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Donald Trump has added roughly $1.8 billion more to his net worth after regulatory filings show that he increased his stake in Truth Social by a significant degree - bringing the former president's ownership to nearly 65% in Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG).

Trump secured an additional 36 million shares of TMTG, bringing his stake to 114.75 million shares, according to an April 30 filing with the SEC. According to the latest price of nearly $50 per share, Trump's stake in TMTG is valued at around $5.7 billion.

The additional $1.8 billion was secured through 36 million additional "earnout shares" granted if TMTG hit certain performance metrics over a certain period, according to an April 15 filing. That said, Trump can't sell any shares due to a six-month lockup agreement.

As the Epoch Times notes further, TMTG shares have been on a roller-coaster ride since the company listed on Nasdaq last month through a merger with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) and was snapped up by Trump supporters and speculators.

After the initial surge of interest, TMTG shares pulled back to around the $62 mark, where they traded until news broke on April 1 that, in 2023, the company suffered a $58 million loss.

Word of the loss sent its stock price on a downward trajectory, to $22.84 by April 16, which marked a bottom.

Since then, TMTG shares have rallied, with only one meaningful pullback between April 19–23, and are now trading at $49.90 per share, the highest since an April 3 close of $48.81.

Much of the $58 million loss that sent the stock price falling on April 1 appears to be related to an interest expense of $39.4 million on its outstanding debt, according to the 8-K filing. In 2022, the company made a net profit of $50.5 million.

The former president said on April 4 that media fixation on the $58 million loss was misguided. He touted TMTG fundamentals—which he said include over $200 million cash and no debt—as “very solid.”

TMTG CEO Devin Nunes echoed that in an April 1 statement: “Closing out the 2023 financials related to the merger, Truth Social today has no debt and over $200 million in the bank, opening numerous possibilities for expanding and enhancing our platform.”

“We intend to take full advantage of these opportunities to make Truth Social the quintessential free-speech platform for the American people,” he added.

TMTG’s meteoric rise and subsequent wobble sparked massive interest in shorting the stock—meaning betting money on its potential price decline.

Mr. Nunes expressed concern about “naked” selling of TMTG stock, which is the practice of traders selling shares of a company without borrowing them first, according to the letter.

The tech CEO added that the company has become the “single most expensive stock to short in U.S. markets” as of early April, arguing that traders now “have a significant financial incentive to lend non-existent shares” of the stock.

Pressing the issue further, TMTG issued a notice to DJT investors on April 23, highlighting steps they can take to prevent the lending of their shares by brokerage firms for the purpose of short selling.

“TMTG wants to clarify that brokerage firms may facilitate short selling in DJT shares by lending DJT shareholders’ shares held in margin accounts,” the notice reads.

“Through this practice, brokerage firms earn an alternative source of revenue by ‘lending’ shares to sophisticated and institutional investors who are betting that the stock’s price will fall. If the stock price in fact falls, then the brokerage firm and the sophisticated and institutional investors will profit while retail investors will not,” it added.

To prevent their shares from being loaned out for the purpose of short selling, DJT investors were advised to hold their shares in cash accounts at their brokerage firms, rather than in margin accounts.

They should also opt out of any securities lending programs, according to the notice.

Rep Jim Jordan (R-OH) has released several new pieces of previously unseen information revealing what Elon Musk called a "smoking gun" in regards White House pressure on Facebook to censor the lab leak theory of Covid-19.

First, Jordan shares a text message from Mark Zuckerberg to Sheryl Sandberg, Nick Clegg and Joel Kaplan - the company's highest-ranking executives at the time, in which he asks if Facebook can tell the world that "the [Biden] WH put pressure on us to censor the lab leak theory?" - hours after Biden accused Facebook of "killing people."

On July 16, 2021, Mark Zuckerberg texted Sheryl Sandberg, Nick Clegg, and Joel Kaplan.

Three of the highest ranking executives at Facebook.

Could Facebook tell the world that “the [Biden] WH put pressure on us to censor the lab leak theory?" pic.twitter.com/B1Wno3ayTW

— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) May 1, 2024

 Clegg responded that the Biden White house is "highly cynical and dishonest," while Sandberg said that they were being scapegoated because the White House wasn't hitting its vaccination numbers.

Facebook felt that they had been combatting alleged misinformation—aka censoring Americans—all year! pic.twitter.com/HQxQKrwX5z

— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) May 1, 2024

Facebook felt, in fact, that they had been 'combating misinformation,' (aka censoring Americans) all year.

Since February 2021, the company had been censoring the “Wuhan lab leak theory” “in response to … tense conversations with the new [Biden] Administration.” pic.twitter.com/lB9wg7tlDe

— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) May 1, 2024

Then in late May of 2021, Facebook finally stopped removing content regarding the lab leak theory - though they did demote it. When employees told Zuckerberg about the reversal and explained why they censored the lab leak theory in the first place, Zuckerberg replied that this is what happens when Facebook "compromises [its] standards due to pressure from an administration."

These documents show the CHILLING EFFECT government coercion has on free expression.

Facebook knew the White House wanted them to censor, but they didn’t exactly know what or how much.

— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) May 1, 2024

According to Elon Musk, this is a "Smoking gun First Amendment violation."

Smoking gun First Amendment violation

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 2, 2024

We know the feeling!

Oh yeah, that https://t.co/w1mYccdhLK pic.twitter.com/Y6v64yAy6J

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) May 2, 2024

 

With most of the megatechs having already released earnings, all eyes were on the last Mag7 to report during the heart of earnings season (there is still Nvidia, but due to a calendar quirk that's not for a month) which is also the company which until recently was the undisputed market cap world champion until it was overtaken by the mAIcrosoft juggernaut: Apple. Having failed to enjoy the same AI-driven euphoria some of its giga cap peers, Apple stock had languished for months and was in fact relegated by Goldman recently to the Meh 3 (AAPL, GOOGL, TSLA) and away from the Fab 4 (META, NVDA, MSFT, AMZN). But much of that was recovered after hours when AAPL not only reported blowout earnings but unveiled a massive, record-breaking $110 billion stock buyback program (because when your best product is the 5 pound neck brace known as the Vision Pro you have no choice but to buy your own stock since nobody else will do it for you) which sent the stock soaring after hours.

Here is what AAPL reported for the quarter ended March 31:

• EPS $1.53 vs. $1.52 y/y, and beating the estimate $1.50
• Revenue $90.75 billion, down 4.3% y/y primarily on China weakness, but beating the recently lowered estimate of $90.33 billion
  • Products revenue $66.89 billion, -9.5% y/y, just missing the estimate $66.95 billion
    • IPhone revenue $45.96 billion, -10% y/y, beating estimate $45.76 billion
    • Mac revenue $7.45 billion, +3.9% y/y, beating the estimate $6.79 billion
    • IPad revenue $5.56 billion, -17% y/y, missing estimate of $5.91 billion
    • Wearables, home and accessories $7.91 billion, down 9.6% y/y, and badly missing estimate $8.29 billion now that the Vision Pro is a confirmed flop
  • Service revenue $23.87 billion, +14% y/y, beating the estimate $23.28 billion
  • Greater China rev. $16.37 billion, -8.1% y/y, beating the estimate $15.87 billion. This was probably the one item everyone was closely watching due to the big swing impact the recent plunge in China sales would have on the company. It ended up being not as bad as feared.

Going down the line:

• Total operating expenses $14.37 billion, higher than the estimate $14.33 billion
• Gross margin $42.27 billion, +0.7% y/y, higher than the estimate $42.01 billion
• Cash and cash equivalents $32.70 billion, below the estimate $36.83 billion

And so on.

Looking at a breakdown of sales by product category we find that, as expected, iphone sales dropped 10% in a quarter which most knew would be ugly for the iphone maker, but at $46bn they just barely beat expectations of $45.8 billion. The rest of the product suite was mixed with Macs surprisingly beating estimates while both iPads and wearables missed. In any case the trend is clear: while sales may not be plunging, they have certainly topped out and the only ting that is still rising is Services.

Looking at a geographic breakdown we find that while sales declined across almost every region, with the notable exception of Europe...

... the 8.1% drop in China sales was not nearly as bad as consensus expected, which fear a double digit drop was coming.

CFO Maestri said that the China concerns were overblown. “We were happy with our results in China,” he said. “The reality is different from maybe what you read at times.”

CEO Cook also pushed back on the idea that the iPhone was suffering in the country, saying that revenue from the device actually grew in mainland China. The weakness stemmed from other parts of the business, he said.

“Other products didn’t fare as well,” he said on a conference call. “And so we clearly have work there to do.”

At the same time, Bloomberg notes that Apple hasn’t shown that new product categories can reinvigorate growth. It canceled work on a self-driving car in February, eliminating a project that some had hoped could become one of its famous “next big things.”

Services were a relative bright spot, growing 14% to $23.9 billion in revenue. That topped Wall Street expectations of $23.3 billion: the category includes Apple Music, the TV+ streaming platform and iCloud subscriptions, but its revenue primarily comes from the App Store. But that business is under pressure from regulators, with Apple being forced to allow third-party marketplaces and payment services in the European Union. Depending on how Apple fares in a legal battle with the Justice Department, it may have to make changes in the US as well.

The company did push into the mixed-reality headset market this year, with the Feb. 2 debut of the Vision Pro. But that product is off to a slow start and could take years before it adds meaningfully to Apple’s revenue. Apple didn’t disclose Vision Pro sales figures on Thursday, but said that the device is generating interest among corporate customers.

But while the results were solid, and beat reduced estimates it's what was not part of the income statement that stunned investors: the company announced a mind-blowing new stock buyback program, of $110 billion, beating the previous record set by - who else - Apple, and which itself is bigger than the market cap of Boeing (although now that all Boeing whistleblowers have died, expect BA to soar), and also bigger than both GM and Ford combined!

If that wasn't enough, AAPL also predicted a return to growth in the current period, sparking optimism that a slowdown is easing. A lack of innovative new devices has contributed to slow sales at Apple, but the company looks to begin fixing that on May 7. That’s when it plans to unveil new iPads — the first updates to its tablet line in 1 1/2 years.

The results came as a relief to investors, who have been waiting for the iPhone maker to pull out of a long slump. Apple has posted sales declines in five of the past six quarters, hurt by a sluggish smartphone market and headwinds in China. The company had warned analysts in February that revenue in the latest period would be down about 5% from a year earlier.

In the current period, Apple expects sales to climb by a percentage in the low single digits. The company predicted that both its iPad and services business would grow by a rate in the double digits, but declined to give a forecast for the iPhone — its flagship product.

But wait there's more: the iphone maker also is planning a long-awaited push into generative artificial intelligence. In June, Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook is expected to lay out Apple’s AI strategy at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference.

“We are making significant investments in the space,” Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri told Bloomberg Television’s Emily Chang. “We believe we are well-positioned.” Cook said Thursday that Apple will stand out from its AI rivals by tightly integrating hardware and software, using in-house chips, and making privacy and security a priority.

AAPL shares soared as much as 7.9% in extended trading Thursday before easing back a bit. Apple had been down 10% to $173.03 this year through the close, and is now still down modestly for the year.

Whatever happened to the media coverage of the mass shooting of police officers in Charlotte, NC this week?  Only moments after the attack which took the lives of four law enforcement officers and injured four others, mainstream news feeds and social media sites were flooded with calls from journalists as well as Democrat politicians demanding that "something be done" about assault weapons and high capacity magazines.  Joe Biden quickly issued a White House statement calling for swift gun control measures and (ironically) more funding for police.

Then, suddenly, everything went quiet.  Why?

We all know why; because this has happened so many times in the past and the outcome is now laughably predictable.  The eventual reveal of the alleged assailant's identity derailed progressive gun control efforts.  His race and background did not fit the narrative mold that Democrats are looking for (the unhinged white male gun nut, preferably conservative).  

Terry Clark Hughes Jr. already had a long rap sheet in North Carolina well before he killed four police officers this past week in Charlotte.  With multiple warrants spanning several years as well as being involved in a high speed chase in January of 2024, Hughes should have been buried in the prison system for a very long time.  Sadly, this was not the case - North Carolina is a blue state and Charlotte is a Democrat run city notorious for its soft treatment of repeat criminals.  

Vi Lyles, the Mayor of Charlotte since 2017, is the city's first black female mayor and a Democrat.  The city council is predominantly progressive and has been pursuing "defund the police" measures since 2020.  And this is the kind of political environment that you will consistently find in nearly every city in the US with high crime rates and mass shootings.  It's not a theory, it's a rule.

Since at least 2017 Charlotte has been suffering from what many residents call a "revolving door" when it comes to prosecutions and prisons.  Critics have accused the city leadership of engaging in "high profile arrests and low profile releases" in order to keep crime stats down.  This includes a myriad of sex offenders and violent criminals set free in the past few years, only to have them victimize even more people not long after.

For example, only two weeks ago Shareef Sudan Thompson, 36, was released from jail on bond despite facing charges in a violent stabbing last week in Uptown Charlotte.  Local journalists discovered he has an extensive criminal history and police continue to question why extremely dangerous offenders are treated with such accommodations.  City officials offer no clear answers, except to suggest that the bond system is to blame.

   

After the election of Vi Lyles, Charlotte soon rose through the ranks of most violent cities in the nation.  It recently jumped to a list of the top 15 cities in the US with the fastest growing homicide rates. 

Leftists and gun control advocates blame guns every time there's a high profile shooting, yet they conveniently ignore the history of the shooters and who is in charge of the cities and criminal policies the shootings take place in.  The Democrat policy of catch and release when it comes to the worst possible criminals is the biggest contributor by far to violent assaults and murders across the country. 

Roughly half of all crimes in the US are perpetrated by a small percentage of offenders with pervasive criminal histories.  Locking these people up for extended sentences should be the primary solution to the problem, but progressives absolutely refuse.  Most likely, these releases are designed to obscure a growing crime epidemic in blue cities across the country.  Meaning, if we want shootings like the one in Charlotte, NC to stop, Democrat officials must be removed from power first. 

Authored by Paul D. Thacker via The Disinformation Chronicle,

Some of the shine on the disinformation industry has gone dull in recent years, as many misinformation experts having been caught trafficking in misinformation themselves, or exposed for their ties to intelligence agencies. This should not come as a shock.

It’s a basic tenet of “mirror politics” and practitioners of propaganda to accuse others of the very same actions they plan to commit.

In late 2018, the New York Times and Washington Post reported on a leaked document discussing a secret project by Democratic Party operatives that falsely accused Republican candidate Roy Moore of support by Russians, while he was running in a tight race for the Senate in Alabama. The scheme linked the Moore campaign to thousands of Russian accounts on Twitter and drew national media attention.

“We orchestrated an elaborate ‘false flag’ operation that planted the idea that the Moore campaign was amplified on social media by a Russian botnet,” the New York Times reported that the leaked documents stated.

The documents linked a relatively unknown company called New Knowledge to the Alabama disinformation campaign, although New Knowledge’s chief executive Jonathon Morgan said the company was not involved, and he worked on “Project Birmingham” in his personal capacity. Morgan also reached out at the time to Renee DiResta, a self-styled expert on disinformation, who told the New York Times she disagreed with such tactics, and later joined New Knowledge sometime, but only after Project Birmingham ended.

New Knowledge later changed names to Yonder, while DiResta joined Stanford University as an expert in disinformation. However, New Knowledge could not stop landing in the media spotlight.

2) New Knowledge filled w/ former NSA agents who explained the game to Betsy Depuis while out for drinks:
NSA cannot violate the Constitution, so they hire contractors to do their dirty work of spying on Americans and censoring them. pic.twitter.com/IngIwmHQCw

— Paul D. Thacker (@thackerpd) May 1, 2024

In early 2023, journalist Matt Taibbi released a “Twitter Files” drop about “Hamilton 68,” a public dashboard created by New Knowledge. Hamiton 68 tracked hundreds of Twitter accounts to monitor the spread of purported pro-Russian propaganda online, but screenshots of emails sent by former Twitter executive, Yoel Roth, voiced alarm that the dashboard was creating, not tracking disinformation.

“I think we need to just call this out on the bullshit it is,” Roth wrote.

The “Hamilton 68” dashboard had spurred dozens of stories in major media outlets that accused conservatives of trafficking in Russian disinformation, but when Twitter looked into the dashboard’s accuracy, they found it was garbage in, garbage out.

