In a surprising turn, The Wall Street Journal has issued a new weekend report saying that US intelligence agencies do not believe that Russian President Vladimir Putin planned or ordered the death of opposition activist and politician Alexei Navalny.

“U.S. intelligence agencies have determined that Putin likely didn’t order Navalny to be killed at the notoriously brutal prison camp in February, people familiar with the matter said, a finding that deepens the mystery about the circumstances of his death,” writes the Journal.

“The assessment doesn’t dispute Putin’s culpability for Navalny’s death, but rather finds he probably didn’t order it at that moment,” WSJ continues. “The finding is broadly accepted within the intelligence community and shared by several agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agency, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the State Department’s intelligence unit, the people said.”

And yet it must be recalled that Western officials and media pundits alike had immediately upon reports of the 47-year old Navalny’s death rushed to declare that he had been ‘assassinated’ by Russian authorities upon Putin’s order.

This led to a new wave of US-led sanctions on Russia, and even disrupted momentum toward a hoped-for prisoner swap between Moscow and Kiev at the time.

President Biden had asserted in a statement issued on the very day of his Feb.16 death that “Putin is responsible for Navalny’s death” and that it was “proof of Putin’s Brutality” – but ultimately that the ‘democratic future’ Navalny believed in was worth “dying for” – according to the president’s words at the time.

Russian prison authorities had officially listed his demise as from “sudden death syndrome,” which is how natural causes such as heart attacks are typically described.

Navalny’s team is not happy with the fresh WSJ report which is being seen as essentially an exoneration of Putin:

In a statement to the Journal, Leonid Volkov, a longtime Navalny ally, rejected the U.S. intelligence assessment and said those who assert that Putin wasn’t aware of Navalny’s death “clearly do not understand anything about how modern day Russia runs.”

“The idea of Putin being not informed and not approving killing Navalny is ridiculous,” he said.

You will find more infographics at Statista

Below, journalist and geopolitical commentator Aaron Maté explains that despite news of Navalny’s life and death having driven world headlines, he was still largely an unknown within broader Russian politics and society especially on a national level [emphasis ZH].

* * *

Navalny was a marginal opposition figure who polled at around 2%. Putin didn’t fear him; it served Putin to have him seen in the West as his main opposition.

The Russian gov’t meanwhile has just barred anti-war candidate Boris Nadezhdin. A Russian court has also issued a draconian prison sentence to anti-war sociologist Boris Kagarlitsky. We don’t hear about people like Nadezhdin and Kagarlitsky in the West nearly as much for one reason: unlike Navalny, they don’t collaborate with Western governments.

Navalny worked with NATO intel cutout Bellingcat and went through the “Yale World Fellow” program, a regime change training ground. For this reason, we also don’t hear that Navalny was an unrepentant xenophobe who compared Muslim immigrants to cockroaches and rotten teeth. 

His death is a tragedy. He was undoubtedly mistreated. But because he served US interests, US state media will make him into someone he was not. And just compare their fawning coverage to their silence on, or even support for, the ongoing persecution of Julian Assange. Or their complete silence on the mistreatment and death of US citizen Gonzalo Lira in Ukrainian custody — universally ignored in US media.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is investigating Tesla’s Autopilot (again) to determine if the over-the-air update to the automated driving system was enough to keep drivers on the road. 

The new probe comes after the NHTSA closed a multi-year investigation into Autopilot. The prior report found evidence that “Tesla’s weak driver engagement system was not appropriate for Autopilot’s permissive operating capabilities,” which resulted in a “critical safety gap.”

On Friday, NHTSA said the original Autopilot investigation was opened to see if “Tesla’s Autopilot contained a defect that created an unreasonable risk to motor vehicle safety,” adding that it discovered similar findings with Tesla’s voluntary recall (Recall 23V838). 

The initial investigation found at least 13 crashes involving one or more fatalities, many more involving severe injuries, in which “foreseeable driver misuse played an apparent role,” NHTSA said. 

The new investigation covers two million Model Y, X, S, 3, and Cybertruck vehicles equipped with Autopilot produced between 2012 and 2024. 

The federal agency is concerned about whether the company’s remedy was enough, partly because 20 crashes have occurred since the over-the-air software update earlier this year. 

One ZH reader reached out to us about Autopilot, explaining that the automated driving system has become increasingly aggressive in making sure the operator is paying attention since the update. The individual told us he was suspended from using Autopilot earlier this week for what he says were ‘minor’ distractions while driving, adding that the warning system is getting more strict by the update. 

