ultimately still provide a win for the regime that either desired his death or was at least disinterested in preventing it.

If, however, it serves as a moment to fuel a Trump Administration that better acts on the themes of his candidacy, then it could achieve something that is truly worth celebrating: a nation better unified as a result of a diminished national government.

Authored by Susan C. Olmstead via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The antioxidant n-acetylcysteine (NAC) is emerging as a promising treatment for obsessive-compulsive disorder, offering new hope for the approximately 50 percent of adults with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) who do not respond to customary treatments.

Researchers have been accumulating evidence over the last few years that NAC, a derivative of the amino acid cysteine, available as an over-the-counter supplement, could help people with OCD. It’s also showing promise in the treatment of patients with the hair-pulling disorder trichotillomania and is being investigated as a treatment for compulsive gamblers and drinkers.

However, research into NAC has been slow, in part because the drug, now available without a prescription, has limited commercial potential, according to Dr. Massimo Caroll,  a pharmacologist and clinical toxicologist in the Department of Diagnostics and Public Health at the University of Verona in Italy.

Currently, first-line treatments for OCD are usually selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) and cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT). However, “approximately 40 percent to 60 percent of OCD patients do not achieve adequate symptom relief from first-line treatments or experience adverse events/reactions that preclude continuation of the therapy,” Dr. Carollo told The Epoch Times.

“This high rate of treatment resistance underscores the complexity of OCD and the need for alternative therapeutic approaches,” he said. This complexity, he wrote in a letter in the February issue of the journal CNS Neuroscience & Therapeutics, “likely emerges from a multifaceted interplay of factors, encompassing neurochemical imbalances, genetic predispositions, environmental triggers, and psychological influences.”

Dr. Carollo and colleagues published the letter to raise awareness of the use of NAC to treat OCD.

In it, they wrote that to the best of their knowledge, despite NAC’s potential effectiveness, “only five randomized controlled trials have tested the potential efficacy of NAC as an adjunctive treatment in OCD.” Four of these studies reported significant symptom improvement as measured by Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Scale (Y-BOCS) scores at dosages of 2,000 milligrams (mg) to 3,000 mg per day, they wrote.

NAC has been proven to be safe even at these high dosages, they claim. But because the NAC products now available on the market typically contain 200 mg to 600 mg, the practicality of achieving a therapeutic dose is limited.

OCD and Serotonin

NAC’s potential effectiveness in treating OCD suggests that the disorder’s cause may arise in the body’s glutamatergic system, according to Dr. Carollo.

OCD may be due to problems with the excitatory neurotransmitter glutamate, not the inhibitory neurotransmitter serotonin, some researchers believe, and so it may be better treated with NAC than with SSRIs. But investigation into the role of glutamate in OCD has been limited, Dr. Carollo said.

“The majority of OCD treatments have traditionally focused on modulating serotonin levels, as evidenced by the widespread use of SSRIs [to treat OCD],” Dr. Carollo told The Epoch Times. “This emphasis on SSRIs is not unique to OCD, but extends to other psychiatric disorders such as depression and anxiety, where serotonergic dysfunction is also a key target.”

Abnormal levels of glutamate have been observed in specific brain regions of people with OCD, such as the anterior cingulate cortex, crucial for attention allocation and emotion regulation, Dr. Carollo said.

These findings, along with documented altered functioning of glutamate receptors and transporters, suggest that glutamatergic dysfunction plays a significant role in OCD, he explained, although it likely does not explain the entirety of the disorder. “More research is needed to explore glutamate-targeted treatments,” he said.

More Evidence, Funding Needed

Dr. Carollo cited three reasons for the lack of large-scale trials on the use of NAC for OCD:

1. Limited financial incentives for conducting expensive large-scale trials. “Pharmaceutical companies typically fund large trials for new drugs with strong commercial potential, a scenario less applicable to NAC,” he said.
2. The need for more conclusive evidence regarding NAC’s optimal dosages, long-term efficacy, and safety in the treatment of OCD. “This necessitates phase II and III studies, which require considerable time and resources,” he said.
3. The historical focus on serotonergic mechanisms behind OCD, which may have diverted attention and resources away from exploring alternative pathways.

