Authored by S.A. McCarthy via The Washington Stand,

President Joe Biden issued 162 executive orders over the course of his Oval Office tenure, but according to a new report, most of them were signed by “autopen,” giving rise to concerns that unelected White House staffers may have had more say in shaping policy than the president. The report is furthering those concerns and suggesting that Biden may not have even been aware of the existence of the orders being signed in his name.

The American energy advocacy group Power the Future published the report Wednesday, examining eight Biden-era executive orders on climate change and U.S. energy policy, and found “no evidence” that Biden ever spoke about or acknowledged the existence of any of these orders. “Not in a press conference. Not in a speech. Not even a video statement,” Power the Future’s report stated. Power the Future Executive Director Daniel Turner said in a statement, “Americans deserve to know which unelected staffers or radical unnamed activists implemented sweeping change through an autopen. The Biden energy agenda destroyed the livelihoods of energy workers and fueled the record-high inflation that broke the budgets of millions of Americans.” He asked, “The question is simple, and deserves an immediate answer: what did Joe Biden know, and when did he know it?”

According to the Oversight Project, dedicated to government accountability, practically every order signed by Biden was signed via autopen, with the exception of his announcement withdrawing from the 2024 presidential election. The Oversight Project cited House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who questioned Biden on an executive order affecting liquefied natural gas (LNG) and reported that the president didn’t remember signing the order. “He looks at me, stunned, and he said, ‘I didn’t do that,’” Johnson recounted. He continued, “And I said to him, ‘Mr. President, yes you did, it was an executive order, like, you know, three weeks ago.’ And he goes, ‘No, I didn’t do that.’ … It occurred to me … he was not lying to me. He genuinely did not know what he had signed.”

“For investigators to determine whether then-President Biden actually ordered the signature of relevant legal documents, or if he even had the mental capacity to, they must first determine who controlled the autopen and what checks there were in place,” the Oversight Project wrote in a social media post. The accountability organization continued, “Given President Biden’s decision to revoke Executive Privilege for individuals advising Trump during his first Presidency, this is a knowable fact that can be determined with the correct legal process…”

The “autopen” has been the subject of significant controversy in recent years due to Biden’s excessive use of the technology. Devices have been around for centuries, allowing individuals to replicate their signature or sign multiple documents at once. Thomas Jefferson, for example, kept an early prototype, then called a “polygraph,” in the White House and another in his residence at Monticello. The device allowed a user to sign multiple documents at once but did require the signer to be present and to actively use the machine.

In the late 1930s, an automated version of the machine was developed, called the “autopen,” which would store a template of a signature that could be reproduced without the presence of the actual signer. The autopen became commercially available in the early 1940s and was quickly purchased by politicians, government officials, celebrities, and others. The first U.S. president to use an autopen was reportedly Harry Truman, although he only used the device to sign checks and answer mail. Likewise, most other presidents — such as John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, or Gerald Ford — who used an autopen relegated their use of the instrument to signing checks, correspondence, and autographs.

George W. Bush considered using the autopen to sign executive orders and legislation and even got the Department of Justice’s (DOJ’s) approval to do so, but still insisted on signing such documents himself, flying to Washington, D.C. to sign emergency legislation in 2005, for example. Barack Obama was the first president to use the autopen to sign legislation, giving his approval to sign Patriot Act extensions via autopen while he was visiting France in 2011, the National Defense Authorization Act while vacationing in Hawaii in 2012, and fiscal legislation in 2013.

President Donald Trump has openly refused to use autopen signatures for executive orders and other legal documents. “We may use it, as an example, to send some young person a letter because it’s nice,” Trump told reporters in March. Contrasting his limited use of the autopen against Biden’s much broader use, Trump added, “But to sign pardons and all of the things that he signed with an autopen is disgraceful.” Trump has also suggested that pardons — and, potentially, executive orders — signed by the Biden administration via autopen may be legally “void” if the president didn’t know what he was signing or didn’t authorize its signature.

The Washington Stand asked the DOJ about potential investigations and, if applicable, prosecutions of the Biden administration’s autopen use and was told, “No comment here.”

