Trump further slammed the SCOTUS decision as “anti-American”…
“Based on a thorough, detailed, and complete review of the ridiculous, poorly written, and extraordinarily anti-American decision on Tariffs issued yesterday, after MANY months of contemplation, by the United States Supreme Court,
Then dropped the hammer…
“…please let this statement serve to represent that I, as President of the United States of America, will be, effective immediately, raising the 10% Worldwide Tariff on Countries, many of which have been “ripping” the U.S. off for decades, without retribution (until I came along!), to the fully allowed, and legally tested, 15% level.“
With the policy taking effect immediately, Trump further signaled that he would press ahead with his trade war despite the major legal setback.
“During the next short number of months, the Trump Administration will determine and issue the new and legally permissible Tariffs…
…which will continue our extraordinarily successful process of Making America Great Again – GREATER THAN EVER BEFORE!!! Thank you for your attention to this matter.”
Ironically, for those cheering yesterday’s court ruling, for some countries, President Trump’s new 15% tariff may actually be higher than the rates that previously applied to their exports to the US.
Trump is applying the new baseline tariff under Section 122 of the 1974 Trade Act, which allows the president to impose tariffs for 150 days without congressional approval.
Securing that approval could prove challenging, as Democrats and some Republicans have opposed elements of his trade policy
The Trump administration has indicated that it will use other legal authorities, like Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, to impose tariffs on countries individually based on their trade practices.
But those investigations will take time to prepare.
At least temporarily, exports from all countries will now face a 15 percent tariff rate, regardless of their trade practices, or the concessions they have made.
Presumably, at some point soon, the ‘left’ will sue to halt these tariffs too (even though – as Trump noted – they have been ‘tested’ in court previously).
The last six years have been a time of astonishing revelation about many features of public life that had been previously hidden.
I’m not just speaking of the Epstein files though they are part of it.
We’ve all seen and experienced things over these years that (at least to me) would have been nearly inconceivable before. It’s shaken us and forced people to recalibrate their understanding of the world.
If you have changed your mind on some important matters, congratulations? That’s a sign of humility, curiosity, adaptability, and adherence to facts over bias. This is a virtue. People who report no change are either omniscient, which is doubtful, not paying attention, or just too doggedly attached to prior views that nothing can unsettled them.
I have a huge archive of my own writings over decades and I look through sometimes just to test how and to what extent my own outlook has shifted. Indeed it has. There is value in my old books and articles but reading them now, I detect a kind of naivete, a simplicity in theory and understanding. I don’t think it is just maturing here. There is more going on.
Below I list some of the issues on which our times have introduced depth and complexity that defy conventional ideological categories.
I suspect you might have undertaken a similar journey yourself but likely with different starting points and different conclusions. We all process this new transparency in different ways. I can only chronicle my own, which I’ve summarized in ten points.
1. We were introduced to a new conception of what government is in real life.
Perhaps we once thought of government as the people we elect. That’s supposed to be how it works. As it turns out, gradually over a century and a bit more, an unelected bureaucracy has come to take power. It runs circles around the elected representatives of the people. It has deep links throughout society. The administrative state also has the institutional knowledge and holds on for dear life from the turning of one leader to another.
The U.S. Constitution says that the president is head of the executive branch. Trump has attempted to control its 444 agencies but has been stopped by a flurry of lawsuits. As it turns out, the machinery of state is impervious to elected leaders and designed to be exactly that. The same is true of Congress, which has its own staff that migrates and lasts through every political turning. This is not democracy. This is an entrenched and unelected oligarchy. It needs to change, lest the people be disenfranchised forever.
2. We newly understand what industry capture means.
In the past, it’s not been entirely clear how agency government works with industry. Two views have prevailed: agencies existed in an antagonistic relationship to business in ways that harm enterprise, or agencies work to protect the people against the depredations of corporations. Now that we’ve had a closer look, we see a more symbiotic relationship between large and powerful corporations and the agencies that are supposed to control them. We see this in agriculture, pharmaceuticals, education, technology, and munitions. This problem is pervasive.
3. Academia, as it turns out, is not the bee’s knees.
University intellectuals have long been valorized as the best and the brightest, the institutions guarding an independent version of truth that rises above the exigencies of the mutating public mind. But think about the major controversies of our time that academia has in general done little to nothing to resolve and much to promote: transgender issues, woke ideology, lockdowns for infectious disease, censorship, welfare corruption, the integrity of science, the problem of citizenship, and on and on. Academia in general has given off the appearance of aloofness to it all or merely being a participant in sketchy financial dealings. Think of it: when Trump started cutting the funding of elite universities, there was no real outcry at all. This is because academia has lost its once-high status in American life.
4. Big Media mostly is hopelessly partisan.
There was a time when we might have believed that the watchdog media was the essential bulwark to stand between the citizens and political power, holding elected leaders to account. This old view has been proven unsustainable in light of the last decade in which its blatant partnership has been unbearably obvious. The war on Trump that began in 2016 led inexorably to a complete takeover of the newsroom which then diminished trust in media, which is at historic lows. What’s more, we’ve learned that the biggest media players also operate in a cooperative relationship with state priorities, much more so than we knew before.
5. Big business partners with big government.
There was a reason why during the recent respiratory pandemic that your local small businesses were closed whereas the big-box stores were open. There is a reason why when the opening started happening, capacity restrictions hit small coffee shops but large eat-in restaurants thrived. It’s because of their pull in Washington and state houses. The big guys have political pull whereas the small guys do not. The big guys deploy the power of government to hurt the competition. Is this how it works? Maybe I knew this abstractly but seeing it all unfold in real time was remarkable.
