Authored by Peachy Keenan via AmericanMind.org,

The 2024 election is between a dangerous madman and Donald Trump…

I hope everyone enjoyed a wonderful day with family and friends on the holiest day of America’s liturgical year, the Transgender Day of Visibility. I had never heard of this blessed Federal holiday until a few days ago, but my kids loved it. We had a visit from the Easter Drag Bunny and it/they filled the kids’ baskets with all kinds of treats. Puberty blockers, dilators, lipstick for the boys, packers for the girls. She/They is risen—and you will bow down and worship Her/Them!

Of course, Joe Biden’s Easter sacrilege was only the latest travesty that proves what you and I already know, which is that the 2024 presidential election is a contest between common-sense centrism and dangerously radical extremism. 

One candidate is a classical liberal whose positions are squarely in the middle of the political spectrum. On nearly every issue, his views are anodyne, conventional, mainstream—positions that were the norm, nationwide, in every state, on both sides of the aisle, within recent memory (not including a few fringe strongholds in Berkeley and the West Village).

His opponent, however, is a dangerous radical extremist; a divisive, fanatical agent of chaos who holds frightening positions that threaten to destroy America.

To preserve what’s left of Our Sacred Democracy, the extremist must be stopped.

Grand Unified Replacement Theory

The radicals we are up against are so deranged that they are embracing and even leaning into the Replacement Theory they once vilified and dismissed as fake. You will recall that “replacement theory” was a taboo conspiracy only racists and bigots believed in until about 15 minutes ago. But the extremists running the country recently decided that akshally, “replacement” is the perfect strategy to finish off what’s left of what you and the country formerly known as “America.” 

Replacement means you don’t need to worry about convincing Congress to pass new laws or give speeches or waste time governing. To get your way, just replace everyone.

But the extremists in charge are not going to stop after replacing you with “newcomers.” They’re replacing everything not nailed down.

Easter just got replaced with a demonic child abuse cult festival. 

Jews are getting erased, literally chased out of cities, harassed out of college, and replaced with ululating Hamas enthusiasts. 

Your grandchildren got replaced with fur babies. 

Formerly great universities have been replaced with plagiarizing paperclip factories.

Your borders have been replaced with Welcome Centers.

Your retirement has been replaced with twenty more years of work to pay for safe injection sites for your kids and free gender affirmation surgeries for the world.

As Elon Musk likes to point out on X, Americans are just four percent of the Earth’s population. Soon, they’ll be just four percent of their own country.

This is, in President Biden’s own words, going according to plan. “Just like we drew it up,” he tweeted ominously. 

The No-Brainer Election

An explosion in robberies and violent crime. Two dangerous new foreign wars. Forced conversion therapy on normal people to make them believe children can change their sex. Rampant hate crimes and open, gleeful discrimination against people who are not “of color.” 

Who is the extremist again?

The dangerous tyrant seeking re-election has the full support of our bloodthirsty elites, a warmongering foreign policy establishment, virulently antisemitic academia, and the entire mainstream media apparatus. Sometimes it’s hard to even fathom what we are facing, but then you remember that they had the nerve to arrest and sentence a young man to prison for… wait for it… sharing a funny Hillary Clinton meme. That actually happened in real life.

The humble moderate whom these frightening cretins hope to defeat this fall faces expropriation of his property to satisfy hundreds of millions of dollars in absurd fines, plus hundreds of millions of dollars in legal fees to fight regime lawfare on a Hiroshima scale. The threat of prison looms. His support comes not from wealthy celebrities, titans of industry, or the tech billionaires. It comes from the peasants. The rabble. A ragtag coalition of nobodies, the working class, the powerless middle class, and a few anonymous dissidents forced to post samizdat from undisclosed locations to avoid the eye of Sauron. 

The radical extremist we face wants to empty our treasury so he can continue to launder hundreds of billions of our dollars through the most corrupt nation in Europe, which for decades was the world’s number one producer of child pornography, among other evils. 

