Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

US War Department officials don’t know the identities of the 61 people who have been extra-judicially executed in US military strikes on boats in the waters near Venezuela and in the Eastern Pacific Ocean, Politico reported on Thursday, citing House Democrats who attended a classified briefing on the campaign.

“[The department officials] said that they do not need to positively identify individuals on these vessels to do the strikes, they just need to prove a connection to smuggling,” said Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-CA). “When we tried to get more information, we did not get satisfactory answers.”

While the Trump administration has cited overdose deaths in the US related to fentanyl to justify the bombing campaign, lawmakers were told in the briefing that the boats that have been targeted were allegedly smuggling cocaine, though the Pentagon has not provided evidence to back up its claims about what the vessels were carrying.

“They argued that cocaine is a facilitating drug of fentanyl, but that was not a satisfactory answer for most of us,” Jacobs said.

The briefing on Thursday came after the Pentagon shut out Democrats from another briefing it held with Republicans a day earlier, which left Democratic senators fuming. Democrats who attended Thursday’s briefing said Pentagon lawyers were pulled from the meeting at the last minute.

“Am I leaving satisfied? Absolutely not. And the last word that I gave to the admiral was, ‘I hope you recognize the constitutional peril that you are in and the peril you are putting our troops in,’” Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA) told reporters after the briefing, according to CNN.

Jacobs said that, based on what she was told, even if Congress authorized the bombing campaign, it would still be illegal. “[T]here’s nothing that we heard in there that changes my assessment that this is completely illegal, that it is unlawful and even if Congress authorized it, it would still be illegal because there are extrajudicial killings where we have no evidence,” she said.

Criticism of the US bombing campaign has also come from Republicans, most prominently from Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY). “No one said their name, no one said what evidence, no one said whether they’re armed, and we’ve had no evidence presented,” Paul said this week of the people who have been targeted. “They summarily execute people without presenting evidence to the public… so it’s wrong.”

Paul has joined Senate Democrats in introducing a War Powers Resolution aimed at preventing the Trump administration from starting a war with Venezuela amid threats of US strikes on the country aimed at ousting President Nicolas Maduro and a major US military buildup in the region. A vote on the bill is expected to happen next week.

A very interesting moment played out earlier this week when Vice President JD Vance spoke at a Turning Point USA event at the University of Mississippi. Vance during the Wednesday visit was asked by a student wearing a MAGA hat why the US is so constantly devoted to Israel, handing it billions of dollars to support what the student described as “ethnic cleansing” in Gaza.

Vance seemed ready and willing to field the tough question, which is representative of a shift on Israel among especially young conservatives. Vance in responding revealed that United States had used its “leverage” to persuade Israel to accept a ceasefire agreement in Gaza.

“The most recent Gaza peace plan that all of us have been working on very hard for the past few weeks — the president of the United States could only get that peace deal done by actually being willing to apply leverage to the State of Israel,” the vice president described.

“When people say that Israel is somehow manipulating or controlling the President of the United States, they’re not controlling this President of the United States,” he added.

Not only does this mark the first public indication from a top American official that Washington exerted (perhaps unprecedented) pressure on Netanyahu to reach a deal, but Vance strongly suggested that in his view Israel has manipulated and ‘controlled’ past presidents (given his curious wording of “they’re not controlling this President of the United States”).

Part of Vance’s defense of Trump’s policy included the explanation that “America First” foreign policy does not mean rejecting all alliances or cooperation with other nations, but that this can be approached pragmatically, and leverage can at times be exerted based on the relationship. He acknowledged in responding to the student that “sometimes Israel’s interests align with those of the United States, and sometimes they don’t,” and that Washington must then act accordingly.

Student to JD Vance at TPUSA event: Why do we have to give Israel billions of dollars to support, to quote Charlie Kirk, this “ethnic cleansing” in Gaza? pic.twitter.com/C9ud246G17

— Chris Menahan 🇺🇸 (@infolibnews) October 30, 2025

It’s no secret that the Trump presidency has been backed by billionaire pro-Israel interests, including AIPAC (which is no doubt influential on both sides of the aisle), and Trump himself has openly joked about this. Earlier this month while in Israel he even awkwardly alluded to Miriam Adelson, one of his single biggest donors, who he suggested cares more about Israel than the United States.