6. The science is skewed at best.
Like you, I used to think that peer-reviewed publications in prestigious journals were likely approximating some truth. Then I watched as these same journals and publications ran articles that were obviously manipulated, false, and some just completely made up to fit with a prevailing political agenda. Once we found out that these venues are funded by the very industries they cover, it started to make sense. Now most of us have come to doubt the truth of much if not most of what they publish. This is supposed to be the age of science and yet we cannot presume to trust what appears under the name science.
7. Courage is scarce.
I once believed that when people thought the right things—freedom matters, humans have rights, we should follow laws, censorship is wrong, bureaucrats should not rule outside their realm of competence—that we have won most of the battle. What I did not understand entirely is that the courage to act on convictions is far more rare than convictions themselves. Indeed, without the courage to stand up for truth at some risk to reputation and financial well-being, it’s not clear that one’s convictions matter much. Not only that, such courage is exceedingly rare. Most people can be cowed by fear of the unknown. I did not know this.
8. The left and right are fuzzy concepts.
We all used to think we understood what was right and what was left, as if they are fixed categories. Same with the word libertarian: we thought we could predict views and actions based on those labels. I no longer believe that. I’m now allied with people schooled on the left in ways I never imagined possible, and with others on the right who I once seriously doubted. Nor do these words seem to mean much now that the left seems to push things that make zero sense according to their previous principles, and the right has warmed up to topics that were only of interest to the left. In general I’m glad for this but I’m waiting for all of it to settle in some ways that it is not now.
9. Food matters as much as medicine.
I once believed that concern over chemicals in food and large-scale industrial agriculture was wildly overwrought. But after discovering the problems in the medical world and Big Tech, it seemed obvious to consider the ways in which government intervention in agriculture is also creating cartels and distortions. Put that together with genuine concerns over health and you see the problem that has been highlighted by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. This issue that I had completely dismissed ten years ago is now front and center in my thinking, along with a passion to see the restoration of small regenerative agriculture.
10. You can make a difference.
Here is what has shocked me most. I’m now connected with a large group of Americans who are deeply concerned for the future of freedom in every sector: education, medical, agriculture, technology, and citizenship rights including voting integrity. I’ve seen this movement blossom from nearly non-existent to becoming enormously powerful and influential, not only in the United States but all over the world. Things are changing today and not because the establishment wants it that way. Things are changing because people are learning, gathering, acting, and insisting on change. This inspires me to no end. We need more of this in every area of life.
This metric captures a company’s most liquid assets: cash plus short-term securities like T-bills that typically mature within a year.
Which Companies Hold the Most Cash?
Berkshire Hathaway leads the rankings with an impressive $382 billion.
The data table below shows the top 50 companies worldwide with the largest cash and short-term securities holdings:
Source: TradingView | Cash and Short-Term Investments | as of Feb 11, 2026
Following Berkshire are CITIC—a Chinese state-backed financial conglomerate—and Daiwa Securities Group, one of Japan’s biggest financial brokerages.
Big Tech rounds out the top five, with Alphabet holding $127 billion and Amazon holding $126 billion.
Why Buffett Holds So Much Cash
Among the top 50 companies, the Financials sector collectively holds the largest cash reserves at $1.2 trillion—partially driven by strict capital rules requiring banks to maintain large liquid buffers.
Berkshire Hathaway is different: its cash position is strategic, not regulatory.
After 12 straight quarters as a net seller of stocks, Buffett and the team have parked much of the company’s liquidity in short-term U.S. Treasury bills, implying that equity valuations look expensive.
The Oracle’s cash and cash equivalents as a percentage of total assets is at an all-time high—roughly 31% of total assets.
Historically, this has coincided with periods when he waits for a major economic or market dislocation before deploying capital as prices begin to mean-revert—quietly accumulating dry powder in the meantime.
Why Big Tech Holds So Much Cash
The Magnificent Seven: Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Apple, Nvidia and Tesla collectively hold $597 billion—enough to buy most S&P 500 companies.
Traditionally, Big Tech companies are massive cash machines: high gross margins and scalable cost structures mean incremental revenue converts into cash quickly.
Despite spending heavily to build AI factories, they’ve used little of their cash reserves to finance them—opting instead for debt.
They hold large cash stockpiles both to fund acquisitions and guard against potential economic turmoil, such as threats from tariffs or geopolitical conflicts.
To learn more about the world’s largest companies, check out this graphic on Voronoi.
With tax season underway and the April 15 filing deadline approaching, taxpayers are being encouraged to review new changes introduced by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act to help minimize their tax bills and avoid filing delays.
The law, signed in July 2025, made several permanent revisions to the tax code. It also created a series of temporary deductions and expanded limits—many of which expire after 2028 or 2029 and come with strict income phaseouts.
The IRS has urged taxpayers to review the new provisions carefully and use online tools at IRS.gov to help ensure smooth processing.
Here are nine strategies to consider.
1. Revisit Itemizing Under the Higher SALT Cap
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) temporarily increased the state and local tax (SALT) deduction cap from $10,000 to $40,000 for both single filers and married couples filing jointly.
For 2025, the standard deduction is $15,750 for singles, $31,500 for married couples, and $23,625 for heads of household.
Taxpayers whose total itemized deductions—including mortgage interest, charitable contributions, and state and local taxes—exceed those amounts may benefit from itemizing.
