The Foundry.

Former CIA Director John Brennan is one of the most contemptible and shady people in public life. Few people have abused their position, power, and access with such impunity and hubris.

So, it was a pleasure to read a Fox News report that the FBI has launched a criminal investigation into Brennan, along with former FBI Director James Comey, for possible wrongdoing related to the Trump campaign-Russia collusion probe, including making false statements to Congress.

No, I’m not under the impression Brennan will end up in prison, where he likely belongs, or even see an indictment. The statute of limitations has largely sunset. And even if they hadn’t, the notion there will be any reckoning is remote.

My modest hope is that perhaps a better accounting of his corruption for the historical record will destroy Brennan’s reputation forever, which shouldn’t be a heavy lift.

Power Line.

Biden appointee — issued a temporary restraining order yesterday preventing the government from using certain characteristics (like race, ethnicity, language, or location) as the sole basis for reasonable suspicion to stop individuals in immigration enforcement actions. The order also includes requirements for record-keeping, developing official guidance on reasonable suspicion, and implementing mandatory training for agents.

Back to the Turd World where they belong.

Read it.

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) shipped 1000s of virus samples to a biolab in Wuhan, China despite having no formal approval or safety protocols, the Daily Caller first reported on Tuesday.

Newly released documents reviewed by the outlet show that USAID facilitated the delivery of nearly 11,000 virus samples from Yunnan Province to a biolab in Wuhan, the epicenter of the COVID-19 global pandemic. The Wuhan lab has become infamous for its substandard safety protocols and ties to the People’s Liberation Army.

The shipments were made with no effort to ensure the samples were not used in bioweapons or remained accessible to U.S. government. The virus samples were derived from humans, bats, and rodents and were collected over the course of a 10-year period.

And this is why Fauci was given a going-away pardon from the Biden Bitches.

Power Line.

From The Hill newspaper,

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced Monday that it would rescind protections from deportation for Nicaragua and Honduras.

The move ends temporary protected status (TPS) for citizens of those countries living in the U.S., which were both established after the same deadly hurricane and in place for more than 25 years.

25 years? You read that correctly. The TPS status dates from 1999 and Hurricane Mitch, which struck Central America in late October 1998. The move impacts some 55,000 refugees, mostly from Honduras, the nation hardest hit from the storm.

Two things are remarkable about the story. First, an extremely powerful hurricane (180 MPH winds,75 inches of rain) occurred in a previous century. Second, this “temporary status” has lingered on for more than a quarter century.

I’m sure some district judge somewhere will try to block the move, but how long is temporary?

Read it.

Planned Parenthood sued the Trump administration on Monday over a provision in President Donald Trump’s sweeping domestic policy bill that would strip funding from health centers operated by the reproductive healthcare and abortion provider.

In a complaint filed in Boston federal court, Planned Parenthood said the provision is unconstitutional, and its clear purpose is to prevent its nearly 600 health centers from receiving Medicaid reimbursements.

Because, as we all know, once anyone has received money from the Federal government–and the Federal taxpayer–they are entitled to that much (or more) forever after.

Read it.

Abstract
Governments originally meant for civil asset forfeiture laws to take the profit out of crime and show that crime literally does not pay. Since governments keep the seized assets for themselves, however, these laws lead to perverse incentives. Instead of police using resources to fight crime that has actual victims, police go after drug buyers to find assets to seize to increase the police budget. This paper attempts to show that police are ordinary, rational people who attempt to maximize their welfare. Police unions lobby to block regulations that limit forfeiture laws; seized assets and drug arrests have gone up while drug usage has not. Instead of trying to reduce crime, the police become the criminals by taking honest people’s belongings. This paper also shows the effect of forfeiture on drug prices and how law enforcement has no incentive to reduce arrests for victimless crimes.

Give people an excuse to take your stuff, and they will take your stuff.

Read it.

A Kenyan national convicted of sexually assaulting a sleeping woman in Minnesota wasn’t deported after his prison sentence — he was promoted.

Wilson Tindi holds a director position at the Minnesota Department of Education, where he audits taxpayer spending and oversees internal accountability.