Does NAC Help Children With OCD?

NAC may be less helpful for children with OCD, according to a review article published in the June issue of the journal Pediatric Drugs.

In children, the practice guidelines recommend CBT monotherapy for youth with mild to moderate OCD, and combined treatment for those with more severe presentations, according to coauthor Eric Storch, a professor, vice chair, and head of psychology in the Menninger Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas.

“NAC should not be a first-line treatment, given the very limited supporting data for youth with OCD (as well as adults with OCD),” Mr. Storch, who has a doctorate in clinical psychology, told The Epoch Times.

“I certainly hope that there is more research, but at the same time what has been reported has not been supportive of NAC for pediatric OCD treatment,” he said. “Understanding underlying mechanisms better would be a helpful avenue. Researching dissemination of effective treatments would also be helpful.”

About 10 percent of children are refractory to treatment, he said, and a recent study (published in May in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry) showed that 90 percent of youth with OCD were either in remission or much improved three years later.

Authored by Lorenz Duchamps via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The number of illegal immigrants arrested at the U.S. southern border fell by nearly 30 percent in June, reaching the lowest monthly total since January 2021, according to figures released this week.

Arrests totaled 83,536 illegal immigrants in June, down from 117,901 in May, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) announced in a June 15 statement.

The agency attributed the decline to President Joe Biden’s order announced on June 4 that halts asylum requests at the southern border once the average daily number of illegal immigrant arrests exceeds 2,500 for seven days.

“Recent border security measures have made a meaningful impact on our ability to impose consequences for those crossing unlawfully, leading to a decline of 29 percent in U.S. Border Patrol apprehensions from May to June,” Troy Miller, acting CBP commissioner, said in a statement.

President Biden issued the proclamation as his administration had been dealing with historic levels of illegal immigrant encounters at the U.S.–Mexico border, while Americans rank border security as one of the country’s top concerns.

The order is a proclamation under Immigration and Nationality Act sections 212(f) and 215(a) and prohibits immigrants who cross the southern border unlawfully from receiving asylum when, as Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a June statement, “high levels of encounters at the southern border exceed our ability to deliver timely consequences.”

This is the same legal rationale former President Donald Trump used to take some of his toughest executive actions to address border security during his term.

Meanwhile, Mr. Miller also said the seven-day average of border-crossing encounters has decreased by more than 50 percent in the past six weeks to below 1,900 per day.

“We are continuing to work with international partners to go after transnational criminal organizations that traffic in chaos and prioritize profit over human lives,” he said.

Since the executive action went into effect on June 5, the Department of Homeland Security has “removed or returned more than 70,000 individuals to more than 170 countries, including by operating more than 150 international repatriation flights,” according to the CBP.

The border agency noted that the total number of removals and returns over the past year is the highest of any year since 2010.

Decline in Illegal Border Crossings

Arrests have fallen by more than half in recent months after reaching an all-time high of 249,785 in December.

Border officials said the agency has registered sharp declines across various nationalities, including Mexicans as well as Chinese people, who generally fly to Ecuador and travel to the U.S. border over land.

San Diego was the busiest of the Border Patrol’s nine sectors bordering Mexico by number of arrests, followed by Tucson, Arizona.

In addition, more than 41,800 immigrants were processed through an online appointment app called CBP One in June. The agency said more than 680,500 immigrants have successfully scheduled appointments since the app was introduced in January 2023.

“The top nationalities processed subsequent to arrival for their appointment are Venezuelan, Cuban, and Haitian,” the border agency stated.

Meanwhile, nearly 500,000 migrants from four countries have been allowed entry into the country under the Biden administration’s Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela CHNV parole program from October 2022 through June 2024, according to the CBP.

The agency said they include 104,130 Cubans, 194,027 Haitians, 86,101 Nicaraguans, and 110,541 Venezuelans.