Cash rewards for shooting down American F-16 fighter jets? That’s a real headline out of the Ukraine war…

“A Russian company awarded a dozen servicemen a total of 15 million rubles ($190,000) for destroying U.S.-made F-16 fighter jets in Ukraine,” the Amsterdam-based Moscow Times reports. And they are even publish photos of the ‘award ceremony’.

“Fores, a Yekaterinburg-based fracking components supplier, said Friday that it handed out the cash prizes to troops at a location near the Russian-Ukrainian border,” MT continued. “Photos shared from the ceremony showed the soldiers’ faces blurred.”

Russian state sources have reported on at least three confirmed downed Western-supplied F-16s so far in the 3+years-long war, and the Kremlin has called the aircraft “sitting ducks”.

In some instances, Ukraine has claimed that jets have simply crashed while operating in intense battle environs, only to have the Russian defense ministry then assert back that they were shot down.

A second US-donated F-16 went down down over Ukraine last December, after prior to that there was a reported incident last August. Another was downed more recently. Conflicting reports have at times even mentioned a ‘friendly fire’ incident as the potential cause of one downing.

Fores has boasted that it’s the first company to ever offer huge financial payouts for the destruction of Western military equipment. It had actually paid out rewards for prior successful attacks on Leopard 2 and Abrams tanks.

According to some background via TASS:

Earlier, Fores Director General Sergey Shmotyev said on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum that his company would will pay a bonus of 15 million rubles for the first F-16 fighter jet that could be shot down in Ukraine. In December, the businessman confirmed his intentions to TASS.

Based in the Urals, Fores makes proppants for the oil industry. It has supported the Russian Army since the launch of the special military operation. To date, the company has donated 237.7 million rubles ($3 million) toward the purchase of hardware, communications devices, jamming systems, thermal sights, medicines, and evacuation equipment. It has also purchased more than 500 tons of healthcare products and medicinal drugs for the special military operation zone.

Raining money? Russian soldiers hope so, in a somewhat macabre patriotic game…

It was starting in early 2024, when a European and US training program for Ukrainian fighter pilots was well underway, that Fores began announcing huge cash bounties for downing Ukrainian F-16s.

As for the tank reward program, Fores paid out 5 million rubles (about $65K) for the first take destroyed, starting in 2023, and has continued issuing payouts of 500,000 rubles per vehicle. Several videos have emerged of UK, US, and French battle tanks burning and destroyed.

Authored by Vincent Geloso via TheDailyEconomy.org,

Every year, since 1992, the UN General Assembly votes on a resolution brought forth by Cuba’s government regarding the need to end the US embargo. Each time the resolution is brought, Cuba’s government attributes the country’s economic hardships — such as shortages, rationing, and limited access to goods — to the long-standing US embargo, which it frames as a form of “economic warfare.” In its 2023 estimate, Cuba claimed the embargo has costits economy a total of $1.34 trillion, adding roughly $13 million in losses each day over the past year. This is an enormous number — and just as enormous a pile of rubbish.

The Cuban government attributes the figure to lost export revenues, trade reallocation costs, and disruptions in production and services. While these categories may sound reasonable at first glance, the regime assumes that all such disruptions are caused by the embargo, not by its own dysfunctional socialist policies. To top it off, the government even attributes emigration and talent loss — 4 percent of the total cost — to the embargo, as if decades of central planning and political repression had nothing to do with people fleeing the country.

Finally, it assumes that all losses in tourism are due to the embargo and not the nationalization of hotels, bars, and restaurants (in the 1960s) or the tight price controls and rationing (which continue today). Together, these fudged numbers account for 45 percent of the total cost, and that assumes the rest is based on “true” number.

The point of this exercise in statistical deception is to shift blame. 

Cuba used to be one of the richest countries in Latin America. Its living standards — in the 1920s — even matched those of some poorer American states. Globally, Cuba was among the wealthier nations. Today, it lingers near the bottom of international rankings. To deflect blame for the disastrous effects of the socialist policies implemented by Fidel Castro after 1959 — and largely maintained ever since — the regime points to the US embargo. It wasn’t Castro and his successors who slowed Cuba’s growth and impoverished the nation by global standards. No, it was the Americans and their embargo that kept the Revolution from bearing its true fruits.

Calle San Lazaro, Havana. 1956. Wikimedia Commons

The problem is that there is no doubt that embargoes make nations poorer! The US embargo clearly makes Cubans poorer — this is a near consensus. But by how much? As long as that question lingers, Cuba’s government can get always with promoting rubbish studies that serve to legitimize their rule.

