Tag: donald trump

Soon Comes The Mother of All Supply Shocks

It’s getting pretty hard to tell who is more delusional: The Donald or the noisy boy band of school-yard incompetents that surround him.

Either way, it’s not surprising that Trump posted this missive earlier today. He apparently actually thinks that his cockamamie Iranian War, which is on the edge of stalemate or actually being lost, is nearly all over except for the shouting.

Of course, it’s no mystery as to where the Donald is getting his utterly misplaced optimism. To wit, almost every POTUS of modern times – financially challenged or solid in his own right – has had a strong Secy of the Treasury to keep him tethered to reality.

After all, Herbert Hoover had the outstanding Andrew Mellon. FDR finally got himself anchored down by the capable Henry Morganthau. And General Eisenhower, who was himself no slouch on fiscal matters, had the rock solid midwestern banker, George Humphreys.

Likewise, economics were not JFK’s strong suit, but all matters financial were second nature to his Treasury Secretary, Douglas Dillon. And even after his screw-ups at Camp David, Nixon turned to the brilliant Bill Simon, while the peanut farmer from Georgia had the world class industrial CEO, Michael Blumenthal at the Treasury post.

Contrary to the main stream stereotype, Ronald Reagan was actually deeply learned on economic matters, but even then he had the exceedingly capable Jim Baker at the Treasury during this second term. Similarly, Clinton had Wall Street titan Bob Rubin and G. Dubya Bush had the exceedingly capable Paul O’Neill.

Not the Donald. The first time around he had a Goldman Sachs nepo baby, Steven Mnuchin, whose economic policy grounding was as razor thin as the Donald’s. And now he’s got former George Soros, trainee, Scott Bessent, who apparently fancies himself to be a big think strategist, who actually doesn’t know shit from shinola on most matters within his brief.

So in even more declarative terms than the Donald, Bessent now tells us that the Iranian’s are literally days away from waving the white flag of surrender because he and the Donald have constipated their oil wells with the naval blockade.

Keep reading

Trump Admin Finalizes Rule Scrapping ‘Invasive’ DEI Requirements for Small Business Lending

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has finalized a rule that scraps diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) requirements and other burdensome regulations that affect small business lending, saving more than $166 million annually.

“This is a long-awaited win for both borrowers and small businesses. Annual savings from replacing the Biden-Harris rule will exceed an estimated $166 million annually,” Acting CFPB Director Russ Vought said in a statement to Breitbart News. “These reforms not only make borrowing more affordable for America’s small businesses, including our farmers, but minimize burdens on those needing quick access to credit without requiring them to answer unnecessary and invasive DEI questions introduced by the Biden-Harris-Chopra Administration.”

The CFPB, under the Trump administration, has moved to replace the Biden-era Section 1071 rule that was believed to be too invasive, and the Trump administration’s proposal would have the rule go back to the regulation’s intent as stipulated by the Dodd-Frank banking law. The rule intends to help with the administration’s mission to increase affordability as it would seek to save money for borrowers and small businesses who loan to them. It would also help farmers who get access to credit.

The Dodd-Frank Act directed the CFPB to adopt regulations governing the collection of small business lending data. Section 1071 amended the Equal Credit Opportunity Act to require financial institutions to compile, maintain, and submit to the CFPB data on applications for credit from women-owned, minority-owned, and small businesses.

The CFPB rule would reduce the discretionary data points adopted during the Biden administration and focus on data points set out in the Dodd-Frank ACT and only include a few essential discretionary data points such as time in business, number of principal owners, and NAICS code. The rule eliminates:

  • Application method (in-person, online, etc.)
  • Application recipient (direct vs. third-party submission)
  • Denial reasons
  • Pricing information (interest rates, fees, prepayment penalties)
  • Number of workers
  • LGBTQI+-owned business status

The rule modified demographic data collection to comply with the Trump administration executive order that requires binary sex categories of male or female and removes references to gender identity. It also eliminated disaggregated race and ethnicity categories and collects only aggregate categories to limit complexity.

Keep reading

The Trump Surveillance State

The Fourth Amendment protects all persons from warrantless government searches and seizures of their persons, houses, papers and effects. It requires that warrants be supported by probable cause of crime and specifically describe the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized.

Last week, for the first time in the modern era, the government argued to the Supreme Court of the United States that the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution did not outlaw general warrants. General warrants were issued in the colonial era by a secret court in London. They were not based on probable cause of crime or even on articulable suspicion about a potential defendant. They did not identify a target or state what crime was being investigated.

Rather, general warrants were based on governmental need; a meaningless standard as whatever the government wants it will tell a court it needs. The warrants authorized the bearer of the warrant to search wherever he wished and seize whatever he found.