The parole program was set in motion for Venezuelans by President Biden in October 2022. It was intended to help ease the number of illegal border crossings by flying people from certain countries directly to the United States. It was expanded in January 2023 to include nationals from Cuba, Haiti, and Nicaragua.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

From NTD News

Before the failed assassination attempt, before the catastrophic (for Biden) first presidential debate, Donald Trump gave Bloomberg an extensive interview in which he laid out the core tenets of Trumponomics 2.0 that will define his next presidency. Here are the key highlights:

According to the interview, if Trump wins, he will…

• enforce huge bilateral sanctions even though he claims “I don’t love sanctions,” he says. He keeps circling back to William McKinley, who he says raised enough revenue through tariffs during his turn-of-the-20th-century presidency to avoid instituting a federal income tax yet never got the appropriate credit.

• allow Jerome Powell to serve out his term as chair of the Federal Reserve, which runs through May 2026

• will lower the corporate tax rate to as low as 15%

• no longer plans to ban TikTok.

• considers Jamie Dimon to serve as secretary of the Department of the Treasury

• ambivalent (if not outright hostile) to the idea of protecting Taiwan from Chinese aggression and to US efforts to punish Putin for invading Ukraine.

While the broad strokes of Trumponomics might not be different from what they were during his first term, what’s new is the speed and efficiency with which he intends to enact them. He believes he understands the levers of power much more deeply now, including the importance of selecting the right people for the right jobs. “We had great people, but I had some people that I would not have chosen for a second time,” he says. “Now, I know everybody. Now, I am truly experienced.”

Maybe he is, or maybe he just is surrounded by better people. Here is the inner circle of Trump economic policy advisors:

In a world where everything else has been tried – and has pushed US debt to stratospheric levels that virtually assure the US will lose the dollar reserve status in coming years, Trump is betting that his unorthodox agenda of tax cuts, more oil, less regulation, higher tariffs and fewer foreign financial commitments will appeal to enough swing state voters to hand him the election. And it’s working: debate and assassination attempt boosts aside, recent polling has showed that Black and Hispanic men are shifting to the Republican Party as they tire of historically high prices for food, housing and gas. As many as 20% of Black men now back Trump while Biden is struggling to sell key voters on his catastrophic economic record (not to mention the panic over his age). While Trump is almost assured a win in November according to online prediction markets, many Democratic leaders are increasingly concerned he’ll also deliver Republicans control of the House and Senate along with the White House: a sweeping red tsunami. In such an outcome, Trump would have unprecedented leverage to shape the US economy, the climate for global businesses and trade with allies for decades to come.

But there is one hurdle: while the business leaders Trump would be working with prize stability and certainty, they didn’t get much of either in Trump’s first presidency. This time around, his campaign is more professionally run, but he hasn’t produced a detailed economic policy agenda to reassure them. The vacuum has generated confusion among those who are planning for a second Trump term.

So Trump took advantage of the interview to set the record straight on some key items:

The Fed

In late April, a few of Trump’s informal policy advisers leaked to the Wall Street Journal an explosive draft proposal to severely curb the independence of the Federal Reserve. It was inferred that Trump had endorsed the idea, which didn’t seem like a stretch given his prior attacks on Powell. In fact, the Trump campaign insisted he’d endorsed neither the proposal nor the leak, and his top campaign brass were furious about it. But the episode was a consequence of Trump’s still-unformed policy, which has left wonks from such think tanks as the Heritage Foundation battling to fill in the details and jockey for influence. Other conservative policy entrepreneurs have been pushing proposals to devalue the dollar or institute a flat tax. At Mar-a-Lago, Trump makes it clear he’s fed up with the unauthorized freelancing. “There’s a lot of false information,” he complains. He’s eager to set the record straight on several topics.

First, there’s Powell. While in February, Trump told Fox News that he wouldn’t reappoint the Fed chair; now he states unequivocally that he’ll let Powell finish his term, which would last well into a second Trump administration. “I would let him serve it out,” Trump says, “especially if I thought he was doing the right thing.”

