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Does No One Want Peace in Ukraine?

Peace talks between Russia and Ukraine have been rare since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Part of the blame falls on Europe and the mainstream media for attempting to suffocate diplomacy.

When the first bilateral talks occurred in the early weeks of the war, the West, led by the United States, Britain and Poland discouraged them and nudged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky off the promising path of peace and along the path of war with promises of whatever Ukraine needs for as long as they need it. An initialed draft of a peace plan yielded to three years of war.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that Russian President Vladimir Putin “should be pressured, not negotiated with” and told Zelensky that Ukraine should “just fight.” The Americans, rather than encouraging diplomacy that could have saved hundreds of thousands of lives, prevented the poisoning of international relations and prevented the real risk of World War III, ramped up military aid and provided Ukraine with the most advanced weapons NATO had to offer.

Now there is hope of a resumption of those talks. Russian and Ukrainian delegations have met for the first time since those early talks for a first round of direct negotiations. And, once again, rather than nurturing them, Europe and the Western media are dismissing and suffocating them.

Rather than throwing their influential weight behind Ukraine negotiating with Russia, Europe has pushed Ukraine to adopt maximalist terms that they know will force Russia to go on fighting. They try to convince the Trump administration that Putin is bent on conquering Europe and is only faking interest in peace. They push for more sanctions on Russia and more military aid for Ukraine.

Instead of pushing for peace, Germany’s new chancellor, Friedrich Merz, said on May 26 that Germany had removed range restrictions on weapons sent to Ukraine, restrictions that his predecessor, like the United States, had insisted on to avoid crossing red lines that could draw NATO into war with Russia and into a third world war.

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European Commission Launches €5.69M European Fact-Checking Funding Network to Advance “Democracy Shield” and Expand Censorship Infrastructure

The European Commission has launched a €5 million initiative presented as a fact-checking support program; but beneath the surface, it reads as yet another calculated step toward institutionalizing censorship across the European Union.

This call for proposals is marketed as a tool to “protect democracy” and combat “disinformation,” but the structure, goals, and affiliations of the program point clearly to the opposite: a top-down, publicly funded apparatus for narrative enforcement.

Slated to run until September 2, 2025, the project is open not only to EU Member States but also to candidate countries like Ukraine and Moldova; jurisdictions framed as highly vulnerable to “foreign interference,” especially pro-Kremlin disinformation.

This strategic framing serves a dual purpose: justifying increased surveillance of content and securing narrative dominance in geopolitically sensitive areas.

The program’s core deliverables; protecting fact-checkers from so-called “harassment,” creating a centralized repository of “fact-checks,” and building emergency “response capacity;” sound benign to some. But stripped of the euphemism, this is a blueprint for constructing a continent-wide content control grid.

The “protection scheme” offers legal and cyber assistance to fact-checkers, but more crucially it reinforces the narrative that opposition to these groups constitutes abuse rather than legitimate disagreement.

The “fact-check repository” enables centralized curation of what counts as “truth,” and the “emergency response” function gives the Commission a pretext to fast-track suppression efforts in politically sensitive moments.

Most telling is the program’s requirement that participating organizations be certified by either the European Fact-Checking Standards Network (EFCSN) or the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN).

Many of their members, such as AFP and Full Fact, already work directly with major social media platforms like Meta under third-party moderation schemes. This effectively means the EC is reinforcing an exclusive gatekeeper class, already aligned with corporate censorship programs, now endowed with taxpayer funds and the backing of the European bureaucracy.

At least 60% of the funding will go to third parties, who must co-finance their participation.

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Who’s Programming The AI, Mr. President?

President Trump’s new legislative centerpiece – the One Big Beautiful Bill – has a promising name and some compelling goals: reduce government bloat, streamline agencies, and modernize operations with cutting-edge technology.

But there’s a problem. A big one.

No one will tell us who’s programming the AI.

This sweeping bill includes a 10-year moratorium on any state or local government regulating artificial intelligence. According to The Washington Post and AP, more than 60 existing state-level laws will be overridden if this provision passes. All regulatory authority over AI—including systems that will be used in law enforcement, healthcare, defense, and finance—will be centralized in the federal government for a decade.

Even worse? The bill empowers the Department of Commerce to deploy “commercial AI” across virtually every federal agency—from the IRS to Homeland Security—according to Indian Express and The Verge.

And yet, no one in the White House or Congress has revealed who is writing the AI code, what datasets it’s trained on, whether it can be independently audited, or whether it’s bound by the U.S. Constitution.

This isn’t just a transparency issue. This is a constitutional crisis in the making.

To be clear, President Trump’s instincts here may be sound. We’ve long needed to shrink the federal leviathan and replace unconstitutional bureaucracies with systems that serve the people—not special interests.

But good intentions won’t protect us from unseen programmers, black-box algorithms, and unaccountable automation.