There’s also ample evidence going all the way back to 2016 that Trump’s approach to the Israel-Palestinian conflict would be guided more by pragmatism and not simply Zionist ideology. Yet he’s also boasted time and again he’s done more for Israel than any other US president in history, which has included recognition of Israeli sovereignty over Syria’s Golan Heights, as well as moving the US embassy to Jerusalem – as part of historic recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Fuentes on the young Right moving away from the historic Republican pro-Israel stance: “That’s the groyper squeeze. Now THIS is politics.”

Nick Fuentes warns he will cost JD Vance the 2028 election if he sides with israel first over America Firsters

“Cross that red line, and we will be your worst enemy politically.” pic.twitter.com/kkzF14fZqD

— 𝐆𝐫𝐢𝐦𝐚𝐥𝐝𝐮𝐬 (@ImperiumFirst) October 31, 2025

What the Vance explanation at the Turning Point event also signifies is perhaps a new frankness and openness about discussing America’s so-called ‘greatest ally in the Middle East’. Republicans have long campaigned on demonstrating their devotion to Israel, but times could be changing if Vance is boasting that the Trump administration is keeping Bibi in line on the ceasefire, also as the American Right is slowly shifting, especially among the youth. The Trump era perhaps represents a new willingness to aggressively criticize Israel, a historic taboo and rarity in conservative circles.

In a stark irony, Iran has condemned and lashed out at President Trump’s call to return the United States to nuclear weapons testing “on an equal basis” with other countries like Russia and China.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi called out the move as both “regressive” and “irresponsible”. Iran has of course remained under harsh and expansive US-led sanctions over its nuclear program, which has involved no warheads or other testing, and which Tehran has long insisted is only for peaceful nuclear energy purposes.

“Having rebranded its ‘Department of Defense’ as the ‘Department of War,’ a nuclear-armed bully is resuming testing of atomic weapons,” Araghchi wrote on X late Thursday.

“The same bully has been demonizing Iran’s peaceful nuclear program and threatening further strikes on our safeguarded nuclear facilities, all in blatant violation of international law,” he said.

Trump’s surprise announcement on Truth Social came earlier that same day just before meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in South Korea on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit.

The has media widely assumed that Trump just ordered explosives tests of nuclear warheads, which hasn’t been done by the US since 1992. But the reality is that Trump’s wording was ambiguous enough to also mean simply the testing of nuclear delivery weapons and not detonating bombs themselves.

Moon of Alabama astutely points out that A Nuclear Delivery Vehicle Is Not A Nuclear War Head:

However Trumps next sentence is not about testing nuclear warheads. It is about testing of carrier systems that can deploy nuclear warheads.

Trump says: “Because of other countries testing programs,…”

No country has recently exploded a nuclear bomb or warhead for testing or other purposes. The last known nuclear test was done by North Korea in 2017.

It is important to distinguish between testing a carrier designed to deliver a nuclear war head and testing, i.e. exploding, the nuclear war head itself. A nuclear carrier can be a bomber, a land based (intercontinental) missile or a submarine based missile or torpedo.

Still, this is how the world is interpreting it, given The Washington Post and many others gave it precisely that meaning. But given Trump was aiming all of this at Russia to condemn its own tests within the last week of no less than two cutting-edge nuclear delivery weapons, the ambiguity is perhaps intentional and having its effect.

As for Iran, despite the June war and the at this point total and official end of the JCPOA, it is unlikely to give up its nuclear program. After being attacked by Israel and Washington, with its nuke sites heavily bombed, it likely feels more incentivized than ever to achieve nuclear weapons, or other capable WMD deterrent.