However, the expanded SALT cap begins phasing out at $500,000 in modified adjusted gross income (MAGI) and returns to $10,000 once MAGI reaches $600,000.
Because many benefits phase out at specific income levels, reviewing your projected MAGI before making major financial moves—such as selling investments or doing a Roth conversion—can help protect valuable deductions.
While most of your 2025 income is already set by filing season, certain contributions made before the April deadline, such as individual retirement account or health savings account funding, can still lower taxable income and help preserve income-sensitive tax breaks.
2. Calculate the Overtime Deduction Carefully
The law introduced a temporary deduction for qualified overtime compensation, capped at $25,000 for married couples and $12,500 for singles.
Only the additional “half-time” portion of time-and-a-half pay qualifies—not the full overtime rate.
The deduction begins phasing out at $300,000 in MAGI for joint filers and disappears entirely at $550,000.
Taxpayers should confirm that their W-2 accurately reflects overtime earnings before claiming the deduction.
3. Make Sure Tip Income Is Properly Reported
The qualified tip income deduction allows up to $25,000 in reported tip income per return.
Only tips formally reported on a W-2 or 1099 qualify. Unreported cash tips cannot be deducted.
The IRS has reminded taxpayers that they are responsible for all information reported on their return, even if a preparer completes it. Incorrect or mismatched income reporting may delay processing.
The tip deduction phases out beginning at $150,000 in MAGI for singles and $300,000 for married couples.
4. Confirm Eligibility for Auto Loan Interest Deduction
Taxpayers who purchased a new personal-use vehicle in 2025 may be able to deduct up to $10,000 in interest paid on a qualifying auto loan.
The vehicle must have final assembly in the United States, and leased vehicles do not qualify.
The deduction phases out beginning at $100,000 in MAGI for singles and $200,000 for married couples.
The IRS notes that lenders must provide taxpayers with statements showing the total interest paid during the year—and retaining that documentation is essential when claiming the deduction.
5. Seniors Should Watch Income Limits Closely
Taxpayers age 65 or older may qualify for a temporary senior deduction of up to $12,000 for married couples and $6,000 for singles.
The benefit begins phasing out at $150,000 in MAGI for married couples and $75,000 for singles.
Large Roth conversions, capital gains, or other income spikes could eliminate the deduction. Financial planners often recommend modeling income carefully before executing major transactions to avoid unintended tax consequences.
6. Manage MAGI to Preserve Income-Sensitive Breaks
Many of the OBBBA’s temporary provisions hinge on income thresholds, making modified adjusted gross income a key planning factor.
Taxpayers whose income is close to phaseout levels—such as $300,000 for the overtime and tip deductions or $500,000 for the expanded SALT cap—may benefit from carefully timing income and contributions. Even modest adjustments to income can preserve eligibility for deductions that may be worth thousands of dollars.
The IRS notes that contributing to retirement plans like 401(k)s or traditional IRAs—and making eligible health savings account contributions by the filing deadline—can lower adjusted gross income, which in turn can help taxpayers stay under key income thresholds that affect eligibility for tax breaks.
7. Double-Check Identity and Dependent Information
Errors in personal information remain one of the most common causes of refund delays.
The IRS has advised taxpayers to confirm Social Security numbers, dependent names, and Identity Protection PINs before filing. Taking these steps can help avoid delays in processing and in claiming credits such as the Earned Income Tax Credit or Additional Child Tax Credit.
8. Use IRS Online Tools to Avoid Delays
The IRS recommends filing electronically and choosing direct deposit to speed refunds, noting that most refunds are issued in less than 21 days.
Refund status can be tracked using the “Where’s My Refund?” tool, available within 24 hours after an electronic filing is received.
The IRS is also phasing out paper refund checks, and mailed refunds may take six weeks or longer.
Taxpayers can use an IRS Individual Online Account to view tax records and transcripts, check refund status, verify adjusted gross income, retrieve an Identity Protection PIN, and view certain W-2 and 1099 forms.
9. The Bottom Line
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act created new tax-saving opportunities for 2025, but many come with strict limits and income phaseouts.
A careful review of deductions, income timing, and documentation—combined with the IRS’s online tools—can help taxpayers avoid losing temporary benefits or experiencing unnecessary delays.
With the filing deadline approaching, preparation and attention to detail may be the most effective ways to reduce stress—and potentially reduce your tax bill.
Precrime: Months Before Massacre, OpenAI Worried About Canada’s Trans Mass Killer
Months before a Canadian man in a dress went on a Feb 10 rampage, killing his mother and half-brother at home before slaughtering five students and an education assistant at a secondary school where he was formerly a student, employees atOpenAI were deeply troubled by his interactions with the firm’s ChatGPT AI chatbot.
As first reported by the Wall Street Journal, Jesse Van Rootselaar’s ChatGPT activity was flagged by the company’s automated review system. When employees took a look at what he’d been up to over a several-day period in June 2025, they were alarmed.About a dozen of them debated what they should do.
Some were convinced Van Rootselaar’s descriptions of gun-violence scenarios signaled a substantial risk of real-world bloodshed, and implored their supervisors to notify police, according to the Journal’s unnamed sources. They opted against doing so, and a spokeswoman now says they’d concluded Van Rootselaar’s posts didn’t cross the threshold of posing a credible and imminent risk of serious harm. Instead, the company decided only to ban his account.