This bill mandates AI integration across government “to improve efficiency and security.” But efficiency isn’t liberty. Security isn’t sovereignty. And no AI—no matter how “smart”—should be allowed to rewrite, ignore, or reinterpret constitutional rights.

According to Business Insider, the AI moratorium’s stated goal is to “foster innovation” and avoid a “fragmented regulatory landscape.” In reality, it strips states of their authority to protect their citizens from deepfakes, algorithmic bias, digital censorship, and mass surveillance.

This is not governance. This is outsourced tyranny, hidden under the guise of modernization.

So let’s ask the question about what happens when AI is weaponized. If the systems being implemented were open source, transparent, built entirely on constitutional jurisprudence, and auditable by the public, we’d be having a very different conversation.

Instead, we’re facing a future where an algorithm may determine whether you’re eligible for services, a machine learning system may flag you as a “threat” based on your social media posts, and a black-box model may deny you a loan, reject your legal challenge, or freeze your bank account.

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Minnesota Governor Signs Bill To Decriminalize Bong Water Containing Drug Residue

Shortly after Minnesota lawmakers passed a bill to end the criminalization of bong water containing trace amount of drugs, Gov. Tim Walz (DFL) has signed the measure into law.

The change addresses an existing policy that had allowed law enforcement to treat quantities of bong water greater than four ounces as equivalent to the pure, uncut version of whatever drug the device was used to consume.

Four ounces of bong water used to consume methamphetamine, for example, could have been charged as a first-degree felony, punishable by up to 30 years in prison and a $1 million fine.

The new bong water provision is part of a sweeping judiciary and public safety bill, HF 2432, which Walz signed into law last week. In relevant part, it clarifies that a mixture of drugs “does not include the fluid used in a water pipe or any amount of a controlled substance that is dissolved in the pipe’s fluid.”

The existing policy was the result of a 2009 state Supreme Court decision, and though it was rarely used by authorities, critics said it allowed prosecutors to selectively go after defendants with the threat of outsized penalties.

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If Only Ukraine-Loving Senate Republicans Put Americans First For Once

Senate Republicans and their majority leader are Johnny-on-the-spot when it comes to punishing Russia with sanctions after bad Vlad Putin and crew upped their missile strikes against Ukraine. Political strongmen tend to get a little testy when they suspect the countries they’re attacking of trying to blow them up.  As Axios reported earlier this week, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., was “ready to move on a popular, bipartisan sanctions bill if Russia won’t come to the table in good faith” on a peace deal. 

“Senate Republicans are seizing on President Trump’s growing frustration with Russian President Vladimir Putin to argue the time to impose fresh sanctions on Russia is now,” the news outlet reported. Axios apparently carpooled with the rest of the corporate news gang on the “angry” “frustration” talking points expressway.

Senate Republicans are mad as hell, and they’re not going to take it anymore.

Tough-talking Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., is buddying up with Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., on an economic sanctions bill aimed at bringing Russia to the negotiating table. Graham says there’s a “new sheriff in town. The old playbook won’t work this time.”  

But the old playbook remains sadly in fashion in so many ways in Washington, D.C. 

Wouldn’t it be swell if Senate Republicans displayed the same level of passion and urgency when it comes to cutting taxes, shrinking government, and protecting our borders? While a lot of Americans agree with Trump that “crazy” Putin may be “playing with fire,” they would like to see their representatives in Washington, D.C., take some interest in pressing matters at home.

Whatever you think of President Trump’s “One, Big, Beautiful Bill,” and the House-passed reconciliation package as it stands is colossal, it does deliver on key policy issues Americans overwhelmingly support. Topping that list is the huge provision that locks in the wildly popular tax cuts Trump signed in his first term. When the clock strikes 2026, the law preventing the IRS from grabbing more of your hard-earned money turns back into a pumpkin without action from Congress. 

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Democrats’ inexcusable cover-up of Biden’s decline — and possible cancer

The American people have a right to know about the health and mental status of the president of the United States. For goodness’ sake, “physician to the president” is an official position. Whoever is in that position should be required by law to reveal to us if the commander in chief has a medical emergency, is diagnosed with a terminal illness or is otherwise incapable of fulfilling the oath of office.

We learned that former President Biden has an aggressive form of prostate cancer that has metastasized to his bones. Tonette and I offer our prayers for his recovery; we feel badly for him and his family. However, that should not stop discussions about the cover-up of his cognitive lapses while in office. If anything, the news warrants an even more extensive investigation into what was known about Mr. Biden’s health and well-being while he was president.

Sadly, it is not shocking to learn that the White House staff might have concealed the cancer diagnosis until after Mr. Biden’s term was up. Remember, this is the same administration in which the secretary of defense was incapacitated in the hospital following complications from cancer treatment and failed to notify the president or anyone in the White House.