He’s flirting with nuclear war, and even committed an illegal act of war by detonating an enormous oil pipeline that helped heat all of Europe. His military bosses are blackmailing brave American military families: if they don’t cough up the cash for Ukraine, he’ll send their enlisted kids to die in a hole in Siberia. Thanks to him, 13 Marines were blown up in Afghanistan, but if you’re a grieving parent who protests, he has you handcuffed and dragged to prison, as he did to one dad who dared to protest at the State of the Union.

This extremist lunatic is also doing whatever he can to trigger another Middle East quagmire that inevitably will put boots on the ground in all the old stomping grounds. He wears Catholicism like a skinsuit, blaspheming the rosary around his wrist as he excoriates actual people of faith who want to protect the unborn. He screams for abortion through 40 weeks, for any reason.

He sends his shock troops to arrest pro-life protestors and slanders parents as “domestic extremists.”

He’s so extreme he thinks young children can choose to change their genders with irreversible experimental surgeries that have catastrophic rates of failure. He wants parents who don’t allow schools to secretly change a child’s gender behind their backs to lose control of their children and go to prison.

He’s so radical that he thinks it’s funny when you can’t afford groceries, and wonders why you don’t buy the “other Raisin Bran” in order to save a dollar. He mocks you when he declares “Let them eat more chips,” as he pledges to increase the number of Doritos in each shrinkflated bag. 

Worst of all, this crazed extremist thinks it’s good to dissolve the nation’s borders, permanently and eternally. He wants to pack the country with the excess population of Central and South America, as well as Africa and Asia, to boost congressional reapportionment numbers and make America blue forever. Any kids that get raped or murdered are not his problem. The tree of extremism must be watered by the blood of America’s daughters like Laken Riley.

Our only hope, my fellow centrists, is to throw our entire weight behind the common-sense moderate running against Joe Biden. All he wants is to return the country to the way it was within recent memory (!):  a blessed land that enjoyed low illegal immigration, low crime, low prices, low inflation, low mortgage interest rates, and high patriotism and, imagine—optimism.

Our demands are simple. We want a leader who will make the country a place where normal citizens can go about their lives in peace, enjoy a bit of prosperity, not have to worry about politics constantly, and not get pushed in front of a train waiting for the subway on the way to work. 

A poll says most of the electorate is “unhappy” with their choice of candidates and wishes it wasn’t a Trump-Biden rematch.

Get over it and get on board. You don’t have any other option. 

The Regime’s iron grip on power can only be broken by finally calling them what they are: domestic extremists inflicting acts of terror, violence, and child abuse on innocent citizens. Their hegemony can only be broken by regular, reasonable people in the middle—in other words, you, me, and Donald Trump—exorcising them from power and driving them back into the fetid swamps from whence they came.

The current Regime represents an existential threat to our lives and liberty. They are no longer a political party; they are a violent hate group, and the group they hate is us.

Only God himself can show them mercy, and I doubt he will when the time comes.

Vote for the centrist if you want to live!

We presented the trade idea that a surge in artificial intelligence demand is sparking the need for significant upgrades to the nation’s decades-old power grid as new data warehouses come online. Several of the nation’s power grids face increasing power brownout/blackout risks during high-demand periods. This overview we provided premium subscribers was published in a Wednesday note titled “The Next AI Trade.”

Cloud-computing startup CoreWeave’s co-founder and chief strategy officer, Brian Venturo expands more on this. He spoke on Thursday at the Bloomberg Intelligence Summit on generative AI in New York.

He said the world is “grossly” underestimating how much AI demand will expand the need for data centers across North America and the world. 

Venturo said the cloud computing provider has seen an “absurd” amount of data center requests over the last several quarters. He noted that some companies are asking to reserve entire campuses for themselves. 

“There are going to be some things that this industry is going to have to work through,” Venturo said, adding, “What worries me” is that there’s not enough infrastructure to handle the demand.

He stressed, “It’s a sprint. It’s a sprint that requires all the capital in the world” to build new data centers and revamp old ones and upgrade the existing infrastructure to supply the electricity needs of data centers. This urgency highlights the need for swift action by smart grid companies and utilities that can rapidly build out the grid for the digital age. 