About seven months after his disturbing series of interactions with ChatGPT, police say he killed 8 people and injured 25 more before killing himself in the school he’d attended earlier. VanRootselaar’s social media and YouTube accounts contained transgender symbolism as well as the online name “JessJessUwU” (a meme phrase that people may recognize from the bullet casings tied to the gay suspect charged in the assassination of Charlie Kirk).
Only after the bloody horror unfolded did OpenAI contact the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The situation highlights the difficult position social media and AI platforms are in, as they struggle with balancing conflicting goals: protecting their users’ privacy and avoiding unnecessary interactions with police, versus preventing crimes up to and including mass murder. The Journal didn’t report specifics about Van Rootselaar’s ChatGPT interactions.
ChatGPT wasn’t the only online resource where he evidenced a potential for violence: He’d also used Roblox to build a game centered on carrying out a mass shooting at a shopping mall. Online activity aside, Van Rootselaar was already on the radar of local police, who made multiple visits to his home in response to mental health episodes, and even temporarily removing firearms from the property. An RCMP official said that, on multiple occasions, he was “apprehended for assessment and follow-up.”
Police say Van Rootselaar gender-transitioned about six years ago. Given he was 18 when he exploded into violence, that translates into the very young age of about 12. There’s no indication that the “transition” went beyond “identity” and clothing, and into the realm of hormones and other body-transforming measures. Online, he bemoaned the fact that his six-foot frame would render impossible his aspiration to be a “petite” woman.
On Reddit, Van Rootselaar often posted about his use of prescription and other drugs, and curiosity about 5-MeO-DMT, a hallucinogen nicknamed “toad venom.” He said he’d been diagnosed with ADHD, obsessive compulsive disorder, major depressive disorder and autism spectrum disorder, and was taking “Setraline 380mg (SSRI). I on rare occasion take 2mg of Risperidone for sleep purposes (anti-psychotic.)” Setraline is the generic version of Zoloft. He dropped out of school about four years ago.
Elsewhere on Reddit, in a post about his “right to be myself” and his “right to Hormone Replacement Therapy,” Van Rootselaar noted that at least other people support his “bare minimum…right to bear arms,” adding, “I’m a 15 year old trans person, transitioning from Male to Female. I ‘own’ 7 firearms, it’s cool.”
What’s definitely not cool: nudging 12-year-olds down the gender-transitioning path.
In the classic movie comedy, A Fish Called Wanda, John Cleese lamented, “do you have any idea what it’s like being English? Being so correct all the time, being so stifled by this dread of, of doing the wrong thing.”
Now 86, Cleese has a more pressing concern about being English: whether his exercise of free speech will make him a criminal in his own country.
In a recent interview, Cleese observed that the government’s new speech standards would classify many citizens, including himself, as presumptive criminals for criticizing certain policies.
He observed that: ”As I am an Islamosceptic, I’m now worried that the Labour government may categorise me as a terrorist…”
The government of Prime Minister Keir Starmer has continued its headlong plunge into the criminalization of speech. The guidelines include a section on cultural nationalism, stating that such views are now the subject of government crackdowns. To even argue that Western culture is under threat from mass migration or a lack of integration by certain groups is being treated as a dangerous ideology.
Cleese responded by saying, “I’m clearly a terrorist, so I’m afraid they are going to have to arrest me.”
The tragedy is that this is no wicked Monty Python joke. Cleese has every reason to be concerned.
As I discuss in Rage and the Republic, the United Kingdom has eviscerated free speech in the name of social cohesion and order.
For years, I have been writing about the decline of free speech in the United Kingdom and the steady stream of arrests.
While most of us find Brock’s views repellent and hateful, they were confined to his head and his room.
Yet, Judge Peter Lodder QC dismissed free speech or free thought concerns with a truly Orwellian statement:
“I do not sentence you for your political views, but the extremity of those views informs the assessment of dangerousness.”
Lodder lambasted Brock for holding Nazi and other hateful values:
“[i]t is clear that you are a right-wing extremist, your enthusiasm for this repulsive and toxic ideology is demonstrated by the graphic and racist iconography which you have studied and appeared to share with others…”
Even though Lodder agreed that the defendant was older, had limited mobility, and “there was no evidence of disseminating to others,” he still sent him to prison for holding extremist views.
After the sentencing, Detective Chief Superintendent Kath Barnes, Head of Counter Terrorism Policing South East (CTPSE), warned others that he was going to prison because he “showed a clear right-wing ideology with the evidence seized from his possessions during the investigation….We are committed to tackling all forms of toxic ideology which has the potential to threaten public safety and security.”
“Toxic ideology” also appears to be the target of Ireland’s proposed Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences) law.
It covers the possession of material deemed hateful.
The law makes it a crime to possess “harmful material” as well as “condoning, denying or grossly trivialising genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and crimes against peace.”
The law expressly states the intent to combat “forms and expressions of racism and xenophobia by means of criminal law.”
The Brock case proved, as feared, a harbinger of what was to come. Two years ago, the home secretary, Yvette Cooper, vowed to crack down on people “pushing harmful and hateful beliefs.” That includes what she calls extreme misogyny.
Now the UK’s most famous writers and comedians believe that they can be arrested under the country’s draconian speech laws from JK Rowling to John Cleese.
That leaves free speech much like Cleese’s famous parrot.
The British government and its supporters can claim evidence of life or just “resting,” but it is in fact “bleedin’ demised…passed on! … no more! … ceased to be! … expired and gone to meet it’s maker!”
