Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times,

The Catholic Church’s criticism of the Trump administration’s policies regarding illegal immigration is “wrong,” border czar Tom Homan told reporters on Nov. 14.

“Secure border saves lives. I wish the Catholic Church would understand that. We have the right to secure our borders like they have the right to secure their facility,” Homan said.

“You can’t enter their facility without getting arrested. Matter of fact, the penalties for entering their facilities are much worse than ours,” he said.

“So the Catholic Church is wrong. I’m sorry. I’m a lifelong Catholic. I’m saying it as not only a border czar. I’ll say it as a Catholic. I think they need to spend time fixing the Catholic Church.”

Homan’s remarks were in response to a “special message” issued on Nov. 12 by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) saying the group was “disturbed” by the climate of fear and anxiety regarding questions of profiling and immigration enforcement among the church’s followers.

Homan said that under the Biden administration, more than 4,000 illegal immigrants died during their journey to the United States, which is a “historic record.” Meanwhile, more than a quarter million Americans died from fentanyl, which is also a “historic record,” he said.

According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 270,000 people are estimated to have died due to fentanyl overdose between 2021 and 2024.

In its message, USCCB said it opposes the “indiscriminate mass deportation” of people and prays for ending the “dehumanizing rhetoric and violence” aimed at illegal immigrants and law enforcement personnel.

“We are saddened by the state of contemporary debate and the vilification of immigrants. We are concerned about the conditions in detention centers and the lack of access to pastoral care. We lament that some immigrants in the United States have arbitrarily lost their legal status,” it said.

“We are troubled by threats against the sanctity of houses of worship and the special nature of hospitals and schools. We are grieved when we meet parents who fear being detained when taking their children to school and when we try to console family members who have already been separated from their loved ones.”

USCCB said that while nations have a responsibility to regulate their borders, they must also set up a just and orderly immigration system in service of the common good.

Homan said the organization’s views sent the wrong message about the rule of law. He also noted the price illegal immigrants have to pay in order to make the journey to the United States.

“So, according to them, the message we should send to the whole world is, if you cross the border illegally, which is a crime, don’t worry about it. If you get ordered removed by federal judge after due process, don’t worry about it because there shouldn’t be mass deportations,” he said.

“If that’s the message we send to the whole world, people are still going to put themselves in harm’s way to come to the greatest nation on earth. They’re going to spend their life savings to give it to a criminal cartel.”

USCCB is an assembly of bishops who seek to promote and carry on Catholic activities in the United States, including caring for illegal immigrants, according to the organization’s website.

The group’s special message was the first it had issued since 2013. The message received 216 votes in favor from conference members, with five voting against it, and three declining to vote.

The message follows Pope Leo’s criticism in September of the Trump administration’s immigration policies.

“Someone who says I am against abortion but I am in agreement with the inhuman treatment of immigrants in the United States, I don’t know if that’s pro-life,” Leo, the first American pope, said on Sept. 30.

During a press briefing in early October, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt countered the Pope’s accusations.

“I would reject there is inhumane treatment of illegal immigrants in the United States under this administration,” she said. “There was, however, significant inhumane treatment of illegal immigrants in the previous administration as they were being trafficked and raped and beaten, and in many cases killed over our United States southern border.”

“This administration is trying to enforce our nation’s laws in the most humane way possible and we’re upholding the law.”

USCCB Lawsuit

In February, USCCB filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration for halting the funding of its refugee resettlement program.

Under the program, USCCB facilitated the integration of refugees into the United States. The refugees were entitled to receive federal funds as transitional support for up to 90 days, which the complaint said was essential to helping them set up a new home.

When the Trump administration suspended the program in January, there were more than 6,700 refugees assigned to USSCB by the government who were still within their 90-day transition period, the lawsuit said.

The suspension resulted in USCCB having “millions of dollars in pending, unpaid reimbursements for services already rendered to refugees and is accruing millions more each week—with no indication that any future reimbursements will be paid or that the program will ever resume,” it said.

The proceedings in the case were stayed in July upon the USCCB’s request after the organization and the federal government entered into an agreement to wind down the group’s participation in the refugee resettlement program.