Even so, Trump has thoughts on interest-rate policy, at least in the near term. The Fed, he warns, should abstain from cutting rates before the November election and giving the economy, and Biden, a boost. That would be a problem for a market that has already priced in not one but two rate cuts in the second half (the first of which in September). “It’s something that they know they shouldn’t be doing,” he said.

Inflation

Trump has been ruthlessly critical of Biden’s stewardship of the economy. But he sees, in the anger generated by high prices and interest rates, an opportunity to woo voters who typically don’t support Republicans, such as Black and Hispanic men. Trump says he’ll bring down prices by opening up the US to more oil and gas drilling. “We have more liquid gold than anybody,” he says, even though the tariffs he plans on implementing will certainly lead to higher prices for imported goods. A report from the Peterson Institute estimates that Trump’s tariff regime would impose an additional annual cost of $1,700 for the average middle-income family. And Oxford Economics estimates that Trump’s combination of tariffs, immigration restrictions and extended tax cuts could also increase inflation and slow economic growth. The through line of these policies, says Bernard Yaros, lead US economist at Oxford Economics, is “an increase in inflation expectations.”

Immigration

He believes harsh restrictions are key to boosting domestic wages and employment. He characterizes immigration restrictions as “the biggest [factor] of all” in how he’d reshape the economy, with particular benefits for the minorities he’s eager to win over. “The Black people are going to be decimated by the millions of people that are coming into the country,” he says. “They’re already feeling it. Their wages have gone way down. Their jobs are being taken by the migrants coming in illegally into the country.” Trump’s language turns apocalyptic. “The Black population in this country is going to die because of what’s happened, what’s going to happen to their jobs—their jobs, their housing, everything,” he continues. “I want to stop that.”

Budget deficit

Trump’s desire to renew his landmark 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and to further reduce corporate taxes means that the budget deficit, having ballooned to war levels, will not shrink any time soon if ever. Coupled with the upward pressure on interest rates that economists expect from his protectionist policies, Trump’s plans could exacerbate the country’s growing debt burden. In the end, however, Trump’s other positions could be enough to sway business leaders to his side. Harold Hamm, a Trump donor and the executive chairman of oil giant Continental Resources Inc., writes in an email: “There seems to be outright hostility to free markets in the Biden Administration. As a result, capital is parked on the sidelines. Why? Because of regulatory uncertainty and in some cases downright regulatory hostility toward certain sectors.” Hamm cites the pause Biden put on liquefied natural gas projects in January as one example. “When Trump is re-elected,” he predicts, “that capital that was parked on the sidelines will be unleashed once again.”

Treasury Secretary Dimon

It is no secret that most Fortune 1000 CEOs have never been fans of Trump, but slowly the tide is turning. Overnight, the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, announced he would donate $45 million a month to a Trump PAC. Expect many others to follow. But the biggest praise for Trump in recent months has come from a card-carrying Democrat and the CEO of the largest US bank: “Be honest,” Jamie Dimon said at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January. “He was kind of right about NATO, kind of right about immigration. He grew the economy quite well. Tax reform worked. He was right about some of China. … He wasn’t wrong about some of these critical issues, and that’s why they’re voting for him.” According to Bloomberg, Trump relishes the compliment. He’s changed his view of the man he attacked on Truth Social last year as “Highly overrated Globalist Jamie Dimon” and now says he could envision Dimon, who’s thought to be contemplating a political career, as his secretary of the Treasury. “He is somebody that I would consider,” Trump says.

Tariffs and Foreign Policy

As president, Trump shattered the long-standing Republican orthodoxy of favoring free trade. He says he’ll go further if reelected. To Bloomberg, he offered an impassioned defense of US tariffs — he’s been studying McKinley, dubbing him “the Tariff King” — to make it clear he intends to ratchet up levies not just on China but on the European Union, too. “McKinley made this country rich,” Trump says. “He was the most underrated president.” In Trump’s reading of history, McKinley’s successors squandered his legacy on costly government programs such as the New Deal (“the whole thing with the parks and the dams”) and unjustly poisoned an important tool for economic statecraft. “I can’t believe how many people are negative on tariffs that are actually smart,” Trump says. “Man, is it good for negotiation. I’ve had guys, I’ve had countries that were potentially extremely hostile coming to me and saying, ‘Sir, please stop with the tariff stuff.’”