Court records show Tindi was convicted in 2016 of fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct after breaking into a woman’s home and assaulting her in bed where she slept. He pleaded guilty to the sex assault charge in exchange for prosecutors dropping a first-degree burglary charge.

Tindi was sentenced to two years in prison and ordered to register as a predatory offender. His sentence was stayed for five years, but he was also sentenced to 210 days in the workhouse, records show.

However, despite the felony conviction and offender status, Tindi serves as Director of Internal Audit and Advisory Services at MDE, according to public records and his LinkedIn profile.

UPDATE: Tim Walz Admin Promoted Sexual Assault Convict To Top Agency Role (Hudson Crozier/The Daily Caller)

Read it.

While tax rates are at historic highs, the complexity of the Tax Code itself presents enough problems to be worthy of a complete renewal.

• The first problem with the Tax Code complexity is that enforcement has become such a nightmare that even the well-funded IRS cannot begin to properly enforce it.
• The next problem is that the tax code’s complexity unfairly benefits those with time, resources, and ironically, money, to spend avoiding taxation, allowing the richest and most unethical to benefit from the web of confusion.
• The last problem with the tax code is that it creates a fundamental rift between the American people and the government through providing a realistic view into the complexity and self-contradictory nature of the state.

Newsbusters.

Here’s how it’s so easy to identify the national media as liberal Democrats: They hate “moderate” Democrats. They love moderate Republicans. They despise disunity in their party, and love to fester disunity in the Other Party.

This week, we’ve witnessed an outpouring of love for Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, whom the Institute for Legislative Analysis evaluated as voting for limited government just 37 percent of the time in 2024. These journalists loathed “centrist” Democrats like Sen. Joe Manchin or even Sen. Kyrsten Sinema.

Murkowski is selling a new book titled Far from Home: An Alaskan Senator Faces the Extreme Climate of Washington, D.C. The liberal networks haven’t offered a welcome wagon to books by conservative senators like Tom Cotton, Mike Lee, and especially, Rand Paul, whose last book put Anthony Fauci on the cover and was titled Deception: The Great Covid-19 Coverup.

Read it.

Didn’t know it was possible to ‘smuggle’ frog embryos.

Don’t know why they’re wasting time and YOUR MONEY on this bullshit.

Read it.

My, what a surprise. The U.S. has been doing this forever. In order to renounce one’s U.S. citizenship, they charge an exit tax calculated as if you’d sold every property you own. Your money is actually the government’s money, and they will charge you for taking their money away.

Affluent residents across the continent are now facing exit levies before they make the move to tax havens such as Monaco, Dubai, and Switzerland. This is a result of some nations’ efforts to slow down—or even halt—the departure of these ultrahigh-net-worth individuals, Bloomberg reported.

With the exit tax, countries are aiming to collect a portion of the profits that a person has generated while using that nation’s infrastructure to build their assets. The implementation has faced criticism, since individuals are required to pay levies on unsold assets. Even so, exit taxes have become more prevalent in the past year: Recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic, among other expenses for the public, and slower growth overall has left European governments searching for ways to increase funds, according to Bloomberg.

“A lot of countries are bringing in exit taxes,” David Lesperance, founder of wealth management company Lesperance & Associates, told Bloomberg. “Clients who have illiquid assets and mortgages are then hesitant to trigger [them] because they just don’t have the money to pay the bill.”

And some people think it is worth it, just to escape the Gulag.

Read it.

It seems many still harbor, or want to perpetuate, the illusion that our Social Security system is not in trouble.

Let me quote here from a press release from the Social Security Administration released March 31, 2023:

“The Social Security Board of Trustees today released its annual report on the financial status of the Social Security Trust Funds. The combined asset reserves of the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance and Disability Insurance (OASI and DI) Trust Funds are projected to become depleted in 2034, one year earlier than projected last year, with 80% of benefits payable at that time.”

In 2034, per the report, “if Congress does not act before then … there would be sufficient income coming in to pay 80% of scheduled benefits.”

It couldn’t be clearer. In 10 years, with no action from Congress, everyone will begin receiving 80% of what they are currently receiving, or promised, under the existing Social Security system.