“You have to build new transmission lines,” Venturo said, adding, “You have to do new substation builds. There are just a lot of physical blockers here that are hard to overcome in the short-term.”

Reverting to our “The Next AI Trade” note, we emphasized to premium subs the potential for significant investment opportunities with companies that have high exposure to infrastructure, electrification, power grid, and energy.

The companies, such as the ones in Goldman’s “Power Up America” basket (Bloomberg ticker GSENEPOW), will be some of the winners over the coming years.

Authored by Citizen Soldier via RealClear Politics,

Mike Gallagher – former Marine intelligence officer, fresh face of 2016, young idealist with enough honors to fill a trophy case – is quitting his congressional seat April 19.

The high school valedictorian, Princeton undergrad, and Georgetown PhD was elected to the House of Representatives before his thirty-third birthday. His intellect and eloquence made him a leader in the Republican caucus, someone capable of wielding not just votes but ideas to influence policy.

Former Speaker Kevin McCarthy acknowledged Gallagher’s status among his colleagues in January 2023 when McCarthy picked him to chair the newly formed House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party. Gallagher was a fervent advocate for strengthening our China policy, and his ideas and passion drove the agenda of the 24-member committee.

Back home in Wisconsin’s eighth congressional district, voters resoundingly endorsed Gallagher. He garnered 63 percent of the vote in 2016, 64 percent in 2018 and 2020, and a whopping 72 percent in 2022.

We’ll never know how far he might have gone; how bright his star might have shone.

It’s unclear why Gallagher, a generational talent, is abandoning his seat halfway through his term. To spend more time with his family? Or, perhaps more cynically, to work for defense tech giant Palantir? Gallagher hasn’t said, but whatever his answer, he’s lowered the bar – as a veteran and a congressman.

Gallagher promised to work for Green Bay, Oshkosh, and the country, and the voters believed him. While the media fixates on whether Gallagher “betrayed the party,” the truth is he betrayed the American people. Gallagher happily displayed his service medals on campaign commercials, and proudly wore his USMC polo shirt while meeting the voters. I once attended a meeting where Gallagher sipped hot tea from a green canteen cup – odd but touching, like watching a young lieutenant showing the troops he’s all in.

Ultimately, though, Gallagher was like many others on the political stage; more actor than genuine article. Just another young, ambitious person playing the role of veteran, for as long as it served his self-interest.

I wish him well, but wonder if the decision, for him, won’t age well.

Beneath the T-shirts and slogans, the medals and canteen cups, are the principles Gallagher learned in Quantico, and followed while serving in Iraq. The warrior ethos is ingrained in everyone who wears the uniform. Put the mission first. Never quit. And most importantly, never leave a Marine behind.

You fooled us, Mike, but did you fool yourself?

Citizen Soldier believes in life, liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Authored by Matthew Vadum via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Liberals are mounting a pressure campaign to force liberal Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor to retire from the bench so President Joe Biden, who faces a tough reelection fight in November, can appoint a younger liberal successor before the election.

Democrats fear that the 6–3 conservative majority on the nation’s highest court could become a 7–2 conservative majority if President Donald Trump wins the election in November and she dies during his second term of office.

They point out that President Trump was able to replace liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died of pancreatic cancer complications on Sept. 18, 2020, at 87, with conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett days before the 2020 election.

Justice Ginsburg refused to step down despite her fragile health.

Justice Barrett’s appointment, they say, helped supply the votes on the Court needed to overturn abortion rights precedent Roe v. Wade by a 5–4 vote in June 2022.

The ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization found there was no right to abortion in the U.S. Constitution and returned the regulation of abortion to the states, which Roe had taken away.

Justice Sotomayor, 69, is reportedly in good health, but activists have seized on the fact that she has had Type I diabetes since she was 7 years old and that she has had some health scares.

They note that she is the only Supreme Court justice to have traveled with a medic and remarked she was “tired” during a talk in January at UC Berkeley Law School.

In January 2018, she was reportedly treated at her home for low blood sugar by paramedics but was able to report for work afterward.

Left-wing activists seem emboldened because they successfully pressured liberal Justice Stephen Breyer, now 85, to retire in June 2022, which allowed President Biden to replace him with liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, now 53.

