Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) and two top U.S. lawmakers on March 31 sued President Donald Trump over a recent executive order that aims to enforce the law against illegal immigrant voting and election dates.

“The Executive Order seeks to impose radical changes on how Americans register to vote, cast a ballot, and participate in our democracy—all of which threaten to disenfranchise lawful voters and none of which is legal,” says the lawsuit, filed by Democratic Party attorney Marc Elias in federal court in Washington.

Trump’s March 25 order has multiple sections. Several deal with laws that bar foreigners from registering to vote or from voting in federal elections. Trump directed the independent Election Assistance Commission to require proof of U.S. citizenship in its mail voter registration form, ordered U.S. officials to work with the Department of Government Efficiency to review voter rolls to identify noncitizens who are already registered, and told the U.S. attorney general to prosecute individuals who have illegally registered or voted.

Another prong takes aim at how some states in recent years have begun counting mailed ballots that arrive after Election Day, which the order says contravenes federal law.

A third portion says the Election Assistance Commission shall stop providing federal funds to states that don’t comply with the laws on election dates and noncitizen voting and voter registration.

The U.S. Constitution’s election clause says that states can set election dates, although Congress can alter them.

“Outside of the Elections Clause, other provisions in the Constitution place certain requirements and limitations on the regulation of elections—but none allows the President to override the will of the States or Congress in this space,” the new suit states.

The legal challenge also says that the Election Assistance Commission is an independent agency over which the president, who appoints commissioners, has no control, and that federal law lets applicants who vote in federal elections attest to citizenship with a signature as opposed to requiring proof from documents such as a passport.

In addition to the DNC, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), the top Democrat in the U.S. Senate, and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), the top Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives, are plaintiffs in the suit.

The Democrats are asking the court to declare that the order violates the Constitution and federal law and block U.S. officials, such as the attorney general, from implementing it.

“The Democrats continue to show their disdain for the Constitution and it continues to show in their insane objections to the President’s commonsense executive actions to require proof of U.S. citizenship in an effort to protect the integrity of American elections,“ Harrison Fields, a White House spokesman, told The Epoch Times in an email. ”The Trump administration is standing up for free, fair, and honest elections and asking this basic question is essential to our Constitutional Republic.”

Ahead of the 2016 election, Elias helped compile a dossier against Trump. He was named in a different order by Trump that directed officials to take action against lawyers who are violating laws and regulations.

Earlier Monday, several organizations filed a separate suit in the same court over the election order, outlining similar arguments.

“The president’s executive order is an unlawful action that threatens to uproot our tried-and-tested election systems and silence potentially millions of Americans,“ Danielle Lang, senior director of voting rights at the Campaign Legal Center, which is representing the groups, said in a statement. ”It is simply not within the president’s authority to set election rules by executive decree, especially when they would restrict access to voting in this way.”

Ahead of President Trump’s reciprocal tariff announcement across all US trading partners later today, the president will meet with senior administration officials to review a final proposal for the Chinese social media app TikTok. The deliberations come before a Saturday deadline, by which TikTok must complete a sale to a non-Chinese entity or face a US ban. 

CBS News cited sources familiar with the upcoming meeting in the Oval Office that said Vice President JD Vance, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard would be present. It’s unclear whether Trump will approve the final proposal today, given that today is “Liberation Day.” The report noted that Blackstone and Oracle are potential investors. 

At the start of Trump’s first term, he signed an executive order granting a 75-day extension for TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, to sell the app—used by 170 million Americans—to a US entity or face a nationwide ban. The deadline is Saturday, April 5, bringing the final deal down to the wire. 

Over the weekend, Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One, “We have a lot of potential buyers. There’s a lot of interest in TikTok. The decision is going to be my decision,” adding, “I’d like to see TikTok remain alive.” Trump said Monday there was “a lot of enthusiasm for TikTok.” 

In a separate report, the Financial Times said Marc Andreessen’s venture capital firm, Andreessen Horowitz, was discussing the purchase of TikTok from ByteDance with Oracle and other investors. 

Reuters noted, “In the closely watched sale of TikTok, the White House is playing the role of an investment bank, with Vance running the auction.” 

The Trump administration is about to have a hectic week. It will announce reciprocal tariffs later today, and it must also begin finalizing a deal for TikTok as the April 5 deadline looms. 

Authored by Jon Fleetwood,

In a move both hailed and questioned, Argentine President Javier Milei has ordered the full declassification of secret government files related to Nazis who fled to Argentina after World War II—along with archives from the country’s own military dictatorship.

The promise of disclosure follows a broader global trend toward transparency, including the U.S. government’s recent release of long-classified files related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy—documents that, for decades, were withheld from the public under claims of national security.

WATCH: I break down Argentina’s move to declassify Nazi files—and the FBI docs claiming Hitler survived WWII and escaped to Argentina.

“Hitler was landed in Argentina approximately June 20 [1945]… his face was disfigured.”

Full story in the video:
🎥👇#Hitler #Argentina… pic.twitter.com/Q6eq2z8Yz3

— Jon Fleetwood (@JonMFleetwood) March 31, 2025

But with reports of 5,000 Nazis escaping to South America—including top convicted war criminals like Adolf Eichmann and Josef Mengele—some are asking a more explosive question: did Hitler himself survive the war and escape to Argentina?

Cabinet Chief Guillermo Francos confirmed that Milei’s order, made after a meeting with U.S. Senator Steve Daines, applies to all Nazi-related documents across state agencies, including Defense Ministry files and financial records long shrouded in secrecy.

“President Milei has ordered the publication and declassification of the archives,” Francos said. “These files concern Nazis who sought refuge in Argentina and were protected for many years. These are historical documents that should be accessible to the public.”

“There is no reason to continue safeguarding that information,” he added. “These are archives of a part of Argentine history and they have to be public.”

The move also revives a long-held claim—dismissed by mainstream historians but not by everyone—that Adolf Hitler didn’t die in Berlin in 1945, but instead fled via Spain and ended up living out his days under protection in South America.

The Escape Route Nobody Was Supposed to Talk About

Historians have documented the escape of high-profile Nazis to Argentina—Eichmann was captured by Israeli Mossad agents in Buenos Aires in 1960; Mengele died decades later under a false identity in Brazil.

