The ‘Projects’ That Could Ignite The Next World War

The Military, Industrial and Strategic Programs Reshaping the World in 2026

The most dangerous geopolitical developments of 2026 are not necessarily the weapons that have already been fired, but the systems being constructed in anticipation of the next crisis. Across Europe, the Indo-Pacific and the Middle East, governments are committing extraordinary resources to military production, strategic infrastructure, weapons procurement and long-term defence planning, creating a global security environment in which preparation for war has itself become one of the defining features of international politics. The official justification is almost always deterrence: stronger armies are supposed to prevent aggression, larger stockpiles are supposed to make adversaries think twice and new military infrastructure is supposed to close the gaps that might otherwise invite attack. Yet deterrence has an inherent paradox. Every military capability built by one state is examined by another as a potential threat, and every response can then be used to justify another round of preparation. What emerges is not necessarily an organized march toward a single global conflict, but something more unstable: a collection of increasingly sophisticated military projects operating simultaneously across several regions, each designed to prevent war while potentially making the consequences of miscalculation far more severe.

The scale of this transformation is no longer a matter of speculation. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, global military expenditure reached approximately $2.887 trillion in 2025, marking the eleventh consecutive year of growth. European military spending increased by 14% to approximately $864 billion, while military expenditure in Asia and Oceania rose by 8.1% to around $681 billion. The United States remained the world’s largest military spender at approximately $954 billion, followed by China at $336 billion and Russia at $190 billion. Together, those three countries accounted for roughly 51% of global military expenditure. SIPRI also reported that European NATO members increased spending sharply, while China’s military expenditure continued a decades-long upward trajectory and Taiwan increased its own military spending by approximately 14% in 2025. These figures do not prove that a world war is approaching, but they reveal an international system in which the largest military powers are simultaneously expanding or restructuring their strategic capabilities.

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OH PLEASE: Karen Bass Tries to Blame Trump for Rising Number of Homeless in Los Angeles

As the Gateway Pundit reported earlier this week, the number of homeless people in the city of Los Angeles is rising, despite billions of dollars being spent to supposedly ‘fix’ the problem.

And because Democrats can never, ever take responsibility for problems that they created or made worse, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass is blaming Trump for the rise in homelessness.

It’s so ridiculous. She probably doesn’t even believe this herself.

RedState reports:

LA Mayor Karen Bass Blames Trump When Confronted on Growing Homeless Problem

The homeless crisis is worsening in California. And the Democrats who run the state there have a familiar excuse for why their state is in a constant state of decline. It’s all Trump’s fault.

Homelessness in Los Angeles grew by about 3.4 percent over the last year. A survey conducted the previous year found about 44,000 people living on the streets, and 72,000 people across L.A. County.

L.A. Mayor Bass recently blamed the president for exacerbating the homeless problem.

“The Trump Administration has driven up the cost of gas, groceries and rent, pushing more families to the edge, and slashed critical safety net funding,” Bass said in a statement.

Bass pointed to cuts in federal housing assistance by about half last year, which cost the city around $70 million.

“For two years straight, we drove down homelessness by historic margins, but as expected, last year our efforts ultimately couldn’t keep up with policies and funding cuts at the federal and state levels that pushed more people onto the streets,” the mayor claimed.

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Over 148,000 Mail Ballots Rejected In California’s Primary Election, Data Show

Election data that was provided by California state officials for last month’s primary elections show that more than 148,000 mail-in ballots were rejected, an uptick of more than 40,000 from the 2024 primary.

All in all, 148,241 were rejected in the state’s June 2 primary election, according to data released by the California Secretary of State’s office, which manages elections. The figure represents 1.73 percent of all mail-in ballots.

According to the data released earlier this month, more than 93,000 mail-in ballots were rejected by officials because they arrived too late. Another 8,300 were rejected because there was no voter signature on the ballot, and nearly 44,000 were rejected due to a non-matching signature.

Meanwhile, some 580 weren’t used because no photo ID was provided, more than 740 were rejected because the voter had already voted, around 640 were rejected because the ballot was missing from the envelope, and roughly 450 were flagged as having multiple ballots in each envelope, the election figures show.

The data provided by the office did not list the rejected ballots by party registration.

The rejection rates varied by county, with Tulare County having the highest rate at 3.52 percent. Alpine and Merced counties saw 3.36 percent rejection rates, according to the data. The lowest was reported in Placer County, with a 0.93 percent rejection rate.

Los Angeles County, the county with the highest population and most voters, reported a 1.34 percent rejection rate, while San Diego County saw a 1.37 percent rate, the figures show.