California Dominates America’s AI/Data-Center Jobs
The AI boom isn’t just about chatbots and software. It’s also creating thousands of jobs tied to the physical infrastructure that powers large-scale computing.
As companies race to build data centers and expand AI capacity, employment tied to AI infrastructure has climbed to 482,716 jobs nationwide, according to 2025 data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
This map, via Visual Capitalist’s Jeff Desjardins, ranks all 50 states by AI and data center employment, highlighting where this fast-growing segment of the tech economy has taken root—and which states have built the deepest talent bases.
The AI and Data Center Boom: Jobs by State
California leads the nation with 81,577 AI and data center jobs, accounting for about 17% of the U.S. total.
While California dominates in total jobs, Washington ranks first on a per capita basis, with 289.8 roles per 100,000 residents. This is partially thanks to being home base to companies like Microsoft and Amazon.
More populous states like Texas (48,029), Florida (28,682), and New York (27,849) are all at the top of the leaderboard in absolute terms. That said, the latter two (Florida and New York) are actually below average in per capita terms.
Silicon Slopes and the Data Center Capital of the World
When sorting the list in per capita terms, the states Utah, Missouri, and Virginia stand out—all making the top five.
Virginia has the world’s largest concentration of data centers (Northern Virginia’s “Data Center Alley”), driven by hyperscalers, federal demand, and dense fiber connectivity.
Utah is known in the tech industry as “Silicon Slopes”, with a budding startup ecosystem, strong SaaS presence, and tax-friendly policies for data center investment.
Finally, Missouri is an emerging Midwest tech hub with growing cloud, geospatial intelligence, and defense-tech activity, supported by low-cost power and central U.S. connectivity.
Learn more about data center electricity demand by region in this visualization on Voronoi.
As ICE sweeps in Minneapolis have drawn wide attention, a little-noticed immigration case playing out in a New York federal court has significant implications for America’s relationship with Britain and the ongoing debate over global censorship.
In late December, the State Department announced its intention to revoke the visas of five foreign individuals who have allegedly censored Americans. The most consequential member of this group is Imran Ahmed, a British Labour Party political operative now living in the U.S., who is the CEO of an influential nonprofit, the Center for Countering Digital Hate.
In documents released Feb. 6 in federal court, the State Department claims Ahmed and the Center have been key players in efforts to censor Americans. A memo written by State Department Undersecretary Sarah Rogers asserts that “Ahmed was a key collaborator with the Biden administration on weaponizing the national security bureaucracy to censor U.S. citizens and pressure U.S. companies into censoring, and his group advocates for foreign regulatory action that extraterritorially impacts American citizens and companies.”
In a follow-up memo, Secretary Marco Rubio wrote that Ahmed had led efforts to censor Americans and harm U.S. media outlets, including ZeroHedge and The Federalist. “I have determined that Ahmed’s activities and presence in the United States have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences and comprise a compelling U.S. foreign policy interest.” Rubio asserted. While the Center casts itself as a disinterested nonprofit trying to stop online hate, Rubio noted that documents leaked from inside the group outline ambitious plans to “kill Musk’s Twitter” and “trigger EU and UK regulatory action.”
Ahmed has a small army of lawyers working to halt his deportation proceedings, which are now being litigated. Ahmed’s lead attorney is Roberta Kaplan – a former advisor to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo – who sued President Trump on behalf of his niece, Mary Trump. Ahmed is also represented by Norm Eisen, a Democratic Party fundraiser and former advisor to Obama. Last Thursday, they filed an updated court complaint against the U.S. government to keep Ahmed in the United States.
International Implications
The effort to deport Ahmed has broader political implications because of the close ties he and his associates have to the highest reaches of the British government. Morgan McSweeney, who co-founded the Center with Ahmed, is widely seen as the architect of Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour Party victory in 2024. McSweeney served as Starmer’s chief of staff until earlier this month, when he resigned because of a separate scandal connected to Jeffrey Epstein.
U.K. government documents reviewed by RCI show that the organization’s influence extends throughout Starmer’s government. The Trump administration’s pushback on Ahmed’s weaponization of speech against U.S. citizens and companies suggests a deep concern about foreign intervention and censorship stemming from one of America’s closest allies.
In a recent interview with Undersecretary Rogers, RCI noted that the State Department appeared to be “knocking on the door of the Prime Minister’s office.” Rogers demurred, declining to detail her discussion with Starmer officials. “We have a very special relationship with the British government,” she responded. “The issue has been communicated.”
Senior Labour Minister Chi Onwurah accused the Trump administration of attacking free speech after Rubio announced shortly before Christmas that the administration was seeking Ahmed’s deportation. “Banning people because you disagree with what they say undermines the free speech the administration claims to seek,” Onwurah said, adding that Ahmed was an articulate advocate for greater regulation of online speech.
However, internal British government documents show that Onwurah is one of Starmer’s many advisors who have been working with Ahmed on activities many consider censorship. Ahmed and Onwurah did respond to requests for comment.
Weaponizing Censorship
The Center for Countering Digital Hate grew out of the efforts of Labour Together, a think tank founded in 2015 to undermine Jeremy Corbyn, a far-left member of Parliament who led the Labour Party at the time. McSweeney, a leading figure in the organization, founded the Center around 2018 with Ahmed as a potent weapon to attack political enemies and advance narratives in the British media.