So why wouldn’t the same network that protected them also protect Hitler?

That’s the question Argentine journalist and author Abel Basti has spent his career trying to answer.

In books like Hitler in Exile and Hitler in Argentina, Basti argues that Hitler escaped through a tunnel under Berlin to Tempelhof Airport, fled to Spain, then traveled by submarine to Argentina, where he lived with SS support and the help of sympathetic German immigrants.

He cites declassified FBI reports, alleged sightings in Patagonia, and photos he claims show Hitler with known Nazi sympathizers in Argentina.

The Eden Hotel in La Falda—a hotspot for Nazi activity in the mid-20th century—is at the center of many of these claims.

Basti believes Hitler stayed there with Walter and Ida Eichorn, well-known Nazi loyalists who ran the property.

U.S. intel files from the era include dozens of unverified tips about Hitler sightings across South America.

Now, Milei’s declassification order may allow researchers—and skeptics—to comb through those files firsthand.

FBI Document Reveals Escape Rumors After Hitler’s Death: National Archives

As part of a National Archives blog series titled ‘Hunting Hitler,’ two FBI reports released in 2015 revisit mysterious rumors from 1945 suggesting Hitler escaped to Argentina.

One report, sent from Buenos Aires on July 14, 1945, claimed that “a source of unknown reliability” said “Hitler was landed in Argentina approximately June 20, that his face was disfigured,” and that an Argentine army major was preparing to escort him to a “secret hiding place in Chaco territory.”

The report added, “All rumors being investigated.”

A second document, dated August 14 from the FBI in Los Angeles, recounted a claim made by a Hollywood actor, who said a man at a club told him he had a “tremendous problem that was bothering him.”

That man allegedly said he “was one of four men who met Hitler and his party when they landed from submarines in Argentina two and a half weeks after the fall of Berlin.”

Both documents appear in ‘Hunting Hitler Part VII: The search continues June–September 1945,’ authored by National Archives historian Greg Bradsher.

Argentina Wasn’t the Only One Harboring Nazis

It’s worth noting that Argentina was not alone in giving shelter to Nazi officials.

The United States government—through a covert program known as Operation Paperclip—smuggled more than 1,600 German scientists, engineers, and technicians into the country after the war.

Many of these individuals had direct ties to the Nazi regime, and some were connected with war crimes.

One of the most famous Paperclip recruits was Wernher von Braun, former SS officer and architect of the Nazi V-2 rocket program, who later became a leading figure in NASA’s Apollo program.

U.S. intelligence scrubbed their records and gave them new lives in American institutions of research, military development, and space exploration.

If the U.S. was willing to overlook Nazi atrocities in the name of national interest, it raises the question: how many other countries did the same—and what information still hasn’t been revealed?

Publicity Stunt or Historic Breakthrough?

Critics argue the announcement is little more than political theater.

The Libertarian government has already laid off many of the archivists and staff who would handle the release.

“So who’s going to do it?” opposition lawmakers asked.

“The announcements are pure demagogy,” one local outlet reported.

Milei made the announcement last week on Argentina’s National Day of Memory, Truth, and Justice—a holiday marking the start of the country’s 1976-1983 military dictatorship.

His administration also vowed to declassify intelligence files from that era, saying “telling the whole story is a crucial task.”

Yet, the most consequential revelations may not be about Argentina’s dictatorship—but what the country knew about one of the darkest chapters in world history, and when.

Fringe, Fiction, or Classified Fact?

Mainstream historians like Richard J. Evans reject the Hitler escape theory as fiction.

They point to forensic evidence like Hitler’s dental remains, which match his known records and were confirmed in 2018 by a French-led team examining Soviet archives.

Still, questions remain.

Why did U.S. intelligence keep thousands of pages of Nazi-related sightings and investigations classified for decades?

Why did Argentina offer safe haven to so many convicted war criminals?

And why, nearly 80 years later, does the full story remain locked in government vaults?

Whether the release of Argentina’s Nazi files will finally put the escape theory to rest—or breathe new life into it—remains to be seen.

But for the first time in decades, the files may finally see daylight.

And if Milei makes good on his promise, the world may discover just how deep the rabbit hole goes.

For decades, the idea that Germany’s gold reserves – some of the largest in the world – might not be safe in the vaults of the New York Federal Reserve would have seemed like the stuff of conspiracy theories. But as the political landscape shifts in Washington – and questions have been raised as to what’s actually in US vaults, some German lawmakers are beginning to wonder aloud: Is their gold still secure?

Germany holds the second-largest hoard of gold on the planet, surpassed only by the United States itself. Roughly 37 percent of that treasure – some 1,236 metric tons, currently valued at around €113 billion – supposedly lies deep beneath the streets of Manhattan, stored with America’s central bank. For decades, the arrangement was seen as a prudent hedge, offering Germany immediate access to dollar liquidity in the event of a crisis.

Now, some in Berlin are rethinking that assumption.

“Of course, the question now arises again,” Marco Wanderwitz, an outgoing lawmaker from the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), told the German tabloid Bild (owned by POLITICO parent company Axel Springer) last week. Wanderwitz has long harbored doubts about the wisdom of keeping such a significant portion of the country’s wealth abroad. In 2012, he made an unsuccessful push to personally inspect the gold, urging the Bundesbank to act more transparently – or bring the bullion home.

Fellow CDU member Markus Ferber, a member of the European Parliament, echoed those sentiments, calling for more rigorous oversight. “Official representatives of the Bundesbank must personally count the bars and document their results,” Ferber told the outlet.

These calls come at a time of deepening skepticism toward the institutions that once underpinned Germany’s postwar confidence. The recent decision to discard the so-called “debt brake,” a long-sacrosanct cap on public borrowing, signaled a willingness to rethink long-standing fiscal orthodoxy. The logic behind storing Germany’s gold in New York, once assumed to be self-evident, is now coming under similar scrutiny.

Adding to the speculation is Elon Musk and DOGE, who have questioned the authenticity of stated U.S. gold holdings – recently calling for a formal audit of America’s reserves.