In an interview with Fox News in February, Vice President JD Vance, a Catholic, was critical of the Catholic bishops, saying he was disappointed because they had “not been a good partner in common sense immigration enforcement” and took more than $100 million to “help resettle illegal immigrants.”

“You love your family, and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country,” said Vance. “Then after that, you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world.”

While global public debt is lower than pandemic highs in real terms, it remains stubbornly elevated at $111 trillion.

This graphic, via Visual Capitalist’s Dorothy Neufeld, shows world debt by country in 2025, based on data from the IMF’s latest World Economic Outlook.

A Closer Look at World Debt by Country

Below, we break down government debt around the world in 2025:

America’s debt burden exceeds $38 trillion in 2025, standing at 125% of GDP.

Over the past five years, net interest payments on the national debt have nearly tripled. They are projected to double again by 2035 to reach $1.8 trillion per year.

With $18.7 trillion in debt, China ranks in second. In 2025, debt expanded by almost $2.2 trillion, driven by government stimulus and weaker land revenues given a struggling property market sector.

As we can see, Japan follows next with a $9.8 trillion debt pile, equal to 230% of GDP. Even though debt remains sky-high, the country’s new prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, is proposing $92.2 billion in stimulus spending and subsidies.

The UK and France round out the top largest debt burdens, both hovering near $4 trillion. France, in particular, has experienced significant political instability amid contentious budget cut proposals, cycling through five prime ministers over the past two years.

To learn more about this topic, check out this graphic on government debt to GDP around the world.

There is very little good news this week for those hoping to see relief in electricity prices next year, and more states took steps to put guardrails on data center development.

At the same time, new renewable generation projects continue to face delays and cancellations. 

Here’s the story the data told this week in the electric power sector.

By the Numbers

$51/MWh 

The forecast price of wholesale electricity across the country in 2026, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. That number, 8.5% higher than this year, is the load-weighted average across 11 regional markets, but the increases will not be felt evenly. Much of the rise in demand and price is centered on Texas and driven largely by data centers, cryptocurrency mining facilities and other energy-intensive commercial customers, EIA said.

80%

The minimum percentage of contracted monthly demand that data centers and other large load customers will be required to pay Evergy and Consumers Energy, regardless of how much they use, under new rules adopted by regulators in Kansas and Michigan. The rules are intended to shield existing ratepayers from the costs of interconnecting data centers and other large loads, especially if the demand fails to materialize after the investments are made. AEP Ohio has said its data center pipeline shrank considerably after regulators there approved a similar tariff; many states are weighing like-minded proposals.

2.4 GW

The capacity of the planned Leading Light Wind project offshore New Jersey that developer Invenergy has canceled. It cited financial, supply chain and regulatory obstacles as reasons the project is no longer viable. The cancellation of the large generation project comes as rising power prices have begun to exert political pressure on elected officials. Gov.-elect Mikie Sherrill, a Democrat, campaigned on keeping down electricity prices.

$105B

The upper end of Duke Energy’s expanded five-year capital spending plan, which it expects to roll out early next year. Executives attribute the rise in spending to rapid load growth, including many data centers, which they say is likely to continue into the early 2030s. Additional generation added to Duke’s system could exceed 13 GW in the next five years, including 7.5 GW of new gas facilities. Duke is one of many utilities that have bumped their spending in response to projected load growth from artificial intelligence, manufacturing and electrification. 

20%

The percentage of planned solar capacity for which developers reported a delay in the third quarter of 2025, a decrease from 25% in the same period of 2024. The decline in delays could be related to a rush to finish solar projects before clean energy tax credits expire following the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act in July. The law provided a safe harbor provision for wind and solar projects that commence construction before July 4, 2026.

Submitted by Thomas Kolbe

In Oxfordshire, England, along the River Cherwell, a massive illegal landfill has been discovered. Over a stretch of 150 meters, tons of waste have accumulated, posing a serious environmental threat. This is not an isolated incident in England, which now faces the mafia-like structures of its waste and water industry.