Former FBI counterintelligence official Clint Watts headed the Hamilton 68 dashboard and Jonathon Morgan of New Knowledge had helped to build it, along with J.M. Berger at the Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD), housed by the German Marshall Fund.

“No evidence to support the statement that the dashboard is a finger on the pulse of Russian information ops,” one Twitter official wrote of Hamilton 68.

The internal Twitter emails were so damaging that the Washington Post later posted corrections to multiple stories that reported on Hamilton 68 and its findings.

But every story about disinformation elites caught creating disinformation contains critical missing facts and minor elements of disinformation planted by the very experts being exposed. New Knowledge is no different.

Starting a month ago, I began discussing what the media got wrong about New Knowledge and Hamilton 68 with Betsy Dupuis, a former New Knowledge employee who worked on Hamilton 68. Dupuis tells me she was fired from New Knowledge after expressing misgivings upon discovering the company that branded itself  “the world’s first platform for defending online communities from social media manipulation” was itself engaging in blatant social media manipulation.

To back up her claims, Dupuis provided internal documents and photos from her time at New Knowledge, as well as screenshots of texts messages. Some of those we are publishing today.

New Knowledge poached Dupuis from another company and set her to work improving the Hamilton 68 dashboard, which was planned as a product for groups aligned with the Democratic Party. The development was underwritten with a year of funding by the Center for American Progress, a think tank and lobby shop run by party political operatives.

Dupuis says she enjoyed her work updating Hamilton 68, but she became concerned when people in the office discussed the “Alabama Project” and she began wondering if this had anything to do with Roy Moore, a Republican candidate running for Senate. When she had joined the company, Jonathon Morgan had assured her that New Knowledge would only monitor, never create disinformation.

But then several former employees from the National Security Agency (NSA) joined New Knowledge.

Out for company drinks, former NSA employees explained to Dupuis how agencies get around federal laws that ban the U.S. government from spying on and censoring Americans: they contract with companies like New Knowledge to do their dirty work. By the time New Knowledge announced they had secured a Department of Defense contract to create automated disinformation, Dupuis had had enough.

She met with Jonathon Morgan to discuss her concerns and was fired days later.

Speaking with me from her home in Austin, Dupuis says that neither Jonathon Morgan, nor Stanford’s Renee DiResta have come clean with journalists about what happened in Alabama to create disinformation during an American election. But she says she is tired of being scared and the time has come for her to speak up. “Silence doesn’t buy you safety, Dupuis says. “People will still come after you because of what you know.”

“I just kept quiet, until now, because I didn’t want to be accused of spreading a conspiracy theory,” Dupuis tells The DisInformation Chronicle. “After I was fired, I was just like, ‘You know what? This is so crazy. Nobody's ever going to believe me. I'm never going to talk about this again.’”

Jonathon Morgan did not return multiple requests for comment sent to his current job and personal cell phone number. This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

*  *  *

THACKER: What caused you to get fired at New Knowledge?

DUPUIS: When they hired me, they said that we would never do disinformation. And I felt the grounds I'd been hired on had been violated. So I went to Jonathon Morgan, who was the CEO. I had a good relationship with him, or at least I thought I did.

I told Jonathon, “Hey, this is unethical. I'm concerned about this.”

I knew there were other people who were also concerned, very disturbed about what was going on, but I didn't bring them up.

I told Jonathon, “You said we would track disinformation, but we wouldn't do disinformation.”

And he told me, “If we don't do it, somebody else will.”

Which sounds like a very classic James Bond villain. What a great way of revealing your evil plan.

THACKER: This conversation happens on a Friday, night. Then what happens to you on Monday?

DUPUIS: Well, I went home, and at this point, I really didn't want to work there anymore. I had already been talking to friends about this, and I went out to the lake with a friend.

I got a message from Sandeep Verma that I needed to come in at—I think it was 8 a.m.—which is really early in tech time. This was very confusing, so I asked if they wanted to do it remote, but I was told I needed to come in early on Monday.

They had hired this really young women to be, I think it was VP of Marketing, but also HR. She was a nepo baby: her parents had given her a bunch of money to start a fashion line that failed. And now she's an executive at my tech company.

She and Sandeep are there, and Sandeep… I don't know, he was trying to look really positive, but he looked sad also.

He said, “We're letting you go. We no longer need the position. We're going to give you a month severance if you sign this NDA.” I had to sign the NDA right there on the spot, before I left, or else I wouldn’t get severance.

I told him, “I left another job to come to this company.” He said he knew, and then I signed it and left. If they want to come after me for doing this interview, I was coerced to sign the NDA.

I felt pressured to sign it. I didn't really have a choice because of how insane things were. What am I supposed to do? Not take the severance, and not be allowed to collect unemployment because I refused to sign their agreement and then maybe tell people that there's a conspiracy going on.

THACKER: Right?

DUPUIS: What happened was so crazy. Things that people would not believe is true.

DUPUIS: I'm mid-thirties, so that puts me smack dab in the middle of millennial territory, and I grew up with internet. I was one of those kids that learned to make their own web pages and interact with the internet even before Myspace.

THACKER: When I started at UC Davis in 1994, that was the first year that University of California students were required to have an email. I learned how to type having discussions on a UC Davis chat group.

When people started to come out with this idea, about seven years back, that they had discovered there was “disinformation” on the internet, I was like, “Wait, I've been on the internet for decades. From the very beginning I saw people behave like assholes and throw crap up on the internet.”

DUPUIS: Well, there was this progression from “Do not use anything from the internet for any paper; it has to be from Ebsco or Britannica. Some trusted encyclopedia.”

You were supposed to vet sources. Now with Gen Z kids, they don't even know what plagiarism is.

THACKER: So you started off at around age ten. You're on the computer, but it was still kind of a thing for weird dudes in the basement.

DUPUIS: I kept it kind of a secret, and then MySpace came out when I was in high school. But the internet was still for nerds. I gave up pursuing a career in programing because my parents had read a bunch of articles in newspapers saying that the internet was a fad.

THACKER: But you still got involved.

DUPUIS: I got into photography in high school, and I started shooting for iStockphoto which was an early internet start-up in online stock photography. Before them, you had to order a stock photo catalog.

I was doing work for them when I was teenager making like $1,000 a month, which for a high school kid is a hell of a lot of money. I could rent an apartment $300 at the time. I thought this is going to be my job. And then the stock market crashed in 2007 and everything went away.

So, I went to college and studied art, and when I graduated the market still really sucked.

I went to go visit some friends during South by Southwest—the big music festival in Austin—to see about jobs and opportunities in 2012.

I was like, “I’m moving here.” I was kind of homeless for about a year, worked for a few random start-ups, and became part of this industry.

THACKER: But then you land your dream job at New Knowledge.

DUPUIS: I would not say it was a dream job. I was really skeptical of this company to begin with.

THACKER: You’re this young woman working in the tech industry in Austin. Why New Knowledge?

DUPUIS: I was at an oil and gas data analytics company that owned some old data sets which are very valuable. My title was software engineer, but I was working mostly as a designer, building the front end of the software. I was designing a dashboard that allowed you to build reports and interface with their data. It wasn't super advanced stuff.

It was fine, but then New Knowledge reached out to me on Angel List and, when I met with them, they were immediately ready to hire me.

I think New Knowledge was interested in me because, “Oh, you can do some of the programing, but then you can also know how data works and can do the data visualization stuff.”

I think that's what I was qualified to do for New Knowledge, but I wasn't really qualified to do this disinformation stuff.

THACKER: Did you research them to find out what they were all about?

DUPUIS: I'd never heard of them before and the politics they were involved in. My way of looking into politics was going on Facebook and subscribing to every spectrum of political ideology: Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Green Party, whatever. I just read whatever because I wanted to see what everybody was thinking.

Politics was not a big deal to me, but I would casually absorb things. I knew that Russian disinformation was in the news, and stuff about Trump.

THACKER: Of course, you knew about Russian disinformation and Trump, because that's all the media wrote about for four years.

DUPUIS: Yes. But it wasn’t something I really followed. I just wanted to have intelligent conversations about what was in the news.

New Knowledge told me they do all this stuff with disinformation. Jonathon had some State Department role under the Obama administration. Sandy was a friend from high school or something from their time in Houston. He was the Chief Technical Officer (CTO.) I guess you know how that works, right?

THACKER: Well, no. From what I understand about the tech industry, people get these jobs they’re not really qualified for, but they know someone, or have some weird skill that nobody else has in the office. The programming guy who likes talking to people can suddenly become head of marketing.

I get the sense that titles are very nebulous in tech start-ups.

DUPUIS: Sandy had a degree, and I think he was serious about being a tech guy. But I don't think he had the work experience to be a CTO. But that's often the case at start-ups.

They told me about their funding and trying to get all these contracts with companies that were doing this disinformation thing. I had a vague idea about this stuff from what I was reading about Trump and just from being online for so long.

People make stuff up.

But they said they were going to build this AI tool and I was kind of skeptical.

I previously worked at a company that had done some AI thing back in 2013. A lot of times people tell you they have artificial intelligence to do some chore, but it’s really just a bunch of humans doing all the work. Which is really expensive.

Eventually, you get found out

THACKER: There’s a lot of nonsense and pretense in tech. Amazon dropped their "Just Walk Out" AI technology which automated what you bought. It was really just 1,000 workers in India acting as remote cashiers.

DUPUIS: These companies pretend to have computer automated intelligence, but it's a sham. Real people do the work it because they don't know how to make software good enough to automate the task.

So I was a little bit skeptical of that, but they had all these PhDs so maybe they could make it work. I asked, “Hey, will you guys ever want to do disinformation?”

And they said, “No, it's completely against our ethics.” I also asked if they were only going to point out disinformation whenever Republicans do it, or when both sides do it.

And they said, “We're bipartisan. In fact, we have Republicans that we've worked with for a long time.”

THACKER: How was their business set up? Who was funding them?

DUPUIS: DARPA. Jonathon had gotten his seed money from DARPA, and he had actually been through several iterations of trying to get the company off the ground. Apparently, a whole other set of co-founders had left the company. I can’t remember why.

He had a podcast called Partially Derivative and some nonprofit organization called Data for Democracy.

There was a weird thing with people in the office, people that weren't in the office, people working as contractors. Some of the contractors had this aura around them. The same as what I've heard of Renee DiResta: “We're just really passionate about disinformation!”

One contractor was just involved in building scrapers.

THACKER: Explain what scraping means. I think it means an automated system to go out and collect or scrape data off the internet, instead of doing it manually.

DUPUIS: Instead of having a person go and copy/paste everything from a website, you use a computer that collects all the data.

I knew someone who had a scraping company that the State Department, FBI and other agencies use, and they could have saved a lot of money using him. Instead, they hired this contractor to learn how to scrape Twitter.

Twitter kept denying New Knowledge access to scrape, because it costs them money when you’re pulling too much data, and they didn't have an established partnership. New Knowledge was using a lot of their bandwidth.

THACKER: Tell me about working on the Hamilton 68 disinformation dashboard.

DUPUIS: We eventually had a meeting with J.M. Berger with the German Marshall Fund. There were other people on the Zoom, but the German Marshall Fund had done this dashboard and I was supposed to redesign it.

It was ugly and looked like a programmer designed it. I was supposed to repackage it into a better dashboard and allow them to sell that as a product. They were going to sell it to the Center for American Progress.

THACKER: Just to let readers know, the Center for American Progress (CAP) is a Democratic Party think tank and lobby shop. They're most famous for being the ones who basically ran Hillary Clinton's campaign in 2016. Simon Clark is a former member of CAP who now chairs the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a bogus “disinformation group” that works closely with the Biden Administration.

According to your notes from the time, the lead on this dashboard redesign at CAP was Casey Michel, who worked at their news site, Think Progress. Another was Andrew Weisburd, who was working at the German Marshall Fund and is now at Microsoft’s Threat Context.

And in the dashboard deliverables you were given, it says that J.M. Berger, who also had ties to the Brookings Institute, was developing the communities or lists of people to track.

What did the German Marshall Fund want you to make better?

DUPUIS: The dashboard was called Hamilton 68 because it had something to do with Alexander Hamilton, some paper he wrote, or something esoteric. You know how people name something after some esoteric fact to make it sound important?

THACKER: Right.

DUPUIS: The German Marshall Fund owned Hamilton 68, which was something Jonathon Morgan had built for them. I think with his previous business partners.

J.M. Berger was there because he was somehow involved with the Center for American Progress getting their own version. They were going to launch it on Think Progress, which was CAP’s news organization, but is now defunct.

I wrote specifically in my notes that Center for American Progress was giving us 12 months of funding. I don't know what that meant in terms of actual money.

THACKER: I’m gonna guess that Center for American Progress won’t tell me how much funding they were putting out for this. (The Center for American Progress did not respond to questions asking how much money they provided to upgrade Hamiltion 68 and whether they still use the system.)

DUPUIS: My job was to take Hamilton 68 and repackage it with a better design. I think I did a good job of it.

THACKER: What did this upgraded Hamilton 68 allow them to do?

DUPUIS: They could observe emerging trends on Twitter, trending hashtags, trending topics and track what people were linking to.

Click here to continue reading...

US equities ended their two-day slide as tech companies surged late in the session. The trading day has been choppy, with Wall Street now turning its attention to Apple's earnings after the bell. Some analysts anticipate Apple will reveal a major buyback program to offset potentially disappointing earnings amid countless reports from research firms in recent months about slumping iPhone sales overseas. 

Let's begin with the choppy session in main equity index futures. Futs tumbled at the start of the cash session and caught a bid about 30 minutes later, or around 1000 ET. Since then, price action has been mostly higher into the late afternoon trade. 

Despite the chop, Goldman's Most Shorted index (GSCBMAL) surged higher, up 4% on the session. Names like Carvana Co. were up 32% late in the session after a better-than-expected first-quarter earnings release. The company is heavily shorted, with about 27.6% of the float short, contributing to the surge in price. 

Within the S&P500, consumer discretionary and technology stocks were up 1.49% and 1.39%, respectively. Almost green across the board. 

Regarding the chop, most S&P500 sectors are still below levels after Wednesday's late session pump and dump. 

NYSE TICK data shows that most buy programs were out ahead of Apple's earnings. 

Again, more chop with individual names in the tech sector & Mag7. 

Ahead of Apple earnings, here's Goldman's preview: 

All eyes on AAPL tonight. We have positioning at a 7 out of 10, with a recent uptick in interest in the name (altho remains a BM underweight). Focus commentary 1) China trends in March qtr (cons has China revs -11% y/y in March vs the -13% y/y last qtr) .. 2) commentary on AI.. 3) Services visibility (including TAC + App Store)

In the macro world, Wall Street traders are preparing for Friday's announcement of March non-farm payrolls data. The median estimate tracked by Bloomberg is 240k. 

22V Research polled investors and found that 30% of respondents believe Friday's jobs report will be "risk-on," 27% expect a "risk-off" reaction, and 43% said "mixed/negligible."

Meanwhile, the S&P500 is wedged between the 100-day Simple Moving Average (4979) and the 50-day Simple Moving Average (5129). A combination of Apple earnings (after the bell) and jobs data (Friday) could determine the next direction in price action. 

One day after the Federal Reserve kept the target range for the benchmark rate at 5.25% to 5.5%—after serious concern that the US is headed for stagflation—bond yields across the curve leaked lower late in the session. 

In FX, the greenback is on pace for its biggest drop this year as yields continue sliding. Cryptos, such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, trade mainly in chop. BTC/USD is trying to recover the $60k handle late in the cash session. 

We noted early that BlackRock's ETF saw around $37 million in outflows for the first time, while the remaining spot Bitcoin ETFs collectively notched over $526.8 million in outflows.

Rate traders have priced in about 1.6 cuts this year—up from 1.15 yesterday—but down from nearly 7 earlier this year. There has been dramatic repricing in Fed cuts due to sticky inflation. 

On inflation, using Bloomberg data, the number of mentions in earnings calls for "sticky inflation" surged to record highs in this earnings season. Several mega-corporations like Starbucks and McDonald's have warned about struggling working poor consumers. 

Here's the recap of some of today's top corporate news (courtesy of Bloomberg): 

• Peloton Interactive Inc. said Chief Executive Officer Barry McCarthy is stepping down as the company undergoes a major restructuring that will reduce its global workforce by 15% in an effort to slash costs.