In an April 3 broadcast on NBC News, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), said Justice Sotomayor should consider stepping down soon.

“Justices have to make their personal decisions about their health, and their level of energy, but also to keep in mind the larger national and public interest in making sure that the Court looks and thinks like America,” the senator said.

“We should learn a lesson, you know? And it’s not like there’s any mystery here about what the lesson should be—that the old saying, ‘graveyards are full of indispensable people,’ ourselves in this body included.”

Before that, left-wing commentator Mehdi Hasan published a column in The Guardian (UK) saying it pained him to argue that Justice Sotomayor should make way for a younger successor who can serve for decades on the Court because she is a good standard bearer for the progressive cause.

He described Justice Sotomayor as “the greatest liberal to sit on the Supreme Court in my adult lifetime.”

Mr. Hasan added that she is “the first Latina to hold the position of justice, [and] she has blazed a relentlessly progressive trail on the highest bench in the land.”

“Whether it was her lone dissent in a North Carolina voting rights case in 2016 (“the Court’s conclusion … is a fiction”); her ingenious referencing of Ta-Nehisi Coates, James Baldwin, and WEB DuBois in another 2016 dissent over unreasonable searches and seizures.

“Her withering observation at the Dobbs oral argument in 2021: (Will this institution survive the stench that this creates in the public perception that the Constitution and its reading are just political acts?’), Sotomayor has stood head and shoulders above both her liberal and conservative colleagues on the bench for the past 15 years.”

Although Justice Ginsburg had already survived two cancer diagnoses, she refused to retire even though liberal voices urged her to do so, Mr. Hasan wrote.

On her deathbed in 2020, she said her “most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed,” yet President Trump “nominated Amy Coney Barrett as RBG’s replacement just eight days after her death, and Senate Republicans confirmed Barrett to RBG’s vacant seat just eight days before election day.”

With President Biden now trailing President Trump in polls in several swing states and Democrats “in danger of losing their razor-thin majority in the Senate, are we really prepared for history to repeat itself?”

Justice Sotomayor could “easily” survive a second Trump term and continue serving until 2029, “but why take that risk? Why not retire now?” he wrote.

Molly Coleman, executive director of the People’s Parity Project, also wants Justice Sotomayor to resign.

“This isn’t personal. This isn’t about one individual justice. It’s nothing to do with what an incredible legal talent Justice Sotomayor is. It’s about what’s in the best interests of the country moving forward,” she told NBC News.

The Biden administration is neutral on the issue so far.

White House spokesman Andrew Bates said: “President Biden believes that decisions to retire from the Supreme Court should be made by the justices themselves and no one else.”

The Epoch Times reached out to Justice Sotomayor for comment but had not received a reply as of press time.

In 1980, the global average corporate tax rate stood at 40.2% – a level notably higher than today…

Over the last several decades, corporate tax rates have declined across every region, with the average now falling at 23.5% as of 2023. As tax rates have sunk lower, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and others have called for a global minimum corporate tax to prevent multinationals from sheltering profits in tax havens.

But on the other hand, some argue that lower corporate rates allow corporations to report more income and boost real business activities.

The graphic below, from Pranav Gavali, via Visual Capitalist, shows the countries with the highest corporate tax rates since 1980.

What are the Top 10 Countries by Corporate Tax Rates?

Below, we show how countries with the highest corporate taxes have changed over the last four decades, based on data from the Tax Foundation:

As the above table shows, countries clustered in Africa and South America have the top rates globally.

Argentina, with a corporate tax rate of 35%, hiked up rates from 25% in 2022 as the country was mired in a deepening economic crisis. The country has also been a key supporter of a global minimum tax, suggesting it should be raised as high as 25%.

Malta, the only European nation on the list, also has one of the highest rates. Yet its tax system is complex: local businesses pay a 35% rate on profits, but international firms can pay as low as 5% in Malta with an additional 10% tax paid in their originating country.

By contrast, we can see that in 1980, countries including India, China and the United Kingdom had corporate tax rates above 50%. Since then, China underwent a series of economic reforms that included key tax reductions that helped drive the growth of its private sector.