During a call with investors earlier this week, Elon Musk said, “I actually do not think that there will be significant regulatory barriers, provided there is conclusive data that the autonomous car is safer than a human-driven car,” adding that those who doubt Tesla’s ability to “solve” autonomy shouldn’t invest in the company. 

Meanwhile, the Biden administration has weaponized federal agencies against Musk’s companies, such as SpaceX and Tesla. This is mainly over Musk’s ‘free speech’ platform, “X,” which the Biden administration despised because it has been unable to suppress the First Amendment on the platform through the censorship-industrial complex. 

Authored by Matt McGregor via The Epoch Times,

The Department of Justice (DOJ) stands its ground on its refusal to surrender the audio recording of Special Counsel Robert Hur’s interview with President Joe Biden to the House Oversight Committee.

Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and James Comer (R-Ky.), chairmen of the House Judiciary and Oversight Accountability committees, warned Attorney General Merrick Garland that he would hold him in contempt of Congress unless he handed over the recording of Mr. Hur’s interview stemming from a probe into President Biden’s alleged mishandling of classified information.

In the letter, signed on April 25, Assistant Attorney General Carlos Felipe Uriarte told Mr. Jordan and Mr. Comer that despite the committees’ threats of contempt proceedings, the DOJ has adequately responded and sees no reason to give the audio to the committees.

“We have repeatedly invited the Committees to identify how these audio recordings from law enforcement files would serve the purposes for which you say you want them,” the letter stated.

“We have also repeatedly urged the Committees to avoid unnecessary conflict and to respect the public interest in the Department’s ability to conduct effective investigations by protecting sensitive law enforcement files.”

Mr. Uriarte said the DOJ has already complied with the committees’ request by providing Mr. Hur’s report and testimony in addition to transcripts of the interview.

“This is consistent with our strong record of cooperation this Congress,” Mr. Uriarte said.

The committees have failed to articulate “a legitimate congressional need” for the audio recordings, which Mr. Uriarte said the DOJ is withholding to protect “the confidentiality of law enforcement files.”

“The Department will continue to cooperate reasonably and appropriately, but we will not risk the long-term integrity of our law enforcement work,” Mr. Uriarte said.

Mr. Uriarte elaborated on Mr. Jordan’s and Mr. Comer’s request for the audio recording by questioning the necessity.

Among the committees’ expressed concerns as reviewed by Mr. Uriarte are whether President Biden is linked to “troublesome foreign payments,” whether he “retained sensitive documents related to specific countries involved in his family’s foreign business dealings,” and whether the DOJ has acted impartially by avoiding prosecuting President Biden while targeting former President Donald Trump.

Mr. Uriarte said there’s no evidence found in the transcripts that suggests discussions of these issues will be revealed in the audio recording.

‘Severely Chilling’

“You have offered no explanation of how these specific files would provide any information pertinent to the Committees’ stated purposes,” Mr. Uriarte said. “And even if they did have pertinent information, you have not explained how that information isn’t already available from the transcripts we produced as an extraordinary accommodation to the Committees.”

Mr. Uriarte classified the audio as “sensitive law enforcement information” that, if made public, would send a message “to the public that the Department cannot be trusted to keep law enforcement files confidential.”

“It would be severely chilling if the decision to cooperate with a law enforcement investigation required individuals to submit themselves to public inquest by politicians, particularly because congressional investigations are not subject to the same standards and checks as the Department’s,” he said. “Indeed, the Committees have frequently objected to even the suggestion that your investigative powers are subject to any requirement to justify your requests according to objective standards or limit your demands to avoid harming other values and interests.”

Mr. Uriarte added that the threat of contempt proceedings is “unjustifiable” considering the DOJ’s past cooperation with the committees’ investigations.

“We urge the Committees to deescalate and to work with the Department in the same mode of cooperation and respect that we have shown Congress for over a year,” he said. “Furthermore, the Department is eager to make good use of the remaining time in this Congress, such as by working together with the Committees on legislative priorities that can make real, tangible progress for the American people.”

The committees issued the first subpoenas on Feb. 27 requesting notes, audio files, video, and transcripts related to Mr. Hur’s investigation.

The DOJ responded by providing transcripts, but no recordings.

After his probe into President Biden’s handling of classified documents spanning his over four decades in politics, Mr. Hur said in February that President Biden would not be charged and that a jury would probably not convict him partially due to his cognitive decline.

“We have also considered that, at trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” Mr. Hur wrote.