The stated motivation for the general warrants was the British government’s enforcement of the Stamp Act. That legislation required all colonists to have stamps affixed to all papers, books and newspapers in their possession. The enforcement of the Stamp Act was the government’s fig leaf for spying.

We know that the true reason for the Stamp Act was to conduct surreptitious searches for revolutionary materials. We know this because during the one-year existence of the Stamp Act — 1765 — a group of enterprising students at the College of New Jersey, now known as Princeton University, calculated that more revenue was spent to enforce the act than was collected by the sale of the stamps.

Historians believe that the use of general warrants for the enforcement of the Stamp Act pushed many colonists into the independence camp 10 years later in 1775. The use of general warrants also motivated James Madison and his colleagues in 1791 to craft the Fourth Amendment whose specificity requirement “particularly describing the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized” poignantly did away with search where you wish and seize whatever you find.

Until now.

Now, in one week on Capitol Hill, the right to privacy is facing its gravest challenges since pre-colonial days, in Congress and the Supreme Court. Congress will wrestle with Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which expires in just days, and the court will hear a claim that general warrants are still viable.

Sec. 702 permits warrantless surveillance on Americans by permitting federal agents to use software that allows them to conduct surveillance of all fiber optic means of communication — mobile phones, message texting, emails — based on the lawful communications of some Americans to foreign persons and then their subsequent lawful communications to other Americans. The “other Americans” can include all 340 million of us.

Theoretically, the data gathered from these warrantless searches cannot be used for criminal prosecutions, since even the feds who do this spying have told members of Congress that they recognize the need for search warrants to access the content of the data. There are at least two reasons that no one should believe what the feds have said. The first is the feds lie. In 2023, they accessed the content of the data thousands of times without warrants. The second reason is that Madison and the Fourth Amendment’s ratifiers did not believe the government would restrain itself, hence the specificity requirement.

Keep reading

Trump presented with RISKY secret Iran plan using US ground troops as oil prices plunge global economy into chaos

Donald Trump may escalate the Iran war by sending ground troops to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and deploying special operations forces to seize the nuclear materials the regime needs to build a bomb.

The President’s top military advisers are set to brief him on new options for military action designed to force Iran back to the negotiating table and end the war.

CENTCOM’s secret plans include using ‘short and powerful’ strikes on Iranian infrastructure to force Tehran to show more flexibility on ending its nuclear program, according to Axios.

It would amount to the most intense US combat activity in Iran since the beginning of the month, when Americans staged a high-stakes rescue of downed crew members. 

One plan Trump is expected to review calls for reopening commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz with US ground troops. The passage, which transits one-fifth of all global oil shipping, has been stalled for seven weeks.

Another strategy the President will hear involves using special forces to enter Iran and recover its stockpile of highly enriched uranium. During prior negotiations, the regime refused to hand over the nuclear material to the US.

After peace talks stalled earlier this month, Trump imposed a naval blockade on all Iranian ports in the Gulf.

Tehran, meanwhile, has shut down oil shipping lanes by attacking tankers with speedboats and laying sea mines in the strait.

Trump’s new pressure campaign to reopen the strait comes as the global oil market has plunged into chaos, driving US gas prices to their highest level per gallon since 2022.

US gas prices rose another 7 cents on Thursday to $4.30 for a gallon of regular, the biggest one-day jump in prices since the start of the war. 

Gas is now at its highest price since the consumer inflation crisis of July 2022, according to the data from AAA. 

Keep reading

Trump DOJ, ATF Unleash Massive Second Amendment Overhaul — 34 New Reforms Slash Red Tape for Gun Owners, Dealers and Small Businesses

In a HUGE victory for the Second Amendment and law-abiding Americans everywhere, the Department of Justice and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives announced this week they are unleashing 34 notices of final and proposed rulemaking to slash the mountain of Biden-era red tape strangling gun owners and Federal Firearms Licensees.

The move follows a top-to-bottom review of ATF regulations ordered by President Trump’s Executive Order 14206, “Protecting Second Amendment Rights.”

After years of the Biden ATF acting as an unaccountable attack dog against honest gun shops and citizens, the agency is finally being forced to listen to industry experts, FFLs, and everyday Americans who just want to exercise their God-given constitutional rights without the federal government breathing down their necks.

This is the first wave of reforms. More are coming. The Trump administration is keeping its promise to dismantle the deep-state gun-control apparatus piece by piece.

“The Second Amendment is not a second-class right,” said U.S. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche. “This Department of Justice is ending the weaponization of federal authority against law-abiding gun owners. We will continue to vigorously defend their rights as the Constitution demands.”

Below are the summary of the 34 proposed and final regulatory changes affecting firearms, explosives, importation, federal firearms licensees (FFLs), and ATF procedures.