• MGM Resorts International reported first-quarter sales and earnings that beat analysts' projections, benefiting from the post-pandemic recovery in Macau and a new partnership with Marriott International Inc. that helped fill hotel rooms.

• Carvana Co. reported stronger earnings with revenue topping expectations as the company digs into its restructuring plan and regains sales momentum.

• DoorDash Inc., the largest food delivery service in the US, offered a disappointing profit forecast for the current quarter as the company invests in expanding its list of non-restaurant partners and improving efficiency.

• Moderna Inc. reported a narrower first-quarter loss than Wall Street had expected, as the biotech giant's cost-cutting helped offset a steep decline in its Covid business.

• Apollo Global Management Inc. reported higher first-quarter profit as the firm raked in more management fees and originated a record $40 billion of private credit, a key area of growth.

By the way, Boeing shares continued to surge even after another Boeing whistleblower died. 

no whistleblowers left. buy buy buy pic.twitter.com/BMOFzsvOi8

— BuccoCapital Bloke (@buccocapital) May 2, 2024

A recap of this morning's macro data:

• Thursday Humor: Jobless Claims

• Unit Labor Costs Soar In Q1 As 'AI Productivity Boom' Fails To Show Up

• US Factory Orders Rise In March... But February Saw Yet Another Downward Revision

.... and it's an election year - remember that... We cited a note from Goldman's Adam Crook that points out the Fed and US Treasury are in 'full-blown stock support mode'... Powell can't let Biden's stock market crash... Pro subs read here.  

Anyways, all eyes are on Apple after the bell. 

On Wednesday, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell dismissed the idea that the economy could slide into "stagflation" despite multiple warning signs of a slowing economy and inflation reaccelerating higher. 

"I was around for stagflation, and it was 10% unemployment, it was high-single-digit inflation," Powell said, noting, "Right now we have 3% growth, which is pretty solid growth, I would, say by any measure, and we have inflation running under 3%." 

Powell then claimed he didn't see "stag" or the "flation" anywhere. 

However, Powell has been very wrong before. He missed the initial surge in inflation in the months following the virus pandemic after the government helicopter dropped trillions of dollars on the economy. More recently, Powell prematurely pivoted on the interest rate hiking cycle before having to backtrack. 

Meanwhile, America's largest companies are warning consumers are buckling due to the weight of inflation. This comes amid the failure of Bidenomics, where a new Gallup poll has shown a parabolic surge in households complaining about inflation-related financial problems. 

All you need to know pic.twitter.com/a3Ay7c0PA0

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) May 2, 2024

On Wednesday, Starbucks logged the largest single-day crash since early Covid, nearly exceeding the 16.2% level that would've made it the worst drawdown since the Dot Com bust. The reason is simple: Earnings were a complete disaster as misses were reported across the board due to headwinds of a "cautious consumer." 

Earlier in the week, McDonald's CEO Chris Kempczinski warned the burger chain faced "broad-based consumer pressures persist around the world." 

"Consumers continue to be even more discriminating with every dollar that they spend as they faced elevated prices in their day-to-day spending," Kempczinski said. 

Clearly, a $15 Big Mac combo meal is too expensive for many working poor folks. Plus, the food quality is junk. 

Moving on to the 3M Company, the maker of Scotch tape and Post-it Notes, top executives told analysts during an earnings call that it "continued seeing softness in consumer discretionary spend." 

As for Newell Brands, the owner of Rubbermaid, Yankee Candle, Coleman, Paper Mate, and many others, warned, "Consumers continuing to carefully manage their discretionary spend as the cumulative impact of inflation on food, energy and housing cost has outpaced wage growth." 

Looking at Bloomberg data, the term "sticky inflation" has surged to a record 17 mentions in earnings calls. Other topics on the rise include "inflation" and "interest rates" and "labor costs." 

But don't worry, Powell has glanced over the mounting stagflation threat because it's an election year... 

For months, relations between Turkey and Israel have been on the brink of breaking point. Already there has been the recalling of ambassadors, inflammatory rhetoric exchanged between leaders, and then things got more serious when Turkey a month ago moved to restrict 54 products from being exported to Israel until a Gaza ceasefire can be reached.

But Turkey's government on Thursday has taken the next big step, halting all exports and imports to and from Israel, according to Bloomberg which cited Turkish government officials. It has begun effective today, but Ankara has yet to officially announce the dramatic move.

Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz has confirmed that the breaking headlines are accurate. He said that Ankara has already begun to block Israeli imports and exports at Turkish ports.

Katz has ordered the foreign ministry to immediately pursue alternatives for trade which focus on "local production and imports from other countries."

Bilateral trade volume between the two countries, which prior to Oct.7 were enjoying warmer relations, had stood at $5.4 billion last year.

• Turkey sells $5B-$7B of exports to Israel every year.
• Israel sells $2B-$3B of exports to Turkey every year.

But President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been unrelenting in his attacks on Israel and directed against Netanyahu personally. 

In March, he went so far as to suggest the Israeli prime minster should be assassinated for overseeing war crimes in Gaza and against Muslims.

 In a prior election rally the Turkish president vowed to "send [Netanyahu] to Allah to take care of him, make him miserable and curse him."

This week Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan announced Turkey will join South Africa’s case against Israel before the Hague-based International Criminal Court (ICC).

So it appears at this point Turkey is waging both full-scale diplomatic and economic war on Israel. This is unprecedented for a NATO member, which also happens to have the second largest military within the Western military alliance, and is sure to put Western officials in an awkward spot.

Update: Sure enough, it is about the protests, which apparently have had zero impact on anything as expected:

• *BIDEN: RULE OF LAW, FREEDOM OF SPEECH MUST BOTH BE UPHELD
• *BIDEN: DISSENT MUST NEVER LEAD TO DISORDER, DENIAL OF RIGHTS
• *BIDEN: RIGHT TO PROTEST DOESN'T MEAN RIGHT TO CAUSE CHAOS
• *BIDEN: NATIONAL GUARD SHOULD NOT INTERVENE ON CAMPUS PROTESTS
• *BIDEN: NO CHANGE IN MIDDLE EAST POLICY OVER CAMPUS PROTESTS

* * *

The White House has announced that President Biden will deliver unscheduled remarks at 10:30am ET (so he is already about 30 minutes late). It is unclear what Biden's handlers will feed the teleprompter but it is a very safe bet that the university protests around the country will be a key topic... pause.

Despite the lack of total carnage in spot bitcoin prices, yesterday was an ugly (nay the ugliest) day for the newly minted ETFs (although bitcoin is down over 10% this week).

Most notably, BlackRock’s ETF saw around $37 million in outflows for the first time, while the remaining spot Bitcoin ETFs collectively notched over $526.8 million in outflows.

The largest outflow for the day was the Fidelity Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund, which saw $191.1 million in net outflows. The Grayscale Bitcoin Trust took the second spot with outflows of $167.4 million.

This means the total net inflow since inception has fallen to USD11.2bn.

On the crypto-specific we have now had 6 days in a row of outflows from the US spot ETFs and, as importantly, we are now below the average ETF purchase price of around 58k...

Source: Geoffrey Kindrick

Bloomberg ETF analyst James Seyffart noted that the Bitcoin ETFs are still “operating smoothly across the board” and that “inflows and outflows are part of the norm in the life of an ETF.”

Coinglass data shows that there has been around $200mm in 'long liquidations' in the last coupled of days...

“Bitcoin is our favorite canary,” ByteTree Asset Management Chief Investment Officer Charlie Morris wrote in a note.

“It is warning of trouble ahead in financial markets, but we can be confident it’ll bounce back at some point.”

But this is not a time to panic, as CoinTelegraph reports, ETF Store president Nate Geraci pointed out that the iShares Gold ETF and SPDR Gold ETFs have had $1 billion and $3 billion in outflows so far this year.

Yet, gold is up 16% year-to-date, Geraci noted in a May 2 X post.

As CoinDesk reports, the current lull is likely to be followed by a new wave from a different type of investor, said Robert Mitchnick, head of digital assets for BlackRock, the world's largest asset-management company.

The coming months will probably see financial institutions such as sovereign wealth funds, pension funds and endowments start to trade in the spot ETFs, Mitchnick said in an interview. The firm is seeing “a re-initiation of the discussion around bitcoin,” which turns on the topic of allocating to bitcoin (BTC) and how to think about it from a portfolio construction perspective.

“Many of these interested firms – whether we're talking about pensions, endowments, sovereign wealth funds, insurers, other asset managers, family offices – are having ongoing diligence and research conversations, and we're playing a role from an education perspective,” Mitchnick said.

And finally, Geoffrey Kendrick - who correctly predicted $4k in ETH few months ago - is sticking with his 150k target for year-end 2024 and 200k for year-end 2025 (with chance of overshoot to 250k).

“The next three to four months will be less bullish and more risk-oriented, with the market closely monitoring inflation, employment and economic data for any unexpected shocks or to gain confidence about potential rate cuts,” said Youwei Yang, chief economist and vice president of crypto miner BIT Mining Ltd.

But, Kendrick notes, the next leg higher may take some time and require us to be closer to the US election.

At that time we would expect BTC to rally into year-end, particularly if a Trump presidential election victory becomes more likely, as a Trump administration will be more crypto friendly than a Biden one.

How it started:

How it's going: 

Biden finally managed to unify the country https://t.co/Oppf7ssAXn

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) May 2, 2024

In early March, President Biden and the Democrats called for the "Unity of all Americans." 

Fast forward to the Marxist revolution spreading like stage four cancer at the nation's colleges and universities, anti-Israel and counter-protesters found common ground, or perhaps a glimpse of solidarity, when both sides were heard chanting "F**K Joe Biden" this week at the University of Alabama. 

"It finally happened. Joe managed to get both sides of the protest to hate him for different reasons," X user Alex The Ghost wrote. 

It finally happened. Joe managed to get both sides of the protest to hate him for different reasons @ShamashAran @ClairNova4k @Carlkeck1 @DefiantlyFree @Piper010100 @Katie_likes_it @ImissPresTrump @CreativeVerveM

— Alex The Ghost (@GhostOfAlex1) May 2, 2024

Others on X agreed... 

See, he really did unify the country.

— Jason Lambeth (@JLambo79) May 1, 2024

Finally!
America agrees on one thing!

— flyby (@Barbara88625178) May 1, 2024

He’s finally found a way to unite the country after 3.5 years. Bravo. pic.twitter.com/t3L9weU4c7

— Shooting News Weekly (@SN_Weekly_) May 1, 2024

Finally something we can all agree on. Thanks Joe.

— Bernard (@BBD100) May 2, 2024

The president and the radical left are walking a very fine line between supporting the Marxist kids at schools and their right to protest while simultaneously denouncing antisemitism. The surge in criticism from both the left and the right of the elderly president's Israel policy risks the unity of both sides in their hatred of the president. 

Meanwhile, Axios reports Democrats are in full-blown' panic mode' behind the scenes as campus takeovers by extremists of their own party produce terrible optics ahead of the presidential election in November. 

"The longer they continue, and the worse that they get, the worse it's going to be for the election overall," one House Democrat said.

The House Democrat warned that school chaos will only "bring out [the public's] most conservative side." 

What's clear is that campus protesters are becoming a political liability for Biden and Democrats. 

Republicans are now seizing on the opportunity from New York to California to inform voters that under this administration, the destruction and chaos of America continues. Add this chaos to the long list of failures by the Biden administration, including the migrant invasion, worsening drug overdose crisis, violent crime proliferating across metro areas, disastrous foreign policy moves in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, risking World War III, and, of course, the failure of Bidenomics that has ignited stagflation, crushing America's middle class. 

"[Democrats] were trying to make a big deal out of these Trump trials, but they've taken a back seat" to the protests, John Feehery, a Republican strategist and former congressional aide, told Financial Times. 

This week, the White House has been awfully silent on the campus takeover crisis. 

"When will the president himself, not his mouthpieces, condemn these hate-filled little Gazas?" Tom Cotton, the Republican senator from Arkansas, told reporters on Wednesday.

"President Biden needs to denounce Hamas' campus sympathizers without equivocating about Israelis fighting a righteous war of survival," Cotton added.

A recent poll showed that 81 percent of voters aged 18 to 35 disapprove of Biden’s handling of the conflict in the Middle East.

Michael Moore, who correctly predicted Trump’s victory in 2016, even issued a plea to Biden urging him to accomplish a ceasefire or face defeat.

“We’re going to lose the election. We’re going to lose Michigan if we don’t turn this around. If President Biden doesn’t turn this around, that is going to do more to put Trump back in the White House. And I refuse to have Donald Trump back in the White House,” said Moore.

To sum up, the Democrats are in serious trouble if anti-Israel protesters and counter-protesters begin to march in solidarity around their hatred of Biden.

With WARNs high, JOLTS data tumbling - led construction jobs collapsing, and Challenger-Grey layoffs remarkably elevated, why would anyone question the government's official data on jobless claims - that continues to languish (in a good way) near record lows.

Last week saw 208,000 Americans file for jobless benefits for the first time (the same as the prior week), basically flat for the last three years...

Source: Bloomberg

In the real world labor market, 2024 has been a shitshow of layoffs...

1. Everybuddy: 100% of workforce
2. Wisense: 100% of workforce
3. CodeSee: 100% of workforce
4. Twig: 100% of workforce
5. Twitch: 35% of workforce
6. Roomba: 31% of workforce
7. Bumble: 30% of workforce
8. Farfetch: 25% of workforce
9. Away: 25% of workforce
10. Hasbro: 20% of workforce
11. LA Times: 20% of workforce
12. Wint Wealth: 20% of workforce
13. Finder: 17% of workforce
14. Spotify: 17% of workforce
15. Buzzfeed: 16% of workforce
16. Levi's: 15% of workforce
17. Xerox: 15% of workforce
18. Qualtrics: 14% of workforce
19. Wayfair: 13% of workforce
20. Duolingo: 10% of workforce
21. Rivian: 10% of workforce
22. Washington Post: 10% of workforce
23. Snap: 10% of workforce
24. eBay: 9% of workforce
25. Sony Interactive: 8% of workforce
26. Expedia: 8% of workforce
27. Business Insider: 8% of workforce
28. Instacart: 7% of workforce
29. Paypal: 7% of workforce
30. Okta: 7% of workforce
31. Charles Schwab: 6% of workforce
32. Docusign: 6% of workforce
33. Riskified: 6% of workforce
34. EA: 5% of workforce
35. Motional: 5% of workforce
36. Mozilla: 5% of workforce
37. Vacasa: 5% of workforce
38. CISCO: 5% of workforce
39. UPS: 2% of workforce
40. Nike: 2% of workforce
41. Blackrock: 3% of workforce
42. Paramount: 3% of workforce
43. Citigroup: 20,000 employees
44. ThyssenKrupp: 5,000 employees
45. Best Buy: 3,500 employees
46. Barry Callebaut: 2,500 employees
47. Outback Steakhouse: 1,000
48. Northrop Grumman: 1,000 employees
49. Pixar: 1,300 employees
50. Perrigo: 500 employees
51. Tesla: 10% of workforce

Continuing claims - according to the government - were also flat week on week at 1.774 million Americans, having gone practically nowhere for a year...

Spot the odd one out... (or spot the government-supplied data)...

Source: Bloomberg

Ah, Bidenomics!!

If Trump wins in November, will all this data suddenly be 'allowed' to reflect reality?

Via Schiffgold.com,

Peter appeared on OAN’s Real America with Dan Ball to discuss new prospective income taxes, the latest idiotic craze in politics.

He starts by explaining why President Biden’s desired policy isn’t even an income tax:

“The worst of the capital gains tax is that Biden wants to impose a 25% tax on unrealized capital gains, which is definitely unconstitutional because it’s not an income tax. … If you haven’t realized the gain, you have no income subject to tax under the 16th amendment. It’s a property tax. You’re taxing property, and property taxes are direct taxes. They’re still bound by the rule of apportionment. They’re not exempted through the 16th amendment, so it would be unconstitutional.”

If such a tax was legal, it would still be a terrible policy, and it’d complicate the already burdensome tax code:

“It would also be economically destructive to try to force people to pay taxes on income they haven’t even received. They’d have to sell their assets. Imagine having to appraise your illiquid assets every year and then have to pay some kind of tax without having the liquidity to actually pay it. It would be an economic disaster if that were to be passed!”