‘With Respect to National Security’

In an April 16 testimony before the House Appropriations Committee on the DOJ’s 2025 budget request, Mr. Garland echoed Mr. Uriarte, stating that the reasons for not giving the audio was due to “privileges with respect to national security.”

When asked about Mr. Hur’s observations of President Biden being an “elderly man with a poor memory,” Mr. Garland said he has “complete confidence” in the president based on his own observations.

“I have watched him expertly guide meetings of staff and Cabinet members on issues of foreign affairs and military strategy and policy in this incredibly complex world in which we now face, and in which he has been decisive—decisive in instructions to the staff, and decisive in making the decisions necessary to protect the country,” Mr. Garland said.

The Epoch Times has contacted the subcommittees for comment.

With the presidential election still more than six months away, President Biden’s handlers are under increasing pressure to divert Americans’ eyes from his obvious and accelerating mental and physical decline. 

Where his deteriorating mental abilities are concerned, we’ve already seen them using tactics like drastically minimizing his spontaneous interactions with reporters and excessively stage-managing his rare press conferences — down to furnishing him with answers to questions submitted in advance. 

Now comes news that Team Biden’s latest stage-management innovation is focused on obscuring his frailty: Uncomfortable with the way Biden looks as he unsteadily shuffles across the White House lawn, one or more staffers now walk at his side, helping to prevent close scrutiny of his gait. 

Biden advisors have told Axios they’re uneasy about how he looks when walking and shuffling by himself, particularly across the White House lawn. The outlet analyzed video of Biden’s navigation to Marine One helicopters and pegged when the new hide-the-invalid routine started:

• In March, Biden’s five walks shuffles to Marine One were by himself or family members only
• After April 16, nine of his 10 treacherous traverses of the lawn had him obscured by accompanying staffers or legislators

Can’t Make It Up: The President of the United States has been assigned “walkers.”

You heard that right. The man that has access to nuke codes now requires aides to escort him across a lawn.

These handlers now walk between Biden and the pool cameras, “to draw less attention to… pic.twitter.com/RO81Dvufb6

— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) April 26, 2024

In addition to acting as visual screeners, the aides might also be beneficial in grabbing him if he starts falling to the ground. Biden’s advisors and doctors have had him embrace other tools and techniques to minimize physical disasters like his falls on the Air Force One stairs…

…and this wipeout at last spring’s Air Force Academy graduation: 

The extra measures include wearing black sneakers instead of business shoes, and now walking up a shorter set of stairs to board Air Force One.  The mental side of the ledger is constantly being filled with new debit entries. The latest came this week, when — not for the first time — Biden read his stage directions off the teleprompter. In a Wednesday speech to North America’s Building Trades Unions, he weakly delivered a line meant to draw applause, then read the word “PAUSE” off the prompter:  

NOW – Biden: “Four more years. Pause.” pic.twitter.com/PW1HBgaCVu

— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) April 24, 2024

As we detailed Friday, Biden’s latest approval rating is the worst for any president at this point in a term in 70 years. Just 38.7% of Americans approve of his performance, according to Gallup. A February poll found 76% of Americans have moderate or major concerns about Biden’s mental and physical fitness to advance to a second term. 

One thing’s for sure: Biden’s handlers are in for an agonizingly tense time as the remaining 191 days until the Nov. 5 general election slowly grind away.  

Authored by Simon Hankinson via The Epoch Times,

After nearly two years of legal and political challenges, Britain’s parliament has finally passed a law confirming that Rwanda is a safe place to send people who arrive in the UK illegally by sea. This is a major policy win for the Conservative government of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and a victory for common sense. Britain, like the United States and Europe, is experiencing mass illegal migration in the guise of asylum claims. The British devised the Rwanda plan in response, but the U.S. already has successful equivalents that can be resurrected when there is a will to once again control America’s borders.

Like those coming to the United States by land, most people illegally arriving in Britain by boat are economic migrants. Britain’s asylum system has been swamped by growing demand, and backlogs for processing cases stretch into years.

In 2018, only 300 people arrived illegally in the UK by small boat from France across the English Channel. In 2022, it was more than 45,000. And in August 2023, the UK received its 100,000th illegal boat-borne immigrant, one of 700 who arrived each day. Nearly all of the 100,000 are still in Britain, joined by ever-increasing numbers.

From Jan. 1 to April 21 this year, 6,265 small boats arrived in the UK carrying illegal immigrants, with the largest numbers being from Afghanistan and Vietnam.