For the Deutsche Bundesbank, which oversees the management of Germany’s reserves, any suggestion of instability is unwelcome. The central bank has maintained a quiet and resolute stance, rebuffing insinuations of risk.

“We have a trustworthy and reliable partner in the Fed in New York for the storage of our gold holdings,” Bundesbank President Joachim Nagel said at a press conference in February, a line the bank reiterated when asked for comment on Friday. “It does not keep me awake at night. I have complete confidence in our colleagues at the American central bank.”

Famous last words…

In 2013, amid a populist outcry and growing eurozone instability, the ‘completely confident’ Bundesbank repatriated hundreds of tons of gold previously held in Paris – a move that was seen at the time as a symbolic reassertion of sovereignty. The bank argued that, with France and Germany sharing the euro, the strategic rationale for keeping reserves in Paris had faded.

Now, more than half of Germany’s gold sits safely in Frankfurt. Thirteen percent is held in London. But it is the tranche in New York – once a monument to transatlantic trust – that is drawing the most anxious of glances.

*  *  *

One question… GOT GOLD?

The harbinger of the AI revolution, ChatGPT, remains the most popular AI tool on the market, with more than 200 million weekly active users.

But amongst all its competitors, which AI chatbots are collecting the most user data? And why does that matter?

Visual Capitalist’s Marcus Lu visualizes data from Surfshark which identified the most popular AI chatbots and analyzed their privacy details on the Apple App Store.

Their findings are as of February 18th, 2025.

Gemini, the Data Collection King

At first place, Google’s Gemini (released March, 2023) collects 22 different data points across 10 categories, from its users.

Data collected ranges from general diagnostics (that all bots in this study collect) to access to contacts (that no other bot identified collects).

Note: The Number of data points collected in each category vary per bot, leading to different totals.

xAI’s Grok (released November, 2023) collects the least unique data points (7).

China’s DeepSeek (released Jan 2025), sits comfortably in the middle of the pack at 11 points.

The kind of data collected by each of these AI tools varies. All of them collected general diagnostics information. However, only Gemini and Perplexity look at purchases.

And then, nearly all but Perplexity.ai and Grok collect user content.

User content is the kind of information that is usually linked to third party data and then sold to advertisers for targeted ads on the platform.

The general rule of thumb when it comes to data privacy is true for AI chatbots also. After all, information is stored on their servers, and those can be breached.

Want to stay up to date on the AI revolution? Check out: Ranked: Jobs Where AI is Most Used for quick insights into the shifting workplace.

Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Individuals and entities helping to finance the Hezbollah terrorist group were sanctioned by the Department of the Treasury on March 28.

The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) “is designating five individuals and three associated companies involved in a Lebanon-based sanctions evasion network supporting the Hizballah finance team,” the agency said in a March 28 statement.

Hezbollah, also known as Hizballah, is an Iran-backed terrorist group based in Lebanon. Following the Hamas terrorist attack against Israel in October 2023, Hezbollah began firing thousands of rockets and mortars into Israel.

According to the Treasury Department, “the Hizballah finance team uses front companies to generate millions of dollars in revenue for Hizballah and support the group’s terrorist activities.”

The team manages several commercial projects and oil smuggling networks to generate revenue, which is eventually transferred to Hezbollah, according to the Treasury. This is typically done in conjunction with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force (IRGC-QF).

The individuals and companies that OFAC has sanctioned facilitate and conceal oil sales for IRGC-QF and offer the terrorist group access to formal financial systems.

For instance, one of the sanctioned companies is Ravee SARL, a Lebanese business “that aims to generate profits for Hizballah from trade deals related to veterinary products,” the Treasury said.

One sanctioned individual, Mahasin Mahmud Murtada, is a “registered owner of several companies associated with Hizballah’s commercial investments,” it said.

With the new sanctions, all property of the designated individuals and companies that is located in the United States is “blocked and must be reported to OFAC,” the agency said. U.S. citizens are prohibited from engaging in any transactions involving the sanctioned individuals.

“Violations of U.S. sanctions may result in the imposition of civil or criminal penalties on U.S. and foreign persons. OFAC may impose civil penalties for sanctions violations,” the agency stated.

Acting Undersecretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Bradley T. Smith said OFAC’s latest actions aim to “expose and disrupt the schemes that fund Hizballah’s terrorist violence against the Lebanese people and their neighbors.”

“These evasion networks strengthen Iran and its proxy Hizballah and undermine the courageous efforts of the Lebanese people to build a Lebanon for all its citizens,” he said.

Disrupting Terrorist Financing

The U.S. government previously imposed sanctions against entities for assisting Hezbollah.

In 2021, the Treasury announced sanctions on multiple Chinese nationals and entities for financing the terrorist group.

Many of the companies were based in Hong Kong and were directly or indirectly owned or controlled by Morteza Minaye Hashemi, an Iranian businessman living in China who was on the United States’ sanctions list and was accused of funding IRGC-QF.

Hashemi laundered tens of millions of dollars through foreign exchange and gold sales, transferring the money to IRGC-QF and Hezbollah, the department said at the time.

Last year, a Lebanese national pleaded guilty to circumventing U.S. sanctions to finance Hezbollah.

The individual was accused of coercing an individual to liquidate real estate assets in Michigan and transfer hundreds of thousands of dollars to Lebanon without the necessary licenses.

Israel is also targeting Hezbollah’s financial channels to counter the terrorist group amid its conflict with Hamas.

In October 2024, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) hit branches of the U.S.-sanctioned Al-Qard Al-Hasan Association in Beirut via multiple strikes.

That entity helped Hezbollah store billions of dollars in funds for its terror operations, according to the IDF. Hezbollah reportedly used the organization to buy armaments and weapon storage facilities, pay salaries of its members, and conduct terror activities.

Meanwhile, the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah intensified recently when the Jewish state’s military conducted an air strike in Beirut on March 28. This was the first attack on Lebanon’s capital city after Israel and the terrorist group agreed to a cease-fire in November.

The strike targeted a Hezbollah drone storage site, the military said, adding that the operation was carried out after rockets were fired at Israel from Lebanon earlier in the morning “in blatant violation of the understandings between Israel and Lebanon.”