Oxfordshire, located northwest of London, is usually a tranquil natural paradise. The county is home not only to the world-famous University of Oxford – it has now also become the scene of a striking environmental scandal.

Over a length of 150 meters in the river’s floodplain, hundreds of tons of plastic waste have piled up. A massive ecological disaster is looming: toxic substances could seep into the groundwater if the river overflows during heavy rains.

Calum Miller, the Liberal Democrat MP for the constituency, demanded immediate government cleanup efforts to prevent an environmental and groundwater catastrophe.

Not an Isolated Case

This waste scandal is far from unique. Britain is experiencing a true flood of garbage – a systemic problem evident in many locations, including the banks of the Thames in west London, near Hammersmith Bridge. Years ago, a massive waste island was discovered there, now known as “Wet Wipe Island.”

The mass consists primarily of wet wipes flushed down the drain. In some places, the accumulation reaches up to a meter high.

The weight of the island is enormous: 180 tons, stretching along roughly 250 meters of riverbank – an area comparable to two tennis courts.

The cause is not only the widespread use of wet wipes. London’s outdated sewage system also plays a critical role. During heavy rain, overflows send wipes directly into the Thames, causing severe damage to the waterway and wildlife.

According to the UK Environment Agency, over 3.6 million hours of raw sewage were discharged into rivers and coastal waters in 2023 alone – conditions comparable to developing countries. Despite well-intentioned declarations, nothing has changed about England’s poor water quality, warned Giles Bristow of “Surfers Against Sewage.”

Meanwhile, additional infrastructure fees charged to households have risen by £123 per year, Bristow noted.

Pseudo-Privatization and Capital Extraction

The roots of the problem go back decades. During the economic crisis 36 years ago, England broadly privatized the waste and water sector without defining a true market structure with open competition and minimum standards.

This opened the door to corruption – a British-style “Kölscher Klüngel (Cologne-style regional corruction).”

Since then, Britain’s waste, sewage, and recycling industry has developed a mafia-like system that acts as a capital extraction machine, attracting mostly foreign investors.

The Usual Suspects

About 70% of investor capital in the UK water sector comes from foreign sources, reports The Guardian.

Familiar names are involved: asset managers BlackRock and Vanguard (the Siamese twins) in Severn Trent, Abu Dhabi Investment Authority in Thames Water, and Hong Kong’s CK Hutchison Holdings as 75% majority owner of Northumbrian Water.

Connections in politics pay off, becoming part of the well-oiled revolving door between government and the private sector. High-ranking politicians reportedly move back and forth like “springboard jackdaws” – a prime example of a revolving door between politics and extraction business.

Simple Structure

The profit-extraction structure follows a simple pattern, like a choking web over parts of society: the waste and water industry was regionally divided, privatized, and licensed to monopoly operators largely free from regulation.

The lack of competition and legal obligations for minimum standards or infrastructure investment allows astronomical returns, which investors extract and largely transfer abroad.

The environmental damage and enormous social costs, however, are borne by British taxpayers. Public health consequences alone merit separate analysis.

We face criminal operations protected by law and executed by operators of this extraction model.

Market Opening and Liability Rules

The solution is obvious: open the market – even to smaller local providers. Competition would force established operators to improve quality. A classic liberal economist demand – full internalization of liability and damages for affected parties – should have been implemented long ago.

The political resistance to such reforms shows the tight entanglement of regional politics and monopoly operators.

It is a perilous alliance that has seized one of the most sensitive areas of public hygiene and environmental policy in Britain – now under maximum public pressure.

A feasible interim solution to curb the extraction strategy could be a capital buffer deposited upon market entry, dedicated to potential environmental damage.

It is not the classical market solution – but it may be the only way to quickly relieve fiscal pressure on an already heavily indebted British government now liable for the damage.

* * *

Authored by Thomas Kolbe, born in 1978 in Neuss/ Germany, is a graduate economist. For over 25 years, he has worked as a journalist and media producer for clients from various industries and business associations. As a publicist, he focuses on economic processes and observes geopolitical events from the perspective of the capital markets. His publications follow a philosophy that focuses on the individual and their right to self-determination.