Having left the European Union, the British are unable to return asylum-seekers to the first safe country in the EU under what are called the Dublin Regulations. By mid-2023, 96 percent of asylum-seekers who arrived in 2021 had not received final decisions in their cases, and around 50,000 were being housed in hotels, costing the United Kingdom the equivalent of more than $8.8 million U.S. a day. The limitless liability of illegal immigration to the UK is an important electoral issue for Conservative Party voters.

Sound familiar?

In August 2023, Sunak’s government passed an Illegal Migration Act that barred people who entered illegally by sea from applying for asylum. The act requires British officials to return inadmissible aliens—without appeal—back to their birth country, if possible, or if not, to a safe third country.

To implement the act, Britain needed a safe third country to house putative asylum-seekers pending case processing. Britain does not have any developing-country neighbors, so they struck a deal with Rwanda in 2022 in which that Central African country would be compensated to take up to 1,000 putative asylum applicants over five years.

Anyone sent to Rwanda could opt at any time to return to their home country or to be resettled in Rwanda as refugees, but they could not return to Britain. The British government fought a series of legal challenges to its policy, but passage of the new law should clear the way for removal flights to Rwanda within weeks from now.

Sunak says he means business. “The only way to stop the boats is to eliminate the incentive to come, by making it clear that if you are here illegally, you will not be able to stay,” he said at a press conference. “We are ready. The plans are in place.”

The government has also set aside judges and courts on standby to handle the inevitable legal challenges.

The Rwanda plan is Britain’s attempt to regain control over its borders and national sovereignty.

The goal is to cut off the possibility of asylum from boat arrivals, thus both destroying the business model of maritime smugglers and saving lives. This past week, five people died when over 100 illegal migrants attempted to cross the English Channel in an overcrowded boat.

The Rwanda plan has many opponents. The United Nations High Commission for Refugees argues that if the UK is successful, it will set a “worrying precedent for dismantling asylum-related obligations that other countries, including in Europe, may be tempted to follow …” Perhaps so, but the alternative is to cede control over immigration to foreign actors in perpetuity.

The British hope to emulate the success of Australia, which in 2001, started turning back boats carrying illegal migrants. The idea was to give “no advantage” to asylum applicants arriving illegally by boat over those arriving by air.

Australia set up detention and asylum processing centers on the island nation of Nauru, and on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea. Eventually, Australia adopted a strict rule that no asylum-seeker arriving by boat and processed offshore would ever be resettled in Australia. The policy faced considerable political opposition but was highly effective in reducing demand.

The message was quickly understood by would-be boat migrants and migrant traffickers across Southeast Asia. “Arrival numbers went off a cliff once the Australians started to deport … because ‘news spreads like wildfire among refugees,’” wrote Matthew Paris in the Spectator.

When a later Australian government closed the Manus and Nauru centers, illegal migration soared again. In 2012, more than 600 people drowned when boats carrying illegal migrants capsized. In response, Australia reopened the offshore centers and resumed sending back all illegal aliens who arrived or attempted to arrive in Australia by sea.

As before, the putative asylum applicants remained in the offshore centers for the entire time, pending the adjudication of their cases. The offshoring policy and an unbending Australian government destroyed the market for maritime migrant smugglers. For example, in 2014, only a single boat carrying migrants made it to Australia.

At its peak in 2014, Nauru’s camp had 1,233 asylum applicants living there. By June 2023, only three remained. Though the boat-borne illegal migration virtually stopped, a credible ability to restart offshore processing is vital to Australia maintaining its current control over seaborne illegal immigration. Therefore, Australia is paying the equivalent of $288,000 U.S. a year to Nauru to keep the detention/processing option open in reserve.

The United States does not have the advantage of being an island. But as recently as the Trump administration, we had Safe Third Country agreements in place with Central American countries and the Migrant Protection Protocols with Mexico. Under these agreements, any asylum applicant coming to the U.S. and first passing through a third safe country to get here would be sent back to that country if he or she had not applied for asylum in that country. For example, all those who crossed illegally into the U.S. from Mexico were returned there pending their case adjudication.

The United States needs to use all the economic and diplomatic leverage at our disposal to revive those agreements. Meanwhile, similar to the UK and Australia, we should prohibit asylum applications from those illegally crossing between ports of entry to discourage frivolous and fraudulent asylum claims.

*  *  *

Reprinted by permission from The Daily Signal, a publication of The Heritage Foundation.

