Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Cradle,

So long as Russia and China remain the region’s dominant political and economic powers, the Central Asian heartland will remain a US and EU target for threats, bribes, and color revolutions…

The historical Heartland – or Central Eurasia – already is, and will continue to be, the prime battlefield in the New Great Game, fought between the United States and the China-Russia strategic partnership.  

The original Great Game pitted the British and Russian empires in the late 19th century, and in fact, never got away: it just metastasized into the US-UK entente versus the USSR, and, subsequently, the US-EU versus Russia. 

According to the Mackinder-designed geopolitical game conceptualized by imperial Britain back in 1904, The Heartland is the proverbial “pivot of History,” and its re-energized 21st century historical role is as relevant as in centuries ago: a key driver of emerging multipolarity.    

So it’s no wonder all major powers are at work in the Heartland/Central Eurasia: China, Russia, US, EU, India, Iran, Turkiye, and to a lesser extent, Japan. Four out of five Central Asian “stans” are full members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO): Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. And some, like Kazakhstan, may soon become members of BRICS+.   

The key direct geopolitical clash for influence across the Heartland pits the US against Russia and China on myriad political, economic, and financial fronts.   

The imperial modus operandi privileges – what else – threats and ultimatums. Only four months ago, US emissaries from the State Department, Treasury, and Office of Foreign Affairs Control (OFAC) toured the Heartland bearing a whole package of “gifts,” as in blatant or thinly disguised threats. The key message: if you “help” or even trade with Russia in any way, you will be slapped with secondary sanctions. 

Informal conversations with businesses in Uzbekistan’s Samarkand and Bukhara and contacts in Kazakhstan reveal a pattern: Everyone seems to be aware that the Americans will go no holds barred to hold the Heartland/Central Asia at gunpoint. 

Kings of the Ancient Silk Roads

There’s hardly a more relevant place across the Heartland to observe the current power play than Samarkand, the fabled “Rome of the East.” Here we are in the heart of ancient Sogdiana – the historical trade crossroads between China, India, Parthia, and Persia, an immensely important node of East-West cultural trends, Zoroastrianism, and pre/post-Islamic vectors. 

From the 4th century to the 8th century, it was the Sogdians who monopolized the caravan trade between East Asia, Central Asia, and West Asia, transporting silk, cotton, gold, silver, copper, weaponry, aromas, furs, carpets, clothes, ceramics, glass, porcelain, ornaments, semi-precious stones, mirrors. Wily Sogdian merchants used protection from nomadic dynasties to solidify trade between China and Byzantium. 

The meritocratic Chinese elite, which reasons in terms of very long historical cycles, is very much aware of all of the above: that’s a key driver behind the New Silk Roads concept, officially known as BRI (Belt and Road Initiative), as announced nearly 10 years ago by President Xi Jinping in Astana, Kazakhstan. Beijing plans to reconnect with its Western neighbors as the necessary pathway towards increased pan-Eurasian trade and connectivity.         

Beijing and Moscow have complementary focuses when it comes to relations with the Heartland – always under the principle of strategic cooperation. Both have been engaged in regional security and economic cooperation with Central Asia since 1998. Established in 2001, the SCO is an actual product of the Russia-China common strategy as well as a platform for non-stop dialogue with the Heartland.  

How different Central Asian “stans” react to it is a multi-level issue.

• Tajikistan, for instance, economically fragile and heavily dependent on the Russian market as a provider of cheap labor, officially keeps an “open door” policy to every sort of cooperation, including with the west.         

• Kazakhstan and the US have established a Strategic Partnership Council (their last meeting was late last year).

• Uzbekistan and the US have a “strategic partnership dialogue,” set up in late 2021. American business presence is very much visible in Tashkent, via an imposing trade center, not to mention Coke and Pepsi in every Uzbek village corner shop. 

The EU tries to keep up, especially in Kazakhstan, where over 30 percent of foreign trade ($39 billion) and investments ($12.5 billion) come from Europe. Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev – extremely popular for opening up the country five years ago – nabbed $9 billion in trade deals when he visited Germany three months ago. 

Since the inception of the Chinese BRI a decade ago, the EU, by comparison, invested around $120 billion across the Heartland: not too shabby (40 percent of total foreign investment), but still below Chinese commitments.    

What is Turkiye really up to? 

The imperial focus in the Heartland is predictably Kazakhstan, because of its vast oil and gas resources. US-Kazakh trade represents 86 percent of all American trade with Central Asia, which was an unimpressive $3.8 billion last year. Compare that figure with only 7 percent of US trade with Uzbekistan. 

It’s fair to argue that most of these four Central Asian “stans” in the SCO practice “multifaceted diplomacy,” trying not to attract unwanted imperial ire. Kazakhstan, for its part, goes for “balanced diplomacy”: that’s part of its Concept of Foreign Policy 2014-2020. 