Plus, the timing seems odd. The Bidens chose to reveal the cancer diagnosis just as CNN anchor Jake Tapper’s new book on the cover-up of the former president’s cognitive decline came out. I empathize with Mr. Biden, but things just do not add up. Members of the House and Senate should hold committee hearings and subpoena Mr. Biden’s physician, Kevin O’Connor. The good doctor needs to provide some clear answers.

None of this, however, should cloud our disdain for a media that is now acting shocked to find out about the cognitive decline of Mr. Biden. Mr. Tapper appeared on Megyn Kelly’s podcast as part of his book tour and was surprised when Ms. Kelly called him out for being part of the cover-up. He begged off until she responded with footage from his show and said, “One of us didn’t miss the biggest story of the century when it comes to presidential politics, and one of us did.”

Mr. Tapper’s book is filled with disturbing stories about the then-president’s state of mind. He writes of George Clooney greeting Mr. Biden on the way into a mega fundraiser the actor was co-hosting for Mr. Biden’s reelection. In the story, Mr. Biden appears not to recognize the well-known star. Later, Mr. Clooney was one of the first to publicly call for Mr. Biden to drop out after the disastrous June debate with President Trump.

The Washington media elite act as if they did some sort of Woodward and Bernstein-level work to uncover the truth about Mr. Biden’s problems. Instead, it’s been more like watching “Dave” or “Weekend at Bernie’s.”

Conservatives on talk radio, podcasts and social media have been discussing these problems for years. Most in the corporate media sought to dismiss or even attack our concerns. Until Mr. Biden’s disastrous performance on the debate stage last June made it impossible to overlook, most of the mainstream media were all in for Joe.

DeSantis Signs Gold Money Legislation Into Law

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed “transactional gold” legislation on Wednesday, aiming to help Floridians use precious metals in commerce and savings to protect their purchasing power from inflation.

The move can also protect the freedom and privacy of citizens if federal policymakers were to ever revisit Biden-era plans for tools such as a central bank digital currency, the governor said. Those federal proposals were among the key reasons this sort of state policy was pursued in the first place, he said.

The new law, passed unanimously by lawmakers in both chambers, aims to create a system that citizens can use to buy, store, sell, save, and transact with gold and silver.

It creates a framework for precious metals to become a part of everyday commerce, with backing and authorization from the state.

Eventually, the law will pave the way for consumers to use a debit card-style card or app to pay for everyday needs with precious metals held in a depository. Merchants, though, could choose to be paid in dollars if they prefer.

The metals are now considered “legal tender” under state law, too, making them exempt from state sales taxes.

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Anti-Trump Defense IT Specialist Arrested For Attempting to Provide Classified Information to Foreign Government Because He Did Not “Agree or Align with the Values of This Administration”

An anti-Trump IT specialist the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) was arrested on Thursday for attempting to provide classified national defense information to a foreign government.

According to the DOJ, Nathan Vilas Laatsch, 28, of Alexandria, Virginia, was arrested on Thursday in northern Virginia, and will make his initial court appearance in the Eastern District of Virginia on Friday.

The Justice Department said Laatsch offered to transmit classified information to the foreign government because he did not “agree or align with the values of this administration” and was therefore “willing to share classified information” that he had access to, including “completed intelligence products, some unprocessed intelligence, and other assorted classified documentation.”

Per the Justice Department:

According to court documents, Laatsch became a civilian employee of the DIA in 2019, where he works with the Insider Threat Division and holds a Top Secret security clearance. In March 2025, the FBI commenced an operation after receiving a tip that an individual — now known to be Laatsch — offered to provide classified information to a friendly foreign government. In that email, the sender wrote that he did not “agree or align with the values of this administration” and was therefore “willing to share classified information” that he had access to, including “completed intelligence products, some unprocessed intelligence, and other assorted classified documentation.”

After multiple communications with an FBI agent — who Laatsch allegedly believed to be an official of the foreign government — Laatsch began transcribing classified information to a notepad at his desk and, over the course of approximately three days, repeatedly exfiltrated the information from his workspace. Laatsch subsequently confirmed to the FBI agent that he was prepared to transmit the information.

Thereafter, the FBI implemented an operation at a public park in northern Virginia, where Laatsch believed he would deposit the classified information for the foreign government to retrieve. On or about May 1, 2025, FBI surveillance observed Laatsch proceed to the specified location and deposit an item. Following Laatsch’s departure, the FBI retrieved the item, which was a thumb drive later found to contain a message from Laatsch and multiple typed documents, each containing information that was portion-marked up to the Secret or Top Secret levels. The message from Laatsch indicated that he had chosen to include “a decent sample size” of classified information to “decently demonstrate the range of types of products” to which he had access.