Fortunately, there is now a way to disentangle the effects of different factors explaining Cuba’s economic evolution since 1959. Alongside João Pedro Bastos and Jamie Bologna Pavlik, we separated the effect of Cuba’s socialist policies from those of the embargo and those of Soviet aid to the country.

This was possible thanks to two new advances.

• The first was a new series for GDP per capita in Cuba that is consistent over time and which can be matched with Soviet transfers to the country; this way, we can evaluate Cuba with and without transfers.

• The second is a relatively novel method in economics — the synthetic control method, which can be used to estimate the causal effect of an intervention (i.e., a treatment just like in a laboratory experiment). It consists in constructing a weighted combination of control units (here: other countries) that approximates the characteristics of the treated unit before the intervention. For Cuba, the intervention is Fidel Castro’s socialist policies. This “synthetic control” serves as a counterfactual — what would have happened in the absence of the treatment (i.e., Cuba continues with a non-socialist and non-democratic regime as was the case before 1959). The difference between the observed outcomes of the treated unit and its synthetic counterpart after the intervention provides an estimate of the treatment effect.

Combined, this allows us to observe the trajectory of Cuba’s economy net of Soviet transfers but still accounting for the effects of the US embargo. By 1989, our results show that Cuba was approximately 55 percent poorer than it would have been in the absence of both socialism and the embargo. In other words, even before the collapse of Soviet support, the costs of central planning and isolation had already taken a severe toll on Cuban living standards.

So, what about the embargo? After stripping out the Soviet subsidy, we can use trade data to simulate how much trade openness was lost due to the embargo. Trade openness — measured as the ratio of total trade (exports plus imports) to GDP — plummeted after 1960 as Cuba was cut off from its most natural trading partner and was forced to reallocate to less efficient trading partners (European countries, Soviet bloc countries, other developing nations). Simply put, Cuba was forced into inefficient trade relationships. This, in turn, affected productivity.

By reapplying the synthetic control method using trade data, we can construct a counterfactual level of trade openness in the absence of the embargo. The resulting gap provides a measure of lost openness attributable to the embargo, which can then be converted into a cost figure by using standard estimates of the growth effects of trade openness. This approach yields an estimate of the economic cost of the embargo independent of domestic policies.

So how big a deal is the embargo? At worst, it accounts for about 10 percent of the economic gap attributable to the combination of the Revolution and the embargo; at best, it explains less than 3 percent. In other words, yes — the embargo has made Cubans poorer, and it may even have helped the regime endure longer by providing a convenient scapegoat. But it simply doesn’t explain much. The true source of Cuba’s decline is the regime’s own policies. These policies placed the country on a trajectory that dragged it from the top tier of global rankings to the bottom.

Next year, when yet another resolution condemning the embargo is tabled before the UN General Assembly, let us hope at least one journalist will point out the absurdity of the regime’s estimates. Let us some representative in the Assembly will state what truly needs to be said: the embargo may be unwise, but the primary cause of Cuba’s poverty is the repressive socialist regime that has extinguished the economic freedom of its people.

Immigration raids on the posh island retreats of Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard took place on the morning of  May 27th, resulting in dozens of arrests and angry reactions from wealthy Democrats.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) released a statement on Wednesday morning stating that roughly 40 people had been detained on Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard, including one documented gang member and one child sex offender. The agency offered no statement for the remaining roughly 38 people (the Trump Administration has made it clear that all migrants within the US illegally are fair game). 

The U.S. Coast Guard supported ICE’s operations on Martha’s Vineyard and a Coast Guard spokesperson confirmed that Guard Station Menemsha was being used to transfer detainees off the island.  Reports from Martha’s Vineyard claim the migrants arrested were construction workers and domestic workers.

ICE and the FBI have reportedly begun
operations on Martha’s Vineyard, detaining individuals suspected of being undocumented.
Local witnesses say the island’s immigrant community is living in fear amid concerns over a broader immigration crackdown under the Trump administration. pic.twitter.com/Vi2va2Mawk

— david 🌻 (@realdavidonline) May 28, 2025

Locals reported the raids to congressional representatives, arguing that the ICE raids are “creating fear” among the migrant population of the area.