In a sense, Astana’s new motto expresses some continuity with the previous one, “multi-vector diplomacy,” established during the nearly three-decade rein of former President Nursultan Nazarbayev. Kazakhstan, under President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, is a member of the SCO, the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU), and BRI, but at the same time, must be on 24/7 alert to imperial machinations. After all, it was Moscow and prompt intervention by the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) that saved Tokayev from a color revolution attempt in early 2022. 

The Chinese, for their part, invest in a collective approach, solidified, for instance, in high-profile meetings such as the China-Central Asia 5+1 Summit, held only 3 months ago. 

Then there’s the extremely curious case of the Organization of Turkic States (OTS), formerly Turkic Council, which unites Turkiye, Azerbaijan, and three Central Asian “stans,” Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan. 

This OTS’ overarching aim is to “promote comprehensive cooperation among Turkic-speaking states.” Not much in practice is visible across the Heartland, apart from the odd billboard promoting Turkish products. A visit to the secretariat in Istanbul in the spring of 2022 did not exactly yield solid answers, apart from vague references to “projects on economy, culture, education, transport,” and, more significantly, customs. 

Last November, in Samarkand, the OTS signed an agreement “on the establishment of a simplified customs corridor.” It’s too early to tell whether this would be able to foment a sort of mini-Turkiye Silk Road across the Heartland.  

Still, it’s enlightening to keep an eye on what they may come up with next. Their charter privileges “developing common positions on foreign policy issues,” “coordinating actions to combat international terrorism, separatism, extremism, and cross-border crimes,” and creating “favorable conditions for trade and investment.”

Turkmenistan – the idiosyncratic Central Asian “stan” which vehemently insists on its absolute geopolitical neutrality – happens to be an OTS observer state. Also as eye-catching is a Center of Nomadic Civilizations based in the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek. 

Solving the Russian-Heartland riddle 

Western sanctions against Russia have ended up profiting quite a few Heartland players. Because Central Asia’s economies are closely linked to Russia, exports skyrocketed  – as much, by the way, as imports from Europe. 

Quite a few EU companies resettled in the Heartland after leaving Russia – with the corresponding process of selected Central Asian tycoons buying Russian assets. In parallel, because of the Russian troop mobilization drive, arguably tens of thousands of relatively wealthy Russians moved to the Heartland, while an extra lot of Central Asian workers found new jobs, especially in Moscow and St. Petersburg.  

Last year, for instance, remittances to Uzbekistan shot up to a hefty $16.9 billion: 85 percent of this (about $14.5 billion) came from workers in Russia. According to the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, economies across the Heartland will grow by a healthy 5.2 percent in 2023 and 5.4 percent in 2024.

That economic boost is plainly visible in Samarkand: The city is a giant construction – and restoration – site today. Impeccably new, wide boulevards are springing up everywhere, complete with lush green landscaping, flowers, fountains, and wide sidewalks, all sparkling clean. No vagrants, no homeless, no crackheads. Visitors from decaying western metropolises are absolutely stunned.    

In Tashkent, the Uzbek government is building a vast, stunning Center of Islamic Civilization, heavily focused on pan-Eurasia business. 

There’s no question the key geopolitical vector all across the Heartland is the relationship with Russia. Russian remains the lingua franca in every sphere of life. 

Let’s start with Kazakhstan, which shares an enormous 7,500 km-long border with Russia (yet there are no border disputes). Back in the USSR, the five Central Asian “stans” were, in fact, denominated “Central Asia and Kazakhstan,” because a large part of Kazakhstan lies in the south of West Siberia, and close to Europe. Kazakhstan sees itself as quintessentially Eurasian – it is no wonder that since the Nazarbayev years, Astana privileges Eurasia integration. 

Last year, at the St. Petersburg Economic Forum, Tokayev told Russian President Vladimir Putin, in person, that Astana would not recognize the independence of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics. Kazakh diplomats keep stressing they can’t afford to have the country as a gateway to bypass Western sanctions – although, in the shadows, that’s what happens in many cases. 

Kyrgyzstan, for its part, canceled the CSTO “Strong Brotherhood-2022” joint military exercises scheduled for October last year – it is worth mentioning that the problem in this case was not Russia, but a border issue with Tajikistan.

Putin has proposed to establish a Russia-Kazakhstan-Uzbekistan gas union. As it stands, nothing has happened, and may not happen. 

All these must be considered as minor setbacks. Last year, Putin visited all five Central Asian “stans” for the first time in quite a while. Mirroring China, they held a 5+1 summit also for the first time. Russian diplomats and businessmen ply Heartland roads full-time. And let’s not forget that the presidents of all five Central Asian “stans” were themselves present in the Red Square parade in Moscow on Victory Day last May. 

Russian diplomacy knows everything there is to know about the major imperial obsession to extract the Central Asian “stans” from Russian influence. 

That goes way beyond the official US Central Asia Strategy 2019-2025 – and it has reached hysteria status after the US humiliation in Afghanistan and the impending NATO humiliation in Ukraine.  