Can anyone imagine getting a notice from a private retirement provider saying that in 10 years all beneficiaries will begin receiving 80% of what they were promised?

How did we get into this situation? It’s the wonders of government planning, of socialism.

Every entitlement program eventually leads to insolvency, because resources are limited but demand is unlimited. The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.

Read it.

A federally funded left-wing nonprofit that provides legal services for detained illegal immigrants has launched a bond fund that frees them from ICE custody.

Immigrant Defenders Law Center (ImmDef) partnered with Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice (CLUE Justice) to establish the Detained Immigrant Bond Fund on June 7, one day after violent anti-ICE protests broke out in Los Angeles. The fund provides “detained immigrants in Los Angeles and Orange Counties with the bond money that allows them to get out of detention, and return back to their lives and families while they build a case to gain status,” the announcement page reads.

Through the partnership, ImmDef identifies detained immigrants eligible for release and CLUE Justice, another federally funded nonprofit, pays their bonds through donations. ImmDef then provides them with free legal services, the group wrote in an Instagram post promoting the project.

Why are illegal immigrants allowed bond in the first place? If anybody is a ‘flight risk’, it’s an illegal immigrant.

Read it.

Already ravaged by wildfires earlier this year, the city is now dealing with violence toward law enforcement, incendiary devices, arson and more. And all of that is on the heels of years of seemingly endless, rolling Covid lockdowns under Governor Gavin Newsom and Mayor Karen Bass. The latter had the effect of shrinking revenues and thus staffing levels across the city, putting Los Angeles – America’s second-most populous city – in a unique financial and logistical position as it faces a summer of more disorder.

A record-breaking era of overtime pay is likely to keep costs high as police, fire and other first responders carry out their duties.

The cost to taxpayers isn’t limited to California or Los Angeles, though. City officials have alternately declared the protests peaceful and claimed they had them well in hand, and then also admitted they were “out of control” and that the LAPD was “overwhelmed.” Regardless of the varying protestations and the outright legal and political battle being waged by Newsom, President Trump has taken control of the state’s National Guard to defend federal property and officers. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has allowed that it’s likely a 60-day investment with an accompanying $134 million price tag for federal taxpayers.

That’s all before we factor in the cost of duking it out in federal court as Newsom seeks to stop the President from utilizing the Guard.

Read it.

Fossil fuel advocate Alex Epstein delivered a hard-hitting briefing to nearly all Senate Republicans on Wednesday, emphasizing that the Inflation Reduction Act’s “toxic subsidies” for the green energy industry—totaling billions—must be “terminated.”

“Today I got the opportunity to speak to almost all Republican Senators about the IRA subsidies at their Wednesday lunch,” Epstein wrote on X late Thursday.

He said, “The discussion was private, so I won’t tell you what the Senators said. But you better believe I told them the subsidies are toxic and need to be terminated!”

Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, commented on Epstein’s post by saying, “I was there. As always, Alex Epstein was full of deep and helpful insights.”

Read it.

Dozens of US military aircraft are no longer on the tarmac at a major US base in Qatar, satellite images show – a possible move to shield them from eventual Iranian air strikes, as Washington weighs whether to intervene in Tehran’s conflict with Israel.

Between June 5 and 19, nearly all of the aircraft visible at the Al Udeid base are no longer anywhere in plain sight, according to images published by Planet Labs PBC and analyzed by AFP.

Nearly 40 military aircraft – including transport planes like the Hercules C-130 and reconnaissance aircraft – were parked on the tarmac on June 5. In an image taken on June 19, only three aircraft are visible.

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Over the weekend, thousands of anti-Trump advocates gathered for “No Kings” protests across the country, but their aims were not directed at constitutional norms; instead, they are engaged in a protest against the President’s authority over the Executive Branch.

The chief issue in Washington since the second Trump inauguration is whether the commander-in-chief is empowered to control the Executive Branch, which houses nearly all federal agencies.

The Vesting Clause answers that question with absolute certainty: The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.

In response to the Trump administration’s efforts to abolish the government’s vast censorship apparatus, however, Democrats and judicial activists offer an anti-constitutional alternative for the country: The power to fire taxpayer-funded bureaucrats or reduce their funding shall be vested in no person.