Another confirmation that Trump was right: despite rampant criticism, Biden maintained Trump’s tariffs on China, even increasing ones on steel, aluminum, semiconductors, electric vehicles, batteries and other goods. “This is going to add price inflation across the board, all in the name of ‘tough guy’ election-year politics,” Yaël Ossowski, deputy director of the Consumer Choice Center, a nonpartisan advocacy group, said in May. And sure enough, in Trumpworld, Biden’s actions are seen as validation that Trump was right, and his Democratic critics were wrong, about the threat China poses to the US economy and security. Trump is eager to prescribe more of the same medicine, including to European allies. In addition to targeting China for new tariffs of anywhere from 60% to 100%, he says he’d impose a 10% across-the-board tariff on imports from other countries, citing a familiar litany of complaints about foreign countries not buying enough US goods.

“The ‘European Union’ sounds so lovely,” Trump says. “We love Scotland and Germany. We love all these places. But once you get past that, they treat us violently.” He mentions reluctance in Europe to import US automobiles and agricultural products as key drivers of the more than $200 billion trade deficit, a statistic he considers a critical measure of economic fairness.

Taiwan

Asked about America’s commitment to defending Taiwan from China which views the Asian democracy as a breakaway province, Trump makes it clear that despite recent bipartisan support for Taiwan, he’s at best lukewarm about standing up to Chinese aggression. Part of his skepticism is grounded in economic resentment. “Taiwan took our chip business from us,” he says. “I mean, how stupid are we? They took all of our chip business. They’re immensely wealthy.” What he wants is for Taiwan to pay the US for protection. “I don’t think we’re any different from an insurance policy. Why? Why are we doing this?” he asks. Another factor driving his skepticism is what he regards as the practical difficulty of defending a small island on the other side of the globe. “Taiwan is 9,500 miles away,” he says. “It’s 68 miles away from China.” Abandoning the commitment to Taiwan would represent a dramatic shift in US foreign policy, as significant as halting support for Ukraine. But Trump sounds ready to radically alter the terms of these relationships.

Saudi Arabia

His views about Saudi Arabia are far more amicable. He says he’s spoken to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud within the past six months, though he declines to elaborate on the nature and frequency of their talks. Asked if he worries that increasing US oil and gas production would upset the Saudis, who wish to maintain their primacy in energy, Trump replies that he doesn’t think so, pointing once more to a personal relationship. “He likes me, I like him,” he says of the crown prince. “They’re always going to need protection … they’re not naturally protected.” He adds: “I’ll always protect them.” Trump blames Biden and former President Barack Obama for eroding US relations with Saudi Arabia, saying they pushed the country toward a key adversary. “They’re not with us anymore,” he says. “They’re with China. But they don’t want to be with China. They want to be with us.”

Ukraine

Western allies are taking extensive measures to prepare for his possible return to the White House. These include increasing defense spending, transferring control of military aid for Ukraine to NATO, racing to improve relationships with Trump’s advisers and affiliated think tanks, and reaching out to Republican governors and thought leaders to divine his intentions. At a NATO summit in Washington, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy urged allies to act quickly to help his country repel Russia’s invasion instead of waiting for the election results in November to decide what to do. Dan Caldwell, a policy adviser at the right-leaning think tank Defense Priorities, says that “it’s actually in Europe’s interest to ‘America-proof’ their defense and to start operating on the assumption that the United States has other, more urgent national security priorities, and domestic ones as well.”