Keep reading

More Details Emerge of Trump’s Secret Use of ICE to Spy on Critics

Lawmakers and privacy advocates are demanding answers from the Trump administration about its weaponization of digital tools and popular web platforms to spy on critics and activists. Targets have included a student who attended a pro-Palestine protest and anonymous web users posting about President Donald Trump’s violent immigration crackdown, but the administration’s secret systems of surveillance likely cast a wide net.

Privacy groups are also making demands of Big Tech firms such as Meta and Google, which have come under pressure from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to hand over identifying information for anonymous users. Officials from the agency have wielded legally dubious administrative subpoenas — meant to be used to determine duties on imported products — in an attempt to compel the information.

The efforts to expose domestic spying under the Trump administration offer a preview of how Democrats could yield subpoena power next year if voters hand them the House majority in November. Rep. Delia Ramirez, a Democrat from Illinois who was appointed ranking member of the cybersecurity subcommittee of the House Committee on Homeland Security this week, said emerging technologies are being used to violate civil rights and target Trump’s critics.

“The Trump-Miller regime is weaponizing the government and abusing every authority to persecute anyone whom they perceive as an enemy,” Ramirez told Truthout in a text on April 29, referencing Stephen Miller, the anti-immigrant extremist serving as a top adviser to Trump. “And fascism always requires a public enemy.”

ICE Targets Personal Information of Trump Critics

On April 17, attorneys with the Civil Liberties Defense Center filed a motion in federal court to throw out a grand jury subpoena that Reddit received from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) demanding “extensive private information” about an anonymous user. The user had posted statements critical of ICE and other political content on Reddit, a popular online discussion forum.

Reddit originally received an administrative subpoena from an ICE official in Virginia demanding the user’s personal information, The Intercept first reported earlier this month. The Civil Liberties Defense Center, representing the Reddit user, immediately filed a motion against the summons. Rather than defend the original administrative subpoena in court, ICE switched tactics in early April and demanded that Reddit attorneys appear before a secret grand jury, according to organization’s executive director Lauren Regan.

Keep reading

US presidential security deliberately weak – anti-terrorism expert

The latest assassination attempt on US President Donald Trump was not only a complete security failure but a product of systemic weakness that may even be deliberate, a special forces veteran of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) has told RT. 

Cole Tomas Allen, a 31‑year‑old teacher from California, has been charged with trying to assassinate the US president during a dinner event at the Washington Hilton on Saturday. Allen had reportedly checked into the hotel the day before. On the day of the attack, he used an internal stairwell to get to the hotel’s terrace level where the event was held. Armed with a pump-action shotgun, a semi-automatic handgun, and three knives, Allen rushed through the metal detector frame and engaged in a gunfight with Secret Service agents. He was apprehended just a few meters from the ballroom.

Reserve Lieutenant Colonel Andrey Popov, a veteran of the FSB’s elite Alpha Group anti‑terrorism unit, has argued that the Secret Service made a number of blatant “organizational mistakes” and suggested that its repeated failures to prevent attacks on the American leader are “part of the system.”

According to Popov, such an incident would have never happened if the Security Service had followed standard security and anti-terrorism procedures and had done its due diligence ahead of the event, such as properly vetting all the hotel guests, reviewing building plans, sealing doors and ventilation, setting up proper metal detectors, and stationing additional security forces. “In a decent hotel, a person from the budget zone simply cannot physically get into the VIP zone,” he said.

Keep reading

No, The Trump Administration Shouldn’t Bail Out Spirit Airlines

At a time when Republicans in Congress need to generate enthusiasm ahead of the November midterm elections, the Trump administration is contemplating a move that would undermine conservative support. The president’s talk of a potential $500 million bailout for a budget airline struggling to emerge from bankruptcy might preserve Spirit Airlines, but it would deflate conservatives’ spirit (pun intended) at a critical juncture.

The president spoke last Thursday of “helping them [i.e., Spirit] out, meaning bailing them out, or buying it.” But the government took stakes in private-sector companies during the Obama administration. It didn’t work out well then, and it won’t work out well now.

Bad Policy 

The list of reasons not to bail out Spirit stands as long as an airport runway. Start with the federal government’s $39 trillion in debt and counting. With the federal government running deficits approaching $2 trillion every year, and lawmakers not showing any signs of taking the actions needed to resolve Medicare and Social Security’s long-term shortfalls, why on Earth should taxpayers throw good money on top of bad to save an airline?

On top of the argument against bailing out airlines in general, this specific carrier doesn’t represent an economically critical business, let alone a company with national security implications. Last year, Spirit flew 3.5 percent of passenger miles domestically, which ranks it only eighth nationwide.