By Julianne Geiger of OilPrice.com

Germany has agreed to subsidize electricity for its heavy industries, capping prices at about €0.05 per kilowatt-hour from 2026 through 2028—a major policy move aimed at keeping its industrial base from eroding under the weight of Europe’s soaring energy costs.

Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Thursday that Berlin’s coalition partners reached the deal after months of debate, and that discussions with the European Commission for approval were “largely complete.”

The measure will target energy-intensive industries such as steel, chemicals, and automaking—sectors that have warned repeatedly they cannot compete globally with power costs nearly double those in the U.S.

Germany’s power market is the largest in Europe, consuming roughly 500 terawatt-hours annually, and it’s been under severe pressure. Since the 2022 energy crisis, power prices have remained volatile—spiking again this fall as renewable generation faltered and gas-fired output surged to its highest level since 2021. Low wind speeds, weak hydro output, and grid bottlenecks forced Germany to burn more natural gas and coal to stabilize supply.

Those dynamics have made energy security a central political issue. Forecasts of a cold winter have already driven German power futures near €100 per megawatt-hour, reigniting public anger over industrial competitiveness and household affordability.

Industry groups say the temporary subsidy is essential to prevent production from shifting overseas. But critics warn it only papers over deeper structural problems—aging infrastructure, slow permitting, and unreliable renewable output—that have left Germany dependent on fossil fuels despite its ambitious climate targets.

Berlin hopes the three-year relief period will buy time to expand grid capacity and add flexible generation, but analysts say unless those projects materialize quickly, the country could face another round of industrial contraction by the decade’s end.

For Europe’s industrial heartland, the price of power has become the price of survival.

How does the cost of living differ around the world?

To find out, Visual Capitalist’s Marcus Lu visualized the results of Numbeo’s Cost of Living Index, which measures the price of goods, services, and rent relative to New York City (baseline of 100).

If a country has a value of 80, for example, it indicates that prices are 20% lower than they are in New York City.

Data & Discussion

The data for this visualization comes from Numbeo, the world’s largest crowd-sourced database of prices and living costs. The values shown in this infographic combine daily expenses with housing costs, providing a holistic measure of affordability.

The World’s Most Expensive Countries

At the top of the ranking sits the Cayman Islands (94.3). Its economy is driven by offshore finance, tourism, and real estate—all industries that attract wealthy residents and investors.

Switzerland (82.3) and Singapore (80.9) follow close behind, a reflection of their developed economies, high wages, and premium real estate markets.

European nations are also common in the top 20, with Iceland, Ireland, and Norway all appearing among the most expensive. These countries tend to offer high standards of living but also face the trade-off of elevated consumer prices.

The World’s Most Affordable Nations

At the other end of the spectrum, Pakistan (11.3), Libya (11.3), and Afghanistan (11.6) have the world’s lowest cost of living scores.

Much of South Asia, including India (12.8) and Bangladesh (13.0), also see prices that are roughly one-eighth of those in New York City. Both of these countries have massive young populations and relatively low wages, which keeps the cost of labor and services down.

If you enjoyed today’s post, check out The World’s Safest Countries in 2025 on Voronoi, the new app from Visual Capitalist.

Authored by Thomas Fazi via UnHerd.com,

The EU loves talking about freedom.

Just look at one of its recent press releases, launching something called the European Democracy Shield, which promises to protect everything from “free people” to “free elections” to — this being Brussels — “a vibrant civil society”.

All admirable stuff, perhaps, at least on paper.

In reality, though, the Democracy Shield is just the latest vision in unfreedom: suppressing dissent and policing speech under the pretext of defending democracy from foreign interference and fake news.

As part of the Democracy Shield, the Commission proposes the creation of a Monitoring Centre that would identify and remove “false content” and “disinformation” from the internet. As Henna Virkkunen, Executive Vice President for Security and Democracy, stated, the Shield will enable Europe to “respond faster and more effectively to information manipulation and hybrid threats”. The EU’s High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy, Kaja Kallas, made no secret of the anti-Russian nature of the initiative: “we are seeing campaigns, including from Russia, specifically designed to polarise our citizens, undermine trust in our institutions and pollute politics in our countries.”