In Europe, the lure of a return to cheap energy is ever-present, and that conversation is becoming easier as the Trump administration in Washington pushes hard for ceasefire negotiations with Moscow.

Senior German politicians are already calling for a resumption of ties with Russia. For example Michael Kretschmer, a senior member of Friedrich Merz’s centre-right Christian Democrats, is now arguing that EU sanctions on Russia are “completely out of date” as they increasingly openly contradict “what the Americans are doing.”

Financial Times in a fresh report quoted Kretschmer’s words to the German press agency DPA as follows: “When you realize that you’re weakening yourself more than your opponent, then you have to think about whether all of this is right.”

The same publication has observed the expected immediate backlash to the statements as follows:

Kretschmer, who is also a long-standing opponent of weapons deliveries to Ukraine, is the latest in a string of figures from both Merz’s centre-right CDU and the centre-left Social Democrats to have gone public in recent weeks with calls to resume economic or energy ties with Russia.

That has created a problem for Merz — who is all but certain to be Germany’s next chancellor — as well as for his likely coalition partners in the SPD at a time when he is trying to cast himself as a strong partner for Ukraine and for Europe. Germany’s Green party, which is strongly pro-Kyiv, called on Sunday for Merz to clamp down on “friends of Putin” in his party. 

But Merz hasn’t himself actively tried to silence this growing desire in some political circles for rapprochement with Russia.

But Bloomberg reported Monday, “The co-head of Germany’s Social Democrats party and frontrunner to become the next finance minister Lars Klingbeil dismissed swirling speculation over reviving pipeline gas deliveries from Russia after a potential peace deal for Ukraine.”

And as we highlighted, TotalEnergies’ chief executive Patrick Pouyanne said last week:

“I would not be surprised if two out of the four (came) back to stream, not four out of the four,” Patrick Pouyanne said at an industry event in Germany’s capital city, Berlin, as carried by Reuters.

“There is no way to be competitive against Russian gas with LNG coming from wherever it is,” the executive added.

Meanwhile, both Hungary and Slovakia not only continue bypassing Ukraine for imports of Russian gas – after Ukraine broke from the transit of Russian gas on January 1st – but are actually boosting these supplies.

Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto announced on Tuesday that the Veľké Zlievce/Balassagyarmat interconnection border point from Hungary to Slovakia has been brought to full capacity due to the stoppage through Ukraine.

“We managed to solve the problem of natural gas supplies to Slovakia and Hungary, despite the fact that Ukraine created very serious difficulties for us. To ensure reliable gas supplies to Slovakia via Hungary even with the cessation of its transit through Ukraine, we had to increase the capacity of the connecting gas pipeline between our countries,” the FM told a press briefing.

“Today, the gas pipeline between Hungary and Slovakia is operating at increased capacity. We have now increased the capacity of this pipeline by 900 million cubic meters per year. Until now, 2.6 billion cubic meters were transported between the two countries per year. Starting today, this volume will increase to 3.5 billion cubic meters,” Szijjarto noted.

He added that “compared to last year’s record volume, the volume of natural gas transported through Hungary to Slovakia has increased by 50% in the first three months of this year.”

Via Middle East Eye

Turkey has begun efforts to take control of Syria’s Tiyas air base, also known as T4, and is preparing to deploy air defence systems there, sources familiar with the matter told Middle East Eye. Construction plans for the site are also reportedly under way.

Ankara and Damascus have been negotiating a defense pact since December, following the ousting of Bashar al-Assad. The agreement would see Turkey provide air cover and military protection for Syria’s new government, which currently lacks a functioning military.

Although Turkish officials had previously downplayed the possibility of a military presence in Syria, describing such plans as premature, negotiations have quietly continued.

While Israel views a Turkish military presence in Syria as a potential threat, Ankara aims to stabilize the country by leveraging its military capabilities and filling the power vacuum left by the withdrawal of Russia and Iran.

Turkey also intends to intensify its fight against the Islamic State (IS) group, a key condition for the United States to consider withdrawing from the region.

A source familiar with the matter told MEE that Turkey has begun moving to take control of the T4 air base, located near Palmyra in central Syria. “A Hisar-type air defense system will be deployed to T4 to provide air cover for the base,” the source said.

“Once the system is in place, the base will be reconstructed and expanded with necessary facilities. Ankara also plans to deploy surveillance and armed drones, including those with extended strike capabilities.”

The source added that the base would help Turkey establish aerial control across the region and support its efforts to combat IS, which still has cells operating in the Syrian desert. 

Ankara eventually aims to establish a layered air defense system in and around the base, which would have short-, medium- and long-range air defense capabilities against a variety of threats, from jets to drones to missiles. 

A second source noted that the presence of Turkish air defense systems and drones would likely deter Israel from launching air strikes in the area. The Turkish defense ministry declined to comment. 

Unnerving Israel

Israel has regularly targeted Syrian military installations since Assad’s government collapsed in December, with a recent surge in operations around T4. Last week, the Israeli air force struck T4 and the Palmyra air base, targeting runways and strategic assets.

An Israeli security source told the media on Monday that any Turkish air base in Syria would undermine Israel’s freedom of operation. “This is a potential threat that we oppose,” the source said.

Tensions between Turkey and Israel have escalated since the start of Israel’s war on Gaza in 2023, ending a brief period of reconciliation between the two countries. The collapse of the Assad government and Turkey’s emergence as a dominant power in Syria have further alarmed Israel, which now sees Ankara as a potentially greater threat in the region than Iran.

“We targeted the T4 military base recently to send a message: we will not allow any threat to our operational freedom in the air,” the Israeli security source told the Jerusalem Post.

The first MEE source also revealed that Ankara is considering the temporary deployment of S-400 air defence systems to T4 or Palmyra to secure the airspace during reconstruction efforts. However, no final decision has been made and Russia would need to give its approval.

Meanwhile, Ankara and Washington have been in talks about lifting the sanctions imposed on Turkey over its purchase of the Russian-made S-400 system, which led to Turkey’s removal from the F-35 fighter jet program in 2019.

Turkey is not building a military presence in Syria to fight ISIS, that’s a lie. They helped bring them over. Last time the two were neighbors, they were saluting each other. https://t.co/CZ593HRmqT

— Bassem (@BBassem7) April 1, 2025

In a phone call last month, US President Donald Trump and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan discussed possible ways for Turkey to rejoin the program. Under US law, Turkey must relinquish possession of the S-400 system to be readmitted.