TikTok

The one exception to Trump’s claim to not want to harm US tech companies, and to privilege domestic ones over foreign ones, is TikTok. Discussing his recent embrace of the Chinese-owned social media platform, where he’s already quite popular, Trump mentions that banning it in the US would benefit a company and a CEO he has no desire to reward. “Now [that] I’m thinking about it, I’m for TikTok, because you need competition,” he says. “If you don’t have TikTok, you have Facebook and Instagram—and that’s, you know, that’s Zuckerberg.” It’s an outcome he won’t abide. He’s still stung by Facebook’s decision to bar him indefinitely in the wake of the Jan. 6 attacks. “All of a sudden,” Trump grouses, “I went from No. 1 to having nobody.”

Crypto

His reversal on cryptocurrency has been marked by similar dynamics: not long ago he criticized Bitcoin as a “scam” and a “disaster waiting to happen.” Now he says it and other cryptocurrencies should be “made in the USA.” He frames this about-face as a practical necessity. “If we don’t do it, China is going to figure it out, and China’s going to have it—or somebody else,” he says.

Crypto becoming a top 2024 election issue as expected. On one hand you have Pocahontas and her “Anti-Crypto army”, and now you have DeSantis going all-in crypto, anti-CBDC and anti-Warren. https://t.co/cmrGcPQIcY https://t.co/vK5MqiOhNj

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) May 2, 2023

Not coincidentally, the crypto industry – spurned by the Democratic Party, brimming with cash and eager for friends in Washington – has now found its way to Trump. “Thanks largely to the actions of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Biden administration has stumbled into becoming anti-crypto,” says Justin Slaughter, policy director at the crypto-focused investment firm Paradigm. “Given that about 20% of Democrats own crypto, per polling, and its ownership skews young and non-White, this was politically unwise.” Trump has moved to fill the void, declaring in a May speech that he would “stop Joe Biden’s crusade to crush crypto.” The following month he reaped the benefits, raising money from Bitcoin miners at a Mar-a-Lago fundraiser. Trump’s campaign then announced it would “build a crypto army,” and it now accepts crypto contributions.

More in the full Bloomberg interview here.

Authored by Laurence Vance via The Future Of Freedom Foundation,

In October of 2017, a gunman in a hotel room on the Las Vegas Strip fired multiple guns from his hotel window on a crowd of 22,000 gathered for an outdoor country music festival. After shooting over 1,000 rounds in about 10 minutes, 60 people lay dead, and more than 860 people were injured before the gunman took his own life. The incident was the deadliest mass shooting committed by an individual in the United States.

Naturally, even while the dead bodies were still warm, gun-control advocates began clamoring for more and stricter gun-control laws—especially when it was discovered that the shooter had used a bump stock.

Slide Fire Solutions SSAK-47-XRS-RH Bump Fire Stock mounted on a GP WASR-10/36 AK-47. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

A bump stock is a device that when attached to a semiautomatic rifle allows it to more rapidly fire bullets by harnessing the rifle’s recoil, but it does not turn a semiautomatic weapon into an automatic one. Between 2010 and 2018, Americans spent more than $100 million purchasing an estimated 520,000 bump stocks.

Until the Las Vegas shooting, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) classified bump stocks as a “firearm part” not subject to federal regulation. Only two states had banned bump stocks prior to the shooting, but since then, about 15 more states and the District of Columbia have banned them.

But it’s not just Democrats and progressives who were advocating more gun-control laws after the Las Vegas shooting. After the shooting at Parkland High School the following year, and at the instigation of then-President Donald Trump, the ATF announced that it would reclassify bump stocks as machine guns subject to the National Firearms Act of 1934 and the Gun Control Act of 1968. Tweeted Trump: “As I promised, today the Department of Justice will issue the rule banning BUMP STOCKS with a mandated comment period. We will BAN all devices that turn legal weapons into illegal machine guns.”  The final rule issued by the ATF to ban bump stocks was published in the Federal Register on December 26, 2018. It banned new sales and required current owners to destroy or surrender their bump stocks to the government.

The ban, however, was just overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of Garland v. Cargill.