On the crucial energy front, very few remember today that the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline, then reduced to TAP (India pulled out), was a priority of the American (italics mine) New Silk Road, concocted at the State Department and sold by then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2011. 

Nothing practical happened with that pie in the sky. What the Americans did manage to do, recently, was to scotch the development of a competitor, the Iran-Pakistan (IP) pipeline, by forcing Islamabad to cancel it, in the wake of the whole lawfare scandal designed to eliminate former Premier Imran Khan from Pakistan’s political life. 

Still, the TAPI-IP Pipelineistan saga is far from over. With Afghanistan free from US occupation, Russia’s Gazprom, as well as Chinese firms, are very much interested in participating in the construction of TAPI: The pipeline would be a strategic BRI node, linked to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) in the crossroads between Central and South Asia. 

The ‘alien’ collective west

As much as Russia is – and will continue to be – a known currency all across the Heartland, the Chinese model is unsurpassed as a sustainable development example capable of inspiring an array of indigenous Central Asian solutions.  

In contrast, what does the Empire have to offer? In a nutshell: Divide and Rule, via its localized terror minions such as ISIS-Khorasan, instrumentalized to foment political destabilization in the weakest Central Asian nodes, from the Ferghana valley to the Afghan-Tajik border, for instance.  

The multiple challenges facing the Heartland have been discussed in detail in meetings such as the Valdai Central Asian Conference.

 Valdai Club expert Rustam Khaydarov may have coined the most concise appraisal of West-Heartland relations:

“The collective West is alien to us both in terms of culture and worldview. There is not a single phenomenon or event, or element of modern culture, which could serve as the basis for a relationship and rapprochement between the US and European Union on the one hand and Central Asia on the other. Americans and Europeans have no idea about the culture and mentality or traditions of the peoples of Central Asia, so they could not and will not be able to interact with us. Central Asia does not view economic prosperity in conjunction with the liberal democracy of the West, which is essentially an alien concept to the countries of the region.” 

Considering this scenario, and in the context of a New Great Game that is becoming increasingly incandescent by the day, it’s no wonder that some Heartland diplomatic circles are very much interested in a closer integration of Central Asia into BRICS+. That’s something bound to be discussed at the BRICS summit in South Africa next week. 

The strategic formula reads like Russia + Central Asia + South Asia + Africa + Latin America – yet another instance of “Global Globe” (to quote Lukashenko) integration. It may all start with Kazakhstan becoming the first Heartland nation accepted as a member of BRICS+. 

After that, all the world is a stage for the re-energized Return of the Heartland in transportation, logistics, energy, trade, manufacturing, investment, infotech, culture, and – last but not least, in the spirit of the Silk Roads, old and new – “people to people’s exchanges”. 

By Charlie Zhu, Bloomberg Markets Live reporter and strategist

Three things we learned last week:

1. One of China’s shadow banking giants fell into a liquidity crisis, showing how contagion from the troubled real estate industry is spreading and raising questions of how far the crunch will now go. Trust companies linked to Zhongzhi Enterprise Group Co., which has assets of more than 1 trillion yuan, missed payments on dozens of products, many of which may have been backed by real estate projects real estate projects.

“Markets still underestimate the aftermath of the significant collapse in China’s property sector,” Lu Ting, chief China economist at Nomura Holdings Inc., wrote in a report. China’s trust wealth management industry is set to face turbulence in coming months, which is likely to cause further headwinds to its already weakening economic momentum, according to the report.

Zhongzhi’s troubles have already sparked protests, leading the police to clamp down on unhappy clients. It has 270 products totaling 39.5 billion yuan due this year, according to data provider Use Trust.

While the reported Zhongrong Trust defaults don’t yet appear to be of systemic concern, a disorderly wind-up of any large trust or wealth management company could test near-term financial stability, Zerlina Zeng, CreditSights senior research analyst, wrote in a note.

2. Fallout from Country Garden is spreading to investment-grade names as China’s property downturn deepens. Dollar bonds from units of Gemdale Corp. and Seazen Group Ltd. — developers that were also among those chosen to sell state-guaranteed local notes like Country Garden did — accelerated declines last week. Notes issued by Longfor Group Holdings Ltd. and China Vanke Co., two of the country’s few private-sector investment grade developers, suffered the same fate.

Country Garden’s delayed payment is likely already exacerbating a loss of confidence and a default would only worsen matters, S&P Global Ratings analysts led by Edward Chan wrote in a report. They said an “L”-shaped national sales recovery seems increasingly likely to shift into a “descending staircase” figure.

3. The central bank stepped up to deliver unexpected rate cuts, and vowed to maintain financial stability. The People’s Bank of China lowered the cost of its one-year and seven-day loans to financial institutions, before the release of data that showed weak consumer spending growth, sliding investment and rising unemployment in July.

In its second-quarter monetary policy implementation report, the PBOC vowed to “step up macroeconomic policy adjustment” and “resolutely prevent excessive correction in the exchange rate,” as the yuan slid toward its weakest level since 2007.