“Congressman Keating was made aware of the presence of federal agents on Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket today by concerned constituents,” Congressman Bill Keating’s office said in a statement. “While the specifics of these detentions remain unknown at this time, Congressman Keating encourages any family members of those detained to contact his office so a congressional inquiry can be submitted to ICE to ensure due process is followed and not, once again, thrown to the wayside.”

The simple solution to the problem?  Stop hiring illegal migrant employees and they won’t be enticed to sneak into the US where they’ll get arrested.

This woman in Martha’s Vineyard is upset about the ICE raid because they are taking their help. Keep in mind none of these illegals actually live in Martha’s vineyard. They’re not allowed to. They have to bus in to work.
pic.twitter.com/oNWaxKvaaR

— Royce Lopez (@hippojuicefilm) May 30, 2025

“Due process” for illegal immigrants simply means confirmation that they do not have American citizenship and then removing them from the country.  Under federal law they are not entitled to court appearances or a jury trial, as Democrats naively assume.

Some might recall the national incident in Martha’s Vineyard in 2022, when Florida Governor Ron DeSantis bussed 50 illegals to the wealthy progressive island in protest of Joe Biden’s open border policies which flooded the US with an estimated 10 million migrants in the course of four years. 

Democrats tried to spin the event as a “criminal act” of human trafficking by DeSantis, but the damage to their narrative had already been done.  The leftists of Martha’s Vineyard gave the migrants a nice cheap lunch, cried about the travesty of their treatment, then pushed them all back on a bus and promptly booted them out of the community – sending them to be held at Joint Base Cape Cod, a military base in Massachusetts.

The point of the exercise was to prove that Democrat elites support illegal immigration into other people’s communities, but not their own communities.  The Martha’s Vineyard incident only confirmed their hypocrisy.  Today, the mass deportation effort now in play under the Trump Administration is party due to the actions of conservative governors who exposed the crisis through the bussing of illegals into northern Democrat strongholds.   

Authored by Katabella Roberts via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Legislation that would have banned anyone under the age of 18 from using or creating social media accounts in Texas stalled in the Senate this week after lawmakers failed to vote on it.

House Bill 186, filed by state Rep. Jared Patterson (R-Frisco), would have prohibited minors from creating accounts on social media sites such as Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Snapchat, and others by requiring the platforms to verify users’ age.

The measure previously passed the GOP-controlled state House with broad bipartisan support in April, but momentum behind the bill slowed at the eleventh hour in the state Senate this week as lawmakers face a weekend deadline to send bills to Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk.

The legislative session ends on Monday.

In a statement on the social media platform X late Thursday, Patterson said the bill’s failure to pass in the Senate was “the biggest disappointment of my career,” adding that no other bill filed this session “would have protected more kids in more ways than this one.”

The Republican lawmaker said he believed its failure to pass meant “I’ve failed these kids and their families.”

“I felt the weight of an entire generation of kids who’ve had their mental health severely handicapped as a result of the harms of social media,”  the lawmaker said. “And then there’s the others – the parents of Texas kids who’ve died as a result of a stupid social media ‘challenge’ or by suicide after being pulled down the dangerous rabbit holes social media uses to hook their users, addict them on their products, and drive them to depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation.”

“Finally, there’s the perfectly happy and healthy teens in Texas today, who will find themselves slowly falling off the edge before the legislature meets again in 2027,” he stated.

Patterson suggested he would try and pass the measure again when the Texas Legislature meets in 2027.

House Bill 186 would have prohibited a child from entering into a contract with a social media platform to become an account holder and required platforms to verify that a person seeking to become an account holder is 18 years of age or older before allowing them to create an account.

The legislation would have also required social media platforms to delete accounts belonging to individuals under the age of 18 at a parent or guardian’s request.

Provisions in House Bill 186

According to the bill, the accounts would need to be removed no later than 10 days after receiving such a request, and the platforms would also be required to cease “further use or maintenance in retrievable form, or future online collection, of personal information collected from the child ’s account, on all of its platforms.”

Additionally, the measure would have required platforms to provide a “reasonable, accessible, and verifiable means by which a parent or guardian” could make a request to have their child’s account deleted.

If signed into law, the bill would have gone into effect in September 2025.