The term “independent” appears repeatedly in the press release. A new “independent European network of fact-checkers” will be set up in all official EU languages, while the European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO), the EU’s flagship “fact-checking” network, financed to the tune of almost €30 million, will gain new “independent” analytical powers to monitor elections and crisis situations. But, remember, independence in Brussels translates to financial dependence on the Commission. Indeed, to guarantee this “independence”, the Commission promises generous funding to “independent” NGOs and media outlets.

The Democracy Shield builds upon the recent Digital Services Act (DSA), the most sweeping internet regulation ever implemented in Europe. In theory, these initiatives are meant to protect democracy; in practice, they do the opposite. Their aim isn’t to “fight disinformation”, as claimed, but rather to control the narrative at a time when Europe’s political elites are facing unprecedented levels of public distrust, by centralising control over the flow of information and imposing a single “truth” defined by Brussels. In short, the European Commission is building a continent-wide censorship machine

As one EU diplomat recently put it, in truly Orwellian fashion: “Freedom of speech remains for everyone. At the same time, however, citizens must be free from interference.” But who decides what constitutes “interference”? Who determines what is “true” and what is “fake”? The same institutions and corporate media outlets that have repeatedly engaged in fearmongering and disinformation themselves. Just a few weeks ago, Ursula von der Leyen claimed that the GPS system on her plane had been jammed by Russia — an allegation quickly debunked by analysts. Meanwhile, the BBC, often held up as a paragon of journalistic integrity, was recently caught editing footage of a Donald Trump speech to make it appear more extreme.

The EU claims to be protecting citizens from “falsehoods” but on what democratic or moral basis does the Commission assume the authority to decide what is true, especially when it is clear that the EU’s political-media establishment itself engages in disinformation and propaganda on a regular basis? Moreover, when so-called independent fact-checkers are hand-picked and financed by the Commission itself, the result is a closed feedback loop: the EU funds institutions that then “verify” and amplify the EU’s own narratives. The Democracy Shield, like its predecessors, thus institutionalises the power to define reality itself.

In a series of reports, I have shown that the European Union already operates a vast propaganda and censorship apparatus that spans every level of civil society — NGOs, think tanks, the media and even academia. The cornerstone of this system is a network of EU-funded programmes — notably CERV (Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values), Creative Europe and the Jean Monnet initiative — that collectively funnel billions of euros into organisations that are, in theory, “independent” but are in fact deeply enmeshed in the Brussels machine.

Through the CERV programme alone — which boasts a budget of almost €2 billion for 2021-2027 — more than 3,000 NGOs have received funding to carry out over 1,000 projects. Officially, these funds promote “European values”. In practice, they finance progressive and pro-EU activism: gender ideology, multiculturalism, anti-nationalism and “countering Euroscepticism”. Many projects are explicitly designed to “increase trust in the EU” or “counter anti-EU narratives”. Meanwhile, NGOs in Central and Eastern Europe are generously funded to “combat autocratic narratives” and “challenge Euroscepticism”, often directly targeting governments in Poland (under the previous executive) or Hungary — external influence strategies not unlike those historically associated with agencies like USAID.

The result is a pseudo-civil society — a network of nominally “grassroots” actors functioning as proxies for the Commission, amplifying its agenda and manufacturing the illusion of popular support for its policies.

The same pattern applies to the media. My research has shown that the EU channels at least €80 million annually directly to newspapers, broadcasters, news agencies and “journalistic partnerships”— amounting to nearly €1 billion over the past decade. Programmes such as IMREG (Information Measures for Cohesion Policy) have paid media outlets to publish articles praising EU cohesion funds, in some cases without even disclosing that the content was EU-financed. The Commission calls it “raising awareness”. In any other context, it would be called covert advertising or propaganda.