Turkish officials have proposed deactivating the system by disassembling and storing it, or potentially relocating it to a Turkish-controlled base outside of Turkey. However, Israel strongly opposes any move that would allow Ankara access to the F-35, arguing it would erode Israel’s qualitative military edge in the region.

Authored by Josh Stylman via The Brownstone Institute,

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has long portrayed itself as America’s humanitarian aid organization, delivering assistance to developing nations. With an annual budget of nearly $40 billion and operations in over 100 countries, it represents one of the largest foreign aid institutions in the world. But recent disclosures reveal its true nature as something far more systematic: an architect of global consciousness.

Consider: Reuters, one of the world’s most trusted news sources, received USAID funding for ‘Large Scale Social Deception’ and ‘Social Engineering Defence.’ While there’s debate about the exact scope of these programs, the implications are staggering: a division of one of the world’s most relied-upon sources for objective reporting was paid by a US government agency for systemic reality construction. This funding goes beyond traditional media support, representing a deliberate infrastructure for discourse framing that fundamentally challenges the concept of ‘objective’ reporting.

Source: USASpending.gov database

But it goes deeper. In what reads like a Michael Crichton plot come to life, the recent USAID revelations show a staggering reach of narrative control. Take Internews Network, a USAID-financed NGO that has pushed nearly half a billion dollars ($472.6m) through a secretive network, ‘working with’ 4,291 media outlets. In just one year, they produced 4,799 hours of broadcasts reaching up to 778 million people and ‘trained’ over 9,000 journalists. This isn’t just funding – it’s a systematic infrastructure of consciousness manipulation.

The revelations show USAID funding both the Wuhan Lab’s gain-of-function research and the media outlets that would shape the story around what emerged from it. Backing organizations that would fabricate impeachment evidence. Funding both the election systems that facilitate outcomes and the fact-checkers that determine which discussions about those outcomes are permitted. But these disclosures point to something far more significant than mere corruption.

These revelations didn’t emerge from nowhere – they come from government grant disclosures, FOIA requests, and official records that aren’t even hidden, just ignored. As my old friend Mark Schiffer noted the other day, ‘The most important truths today cannot be debated – they must be felt as totalities.’ The pattern, once seen, cannot be unseen. Some may question DOGE’s methods or the rapid pace of these disclosures, and those constitutional concerns deserve serious discussion. But that’s a separate conversation from what these documents reveal. The revelations themselves – documented in official records and grant disclosures – are undeniable and should shock anyone who values truth. The means of exposure matter far less than what’s being exposed: one of the largest narrative control operations in history.

No domain is untouched – markets, tech, culture, health, and obviously, media – and you’ll find the same design. Intelligence agencies are deeply embedded in each domain because shaping how we perceive reality is more powerful than controlling reality itself

Just as fiat currency replaced real value with declared value, we now see the same pattern everywhere: fiat science replaces inquiry with predetermined conclusions, fiat culture replaces organic development with curated influence, fiat history replaces lived experience with manufactured narratives. We live in an era of fiat everything – where reality itself is declared, not discovered. And just as they create artificial scarcity in monetary systems, they manufacture false choices everywhere else – presenting us with artificial binaries that obscure the true complexity of our world.

As Schiffer wrote elsewhere, reality no longer requires consensus, only coherence. But there’s a crucial distinction: real coherence emerges naturally across multiple domains, reflecting deeper truths that cannot be fabricated. The coherence imposed by perception management isn’t truth – it’s a controlled discourse engineered for consistency, not discovery. The USAID receipts now provide concrete evidence of how this manufactured coherence is built: a scripted reality where the appearance of logic is more important than actual substance.

This isn’t just pattern matching – it’s pattern prediction. Just as algorithms learn to recognize and anticipate behavioral patterns, those who understand this system’s architecture can see its next moves before they’re made. The question isn’t whether something is “true” or “false” – it’s understanding how information flows shape consciousness itself.

To understand how deep this goes, let’s examine their methodology. As Dr. Sherri Tenpenny and others have meticulously documented through FOIA requests and government grant disclosures, the pattern emerges through two primary vectors of control:

Information Control:

• $34 million to Politico (which as Tenpenny notes, struggled to make payroll without this funding)
• Extensive payments to the New York Times
• Direct funding to BBC Media Action
• $4.5 million to Kazakhstan to combat “disinformation”

Health and Development:

• $84 million to Clinton Foundation health initiatives
• $100 million for AIDS treatment in Ukraine
• Funding for contraceptive programs in developing nations

Cultural Programming:

• $20 million to Sesame Street in Iraq
• $68 million to the World Economic Forum
• $2 million for sex changes and LGBT activism in Guatemala
• Global cultural initiatives (millions spread across LGBTQ programs in Serbia, DEI projects in Ireland, transgender arts in Colombia and Peru, and tourism promotion in Egypt)

What emerges is not just a list of expenditures, but a blueprint for global reality architecture: From Kazakhstan to Ireland, from Serbia to Peru, from Vietnam to Egypt – there isn’t a corner of the world untouched by this system. This isn’t merely a distribution of resources, but a strategic infrastructure of global influence. Each allocation – whether to media outlets, health initiatives, or cultural programs – represents a carefully placed node in a network designed to shape perception across multiple domains. First, control the flow of information through media funding. Then, establish legitimacy through health and development programs. Finally, reshape social structures through cultural programming. The end goal isn’t just to influence what people think, but to determine the boundaries of what can be thought – and to do so on a planetary scale.

For those who’ve been studying the architecture of censorship, like Mike Benz has been documenting for years, none of this comes as a surprise. It’s perfect symmetry: we knew about the censorship. Now we’re seeing the receipts. One hand feeds them talking points, the other hand feeds them our taxpayer dollars. This isn’t speculation; it’s documented fact. Even Wikipedia’s own funding database contains over 45,000 reports tied to USAID – many detailing corruption, media influence, and financial manipulation. The evidence has always been there, but it was ignored, dismissed, or buried under the very fact-checking apparatus USAID funds. These weren’t crackpot theories; they were warnings. And now, we finally have the receipts.