It’s an age-old dilemma for central banks faced with a weakening economy — control the interest rate or the currency? Attempting to do both, as Bank of Japan recently tried, frequently fails to sway traders who see an opportunity.

“If markets are convinced that property sector could be stabilized and the downward spiral is resolutely curbed,” sentiment toward the yuan could improve, said Zhi Xiaojia, head of research at Credit Agricole CIB.

From facilitating crucial international supply chains to ensuring the smooth delivery of personal Amazon packages, cargo shipping is an important part of the global economy.

Total air cargo shipped measured around 117 million metric tons in 2022.

In the following map, Visual Capitalist’s Avery Koop and Athul Alexander, using data from Airports Council International (ACI), showcase the global airports that move the most goods.

The Busiest Cargo Airports

The world’s busiest airport in terms of cargo is Hong Kong’s, which has held the number one spot for almost 28 years. Here’s a look at the ranking:

Some of these busy airports are not well-known, and none of them, aside from LAX, rank as highly in terms of passenger traffic. For example, Anchorage ranks in the top 10 in cargo processed because it is cheaper for cargo carriers to stop over and refuel there, rather than flying nonstop from Asia to the United States.

The Memphis airport handles the most cargo in North America, largely because of FedEx’s significant presence there. FedEx processes over 245,000 documents and 180,000 packages an hour at Memphis’ airport.

On top of being home to UPS’ Worldport, the world’s biggest fully automated package processing facility, Louisville is also central to other transport routes in the United States. Packages come into this hub and then head out on the many highways and railways, as well as the Ohio River, which connects to the Mississippi River, one of the country’s main waterways for barge transit.

Cargo Shipment

Nearly every airport has seen significant increases in the amount of cargo moved year-over-year, with numbers now rising above pre-pandemic benchmarks. Notably, however, Shanghai and Hong Kong have experienced decreases due to geopolitical tensions.

In Hong Kong, goods movement via air travel is integral to the economy. Around half of the entire region’s external trade went through the airport in 2022.

Cargo transit is inherently important to the global economy. Around $6 trillion worth of goods move through airports annually, representing approximately 35% of world trade.

Authored by Ella Ella Kietlinska and Joshua Philipp via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The “rent-a-womb” industry pipelines children born of surrogates in the United States to parents in China, a researcher said. Babies born this way automatically gain U.S. birthright citizenship.

Chinese “rent-a-womb” industry, has been burgeoning in the United States for about a decade, particularly in California, where laws regulating commercial surrogacy and in-vitro fertilization (IVF) are permissive, said Emma Waters, a research associate for the Center for Life, Religion, and Family at The Heritage Foundation.

Surrogacy, a practice where a woman carries a pregnancy and gives birth to a baby for another person or couple, is completely banned in China.

Therefore Chinese couples use services offered by American fertility clinics that create for them embryos potentially having the biological makeup of the Chinese nationals, and birth the baby in the United States, Ms. Waters said in an interview on Epoch TV’s “Crossroads” program on Aug. 11.

With birthright citizenship laws in the United States, that child, who may be 100 percent Chinese national in their biology and genetic makeup, actually gains and maintains the full rights of U.S. citizenship, Ms. Waters explained.

When that child turns 21, even the parents can apply for a green card and eventually get citizenship, “which is a much faster and cheaper process than if they were to apply for citizenship through some of the traditional methods,” she added.

Threat to National Security

Giving foreign nationals full access to American citizenship through the wombs of American women poses “a huge national security threat,” Ms. Waters said.

“If a child is born and raised in China, inculcated in their culture, and very loyal to their lands, when they come to the United States, they’re not being flagged as a foreign national who’s applying for a job or applying to work in a research lab—they are applying as a U.S. citizen.”

“There’s not a database that’s publicly available or easy to access where these children are being listed. And so should they apply for jobs, employers in government or private sector have no idea of the background that they’re dealing with.”

The situation was made possible due to the lack of regulation and laws around this, Ms. Waters said.

Ms. Waters suggested that the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, which has been studying Chinese investment in areas such as entertainment, farmland, and media, needs to spend more time investigating Chinese investment in Americans through Chinese children created in America by in-vitro fertilization and commercial surrogacy.

How Fertility Industry Works

When Chinese nationals connect with a fertility clinic, particularly in California, they have an option to “either create an embryo using their own sperm and egg or they can purchase a sperm or egg,” Ms. Waters explained.

In many cases, they travel to the United States, but with the current technology, they are technically not required to leave China in order to create an embryo, she continued.

“A Chinese couple or individual can simply work with a U.S.-based agency to send their reproductive material (sperm, egg, or embryo) to an IVF lab and implant it in a hired surrogate [in the United States] to produce a viable pregnancy,” Ms. Waters wrote for the Heritage Foundation.

Ms. Waters reviewed recently about 450 fertility clinics, particularly in California, but there is many more outside of that. she said. “Many of these fertility clinics actually have a direct or indirect connection to China.”