Aerospace and defense company Sierra Nevada Corporation won the $13 billion Pentagon contract to develop a successor to the “Doomsday Plane” that serves as a mobile command post in the event of nuclear war. 

The current 1970s-era Boeing E-4B “Nightwatch” serves as the National Airborne Operations Center and is a key component of the National Military Command System for the President, the Secretary of Defense, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. 

However, the fleet of E-4B Nightwatch, which can withstand nuclear blasts and electromagnetic effects, is aging and needs to be replaced. 

That’s where Sierra Nevada comes in with the new Survivable Airborne Operations Center project, which will replace the E-4B Nightwatch by 2036. 

“In case of national emergency or destruction of ground command and control centers, the aircraft provides a highly survivable command, control, and communications center to direct US forces, execute emergency war orders, and coordinate actions by civil authorities,” explained an E-4B Nightwatch fact sheet produced by the US Air Force. 

In December, Reuters sources said Boeing – the incumbent manufacturer of the E-4B Nightwatch, could not agree with the Air Force on data rights and contract terms for the replacement plane. 

Currently, the Air Force operates four E-4B Nightwatch planes, with at least one on full alert at all times. 

Given Boeing’s string of problems at its commercial jet unit, it’s probably best that Sierra Nevada was awarded the project for one of the nation’s most important aircraft. 

Authored by Toby Rogers via The Brownstone Institute,

I’ve seen some crazy things over the last few years but this is off-the-charts insane.

Last week, Michael E. Mann spoke at the EcoHeath Alliance: Green Planet One Health Benefit 2024. Just to recap who each of these players are: 

• Michael E. Mann is the creator of the “hockey stick graph” that has driven the global warming debate for the last 25 years. 

• EcoHealth Alliance is the CIA cutout led by Peter Daszak that launders money from the NIH to the Wuhan Institute of Virology to create gain-of-function viruses (including SARS-CoV-2 which killed over 7 million people). 

• “One Health” is the pretext the World Health Organization (WHO) is using to drive the Pandemic Treaty that will vastly expand the powers of the WHO and create economic incentives for every nation on earth to develop new gain-of-function viruses.

So a leader in the global warming movement spoke at an event to raise money for the organization that just murdered 7 million people and the campaign that intends to launch new pandemics in perpetuity to enrich the biowarfare industrial complex. 

And then just for good measure, Peter Hotez reposted all of this information on Twitter, I imagine in solidarity with all of the exciting genociding going on. 

Mann’s appearance at this event is emblematic of a disturbing shift that has been years in the making. Serious and thoughtful people in the environmental movement tried to address industrial and military pollution for decades. Now their cause has been co-opted by Big Tech and other corporate actors with malevolent intentions — and the rest of the environmental movement has gone along with this, apparently without objection. So we are witnessing a convergence between the global warming movement, the biowarfare industrial complex, and the WHO pandemic treaty grifters. 

I wish it wasn’t true but here we are. 

Before I go any further I need to make one thing clear: the notion that pandemics are driven by global warming is complete and total bullsh*t. The evidence is overwhelming that pandemics are created by the biowarfare industrial complex including the 13,000 psychopaths who work at over 400 US bioweapons labs (as described in great detail in The Wuhan Cover-Up). 

Unfortunately “global warming” has become a cover for the proliferation of the biowarfare industrial economy. 

Mann’s appearance at an event to raise money for people who are clearly guilty of genocide (and planning more carnage) made me realize that this really is World War III. They are straight-up telling us who they are and what they intend to do. 

The different sides in this war are not nation-states.

Instead, Team Tyranny is a bunch of different business interests pushing what has become a giant multi-trillion dollar grift.

And Team Freedom is ordinary people throughout the world just trying to return to the classical economic and political liberalism that drove human progress from 1776 until 2020. 

Here’s how I see the battle lines being drawn: 

TEAM TYRANNY 

Their base: Elites, billionaires, the ruling class, the biowarfare industrial complex, intelligence agencies, and bougie technocrats.

Institutions they control: WEF, WHO, UN, BMGF, World Bank, IMF, most universities, the mainstream media, and liberal governments throughout the developed world.

Economic philosophy: The billionaires should control all wealth on earth. The peasants should only be allowed to exist to serve the billionaires, grow food, and fix the machines when necessary. Robots and Artificial Intelligence will soon be able to replace most of the peasants. 

Political philosophy: Centralized control of everything. Elites know best. The 90% should shut up, pay their taxes, take their vaccines, develop chronic disease, and die. High tech global totalitarianism is the best form of government. Billionaires are God.