The 2026 primary rejection figures are up from the 2024 primary, when 108,982 mail ballots were tossed, representing a 1.56 percent increase, according to the California Secretary of State’s office.

Kim Alexander, the head of the California Voter Foundation, told media outlets this week that ballot rejections during the primary election last month were largely due to them being mailed too late.

“Ballots rejected due to lateness are caused primarily to being postmarked too late to count, not because they arrived too late to count,” Alexander told The Associated Press.

Following last month’s primary, President Donald Trump criticized California’s election system. At one point, he questioned results showing Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt falling to third place behind two Democrats.

“Not possible for Spencer Pratt to have lost the L.A. runoffs after the big lead he had,” Trump wrote on social media at the time. “Rigged Elections!”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office has sought to counter claims made by Trump that elections are being mismanaged in the state, including a post issued on X last week.

“California law is clear: You MUST be a U.S. citizen to vote state and federal elections,” the post said. “Voter fraud is EXTREMELY RARE – and almost always committed by U.S. citizens.”

Newsom added that the Trump administration has “provided NO evidence to support” recent claims of non-citizens being registered to vote in California. It came as Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said on July 17 that around 250,000 non-citizens were registered in New Jersey, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and California.

The Trump administration has sought to tighten rules around mail-in ballots, issuing an executive order that would create a voter list regarding who could get a mail-in ballot during elections that was blocked by a judge in late June. Trump has long said, especially in the lead-up to and after the 2020 election, that voting by mail leads to fraud and irregularities.

On Thursday, Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) and Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers called on the U.S. Postal Service to address delays in the state in April.

“Hundreds of absentee ballots received by the Postal Service before Wisconsin’s Spring Election were delivered after Election Day, preventing them from being counted,” the two Democrats wrote to U.S. Postmaster General David Steiner.

The California Secretary of State’s office did not respond to a request for comment on Friday.

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Journalists Who Have Spent Years Comparing Trump to Hitler, Complain That His WHCD Jokes Were Mean Spirited

Members of the American media, who have spent years calling Trump an authoritarian and have even repeatedly compared him to Hitler, are now complaining that the jokes he told at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner were too mean.

Remember, these same people also regularly accuse Trump of being thin-skinned for not wanting to be compared to a fascist dictator. But they break down at the slightest pushback.

They take themselves so seriously and are completely incapable of taking any criticism while they hurl insults 24/7.

Brian Stelter of CNN writes:

President Donald Trump bombed at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner Friday night. He knew he was bombing, too, and he even tried to meta-joke his way out of it.

But no. Even the president’s jokes about his bad jokes fell flat, and he was widely ridiculed for the comedy routine afterward.

Members of the media mocking a leader’s dismal performance on live TV and all across the internet? In some other countries, that’s a criminal offense. But in the US, it’s the norm, so maybe Trump’s speech unwittingly underscored the theme of the dinner: America’s robust First Amendment protections.

In a rambling hour-long speech, Trump insulted journalists by name, repurposed old nicknames for political opponents, made a strange number of fat jokes that weren’t funny at all, and sounded mad at his unnamed writers for giving him weak material to work with.

The Associated Press called it an ‘insult-filled’ speech.

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Trump and Rubio Are Reviving the Old Cold War Racket Against Cuba

President Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio are making me feel like I’m smack dab back in the middle of the old Cold War racket — the racket that succeeded in making the U.S. national-security state and its ever-growing army of “defense” contractors a permanent feature of American life.

The State Department just issued a report that is straight out of the old Cold War playbook. It states that Cuba’s communist regime is behind the democratic socialist movements and radical leftist groups here in America . Reinforcing the report, Rubio delivered a talk last week at a big event hosted by the State Department in which he stated that Cuba’s “sprawling intelligence and ideological network helped to build the far left in our country and in our hemisphere.”

In other words, the Reds are coming to get us … again! Everyone needs to start looking under his bed for a Red … again! And Cuba, which is located only 90 miles away from American shores, is clearly the spearhead of the international communist conspiracy that is determined to take over America … again! Too bad Senator Joseph McCarthy is no longer here when we need him.

First question for Rubio: Is the international communist conspiracy still centered in Moscow or has it moved to Beijing?

Second question for Rubio: Is socialist-communist Cuba also responsible for Rubio’s fervent belief in Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, public (i.e., government) schooling, and other socialist programs here in the United States?

The Cold War racket was the best thing that ever happened to the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA, the three principal components of the U.S. national-security state. By striking deep fear of the Reds within the American people after World War II, warfare statists succeeded in converting the federal government from our founding system of a limited-government republic to a national-security state, which is a totalitarian-like governmental structure — and they did it without even the semblance of a constitutional amendment.