Read more here…

A New York jail which was shuttered following Jeffrey Epstein’s death, the Manhattan Correctional Center, may wind up housing illegal immigrants.

A proposal mentioned in an Aug. 9 letter to Gov. Kathy Hochul aims to mitigate the impact of some 100,000 migrants estimated to have arrived in the city since last year after crossing the southern US border, AP reports.

Under NYC rules, officials are legally obligated to obtain shelter for anyone needing it. And with homeless shelters packed to the brim, NYC Mayor Eric Adams (D) has been renting out hotels, shoving cots in recreational centers and school gyms, and creating official tent cities.

The letter, written by a senior counsel for the city’s law department, identifies several other sites in which migrants could potentially be housed, including the defunct Metropolitan Correctional Center, which closed in 2021.

That shutdown came after the detention center, whose prisoners have included Mafia don John Gotti, associates of Osama bin Laden and the Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, came under new scrutiny because of squalid conditions and security lapses exposed following Epstein’s death. -AP

According to the report, lawyers have described the jail as ‘filthy’ and infested with bugs and rodents, as well as plagued by water and sewage leaks which caused structural issues.

Pro-immigrant groups have denounced the plan.

“Mayor Adams likes to say that all options are on the table when it comes to housing asylum seekers, but certain places should most definitely be off the table,” said Murad Awawdeh, executive director of the New York Immigration Coalition, adding: “The Metropolitan Correctional Center was a notoriously decrepit jail, and is not a suitable place to support people trying to build a new life in a new country.”

Meanwhile, hundreds of NY residents recently turned out to protest against a proposal to turn a former assisted living facility on Staten Island into a migrant shelter.

Hundreds out in New York protesting against a proposal to turn a Staten Island former assisted living facility into a migrant shelter pic.twitter.com/WNBMtnBaxo

— Brendan Gutenschwager (@BGOnTheScene) August 20, 2023

While New York State has been accused of being slow to respond to the immigrants, a Hochul attorney pushed back, rejecting allegations that the state failed to deal with the migrant influx in a substantial way.

“The City has not made timely requests for regulatory changes, has not always promptly shared necessary information with the State, has not implemented programs in a timely manner, and has not consulted the State before taking certain actions,” reads the letter.

Authored by Catherine Yang via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) is introducing a resolution to censure U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan and open an investigation into her “for showing open bias and partisanship in her official duties on the bench.”

Judge Chutkan is overseeing a case against former President Donald Trump, brought by the Department of Justice (DOJ) for conspiracy in his challenge of the 2020 election results. She has already overseen many other cases related to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol protest, which is being investigated by special counsel Jack Smith. About 1,000 people have already been sentenced for crimes related to the day’s events, and Judge Chutkan has been known to hand down harsh prison sentences.

“Judge Tanya Chutkan’s extreme sentencing of January 6th defendants, while openly supporting the violent Black Lives Matter riots of 2020, showcases a complete disregard for her duty of impartiality and the rule of law,” Mr. Gaetz said.

He appeared to be referring to remarks the judge made in one Jan. 6-related sentencing.

“People gathered all over the country last year to protest the violent murder by the police of an unarmed man,” she said, referencing violent riots that erupted after the death of George Floyd. “To compare the actions of people protesting, mostly peacefully, for civil rights, to those of a violent mob seeking to overthrow the lawfully elected government is a false equivalency and ignores a very real danger that the January 6 riot posed to the foundation of our democracy.”

Mr. Gaetz’s resolution points to a few other cases of “open partisanship,” including the fact that the Obama-appointed district judge had donated thousands of dollars to his presidential campaign, and that during another Jan. 6-related sentencing she “lamented” that President Trump “remains free to this day.”

“Such partisan commentary by Judge Chutkan has been ongoing and calls into question her fitness as a judge and … Chutkan’s comments and activities on and off the bench violate all 5 canons of the Code of Conduct for United States Judges,” the resolution reads (pdf).

The canons are that a judge should uphold the integrity and independence of the judiciary; avoid impropriety and the appearance of impropriety in all activities; perform the duties of the office fairly, impartially, and diligently; engage in extrajudicial activities that are consistent with the obligations of judicial office, and refrain from political activity.

“It is deeply concerning that a United States District Court judge would exhibit such blatant political bias from the bench,” he said in a press release. “Justice may be blind, but the American people are not—we see Judge Chutkan for her actions, and we rebuke them in the greatest possible sense.”

Mr. Gaetz is proposing Judge Chutkan be censured and condemned via the resolution, and to have the House Committee on the Judiciary, on which he sits, launch an investigation seeking evidence showing that she should be removed from office on impeachment or other misdemeanors.

The Epoch Times reached out to Judge Chutkan’s office for comment.

Trump on Chutkan

President Trump has been critical of Judge Chutkan in multiple social media posts given her earlier remarks.