In the United Kingdom, tax rates were 52% four decades ago and now fall at 25%. The U.S. tells a similar story, with corporate rates standing at 46% in 1980—more than double the rates seen today. Major corporate tax cuts were seen during Reagan’s presidency during the 1980s, when rates were cut to 35%, and later in 2017 when they were further reduced to 21% under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

Authored by Kevin Stocklin via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

President Joe Biden’s new EV mandates will likely prove to be a sizable wealth transfer from rural red regions of America to urban blue sections, and to wealthy Democrats who reside in them, according to reports.

On March 20, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalized its tailpipe emissions rules for the auto industry starting in 2027.

These rules are the strictest in history and will effectively force carmakers to have one-third of new car sales be plug-in electric vehicles (EVs) by 2027 and more than two-thirds by 2032.

This represents a dramatic increase from current EV sales, which were about 8 percent of the new car market in 2023.

Climate activists cheered the EPA’s move, with the Environmental Defense Fund calling it “a day to celebrate American achievement.”

But critics say that the measures will be particularly punitive for huge segments of the U.S. population who don’t want, can’t use, or can’t afford EVs. If carmakers go along with President Biden’s plan to shift their fleets to EVs, the cost of remaining gas-fired cars and trucks will likely escalate as demand dwarfs supply.

“This isn’t industrial policy,” Robert Bryce, author and energy analyst, told The Epoch Times. “In reality it’s a type of class warfare that will prevent low- and middle-income consumers from being able to afford new cars.”

And as many traditional car buyers struggle, the federal subsidies and incentives continue to flow, to the benefit of EV buyers.

According to an October 2023 report by the Texas Public Policy Foundation, as much as $48,000 of the cost of the average EV sold in the United States is paid, not by the owner, but in the form of “socialized costs” that are spread out among taxpayers and electricity consumers over a 10-year period.

These socialized costs come in the form of taxes, government subsidies, fuel economy credits paid by gas carmakers to EV manufacturers, and higher electricity bills as consumers absorb the capital costs required to expand the power grid and install new charging stations.

The report states that “the average model year 2021 EV would cost $48,698 more to own over a 10-year period without $22 billion in government favors given to EV manufacturers and owners.”

These dollars, which do not take into account the additional dollars that gas-car owners will likely pay for their vehicles as manufacturers are forced to make fewer of them, amount to a government-mandated wealth transfer to affluent EV owners, paid by those who often cannot afford to buy EVs.

The new EPA mandate is “aimed at accommodating a very narrow segment of the auto-buying public: wealthy, white Democrats who live in a handful of liberal communities,” Mr. Bryce said. “EV ownership is largely defined by class, ideology, and geography.”

In a February analysis of EV buyers, Mr. Bryce reported that 57 percent of them earn more than $100,000 annually, 75 percent are male, and 87 percent are white. In addition, EV buyers are overwhelmingly Democrats, with 71 percent of Republicans stating in a Gallup poll that they would not consider owning an electric vehicle.

A 2023 University of California Energy Institute report found “a strong and enduring correlation between political ideology and U.S. EV adoption.”

Looking at county-level data on new vehicle registrations between 2012 and 2022, the report stated that 50 percent of all new EVs were sold into the top 10 percent of most-Democrat counties, with 70 percent going to the top 25 percent most-Democrat counties, and 90 percent going to the top 50 percent most-Democrat counties.

Twenty counties bought 40 percent of all EVs sold in this period, the report states, and “most of these counties are urban, high-income, and in Democratic states.”

One-third of EV Buyers Live in California

Data from the Department of Energy supports this view. As of year-end 2022, California had 903,600 registered EVs in the state, or 37 percent of all EVs owned nationwide.

The next largest number of EV owners were in Florida, Texas, and Washington state, with 168,000, 149,000, and 104,100 EVs respectively, followed by New Jersey, New York, Georgia, Colorado, Illinois, Massachusetts, Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania.

The states on this list are home to large cities and suburbs, which are the target market for EVs. This contrasts sharply with rural states like Wyoming and North Dakota, where 800 and 600 EV owners reside, respectively.