Even raising corporate taxes would ultimately fall on the shoulders of everyday Americans:

“Nobody seems to understand: corporations don’t really pay taxes. They collect taxes. When you’re talking about taxing a corporation, you’re taxing the shareholders, you’re taxing the employees and the customers. So that’s the American public! One way or another, all corporate taxes are paid by the public. So if you’re raising the corporate tax, you’re raising the taxes on their employees, their shareholders, and their customers. That’s it.”

Thankfully, Peter thinks the proposed taxes are doomed to fail. He also reminds us of the government’s dishonest record with income taxes:

“It’s not gonna pass. At least we’ve got some Republicans with some sense in the House. This is just red meat to the base— the socialists that dominate the base of the democratic party. Yeah, they want to soak the rich. Remember, the only reason we have an income tax is because the government promised that it was only for the billionaires. … It was only 4% when it first started, back in 1916. So the government lied to the public, because as soon as they got the income tax passed, they started jacking up the rates.”

Authored by James Rickards via the Daily Reckoning,

This is a highly consequential election year, to say the least. The policy differences between Biden and Trump are enormous. Whether it’s taxes, regulation, borders, energy or foreign policy, the differences couldn’t be clearer.

And though I prefer to focus my analysis on markets alone, I can’t. These days especially, politics plays too great a role in how markets behave.

But this year’s election is about far more than policy.

In the past, the D.C. establishment could live with a typical Republican or Democrat. They knew neither candidate would rock the boat too much if he got elected. Both candidates were cut from the same basic cloth and played by the accepted rules.

But all that goes out the window with Trump.

He’s the most polarizing political figure we’ve seen in our lifetimes. You’d probably have to go back to Andrew Jackson to find a parallel.

And it’s clear that Trump’s political enemies will stop at nothing to keep him out of the White House this time.

Lawfare 

“Lawfare” is their primary tactic. They just want to get Trump convicted of a felony before the election so they can brand him a criminal, believing that the American public won’t elect a convicted felon.

They don’t care if the conviction is subsequently overturned by a higher court. The damage will already be done. And if it trashes the Constitution, Trump’s political enemies are prepared to live with that.

They’re convinced that Trump is the equivalent of Hitler and that he’ll destroy democracy if he’s elected. So in their minds, the ends justify the means. They’ll justify any action, legal or illegal, to ensure his defeat.

They don’t seem to realize that the harder they go after Trump with bogus charges, the more popular he becomes.

I’m not here to defend Trump or oppose him. No doubt, he’s a deeply flawed character with personality traits that alienate many people. But voters don’t expect a billionaire real estate magnate from New York City to be a saint. They vote for him because they think he can get things done.

And under honest democratic elections, the administrative state, or deep state, whatever you want to call it, stays out of it. But that’s not the system we have today.

And that should concern every American, regardless of his or her political affiliation.

Again, it doesn’t matter if you love Trump or hate him. But in a democracy, the people rule. Not the bureaucrats. And if the people elect Trump, then he should be allowed to enact the policies that got him elected. That didn’t happen when he won in 2016.

Stop Trump!

The first two years of his administration were hobbled by the fake Russian collusion hoax and the numerous investigations that resulted. Those investigations showed that there was no collusion between Trump and Russia, but Trump’s enemies didn’t care (and certainly did not apologize).

They just moved on to the next fake scandal, which was the first impeachment over a brief phone call to Ukrainian President Zelenskyy asking about Biden family corruption. It turns out that Biden family corruption was rampant in Ukraine, but that didn’t stop phony “whistleblowers” (actually lawbreakers) like Eric Ciaramella from leaking classified transcripts to Adam Schiff to get the impeachment process going.

Trump was acquitted by the Senate. Then came the second impeachment where Trump was also acquitted. Since leaving office, Trump has been hit with federal criminal charges relating to Jan. 6 and the Mar-a-Lago raid, as well as state criminal charges in New York and Georgia.

Trump’s enemies never quit. They’re also going after Trump’s advisers and confidants. It’s meant to isolate Trump because anyone who advises him will fear they’ll be hauled into court on some bogus charge and have to spend a fortune on lawyers, win or lose.

The latest lawfare tactic has been unveiled against Trump attorney John Eastman. It’s called “debanking.”

Good Luck Living Without a Bank

In Eastman’s case, it started with Bank of America closing his bank accounts for no good reason and with no recourse. Then he turned to his accounts at USAA, which specializes in accounts for military veterans and their families. Shortly thereafter, USAA also closed Eastman’s bank accounts.

We tend to take banking services for granted and don’t think much about what would happen if we were shut out of the banking system. No checks, no savings accounts, no wire transfers, no ATMs, no bank-issued credit cards, no lines of credit or mortgages, etc.

It’s like trying to survive without food or water. It’s impossible. And that’s the whole point. It’s designed to make the victim’s life miserable.

The same thing happened in the U.K. when NatWest and Coutts debanked Nigel Farage, leader of the Brexit movement. Farage fought back and the CEO of NatWest was eventually fired over the incident. But it was a brutal fight and a tough transition for Farage when he suddenly found himself debanked.

Unfortunately, debanking is just an extension of the “woke” cancel culture that’s taken root in much of the West.

Shut up, Bigot!

When we look around at places like New Zealand and Scotland, there seems to be a bizarre competition to see which country can pass the most fascist laws and imitate George Orwell’s dystopia in Nineteen Eighty-Four in the least amount of time.

Scotland has imposed so-called hate crime laws that subject you to imprisonment for exercising free speech if it happens to offend a long list of protected parties. No actual violence or physical act is needed. If you simply say the wrong thing, you can be arrested, fined and imprisoned for “inciting hate.”

A similar law has just passed in Ireland. The Polish government wants to pass a law that makes it a crime to “defame” members of the LBGT community. Of course, the term “defame” is ill-defined and is in the eye of the beholder. Any choice of words, even if derogatory or hurtful by some standard, should be protected by free speech provisions. But in Poland, it may soon land you in jail.

I’ve never understood hate crime laws anyway (and I’m a lawyer). If you murder someone, it’s murder. If you assault someone, it’s assault. Subject to due process of law, you should go to jail if convicted or perhaps face capital punishment.

Prosecutors have to show intent, but what does “hate” have to do with it? The perpetrator may, in fact, hate the victim but that’s not the crime. The crime is assault or murder. Those crimes have been considered crimes for millennia.

Nineteen Eighty-Four Was Supposed to Be Fiction

Adding hate to the definition just blurs the line between thought and action in ways that make it easier for fascist governments to target political enemies with flimsy allegations of “hate” when no actions were involved.

The most egregious example of this trend toward thought crimes is Canada. The chief neo-fascist there is Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. He has proposed a law called the Online Harms Act that expands the definition of “discrimination” to include online speech “likely to foment detestation or vilification of an individual or group.”

What exactly does this law mean by “foment”? Who defines “vilification” or “detestation”? What’s the definition of “group”?

All of these questions will be answered by a new Digital Safety Commission, which will not be bound by “any technical or legal rules of evidence.” If accused, you can be ordered to pay $20,000 to any “victim” and $50,000 to the state with no limit on how many victims might crawl out of the woodwork.

This is practically an invitation for grifters and activists to attack political enemies with fake claims of having been subject to “detestation.” It gets worse. If a court believes you are likely to commit a “hate crime” under this law, you can be placed under house arrest and held in isolation.

In other words, just thinking the wrong thing as imagined by an unaccountable magistrate is enough to put you under house arrest. This is actually worse than what the Thought Police did in Orwell’s novel.

You can expect censorship in the U.S. to increase as we get closer to the November election. Get ready for it.

Nineteen Eighty-Four was supposed to be fiction. Unfortunately, it’s becoming reality.

Author3ed by Con Coughlin via the Gatestone Institute,

If attempts by Western leaders to impose further sanctions against Iran in retaliation for its direct attack against Israel are to have any validity, they will need to be a great deal more effective than those implemented in recent decades.

For decades, the US and its allies have been imposing sanctions against Tehran in an attempt to restrain its malign support for terror organisations, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.

Wide-ranging sanctions have also been imposed against Tehran to curb its nuclear programme, which most Western intelligence agencies believe is ultimately aimed at fulfilling the Iranian regime's quest to acquire a nuclear weapons arsenal.

This has led to restrictions being placed on Iran's ability to access technology and material that might be used to aid its nuclear development, while a range of other economic sanctions, especially limiting Iran's ability to export oil, have been implemented.

These sanctions were strengthened even more by the US after Iranian-backed militias were accused of attacking US forces in Syria and Iraq in the wake of the October 7 attack on Israel.

The UK, too, has adopted a more robust approach to Tehran after British security officials uncovered a number of Iranian plots to kill or kidnap Iranian opposition figures residing in the UK. Seven senior members of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and one Iranian organisation were added to the UK's sanctions list in January over claims they were involved in threats to kill journalists on British soil.

Iran's direct attack against Israel earlier this month -- the first time Iran carried out such a mission since its 1979 Islamic Revolution -- has prompted Western leaders to formulate a new round of sanctions against Tehran aimed at targeting Iran's drone and missile production industries.

In a coordinated announcement made by the US, UK and Canada this week, new measures were imposed against individuals and companies that are "closely involved" in Iran's drone production.

The US Treasury announced it was "sanctioning over one dozen entities, individuals, and vessels that have played a central role in facilitating and financing the clandestine sale of Iranian unmanned aerial vehicles."

The measures will also result in two individuals facing a travel ban to the UK and an asset freeze, while four companies will be subjected to an asset freeze.

The measures are a direct response to the Iranian attack against Israel, in which more than 300 drones, missiles and ballistic missiles were fired at Israel.

Even so, the fact that the sanctions announced did not extend measures against Iran's lucrative oil industry, whose revenues are primarily responsible for keeping the mullahs in power, shows that, despite the clear and present threat Iran poses to the security of both the Middle East and the wider world, Western governments are still proving reluctant to take the measures needed to cripple the Iranian economy.

A key factor in the reluctance of Western leaders to punish Iran for its aggression is the appeasement policy the Biden administration has pursued towards Iran in recent years in the naive hope that, by going easy on Iran, the Iranian regime might be persuaded to agree to a new deal on its nuclear activities.

US President Joe Biden's desperation to strike a new deal with Tehran even led to him award a sanctions waiver to Iran granting the regime access to $10 billion, money that critics argue is being used to fund Iran's terrorist network throughout the Middle East.

The fallacy of this approach was exposed when Iran threatened, in the wake of its unprecedented attack against Israel, to commence work on building nuclear weapons if Israel attacked any of its nuclear facilities, thereby revealing the true nature of Iran's ultimate nuclear ambitions.

The real challenge Western leaders face, though, in their bid to increase sanctions against Iran, is that all the evidence suggests that, in terms of having any impact on the Iranian regime, they are proving woefully ineffective.

An important factor in the regime's ability to withstand Western sanctions has been the willingness of other autocratic states, such as China and Russia, to continue doing business with Tehran. China has now become the world's largest importer of Iranian oil, while Moscow has enjoyed a number of lucrative contracts with Tehran to supply weapons for use in the Ukraine conflict.

Consequently, the sanctions are failing to have the desired effect in curbing Iran's destabilising activities.

As Fernando Ferreira, head of geopolitical risk service at the Rapidan Energy Group in the US, explained in a recent interview with London's Financial Times, "The Iranians have mastered the art of sanctions circumvention. If the Biden administration is really going to have an impact, it has to shift the focus to China."

All the indications from Tehran certainly suggest it does not feel in any way threatened by the prospect of further sanctions. As Iran's oil minister Javad Owji remarked recently, while Iran's enemies wanted to stop its exports, "today, we can export oil anywhere we want, and with minimal discounts".

If the West is really serious about holding Iran to account for its aggressive activities, then it needs to look at new ways at making sure sanctions have their desired effect.

This should include the possibility of imposing secondary sanctions against any country that continues to do business with Tehran in defiance of Western sanctions.

Without Chinese oil imports, for example, the Iranian oil industry would most likely collapse, thereby increasing the pressure on the Iranian regime to mend its ways.

Similarly, Moscow's lucrative arms deals with Tehran provide an important financial lifeline for Iran's arms industry, which is used to arm and equip Iran's global terrorist infrastructure.

If Western leaders really want the sanctions to have the desired effect of curbing Iran's malign activities, then imposing secondary sanctions on those countries that continue to do business with Tehran will send a clear message that the West is not prepared to tolerate any violations of its sanctions regime.

Con Coughlin is the Telegraph's Defence and Foreign Affairs Editor and a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Gatestone Institute.

In yet another among the latest signs that Moscow is escalating its war against Ukraine, pushing sustained strikes deeper into its territory, Russian forces have mounted a large attack against Ukraine's military headquarters for the southern region. 

The ministry of defense confirmed an attack on Ukraine’s Operational Command South headquarters, coming amid stepped up operations against the southern port city of Odessa. RIA Novosti separately confirmed the attack on the Ukrainian HQ in the center Odessa, citing a ballistic missile strike on the city and three explosions, which reportedly killed three people.

Just last month, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu pledged that his forces will step up attacks on warehouses and logistics hubs with West-supplied weaponry. Moscow has also said it will push back the front lines deeper into Ukrainian territory in order to better prevent NATO-supplied longer range missiles from striking inside Russia. It seems the next big target is Odessa, which would greatly expand Russian military hold in the south.

But Russia also seems to be responding to the increased attacks against Crimea. On Tuesday Russian officials said that the peninsula came under attack with US-provided Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS).

It was revealed only within the last week that these long-range systems were secretly transferred to Kiev by Washington in March. Politico previously documented that the White House "quietly approved the transfer of a number of Army Tactical Missile Systems with a range of nearly 200 miles, said a senior Biden administration official and two U.S. officials, allowing President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s forces to put at risk more Russian targets inside Ukrainian sovereign territory."

A prior, older version of the ATAMCS missiles were sent last year, but the range was reportedly limited to 100 miles. President Biden and his officials throughout the early phase of the war warned Kiev against attacks on Russian territory but this caution seems to have been abandoned by the US administration.

Governor of Crimea Sergey Aksyonov said of the Tuesday attack that the inbound ATACMS were shot down by Russian air defenses. Russia's defense ministry (MoD) specified it shot down six of the missiles. 

Additionally, French-made projectiles were also reportedly shot down elsewhere in the country, with TASS reporting that "Russian air defense systems have taken down 29 Ukrainian drones and five French-made AASM Hammer smart bombs over 24 hours in the special military operation in Ukraine, the Russian Defense Ministry said. Uragan rocket was also shot down."

Ukraine's skies remain by and large undefended and unprotected, which is why President Zelensky is essentially begging for more Patriot anti-air defense systems from the US and Europe. Kiev further wants to see the F-16 program hurried along. 

Ukrainian Air Force spokesman Ilya Evlash on Wednesday told a public broadcaster that the first batch F-16 jets could arrive as early as within weeks, after Orthodox Easter (celebrated on May 5 this year); however, other observers have said that this timetable is a stretch and remains unrealistic.

Authored by CJ Hopkins via off-guardian.org,

So, I gave a little speech about art, and war. The Internationale Agentur für Freiheit, a Berlin art and cultural association, asked me to do that to open their exhibition, Make Art Not War. I couldn’t turn them down.

As my readers may have noticed, I haven’t had very much to say about “The War on Hamas,” or “The War on Gaza,” or “The Liquidation of Gaza,” or whatever you want to call it. (It doesn’t look like much of a “war” to me, but then, nothing really has for quite a while.)

I wrote about it in October and November of last year. And I said a few things about it in my speech. But, mostly, I’ve been trying to keep my mouth shut. I don’t have much to contribute to the … well, I can’t really call it a discussion, or debate, or an argument. It feels like people screaming slogans into each other’s faces, accusing each other of this and that, and calling each other names, and so on. Which … I get why people are inclined to do that. I’m not. But I get why other folks are. So, I think it’s best if I just shut my pie hole (as much as possible) and let folks do that.

It isn’t going to change what’s happening. GloboCap (or whatever you call the system we’re all living under) has been occupying, destabilizing, and restructuring the Middle East for decades. It’s not going to stop. It is going to continue. As the restructuring of the West is going to continue.

GloboCap doesn’t have anything else to do.