As it pared back services to stay afloat, Spirit has reportedly reduced its scheduled flights from 19,575 last May to an estimated 9,353 next month. Those numbers raise an obvious point: If Spirit could cut more than 10,000 flights in the past 12 months without causing a national calamity — or indeed without generating much notice at all — then the disappearance of its remaining 9,353 flights should not cause any major incident. 

But Spirit’s liquidation wouldn’t necessarily lead to the disappearance of all its flights, as other airlines can, and likely would, buy its profitable routes and planes. Contra President Trump’s claim that “I’d love to be able to save those jobs,” letting Spirit go into liquidation would allow other companies to purchase and run its usable assets, including its personnel, without injecting taxpayer dollars into a zombie company to keep it afloat.

Awful Politics

Conservatives have equally solid political reasons to oppose a Spirit bailout. We know how Republicans would react if the political roles were reversed. When President Obama gave bailout funds to American automakers, conservatives derided the actions of “Government Motors” for years, and rightly so.

Moreover, the White House appears not to remember the trap that George W. Bush laid for congressional Republicans 18 years ago: the trap of TARP, the Troubled Asset Relief Program. Coming in the fall of a presidential election year, the Wall Street bailout helped transform a middling-to-bad election cycle for congressional Republicans into a wipeout. Republicans’ catastrophic defeat in November 2008 gave Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama the margins they needed to ram Obamacare down the throats of Congress and a skeptical American people.

With families still struggling under persistent inflation, using more taxpayer dollars to bail out poor choices by airline executives could engender a similar public outrage as TARP among the electorate. Unless Trump has a political death wish, he would steer well clear of this type of golden giveaway.

Keep reading

Artemis astronauts’ awkward reaction as Trump teases classified UFO files will be released ‘soon’

The Artemis II crew smirked as President Donald Trump fielded questions about his long-awaited UFO files during their visit to the White House on Wednesday.

Standing behind the President in the Oval Office, the four astronauts listened as reporters pressed Trump on when Americans might finally see the highly anticipated government records.

Trump had invited the crew, NASA astronauts Victor Glover, Reid Wiseman and Christina Koch, along with Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen, to celebrate their historic journey around the moon earlier this month, praising them as heroes of a mission that marked a major milestone in NASA’s return to deep space.

The moment took an unexpected turn when questions shifted from spaceflight to unidentified flying objects, drawing visible reactions from the astronauts as Trump began discussing the long-awaited disclosure.

When asked about his promised UFO disclosure, Trump suggested that long-awaited files could soon be made public.

‘I think we will be releasing as much as we can in the near future,’ the president replied. ‘For some reason, and I guess it’s just a reason, it’s been in the minds of people for a long time. They want to find out about the UFOs and anything having to do with UFOs or related material.’

Trump first announced the planned disclosure in February, ordering the Pentagon to release all government files related to UFOs and extraterrestrials.

However, months later, Americans have yet to see a single document or video from the promised release, fueling growing curiosity about what the files may reveal.

Keep reading

Jimmy Kimmel Invents an Outrageous Lie While Defending His Cruel Assassination ‘Joke’ About the President and First Lady

ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel came up with one of the most pathetic lies imaginable while deciding to defend his wicked joke about President Trump.

As The Gateway Pundit’s Kristinn Taylor reported, Kimmel previously made an assassination joke about First Lady Melania Trump and her husband President Donald Trump, saying she looked like an “expectant widow.”

This happened just two days before another deranged terrorist tried to take out the president.

“And of course, our first lady, Melania, is here. Look at Mel, so beautiful. Mrs. Trump, you have a glow like an expectant widow,” Kimmel said during a mock White House Correspondent’s dinner last week.

“You know, Melania’s birthday is on Sunday,” he added. “That’s right. She’s uh, planning to celebrate at home the same way she always does, looking out a window and whispering, “What have I done?”

“As you’re all aware, Melania is a movie star now. Her documentary had a score of 10% on Rotten Tomatoes, which is a website named after her husband’s testicles.”

This ‘joke’ generated such widespread outrage that both the President and First Lady issued scathing statements condemning Kimmel. President Trump also called on ABC to fire the alleged ‘comedian.’

On Monday night, Kimmel not only defended his sick words, but astoundingly claimed that he was just talking about Donald and Melania’s age difference.

Is that the best lie he could come up with?

“It was a very light roast joke about the fact that he’s almost 80 and she’s younger than I am,” Kimmel fibbed. “It was not by any stretch of the definition a call to assassination. And they know that.”

“I’ve been very vocal for many years speaking out against gun violence, in particular,” he continued. “But I understand that the First Lady had a stressful experience over the weekend and probably every weekend is pretty stressful in that house?”

Keep reading