That’s how Americans ended up living under omnipotent government — that is, government that wields the power to assassinate, torture, and incarcerate them for life without due process of law and trial by jury.

It’s also how Americans have come to live under forever war and never-ending crises.

It’s also how Americans live like little serfs under a massive, all-powerful, and very expensive military-intelligence establishment and its ever-growing army of voracious “defense” contractors.

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CNN Host Admits He Was Wrong to Claim Illegal Immigrant Voting Never Happens, Following Discovery of Voter Fraud in New Jersey

Michael Smerconish of CNN, who is billed as a conservative commentator, said that he was wrong to dismiss the idea of illegal immigrants voting during a recent conversation with journalist Mark Halperin.

Their discussion was focused on the discovery of thousands of illegal immigrants who were registered to vote in the state of New Jersey.

It’s amazing that the New Jersey story broke just a few days after Trump gave a national address about election integrity in which he alleged that this exact thing is happening in multiple states.

FOX News reports:

CNN and SiriusXM host Michael Smerconish acknowledged Wednesday on “The Michael Smerconish Program” that he could no longer claim noncitizen voting never occurred after New Jersey disclosed that a software error improperly registered roughly 6,600 noncitizens and fewer than 400 cast ballots.

“I can’t say that any longer,” Smerconish said. “I don’t know how often it does happen, but I can’t say any longer, ‘This never happens.’”

Smerconish said he had previously reached the opposite conclusion after discussing a January New York Times analysis titled “Initial Review Finds No Widespread Illegal Voting by Migrants, Puncturing a Trump Claim.” The analysis found no evidence of widespread fraud but noted that noncitizens sometimes appeared on voter rolls…

Political analyst Mark Halperin agreed that the disclosure undercut categorical claims about noncitizen voting while cautioning that more information was needed before conclusions could be reached about its scale.

“Based on what we now know, the thing that Democrats said doesn’t happen happened,” Halperin said. “And it’s not right to take the word of the Democratic governor of New Jersey about what actually happened.”

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PIPE DREAM: Lawyers for Karmelo Anthony Seek New Trial, Alleging Bias From the Judge and Other Issues

Defense attorneys for Karmelo Anthony, who was found guilty of murdering Austin Metcalf by stabbing him to death at a school sporting event, are seeking a new trial for their client, alleging bias from the judge in the case, unclear instructions given to the jury, and a host of other issues.

To be clear, this is not an appeal. These lawyers are seeking a whole new trial for Anthony. The request is likely to be denied.

There is going to be a hearing on this in August.

FOX 4 in Texas reports:

Hearings are set for next month as Karmelo Anthony seeks a new trial, six weeks after he was sentenced to prison for the fatal stabbing of Austin Metcalf at a Frisco track meet stabbing.

What we know: Anthony’s legal team is seeking a new trial over claims that the trial was effectively closed to the public, that prosecutors did not honor an off-the-record evidentiary agreement, and that instructions to the jury made it difficult for them to consider Anthony acted in self-defense.

They also asked for Judge John Roach to be removed from post-trial hearings because of his alleged bias.

In court filings, Anthony’s lawyers said the judge made comments to news reporters following the trial and “expressed personal opinions about the propriety and correctness of the jury’s verdict, the fairness of the trial and the correctness of the judge’s own rulings during the trial.”

When a reporter asked Roach if the jury got it right, he responded, “Yeah, they did.” The judge then reportedly explained himself and talked about his rulings.

The defense argued that the judge’s personal views suggest his probable decision on a motion for a new trial.

Again, this strategy is very unlikely to work.

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Pete Buttigieg Ramps Up His Renewed Effort to ‘Reform’ the U.S. Supreme Court

Former Biden Transportation Secretary and Democrat presidential candidate in 2020, Pete Buttigieg is ramping up his renewed effort on pushing “reform” of the U.S. Supreme Court, most recently while appearing in an interview on Fox News’ America Reports on Friday. But it wasn’t just Democrats’ favorite solution—court packing—that’s on his agenda.

Notice how he tries to push the idea that the current Supreme Court is corrupt, claiming “the legitimacy of the Supreme Court is, I believe, the lowest it’s ever been in the eyes of the American people.”

He adds, “It’s come to feel like a nakedly partisan institution.”

Pretty crafty, but biased. Then he starts with his first of three proposed changes: putting term limits in place. 

“At a minimum, term limits so that, for each presidential term, you know how many Supreme Court appointments are going to go with it,” he says.