Anyway, before I ramble on any further, here’s the English version of the speech I gave at the exhibition. Many thanks to those of you who attended … and apologies again for my German. I’ll get the hang of it one of these days.

Fighting Monsters

The name of this exhibition is “Make Art not War.” So I’m going to say a few things about art, and war. You’re not going to like all of them. Or at least I hope not. If you did, I wouldn’t be a very good artist, but I might be a pretty good propagandist.

I grew up in the 1960s and 70s. In the USA. The war was on television. In Vietnam. Cambodia. Cuba. The Middle East. Then in El Salvador. Nicaragua. Iran. Libya. Yugoslavia. Afghanistan. Iraq. The list goes on and on. I am almost 63 years old. All my life we’ve been at war. Not just Americans. All of us. People. Someone always at war with someone. And all my life there have been other people calling for peace. Protesting the war. Whatever war it was at the time.

If you read a little history, as I like to do sometimes, you will learn that someone has been at war with someone over something since the dawn of civilization. Certainly Western civilization. The history of Western art and literature begins with war. Genocidal war. The Illiad is a poem about a genocidal war. Rape. Mass murder. The slaughter of children. Most of Shakespeare’s plays are about war, or are set during a war, or have something to do with someone killing someone over something.

Some of that history happened right here. There are bunkers below us where people sheltered during the bombing raids in the Second World War. Legend has it the Stasi operated listening stations right here in these rooms. When I first arrived in Berlin, twenty years ago, I lived in a sublet on this street. This was my neighborhood, the Bötzowviertel. There were still bullet holes in the facades of buildings. People died here. Civilians. Children. Women were raped here. Families were dragged out of their homes and sent to the death camps here. This is Berlin. You know the history. I don’t need to recite all the details.

What’s my point? Well, my point is … that is war. Indiscriminate killing. Rape. Mass atrocities. That’s what war is. That is what it has always been. And we’ve been doing it to each other since the dawn of civilization. It is not going to stop. We are not going to stop it. Art is certainly not going to stop it. We are, whether we like it or not, a violent species, human beings. It isn’t all we are, but it is part of what we are. We are also lovers, teachers, healers, artists, and other beautiful things. But sometimes we are vicious killers. Monsters. Genocidal monsters.

A crazy old German philosopher once warned us, “beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster.” He was joking, of course. There are no monsters. Or, rather, there are only monsters, on every side of every war. In a war, there are no good guys and bad guys. There is just our side and the other side. Our atrocities and their atrocities. And whoever wins gets to write the history.

That’s it. The rest is propaganda. Their propaganda and our propaganda. Of course, our propaganda is not propaganda. Our propaganda is just the truth. Because we’re not monsters. They are the monsters.

This is Day 202 of Israel’s war on Hamas, or its liquidation of Gaza, depending on your perspective. I haven’t said too much about it publicly. I said a few things about it when it began. That didn’t go well. No one was listening. The propaganda from both sides was already deafening. I described the Hamas attack as mass murder. My pro-Palestinian readers didn’t like that. I described Israel as a typical mass-murdering nation-state, no different than the United States of America, Germany, France, Spain, The Netherlands, the Soviet Union, the British empire, the Ottoman empire, the Holy Roman Empire, or any other mass-murdering nation-state or empire. My pro-Israeli readers didn’t like that. Neither side wanted to hear about history. The history of asymmetric warfare, or terrorism, depending on your perspective. The history of nation-states and empires. They wanted to hear a story about monsters. About the monsters on the other side.

I told you you weren’t going to like everything I said, right?

OK, let me say a few things about art now. If you didn’t like what I said about war, maybe you’ll like what I say about art. I can’t speak for other artists, but I’ll tell you why I think I became an artist, and what I have been trying to do as an artist.

I haven’t been trying to stop any wars. Or to pacify the human species. I don’t know how to do either of those things. And I am not a fan of propaganda. I confess, I have engaged in it from time to time, but mostly what I’ve been trying to do is deprogram minds, starting with my own.

We are all, by the time we realize we exist, the products of programming, ideological conditioning. I believe it is the job of artists to undo that, or at least to marginally interfere with it. That’s what art, and artists, did for me. They introduced me to my mind. My programmed mind. They forced me to think, and to see, and listen. They taught me to question, to pay attention. They dared me to deprogram my mind, and provided me with the tools to do it. OK, sure, some mind-altering drugs also helped, but it was artists that introduced me to those drugs. Then they introduced me to the monster I’ve been fighting.

I have been fighting this monster, in my art, in my mind, and out in the world for as long I remember. You have to fight it everywhere at once. To fight it in your mind, you have to fight it out in the world. And to fight it out in the world, you have to fight it in your mind.

Let me tell you about the monster.

The monster is legion. It goes by many names. It wears many faces. They change over time. William S. Burroughs called it “The Control Machine.” Some people call it the corporatocracy. I call it global capitalism. The monster doesn’t care what we call it. It doesn’t care who we are, what our politics are, or which side of what war we think we are on. It doesn’t care what we believe, which religion we profess. It couldn’t care less how we “identify.”

All it cares about is power. All it cares about is control.

It is everywhere, and nowhere. It has no country. No nationality. It doesn’t exist. It is everything, and nothing. It is the non-existent empire occupying the entire planet. It has no external enemies because there is no outside, not anymore. So there is no real war. There are only insurrections, carried out by rebels, traitors, terrorists.

The monster, our non-existent empire, is the first global empire in human history. It is not a group of evil people. It is maintained by people, but they are all interchangeable. It has no headquarters. There is no emperor. There isn’t any “Bastille” to storm. It is a logos. A system. An operating system.

It has no politics, no ideology. Its official ideology is “reality.” Thus it has no political opposition. Who would argue against or oppose “reality”? Lunatics. Extremists. The terminally deranged. And thus there are no dissidents, no opposing political parties. There are only apostates, heretics, blasphemers, sowers of discord, “reality” deniers.

It manufactures “reality.” Whatever “reality” it needs. The War on Terror. The War on Populism. The War on the Virus. The War on the Weather. The War on Hate. The War on Whatever. It doesn’t matter. It is all the same war. The same “Clear-and-Hold” op. The same counterinsurgency. It has been for about 30 years.

If things seem crazy, if you’re wondering what’s happening, that is what’s happening. That is all that is happening. That is all that has been happening since the end of the Cold War.

The empire is eliminating internal resistance, any and all forms of internal resistance. The monster is monsterizing everything and everyone. Transforming societies into markets. It doesn’t have anything else to do. It is erasing values. It is dissolving borders. It is “sensitivity-editing” culture. Synchronizing everything and everyone in conformity to its only value … money. Rendering everything a commodity.

It is the apotheosis of liberal democracy, the part where the monster does away with democracy, with the simulation of democracy, and proclaims itself “democracy.” It is global-capitalist Gleichschaltung.

That’s the monster I have been fighting.

Which makes me a terrorist. A conspiracy theorist. A Russian propagandist. A Covid denier. A right-wing extremist. An anti-vaxxer. An anti-Semite. A transphobic racist. An enemy of “democracy.” A Hamas supporter. A Donald Trump supporter. An AfD supporter. Whatever the official enemy happens to be today.

It makes me a criminal. A thought criminal. An art criminal.

Which I literally am. The German authorities are prosecuting me for disseminating art. For tweeting art. Pictures. Words. They banned one of my books. So maybe I’m marginally interfering with their ideological conditioning, with their programming, with their New Normal Gleichschaltung op.

If so, good, because, if I can quote another German, “art is not a mirror held up to reality, it is a hammer to shape reality with.”

And I’ll go a little further than Brecht. Every work of art we make shapes reality one way or another, whether we intend it to or not. It either feeds the monster or it fucks with the monster. The monster out there, and the monster in here, inside us, all of us … because it’s all the same monster.

Thank you, all of you who are fucking with the monster. That is all. Let’s keep it up.

CJ Hopkins is an award-winning American playwright, novelist and political satirist based in Berlin. His plays are published by Bloomsbury Publishing and Broadway Play Publishing, Inc. His dystopian novel, Zone 23, is published by Snoggsworthy, Swaine & Cormorant. Volumes I and II of his Consent Factory Essays are published by Consent Factory Publishing, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Amalgamated Content, Inc. He can be reached at cjhopkins.com or consentfactory.org.

Authored by Gordon Chang via The Gatestone Institute,

It is not clear whether a Chinese official was at the Beijing airport to bid farewell to Secretary of State Antony Blinken as he ended his three-day visit to China on Friday, but the send-off was in any event low-key and Chinese leader Xi Jinping slighted America's top diplomat at the end of his troubled stay.

Also, China, literally and figuratively, did not roll out the red carpet for his arrival in Shanghai on Wednesday. Only a low-level official was on hand to greet Blinken as he stepped off the plane.

"The Chinese government flouted international protocols at the airport on the secretary of state's arrival in Shanghai and departure from Beijing," Charles Burton of the Prague-based Sinopsis think tank told Gatestone.

"It was petty."

"This was more than a slight," Burton, a former Canadian diplomat who served in Beijing, said.

"Aside from a calculated insult to the dignity of the United States, the move indicates Xi Jinping is making clear that the accepted norms of diplomacy will not be respected by China anymore."

Blinken was in China to discuss the growing list of disagreements between Washington and Beijing. Not surprisingly, he did not accomplish anything there other than register America's complaints on matters such as Beijing's support for the Russian war effort in Ukraine and unfair treatment of U.S. companies. On every major issue, the U.S. and China take different sides, and the Chinese have clearly dug in. Blinken was reduced to begging.

As a result, America is resorting to the dialogue-is-progress narrative. "I think it's important to underscore the value—in fact, the necessity—of direct engagement, of sustained engagement, of speaking to each other, laying out our differences which are real, seeking to work through them, as also looking for ways to build cooperation where we can," Blinken said to Chen Jining, Communist Party secretary of Shanghai, ahead of his talks in the Chinese capital.

After the end of fruitless sessions in Beijing—Blinken met with, among others, President Xi Jinping and Foreign Minister Wang Yi—all the secretary of state could do is highlight new dialogue issues.

"I'm pleased to announce that earlier today, we agreed to hold the first U.S.-PRC talks on artificial intelligence to be held in the coming weeks," he said at a press availability on April 26, as he wrapped up his trip to China.

"We'll share our respective views on the risks and safety concerns around advanced AI and how best to manage them."

Blinken's comments repeated those of President Joe Biden after his November 15 meeting with Xi Jinping in Woodside, California. In substance, therefore, Blinken in Beijing continued talking about talking.

There is no question that AI is an important topic, especially when it comes to the control of nuclear weapons. Yet this does not mean the U.S. should seek an agreement with China on that topic.

"The latest shambolic display by the Biden administration comes in the form of Secretary of State Antony Blinken groveling before China's Ruler-for-Life Xi Jinping for a new set of protocols for governing the development of artificial intelligence between America and China, the two nations contributing the most to both the advancement of AI and its weaponization," Brandon Weichert, a national security analyst at The National Interest, told Gatestone.

"Although creating such protocols may sound like a good idea, it seems like a bad idea for Washington to unilaterally agree to limit its own activities."

"Unilaterally"? Burton and Weichert point out that China never honors agreements, so any deal with Beijing is akin to a unilateral promise.

"China is deeply committed to the weaponization of AI and would be counting its lucky communist star if the Americans basically deterred themselves with such a protocol," Weichert, also author of Biohacked: China's Race to Control Life, added.

He suggests the United States spend its time getting the world to restrict tech trade with China "rather than pleading with Xi Jinping for mercy."

On the AI front, the Biden administration to its credit has been restricting sales of chips and chip-making equipment and has been coercing cooperation from others, most notably the Netherlands, the home of equipment-maker ASML.

Nonetheless, Biden needs to do more: China has been able to buy chips on the black market. For instance, Reuters reported this month that ten Chinese entities were able, despite U.S. rules, to acquire Nvidia's artificial intelligence chips through resellers.

The risk now is that the Biden administration will trade away its restrictions for meaningless promises from China's Communists.

Biden is willing to sign agreements with China's regime because he believes it is merely a "competitor," refusing to label it an adversary and certainly not using the term that the Chinese Communist Party reserves for America: enemy. He and his predecessors have not wanted to acknowledge that the Party, as it openly proclaims, seeks the destruction of the United States.

Enemy? In May 2019, People's Daily, the Party's self-described "mouthpiece" and therefore the most authoritative publication in China, carried a landmark piece declaring a "people's war" on America.

This phrase has special meaning. "A people's war is a total war, and its strategy and tactics require the overall mobilization of political, economic, cultural, diplomatic, military, and other power resources, the integrated use of multiple forms of struggle and combat methods," declared a column carried in April 2023 by PLA Daily, an official news website of the People's Liberation Army.

Therefore, Biden's measures, like those of presidents before him, have been inadequate.

America still suffers from an inability to appreciate the hostility and maliciousness of the Communist Party. Blinken left China talking about how it was in America's interest for China to prosper. China's regime, however, fueled with American investment and trade, has been waging "unrestricted warfare" against the United States for decades. Beijing's unrestricted warfare has included the killing tens of thousands of Americans each year with fentanyl, the equivalent of one plane crash every day and more American deaths than in the Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq wars combined.

Now, Xi thinks he has the upper hand. From the moment Blinken touched down in Shanghai to the moment he left, China's ruler went out of his way to humiliate the secretary of state. The secretary of state, however, exhibited inexhaustible patience for humiliation.

Unfortunately, acceptance of rough treatment has consequences, because the meekness leads the Chinese to think they can do what they want, making them even more arrogant and aggressive. Biden has yet to figure that out.

Xi met Blinken on Friday, but China's leader let the cameras record his disdain for his visitor. Seconds before the secretary of state walked half-way across the room to shake hands, Xi asked an aide, "When will he leave?"

"Not soon enough," Blinken should have replied.

The secretary of state should never have gone to China in the first place.

Authored by Michael Wilkerson via The Epoch Times,

Last week, Japan saw its currency, the yen, rapidly depreciate against the U.S. dollar and other world currencies to near record low levels. This drew the attention of financial markets and other observers, and—in some quarters—led to panic. There was concern that Japan, a formerly great nation now increasingly viewed as the “sick man of Asia,” was on the brink of a currency and financial markets crisis.

It wasn’t so long ago that Japan was the envy of the world. Japan’s postwar recovery and subsequent economic miracle produced by the 1980s the world’s second-largest economy after the United States. Numerous Japanese multinational corporations were admired by the business world as a result of their growth, efficiency, and managerial discipline. The state and big business were closely aligned in what appeared an unstoppable formula. Flush with cash and confidence, Japanese companies and investors were aggressively expansionist, acquiring market share, trophy properties, resources, and businesses in the United States and elsewhere. Much like concerns about China today, fears then abounded that Japan would overtake the United States as the global economic leader.

These fears were unfounded. “Japan Inc.” was a house built on a faulty foundation. Overly accommodative easy money, along with high leverage throughout the financial and corporate sectors, facilitated a massive stock market and real estate bubble, which eventually burst in 1990. The crash led to a depression from which Japan has never recovered, even after three decades. The question is, why not? Herein lies a lesson for the United States.

Repeated government bailouts of failing financial and industrial companies have perpetuated Japan’s crisis. Japan’s leaders and policies have repeatedly blocked the process of creative destruction, which—if allowed to run its course and cleanse the system—would have been a massive stimulus to entrepreneurship and economic vitality. However, rather than allow capitalism to work, the Japanese system doomed the country to a generation of stagnation.

As a result, Japan has endured three “lost decades” of weak economic growth, diminished purchasing power, lower and lower standards of living, loss of prestige and influence in the global community, and an aging population that the island nation’s resources are straining to support.

Japan now has the world’s highest government debt-to-GDP ratio, at 264 percent. Japan’s banks are walking zombies, unable to grow or lend because they have never restructured their balance sheets to clean up massive piles of debt left over from excesses of previous decades. The Bank of Japan (BOJ) holds government bonds and other assets equal to 127 percent of Japan’s GDP, the highest ratio of any central bank in the world. This portfolio resulted in over $70 billion in unrealized losses for the BOJ in six months of 2023 alone.