After receiving confirmation that the thumb drive had been received, on May 7, Laatsch allegedly sent a message to the FBI agent, which indicated Laatsch was seeking something from the foreign government in return for continuing to provide classified information. The next day, Laatsch specified that he was interested in “citizenship for your country” because he did not “expect[] things here to improve in the long term.” Although he said he was “not opposed to other compensation,” he was not in a position where he needed to seek “material compensation.”

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Former CNN Reporter Shocked as Tesla Vandalized—But Not by MAGA Supporters

Former CNN reporter Chris Cillizza revealed that his Tesla was vandalized during a weekend soccer tournament, which included a handwritten sign accusing Elon Musk of being a Nazi.

Cillizza’s vehicle was vandalized while he was attending his son’s game.

“So this is the first time I’ve experienced the sort of politics of Elon Musk and Tesla,” Cillizza wrote on his Substack newsletter.

Cillizza explained that when he initially bought the car, he was more concerned that MAGA supporters might vandalize it due to its strong association with progressive values.

“The big concern I had—because this was the big thing that was happening—was sort of pro-MAGA people keying the car or smashing it…because America is about, like, real engines, not electric cars,” he said.

“That was the perception back then, right? It was like you’re coding yourself as, like, an enviro-liberal-wacko-communist if you bought a Tesla.”

However, Cillizza was forced to admit it was not conservatives who ultimately targeted his vehicle.

“It is amazing to me that five-ish years on, I am getting this on my car because Elon Musk has now become sort of persona non grata for the non-MAGA crowd,” he said.

Musk’s endorsement of President Donald Trump has made him a target in progressive circles that once championed Tesla as a symbol of green innovation.

Cillizza acknowledged the brand’s shift in public perception, recalling a similar cultural backlash he received after tweeting about eating at Chick-fil-A.

“I hope the hate tastes good,” was one of the responses he said he received at the time.

Despite progressive criticism, Chick-fil-A ranked 26th in this year’s Axios/Harris poll, well ahead of Tesla.

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Supreme Court Unanimously Agrees To Curb Environmental Red Tape That Slows Down Construction Projects

The Supreme Court ruled in favor of a Utah railroad project on Thursday, setting a precedent that could make it easier to build things in the United States. 

The case at hand—Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County—involved an 88-mile-long railroad track in an oil-rich and rural area of Utah. The project would have connected this area to the national rail network, making it easier and more efficient to transport crude oil extracted in the region to refineries in Gulf Coast states. 

In 2020, a group of seven Utah counties known as the Seven Counties Infrastructure Coalition submitted its application to the federal Surface Transportation Board (STB) for the project. During its review process, the board conducted six public meetings and collected over 1,900 comments to produce an environmental impact statement (EIS)—which is required by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)—that spanned over 3,600 pages. The board approved the project’s construction in 2021.

Before construction could begin, however, Eagle County, Colorado, and several environmental groups filed suit, challenging the STB’s approval. Specifically, this coalition argued that the STB did not consider the downstream environmental effects of the project—such as increased oil drilling in Utah and refining in the Gulf Coast. The Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit agreed with the plaintiffs and vacated the railroad’s construction approval. 

In an 8–0 decision on Thursday (Justice Neil Gorsuch recused himself from the case), the Supreme Court overturned the lower court’s ruling. 

In its majority opinion, authored by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the Court clarified that under NEPA the STB “did not need to evaluate potential environmental impacts of the separate upstream and downstream projects.” The Court concluded that the “proper judicial approach for NEPA cases is straightforward: Courts should review an agency’s EIS to check that it addresses the environmental effects of the project at hand. The EIS need not address the effects of separate projects.”

This statement “is particularly significant for infrastructure projects, such as pipelines or transmission lines, and should help reduce NEPA’s burdens (at least at the margins),” wrote Jonathan Adler, a law professor at the Case Western Reserve University School of Law, in The Volokh Conspiracy. “The opinion will also likely hamper any future efforts, perhaps by Democratic administrations, to expand or restore more fulsome (and burdensome) NEPA requirements.”

One recent example is former President Joe Biden, who finalized rules requiring federal agencies to consider a project’s impacts on climate change—a global issue that is incredibly complex and hard to forecast—in their NEPA analyses. The Trump administration recently rescinded this requirement. 

Kavanaugh’s opinion also clarified that courts should “afford substantial deference” to federal agencies in their EIS reviews and “should not micromanage” agency choices “so long as they fall within a broad zone of reasonableness.” 

This point could reduce one of the largest delays caused by NEPA: litigation. Since its passage in 1969, NEPA has been weaponized by environmental groups to stunt disfavored projects—which has disproportionately impacted clean energy projects. On average, these challenges delay a permitted project’s start time by 4.2 years, according to The Breakthrough Institute.

The increased threat of litigation has forced federal agencies to better cover their bases, leading to longer and more expensive environmental reviews. With courts deferring more to agency decisions, litigation could be settled more quickly.  

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