Authored by Yael Ossowski via RealClearPolitics,

Among political conservatives, there is no hotter potato at the moment than the civil liability protections afforded by Section 230 to online operators. Unless Republicans learn to love it again and reject the censorship lawfare complex favored by Democrats, they risk dooming our tech leaders and everyone who uses their products to the sharks circling our legal system.

The twenty-six words tucked into the Communications Decency Act of 1996 shielded publishers from liability so they could host and moderate content and still allow a wide range of speech without fear of lawsuits. Since then, Section 230 has evolved to be one of the most powerful legal shields in the nation against civil litigation in U.S. courts. This gave the early digital economy the guardrails it needed to thrive by incentivizing creatives and disruptors to bring their big ideas to life.

Nothing ices a good idea like the fear of a lawsuit.

Yet, to be a rising star in the Republican Party today conveys some kind of fealty to the idea that Section 230 is antiquated – a relic of the early Internet that has outlasted its usefulness.

Last month, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) called on his colleagues to “fully repeal Section 230” to cut the knees of AI companies and thwart their LLM training models. “Open the courtroom doors. Allow people to sue who have their rights taken from them, including suing companies and actors and individuals who use AI,” said Hawley.

He’s joined in these efforts by fellow Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham and Marsha Blackburn, not to mention Democratic Sens. Dick Durbin and Amyâ?¯Klobuchar.

According to the Section 230 Legislation Tracker maintained by Lawfare and the Center on Technology Policy at UNC-Chapel Hill, there have already been 41 separate bills aimed at curbing some aspects of the law by both Democrats and Republicans in the last two sessions.

The principal motivation for Democrats, including former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, has always been to force censorship of social media platforms to stop “disinformation,” a pretext for muting opposing views. The coordination of Democratic officials pressuring platforms to censor, as revealed in the Twitter Files, proves this beyond dispute.

To highlight the irony, we should remember that President Donald Trump is not only the chief executive of the United States, but also the owner of a social media platform that currently enjoys broad Section 230 protections afforded to any online publisher.

A wish to cripple Section 230 means making Truth Social a target as much as YouTube or Instagram. We should harbor no illusions that right-leaning media publications, podcasters, and websites would be the first to be kneecapped in a post-Section 230 world. Can MAGA and the GOP swallow that pill?

In that scenario, it will be the millions of Americans who currently enjoy freedom of speech online that will lose out. It’s the tens of millions of Americans turning to AI tools to become more productive, create value, and build the next great economic engines of our time who will be harmed by dismantling Section 230.

If Republicans want to cement American dominance in technological innovation, they will have to abandon this devil’s dance on gutting Section 230 liability protections. This is a censorship trap laid by Democrats to benefit them once they return to power.

The premise of broad civil liability protection for platforms is a core principle that has and should be applied to producers across America’s innovative stack, whether it’s oil and gas firms fending off dubious climate cases or artificial intelligence firms building the tools that are the key to America’s present economic dominance.

For one, Republicans should follow the lead of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who has rightly intimated that Section 230 likely applies to AI chatbots where many Americans are now getting their information. Legislation to further clarify this would alleviate thousands of hours of courtroom battles and millions awarded to plaintiff attorneys, all too keen to make their millions suing AI companies.

Forcing platforms to spend their time fending off trial lawyers circling their offices will not only hasten censorship on American internet platforms, but it will also require it. There is no business model for online connection with liability protection removed.

If Section 230 falls and every online dispute is dragged into court, it won’t be Big Tech that pays the price – it will be Americans whose speech and livelihoods hang in the balance.

Yaël Ossowski is deputy director of the Consumer Choice Center, a global consumer advocacy group.

Authored by James Howard Kunstler,

“. . . the fake news isn’t reporting on Operation Arctic Frost. It’s not that they’re trying to cover it up. . . but that they actually think it was totally normal and legitimate.”

 – Hans Mahncke

Surely you’ve noticed in recent years just how gruesome the Halloween townscape has become with our competitive yard displays of giant skeletons, shrieking ghouls, corpses seeming to emerge from the crabgrass, and miscellaneous body parts strewn about the property. The symbolism seems pretty overt: America yearns to become a death cult.