The Japanese yen has devalued against the U.S. dollar by more than 30 percent in just three years since 2021. Since the global financial crisis 2008–09, the yen has lost 75 percent of its value against gold. Because of Japan’s high reliance on imports, this loss of purchasing power has translated directly into a substantially lower standard of living for the Japanese people. In theory, Japan could support the yen by raising interest rates, but this is a political, monetary, and fiscal impossibility.

Decades of easy money policies are a central culprit and cause of this slow-moving trainwreck.

The Bank of Japan only began raising interest rates this March, some three years after the United States and the European Union brought their own easy money policies to an end. This was the first time the BOJ has raised rates since 2007, a move that pulled the official rate out of negative territory. Nonetheless, with inflation now approaching 2 percent, a short-term policy rate of zero to 0.1 percent means that real rates remain around negative 2 percent. This serves as an additional tax on Japanese households and an intended stimulus to spend today rather than save for tomorrow.

Money essentially is free in Japan, but no one can afford to borrow it, even if the banks can manage to lend it. The BOJ and the entire banking system stand in the penumbra of insolvency. Only Japan’s decade-long zero interest-rate policy has allowed Japan’s decrepit financial system to continue to stand following the 2008 financial crisis and the effects of COVID economic shutdowns. Japan cannot afford to raise interest rates to support its currency more than nominally above the zero bound without substantially raising debt service costs and exploding losses. This would bring the entire rickety system to the ground.

A growing economy might help ease the burden, but Japan’s economy is moribund. This is not surprising, as meaningful growth is impossible under mountains of debt. GDP shrank by 0.8 percent in the third quarter and eked out 0.1 percent growth in the fourth quarter. While the country thus barely escaped technical recession (two consecutive quarters of GDP decline), Japan hasn’t posted GDP growth above 2 percent in more than 20 years, save for two rebound quarters after the global shocks of the financial crisis and COVID.

Japan represents a slow-moving demographic disaster. Japan has the oldest median population of any major country in the world and the lowest fertility rate at 1.37. Japan’s fertility rate has been below the minimum population replacement rate (2.1) for 40 years, meaning that the country is both aging and losing economic productivity, and it is probably too late to reverse it.

This all represents a grave warning to the United States.

The U.S. government is chasing Japan for the ignoble title of most indebted nation. Overly indebted nations cannot grow. With federal government debt to GDP of 129 percent, a ratio which is increasing rapidly, the United States is now the fourth most indebted country in the world. Debt is growing more quickly now because the federal government refuses to wean itself off of deficit spending, including an additional $1.7 trillion in 2023, which must be funded by new debt, as must over $1 trillion in interest expense. This debt—and the cost to service it—acts as a drag on our economy. Deficit spending and the borrowing required to support it crowds out private market investment and financings.

Rather than let more insolvent banks and unprofitable firms fail, U.S. monetary policy since at least the 2008 financial crisis has propped up bad business models—and the asset values of otherwise worthless investments—by subsidizing the cost of capital well below the natural rate of interest. In a nation that has been the standard bearer and exporter of capitalism for more than two centuries, socialistic government policies are preventing capitalism from working at home. This will eventually catch up with our financial markets and economy, just as it did for Japan.

It is not just shortsighted monetary and financial policy that threatens U.S. competitiveness.

If Americans’ worsening attitudes toward the importance of marriage and children do not reverse course dramatically, the United States will face the same demographic fate as Japan. The fertility rate in the United States has been in decline since at least 2008, and reached a record low of 1.62 in 2023. This is well below the replacement rate, and thus unsustainable.

Progressives point to declining fertility rates and aging populations to justify mass illegal immigration, but this is a red herring. Bringing tens of millions of unskilled, uneducated, and culturally unassimilated migrants into the nation is not a benefit but rather an untenable burden on social infrastructure, an enervating drain on economic productivity, and an unbearable tax on legal citizens.

At least Japan got that part right.

It's been no secret that the fiercest and most sustained criticism of Israel's military operation in Gaza has come from Global South countries. Many of these have also supported South Africa's taking Israel before the International Criminal Court (ICC) on allegations of genocide.

But now the next big step is taking place: governments are formally severing ties with Israel and expelling diplomats. On Wednesday Colombian President Gustavo Petro announced that his country will cut relations with Israel over what he called its "genocidal" war against Palestinians. He said this will be formally initiated starting Thursday.

"Tomorrow (Thursday) diplomatic relations with the state of Israel will be severed... for having a genocidal president,"  Petro told a May Day rally in Bogota.

"If Palestine dies, humanity dies, and we will not let it die," he said at one point in the speech. Petro is Colombia's first ever leftist president, and he proclaimed that "democratic peoples cannot allow Nazism to reestablish itself in international politics."

However, Bloomberg has noted that his motives could partly be to distract from the ongoing economic crisis in the country:

Petro is looking to counter large anti-government rallies that took place on April 21 and said his administration will send a package of bills to congress meant to boost economic growth.

The package will include measures that force the financial sector to provide cheap financing to productive sectors, Petro said.

“It will consist of bills that generate forced investment in the Colombian private financial system aimed at credits for small, medium, and large industries, agriculture, and tourism in Colombia, to reactivate the country,” he said.

President Petro has for months been a fiery vocal critic of Israel, having first threatened to sever relations with Israel back in March. Already Bolivia had cut ties with Israel by the end of October as the Gaza offensive entered full swing.

NOW - Socialist president of Colombia: "Tomorrow diplomatic relations will be broken with Israel due to having a genocidal president."pic.twitter.com/FbkVBnaHIn

— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) May 1, 2024

At that time Foreign Minister Israel Katz had condemned the Colombian leader's call to cut ties, writing on X that his support for "the Hamas murderers who carried out terrible acts of slaughter and sexual crimes against babies, women and adults is a disgrace to the Colombian people."

"Israel will continue to defend its citizens and will not give in to any pressure or threats," Katz had declared at the time. Israel has already halted security exports to Colombia as of last year following the worsening rift with Bogota in the wake of Oct.7.

Tel Aviv fears that such dramatic actions by Global South and non-aligned governments could spread, damaging trade in some corners of the globe and its standing on the world stage. A similar domino-effect momentum also happened in the late 20th century with apartheid-era South Africa.

Authored by Aldgra Fredly via The Epoch Times,

Dozens of Google workers who were fired for protesting the tech giant’s cloud deal with the Israeli government filed a complaint on Monday with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) over their termination.

The complaint, obtained by The Washington Post, alleges that Google violated the workers’ rights by “terminating and/or placing them on administrative leave in response to their protected concerted activity, namely, participation (or perceived participation) in a peaceful, non-disruptive protest that was directly and explicitly connected to their terms and conditions of work.”

The workers are seeking reinstatement of their jobs and back pay, alleging that Google had “unlawfully retaliated” against them for engaging in “peaceful” protest, Jane Chung, a spokesperson for No Tech for Apartheid, was quoted as saying by the New York Post.

No Tech for Apartheid, the group organizing the protests, claimed that Google fired over 20 workers on April 23, including non-participating bystanders.

This adds to the 30 workers fired last week for their involvement in sit-in protests at Google offices in New York and Sunnyvale, California, bringing the total number of terminated workers to over 50 people.

Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The protests targeted a $1.2 billion deal known as Project Nimbus that provides artificial intelligence technology to the Israeli government.

The fired workers contend that the system is being lethally deployed in the Gaza war.

“Google’s aims are clear: the corporation is attempting to quash dissent, silence its workers, and reassert its power over them,” the group said in an April 23 press release.

“In its attempts to do so, Google has decided to unceremoniously, and without due process, upend the livelihoods of over 50 of its own workers,” it added.

The activist group has vowed to continue organizing until their demands are met: for Google to “drop Project Nimbus and stop powering Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza now.”

Project Nimbus was signed in 2021. It involves joint cloud computing and AI services provided by Google and Amazon to the Israeli government. Google has said that the program is not being utilized for military or intelligence purposes.

Google has said that it fired the workers after gathering details from coworkers who were “physically disrupted” and it identified employees who used masks and didn’t carry their staff badges to hide their identities. Google didn’t specify how many were fired.

In a blog post on April 18, Google CEO Sundar Pichai hinted that workers will be on a short leash as the company intensifies its efforts to improve its AI technology at a pivotal moment in the industry and, potentially, humanity. He did not openly refer to a specific incident.

“But ultimately we are a workplace and our policies and expectations are clear: this is a business, and not a place to act in a way that disrupts coworkers or makes them feel unsafe, to attempt to use the company as a personal platform, or to fight over disruptive issues or debate politics,” Mr Pichai wrote.

“We have a duty to be an objective and trusted provider of information that serves all of our users globally,” he added.

It’s not the first time Google workers have protested against some of the company’s ventures and its approach to AI development.

A previous protest by employees in 2018 resulted in Google’s termination of a contract with the U.S. Department of Defense called “Project Maven.” The contract was largely focused on assisting armed forces with military video analysis.

Despite this, Google has remained largely unaffected by the internal uproar.

From a financial perspective, the company continues to flourish through revenue obtained through its main sources, primarily digital advertising and a dominant search engine.

This visualization shows which companies are receiving grants from the U.S. CHIPS Act, as of April 25, 2024. The CHIPS Act is a federal statute signed into law by President Joe Biden that authorizes $280 billion in new funding to boost domestic research and manufacturing of semiconductors.

The grant amounts visualized in this graphic, via Visual Capitalist's Marcus Lu, are intended to accelerate the production of semiconductor fabrication plants (fabs) across the United States.

Data and Company Highlights

The figures we used to create this graphic were collected from a variety of public news sources. The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) also maintains a tracker for CHIPS Act recipients, though at the time of writing it does not have the latest details for Micron.

BAE Systems was not included in the graphic due to size limitations

Intel’s Massive Plans

Intel is receiving the largest share of the pie, with $8.5 billion in grants (plus an additional $11 billion in government loans). This grant accounts for 22% of the CHIPS Act’s total subsidies for chip production.

From Intel’s side, the company is expected to invest $100 billion to construct new fabs in Arizona and Ohio, while modernizing and/or expanding existing fabs in Oregon and New Mexico. Intel could also claim another $25 billion in credits through the U.S. Treasury Department’s Investment Tax Credit.

TSMC Expands its U.S. Presence

TSMC, the world’s largest semiconductor foundry company, is receiving a hefty $6.6 billion to construct a new chip plant with three fabs in Arizona. The Taiwanese chipmaker is expected to invest $65 billion into the project.

The plant’s first fab will be up and running in the first half of 2025, leveraging 4 nm (nanometer) technology. According to TrendForce, the other fabs will produce chips on more advanced 3 nm and 2 nm processes.

The Latest Grant Goes to Micron

Micron, the only U.S.-based manufacturer of memory chips, is set to receive $6.1 billion in grants to support its plans of investing $50 billion through 2030. This investment will be used to construct new fabs in Idaho and New York.

The Biden administration and US Treasury on Wednesday unveiled nearly 300 new anti-Russia sanctions which especially target third party entities which are said to help Moscow in sanctions-busting activities.

"The almost 300 targets being sanctioned by both Treasury and the Department of State include sanctions on dozens of actors that have enabled Russia to acquire desperately needed technology and equipment from abroad," the Treasury Department said in a press release.

So-called dual-use items out of China are a key focus of the action, which is being hailed as one of "the most wide-ranging actions against Chinese companies so far in Washington's sanctions aimed at Russia." 20 companies based in China and Hong Kong were named.

Companies in Turkey, Belgium, Azerbaijan, Slovakia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are also targeted.

"Treasury has consistently warned that companies will face significant consequences for providing material support for Russia’s war, and the U.S. is imposing them today on almost 300 targets," Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said.

It also marks the furthest reaching action that seeks to specifically degrade Russia’s military-industrial base, as well as its biological and chemical weapons programs. For example, companies involved in manufacturing precursor materials for Russia to make explosives are listed.

Last week during Secretary of State Antony Blinken's visit to China he warned about Beijing's support for Russia's war in Ukraine. "Russia would struggle to sustain its assault on Ukraine without China’s support," Blinken had claimed provocatively, while also asserting China is the "top supplier" of Russia's defense industrial base - albeit not in terms of lethal aid (but instead "dual use" technologies).

This support to Russia's defense industry additionally constitutes a "medium to long-term threat that many Europeans feel viscerally that Russia poses to them," Blinken had asserted.

Meanwhile, as Ukraine forces continue getting pushed back from frontline positions by the better-armed Russian force, hawkish threats out of Congress are getting more frantic...

??We must be prepared to strike back at Putin on Russian soil - Congressman Scott

"Supporting Ukraine means defeating Vladimir Putin in Russia. We must be prepared to hit him back on Russian territory. And when I see the Biden administration, which does not want to comply with… pic.twitter.com/B3UlXzV5ak

— Victor vicktop55 (@vicktop55) April 30, 2024

He warned last week that the Biden administration stood ready to introduce more sanctions against China if dual-use goods and technologies continue to be sent to Russia, including things previously identified by Washington as problematic: semiconductors, machine tools, chemical precursors, ball bearings, and optical systems. Based on Wednesday's Treasury action it is clear that the sanctions were already being prepared even as Blinken was on the three-day trip, which including a meeting with President Xi.

Authored by Katabella Roberts via The Epoch Times,

A group of six Republican state attorneys general filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration’s Department of Education on Tuesday over what they said were “radical and illegal” changes to Title IX rules.

The lawsuit, led by Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman and Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti, was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky.

In their legal filing, the GOP attorneys general argued that the department overstepped its authority when rolling out new updates to Title IX rules that expanded protections to students by incorporating gender identity into the legal text.

They further claimed the changes to the rules override state laws and will harm Tennessee students, families, and schools. The attorneys general called on the court to pause and overturn the newly expanded policy.

“The U.S. Department of Education has no authority to let boys into girls’ locker rooms,” Mr. Skrmetti said in a statement.

“In the decades since its adoption, Title IX has been universally understood to protect the privacy and safety of women in private spaces like locker rooms and bathrooms. Federal bureaucrats have no power to rewrite laws passed by the people’s elected representatives, and I expect the courts will put a stop to this unconstitutional power grab.”

Mr. Coleman, meanwhile argued the new changes to Title IX rules would “rip away 50 years of Title IX’s protections for women and put entire generations of young girls at risk.”

“As Attorney General, it is my duty to protect the people of Kentucky. As a Dad, it is my duty to protect my daughters,” Mr. Coleman said. “Today, I do both.”

Biden Admin Unveils Changes to Rules

The Kentucky attorney general added that his office is joining the lawsuit to “lead this fight for our daughters, granddaughters, nieces, and all the women of our Commonwealth.”

Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 is a longstanding policy designed to protect people from discrimination based on sex in schools.

Specifically, the protections prohibit sex-based discrimination in any school or any other education program that receives funding, either directly or indirectly, from the federal government.

However, the Department of Education last week rolled out newly updated Title IX rules that include expanded protections for LGBTQ students for the first time.

Under the updated rules, the prohibition against discrimination based on “sex” has been updated to include a prohibition against discrimination “based on sex stereotypes, sex-related characteristics (including intersex traits), pregnancy or related conditions, sexual orientation, and gender identity.”

The new rules also dictate that any K-12 school or institution of higher education that receives any federal funding may not separate or treat individuals differently based on sex “in a manner that subjects that person to more than de minimis harm,” which Republicans say will lead to shared bathrooms, locker rooms and more.

It does, however, clarify that such separations are allowed “in the context of sex-separate living facilities and sex-separate athletic teams.”

The rules also state that all “non-confidential” school employees are required to notify a Title IX coordinator if they learn of any violations.

According to the Biden administration, the new regulations are set to take effect on Aug. 1.

President Joe Biden (R) speaks in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, on June 30, 2023. (Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images)

‘Radical, Illegal Attempt to Rewrite the Statute’

In a statement announcing the newly updated rules, U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said they “build on the legacy of Title IX by clarifying that all our nation’s students can access schools that are safe, welcoming, and respect their rights.”

“The final regulations promote educational equity and opportunity for students across the country as well as accountability and fairness while empowering and supporting students and families,” the department said.

However, the attorneys general of Kentucky and Tennessee claim the new rules could put schools at risk of losing federal education funding, including access to free and reduced lunch programs and Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) grants if they fail to abide by them.

The new rules would also require K-12 schools, colleges, and universities to “allow males identifying as females access to women’s sports, bathrooms and locker rooms,” they said.