Social media companies’ failure to comply with the legislation would have been considered a deceptive trade practice, meaning they could face legal action under Texas consumer protection laws.

While the measure was widely championed by Republicans, it drew sharp condemnation from tech trade groups and critics who branded it an unconstitutional limit on free speech.

Trade association Netchoice said the bill’s core provisions were “unconstitutional,” while the age-verification stipulation “presents heightened threats to privacy and undermines the state’s interest in protecting the privacy of users.”

In addition, the association said the HB 186 “usurps parental decision making.”

The bill’s failure to make it past the state Senate comes as Abbot signed into law a separate measure this week requiring Apple and Google to verify the age of online app store users.

That legislation also requires parental consent to download apps and make in-app purchases for users under 18.

Utah passed a similar bill earlier this year. California is also set to make it illegal for social media platforms to knowingly provide addictive feeds to children without parental consent, beginning in 2027.

Florida passed a similar law last year banning social media accounts for children under the age of 14 and requiring parental permission for 14- and 15-year-olds.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

The Baltimore Peninsula—formerly known as Port Covington—is a 235-acre, large-scale mixed-use waterfront redevelopment in South Baltimore, which one YouTuber has called it a “billion-dollar ghost town.” 

“This video explores Baltimore’s newest and swankiest waterfront neighborhood,” YouTuber “Building Tales” wrote in the description of the video, adding, “It’s a beautiful Saturday, but there’s just one thing missing … people.” 

The video description continued, “On this particular Saturday I walked around for a half hour and could just about count all the people I saw on one hand. So what’s going on here… why are there all of these beautiful new buildings but seemingly no one here to use them?” 

Major developers of the waterfront redevelopment project include:

• Sagamore Ventures (Kevin Plank, Under Armour founder)

• Goldman Sachs Urban Investment Group

• MAG Partners (New York-based, led by MaryAnne Gilmartin)

• MacFarlane Partners (San Francisco-based real estate firm)

Financing on the deal included: 

• Public and private financing: Over $5.5 billion in total investment planned

• Largest TIF (Tax Increment Financing) in Baltimore history: $660 million approved in public bonds to fund infrastructure

So far, the struggling apparel brand Under Armour remains the large anchor tenant at Baltimore Peninsula, with a new global headquarters. Much of the surrounding office and retail space has been built on speculation, with hopes that additional tenants will follow.

According to one industry insider, a key challenge facing Baltimore City’s commercial real estate market is the growing number of competing business districts—both completed and under development—that are attracting tenants, such as Harbor East. 

The broader issue is that Baltimore City Hall remains under the control of radical leftist activists whose decade-long social justice experiment has backfired, igniting recent and broader violent crime waves. The population in the metro area has plunged to a 100-year low as residents and businesses flee the crime-infested area. 

Whether it’s the population collapse, violent crime, mass exodus of residents, or the sight of a “ghost town” in a major new commercial development—Baltimore’s decline all points back to one root cause: decades of failed progressive leadership at City Hall.

President Trump announced late on Friday that his administration will double tariffs on steel imports from 25% to 50%, saying the move would help protect American steelworkers during a visit to a United States Steel Corp. plant in Pittsburgh on Friday focused on boosting the US steel industry. 

Trump was visiting the plant to champion an expected deal between United States Steel Corp. and Japan’s Nippon Steel Corp. as one that would ensure the iconic American firm remains US-owned and operated, even as details on the agreement remain vague. He said the new tariffs would benefit the new venture’s US operations.

“We’re going to bring it from 25 to 50 percent on steel into the United States of America, which will even further secure the steel industry in the United States,” Trump said during remarks at a steel factory in Pittsburgh, flanked by banners that read “The Golden Age,” “American Jobs” and “American Steel.”

🚨 BREAKING: @POTUS announces that next week, tariffs on steel imports will double to 50% — “which will even further secure the steel industry in the United States.” pic.twitter.com/AwOSQ380pn

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) May 30, 2025

Trump previously imposed a 25% tariff on steel and aluminum imports, arguing it would boost the US steel industry. Those were in addition to tariffs on automobile tariffs, and a baseline 10% tariff on all imports.

Those tariffs have faced legal scrutiny and skepticism from Wall Street and critics on both sides of the aisle, who have warned that the tariffs will ultimately lead to price increases for consumers. Trump and his allies have insisted the tariff threats, which have often been delayed or revised, have been effective at bringing other countries to the negotiating table.