Read it.

Topline: Massachusetts’ Emergency Assistance Family Shelter Program recently funded what might just be history’s most expensive car trip: $140 for a taxi ride of 223 feet. For those quick with a calculator, that’s a rate of $3,314 per mile.

It’s just one example of taxpayer funds spent on “improper and unlawful emergency procurements” while the agency was using $325 million in state funds last year to help address the state’s migrant crisis, according to a recent report from the state auditor.

Key facts: The emergency housing program was originally created to carry out Massachusetts’ “right to shelter” law from 1983, which guarantees housing for families with children or pregnant mothers.

The program has been overwhelmed with immigrant families in the last few years. There were 3,883 families in shelters in January 2023 but 7,463 families by December 2024.

The influx forced the state to sign emergency, no-bid contracts with companies that were charging up to $31 per meal to feed migrants on the taxpayers’ dime. One company, Spinelli Ravioli, billed the state 9.6% more than their contract allowed for 493 food deliveries, according to the new audit.

Your guess is as good as mine why Humana is on this list.

The Antiplanner.

The federal government owns about 640 million acres of land — some 28 percent of the land area of the United States — but according to some press reports, members of the U.S. Senate are proposing to sell 250 million of those acres. The press reports are wrong, but even if they weren’t, I can’t help but feel schadenfreude at environment groups that are going ballistic at the proposal.

Federal land aficionados all agree that the lands are enormously valuable. Yet Congress has given away most of the resources produced by those lands, including minerals, forage for domestic livestock, recreation, and water, to various special interest groups for nothing or well below their true value. As result, federal taxpayers lose roughly $10 billion per year managing the federal lands.

The 1980s saw a movement to privatize national forests (about 193 million acres) and Bureau of Land Management (about 247 million acres) lands, but it never got very far. However, I examined the arguments made by the privatizers and realized they were hard to refute. The lands were poorly managed, they said, and almost any environmentalist would agree. The politicization of federal lands meant that people fought over them rather than cooperated with one another to see that they were used for their highest values. Federal land mismanagement had bad influences on adjacent private lands. Privatization could have solved many of these problems.

Read it.

Topline: Nashville spent $1.2 million to buy 108 quarantine housing pods in 2021 during the Covid-19 pandemic, but the shelters were never used. Now the city plans to give 25 of them away to local nonprofits to be used as homeless shelters while covering the cost of renovating them.

Key facts: The combined municipality of Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County bought the pods using federal funds from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Part of the $1.2 million price tag was for certified nursing assistants and 24-hour security at the pods — which was obviously unnecessary because the pods were never used, Nashville Scene reported.

Nashville started installing 25 of the quarantine pods in 2021 but could not use them until the Tennessee Fire Marshall’s Office gave its approval. The fire marshal told Nashville Scene they required a letter signed by an engineer declaring the pods were safe, but Nashville did not send the letter for almost a year.

sd

Read it.

Solar and renewable energy stocks crashed in premarket trading after Senate Republicans unveiled a draft of a bill that would end wind and solar tax credits by 2028, while providing incentives for other energy sources like nuclear, hydropower, and geothermal (which would extend to 2036).

According to Reuters, the draft tax bill released by Senate Finance Committee Chair Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) proposes an accelerated phaseout of clean energy subsidies established under the Biden-Harris regime’s 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. Specifically, the legislation would significantly dial back solar and wind tax credits to 60% of their original value starting in 2026, with complete elimination by 2028. Under current law, these credits are scheduled to begin phasing out in 2032, meaning the proposal would effectively shorten the incentive window.

An illustration of the fact that ‘green energy’ is merely a scheme to get leech off of the taxpayers pursuant to a political agenda.

The Foundry.

The government spent decades trying to make fathers unnecessary. The failure of that experiment put society on the long-term path to collapse.

Father’s Day is Sunday. It’s much less popular than Mother’s Day for a sad reason. Fewer fathers are involved in their children’s lives. That’s caused by two main factors, the first being children born to single moms. In 2022, almost 40% of births were to unmarried women, according to the Centers for Disease Control. The second reason is the prevalence of divorce.