And it doesn’t stop at controlling information. USAID isn’t just shaping media portrayals – it’s funding the systems that enforce them. Last week, Benz broke a bombshell: USAID gives twice as much money ($27 million) to the fiscal sponsor of the group controlling Soros-funded prosecutors than Soros himself gives ($14 million). This isn’t about one billionaire’s influence – it’s about state-backed enforcement of scripted accounts. The same network that dictates what you can think is dictating who prosecutes crime, what laws are enforced, and who faces consequences.

Source: Wikileaks

USAID’s influence isn’t just about funding media control—it extends to direct political interference. It didn’t just send aid to Brazil – it funded censorship, backed left-wing activists, and helped rig the 2022 election against Bolsonaro.

Former State Department official Benz revealed that the agency waged a “holy war on censorship,” systematically suppressing Bolsonaro supporters online while bolstering opposition voices. Millions flowed to NGOs pushing leftist framing, including the Felipe Neto Institute, which received US funding while Bolsonaro’s allies were deplatformed. USAID also bankrolled Amazon-based activist groups, financed media campaigns designed to manipulate public opinion, and funneled money into Brazilian organizations that pushed for stricter internet regulations.

This wasn’t aid – it was election interference disguised as democracy promotion. USAID used American tax dollars to decide Brazil’s future, and it likely deployed similar tactics in many other countries – all under the guise of humanitarian assistance.

And it’s not just abroad. While USAID’s defenders claim it’s a tool for charity and development in poor nations, the evidence suggests something much more insidious. It’s a $40 billion driver of regime change overseas – and now, evidence points to its involvement in regime change efforts at home. Alongside the CIA, USAID appears to have played a role in the 2019 impeachment of Trump – an illegal effort to overturn a US election using the same tools of perception sculpting and political engineering it deploys abroad.

Left vs right, vaxxed vs unvaxxed, Russia vs Ukraine, believer vs skeptic (on any topic) – these false dichotomies serve to fragment our understanding while reality itself is far more nuanced and multidimensional. Each manufactured crisis spawns not just reactions, but reactions to those reactions, creating endless layers of derivative meaning built on artificial foundations.

The real power isn’t in manufacturing individual facts, but in creating systems where false facts become self-reinforcing. When a fact-checker cites another fact-checker who cites a “trusted source” that’s funded by the same entities funding the fact-checkers, the pattern becomes clear. The truth isn’t in any individual claim – it’s in recognizing how the claims work together to create a closed system of artificial reality.

Take the vaccine debate for example: The pattern manifests before the explanation – people passionately debate efficacy without realizing the entire framework was constructed. First, they fund the research. Then they fund the media to shape the narrative. Even skeptics often fall into their trap, arguing about effectiveness rates while accepting their basic premise. The moment you debate ‘vaccine efficacy,’ you’ve already lost – you’re using their framework to discuss what is, in reality, an experimental gene therapy. By accepting their terminology, their metrics, their framing of the discussion itself, you’re playing into their constructed reality. Each layer of control is designed not just to influence opinions, but to preemptively structure how those opinions can be formed.

Like learning to spot a staged photo or hearing a false note in music, developing a reliable bullshit detector requires pattern recognition. Once you start seeing how narratives are constructed – how language is weaponized, how frameworks are built – it changes the lens with which you view the whole world. The same intelligence agencies embedding themselves in every domain that shapes our understanding aren’t just controlling information flow – they’re programming how we process that information itself.

The recursive theater plays out in real time. When USAID announced funding cuts, BBC News rushed to amplify humanitarian concerns with dramatic headlines about HIV patients and endangered lives. What they didn’t mention in their reporting? USAID is their top funder, bankrolling BBC Media Action with millions in direct payments. Watch how the system protects itself: the largest recipient of USAID media funding creates emotional propaganda about USAID’s importance while obfuscating their financial relationship in their reporting.

Source: Lindsay Penny (left), BBC website (right)

This institutional self-defense illustrates a crucial pattern: organizations funded for reality construction protect themselves through layers of misdirection. When presented with evidence, the fact-checking apparatus funded by these same systems springs into action. They’ll tell you that these payments were for standard “subscriptions,” that programs promoting gender ideology are really just about “equality and rights.” But when USAID awards $2 million to Asociación Lambda in Guatemala for “gender-affirming health care” – which can include surgeries, hormone therapy, and counseling – those same defenders conveniently omit the details, blurring the line between advocacy and direct intervention. The very organizations funded for social architecture are the ones telling you there is no social architecture. It’s akin to asking the arsonist to investigate the fire.

Like characters in a grand production, I watch old friends still trusting in institutions like the New York Times. Even this exposition becomes a potential node in the system – the very act of revealing the mechanics of control might itself be anticipated, another layer of the recursive theater. In my earlier work on technocracy, I explored how our digital world has evolved far beyond Truman Burbank’s physical dome. His world had visible walls, cameras, and scripted encounters – a constructed reality he could theoretically escape by reaching its edges. Our prison is more sophisticated: no walls, no visible limits, just algorithmic containment that shapes thought itself. Truman only had to sail far enough to find the truth. But how do you sail beyond the boundaries of perception when the ocean itself is programmed?

Sure, USAID has done some good work – but so did Al Capone with his soup kitchens. Just as the infamous gangster’s charity work made him untouchable in his community, USAID’s aid programs create a veneer of benevolence that makes questioning their larger agenda politically impossible. Philanthropic window-dressing has long been a tool for power players to shield themselves from scrutiny. Consider Jimmy Savile: a celebrated philanthropist whose charity work granted him access to hospitals and vulnerable children while he committed unspeakable crimes in plain sight. His carefully cultivated image made him beyond reproach for decades, just as institutional benevolence now serves as a protective layer for global influence operations. The true function of organizations like USAID isn’t just aid – it’s social architecture, mind shaping, and the laundering of taxpayer dollars through an intricate web of NGOs and foundations.