“She obviously wants me behind bars,” he wrote, describing her as “highly partisan” and “very biased and unfair.”

A day after President Trump pleaded not guilty to the felony charges filed by Mr. Smith, he made a social media post: “If you go after me, I’m coming after you!” He later posted a campaign ad that claimed election interference on the part of the Biden administration.

In response, Mr. Smith’s office filed a motion pointing to the initial social media post as evidence a protective order was needed. He requested the judge issue an order barring President Trump from sharing information about the case.

“Such a restriction is particularly important in this case because the defendant has previously issued public statements on social media regarding witnesses, judges, attorneys, and others associated with legal matters pending against him,” Mr. Smith wrote in a filing (pdf).

President Trump responded on social media yet again. “No, I shouldn’t have a protective order placed on me because it would impinge upon my right to free speech,” he wrote.

His legal team filed an opposing motion arguing public speech was not grounds for a gag order.

Judge Chutkan ended up issuing a limited protective order, which bars President Trump from releasing information the prosecutors label sensitive, not all information.

The prosecution has also requested a Jan. 2, 2024, trial date, with jury selection to begin as early as Dec. 11.

On Thursday, President Trump’s legal team proposed a April 2026 trial date, arguing that the prosecution was rushing the case.

“The government’s objective is clear: to deny President Trump and his counsel a fair ability to prepare for trial,” the lawyers wrote. “The Court should deny the government’s request.”

They cited a number of reasons an extension was required, including the 11.5 million pages of discovery Mr. Smith’s office has already provided.

“That is the entirety of Tolstoy’s War and Peace, cover to cover, 78 times a day, every day, from now until jury selection.”

Authored by Roger Kimball via American Greatness,

The fish are plentiful today…

• There’s Hunter Biden and his various lies: about the sources of his prodigious income, his payment (that is, non-payment) of taxes, drugs, guns, child support, laptops and prostitutes.

• There’s Joe Biden and his lies, the sources of his prodigious income, and – the latest – his use of pseudonymous email accounts when writing to Hunter and Hunter’s business partners to discuss the weather – or was it the whether and how to siphon 20 million of the crispest into virtually untraceable bank accounts?

• There’s the seemingly endless series of indictments directed at Donald Trump. The latest news there, if I am up to date, is that he told people to watch election returns on One America News Network. Clearly part of a RICO conspiracy. Someone whose math is sharper than mine calculated that President Trump is potentially on the hook for 450 years in the slammer for . . . well, his torts are mostly in the eye of the beholder.

This coming week, Fox News, whose leaders have made no secret of their contempt for Trump, are holding the first Republican debate. Problem: as of this writing, it looks as though Trump will not be participating. How rude! And to Fox News, which hates him, and to the RNC, which doesn’t like him very much. How could he do this?

The really delicious thing is that even if Trump doesn’t show up for the debate, he will upstage everyone. The word at the moment is that he’ll do an interview with Tucker Carlson on Twitter at the same time as the debate. My bookies report that viewership of that interview, should it take place, would be far higher than the viewership for watching Chris Christie throw his, er, weight around. Quick: who is Doug Bergum and does anyone care? Yes, the event will be an opportunity for Tim Scott and Vivek Ramaswamy to shine. It will also be a sort of last bite at the apple for Ron DeSantis and his sputtering campaign.

But let’s face it, whether Trump shows up or not, he is the star of the show. If he doesn’t show, his performance will be like that of Tallulah Bankhead who, late in her career, was dissed by some pushy ingenue. “I could upstage you dahling,” Tallulah said, “without even being on stage.” She did, too, by the simple expedient of precariously balancing a champagne glass half-on-half-off a table when she made her exit. The ingenue came on for her big scene, but all eyes were glued to the glass: would it or would it not fall off the table? (No one knew that she had put sticket tape on the bottom of the glass).

I don’t know what is going to happen in this election anymore than you do, Dear Reader.

But I have been amused by the absolute certitude of the chattering class, which assures us with hands wringing that:

1) Trump is a very bad man,

2) That he cannot win the general election,

but that 3) The clever but insidious Dems will assure that he wins the nomination, thus assuring a Republican defeat come November 2024.

Maybe.

But maybe the Dems keep indicting Trump because they are terrified that he could win, and then what?

Wouldn’t it be better to put him in jail, issue a gag order, say that anything he says is an effort to overturn the 2020, or the 2024, election and thereby undermine Our Democracy™?

I think that is the more likely explanation, but I admit that these are deep waters.

There are plenty of scenarios by which someone other than Trump becomes the Republican nominee, beginning with various acts of God. One big problem for the Republican aspirants, though, is that if Trump is prevented by chicanery from being the nominee, a critical portion of his millions of voters will stay home, thus depriving any other candidate of victory. If Trump fails to become the nominee because he is suddenly incapacitated or dies, that is a different story. But so far, he seems surprisingly robust.