Statistically, children raised without a father face a bleak future. Homes led by a single mother are more than four times as likely to live in poverty compared to married couples. Poverty is associated with a host of problems, including lower academic achievement. Children without fathers around are more likely to go to prison. They’re less likely to attend college. Children without dads are more likely to act out and have substance abuse problems. Tragically, teenage girls without a father present are seven times more likely to become pregnant. And thus, the cycle repeats itself.

Read it.

The program office has emphasized that USS Ford was a first-in-class hull, with the inherent issues that come with a first-of-a-kind vessel, and that the teething problems with her new technology were being worked out for the follow-on carriers. But in its annual assessment of defense procurement programs, GAO reports that the Navy expects significant additional delays to future hulls in the series.

Continued issues with the weapons elevators aboard second-in-class CVN 79 could put the planned July 2025 delivery date for the vessel at risk, the program office reported. And the delivery date for CVN 80, the third Ford-class, has been pushed back to May 2030 – more than two years later than the Navy expected.

The problem, according to GAO, is in the availability of materials and skilled labor. HII Newport News has “persistent shipyard workforce issues” that the program office is trying to fix by revising schedules and creating incentives for workers, GAO said.

Buy them from Hyundai, which has excellent shipyards.

Read it.

The U.S. Navy’s future Constellation class frigates are set to be at least 759 metric tons (close to 867 U.S. tons) heavier than expected, a 13 percent increase over earlier estimates. Concerns have previously been raised about how weight growth with the Constellation class design, which was still being finalized as of April, could negatively impact the ships’ top speed and other capabilities. Overall, the frigate program, the entire point of which was to leverage an existing in-production design to help reduce risk and speed up delivery, remains years behind schedule and at risk of ballooning costs.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), a Congressional watchdog, included the new details about the Constellation class design’s weight growth and other updates about the program in an annual assessment of major procurement efforts across the U.S. military released today. The U.S. Navy chose Marinette Marine in Wisconsin, a wholly owned subsidiary of Italy’s Fincantieri, to build the new frigates in 2020. The ship’s core design is derived from the Franco-Italian Fregata Europea Multi-Missione (FREMM).

The Navy currently expects to take delivery of the first-in-class USS Constellation in 2029, three years behind schedule. The service has, to date, awarded Marinette Marine contracts to build six Constellation class frigates.

The Navy procurement system is so screwed up that they would be better off just getting rid of it and starting fresh. Steve Jobs would have fired all of these people by now.

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Senior officials inside the NIH are working to shut down a Tony Fauci initiative launched in 2020 called the Centers for Research in Emerging Infectious Diseases or “CREID.” Meanwhile, attorneys inside the Justice Department have launched initial inquiries into one of the CREID grants awarded to Scripps Research Institute researcher Kristian Andersen, who is now in the process of fleeing the United States for a position being created for him at the University of Oslo.

Read it.

Topline: An annex to California’s Capitol Building was supposed to cost $543 million, but the price has doubled to $1.1 billion and now includes hallways designed to hide lawmakers from journalists.

Tell the truth: Who could blame them?

Key facts: KCRA 3 reported that the annex will include a new parking garage and visitor’s center and office space for 120 state lawmakers. The news station pointed out it is almost as expensive as the $1.3 billion spent on Levi’s Stadium, the San Francisco 49ers’ football stadium that seats 68,500 people.

KCRA 3’s sources revealed the annex will include private hallways. The building’s current layout means lawmakers must walk through a public “swing space” to get from hearing rooms to the elevators, where journalists can ask them questions about the day’s proceedings. The new layout will allow lawmakers to avoid the swing space.

Read it.

The taxpayer subsidized “journalists” at NPR are propping up Rachel Accurso, a viral children’s “educator,” as the “modern-day” Mr. Rogers.

Except “Ms. Rachel,” his woke re-incarnation, is a sheltered middle aged woman who turned what seems to be a histrionic personality disorder into a $10 million internet grift.

Read it.

FBI Director Kash Patel sat down with Joe Rogan in Austin, Texas, where he dropped a series of revelations about the Bureau’s ongoing investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, including a promise to release jail cell surveillance footage and newly uncovered evidence that could implicate Anthony Fauci.