Philosophy of medicine: Allopathic. Cut, poison, burn, kill. Corporations create all knowledge. Bodies are machines. Transhumanism is ideal. The billionaires will soon live forever in the digital cloud. 

Their currency: For now, inflationary Federal Reserve policies. Soon, Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) that will put the peasants in their place once and for all. 

Policy vehicles to advance their agenda: One Health; WHO Pandemic Treaty; social credit scores; climate scores; vaccine mandates/passports; lockdowns and quarantine camps; elimination of small farms and livestock; corporate control of all food, land, water, transportation, and the weather; corporate control of social movements; and 15-minute cities for the peasants. 

Military strategy: Gain-of-function viruses, propaganda, and vaccines.

TEAM FREEDOM

Our base: The medical freedom movement, Constitutionalists, small “l” libertarians, independent farmers, natural meat and milk producers, pirate parties, natural healers, homeopaths, chiropractors, integrative and functional medicine doctors, and osteopaths.

Aligned institutions: CHD, ICAN, Brownstone Institute, NVIC, SFHF, the RFK, Jr. campaign, the Republican party at the county level…

Economic philosophy: Small “c” capitalism. Competition. Entrepreneurship. 

Political philosophy: Classical liberalism. The people, using their own ingenuity, will generally figure out the best way to do things. Decentralize everything including the internet. If the elites would just leave us alone the world would be a much more peaceful, creative, and prosperous place. Human freedom leads to human flourishing. 

Philosophy of medicine: Nature is infinite in its wisdom. Listen to the body. Systems have the ability to heal and regenerate. 

Our currency: Cash, gold, crypto, and barter. (I don’t love crypto but lots of smart people in our movement do.) 

Policy ideas: Exit the WHO. Boycott WEF companies. Repeal the Bayh-Dole Act, NCVIA Act, Patriot Act, and PREP Act. Add medical freedom to the Constitution. Prosecute the Faucistas at Nuremberg 2.0. Overhaul the NIH, FDA, CDC, EPA, USDA, FCC, DoD, and intelligence agencies. Make all publicly-funded scientific data available to the public. Ban insider trading by Congress. Support and protect organic food, farms, and farmers’ markets. Break up monopolies. Cut the size of the federal government in half (or more). 

Our preferred tools to create change: Ideas, love for humanity, logic and reason, common sense, art and music, and popular uprising. 

What would you add, subtract, or change in each of these lists? 

*  *  *

Republished from the author’s Substack

Richard Tornetta, who was at the center of Tesla shareholders’ claim that Elon Musk was taking an excessive pay package, is now at the center of claims that Tesla should not be reincorporating to Texas to approve Musk’s voided pay plan. 

But Tesla is firing back at Tornetta. John Reed, one of Tesla’s attorneys, said in a Delaware Chancery Court filing this week that Tornetta “is raising false alarms”, according to Bloomberg. 

Musk has considered relocating Tesla’s headquarters from Delaware to Texas after a judge revoked his substantial pay package due to conflicts among directors and inadequate disclosure of plan details.

In response, Tornetta is urging the judge to prevent Musk from addressing the pay dispute outside of Delaware. Despite this, no legal actions are currently threatened or pending in Texas, and Musk has not obstructed the issuance of a final judgment in the case, according to Reed’s letter to the judge.

McCormick’s decision on retaining the dispute in Delaware remains uncertain and could affect the case’s outcome. If Tesla relocates to Texas and adjusts Musk’s compensation there, it might trigger a new legal battle under Texas law.

A hearing is scheduled for July 8 to address Tornetta’s lawyers’ request for attorney fees and finalize the case. They aim to secure a ruling on their injunction plea before Tesla’s June 13 annual meeting, where a critical proxy vote will occur, Bloomberg writes. 

Reed, in a letter, suggests that Tornetta’s legal moves could sway Tesla shareholders’ decisions on relocating to Texas and reinstating Musk’s record-breaking compensation package. He advises McCormick against publicly addressing Tornetta’s injunction request to prevent influencing shareholder votes unfairly.

Tornetta’s legal team fears that a Texas move could enable Musk and Tesla’s directors to obstruct the judge’s decision on Musk’s pay. They also seek an escrow account creation for 29 million Tesla shares, valued at around $5 billion, as payment. 

Recall, Tornetta’s lawyers asked for $6 billion worth of legal fees for their services. “The lawyers who did nothing but damage Tesla want $6 billion. Criminal,” Elon Musk fired back last month. 