The world has seen this before and it generally doesn’t end well. Something in their equivalent of the zeitgeist drove the Aztecs to sharply ramp-up the scale of their human sacrifices in the years just before Hernán Cortés came to their capital city, Tenochtitlán. Bernal Diaz, a foot-soldier in Cortés’s legion, later wrote:

“I remember that they had in a plaza, where there were some shrines, so many places of dead skulls, which could be counted, according to the concert as they were set, that when they appeared they would be more than one hundred thousand; and I say again about one hundred thousand. And in another part of the square were as many rows of bones without meat, bones of the dead, that could not be counted; and they had in many beams many heads hanging from one part to another. And keeping those bones and skulls were three priests, who, as we understood, were in charge of them. . . . “

Cortés had arrived in Mexico in April of 1519 with an expeditionary force of about 500 soldiers and by August of 1521, it was all over. He defeated the empire of a million Aztecs and commenced the systematic demolition of their monuments, including the horrifying great rack-of-skulls (tzompantli) where they displayed their thousands of trophies.

“Sculpture of the skull rack in the Zocolo, site of the great Aztec temple, Mexico City.

Something — more precisely, some cabal of somebodies — is attempting to systematically demolish the social scaffold of our country now. It can’t just be the Soros network of NGOs. The best we can do to identify the central animating agent is the Deep State or Blob, a malignancy within our own organs of national management. It’s shaping up as a kind of American Armageddon, a battle between the forces of darkness and light, death and life. The battle has been going on for at least ten years, since Mr. Trump invaded the body politic — rather like when Cortés entered Mexico and set off a chain of events that ended the cruel and despotic culture embedded there. We’re acting out something along those lines now.

The death cult is vividly on display in our time and place. Minneapolis is poised to elect the skeletal-looking Somali Omar Fateh as its next mayor. The once-emblematic city of Garrison’s Keillor’s “above average,” relentlessly “nice” prairie folk was wrecked in 2020 in tribute to BLM’s patron saint, George Floyd, and has never recovered, written off as a national sacrifice zone for the sake of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Omar Fateh styles himself as a “Democratic Socialist.” This is the next new thing.

Omar Fateh on Right

Likewise, New York City is about to elevate the Ugandan Marxist Jihadi (and self-styled Democratic Socialist) Zohran Mamdani into the top job at city hall. As usual with this brand of insurrectionists — that is, persons bent on destroying our society — the label is yet another language game meant to scramble your brain.

You have probably not failed to notice the incessant recital of the phrase “our democracy” by Democratic Party field marshals starting with “Joe Biden” in the final months of his, uh, late performance. “Our democracy” has nothing to do, really, with citizen participation in governance. The phrase is a cover for their desperate power-seeking — for instance, the “nomination” of Kamala Harris with zero democratic voting procedure — in the service of preserving a vast empire of rackets that siphon taxpayer dollars into multitudinous NGOs and countless government programs that provide jobs and free stuff to an ever-growing class of parasitic dependents in the party’s thrall.

So, the next ploy upcoming will be the sequel to the “No Kings” demos of recent months: “The Fall of the Trump Fascist Regime” mass protest event planned for Washington, DC, on November 5, following election day. The stated idea is to surround the White House with millions of shrieking “Resistance” warriors to exorcise President Trump. The unstated idea is to provoke the president to invoke the Insurrection Act and thus, supposedly, demonstrate that he is a tyrant to their satisfaction.

More likely, if things get out of hand and violence erupts, the Resistance warriors and their Antifa shock troops — sure to be on-hand — will only prove that they are the actual insurrectionists. In which case, this time, expect arrests and indictments of the folks behind the extravaganza, with the prospect of pretty harsh penalties. (Are you listening, Norm Eisen, Mary McCord, and friends?)