The EU’s propaganda machine extends into academia as well. Through the Jean Monnet programme, the Commission allocates about €25 million a year to universities and research institutes worldwide, financing over 1,500 Jean Monnet Chairs in 700 institutions. The goal is not to support independent scholarship but to embed pro-EU ideology into higher education. Official documents state explicitly that recipients are expected to act as “ambassadors of the European Union” and “outreach agents” engaging with media and NGOs. The academy has effectively been transformed into an ideological instrument.

With the Democracy Shield, the Commission now intends to vastly expand this machinery. It proposes to not only establish what amounts to a de facto Ministry of Truth, but also to inject even more money into NGOs, “independent” media and fact-checking networks tasked with promoting “European values”. Von der Leyen is, in effect, buying consensus — and using citizens’ own money to do it — collapsing the boundaries between the European super-state, media, civil society and academia.

And if the EU’s goal, here, were merely to manipulate narratives, that would be alarming enough. But the pattern now points towards direct interference in electoral processes. We have already seen this play out in countries like Romania and Moldova, where local elites — with open or tacit support from Brussels — invoked the spectre of “Russian interference” (without providing much evidence) to justify blatant manipulation of domestic elections. In Romania, authorities cancelled an election and barred the leading populist candidate from running. In Moldova, pro-EU authorities used “security concerns” to prevent Russia-leaning expatriates from voting. Protecting democracy thus becomes the pretext for suspending it, even as the Democracy Shield explicitly foresees strengthening the European Cooperation Network for Elections and, ominously, promoting “systematic exchanges on the integrity of electoral processes”.

The Commission’s appetite for control is not limited to information and elections. Ursula von der Leyen recently also initiated the creation of a new intelligence unit under the direct authority of the European Commission. The goal, according to the Financial Times, is to unify intelligence data from member states and “enhance the EU’s ability to detect and respond to threats”. The plan foresees the eventual creation of a European intelligence cooperation service, effectively a supranational agency that would operate alongside national intelligence services. Officially, it would enhance “strategic autonomy”. In practice, it would likely function as a subsidiary of Nato and, by extension, of the CIA, especially since the same proposal explicitly calls for “strengthening EU-NATO cooperation”.

It points to a broader worrying trend of power centralisation in the hands of the Commission — and of von der Leyen personally. Understandably, many observers find the prospect of giving “Empress Ursula” an army of supranational spies — operating beyond the oversight of national parliaments — profoundly disturbing. Giving an unelected, opaque institution like the Commission its own intelligence apparatus would mark yet another milestone in Europe’s transformation into a techno-authoritarian juggernaut — one that surveils not foreign enemies, but its own citizens.

Seen in this context, the Democracy Shield appears like nothing more than a tool to further institutionalise a regime of managed speech and narrative control. Its goal is to police online speech according to vague, politically charged definitions of “disinformation”; to compel platforms, journalists, academics and citizens alike to conform to a narrow, Commission-approved worldview; and to silence dissent in the name of “fighting foreign interference”. Yet it is becoming increasingly clear that the real war on democracy isn’t being waged by Moscow or Beijing; it is being waged from within, by the very institutions claiming to defend it.

Authored by Mollie Engelhart via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

There is a version of my life that could have existed, and for a long time it looked like the path I was on. I was a successful restaurateur, financially independent, living a neat and polished life that most people would label as accomplishment. I could have stayed that woman. A single woman with a couple of well-trained pets, a beautiful home in a gated golf-course community, and a thriving business. No obligations, no interruptions, and no sticky hands tugging my shirt while I tried to answer an email.

Less than 24 hours Days after President Donald Trump called Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene a traitor and mocked Thomas Massie’s dead wife – because they were among four Republicans pushing for a House floor vote to force the DOJ to release the Epstein files, Trump – likely sensing he dun goofed, big time, reversed course Sunday night and now supports their release. 

“As I said on Friday night aboard Air Force One to the Fake News Media, House Republicans should vote to release the Epstein files, because we have nothing to hide, and it’s time to move on from this Democrat Hoax perpetrated by Radical Left Lunatics,” Trump posted to Truth Social. “The Department of Justice has already turned over tens of thousands of pages to the Public on “Epstein,” are looking at various Democrat operatives (Bill Clinton, Reid Hoffman, Larry Summers, etc.) and their relationship to Epstein, and the House Oversight Committee can have whatever they are legally entitled to, I DON’T CARE!” 