This layered deception is self-reinforcing – each level of manufactured reality is protected by another level of institutional authority. These institutions don’t just dictate stories; they shape the infrastructure through which narratives are disseminated. For what it’s worth, I believe most tools themselves are neutral. The same digital systems that enable mass surveillance could empower individual sovereignty. The same networks that centralize control could facilitate decentralized cooperation. The question isn’t the technology itself, but whether it’s deployed to concentrate or distribute power.

This understanding didn’t come from nowhere. Those who first sensed this artificiality were dismissed as conspiracy theorists. We noticed the coordination across outlets, the strange synchronicity of messaging, the way certain stories were amplified while others disappeared. Now we have the sales receipts showing exactly how that manipulation was funded and orchestrated.

I know this journey of discovery intimately. When I started understanding the dangers of mRNA technology, I went all in. I connected with the incredibly talented filmmaker Jennifer Sharp and helped with Anecdotals, her film about vaccine injuries. I was ready to tether my whole identity to this cause. But then I started zooming out. I began seeing how Covid might have been a financial crime designed to usher in central bank digital currency. The deeper I looked, the more I realized these weren’t isolated deceptions – it was part of a larger system of control. The very fabric of what I thought was real began to dissolve.

What disturbed me most was seeing how deeply programming relies on mimicry. Humans are imitative creatures by nature – it’s how we learn, how we build culture. But this natural tendency has been weaponized. I’d present friends with peer-reviewed studies, documented evidence, historical connections – only to watch them respond with verbatim talking points from corporate media. It wasn’t that they disagreed – it was that they weren’t even processing the information. They were pattern-matching against pre-approved chronicles, outsourcing their thinking to “trusted experts” who were themselves caught in the same web of manufactured perception. I realized then: none of us knows anything for certain – we’re all just mimicking what we’ve been programmed to believe is authoritative knowledge.

The challenge isn’t just seeing through any single deception – it’s understanding how these systems work together in complex, non-linear ways. When we fixate on individual threads, we miss the larger pattern. Like pulling a thread on a sweater and watching it unravel, eventually you realize there was no sweater in the first place – just an intricately woven illusion. Just as a hologram contains the whole image in each fragment, every piece of this system reflects the larger blueprint for reality construction.

Consider the $34 million to Politico – this isn’t just a funding stream, but a holographic reveal of the entire system. It’s not merely that Politico received money; it’s that this single transaction contains the entire blueprint of perception management. The payment itself is a microcosm: struggling media outlet, government funding, narrative control – each element reflects the whole. This recursive system protects itself through layers of self-validation. When critics point out media bias, fact-checkers funded by the same system declare it ‘debunked.’ When researchers question official accounts, journals funded by the same interests reject their work. Even the language of resistance – ‘speaking truth to power,’ ‘fighting disinformation,’ ‘protecting democracy’ – has been co-opted and weaponized by the very system it was meant to challenge.

The Covid story epitomizes this systemic manipulation. What began as a public health crisis transformed into a global experiment in narrative control – demonstrating how rapidly populations could be reshaped through coordinated messaging, institutional authority, and weaponized fear. The pandemic wasn’t just about a virus; it was a proof of concept for how comprehensively human cognition could be engineered – a single node revealing the true scope and ambition of discourse manipulation.

Think about the cycle: American taxpayers unknowingly funded the crisis itself – then paid again to be deceived about it. They paid for the development of gain-of-function research, then paid again for the messaging that would convince them to accept masks, lockdowns, and experimental interventions. The system is so confident in its psychological control that it doesn’t even bother hiding the evidence anymore.

As I’ve documented in my Engineering Reality series, this framework for consciousness management runs far deeper than most can imagine. USAID’s revelations aren’t isolated incidents – they’re glimpses into a vast system of social design that has been in operation for decades. When the same agency funding your fact-checkers is openly paying for ‘social deception,’ when your trusted news sources are receiving direct payments for ‘social architecture,’ the very framework of what we consider ‘real’ begins to crumble.

We’re not just watching events unfold – we’re watching reactions to artificial events, then reactions to those reactions, creating an infinite regression of derivative meaning. People form passionate positions about issues that were constructed, then others define themselves in opposition to those positions. Each layer of reaction fuels the next phase of steered consensus. What we’re witnessing isn’t just the spread of manufactured realities, but the architecture of cultural and geopolitical trends themselves. Artificial trends spawn authentic reactions, which generate counter-reactions, until we’ve built entire societies responding to carefully orchestrated theater. The social engineers aren’t just steering individual beliefs – they’re reshaping the very foundations of how humans make sense of the world.

These revelations are just the tip of the iceberg. Anyone paying attention to the depth and depravity of the corruption knows that this is only the beginning. As more information emerges, the illusion of neutrality, of benevolence, of institutions acting in the public interest, will crumble. No one who truly engages with this information is walking away with renewed faith in the system. The shift is only happening in one direction – some faster than others, but none in reverse. The real question is: what happens when a critical mass reaches the point where their foundational understanding of the world collapses? When they realize that the records shaping their perception were never organic, but manufactured? Some will refuse to look, choosing comfort over confrontation. But for those willing to face it, this is not just about corruption – it’s about the very nature of the reality they thought they inhabited.

The implications are staggering not just for individual awareness, but for our very ability to function as a republic. How can citizens make informed decisions when reality itself has been splintered into competing manufactured tales? When people discover that their most deeply held beliefs were shaped, that their passionate causes were scripted, that even their cultural interests and tastes were curated, that their opposition to certain systems was anticipated and designed – what remains of authentic human experience?

What’s coming will force a choice: either retreat into comfortable denial, dismissing mounting evidence as “right-wing conspiracy theories,” or face the shattering realization that the world we thought we inhabited never actually existed. My research over the past few years points to far more nefarious activities yet to be revealed – operations so heinous that many will simply refuse to process them.

As I wrote about in “The Second Matrix,” there’s always the risk of falling into another layer of controlled awakening. But the greater risk lies in thinking too small, in anchoring ourselves to any single thread of understanding. The USAID revelations aren’t just about exposing one agency’s role in shaping reality – they’re about recognizing how our very thought patterns have been colonized by recursive layers of artificial reality.

This is the true crisis of our time: not just the manipulation of reality, but the fragmentation of human consciousness itself. When people grasp that their beliefs, causes, and even their resistance were shaped within this system, they are forced to confront the deeper question: What does it mean to reclaim one’s own mind?