The reasoning for the excessive fee rests on the fact that the victory to void Musk’s pay plan results in 266 million shares being returned to the company. 

On January 31, we wrote that the compensation case, which was launched by Tornetta, argued that Tesla’s board lacked independence in crafting Musk’s pay, a view the judge supported.

Delaware Chancery Court Chief Judge Kathaleen St. J. McCormick cited inadequate disclosures and board conflicts of interest in her ruling. Musk, whose wealth largely comes from Tesla, the top auto company globally, has seen stock options from this plan vest as performance goals were met, though he hasn’t exercised them yet.

The judge wrote earlier this year: “In the final analysis, Musk launched a self-driving process, recalibrating the speed and direction along the way as he saw fit. The process arrived at an unfair price. And through this litigation, the plaintiff requests a recall.”

“The most striking omission from the process is the absence of any evidence of adversarial negotiations between the Board and Musk concerning the size of the grant,” she said in her ruling.

Authored by Jana J Pruet via The Epoch Times,

Nearly half of the pro-Palestinian protesters arrested earlier this week at The University of Texas at Austin were not affiliated with the university.

Law enforcement officials arrested 57 protesters during Wednesday’s event organized by the Palestine Solidarity Committee after participants refused to disperse despite demands from authorities and the university. Of those arrested, 26 were neither students nor faculty of the university, according to officials at UT-Austin.

Hundreds of students walked out of class Wednesday in support of Palestinians in Gaza in the midst of the Israel-Hamas war. The war broke out after Palestinian terror group Hamas launched a brutal attack on Israel on Oct. 7, which left 1,200 Israelis dead. Hamas is believed to still be holding 129 hostages from Israel.

The organizers wrote on Instagram that they aimed to follow “in the footsteps of our comrades at Columbia SJP, Rutgers-New Brunswick, Yale, and countless others,” with SJP referring to Students for Justice in Palestine.

The anti-Israel student group demanded that the university “divest from death.”

“Consistent with this broader movement that is impacting so many, problematic aspects of the planned protest were modeled after a national organization’s protest playbook,” UT–Austin President Jay Hartzell said in a campuswide message Thursday evening.

“And notably, 26 of the 55 individuals arrested yesterday had no UT affiliation.”

Local news outlet KTBC-TV reported that one of its photojournalists was among those arrested during the clash between police and protesters. He was booked into the Travis County jail on a criminal trespassing charge.

By Thursday evening, all of those arrested had been released. The Travis County prosecutor said it had dropped all criminal trespassing charges, citing “deficiencies” in charging documents. Criminal trespassing is considered a misdemeanor in the state of Texas.

According to the Texas Tribune, the Texas Department of Public Safety has opened a criminal investigation into the arrest of the photojournalist.

The UT–Austin chapter of the American Association of University of Professors denounced Mr. Hartzell for allowing authorities to be deployed on campus during the class walkout.

“We, faculty of UT Austin, condemn President Jay Hartzell and our administrative leaders’ decision to invite city police as well as state troopers from across the state—on horses, motorcycles, and bicycles, in riot gear and armed with batons, pepper spray, tear gas and guns to our campus today in response to a planned peaceful event by our students,” read the statement posted on X on Wednesday night.

Policy Violation

Ahead of Wednesday’s demonstration, university officials warned the organizers that the event violated school policy and would not be allowed to take place in an effort to prevent the “pattern” that has occurred across the nation in recent weeks, leading to hundreds of arrests.

“The University’s decision to not allow yesterday’s event to go as planned was made because we had credible indications that the event’s organizers, whether national or local, were trying to follow the pattern we see elsewhere, using the apparatus of free speech and expression to severely disrupt a campus for a long period,” Mr. Hartzell continued.

Palestine Solidarity Committee (PSC) is a student organization with chapters at colleges and universities across the country.

The group’s website states that it is “dedicated to telling the story of the Palestinian struggle for justice and self-determination on the university campus and in the wider Austin community. We work to promote education, discourse, activism, and awareness of the Palestinian story through lectures by academics and political activists, movie screenings, and events and displays on the UT West Mall.”

The UT–Austin group, which holds biweekly meetings on campus, states under Article 1 of its bylaws that it will comply with school policies.

“This organization is a recognized student organization at The University of Texas at Austin and shall comply with all campus policies as set forth in the ​Institutional Rules on Student Services and Activities and Information on Students’ Rights and Responsibilities,” it says.