Michael Cargill, a Texas firearms store owner, sued the ATF in 2019 in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas. He maintained that the ATF lacked authority to issue the final rule because its interpretation of what is a machine gun conflicted with the statutory definition. The suit was dismissed in 2020, and in 2021, a three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit upheld the ban. That opinion, however, was vacated in 2022, and the case was reheard en banc, then reversed in 2023. Upon appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, the 2018 final rule was vacated in a 6–3 decision.

Wrote Justice Clarence Thomas in his majority opinion:

A bump stock does not convert a semiautomatic rifle into a machinegun any more than a shooter with a lightning-fast trigger finger does. Even with a bump stock, a semiautomatic rifle will fire only one shot for every “function of the trigger.” So, a bump stock cannot qualify as a machinegun.

We conclude that a semiautomatic rifle equipped with a bump stock is not a “machinegun” because it does not fire more than one shot “by a single function of the trigger.”

A bump stock is not a “machinegun” for another reason: Even if a semiautomatic rifle with a bump stock could fire more than one shot “by a single function of the trigger,” it would not do so “automatically.”

Predictably, Justice Thomas was joined by conservative justices John Roberts, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch. And just as predictably, liberal justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented. “Today’s decision to reject that ordinary understanding will have deadly consequences,” said Justice Sotomayor.

The Supreme Court certainly made the right decision. As Justice Thomas also wrote in his opinion:

For many years, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) took the position that semiautomatic rifles equipped with bump stocks were not machineguns under the statute. On more than 10 separate occasions over several administrations, ATF consistently concluded that rifles equipped with bump stocks cannot “automatically” fire more than one shot “by a single function of the trigger.”

And as Justice Alito wrote in his concurring opinion:

The horrible shooting spree in Las Vegas in 2017 did not change the statutory text or its meaning. That event demonstrated that a semiautomatic rifle with a bump stock can have the same lethal effect as a machinegun, and it thus strengthened the case for amending §5845(b). But an event that highlights the need to amend a law does not itself change the law’s meaning.

The Supreme Court’s decision struck a blow to the bureaucratic administrative state that makes its own laws independent of Congress, although Congress rarely does anything about it.

Democrats in Congress are already trying to pass legislation to institute a federal ban on bump stocks. Republicans in Congress, many of whom supported a bump stock ban when Trump was president, are now opposing legislation to reinstate the ban. As usual, Republicans are wetting a finger and holding it up to see which way the political winds are blowing.

The issue before us, then, is whether bump stocks should be illegal.

There is no question that Congress could pass legislation to ban bump stocks, just like Congress has passed legislation to ban all sorts of things and all manner of activities. Although such a ban would clearly be unconstitutional, in reality, the Constitution has nothing to do with it. Congress has been passing unconstitutional legislation for over a hundred years; otherwise we wouldn’t have Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, federal job training programs, the war on drugs, and a thousand other federal programs and agencies.

There is also no question that the states could institute a bump stock ban, as at least 15 of them have already done. This is because, as James Madison explained in The Federalist, No. 45, “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the Federal Government, are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State Governments are numerous and indefinite.” Of course, it’s conceivable that such state bans might not survive a challenge under the Fourteenth Amendment.

So, should bump stocks be illegal?

Of course not.

If the guns that bump stocks are attached to are not illegal, even though they can be used to kill large numbers of people in a short time, with or without the help of a bump stock, then neither should bump stocks be illegal.

But more importantly, bump stocks shouldn’t be illegal for the same reason that no inanimate objects should be illegal.  An object—whether it be a gun, a knife, a hammer, a saw, a needle, or a pen—can be used for good or ill. Should pillows be banned because they can be used to smother someone?

The right to own a bump stock is essential to a free society. It is what you do with the bump stock that is the issue. If someone uses it to help him shoot more people, then the fault lies with him, not the bump stock.

The outrage of some family members who lost loved ones in the Las Vegas shooting over the Supreme Court’s decision is misplaced. The gunman who shot himself after killing all those people at the music festival is the culprit — not the gun, not the gun dealer that sold the gun, not the gun manufacturer, not the ammunition, not the ammunition manufacturer, not the store that sold the ammunition, and not the bump stock.