Meanwhile, the emerging scandal around the “Arctic Frost” scheme executed under “Joe Biden’s” DOJ to harass and persecute his admin’s political adversaries, takes shape as “worse than Watergate,” in the words of Senate Judiciary Committee chair Charles Grassley. Fresh evidence about this nefarious activity only reinforces the developing seditious conspiracy case that will be prosecuted out of the Southern District of Florida encompassing the entirety of treasonous acts from RussiaGate forward amounting to a long-running coup that never did manage to succeed, no matter how they keep at it.

Ghouls on display on East 71st Street in Manhattan today (Credit: Truman Verdun)

You know the names of most of the major players involved, and ever more members of the supporting cast, lodged in the Deep State, are being revealed daily. Think of them when you see the ghouls and skeletons on display in America’s yards this Halloween eve.

*  *  *

Saturday, November 1, is the official publication date for my new book, the novel Look I’m Gone, live on Amazon tomorrow. To celebrate, I offer readers an amusing excerpt from the book which you can find here at this link.

Authored by J.T. Young via RealClearPolitics,

Virginia’s and New Jersey’s gubernatorial races show the Republican candidates currently matching or beating Donald Trump’s past presidential margins. This is big for these state races and for gauging the overall country’s mood. It could be bigger still if it presages a Republican threat to Democrats’ “second blue wall” in 2026 and 2028.

In Virginia, the Republican, Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, has been trailing the Democrat, former Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger, by double digits as recently as the beginning of October. Before Republican Glenn Youngkin upset Democrat Terry McAuliffe’s bid for a second term in 2021, four of Virginia’s previous five governors had been Democrats. No Republican presidential candidate has won Virginia since 2004. 

In New Jersey, the Republican, former state representative Jack Ciattarelli, has been trailing the Democrat, former Congresswoman Mikie Sherrill, by double digits as recently as the beginning of September. In presidential elections, no Republican has won New Jersey since 1988. 

Reasonable expectations would consider both states comfortable for Democrats in this year’s gubernatorial races: Neither state has been won by a Republican presidential candidate in over 20 years; this year’s Democrat gubernatorial candidates hold sizable leads; and off-year elections historically go against the party holding the presidency.   

However, polls have shown both races tightening dramatically in their final weeks.

Averaging the polls in RealClearPolitics’ list of gubernatorial races since mid-October, we get Democrat Spanberger with just a 6.9 percentage point lead in Virginia, and Democrat Sherrill with 4.6 percentage point lead in New Jersey. Democrats’ leads have been cut roughly in half in New Jersey and sharply reduced in Virginia.

While noteworthy on their own, these results are even more so when you look at how President Trump performed in these states. Over the last three presidential elections, Trump lost Virginia by an average of 6.9 percentage points. In 2024, Trump lost New Jersey by 5.9 percentage points; over the last three presidential elections, he lost New Jersey by an average of 11.6 percentage points.

In Virginia, Earle-Sears is matching Trump’s average over the last three presidential elections. In New Jersey, Ciattarelli is running ahead of President Trump’s 2024 margin and at less than half of Trump’s three-election deficit average there.    

This is remarkable for several reasons. For one, while much is made of Trump’s job approval being negative (45.3%-51.7% in RCP’s 10/23 national polling average), Trump’s favorability rating is higher at -8.3% than either the Republican Party’s (-12%) or the Democrat Party’s (-24.3%). Yet Republicans’ Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial candidates appear to be matching or outperforming them all. 

Democrats will excuse their gubernatorial candidates’ weakening positions on local issues that are sapping momentum late in these races. In Virginia, Spanberger is being hurt by fallout from the revelation of Democrat attorney general nominee Jay Jones’ violent texting and reckless driving conviction. In New Jersey, Sherrill has been hurt by her involvement in a cheating scandal while she was at the U.S. Naval Academy. 

Yet Trump, as Democrats constantly point out, is also a divisive figure who fails to rally all his base or appeal to moderates. In 2024, exit polling showed Trump losing 9% of conservatives and 58% of moderates. In other words, if the Democrat gubernatorial candidates are performing below the party’s potential, Trump too has also performed below his apparent potential. 