In a tactic also deployed by progressives in the U.S., the Center worked to silence voices it opposed by creating advertising blacklists to deprive disfavored media outlets of revenue. One successful campaign involved constant claims of “misinformation” and antisemitism lodged against the influential leftist news site Canary to drive away advertisers and tank their funding. “Bye birdie! Hyper-partisan fake news website The Canary is on its last legs!” tweeted British TV host and Center campaigner, Rachel Riley, celebrating a 2019 crash in The Canary’s advertising.
In 2021, Ahmed opened an office in Washington, D.C., and began working with American journalists to censor dissent and enforce political narratives friendly to Democrats and the Biden administration. The Center’s chairman is Simon Clark, a former senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a think tank founded by John Podesta, who ran Hillary Clinton’s campaign against Donald Trump in the 2016 election.
In 2021, the Center for Countering Digital Hate released a report targeting a “disinformation dozen” of critics complaining about the Biden administration’s COVID vaccine policies. This report, released by an organization founded only months earlier in the United States, received a warm reception at the White House.
At a July 2021 press briefing, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki quoted from the report while claiming that Facebook was undermining federal vaccine policies. “There’s about 12 people who are producing 65% of anti-vaccine misinformation on social media platforms,” Psaki stated. Facebook criticized the Center’s report for being free of evidence and failing to explain how they arrived at their numbers and conclusions.
One of the people included in the “disinformation dozen” was Robert Kennedy Jr., who was considering a run against President Biden in the Democrats’ 2024 primaries. The Center’s “infamous ‘disinformation dozen’ report specifically called for deplatforming Secretary Robert F. Kennedy and others,” wrote Secretary Rubio in his memo calling for Ahmed’s deportation.
Targeting Musk’s X
In the summer of 2023, the Center hosted a private conference in Washington for liberal groups allied with the Biden administration for the purpose of neutralizing the influence of X owner Elon Musk, who was helping to fund Trump’s presidential campaign. The list of attendees included Biden White House and State Department officials, Democratic Party congressional staffers, union leaders, the heads of several progressive foundations, and employees of the hyper-partisan website Media Matters for America. While no Republicans or conservatives appear on the roster, at least one member of the British foreign service is listed as an invited guest. Annabel Graham is a diplomat and national security professional based at the British Embassy in Washington. She previously handled the Home Office’s engagement with the U.S. and Five Eyes partners.
Working in parallel with Media Matters, the Center took aim at X’s advertisers, just as it had the British Canary. After the Center and Media Matters released reports claiming that Musk’s social media site was promoting “hate,” companies such as Disney announced they were pulling their advertising from X, triggering a crash in Musk’s profits. Disney’s CEO at the time, Bob Iger, was also a major donor to the Biden administration.
Ahmed has also worked in Brussels to influence EU censorship laws. When European regulators first began targeting X for alleged disinformation in late 2023, Ahmed celebrated on social media, implying that his organization was behind the move. “The @CCDHate has been briefing EU officials since October 7,” he wrote, “using our research on the tidal wave of hate and disinformation coming from social media.”
“X has surged to become the leading news app in every EU country, serving tens of millions of Europeans who use the platform daily to access uncensored information,” the State Department noted in its filings to deport Ahmed.
Friends in High Places
The Center’s involvement in U.S. politics is especially fraught because of its close connections with Britain’s leaders.
Ahmed began working hard to lobby the Labour government even before its landslide victory in July 2024. Weeks before the election, Ahmed emailed his staffers, looping them in with Josh Simons on his private Gmail to set up a meeting. “Josh is head of Labour Together and is a key person in policy for the next Labour government,” Ahmed wrote. Simons soon left the think tank to become a member of Parliament, where he is a close ally of Starmer.
The Guardian recently reported that before his election to Parliament, Simons “commissioned and reviewed a report in 2023 on journalists investigating the thinktank [Labour Together] that would help propel Keir Starmer to power.”
The Center even has its own members now operating in Parliament. One of the newly elected MPs, Kirsty McNeill, sat on the organization’s board from late 2019 until her 2024 election to Parliament. McNeill was listed in the Center’s staff handbook as a lead trustee, and the group’s mental well-being plan provided McNeill’s personal cell phone for their Mental Welfare Hotline. “Please feel free to contact Kirsty if you have any concerns about your Mental Wellbeing that is not being addressed by CCDH and/or your Line Manager.”
Ahmed has also been working quite closely with the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, which is responsible for regulating speech in the U.K., including implementing the Online Safety Act. Passed in 2023, the Act put a “range of new duties on social media companies and search services, giving them legal duties to protect their users from illegal content and content harmful to children.” The Starmer government has taken pains to hide Ahmed’s work with the department. When a British reporter asked the department to detail their relationship and work with Ahmed and the Center, it told him to file a freedom of information request.
Newly uncovered documents show that weeks after Labour won the 2024 election, Ahmed wrote to Baroness Jones of Whitchurch, whom Starmer appointed as a leading Minister of the department. Ahmed introduced Jones to his work to “outline the policy areas CCDH believes are critical to delivering your forthcoming agenda.”
Ahmed highlighted that the Center had “championed the Online Safety Act since its inception,” and bragged that he was the “first witness before the draft bill committee” that had reviewed the Act. He also promised that the Center would “continue to be a critical partner to OFCOM,” the U.K. regulator charged with enforcing the censorship act.
“We welcome the opportunity to work with your office as the UK leads the charge in online safety,” Ahmed wrote.
Ahmed stepped up his lobbying in August 2024, writing once again to Jones that, “Social media platforms cannot be a haven for those looking to sow division in our communities. … Please contact for further information or to arrange a briefing with CCDH.”