Authored by Jill McLaughlin via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Drivers in California are paying the highest prices in the nation for gas this summer by nearly 6 cents after a higher gas tax went into effect earlier this month.

The extra 2 cents per gallon added July 1 was announced earlier this year by the California Department of Tax and Fee Administration. The department is required to adjust the gas and diesel fuel tax rates on July 1 each year, based on inflation.

For diesel, the state’s tax rose from 44.1 cents a gallon to 45.4 cents.

In all, the state charges about 60 cents a gallon now, which bumps up the already high cost state consumers pay at the pump during summer months, when gas stations are required to sell a special eco-friendly summer blend.

The additional bump puts California at the top of the list for the highest gas price in the United States with an average price of $4.75 a gallon July 15. The national average was $1.25 less at $3.52 a gallon, according to the American Automobile Association (AAA).

The state with the second most-expensive price for gas was Hawaii at $4.69 Monday, followed by Washington state at $4.27 and Oregon and Nevada both at $4 a gallon, AAA reported.

California and Hawaii are often the top two states for gas prices, according to AAA affiliate Auto Club of Southern California Spokeswoman Anlleyn Venegas.

“It’s usually between us and Hawaii,” Ms. Venegas told The Epoch Times. “We have higher taxes and just a general higher cost of living in California.”

The Golden State also has the most drivers and must import fuel from out of state or overseas, she added.

California’s fuel prices are historically elevated during the summer, when the state requires a special blend that adds about 20 cents to 25 cents per gallon.

The state also adds a federal excise tax, 27 cents a gallon for the state’s cap-and-trade program, a low-carbon fuel tax of 11 cents per gallon, about 2 cents for underground gas storage fees, and another 3.7 percent in state and local taxes.

Despite the higher tax, California’s gas prices were 16 cents lower a gallon Monday compared to the same day last year and 4 cents down from a week ago, AAA reported.

Although the official numbers are not yet in, the drop in gas prices over last year was good news for drivers, Ms. Venegas said.

“It’s already good news that we’re paying less than a year ago,” she said. “It’s a good thing.”

Authored by Dmytro “Henry” Aleksandrov via Headline USA,

The widow of the firefighter who was shot and killed during the assassination attempt against Donald Trump recently said that she rejected a phone call from Joe Biden because her conservative, Trump-supporting husband would not appreciate her talking to Biden.

Helen Comperatore told the New York Post that Biden tried to call her after her husband, Corey Comperatore, died at the Trump rally in Butler, Pa., on July 13, 2024.

“I didn’t talk to Biden. I didn’t want to talk to him. My husband was a devout Republican, and he would not have wanted me to talk to him,” she told the news source on July 15, 2024.

Her husband was killed, and two people were seriously injured when Thomas Matthew Crooks tried to assassinate Trump while he was speaking at the rally.

Helen then went on to say that she didn’t blame Biden for the death of her husband, even though he and the entire establishment have been spreading the hateful anti-Trump rhetoric for almost over the decade, which resulted in the shooting.

“I don’t have any ill will towards Joe Biden. I’m not one of those people [who] gets involved in politics. I support Trump. That’s who I’m voting for, but I don’t have ill will towards Biden. He didn’t do anything bad to my husband. A 20-year-old despicable kid did,” she said.

Her husband was praised as a hero after his daughter said that he died trying to protect her and the rest of his family at the rally.

“He shielded my body from the bullet that came at us. He loved his family. He truly loved us enough to take a real bullet for us,” Allyson Comperatore, the victim’s daughter, said.

People on social media agreed with Helen’s decision.

“Understandable… Biden said it was time to put ‘Trump in the bullseye…’ [Then] her husband was murdered while someone tried to assassinate President Trump,” @USBornNRaised wrote.

Understandable. Being Biden said it was time to put “Trump in the bullseye” then her husband was murdered while someone tried to assassinate President Trump.

— Tired of being politically correct (@USBornNRaised) July 15, 2024