Looking to the 2026 and 2028 elections, there is a lot to glean from Republicans’ closing performances in Virginia and New Jersey. Both states are in the “second blue wall,” those states Democrats depend on to be presidentially competitive, but which Harris won by 10 percentage points or less (Maine, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Virginia, Minnesota, and New Mexico: 50 electoral votes). Without these states and the seven swing states Harris lost in 2024, Democrats become irrelevant in presidential contests. 

Republicans are holding their own in the two biggest electoral vote states in this “second blue wall.” They are doing so without Donald Trump on the ballot (which helps them), yet with him in the White House (which hurts them). 

If Republicans are now matching or outperforming what Trump did in 2024 in these six states, it bodes well for them holding control of Congress in 2026. This would deny Democrats a platform for attacking Trump during his term’s last two years, something they vigorously did after the 2018 midterms. It bodes even better for Republicans’ chances in 2028 and for their nominee outperforming Trump, cementing control of the seven swing states and breaking into Democrats’ “second blue wall.”

Building on the “Chilling Opportunity” theme around data-center cooling and the rapid rise of liquid-cooling systems in AI server racks, Goldman analysts have raised their 2025-26 global server-cooling market estimates and introduced a new 2027 forecast, reflecting surging demand tied to the accelerating AI data center buildout.

Goldman analysts, led by Allen Chang, penned a note to clients on Thursday, highlighting that liquid-cooling adoption is rapidly accelerating across data centers amid growing demand for higher compute and the accompanying rise in power consumption.

Chang modeled liquid cooling penetration to reach 15% / 45% / 74% / 80% (2024–27E) for AI training servers, 1% / 15% / 17% / 20% for AI inferencing servers, and 0% / 4% / 6% / 8% for general and high-performance computing servers. 

Since Chang’s July 2025 report, he raised his Global Server Cooling TAM forecasts by +9% for 2025 and +16% for 2026, to $7.9 billion and $14.0 billion, representing +111% and +77% year-over-year growth, respectively, noting that the upward revision is mostly because of stronger demand for high-power AI servers. It’s very simple: more power equals more compute, which means more liquid cooling.  

AI Training Servers: Liquid cooling to penetrate quickly

Chang’s note builds on the chilling opportunity theme:

• UBS Finds “Chilling Opportunity” In Data Center Cooling

• “Quick” Rise Of Liquid-Cooling At AI Data Centers Signals A “Chilling Opportunity”

• Vertiv Drops After Amazon Unveils In-House Liquid Cooling System, Marking Pivot To Liquid

UBS analyst Joshua Spector showed clients in June a roadmap through 2035 illustrating how AI server rack power consumption could surge to as much as 1,000 kilowatts per unit, compared with legacy servers currently running between 10 and 60 kilowatts, and first-generation AI servers consuming around 80 to 140 kilowatts.

More compute equals more power … and by now, you know what that means: higher demand for liquid cooling. 

ZeroHedge Pro Subs can view the full note in the usual place.

Update (1515ET):

A combination of high winds and staffing shortages among air traffic controllers due to the government shutdown has caused significant disruptions across New York City-area airports, with average delays this evening exceeding 60 minutes and some exceeding 100 minutes.

Latest disruptions by airport (courtesy of NYC Emergency Management): 

• JFK: Ground stop in effect until 7:30 PM; flights held at departure airports. Arrivals are limited to 36 per hour through early Saturday. The average delay is 60 minutes, some exceeding 100 minutes.

• Newark: Arrivals capped at 30 per hour due to staffing and wind; average delay 100 minutes, some above 170 minutes.

• LaGuardia: Arrivals restricted to 24–28 per hour; average delay 140 minutes, with some exceeding five hours. Departures are also delayed 15 minutes and rising.

JFK, Newark, and LaGuardia are all under FAA traffic restrictions this evening because of high winds and reduced staffing in multiple air traffic control centers.
⁰A ground stop is in effect at JFK until 7:30 PM due to staffing shortages in the air traffic system. Flights headed…

— NYC Emergency Management (@nycemergencymgt) October 31, 2025

Here are the latest U.S. flight delays and cancellations via FlightAware. 