“Under this radical and illegal attempt to rewrite the statute, if a man enters a woman’s locker room and a woman complains that makes her uncomfortable, the woman will be subject to investigation and penalties for violating the man’s civil rights,” Mr. Skrmetti said.

“Federal bureaucrats have no power to rewrite laws passed by the people’s elected representatives, and I expect the courts will put a stop to this unconstitutional power grab.”

The attorneys general of Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia, and Virginia have also joined the lawsuit with Tennessee and Kentucky.

It marks the latest lawsuit against the new Title IX changes after Republican attorneys general from nine states including Alabama and Louisiana filed similar legal challenges against the newly updated protections on Monday.

The Texas attorney general also has filed a lawsuit against the expanded rules, calling them “unlawful” and claiming they mandate schools comply with a “radical gender ideology.”

Law-abiding, freedom-loving Americans are finally catching on. The chaos spreading across the nation's colleges and universities is a direct result of failed woke ideologies pushed by radical Marxist teachers, school groups, and school administrators. These schools have brainwashed an entire generation of 'useful idiot' youngsters in classrooms, otherwise called 'indoctrination camps.' 

Let's begin with one Marxist extremist preaching the quiet part out loud to hundreds of youngsters this week: 

"There's only one solution, intifada revolution. We must have a revolution so we can have a socialist reconstruction of the USA."

The X user who posted the footage wrote, "This isn't just about Israel/Palestine. It's an attempt of the Marxist takeover of America. Our colleges have become indoctrination camps." 

An extremist on the mic says: "There’s only one solution, intifada revolution. We must have a revolution so we can have a socialist reconstruction of the USA."

This isn’t just about Israel/Palestine. It's an attempt of the Marxist takeover of America. Our colleges have become… pic.twitter.com/2IEqRyuorB

— A Man Of Memes (@RickyDoggin) April 30, 2024

Following the overnight clashes between Marxist extremists masquerading as pro-Palestinian protesters across a dozen or more schools, partly funded by you know who... Soros, there was a glimmer of hope as NYPD officers restored law and order at City University and raised Old Glory from the ashes once again. 

#HAPPENINGNOW: An incredible scene and proud moment as we have assisted @CityCollegeNY in restoring order on campus, culminating in raising Old Glory once again on their campus flagpole. ????@NYPDPC @NYPD1stDep @NYPDChiefOfDept @NYPDChiefPatrol @NYPDnews pic.twitter.com/XZWFmvXcUs

— NYPD Deputy Commissioner, Operations Kaz Daughtry (@NYPDDaughtry) May 1, 2024

There were more signs of hope, this time from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where a band of fraternity students protected Old Glory from Commies who tried to burn and trample the flag. 

MY BEAUTIFUL PI KAPPA PHI CHAD SQUAD AT UNC CHAPEL HILL HOLDING THE LINE!!!?????? ABSOLUTE LEGENDS!!! pic.twitter.com/VBCSkggy9m

— il Donaldo Trumpo (@PapiTrumpo) May 1, 2024

Now, the boys of Pi Kappa Phi at UNC are being celebrated as heroes on the internet - and someone started them a GoFundMe page titled "Pi Kappa Phi Men Defended their Flag. Throw 'em a Rager." 

As of late afternoon, more than 2,200 donations have been seen, raising $61,557, nearing the goal of $65,000. 

Here's what the organizer of the fundraiser wrote: 

Commie losers across the country have invaded college campuses to make dumb demands of weak University Administrators.

But amidst the chaos, the screaming, the anti-semitism, the hatred of faith and flag, stood a platoon of American heroes. Armored in Vineyard Vines and Patagonia, fueled by Zyn and White Claws, these triumphant Brohemians protected Old Glory from the unwashed Marxist horde -- laughing at their shrieks and wails and shielding the Stars & Stripes from Soviet missiles.

These boys... no, men, of the UNC Chapel Hill Pi Kappa Phi, gave the best to America and now they deserve the best.

Help us raise funds to throw this frat the party they deserve, a party worth of the boat-shoed Broleteriat who did their country proud.

Hayman Capital Management founder and CIO Kyle Bass wrote on X that he donated to the cause:

"I just sent a donation to these principled defenders of our flag, our country, and our values. It's time we fight back against the spineless 'victims' who represent the rot that has infected our universities." 

I just sent a donation to these principled defenders of our flag, our country, and our values. It’s time we fight back against the spineless ‘victims’ who represent the rot that has infected our universities. ???? #UNC #ColumbiaUniversity @squirrelburger https://t.co/6P3sgRfw9F

— ???? Kyle Bass ???? (@Jkylebass) May 1, 2024

Another X user pointed out:

• Democrats: Set up fundraisers to bail out rioters and looters.
• Republicans: Set up fundraisers to celebrate patriotism with kegs of Natty Light.

Democrats: Set up fundraisers to bail out rioters and looters.

Republicans: Set up fundraisers to celebrate patriotism with kegs of Natty Light. https://t.co/QE7BqOypht

— Harrison Fields (@HarrisonWFields) May 1, 2024

Here's what others are saying... 

Did I just toss in my support for these guys? You better believe I did! They are the ray of light and sign of hope that we all needed to remind of us that we have a generation of great kids and fearless leaders that still believe in doing what’s right.https://t.co/7ragrRsQUU

— Dennis Bonnen (@RepDennisBonnen) May 1, 2024

There are many good activities to support on America's colleges and universities.

Today I'm going to contribute towards the Pi Kappa Phi brothers who raised the American flag at UNC!https://t.co/qLi2ZU4Owj

— Michael J. Hicks (@HicksCBER) May 1, 2024

The internet is raising money for the fraternity men who saved the USA flag to throw an epic rager. ????

Chip in:https://t.co/bRFzIqw6Rv

— Old Row (@OldRowOfficial) May 1, 2024

Buy these gentlemen a beer
"Armored in Vineyard Vines & Patagonia, fueled by Zyn & White Claws, these triumphant Brohemians protected Old Glory from the unwashed Marxist horde"https://t.co/Rv3wACfz6y

— Merav Ceren (@MeravCeren) May 1, 2024

 Perhaps Bass is correct.  

Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

It’s ridiculous to have red lines if you are not going to do anything when they are crossed. So what should Biden do?

China Has Crossed Biden’s Red Line on Ukraine

A Wall Street Journal Op-Ed moans China Has Crossed Biden’s Red Line on Ukraine.

President Biden warned China two years ago not to provide “material support” for Russia’s war in Ukraine. On Friday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken conceded that Xi Jinping ignored that warning. China, Mr. Blinken said, was “overwhelmingly the No. 1 supplier” of Russia’s military industrial base, with the “material effect” of having fundamentally changed the course of the war. Whatever Mr. Biden chooses to do next will be momentous for global security and stability.

Mr. Biden can either enforce his red line through sanctions or other means, or he can signal a collapse of American resolve by applying merely symbolic penalties. Beijing and its strategic partners in Moscow, Tehran, Pyongyang and Caracas would surely interpret half-hearted enforcement as a green light to deepen their campaign of global chaos. Mr. Xi sees a historic opportunity here to undermine the West.

What sanctions? On Who? On What? For How Long?

Op-ed writer Matt Pottinger provided no details, he just wants action. He needs to explain what sanctions make any sense at all, and how they would work.

Numerous US sanctions on Russia, China, Iran, all failed. Hell some of them on Russia and China not only failed they backfired.

So funny. Adding to my post on red lines and sanction failures.

— Mike "Mish" Shedlock (@MishGEA) May 1, 2024

How China Gets Around US Sanctions on Semiconductors

On February 18, 2024, I explained How China Gets Around US Sanctions on Semiconductors

How Russia Makes a Mockery of US Sanctions in One Picture

Unprecedented US and EU sanctions against Russia have had no impact on Russia’s oil exports or revenue. Who’s the beneficiary?

On December 29, 2023 I noted How Russia Makes a Mockery of US Sanctions in One Picture

On September 19, 2023, I commented Lesson of the Day: Sanctions Don’t Work Because They Create New Markets

Why Sanctions Fail

• Someone always has an incentive to break sanctions.

• Sanctions create new markets.

This is how Russia sells oil and how China gets access to equipment and parts.

In the case of chips, the US has forced China into a path to self-sufficiency. Hooray?!

Matt Pottinger wants sanctions. He should name some. Nah, what he really wants is to promote his book “The Boiling Moat: Urgent Steps to Defend Taiwan.”

What Color Are Biden’s Red Lines?

On March 10, I asked Are Biden’s Red Lines to Netanyahu Really Yellow or Green?

Presumably you know the answer now, but if not, please consider this idle threat: Biden Threatens Sanctions on Israeli Soldiers Yet Wants More Money for Israel

If you are going to have red lines, I suggest they should be red.

Israel vs China Red Lines

In the case of Israel, there was an easy remedy. Biden could have withheld aid. Instead, when Israel repeatedly crossed lines, Biden stepped up the aid further emboldening Netanyahu.

In the case of China, there are no sanctions or policy actions that make any sense, so there should not be any red lines.

Attempting to set foreign policy for the world is a huge mistake. And setting red lines you cannot or will not do anything about makes one look silly.

Ahead of today's FOMC statement and Powell presser, we said that the bogey for a dovish interpretation today will come not from the Fed's rate decision, which we knew would be unchanged, but the QT tapering decision...

The big question for today: how much will Fed taper QT by?

If Taper goes to $30BN (from $60BN/month), that means less funding needed in Q3 (most likely from Bills), and means less pressure on issuance. Yields should slide

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) May 1, 2024

... and sure enough, the fact that the Fed announced an accelerated QT tapering and it was bigger than expected ($35BN vs $30BN) is why the market is viewing the Fed announcement as dovish and futures are now soaring.

And while we wait for Powell's presser to conclude, here are some other hot takes from Wall Street strategists and thinkers:

David Russell, head of market strategy at TradeStation

“The Fed is still in wait-and-see mode before they get dovish. But the data hasn’t been cooperating. This statement keeps investors data dependent and focused on April numbers like CPI two weeks from now.”  

Audrey Childe-Freeman, chief G-10 FX strategist at Bloomberg Intelligence

“A first glance at the statement brings dollar bears some breathing space as the language adjustment is not as hawkish as may have been feared, though the reference about underwhelming inflation progress entertains a potential new layer of hawkishness at a later stage that could contain dollar downside ahead of the press conference. Muted dollar reaction so far captures this well.

“The language embraced thus far does not signal that the narrative has shifted back to new rate-hike debates, but rather to pushing back the timing on a rate cut. This is probably good enough for near-term euro-dollar relief given the feared hawkish pivot.”

Brian Coulton, chief economist at Fitch Ratings

“With unemployment still low and the labor market still tight, there is only a limited risk to the Fed’s employment mandate from waiting longer before embarking on rate cuts. On the other hand the risk of failing to get inflation down on a sustained basis seems to be rising as each week goes by. Patience is the watchword now for the Fed and the risk of fewer or no rate cuts this year is growing.”

Erica Adelberg, Bloomberg Intelligence’s mortgage-backed securities strategist:

“Making it explicit that any surplus MBS paydowns will be reinvested into Treasuries could adversely affect the MBS/Treasury basis, but at this point MBS paydowns are projected to be about half of the $35 monthly cap on average for the foreseeable future. The average loan rate backing the Fed’s MBS holdings is more than 300 bps below current mortgage rates, so it would take a significant interest rate rally to hit the MBS cap.”

Kathy Bostjancic, Chief Economist at Nationwide:

“We expect Chairman Powell will underscore this hawkish pivot in his press conference and emphasize that the timing of pace of rate cuts will depend highly on the future path of inflation. He likely will indicate the Fed is on an extended pause until inflation resumes its disinflationary trend.”

Ira Jersey, Bloomberg rates strategist:

“His lack of comment about the possibility of a hike is interesting, and I’d be surprised if he’s not asked about the potential for hikes in the press conference. But it seems that ‘on hold’ is his base case for now.”

Bloomberg Economics’ Anna Wong and Stuart Paul:

“For anyone wondering if this year’s hot inflation readings were just a blip, the May 1 FOMC meeting offered a clear answer: Hawkish tweaks to the statement show policymakers have lost confidence that inflation is moving in the right direction. At the same time, the Fed announced it would start tapering its balance-sheet run off in June – a month earlier than we expected — and will reduce the runoff cap by a bit more than we foresaw. That initially comes across as dovish, but the motivation here is key. If it turns out the Fed wants the run-off process to last longer — ultimately boosting the chance that its balance sheet will return to pre-pandemic size – that actually would be hawkish.”

Developing

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

When Robert Mueller appointed Andrew Weissmann as one of his top advisers, many of us warned that it was a poor choice. Weissmann seemed intent to prove those objections correct in increasingly unhinged and partisan statements.

This week, he ratcheted up the rhetoric even further in claiming that the nation is “one vote away” from the end of democracy if the Supreme Court does not embrace the sweeping claims of Special Counsel Jack Smith.

At the time of his appointment, many Republicans objected to Weissmann’s status as a democratic donor, including his reported attendance of the election night party for Hillary Clinton in 2016. My objection was not to his political affiliations but to his professional history, which included extreme interpretations that were ultimately rejected by courts. Weissmann was responsible for the overextension of an obstruction provision in a jury instruction that led the Supreme Court to reverse the conviction in the Arthur Andersen case in 2005.

Weissmann then became a MSNBC analyst and a professor at New York University. In his book, he attacked prosecutors for refusing to take on his extreme views. Weissmann called on prosecutors to refuse to assist John Durham in his investigation.

Now he is predicting the end of democracy if the Court remand the immunity case for further proceedings.

Weissmann told MSNBC anchor Jen Psaki on Sunday:

I think that it’s important to remember that at the outset, the court had already given Donald Trump the win that he was seeking, which is the delay of the DC trial.

So going into this, this was all upside for him. I mean, I think he had to be thinking, I’m making this really outlandish argument, with ramifications that couldn’t possibly be squared with the text and history. The text of the Constitution or the history of the presidency? So it’s all upside if the court would actually bite on this. And so what was surprising is that there were justices who actually were taking this seriously. And it just was, frankly, shocking.

Remember, going into this, the given was that private conduct was certainly not, immunized from criminal liability. What everyone’s talking about now is, hey, maybe they think that some of this is private and they can go forward, but that was what was given going into this. And the reason people are thinking that is because there seem to be four justices who were really taking Donald Trump’s claim of criminal immunity seriously. And we are.

I mean, I know it sounds like hyperbole, but I think your opening is so correct that we are essentially, as Neil put it, one vote away from sort of the end of democracy as we know it with checks and balances. And to say it’s an imperial presidency that would be created is, it’s frankly saying it would be a king, he would be criminally immune. And that that is what is so shocking is how close we are.

And we are really on the razor’s edge of that kind of result. But for the chief justice.

Just for the record, it sounds less “like hyperbole” than hysteria. The justices were exploring the implications of the sweeping arguments on both sides of the immunity question. What they were not willing to do (as does Weissmann) is simply dismiss any arguments of official status on the part of the accused.  That would establish a dangerous ambiguity for the future as prosecutors claim that political statements are private matters for the purpose of prosecution.

Ironically, Weissmann’s lack of concern for the implications of such an interpretation is reminiscent of his prior sweeping arguments as a prosecutor that led to the stinging defeat in the Anderson case.

Of course, there is another possibility is that the justices were not seeking the end of democracy. The Court was honestly trying to get this standard correct not just for this case but future cases. To do so, it will require a record on the underlying actions rather than the categorical threshold judgment made by the district court. The argument showed justices exploring how to avoid a parade of horribles on either extreme with a more moderate approach.

As I previously noted, it has been almost 50 years since the high court ruled presidents have absolute immunity from civil lawsuits in Nixon v. Fitzgerald. That protection applied to acts taken “within the ‘outer perimeter’ of his official responsibility.”

Apparently, that immunity did not endanger democracy.

In United States v. Nixon, the court also ruled a president is not immune from a criminal subpoena. Nixon was forced to comply with a subpoena for his White House tapes in the Watergate scandal from special counsel Leon Jaworski.

Since then, the court has avoided any significant ruling on the extension of immunity to a criminal case — until now.

There are cliffs on both sides of this case. If the court were to embrace special counsel Jack Smith’s arguments, a president would have no immunity from criminal charges, even for official acts taken in his presidency.

It would leave a president without protection from endless charges from politically motivated prosecutors.