Closed-Door Meeting
Heavily redacted documents show that Ahmed met personally with senior department officials in early November 2024. This meeting led to a previously unreported closed-door roundtable with Baroness Jones and other prominent politicians. Documents show that Baroness Jones personally addressed the roundtable in her role as Minister for Online Safety. Jones emailed CCDH organizers and recommended that the meeting “focus on how best we can collectively monitor the impact the [Online Safety Act] is having and identify areas – based on evidence – of where further targeted interventions are needed.”
Last July, the department published a report which argued that the Act “does not go far enough to address the spread of harmful misinformation.”
Baroness Jones left the department to join the House of Lords in September, and the department did not respond to RCI’s request for comment.
Senior directors at OFCOM, which is assessing and enforcing the Online Safety Act, were slated to attend this meeting, as was Simons and four other Labour MPs. Simons was appointed Parliamentary Under-Secretary to the department last month. He did not return request for comment sent to his government and private email.
Another guest expected to attend the private roundtable was Chi Onwurah, the MP who defended Ahmed when Secretary Rubio announced deportation proceedings. Onwurah chairs the Science and Technology Select Committee, which has oversight of the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology.
Onwurah seems determined to obfuscate and mislead the media about her work with the Center. During a December BBC interview, she giggled when asked if the Center was a Labour Party front group that pushed through the Online Safety Act.
“The Online Safety Act was brought forward under the Conservatives and by the Conservative Party,” Onwurah told the BBC. Onwurah’s claim is a poor attempt to recast recent history.
Ahmed had, in fact, recruited at least one member of the Conservative Party. Damian Collins joined the Center in July 2020, and the British government later published a decision allowing his membership with Ahmed’s organization.
After Parliament passed the Online Safety Act, which Collins and Ahmed campaigned for, Collins celebrated on X. Collins later left Parliament to join Geradin Partners in London to run the public policy practice at one of the leading law firms for digital regulation in Europe. Collins is also a director at Orbis, a firm co-founded by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele. Steele’s now-debunked dossier, alleging ties between Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia, helped spark years of investigation that plagued Trump’s first term.
The Trump White House has complained several times to the Starmer government about the Online Safety Act. Vice President JD Vance has said the law infringes on individual rights. When Vance accompanied an American delegationto London last August, he said the Online Safety Act is taking the Starmer government down a “very dark path” of online censorship.
Here’s What People Value Most In The US, UK, & Germany
If you had to choose just three things that matter most in life, what would they be?
Across the U.S., UK, and Germany, family and health dominate. But after that, national differences emerge. Germans lean toward security and stability. Americans stand out for money, growth, and faith. In the UK, work-life balance comes into the fold as a top priority.
The data for this visualization comes from Statista Consumer Insights. Over 1,000 adults per country were surveyed in January 2026 and asked to select up to three personal values that matter most in their lives.
Family Comes First
Family life ranks as the most important value in all three countries.
In the UK, 51% of respondents selected family as a top priority, the highest share among the three nations. Germany follows at 43%, while 42% of Americans say family matters most.
Because respondents could choose multiple answers, percentages do not sum to 100%.
Health and Security Stand Out in Germany
Germans place a particularly strong emphasis on health, with 49% identifying it as a top value.
Safety and security (30%) and freedom/independence (27%) also rank highly in Germany. Friendships, at 26%, further suggest a focus on stability and social cohesion.
Money, Growth, and Faith in the U.S.
In the United States, making money ranks relatively high at 26%, slightly above the UK (25%).
Americans are also more likely to prioritize personal growth (24%) and faith or spirituality (21%), categories that did not rank among the top responses in the UK or Germany.
Work-life balance, cited by 24% in the UK, stands out as a distinctly British priority in this comparison.
The seriousness of a conspiracy can often be quantified by the amount of energy the establishment expends trying to bury it. Consider for a moment the fact that Jeffery Epstein’s monstrous club of elites faced near zero mainstream exposure for over 20 years, despite his arrest for human trafficking in 2006.
Think about the level of political and media interference, the highly organized propaganda, the targeted attacks against conspiracy researchers – Think about the amount of money and time that was expended just to shut us up and convince the public the Epstein situation was “overblown”.
The revelations of the “Lolita Express” and the flights to Little Saint James Island are nothing compared to what we now find in the millions of documents released in the past month. Hints of rape, torture, possible murder, and even cannibalism are present in the coded (and not so coded) language of Epstein’s emails. And, if the revelations of “Pizzagate” and the John Podesta emails are correct, then many of the horrors committed on Epstein’s Island involved young children.
As I noted in my last article, Epstein’s private emails contain coded references to “pizza” (an FBI confirmed code used by pedophiles to describe young boys) over 900 times. They mention “jerky” over 380 times, including mentions of “freezing jerky”, “walking” jerky from one location to another, and getting jerky tested in a lab for “safety”.
The establishment machine is going into panic mode, once again trying to obcure the darker aspects of the Epstein files as “conspiracy theory” and “moral panic”. There is a clear attempt being made to mitigate and run damage control.
In other words, the elites are willing to give up the fight on the issue of underage sex trafficking. They know that the abuse of teens will not trigger enough outrage to get them killed by mobs of angry citizens. However, they are DESPERATE to silence any discussion on the abuse of very young children including babies. They will do anything to prevent the investigation from escalating to issues of cannibalism and occultism.
As long as the public thinks it was all about rich and powerful perverts getting their jollies with 16 and 17-year-old girls, the elites think they can weather the storm. After all, in most states the age of consent is 16. They might even be able to convince a large percentage of the populace that those girls did those things “of their own free will.”