More delays could follow if the weather or staffing worsen. Widespread ripple delays are expected, especially for those with connecting flights.

*   *   *

The fallout from the government shutdown worsened on Thursday afternoon and into late evening at several major airports, as staffing shortages among air traffic controllers led to delays for travelers. Air-traffic controllers missed their first paycheck this week. At the same time, the heads of major U.S. airlines blasted Democrats and sided with Republicans in urging passage of a clean continuing resolution (CR) to reopen the government and avert potential travel chaos nationwide ahead of the holiday season.

Late Thursday, staffing shortages caused major travel disruptions at several airports, including Orlando International Airport, where departures were delayed an average of 2.7 hours. 

Here’s where air travel was impacted the most on Thursday (courtesy of NBC News):

• The FAA issued a ground delay for Orlando from 10 p.m. to 3 a.m. ET, delaying inbound flights by an average of 2.7 hours. Earlier, the FAA had temporarily suspended landings entirely due to a lack of certified air-traffic controllers.

• The situation later improved after an “increase in staffing” at the F11 Central Florida Tracon, though delays persisted. 

• Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport also faced 90-minute ground delays Thursday afternoon through early Friday, while Los Angeles International Airport suffered similar disruptions earlier in the week.

On Thursday, 14,000 air traffic controllers received their first zero-dollar paycheck as the government shutdown entered its 30th day. Earlier in the day, Delta Air Lines demanded that Congress reopen the government and warned that missing paychecks “only increases the stress on these essential workers, many of whom are already working mandatory overtime to keep our skies safe and secure.”

Later in the day, airline heads urged Democrats to back the Republican-led clean CR. Those airline bosses include:

• United CEO Scott Kirby, speaking from the White House alongside Vice President J.D. Vance and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, called for passage of a “clean CR”—the House GOP’s stopgap funding bill that would reopen the government without new spending measures.

• American, Delta, and Southwest joined United in supporting an immediate extension of current spending levels, warning that the situation was untenable as air-traffic controllers and TSA staff continue to work without pay.

• Southwest spokesperson Lynn Lunsford said the public “expects and deserves to travel in a system where safety and security employees are paid in a timely fashion.”

Besides airlines, the American Federation of Government Employees, representing hundreds of thousands of federal workers, also urged Democrats to back the GOP spending bill. The holdup for Democrats is that they refuse to get on board with the clean CR to reopen the government unless illegal aliens (future voter base) receive taxpayer-funded benefits…

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) recently noted that Democrats are demanding $1.5 trillion in spending, including,

• $200 billion in taxpayer-funded benefits for illegal aliens

• $358 billion in COVID-era Obamacare subsidies

• $500 million to Fake News outlets

• $5 billion for wasteful foreign projects like $3.9 million for LGBTQI+ democracy grants

.@SpeakerJohnson: Democrats are demanding $1.5 trillion in new spending, including:

❌ $200 billion in taxpayer-funded benefits for illegals
❌ $358 billion in COVID-era Obamacare subsidies
❌ $500 million to Fake News outlets
❌ $5 billion for wasteful foreign projects like… pic.twitter.com/SJxrWf37bn

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) October 14, 2025

. . . 

Elon Musk’s SpaceX is set to win the contract to build a multi-billion-dollar satellite constellation in low Earth orbit (LEO), called MILNET, to support President Trump’s Golden Dome missile-defense shield.

According to the Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar with the new space program, funding for the so-called “air moving target indicator” system was included in the tax-and-spending bill that Trump signed in July, though it wasn’t publicly linked to SpaceX or any other contractor. 

The Musk-led company could build as many as 600 satellites designed to track hypersonic missiles, aircraft, and drones that threaten the U.S. and parts of the Western Hemisphere, as the Trump administration pushes ahead with “Monroe Doctrine 2.0,” better known to readers as “hemispheric defense“, an investing theme we’ve outlined countless times this year.