According to a report by the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, “if you count all the EVs in North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Mississippi, West Virginia, Alabama, Montana, and Idaho, they account for less than one percent of the total U.S. sales.”

Of the top 10 states in terms of EV per capita ownership, seven are “deep blue states,” the report notes.

“By contrast, the 10 states with the smallest market penetration for EVs were all red states,” Unleash Prosperity states.

“Ironically, Joe Biden is the worst thing that ever happened to this industry. EVs have become ‘Biden cars.’”

The Biden administration is not alone in attempting to force Americans to switch to electric cars. A number of blue states including California, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Oregon, Vermont, Washington are on track to ban the sale of new gas-powered cars and trucks by 2035, according to non profit group Coltura, which advocates for the switch from gasoline to electric cars.

The lack of interest in EVs among red states isn’t merely a political issue, however. There are practical reasons why people are unwilling to spend thousands of dollars more on electric cars. According to a November 2023 AAA survey, the primary reasons for people not to buy electric cars are a lack of charging stations, limited range, and time to charge the battery.

A recent Rasmussen poll found that 65 percent of Americans surveyed don’t think they’re likely to make an EV their next automobile purchase.

Read more here…

US intelligence is ‘convinced’ that Iran is readying a retaliation response against Israel for the Monday attack on the Iranian embassy complex in Syria, US officials have told CBS News, and that an attack could be imminent.

The officials say that the US “has picked up intelligence that Iran is planning a retaliatory attack that would include a swarm of Shaheed loitering drones and cruise missiles. Officials say the timing and target are unknown, but a proportional response to the Damascus attack would be to hit an Israeli diplomatic facility.”

As for possible timing they believe it will come between now and the end of Ramadan next week. Israel has already issued firm warnings that any direct attack from Iranian soil will be met with a “stronger” response, taking the conflict to the next level.

CBS reports further that “A public funeral was held in Tehran on Friday for the seven IRGC members killed in the suspected Israeli strike in Damascus, including two generals.”

One hawkish analyst from the Middle East Institute, Jason Brodsky, has noted on Friday:

There are reports Iran’s regime may be eyeing hitting an Israel diplomatic compound in a third country via drones & missiles. Israel maintains embassies in Bahrain; UAE; Jordan; Egypt; Azerbaijan; & Turkey. I would keep an eye on Jordan.

This is a scenario that Iranian and regional leaders might deem ‘proportionate’. The idea of a sovereign state intentionally attacking another country’s embassy or consulate was pretty much unheard of prior to Israel’s Monday attack.

Israel, however, has tried claim to the international community – which by and large condemned attacking embassies – that what was actually destroyed was a military building used by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

A handful of publications and pundits have pointed out that the Israeli attack, which killed eleven and took out a top IRGC Quds general, is in fact a declaration of war. 

For example, Hamidreza Azizi of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, immediately sought to underscore that the strikes which flattened a consulate next to the main embassy building “is viewed by some in Iran as a declaration of war by Israel against Iran.” 

Israel heading into ‘unprecedented war,’ former IDF official says

The people who lead us today are acting in an unrealistic and irrational way and bring risk and disaster to the countryhttps://t.co/ZhggPmvDrI

— Joshua Landis (@joshua_landis) April 4, 2024

He wrote further that “It represents a shift from previous engagements, directly hitting Iranian soil represented by its consulate in Syria—as opposed to targeting IRGC officers in Syrian sites.”

Currently, Israel is bracing for an inevitable response, and is reportedly calling up extra reserve forces. Hezbollah could also open up a bigger war front:

The leader of Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement said on Friday that Iran would inevitably retaliate after a strike — widely blamed on Israel — destroyed its consulate in Damascus this week, killing two generals.
“Be certain that Iran’s response to the targeting of its Damascus consulate is inevitable,” Hassan Nasrallah said in a televised speech marking Quds (Jerusalem) Day — an annual day of pro-Palestinian rallies held by Iran and its allies.

At least so far, the daily tit-for-tat fighting along Israel’s northern border has remained contained, but perhaps just barely. Israeli leaders have warned that all of Lebanon could be bombed back to the ‘stone age’ if Hezbollah starts a full war.