What many of these Trump-can’t-win prognostications overlook, I believe, is that he will not be running in a vacuum. What matters is not just the “37%” of voters (or whatever the real number is) who say they like or agree with him. There also is the candidate from the other party: Joe Biden, probably, but possibly Kamala Harris, Gavin Newsom, or even (some say) Michelle Obama.

But let’s say it is Joe Biden. I think that the pollster (and former Clinton advisor) Doug Schoen is right. Despite his many legal woes, Trump could win, less because he is broadly popular himself than because Biden is so unpopular.

“One has to go back to 1980,” Schoen wrote this weekend, “to look at the last time a Democratic incumbent president was in a situation where he was bordering on unelectable, and that was Jimmy Carter who had a 37% approval rating when Ronald Reagan won a landslide victory, taking with him the Senate, and helping Republicans to gain a net 35 seats in the House of Representatives.”

Biden is currently hovering over that Carter territory, especially on the critical “it’s-the-economy-stupid” issue. Biden’s approval rating there is a mere 38%, a number that when suitably translated spells J-I-M-M-Y C-A-R-T-E-R.

The point is, though, that Trump will not be running by himself. He will be running against someone. And that someone is likely to have liabilities at least as huge as Trump.

The real question was posed by Michael Anton in “They Can’t Let Him Back In,” a black-pilled essay he published in Compact last summer.

“The people who really run the United States of America,” Anton wrote, “have made it clear that they can’t, and won’t, if they can help it, allow Donald Trump to be president again.”

Who are those people?

Mostly Democrats, yes, but really, it’s a bipartisan, deep-state consensus, a uniparty assumption that Trump, being an existential threat to their continued existence must be kept from political power by any means necessary. 

Think the 2020 BLM riots were awful?

They were, but they will seem like Lake Placid if Trump is reelected.

I put that down as a secondary reason to hope that Trump does win, but I understand that others disagree.

It is curious, as Anton also points out, that for all the fury directed at Trump the individual, the real target of deep state animus is not Trump himself but his supporters, his “base.”

Trump was right when he said “they’re not after me. They’re after you. I’m just standing in the way.”

Anton got to the nub of the issue when he observed that “Anti-Trump hysteria is in the final analysis not about Trump. The regime can’t allow Trump to be president not because of who he is (although that grates), but because of who his followers are.”

I think that is worth bearing in mind.

Progressive insurance is being sued for “patently unlawful” racism over a program which awards exclusively black-owned businesses $25,000, while allegedly discriminating against businesses owned by white, asian, hispanic and anyone else who isn’t black.

Filed in an Ohio federal court on Wednesday by the conservative group America First Legal (AFL) – which is headed by former senior Trump adviser Stephen Miller – the class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of the owner of Freedom Truck Dispatch, Nathan Roberts, claims that Progressive racially discriminated against non-black small-business owners by offering the grants to 10 “black-owned small businesses to use toward the purchase of a commercial vehicle.”

The lawsuit claims that on May 24, Roberts – a customer of Progressive – received an email advertising “a grant opportunity for their [Progressive’s] commercial-trucking small-business owners,” but that “Progressive decided that only black-owned businesses would be eligible for these grants,” since “studies have shown how inequities have made it harder for black entrepreneurs to access capital.“

Progressive is joined by defendant Hello Alice, which it partnered with on the financial award extended to black-owned businesses with 10 or fewer employees and a turnaround below $5 million.

The insurance company announced its 2023 winners in a Tuesday press release, which stated that “Progressive is stepping in to provide funding to Black entrepreneurs to help navigate their small business journey.”

According to Roberts’ suit, the entire scheme was nothing more than “racially discriminatory grantmaking” with the “racially discriminatory requirement” to be black in order to qualify.

AFL lawyer Gene Hamilton told the Daily Mail that the case was part of a larger pushback against big corporations injecting “racial considerations into every aspect of their business operations, employment practices, and so much more.”

The lawsuit asks that the court declare Progressive’s grants illegal, and to award the plaintiffs “nominal” compensation and legal fees.

Looking for a good deal on steel fencing material that could otherwise help maintain America’s border (and therefore national) security? Look no further!

The Biden administration has been hawking sections of Donald Trump’s border wall on a government military surplus website called GovPlanet – where they’ve auctioned off 81 batches of square structural tubing and steel columns since April, the Daily Mail reports.

Meanwhile, illegal border crossings (of future Democrats) hit the second-highest level on record in July.

Last Tuesday, the Biden administration sold 700 28 ft. long hollow beams in five separate lots for $212 each, netting $154,200 according to the report.

13 more lots are set to be auctioned on Aug. 23 and Aug. 30.

According to Republicans, up to $300 million of taxpayer-funded wall components have been left to rust since the Biden administration took over.

To address this, the Democrat-led Senate passed a Republican-sponsored bill last month – the “Finish It Act,” aimed at forcing the administration to extend the wall. The legislation will force the federal government to use the leftover materials on new wall construction – or hand them over to Texas to use for their own border defense inittiatives.