But here’s what they don’t want you to realize: seeing through these systems is profoundly liberating. When you understand how reality is constructed, you’re no longer bound by its artificial constraints. This isn’t just about exposing deception – it’s about freeing consciousness itself from manufactured limitations.

The jig may be up on USAID’s reality architecture operation. But the deeper challenge lies in reconstructing meaning in a world where the very fabric of reality has been woven from artificial threads. The choice we face isn’t just between comfortable illusion and uncomfortable truth. The old system demanded validation before belief. The new reality requires something else entirely: the ability to recognize patterns before they’re officially confirmed, to feel coherence across multiple domains, to step outside the crafted game completely. This isn’t about choosing sides in their manufactured binaries – it’s about seeing the pattern architecture itself.

What does this liberation look like in practice? It’s catching the pattern of a manufactured crisis before it’s fully deployed. It’s recognizing how seemingly unrelated events – a banking collapse, a health emergency, a social movement – are actually nodes in the same network of control. It’s understanding that true sovereignty isn’t about having all the answers, but about developing the capacity to sense the web of deception before it solidifies into apparent reality. Because the ultimate power isn’t in knowing every answer – it’s in realizing when the question itself has been designed to trap you inside the manufactured paradigm.

As we develop this pattern recognition capacity – this ability to see through algorithmic manipulation – what it means to be human is itself evolving. As these systems of ideological infrastructure crumble, our task isn’t just to preserve individual awakening but to protect and nurture the most conscious elements of humanity. The ultimate liberation isn’t just seeing through the deception – it’s maintaining our essential humanity in a world of tightly controlled perception.

As these systems of reality sculpting crumble, we have an unprecedented opportunity to rediscover what’s real – not through their manufactured frameworks, but through our own direct experience of truth. What’s authentic isn’t always what’s organic – in a mediated world, authenticity means conscious choice rather than unconscious reaction. It means understanding how our minds are shaped while maintaining our capacity for genuine connection, creative expression, and direct experience. The most human elements – love, creativity, intuition, genuine discovery – become more precious precisely because they defy algorithmic control. These are the last frontiers of human freedom—the unpredictable, unquantifiable forces that cannot be reduced to data points or behavioral models. 

The ultimate battle isn’t just for truth – it’s for the human spirit itself. A system that can engineer perception can engineer submission. But there’s a beautiful irony here: the very act of recognizing these systems of reality construction is itself an expression of authentic consciousness – a choice that proves they haven’t conquered human perception completely. Free will cannot be engineered precisely because the capacity to see through engineered reality remains ours. In the end, their greatest fear isn’t that we’ll reject their manufactured world – it’s that we’ll remember how to see beyond it.

Republished from the author’s Substack

The White House on Tuesday declared that Iran has been “incredibly” weakened as a result of the Pentagon operation against Yemen’s Houthis which was renewed on March 15 by President Trump and his national security cabinet.

Immense controversy has ensued in the wake of ‘Signalgate’ which involved discussions of war planning with Atlantic journalist Jeffrey Goldberg privy to the group chat conversation. 

White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said there’s has been over 200 strikes on targets in Yemen. It has long been a US talking point going back to 2015 that the Houthis (Ansarallah movement) has been supplied by the Iranians. Shipments of Iranian weaponry has over the years been intercepted by US naval ships in Gulf area waters.

The group has fired at least eight ballistic missiles on Israel over the past week, but the US is leading the way in anti-Houthi operations.

“There have now been more than 200 successful strikes,” Leavitt said. “Iran is incredibly weakened as a result. They’ve taken out Houthi leaders, critical members who have been launching strikes on naval ships and commercial vessels. This operation will not stop until the freedom of navigation in this region is restored.”

The Houthis haven’t confirmed the deaths of any leaders, nor has the US side acknowledged the repeat attacks on US warships or the carrier USS Truman. 

According to some of the latest:

According to a brief statement broadcast by the Houthi-run al-Masirah TV, five airstrikes at dawn targeted the Jarban area in the Sanhan district southeast of Sanaa, while two others hit the Bani Matar district west of the capital.

The statement further indicated that Saada, a stronghold of the group, was subjected to 15 U.S. airstrikes overnight, but did not disclose specific locations targeted.

Israeli media and The Associated Press have meanwhile said that these last two weeks of strikes on Yemen have been far more devasting than similar aerial assaults under Biden.

According to a report featured in center-left Times of Israel:

A new American airstrike campaign against Yemen’s Houthi rebels appears more intense and more extensive, as the US moves from solely targeting launch sites to firing at ranking personnel as well as dropping bombs in city neighborhoods, an Associated Press review of the operation shows.

The pattern under US President Donald Trump reflects a departure from the Biden administration, which limited its strikes as Arab allies tried to reach a separate peace with the group. It comes after the Iran-backed Houthis threatened to resume attacking “any Israeli vessel” over the country’s refusal to allow aid into the Gaza Strip.

Both sides appear content to keep mum on the extent of ‘success’ of the back-and-forth attacks. But the consensus among war analysts is that if the Houthi threat to Red Sea shipping is to be rooted out, it will take a long, sustained campaign – which we should note has not had formal war authorization from Congress.

“Folks that say, ‘We’ll go in there and take out everyone with the last name Houthi and we’ll win.’ The Houthi leadership has been taken out in history in the past, and they are resilient,” said retired US Navy Vice Adm. Kevin Donegan, per AFP. “They came back and they grew stronger. So this isn’t something that is a one-and-done.”

.@PressSec: “These Houthi strikes have been incredibly successful. Last time I was at this podium, there were more than 100 successful strikes. There have now been over 200 successful strikes — Iran is incredibly weakened as a result of these attacks.” pic.twitter.com/FEPyvFH5c8

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) April 1, 2025

As for Iran, it costs little for it to wage proxy war against US Navy ships positioned in the region. In a sense, the Pentagon is in the Iranians’ backyard. Already, the Houthis have claimed to have downed the 16th US MQ-9 Reaper drone as of Tuesday, which hasn’t been acknowledged as yet by the Pentagon. The controversy over the scope of US actions will likely only grow among the American populace.