“The traction that SpaceX has gained with the coming satellite fleets is another sign of the company’s growing influence in U.S. national security,” the WSJ reported, something Democrats, their billionaire funders, and unhinged politicians have been furious about and even waged a color-revolution-style operation against Musk’s companies earlier this year, which only resulted in Tesla vehicles being firebombed. 

Trump’s Golden Dome missile defense shield is estimated to cost $175 billion, but some Wall Street analysts suggest the price tag could cost many billions more. Operational timing of the new defense shield is slated for the end of Trump’s second term. 

Other defense firms, including Anduril, Palantir, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and L3Harris, have also proposed technologies for Golden Dome. Goldman analysts have been very bullish on L3Harris (read report). Lawmakers such as Sen. Rick Scott warned that Trump’s missile shield project risks “vendor lock” and called for more competition to prevent overreliance on a single contractor. 

In mid-June, Breaking Defense first reported that the Space Force contracted SpaceX to build MILNET “hybrid mesh network”… 

“The network will use terminals created by SpaceX for its Starshield satellites being configured for military use, which also can link into SpaceX’s commercial Starlink constellation. The Starshield terminals have more encryption than those sold to consumers for Starlink access,” Breaking Defense wrote in a report, citing comments from Col. Jeff Weisler, Delta 8 commander, over the summer. 

As the Trump administration rushes to secure the Western Hemisphere amid a world fracturing into a bipolar state and undergoing one of the biggest military reposturings in a generation, we recently noted: What good is the Golden Dome when China’s “assassin’s mace” hybrid warfare strategy, designed to exploit U.S. vulnerabilities from within, has been underway for years?

A GOP led House Oversight Committee has submitted a report to Attorney General Pam Bondi asserting that former president Joe Biden’s “cognitive decline” was so severe he may not have been aware of pardons he allegedly signed by autopen. 

Republicans argue that the proper course is to err on the side of caution given evidence of Biden’s decaying mental condition – Even if the President was made aware of the sweeping documents rather than his aides using his autopen signature to falsify the pardons, it is likely that he still had no understanding of what the documents actually contained. 

Conservatives on the committee advise Bondi that the 4,245 presidential pardons and commutations issued by the Democrat, 82, should therefore be placed under review and could be considered invalid.  Republican Senator Josh Hawley chimed in on the issue, expressing deep concerns over some of the Biden signatures, including commuted sentences for multiple criminals who victimized children.

The report has been published only a month after one of former President Joe Biden’s top aides – Jeff Zients, told the House Oversight Committee that an aide with his email credentials was green lighting some of the most controversial ‘autopen’ pardons, that Hunter Biden – who received an insane pardon himself – was involved in the pardon discussions, and that Joe Biden’s brain was pea soup.

Hunter received a “full and unconditional” pardon for his crimes in early December, just under two months before Joe left office.  Biden approved nearly 2,500 commutations on Jan. 17, days before leaving the White House, (and issued over 4,200 in total over his term) – the most of any US president, and the most ever in a single day.

If Bondi moves forward with the investigation into the autopen scandal, it could open up a flurry of prosecutions including cases against Hunter Biden.

The panel “deems void President Biden’s executive actions that were signed using the Autopen, and the committee determines that action by the Department of Justice is warranted to address the legal consequences of that determination,” it said in its letter to Bondi, published Tuesday.

The Biden family is also subject to renewed investigation over ongoing suspicions that they misused their political positions to collect bribes from foreign officials in exchange for favors (influence peddling).  Biden did not pardon himself before leaving office, likely because of presidential immunity for “official acts” as determined by the Supreme Court in 2024.

Biden’s presidency was rife with disinformation and a number of constitutional violations, from lies about Biden’s mental health to lies about his administration’s involvement in mass censorship.  His office then wrapped itself, its aides and it’s allies in pardons upon exiting the White House as a means to avoid any future culpability.  It would be a travesty (for him and his family) if those pardons turned out to be null and void.