The five largest sources of imported steel into the US are Canada, Brazil, Mexico, South Korea and Vietnam.

The president’s announcement came as part of an event to tout what Trump called a “blockbuster” agreement between U.S. Steel and Japanese-owned Nippon Steel.

“I believe that this group of people that just made this investments right now are very happy, because that means that nobody’s going to be able to steal your industry,” Trump said. “It’s at 25%, they can sort of get over that fence, at 50% they can no longer get over the fence.”

The new 50% level also offers a backstop for Trump’s promise that the US Steel-Nippon deal, which he opposed on the campaign trail, would benefit steelworkers in the critical battleground state of Pennsylvania. The deal was opposed by the United Steelworkers, who worried Japanese ownership could see capacity reduced and jobs shifted to other plants. 

“We’re here today to celebrate a blockbuster agreement that will ensure this storied American company stays an American company,” Trump said in remarks from a factory in Allegheny County. “We’re going to have a great partner. And I have to tell you, Japan has been a tremendous friend of mine during my years as president.”

Trump’s decision marked a stunning reversal on a transaction that he had fiercely opposed on the campaign trail, but the president cast the shift as coming with concessions from Nippon Steel that benefitted steelworkers.

“Everytime they came in, the deal got better and better and better for the workers,” Trump said, stressing that US Steel would remain headquartered in Pittsburgh.

The president last week cast it as a “planned partnership” bringing investments to the US — not as an outright sale of an American company. Even after Trump’s announcement last week, work continued on the terms, including what veto powers the US government will retain over the board of the US Steel subsidiary.

“In Washington, I’m going to be watching over it, and it’s going to be great,” Trump said.

The Friday event caps what has been a politically contentious and tumultuous path for Nippon Steel’s bid to purchase an iconic American firm, a lengthy saga that left both companies in limbo. Nippon Steel initially proposed a $14.1 billion transaction for US Steel.

The event also had the tone of a victory lap, with Trump receiving a Pittsburgh Steelers jersey and a golden hard hat during his visit, but despite the celebratory tone, critical details on the deal were unclear ahead of Friday’s event. Investors are eager for any insight into the agreement a week after he first announced that he would approve the deal. 

Last week Trump announced a new partnership between U.S. Steel and Nippon on social media, saying it “will create at least 70,000 jobs, and add $14 Billion Dollars to the U.S. Economy.”

.@POTUS: “As part of this monumental commitment, Nippon will invest $2.2 billion to increase steel production here in the Mon Valley Works… In addition, another $7 billion to modernize steel mills, expand ore mines, and build state-of-the-art facilities in Indiana, Minnesota,… pic.twitter.com/YqCnzxB5pr

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) May 30, 2025

U.S. Steel’s fate had been uncertain dating back to December 2023, when Japan-based Nippon steel said it planned to acquire the Pittsburgh-based company. The fate of U.S. Steel became a hot button issue during the 2024 campaign, particularly given its headquarters was in a key battleground.

Both Trump and former President Biden had opposed the sale of U.S. Steel. Biden blocked the sale shortly before leaving office, citing national security reasons.

Advocates for a deal between Nippon Steel and US Steel have long argued that the Japanese company would help revitalize the American firm with investments. But the deal also faced resistance from the powerful United Steelworkers union that operates US Steel mills across the country.

The next steps to consummate the deal are not entirely clear. Both sides need to finalize their agreement through the Cfius review process. It’s not clear whether the text of any mitigation agreement — which is likely to spell out what powers the US government retains — is finalized.

Trump invited on stage former Pittsburgh Steelers player Rocky Bleier and current Steelers players Mason Rudolph and Miles Killebrew, who presented the president with a football jersey to express their appreciation. But as the Hill notes, the intended focus was on Trump’s attempts to revive the steel industry. The president argued other presidents had ignored the steel industry at the expense of places like Pittsburgh.

The US was the world’s fourth-largest steel producing nation as of 2023, according to the World Steel Association. It is also the world’s largest steel importer, excluding the European Union, according to the International Trade Association.

“Decades of Washington betrayal and incompetence and stupidity and corruption cost this region over 100,000 steel jobs, and they melted away just like butter melts away,” Trump said.