…

During Trump’s first term, Patel was in charge of counterterrorism for the White House and National Security Council. In that role, he helped lead one of the administration’s most overlooked achievements.

“Hostages, we can talk about that forever too,” Patel said. “Counterterrorism was a big portfolio, I ran it for the White House and National Security Council in the first Trump administration.”

Then he dropped the number: “We brought home—people don’t know this—President Trump in his first term, brought home and rescued over 50 hostages and detainees from around the world.” He added, “That’s more than every president before him combined.”

Read it.

FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino appeared on Hannity Wednesday night to outline the Bureau’s current priorities and address concerns around national security, immigration, and public health transparency.

The interview offered a detailed look into how the FBI, under the direction of Bongino and Director Kash Patel, is approaching both domestic and international threats during the early stages of a second Trump administration.

Read it.

Trump is doing the jobs that Democrats won’t do.

Read it.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered the Navy to review the names of vessels honoring prominent civil rights leaders, including Harvey Milk, who was one of the country’s first openly gay elected officials and a Navy veteran.

News of Mr. Hegseth’s decision, reported earlier by Military.com, comes just days into Pride Month, which celebrates the contributions of luminaries in the L.G.B.T.Q. community.

Instead, Mr. Hegseth’s order was intended as a rebuke of Pride Month, keeping with the Trump administration’s drive to expunge diversity, equity and inclusion efforts across the federal government, according to a senior defense official familiar with the decision.

In principle I don’t have a problem with it. Harvy Milk’s only claim to fame is that he was the first homosexual politician in a significant office to own up to it; he never had any connection with the Navy or national defense, and the ship was named after him only to pander to the LBGTQRSTUVWXYZ+ crowd.

From a practical standpoint, I don’t like it. It sets a bad precedent when the government starts renaming ships after a change of administration. Where would it stop? It smacks of Stalin’s trick of erasing people from photographs. If a Republican administration starts doing this sort of thing, what’s to prevent a future Democrat administration from renaming the destroyer USS John McCain the USS Greta Thunberg? I don’t think that’s a road we want to start down.

Read it.

“I want to come to America. I want to see a country where the poor people are fat.”

NavyMatters.

China is cranking out high end warships at an impressive rate … at least compared to our anemic shipbuilding effort. That means they’re cranking out serious, high level firepower in various forms. We, on the other hand, seem hell bent on ditching our high end firepower in favor of ever less lethal unmanned toys. The latest idea I came across is Naval News website speculating about cancelling the Constellation program and replacing it with small, unmanned vessels

With a price tag approaching $1.1 billion to $1.2 billion dollars each for the USS Constellation (FFG-62) frigate, Naval News asked RAND and CSIS if the Medium Unmanned Surface Vessel (MUSV) and the DARPA No Manning Required Ship (NOMARS) can replace the troubled FFG-62 frigate program.

… can MUSVs and NOMARS substitute for the FFG-62 frigates in terms of missions, roles, weapons coverage, and functionalities?[1]

As repeatedly documented on this blog, the Constellation is a poor excuse for a WARship but it is still worlds better than any unmanned asset.

Read it.

I think we can presume that the ‘climate change’ gravy train has officially stopped.

Read it.

June 1 marks the 100th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark parental rights decision in Pierce v. Society of Sisters.

That historic opinion recognized “the liberty of parents and guardians to direct the upbringing and education of children under their control.” It also famously declared that “the child is not the mere creature of the State; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations.”

Sadly, despite that—and even now—many federal programs continue to encroach on parental rights.

Though parents have a fundamental right to raise and educate their children, and America’s history and tradition recognize the integrity of the family and parents’ rightful role as their children’s primary decision-makers, many courts have failed to properly treat parental rights as constitutionally protected. Instead, they have eroded parents’ rights by not applying the highest level of legal protection. That has contributed to the problems that still exist with many federal programs.

Read it.

A whistleblower from the U.S. Department of Agriculture has charged that the Biden administration was actively operating a policy of forgiving loans to farmers based on the colour of their skin.

My, what a surprise.