If the court were to embrace Trump counsel’s arguments, a president would have complete immunity. It would leave a president largely unaccountable under the criminal code for any criminal acts.

The first cliff is made obvious by the lower-court opinion. While the media have largely focused on extreme examples of president-ordered assassinations and coups, the justices are clearly as concerned with the sweeping implications of the DC Circuit opinion.

Chief Justice John Roberts noted the DC Circuit failed to make any “focused” analysis of the underlying acts, instead offering little more than a judicial shrug.

Roberts read its statement that “a former president can be prosecuted for his official acts because the fact of the prosecution means that the former president has acted in defiance of the laws” and noted it sounds like “a former president can be prosecuted because he is being prosecuted.”

The other cliff is more than obvious from the other proceedings occurring as these arguments were made. Trump’s best attorney proved to be Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg — the very personification of the danger immunity is meant to avoid..

Weissmann is not concerned with the clear politicization of the criminal justice system by Bragg just before one of the most consequential elections in our history.

No, the threat is that justices may want to balance the interests over immunity by rejecting the extreme arguments on both sides. They may try to pursue a course that allows for immunity for official acts or functions while rejecting immunity for non-official acts. Some or all of Trump’s actions or statements could well fall into the unprotected category.

The sense of alarm expressed by legal experts is that the Court would not simply sign off on the absolutist arguments of Smith and, most importantly, allow for a trial before the election.

So how will democracy end if the Court adopts a middle road on immunity? It appears to come down to the loss of a possible conviction to influence the outcome of the election.

At the same time, MSNBC guests are also calling, again, for the packing of the Supreme Court. While conservative justices have repeatedly voted with the Biden Administration, it does not matter. They want the Court packed to guarantee outcomes with the appointment of reliable liberal justices. All of this is being defended in the name of democracy, as was ballot cleansing.

The problem with the escalating rhetoric is that there is not much room for further hysterics. Where does Weissmann and others go from here after predicting the imminent death of democracy?

Pundits have now predicted the creation of camps for democrats, killing journalists and homosexuals, the death of the free press, and tyranny. That leaves only systemic mutilations and Roman decimation.

For lawyers to fuel this hysteria is a sad commentary on the state of our country. Whether a true crisis of faith or simple opportunism, it disregards centuries of constitutional history in overcoming every threat and obstacle. We have the oldest and most stable constitutional system in the world. To suddenly embrace tyranny would require all three branches, and the citizens as a whole, to shred an elaborate system of checks and balances.

We are better than that . . . and these inflammatory predictions.

It seems like once again that the Biden White House has almost zero sway, and that Israel is going to do whatever it is going to do, despite continued Washington pressure to halt and avoid the planned Rafah ground assault, with over a million refugees in harm's way.

A deal is still reportedly on the table, with with no breakthrough being reported amid negotiations mediated by Qatar and Egypt. The deal would reportedly see less than 40 Israeli hostages freed but Hamas wants a permanent, lasting truce that would involve an IDF troop withdrawal from Gaza while Tel Aviv only envisions a temporary pause in fighting.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has blamed Hamas for lack of a breakthrough in achieving a deal, saying alongside Israeli President Isaac Herzog in Jerusalem on Wednesday, "No delays, no excuses." He added: "The time is now."

Gaza's terror group is "the only reason that that wouldn’t be achieved," he emphasized. It may not happen "because of Hamas" Blinken stressed. However, Axios' Israel correspondent Barak Ravid has reported that Blinken has conveyed to Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu that the US still stands against an IDF operation in Rafah "without a credible plan for protecting civilians."

Axios cited Blinken further as saying the Biden administration "thinks there are a better options to deal with the Hamas battalions in the city other than a full scale military operation," according to a US diplomatic source.

But importantly Netanyahu responded in the Wednesday meeting that he does not intend to accept any deal that includes ending the war. "He said if Hamas doesn't drop this demand there will be no deal and Israel will invade Rafah, per Israeli and U.S. officials," Ravid reports.

This is similar to what Netanyahu said the day prior: "We will enter Rafah and we will eliminate the Hamas battalions there – with or without a deal, in order to achieve the total victory." Blinken is likely trying to get him to backdown from this hardline stance. But even as diplomacy and negotiations intensify, it could yet take several more days to reach a truce or ceasefire deal:

Suhail al-Hindi, a senior Hamas official, has told the AFP by phone that the group will issue a clear response to Israel’s ceasefire proposal “within a very short period”.

Al-Hindi did not provide a specific timeline for Hamas’s response, but another source told the AFP a reply is anticipated within the next day or two.

According to the source, Israel’s proposal includes “real concessions”, yet the question of its complete withdrawal from the Strip remains a likely sticking point.

Complicating things for Israel is the International Criminal Court (ICC) case hanging over Netanyahu and top Israeli officials. 

Herzog addressed the potential for arrest warrants to be issued from the Hague-based court: "Our enemies and other elements are trying to undermine the entire process by using international legal forums that were established in order to have a world order that pursues peace, and pursues the values and norms that we all believe in in the modern world." said the Israeli president. "Especially the efforts done at the International Criminal Court."

"Israel has a very strong legal system, very strong adjudication and law enforcement system, and it has pursued legal steps from the highest authorities in this land [against] any other citizen," said Herzog.

Israel expects the leaders of the free world to stand firmly against the ICC outrageous assault on Israel’s inherent right of self-defense. We expect them to use all the means at their disposal to stop this dangerous move. pic.twitter.com/mZB85XbnSd

— Benjamin Netanyahu - ?????? ?????? (@netanyahu) May 1, 2024

Netanyahu the day prior issued a video address condemning the action. While it would be largely symbolic, as the World Court doesn't have an enforcement arm, it would be a reputational black eye for Israel at a sensitive moment it faces immense criticism on a global stage for the soaring Gaza death toll and reports of famine. 

As for the impending Rafah operation, Netanyahu has been consistent for the past two months that Israel will go into the southern city "no matter what the US says." There's been no wavering on this point, however there does appear to have been a delay.

Federal prosecutors are investigating compliance issues at Block, the fintech firm co-founded by Jack Dorsey, according to a new report from NBC, citing "two people with direct knowledge". 

Questions about the company started swirling back in March 2023 when short seller Hindenburg Research released a report called "Block: How Inflated User Metrics and “Frictionless” Fraud Facilitation Enabled Insiders To Cash Out Over $1 Billion". 

In it, they concluded that "the 'magic' behind Block’s business has not been disruptive innovation, but rather the company’s willingness to facilitate fraud against consumers and the government, avoid regulation, dress up predatory loans and fees as revolutionary technology, and mislead investors with inflated metrics."

Now, a former employee has shared documents revealing insufficient customer information collection, transactions involving sanctioned countries, and cryptocurrency dealings with terrorist groups, the latest report from NBC says.

The employee claims many transactions weren't reported as required, and Block failed to address the breaches despite being notified. The documents detail transactions with entities in sanctioned countries, including Cuba, Iran, Russia, and Venezuela, as recent as last year.

One former told NBC: “From the ground up, everything in the compliance section was flawed. It is led by people who should not be in charge of a regulated compliance program.”

“It’s my understanding from the documents that compliance lapses were known to Block leadership and the board in recent years," Edward Siedle, a former Securities and Exchange Commission lawyer who represents the former employee and participated in the discussions with prosecutors told NBC. 

Cash App, a mobile payment platform under Block's ownership, faced allegations of compliance failures from two other whistleblowers in mid-February. Introduced in 2013, Cash App enables instant money transfers and stock and Bitcoin purchases. By December, it boasted 56 million active transacting accounts and $248 billion in inflows over the previous four quarters.

Block commented to NBC: “Block has a responsible and extensive compliance program and we regularly adapt our practices to meet emerging threats and an evolving sanctions regulatory environment. Our compliance program includes systems, tools, and processes for sanctions screening, as well as investigating and reporting on sanctions issues in accordance with our regulatory obligations."

They continued: "Continually improving the safety and security of our ecosystem is a top priority for Block. We have been and remain committed to building upon this work, as well as continuing to invest significantly in our compliance program.”

Federal prosecutors are also examining Square, another key component of Block's operations, which serves millions of merchants. According to documents provided to prosecutors and reviewed by NBC News, Square allegedly failed in basic customer due diligence on international merchant sellers and mistakenly reimbursed some merchants' funds frozen for sanctions violations.

The documents also reveal that new customers triggering sanctions alerts were allowed to conduct transactions before resolution, with instances of inadequate screening against sanctions keyword lists, the report adds.

Cash App, due to its design, also apparently heightened compliance risks, NBC wrote. A document highlighted the challenge, stating that stored balances in Cash App are typically depleted by the time of review, limiting the platform's ability to block or reject funds.

The former employee also informed prosecutors of findings from an external consultant hired by Block, which identified nearly 50 deficiencies in monitoring suspicious activities and screening for sanctions violations.

Board members including Lawrence Summers and Sharon Rothstein have also recently departed the company.

After several months of relatively boring JOLTS prints, this morning Janet Yellen's favorite labor market indicator once again got exciting, and not in a good way.

Starting at the top, according to the March JOLTS reported, job openings unexpectedly tumbled by 325K - the biggest drop since October 2023 - from an upward revised 8.813 million in February to just 8.488 million, far below the 8.690 million expected - and the lowest number since February 2021 when it last printed below 8 million.

The 192K miss to estimates of 8.690 million, was the biggest since last October.

According to the DOL, in March job openings decreased in construction (-182,000) and in finance and insurance (-158,000), but increased in state and local government education (+68,000) because when all else fails, just "hire" more government zombies, ideally in the form of unionized illegal aliens to boost wages and inflation.

The kicker: construction jobs openings plunged from 456K to 274K, a 182K one-month drop and the biggest on record!

In the context of the broader jobs report, in March the number of job openings was 2.059 million more than the number of unemployed workers (which the BLS reported was 6.429 million), down significantly from last month's 2.355 million and the lowest since June 2021.

Said otherwise, in March the number of job openings to unemployed dropped to 1.32, a sharp slide from the February print of 1.36, matching the lowest level since August 2021 and almost back to pre-covid levels of 1.3.

But even more interesting than the drop in job openings was the number of quits: here we find that the number of people quitting their jobs, an indicator closely associated with labor market strength as it shows workers are confident they can find a better wage elsewhere - unexpectedly plunged by 198K, the biggest montyly drop since last June, to just 3.329 million the lowest number since January 2021!

But perhaps the most notable twist, is that amid the stagnant level of job openings, not only did the number of quits plunge - as workers no longer expect to find better paying jobs elsewhere - but so did the number of hires, which cratered by 281K to just 5.500 million - the lowest since Jan 2018 (excluding the record one-month plunge due to covid), and is now well below pre-covid levels.

Needless to say, a freeze in hiring is always the precursor to a wholesale collapse in the labor market, which we expect will materialize in 2-3 months, but since the election  will determine what econ data is published, expect the US economy to be in freefall the moment Trump wins the election.

It's not just us warning on this metric: the chief economist as Glassdoor, Daniel Zhao, echoes our warning that "employers are hesitant to hire & workers are hesitant to switch to a new job"

Softness in the hires & quits rates are a concern: The hires rate fell to 3.5%, matching the lowest post-pandemic level. The quits rate fell to 2.1% is at its lowest since Aug 2020.

A sign that employers are hesitant to hire & workers are hesitant to switch to a new job

2/ pic.twitter.com/ZfGaiJh82I

— Daniel Zhao (@DanielBZhao) May 1, 2024

His conclusion: "low hires, quits and layoffs are an unusual combination that points to a certain "lock-in" in the job market. For the Fed, that is likely to tamp down wage growth driven by job switchers even if it doesn't slow net jobs growth."

Low hires, quits and layoffs are an unusual combination that points to a certain "lock-in" in the job market. For the Fed, that is likely to tamp down wage growth driven by job switchers even if it doesn't slow net jobs growth.

6/6

— Daniel Zhao (@DanielBZhao) May 1, 2024

Finally, no matter what the "data" shows, let's not forget that it is all just estimated, and it is safe to say that the real number of job openings remains still far lower since half of it - or some 70% to be specific - is guesswork. As the BLS itself admits, while the response rate to most of its various labor (and other) surveys has collapsed in recent years, nothing is as bad as the JOLTS report where the actual response rate remains near a record low 33%

In other words, more than two thirds, or 70% of the final number of job openings, is estimated!

And at a time when it is critical for Biden to still maintain the illusion that at least the labor market remains strong when everything else in Biden's economy is crashing and burning, we'll let readers decide if the admin's Labor Department is plugging the estimate gap with numbers that are stronger or weaker (we already know that they always get revised lower next month).

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) on Wednesday announced that she'll force a vote next week over whether to oust Speaker Mike Johnson (R?-LA), however Top Democrats have vowed to save him.

Speaking of Johnson's decision to lean on Democrats in order to send billions to Israel and Ukraine, Greene said: "I think every member of Congress needs to take that vote and let the chips fall where they may. And so next week, I am going to be calling this motion to vacate."

Marge Greene with Thomas Massie announces she will call for a vote next week on her Motion to Vacate Johnson as Speaker. pic.twitter.com/hofhomy0vw

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) May 1, 2024

Marjorie Taylor Greene puts a MUGA hat on a picture of Mike Johnson pic.twitter.com/GyIFTap8Yi

— Acyn (@Acyn) May 1, 2024

Not So Fast

Just like they did with the Ukraine money, Democrats rushed to Johnson's side - preempting Greene's Wednesday announcement with a vow on Tuesday to kill the forced vote.

"We will vote to table Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene's Motion to Vacate the Chair," said House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) said in a joint statement with his deputies, Reps. Katherine Clark (D-MA) and Pete Aguilar (D-CA).

"If she invokes the motion, it will not succeed," they said, per Axios.

Pointing to their passage of more Ukraine (and Israel) funding, the Democratic leaders said: "Upon completion of our national security work, the time has come to turn the page on this chapter of Pro-Putin Republican obstruction."

Rigged!

According to the report, Democrats were prepared to rescue Johnson if House conservatives tried to oust him for using Democrats to pass the foreign aid bill, betraying his base. What's more, Axios also reports that there's "significant discomfort" among Democrats at the idea of again joining the GOP's right flank to oust Johnson.

Authored by Peter Tchir via Academy Securities,

Ahead of the Fed

There is very little excitement about this meeting, as the range of possible outcomes seems relatively narrow.

We all know there will be no cut this meeting. There should be an outline of how the Fed will “taper” quantitative tightening. It should be a mild positive for stocks and bonds, , but unless it is surprisingly aggressive it has been largely priced in.

We could see some tweaks to the language. They could highlight any signs of economic weakness (GDP was surprisingly low, after all). That would be positive for stocks and bonds. Far more likely are concessions to inflation being stubborn. So much is priced in, on that front, it shouldn’t be market moving.

The real show will be the press conference. I keep thinking of “self-affirmation” by Stuart Smalley from SNL. Powell standing in front of a mirror trying to harness his inner dove, so that he can actually come across as hawkish.

The market is letting him be quite hawkish. The market, according to probabilities based on futures, calculated by Bloomberg (WIRP function), is not pricing in a full cut until December.

The Fed often likes to be led by markets (though they were not sucked into the 6 cut euphoria from late last year). He has every opportunity to sound hawkish and confirm the current market sentiment.

Yet, he has a history, or reputation, or perception, of not being able to control his inner dovishness during press conferences.

No matter what his intention was, he always seems to come across as dovish.

Will he do that again?

Keep hopes of June/July cuts alive? (market is pricing in a 25% chance of 1 hike before September).

This would trigger a nice rally in rates (across the curve, though more at the front end) and would be good for stocks.

Or, will he stand his ground, and try and put a hike back on the table. At this point, the market is still leaning heavily towards a cut this year, and very little discussion of another hike. If he starts discussing “balanced risk” etc., and puts a hike back on the table, the market would likely assume sooner than later (what Fed wants to hike right before an election?). I think we would see yields rise, especially at the front end, and stocks drop rather quickly (much like near the close of yesterday’s weird session).

I find it hard to believe that Powell will maintain a hawkish persona, but that is the potential surprise for markets.

It should be a dull meeting as a mostly hawkish Fed is priced in, and that is what Powell is likely to deliver, even if he goes into the press conference planning on being more hawkish.

Then we can get back earnings and the volatility those have been creating.