Shares of other US steel companies including Nucor Corp., Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. and Steel Dynamics Inc. rallied in after-hours trading.

Authored by Manouk Termaaten (founder and CEO of Vertical Studio AI) via CoinTelegraph.com,

Major corporations control decentralized AI (DeAI) companies, leaving decentralized AI in the dust. To build a more decentralized world, the sector must actively execute upon a focused DeAI strategy, with shared standards between projects, without compromise.

In April, a UN report warned that AI’s $4.8-trillion market is dominated by a mere 100 companies, most of which are based in the US and China. Centralized AI incumbents have the money and the connections to control this massive new industry, which means significant implications for society. 

These companies, all employing centralized AI technology, have run into their fair share of headaches. For example, Microsoft’s Copilot garnered attention for creating explicit, inappropriate images, such as children in compromising scenarios. This sparked a public and regulatory backlash.

Although Microsoft created stricter moderation, it had already demonstrated that centralized AI can harbor problems in part due to its closed-source code. 

Citadel was wrapped up in an AI trading scandal in the financial sector, as algorithms allegedly manipulated stock prices via artificial volume creation.

Google’s Project Maven, a Pentagon pilot program used in military tech, has raised ethical questions.

“We believe that Google should not be in the business of war,” reads a letter penned by Google employees and addressed to Sundar Pichai, the company’s CEO. The employees requested that Google leave Project Maven.

“We ask that Project Maven be cancelled, and that Google draft, publicize and enforce a clear policy stating that neither Google nor its contractors will ever build warfare technology,” the letter states.

So much for “Don’t be evil” — the company’s old slogan.

These situations give us clear examples of the potential failures of centralized AI, including ethical lapses, opaque decision-making and monopolistic control. DeAI’s open-source ethos, community governance, audit trails and computer facilities can give more than a few massive corporations an edge in the future of AI. 

Centralized AI gains more power 

Corporations and nation-states maintain an upper hand in AI development today — not DeAI projects. Nation-states and corporations can and do outspend DeAI.

Nation-states see that the stakes are high, as Russian President Vladimir Putin highlighted when he warned that the country that wins the AI race will “become the ruler of the world.” The People’s Republic of China aims to become the global leader in AI by 2030. 

AI will likely develop an authoritarian bent and feature the pervasive lack of privacy proliferating across today’s World Wide Web, all defined by a corporate state that maintains only a veneer of sharing the fundamental values of the Enlightenment.

DeAI faces an uphill battle

The chances for DeAI to carve out a considerable market share are relatively small. The incumbents are so well-resourced that the battle is one of David and Goliath. Nation-states and corporations will maintain the lead on access to AI, making it all but guaranteed that most of the world will interface with AI first on centralized systems, giving them early adopter status. 

But on a long enough timeline — decades or hundreds of years — DeAI can win market share via open-sourced models and transparent developer documentation.

To realize the vision of DeAI, the sector will have to maximize AI’s benefits with security. DeAI must execute on privacy and data control, resilience, scalability, reduced latency, access democratization and cost-efficiency. It must do this as a community and express its values to the world — regulators, consumers, investors and more. 

DeAI brings numerous advantages over centralized AI systems, like improved privacy and data control, no single point of failure, edge computing and democratized access.

Despite these advantages, AI will undoubtedly be dominated by the prominent state-enterprise apparatus characteristic of the neoliberal world. 

To create a more decentralized world, it’s time to proactively implement a clear DeAI strategy and establish common standards across projects, ensuring these are upheld without compromise.

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

Various Democrats are promising to investigate and impeach President Donald Trump if they retake the House next year. At the same time, others are promising a scorched earth campaign against those who support Trump, including Elon Musk. Representative Suhas Subramanyam (D-VA) declared this week that Musk committed crimes and will be at the top of the list. 

MSNBC’s ratings may be declining but the network is escalating the unhinged rhetoric. Host Symone Sanders ominously told Rep. Suhas Subramanyam (D-VA) , “Let’s talk about Elon Musk” and his “data” on waste that he identified in the federal government: “So what are Democrats going to do about the data? Are you all going to follow up on this?”