Authored by Sam Dorman via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

President Joe Biden issued a rare primetime threat to the Supreme Court during his State of the Union address on March 7, warning the justices that they could cause political backlash for their 2022 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.

“With all due respect, justices, women are not without electoral or political power,” President Biden said.

In doing so, the president amplified that mounting pressure on the Supreme Court, a pressure that seems to build each week as the election nears and the queue of cases related to former President Donald Trump gets longer.

The justices are taking up two major appeals related to President Trump, who is the presumptive GOP nominee and is leading President Biden in polling matchups, including in crucial battleground states.

President Trump’s former advisors are also facing multiple charges, raising the prospect that some may request the high court’s intervention, as former White House advisor Peter Navarro did on March 15. The court’s denial made Mr. Navarro the first Trump White House adviser to end up in prison.

“This is certainly a blockbuster year for the court,” Heritage Foundation Vice President John Malcolm told The Epoch Times.

“Several of the justices, most notably the Chief Justice, have been concerned about the public’s perception of the court’s ‘legitimacy,’ so it will be interesting to see how the justices respond, especially in an important election year.”

‘High Stakes’

The combination of several Trump-related cases, the potential for landmark changes to legal precedent, the vigorous calls for reform, and the coming elections have made 2024 a year of high impact decisions for the court.

One decision has already impacted the course of the 2024 presidential campaign.

In March, the justices rejected an effort that could have resulted in millions of President Trump’s supporters not having their preferred candidate on the ballot. During oral argument, Justice Amy Coney Barrett referenced the “very high stakes” surrounding the case, which has been described as the court’s most influential election-related matter since Bush v. Gore.

Its landmark opinion in Trump v. Anderson foreclosed the possibility that states like Colorado could, under their existing authority, remove federal candidates from ballots.

The majority opinion, however, has been criticized for lacking clarity around how Congress should act. The decision emphasized the role of Congress in enforcing the 14th Amendment, while the three liberal justices and Justice Barrett favored a more limited approach that overruled state authority over federal candidates for office.

President Trump’s immunity appeal, scheduled for oral argument on April 25, could impact his Florida documents case and hush money trial, wherein he has requested a delay pending the Supreme Court’s decision on his D.C. immunity claims.

The stinging criticism that followed the court’s unanimous opinion in Trump v. Anderson indicates no matter how united the justices are, they will continue to face heavy scrutiny—especially when it comes to President Trump.

President Trump’s appeal, like Mr. Navarro’s, questions the separation of powers as well as the authority of the legislative and judiciary branches in challenging the executive.

In Trump v. Anderson, the court avoided wading into the specifics of President Trump’s alleged wrongdoing on Jan. 6 and will likely try to do the same with his immunity appeal. But their decisions in two other cases might impact the indictment in President Trump’s federal election case.

A challenge brought by Jan. 6 defendants against the DOJ’s use of an Enron-era obstruction charge in prosecutions will be heard before the high court on April 16.

In the federal election case, two of those charges were brought against President Trump. If the court rules in the defendants’ favor, as some legal experts predict, that could lessen the burden for President Trump in D.C. while also provoking scrutiny of the justices’ approach to Jan. 6.

The court’s decision in the presidential immunity appeal could similarly either upend or affirm the prosecution—likely sparking backlash from either side depending on the outcome.

Beyond Trump

Besides President Trump’s cases, the court is considering several major cases in administrative law—including potentially overturning the decades-old Chevron doctrine that gives deference to agencies in construing vague language in statutes. A reversal would significantly roll back the power of the administrative state.

In February, it considered whether the Justice Department legally restricted bump stocks. The case, Garland v. Cargill, was the second of three major gun-related cases announced for the term. Two—Cargill and Rahimi v. United States—could alter who owns guns and how they operate them. The third, NRA v. Vullo, could make it easier or more difficult for governments to pressure organizations like those promoting gun rights.

The justices also heard arguments over the constitutionality of two sweeping social media laws from Texas and Florida that, combined with similar cases this term, could dramatically change the landscape of online expression.