I can already see them generating the spin in the event that any of the perpetrators actually go to trial. By the time it’s over, people will be questioning if anything criminal happened at all? That’s how the system works. It demands that the public ignore the obvious and wait for official confirmation of guilt, which rarely ever comes when oligarchs are involved.
I would continue to warn people NOT to put too much hope in the notion that any of the Epstein suspects will face legitimate legal consequences. Just look at how many corrupt judges we have encountered in the US when it comes to the immigration issue. Now imagine the army of left wing judges that will slither out of the woodwork to protect Epstein’s clients.
The Epstein case does not represent a silver bullet for eliminating the elites and their cabal, but it does represent a moment of mass awakening that cannot be stopped. Never before have conspiracy analysts been so close to exposing the reality of the “New World Order” to the normies. It creates a pathway to other opportunities, including reopening conspiracy events that were buried by the establishment a long time ago.
One such conspiracy of evil from the past stands out to me as directly related to the Epstein case, and I think it should be reexamined in light of the release of the Epstein files.
The Franklin Child Prostitution Case
In Omaha, Nebraska in the 1980s, a child sex abuse scandal was uncovered which involved high profile politicians and business moguls. The central figure, Lawrence King Jr, was a GOP favorite and the manager of the Franklin Federal Credit Union, an institution which would eventually be caught up in an embezzlement investigation.
He was accused of hosting lavish parties where minors were sexually abused and ritual occultism was practiced.
Victims, often from foster care or a regional Boys Town orphanage, alleged they were tricked into recruitment, then flown to locations like Washington, D.C. for exploitation by high-ranking individuals, including politicians, businessmen, and law enforcement. Key accusers included Alisha Owen, Paul Bonacci, and Troy Boner. They claimed the existence of an elitist network engaged in ritualistic practices, drug use, and coercion.
The accusers faced extreme pressure to recant. Alisha Owen was imprisoned for “perjury” by a grand jury – She never recanted her story. Troy Boner recanted due to threats of legal ramifications, then returned to assert that everything he originally said was true after the untimely death of investigator Gary Candori. Boner died mysteriously at the age of 36 in Texas in 2003 with no public information on the cause.
Paul Bonacci would go on to win a civil case against Lawrence King and received a $1 million default judgment for child abuse. King failed to defend the case and the judge found Bonacci’s claims to be credible.
Gary Caradori, a private investigator hired in August 1989 by the Nebraska Legislature’s special “Franklin Committee” to look into evidence of child exploitation, conducted extensive interviews. He gathered over 21 hours of videotaped testimony from alleged victims like Alisha Owen, Paul Bonacci, and others. He uncovered what he described as breakthrough evidence, including photographs and leads implicating prominent individuals.
In 1990, Candori died along with his 8-year-old son while flying his single engine plane over Illinois. The plane reportedly “disintegrated in mid-air” and the wreckage was found strewn across a field near Ashton in Lee County. The FAA ultimately ruled that the incident was “accidental.”
The Buried Documentary
In 1993 a 60 minute documentary called “Conspiracy Of Silence” was produced by a UK company called Yorkshire Television for the Discovery Channel. The production focused on the investigations of John Decamp, a US Army Captain, lawyer and former aide to CIA Director William Colby (who also mysteriously died by “drowning” in the Wicomico river near his home in 1996).
Decamp was a Republican legislator in Nebraska at the time the Franklin case broke. He asserted that the claims of abuse were true, and that the politicians involved had ties to the Iran/Contra drug running scandal.
He also named five prominent local officials and businessmen, including:
Harold Andersen: Publisher of the Omaha World-Herald newspaper (frequently cited as central to the alleged cover-up; DeCamp accused the paper of bias and suppression).
Alan Baer: A wealthy Omaha businessman (indicted on pandering charges in 1990 related to the scandal, though not directly for child abuse; he pleaded to lesser charges).
Robert Wadman: Former Omaha Police Chief (accused in victim testimonies of involvement; he denied it and sued over the claims).
Peter Citron: A former World-Herald columnist (convicted in 1990 on separate child sexual assault charges; linked in allegations to the network).
Lawrence E. “Larry” King Jr.: The Franklin Credit Union manager (central figure; convicted on financial embezzlement but never on abuse charges).
These figures were named for alleged involvement in procuring child victims for political elites in Washington DC, or for covering up the crimes.
The Discovery documentary focused on this thread as well as interviews with the victims, then outlined the government and media suppression campaign that was used to threaten them. It was set to air in May of 1994, but it was abruptly pulled weeks before broadcast, apparently due to pressure from political officials in the US. All master copies were ordered destroyed.
The only reason we know about its existence is because some anonymous hero released a rough edit to a lawyer involved in the case. The full documentary can be VIEWED HERE.
The suppression of this documentary is clear evidence of a conspiracy. At the time, the majority of accusations surrounding the Franklin case were dismissed by the media as “Satanic Panic.” This is a narrative that has also been used to dismiss the darker crimes behind the Epstein case and others. It is time to crush this lie and expose these people for what they truly are.
Furthermore, it’s time to acknowledge the fact that ritual child abuse has been happening in the shadows, in dark and grotesque places, for many decades and long before Epstein. His island is only one of many elitist retreats where such evils are practiced. Esptein was merely a middle-man in a much larger network of pedophiles and luciferians that have operated with impunity for generations.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ZeroHedge.