Subramanyam immediately pledged to hunt Musk down:

“… certainly, I think some crimes may have been committed over the past 3 or 4 months, and they are going to come to light one way or another, even if it takes us getting into power again, but we will subpoena people and find out.”

There is no evidence of any criminal conduct by Musk. Indeed, DOGE has largely won in its fights to gain access to records in the search for fraud and waste.

Nevertheless, after calling for Musk to be “taken down,” Democratic rep. Jasmine Crockett (D., Tx.) is also calling for Musk to be investigated over DOGE once Democrats take power.

It is otherworldly to see Democrats raising prosecution threats against the effort to reduce the size and waste of government. One can certainly be critical of some of the cuts under DOGE but few would disagree that Musk helped find billions in waste, including some shocking revelations about the inefficiencies of our government.

A former Obama aide, Rep. Subramanyam just arrived in Congress but has immediately resumed the same failed narrative. The Democrats are an example of how, if you only have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.

There is a return to the same script from pledges of prosecutions to impeachments.

Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez has even reimagined the “defund the police” campaign into an “Abolish ICE” campaign.

Resisting immigration enforcement, downsizing government, and other issues are only moving the party further from the center of this country.

The threat only reaffirms my call yesterday for President Trump to award Musk the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his contributions to space exploration, electric vehicles, free speech, and other public service. Elon has lost a fortune in resisting these attacks and threats from the left. This country owes him a great debt.

To close out the week, corporate media is finally catching up to a theme we flagged for readers on Wednesday: President Trump’s “Plan B” trade war options.

• Wednesday evening: Goldman Responds To Trade Court Block Of Trump Tariffs: Nothingburger, White House Can Sidestep

This follows a move by Biden-appointed activist judges at the U.S. Court of International Trade who attempted to derail Trump’s trade agenda ahead of the 2026 midterms, only to be overruled by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Thursday. 

• Thursday afternoon: Appeals Court Reinstates Trump Tariffs

With lawfare intensifying in the courts by leftist activist judges, the Trump administration must now press forward with its ‘America First’ trade strategy on a firmer legal footing.

This takes us to our note late Thursday, citing Deutsche Bank’s policy team focused not on the court circus but instead on Section 899 of the “Big Beautiful Bill” that is currently circulating through the U.S. Senate.

As DB’s George Saravelos explained, this legislation creates the scope for the U.S. administration to transform a trade war into a capital war if it so wishes, a development that is highly relevant in the context of this week’s court circus surrounding Trump’s trade policies.

• Ignore The Tariff Court Challenge: Here’s The Obscure “Nuclear Option” Hidden In The Big, Beautiful Bill

Fast forward to Friday morning, UBS analyst Simon Penn told clients about the growing chatter around Section 899 in President Trump’s new tariff framework—already earning the nickname “the revenge tax.”

There’s an increasing amount of conversation about the “899” provision in President Trump’s tariff documentation. It’s been dubbed the “revenge tax”. There’s lots of noise on Friday because it hit the front pages of the Financial Times and Bloomberg.

In very brief, the provision allows the administration to take actions against anything it considers to be a “discriminatory tax”. It leaves the door wide open on the definition and interpretation. Reading through the document and the various opinions that have been given, it looks like its aim is two-fold. It’s a last line of defence to cover anything not caught by the tariffs already in place; it’s another leverage tool to deal with issues such as double taxation and withholding taxes. The provision signals that the administration could step into services, and in particular, financial services. In that case, the administration has designed a powerful negotiating tool and has also built in a technique to deal with any country that attempts to fight back with services-based levies.

UBS analyst George Redman also flagged the increasing traction of Section 899 in corporate media coverage, suggesting that the Trump administration may be preparing to deploy non-tariff measures against serial trade offenders, such as China, to bring Beijing back to the negotiating table. 

Redman noted:

The front page of the Financial Times is focusing on Section 899 of the “big beautiful bill,” which will likely draw attention on Friday. The provision allows the government to raise taxes on foreign investments in the U.S. from companies and investors based in countries it deems to have punitive tax policies. As such, it could include US-based companies with foreign owners and international firms with American branches. Expect a micro focus on companies most exposed to this risk, which are likely to underperform on Friday.

This week’s developments with circus courts show only a temporary blow to Trump’s emergency tariff powers, and the administration appears poised to shift toward a more legal, concrete, and flexible framework—centered around Section 899.