Instead, the Biden administration is rushing to liquidate the wall leftovers before the GOP-led House can pass a matching version of the bill and make it law, the NY Post reports.

“This sale is a wasteful and ludicrous decision by the Biden administration that only serves as further proof they have no shame,” the bill’s sponsor, Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MI) told the outlet, calling the move “outrageous, behind-the-scenes maneuvering.”

“Leaving the border open to terrorists while selling border security materials at a loss is Bidenomics in a nutshell,” saic co-sponsor Tom Cotton (R-AR).

“The pennies made from selling the border wall will not be enough to pay the families who suffer from a criminal act committed by someone who crossed our open borders during the Biden administration,” said Sen. James Lankford (R-OK)

According to Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), the move to sell the materials is “reckless.”

“Our borders continue to be overrun by an unprecedented number of illegal immigrants, turning every district into a border district, and compromising our national security,” she said.

The GovPlanet auction schedule picked up markedly in May, when Wicker first introduced the Finish It Act, and increased again this month, days after the Senate’s defense bill passed on a bipartisan vote.

A DOD spokesman identified the tubes, held in an outdoor storage lot in Pima County, Ariz., as “excess border wall materials.” -NY Post

According to Lt. Col. Devin T. Robinson, who ‘used Defense Department lingo for the process of consigning military surplus items to commercial resellers or the trash heap’ (per the Post), “The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers … has already transferred approximately $154 million worth of the roughly $260 million of bollard panels and other materials.”

One insider told the Daily Upside that GovPlanet has been instructed to keep quiet about the border-wall connection.

“We are legally not allowed to mention these are the border wall materials, or we could lose our jobs,” said the source.

And while the lot listings scrupulously avoid identifying the tubes’ original purpose, viewers of the company’s Instagram page weren’t fooled.

“Good for building a wall,” a user called honest_jake wrote Aug. 3 under a GovPlanet Instagram post touting the sale of “industrial steel tubing” — an entry that was deleted from the social media site Friday.

“Why don’t you put that up instead of selling it,” added Brian Prewitt. “This is why tax payers are just about done paying taxes.” -NY Post

“The federal government needs to be utilizing every tool in the toolbox to secure our border,” said Rep. Juan Ciscomani (R-AZ), who slammed Biden for his “refusal to act.”

“Instead of putting these materials to their intended use, they have been squandered, first collecting dust in the desert and now being auctioned off.”

Hilary weakened from a Category 4 hurricane to a tropical storm, moving northward Sunday along the Baja California peninsula in Mexico. Conditions across Southern California are deteriorating as forecasters warned “catastrophic and life-threatening” flooding is likely. 

The National Weather Service’s National Hurricane Center downgraded Hilary earlier today while indicating the storm made landfall around noon over the northern Baja California peninsula. 

#Hilary makes landfall in northern Baja California. Tropical storm conditions and heavy rains already affecting portions of the southwestern United States. pic.twitter.com/OS9EYPUM0y

— NHC Eastern Pacific (@NHC_Pacific) August 20, 2023

Footage from X, formerly known as Twitter, shows major flooding across Santa Rosalía in Mexico’s Baja California Sur. 

WATCH: Devastating flooding in Baja California brought on by Hurricane #Hilary pic.twitter.com/ONDnSKYiKo

— PoliticsVerse 🇺🇸 (@PoliticsVerse_) August 20, 2023

Here’s Hilary’s latest track:

With forecasters calling for “life-threatening” flooding across Southern California, Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency on Saturday. Then the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services said Hilary “remains on track to impact much of Southern California with heavy rainfall and possibly strong winds this weekend and into early next week.” 

Mexico’s Baja California Peninsula, Southern California, and southwestern Nevada are expected to receive heavy rainfall through Monday. 

“Expect periods of heavy rain; areas of flooding especially in the mtns and deserts; and strong winds especially in San Diego Co, east Inland Empire, mtns, and deserts,” NWS San Diego posted on X. 

Hilary has weakened to a Tropical Strom and is expected to make it into SoCal this afternoon. Expect periods of heavy rain; areas of flooding especially in the mtns and deserts; and strong winds especially in San Diego Co, east Inland Empire, mtns, and deserts. Be safe!#CAwx pic.twitter.com/TNXEfzFgV4

— NWS San Diego (@NWSSanDiego) August 20, 2023

Which means an elevated risk of destructive flash flooding. 

In San Diego, the US Navy is taking no risks and ordered warships and submarines to leave naval bases before the storms arrive. 

US 3rd Fleet has ordered all Navy ships in San Diego to get underway as Hurricane Hilary approaches. The ships will remain at sea until the storm subsides. Those still in port prepare for heavy wind & rain. Standard East Coast procedure, unusual in SoCal https://t.co/6OoUOT60th pic.twitter.com/sjxUV3B8JE

— Chris Cavas (@CavasShips) August 19, 2023

NBC News said the tropical storm taking aim at Southern California would be the first time in eight years.