In striking those laws, the justices could prevent future state legislation aimed at how social media platforms moderate users’ content and the transparency they provide for censoring certain posts. If laws succeed, social media platforms could see a patchwork of rules for moderating users’ content across the United States and enjoy less discretion in how they do so.

“These are cases that touch upon separation of powers and important constitutional rights, in addition to involving ‘hot button’ issues that will have a major impact on the law now and in the future,” Mr. Malcolm told The Epoch Times.

Court’s Image

With such contentious issues before the court, it seems inevitable that the justices’ decisions will upset large swaths of the American public. The justices could also be weighing how the way they phrase rulings will impact public opinion during such a high-stakes year.

University of Michigan Law Professor Barbara McQuade previously told The Epoch Times she imagined that with Trump v. Anderson, Justice Roberts felt pressure to “maintain the credibility of the Court as an independent and apolitical institution.”

She said “a 9–0 decision would provide the country with far more confidence than would a 6–3 decision.”

Justice Barrett emphasized the importance of unanimity and language while appearing to offer a glimpse into the justices’ concerns. Her concurring opinion in Trump v. Anderson seemed to criticize her colleagues for lacking restraint in their opinion. She had joined the liberal justices in favoring a more limited approach but didn’t sign onto their concurrence, which had some strong words for the majority.

“In my judgment, this is not the time to amplify disagreement with stridency,” she wrote. “The Court has settled a politically charged issue in the volatile season of a Presidential election. Particularly in this circumstance, writings on the Court should turn the national temperature down, not up. For present purposes, our differences are far less important than our unanimity: All nine Justices agree on the outcome of this case. That is the message Americans should take home.”

Read more here…

As we’ve been writing over the last year, saturation and competitive pricing are starting to prompt chaos and disorder in the EV space.

EV startup Canoo is the latest to face scrutiny, after it was revealed that CEO Tony Aquila’s private jet expenses totaled $1.7 million, twice the company’s revenue for 2023.

Despite reporting a loss of $302 million last year, Canoo paid for Aquila’s lavish travel, which included either first-class airfare or use of his private jet. Aquila, who also chairs the company, owns about 14% of Canoo. In 2022, Canoo spent $1.3 million on his air travel, according to a new report from Electrek. 

The company, which has yet to turn a profit, generated just $886,000 in revenue in 2023.

Canoo is focused on scaling up production of its commercial vehicles and avoiding the fate of other struggling EV startups. While it faces challenges, such as the recent need for a 1-for-23 reverse stock split to prevent delisting, Canoo received a boost with a contract from the United States Postal Service for six delivery vans.

But, amidst a sea of competition and first movers like Tesla, BYD and legacy automakers, companies like Canoo and the near-bankrupt Fisker are struggling. Ergo, the company CEO’s spending on private jets raises concerns about how the company manages its finances, particularly given its recent stock drop of up to 38% after reporting losses.

Reuters was first to report the massive cost/revenue divergence.

Canoo responded with a statement: “Had Reuters called Canoo for comment we would have told them that we raised $324 million in 2022, and $288 million in 2023 and we are currently in discussions with several entities and individuals about investing in the company this year.”

“We would have also told them that we have begun manufacturing, expect to step up our manufacturing effort this year, and have a backlog of orders. And, that we are not in the consumer market, we are in the commercial market,” the company added. 

We wrote late last year that all of the Tesla-wannabe EV companies were running out of cash. 

The report noted that at least 18 EV and battery startups, including high-profile names like Nikola and Fisker, face the risk of depleting their cash reserves by the end of 2024. These companies, once known for their ambitious goals to revolutionize the industry with electric trucks and SUVs, have struggled with increasing costs and manufacturing challenges.

Names like Lordstown Motors, Proterra, and Electric Last Mile Solutions have already declared bankruptcy, the report notes. Romeo Power, a battery manufacturer, and Volta, a charging company, were sold for much less than their initial public valuations. The remaining firms are reportedly focusing on cost reduction and have secured additional funding.

Gavin Baker, chief investment officer at Atreides Management, told WSJ: “It was by far the most insane bubble I have ever seen.”