His second idea: raising the number of Supreme Court justices (AKA court packing).

“I also think we would be better off with a court that has something like 13 justices that would match the number of districts that we have in the federal system,” he says.

Lastly, he expresses support for a balanced bench proposal being floated by progressives.

The balanced bench system would see the court expanded to 15 justices. Ten would be appointed through the traditional presidential nomination and Senate confirmation process, split evenly between Democratic- and Republican-appointed members over time.

Those 10 justices would then unanimously select an additional five consensus justices, who would be expected to have broader support across ideological lines.

Buttigieg warns that if the kinds of reforms he and other Dems are suggesting aren’t put in place, it would lead to “catastrophe.”

It comes just about two weeks after he told an Iowa Democrat Party audience he wants the Electoral College to be abolished and U.S. Supreme Court justices to be held accountable.

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MSNOW Suggests Trump Will Try to Steal the 2026 Midterms – Then Completely Dismisses Massive Voter Fraud Uncovered in New Jersey

During a recent broadcast, MSNOW pushed the Democrat narrative that Trump is going to try to steal the 2026 midterms, and explained that Senate Democrats are taking the threat so seriously that they’re actually wargaming various scenarios over it.

Minutes later, the same host talks to another guest and the two of them completely dismiss the very real voter fraud that was recently uncovered in New Jersey, where it was discovered that as many as 4,000 illegal immigrants were registered to vote and that hundreds of them had voted.

This is an example of something that could only happen on MSNOW.

NewsBusters has details:

The segment opened with correspondent Ali Vitali interviewing House Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on his “doomsday plans” for if Trump made a move against free elections. Vitali summarized Schumer’s concerns:

Schumer feels there is enough information to go off of from the president’s own statements, not just in recent weeks, but in recent years, casting doubt on elections that Republicans lose. To Schumer’s mind, it says that Democrats have not just an edge going into the midterms, but that they need to be able to have some reflexes to draw upon if there are attempts to sow disinformation or send federal troops to polling places. Those are just some of the fears that he has.

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Former Dem Operative’s New Book Details the ‘Systemic Racism Against White People in the Highest Corners of the Democrat Party’

The Gateway Pundit reported on Evan Barker, a former Obama intern and lifelong Democrat, who left the party after what she saw as a volunteer at the Democratic National Convention.

In 2024, in an op-ed for Newsweek, she expanded on why she became so “disenchanted” with Democrat leadership despite raising “tens of millions of dollars” for them and why she left the party.

Next week, Baker’s memoir, “Nothing Left: Confessions of a Democratic Operative,” is set to drop.

The Wall Street Journal’s Barton Swaim previewed the book noting:

Ms. Barker’s chronicle teems with people I would gently describe as not normal. One fellow consultant hires a “resistance artist” to paint a mural of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s face on the roof of his Washington condominium. Ms. Barker’s associates, including white men, vilify whiteness and maleness as a kind of daily religious ritual.

Most men in progressive circles participated in the bashing,” Ms. Barker writes. “They’d virtue-signal their disdain for their own gender by saying things like I want to elect more people who look like you, and less people who look like me!” The self-flagellation served mainly as self-protection.”

“People would confide in me, ‘I employ a lot of annoying m— f—’ and ‘No wonder the establishment thinks we are insane,’ ” Ms. Barker recalls, “right before hopping on a Zoom meeting to say their pronouns and bash white men.”

She doesn’t exempt herself from censure. Scanning the résumés of job applicants, she would search candidates’ names on the internet and discard the ones from white men. “I knew it was wrong,” she says, “but I had to do it.”

In an interview on Real America’s Voice, Barker shared, “This is not something that was ever publicly announced, right? So the general public doesn’t even know about this.”

“But like George Soros’s organization, for instance, they put out a pledge to only fund organizations in the Democratic Party that were led by people of color for 5 years, which is, I mean, I saw personally people that were turned down for jobs because the organization realized they needed to have the right identity leading their organization or they could be denied funding.”

“And it just, it had a real systemic effect.”

“I myself, I was pressured at times, there was a lot of social and peer pressure to not hire white men especially.”

“I feel very bad about this, but this book is called ‘Confessions of a Democratic Operative,’ so I have to confess my own sins too, right?”

“I, um, you know, I was in positions of hiring, and when I would get resumes, the very first thing I did is Google their names on the internet to see what their race was, to see if they were a man.”

“And if they were, I didn’t set up interviews with them. And this happened all throughout the Democratic Party.”

“There was a systemic push in the party to discriminate against white people.”

“And it was, it came down on high from the very highest levels of the party.”

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