UT Suspends Organization

The university suspended the student group from campus after another walkout on Thursday, which was organized in part by the faculty group that condemned the university for enforcing its rules.

Police were present during Thursday’s peaceful event.

“Students and faculty affirmed their commitment to continue struggling for the liberation of Palestine, to demand their university divest, and demand the resignation of President Jay Hartzell for greenlighting the militarized brutality enforced on students,” PSC wrote on Instagram.

PSC has held more than a dozen pro-Palestinian events since October.

“I’m thankful we live in a country where free expression is a fiercely protected Constitutional right,” Mr. Hartzell said in his campuswide message on Thursday.

“I’m grateful that our campus has seen 13 pro-Palestinian events take place during the past several months largely without incident—plus another one today. I am grateful that everyone is safe after yesterday, we continue to hold in-person classes, and that today’s events followed our long-standing campus standards for allowed demonstrations.”

Brian Davis, a spokesperson for the university, confirmed on Friday that the student group had been suspended from campus in the wake of this week’s events. The length of the suspension is not immediately clear. Mr. Davis said that the Dean of Students office would make that determination.

It is unknown whether any students have been reprimanded for the events that occurred earlier this week. That information is protected by federal privacy laws.

“I encourage us all to continue to communicate and work together, and to help our students finish this school year in positive, safe and celebratory ways,” Mr. Hartzell said.

Ukrainian military planners have been ramping up Kamikaze drone strikes against the Russian energy industrial complex this week, including an overnight attack damaging an oil refinery as Western sanctions fail to crush Putin’s oil-rich economy that funds the “special military operation” in Ukraine. This comes despite the US publicly telling the Ukrainians to stop attacking Russian refineries for fear Brent crude prices could spike and worsen the inflation storm in the US ahead of the presidential elections in the fall. 

Bloomberg reports an oil refinery in the Sloviansk-on-Kuban region was hit by a swarm of Ukranian suicide drones on Saturday morning. 

State-run news agency Tass said the refinery strike caused damage and a fire, partially suspending operations at the crude processing facility.  

“The work of the (Slavyansk) plant has been partially suspended. Exactly 10 UAVs (drones) flew directly into the plant, there was a strong fire. There may be hidden damage,” Eduard Trudnev, the security director at Slavyansk ECO Group, which operates the plant, was cited as saying by TASS.

On Telegram, Roman Siniagovskyi, a local government official in Slavyansk, said drones struck a distillation tower and storage tank. 

Ukraine continues to successfully attack Russian oil refineries. It is confirmed that Ukrainian drones hit Sloviansk Eko oil refinery in Russia’s Krasnodar Krai. The distillation column has been damaged. pic.twitter.com/fFEqbqTfrz

— Giorgi Revishvili (@revishvilig) April 27, 2024

Russia’s defense ministry said 66 drones were intercepted over the Krasnodar region, located in the southern part of the country. 

Earlier this week, Ukraine began ramping up drone attacks on Russian refineries after the Biden administration signed a new military aid package worth billions of dollars. 

Ukraine’s strategy in the war has shifted to attacking Moscow’s oil revenues by precision-guided strikes on the country’s energy infrastructure. So far, drone strikes have knocked out about 10% of Russia’s oil refinery capacity. This comes as Western sanctions fail to crush Putin’s oil-rich economy funding war efforts. 

Aslak Berg, Research Fellow at the Centre for European Reform, recently told Euronews:

“Since Russian import capacity for refined oil products is limited in the short run, since they’re set up to export, it’s actually a fairly clever way of causing disruption in the Russian market with limited impact globally.” 

Berg continued, 

“The Ukrainians have been hitting refineries, not Russian crude oil production or export facilities. This causes problems for Russia’s domestic market for refined products, but for the rest of the world, a decline in Russia’s exports of products will be compensated for by increased exports of crude oil.” 

Meanwhile, Biden’s top officials have pleaded with Kyiv to stop attacks on Russia’s energy infrastructure because of the fears that turmoil in crude markets would send pump prices in the US higher ahead of the presidential elections in November.

UBS Global Wealth Management Giovanni Staunovo said that if the Ukrainian drone attacks are limited to Russian oil refineries, then this won’t cause great disruptions in the global market. 

However, it could only be a matter of time before Ukranians start attacking Russia’s energy-exporting capabilities. If that’s the case, expect an even higher war risk premium to be baked into Brent crude prices. 

The Biden administration has a colossal mess on their hands as stagflation emerges. And don’t forget about the mess in the Middle East.