Read it.  And watch the video (it will break your heart.)

With the MAGA movement in full swing, maybe now is a good time to Make Air Travel Great Again. I have fond memories of flying in the 70s; easy, simple, inexpensive, relaxing, meal on board. And nowadays it’s unbelievably awful.

New York Post.

The Secret Service has suspended two uniformed officers who were reportedly caught on camera fighting each other outside former President Barack Obama’s home last week.

During the brawl, one federal officer allegedly grabbed her radio and threatened to “whoop this girl’s ass.”

Video published Tuesday shows the female agents punching and shoving each other.

Remind me why we have female Secret Service agents.

Read it.

A visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation praised the U.S. Department of Education’s decision to revoke waivers from California and Oregon universities which allowed them to use federal education funds to assist illegal immigrant college students.

The purpose of the Performance Partnership Pilots for Disconnected Youth program is to help students with disabilities and low-income students obtain a college education. However, the Biden administration allowed universities in California and Oregon to divert the funds to illegal immigrants, according to a department news release. Under the previous administration, TRIO programs could extend benefits to “illegal aliens.”

The waives have since been revoked, drawing praise from Adam Kissel, a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation and former deputy assistant for higher education programs in the first Trump administration.

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In February, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) uncovered $4.7 trillion in payments made by the US Treasury that are “almost impossible” to trace – as Treasury Account Symbol (TAS) identification codes were optional in the system. This left billions in payments blank and unable to be traced.

s”Of the 1.5 billion payments that we send out every year, they are required to have a TAS, a Treasury Account Symbol. We discovered that more than one third of those payments did not have a TAS number,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services earlier this month.

“In the Federal Government, the TAS field was optional for ~$4.7 Trillion in payments and was often left blank, making traceability almost impossible,” DOGE announced via its X account. Thanks to DOGE, those “optional” days are over. “…this is now a required field, increasing insight into where money is actually going,” DOGE added.

Read it.

Top Haitian officials called for urgent security support from neighbors at a meeting of the Organization of American States on Thursday, while the U.S. signaled it would not continue current funding aimed at holding back the nation’s armed gangs.

Because, as we all know, fighting gangs in Haiti is TOTALLY the responsibility of the U.S. – and the U.S. taxpayer.

The Antiplanner.

New York University’s Transit Costs Project has been asking the question, “Why do U.S. transit projects cost so much more than similar projects in Europe, Asia, and South America?” A recent report from the project proposes to significantly speed up trains in Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor for only $12.5 billion (plus another $4.5 billion for new rolling stock), which is far less than Amtrak’s proposal to spend at least $110 billion in the same corridor.

Amtrak’s plan called for building a new line for the entire 457 miles between Boston and Washington. The Transit Cost Project’s plan instead proposes to fix specific bottlenecks on the current line. The result, says the project, would be trains that could travel between New York and either Boston or Washington in less than two hours, as opposed to 3 hours (New York-Washington) to 3-2/3 hours (New York-Boston) today.

The most important lesson from this report is that it inadvertently answers the original question: why are U.S. costs so high? That answer is that U.S. transit agencies, including Amtrak, always seek the high-cost solution to any problem. They have no incentive to make a profit because doing so would lead Congress and the states to reduce their operating subsidies. They have no incentive to find affordable solutions to any problem because they regard the federal government and state taxpayers as bottomless pits of money.

Read it.

Gold has been at the heart of the US monetary system since the nation’s founding, evolving from a direct anchor for the dollar to a strategic reserve asset.

Though it no longer backs the dollar, gold remains a cornerstone of central bank reserves, a discreet but powerful force in global finance.

Throughout American history, monetary resets have been a recurring theme—and more often than not, they have revolved around gold because gold is money.

Understanding this history isn’t just about the past—it’s about the future. And if history is any guide, another reset may be coming sooner than most expect.

Gold, as of this morning, is ‘worth’ $3,331.41 per troy ounce. In 1933, when Roosevelt stole everybody’s gold, a twenty-dollar gold piece contained one troy ounce of gold.

So, in reality, the dollar today has 1/166th the value of a dollar in 1933. That’s how bad American inflation has been.