Except he cared enough to excommunicate Massie and MTG for wanting the public to know which elites were likely ensnared in a honeypot operation, while both Reps. have also been highly critical of Israeli influence in US politics. And based on widespread condemnation among the base, Trump clearly miscalculated. 

Trump did the whole ‘release them, I don’t care’ thing earlier this year after failing to follow through on a core campaign promise, and instead giving a handful of influencers binders full of old information. 

“Let’s start talking about the Republican Party’s Record Setting Achievements, and not fall into the Epstein “TRAP,” which is actually a curse on the Democrats, not us,” Trump’s ‘truth’ continues. 

Following his attacks on Greene, Trump denied her claim that his criticism endangered her – and that he didn’t believe her when she said people are targeting her. 

“I don’t think her life is in danger…I don’t think anybody cares about her,” Trump told reporters before boarding Air Force One on Sunday night for a return to Washington DC from Mar-a-Lago in Florida.

Greene, a U.S. House of Representatives member from Georgia who was long known as a Trump loyalist, has recently taken positions at odds with the president. She said on Saturday she has been contacted by private security firms warning about her safety and that harsh attacks against her have previously resulted in death threats.

She attributed her split with the president to her support for releasing records related to the late financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. -Reuters

Massie, meanwhile, cast doubt on the DOJ’s new investigation into Epstein’s ties to notable Democrats – calling it a “a last-ditch effort to prevent the release of the Epstein files.”

“So, this might be a big smokescreen, these investigations, to open a bunch of them to, as a last-ditch effort to prevent the release of the Epstein files,” Massie said, after Trump directed AG Pam Bondi and the FBI to look into Epstein’s relationship with former President Bill Clinton and various other Democrats – writing on Truth Social “This is another Russia, Russia, Russia Scam, with all arrows pointing to the Democrats.” 

Meanwhile, Massie’s position has caused a rift between Trump supporters who seemingly don’t want the Epstein files released, and those who do want them released – with Pro vs. Anti Zionism seemingly the common denominator.

This is literally accurate, dude. You vote against the release of the files, you’re voting to protect pedophiles.

— Impure Hoonter 🇺🇸 ☭⃠ (@Bl00dOld) November 16, 2025

As we noted on Saturday, Massie isn’t just a signatory of the petition to release the files, but its principal champion, having introduced it this summer along with Democratic California Rep. Ro Khanna. When Speaker Mike Johnson finally brought the House back into session this week after nearly two months of idleness, Massie secured the required 218th signature on the Epstein-file discharge petition, a parliamentary avenue that overrides Johnson’s ability to determine which bills are voted upon. When the vote on Massie’s bill takes place on Tuesday, a far larger number of Republicans are expected to vote for it, rather than face subsequent attacks for voting to keep the Epstein files under wraps. 

Trump’s announcement came days after the House Oversight Committee released tens of thousands of emails handed over by the Epstein estate – which made clear that Trump and Epstein were pals, had a falling out, and then Epstein started helping Democrats ‘get Trump’ – including texting in real time with lawmaker Stacey Plaskett (D-Virgin Islands) during a 2019 congressional hearing with Michael Cohen…

Plaskett, for those who didn’t know, previously served in the Virgin Islands government – helping to give Epstein tax benefits, and worked for Epstein’s fixer on the island before she was elected to Congress.

Also interesting – Trump weighed in on the controversy surrounding Tucker Carlson’s interview of “America First” host Nick Fuentes, saying “you can’t tell him who to interview… if he wants to interview Nick Fuentes, I don’t know much about him, but if he wants to do it, get the word out, let him… ultimately, people have to decide.”

NOW – Trump on Tucker Carlson’s interview with Nick Fuentes “you can’t tell him who to interview… if he wants to interview Nick Fuentes, I don’t know much about him, but if he wants to do it, get the word out, let him… ultimately, people have to decide.” pic.twitter.com/eFIlO1zR7v

— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) November 17, 2025