Trump Proposes $1.5 Trillion In War Spending, ‘Largest In Decades’ Via The Cradle US President Donald Trump is asking Congress to boost military spending to $1.5 trillion for 2027, the largest such request in decades, while demanding cuts to domestic spending on social programs, AP reported Friday. The White House released details of the desired spending increase on Friday as part of Trump’s 2027 budget proposal. The proposal […]

Acting AG Todd Blanche: Investigating ActBlue Allegations Is A Top Priority The Democratic Party’s premier fundraising machine is in serious legal jeopardy, and the new man running the Justice Department just made clear he intends to do something about it. The New York Times reported on Thursday that ActBlue’s own lawyers had warned its leadership in early 2025 that it may have lied to Congress about how it screens out illegal […]

Oil Shocks & Recessionary Outcomes Authored by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com, After more than three decades of watching oil markets upend economies, one pattern keeps repeating: investors learn the wrong lessons from the last shock. The 1973 OPEC embargo taught us that geopolitical disruptions are temporary. That lesson then got everyone killed, financially speaking, in 1979. The 2003 Iraq War produced only a mild […]

Senior Iranian Official Involved In Reaching Out To Vance Severely Wounded In Airstrike A top Iranian official who was involved in diplomatic outreach and indirect talks or messaging with the United States and Pakistani mediators was reportedly critically wounded in a US-Israeli strike. Kamal Kharazi, an 81-year-old senior adviser to Tehran and former foreign minister, lost his wife in the Wednesday strike on his home, state media […]

US Fighter Jet Shot Down In Iran, One Crew Member Reported Rescued Update(11:55ET): The NY Times has cited US and Israeli officials who has given confirmation that a US fighter jet was downed and that a major rescue operation is underway, with the fate of the plane’s crew unclear: The fate of the plane’s crew was unclear, as American officials scrambled to mount a search and rescue operation before Iran could get to any […]

Poison Ivey: Chicago Bulls Release Forward After He Speaks Out Against Pride Month Authored by Jonathan Turley, This week, the Chicago Bulls waived guard Jaden Ivey for “conduct detrimental to the team.” No, Ivey did not assault anyone or gamble on games. He did not call for violence. Ivey expressed his opposing religious beliefs, including criticizing the NBA’s Pride Month celebrations. There is no question that […]

Services Sector Contraction In March Screams Q1 Stagflation Following S&P Global’s Manufacturing PMI’s better than expected print higher (signaling resilience in the face of March’s war in Iran), the data released this morning showed the US Services Sector experienced a contraction of activity at the end of the first quarter of 2026. The headline S&P Global US Services PMI Business Activity Index recorded 49.8 in March, […]

March Jobs Shocker: Payrolls Soar By 178K Most Since 2024, Blowing Away All Estimates; Unemployment Rate Drops We titled our nonfarm payroll preview post “a substantial bounce” and boy were we right: with consensus expecting a material rebound from February’s negative print (which was revised as usual worse, from -92K to -133K), what the BLS reported instead was a huge beat to expectations of a 65K increase, with March jobs […]

Why Are They So Obsessed With This? Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news, As NASA’s Artemis II mission — the first crewed flight around the Moon in over half a century — gets underway, some in the media couldn’t resist injecting race into humanity’s greatest technical achievement. Instead of celebrating the engineering triumph and the daring crew pushing the boundaries of exploration, certain outlets fixated […]

Hegseth Ousts Chief Of The Army As Iran War Persists The Pentagon shake-up under Trump has not ended, as on Thursday Pete Hegseth has dismissed Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George, asking him to step down into early retirement. The move is unusual, given this is the head of the Army and the United States is past the one-moth mark in Trump’s Operation Epic Fury. A reason hasn’t been given as to what amounts to Gen. George being […]

Cash Is King, Dowd Sees $10,000 Gold As The Credit Market “Is Starting To End The Party” Via Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com, Wall Street money manager and financial analyst Ed Dowd of PhinanceTechnologies.com warned at the end of January that the “Credit Destruction Cycle” was showing up in something called private credit.  Dowd was worried about extreme risk in the economy, especially with all the growth in lending in […]

Liberal Council In UK Moves To Ban “Intimidating” National Flags Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news, In the latest salvo against British identity, a Liberal Democrat-run council has formally branded the simple act of flying the England flag an “act of intimidation and division” – and backed it up with a legal notice threatening residents with prosecution. Oxfordshire County Council is pushing a county-wide […]

Iran Unwilling To Meet US Negotiators In Pakistan, Talks At ‘Dead End’, As Trump Says ‘A Little More Time’ To Open Hormuz Summary Trump: US needs “a little more time” to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, while floating the prospect of seizing oil amid potential island or ground campaign. WSJ reports indirect talks at ‘dead end’. Iran and Hezbollah fire 140+ rockets during Jewish Passover, with sustained barrages hitting Israel […]

US Futures Drop Ahead Of Payrolls With Most Markets Closed US equity futures dipped ahead of today’s payrolls report in a holiday-shortened session, with most cash markets including US stocks closed globally for Good Friday. Sifma, the US financial markets trade association, recommended trading of dollar-denominated bonds during US hours only and a 12pm New York time stop. As of 8:15am, S&P and Nasdaq futures are down 0.2%. […]

Iran Attacks Kuwaiti Desalination Plant, Bringing Gulf Water Supplies Into Focus Just three days into Operation Epic Fury, we pointed out what may be the more consequential second-order risk, arguably even more important than the risk of data centers getting bombed (identified a month earlier): Are desalination plants the next targets in the U.S.-Iran war? Not even a week after we raised that question, the first worst-case […]

Abu Dhabi Halts Operations At Main Gas Plant After “Falling Debris” From Iranian Strike Operations at Habshan, the UAE’s massive onshore gas-processing hub operated by ADNOC Gas in Abu Dhabi, were halted on Friday after local authorities said a fire broke out at the facility due to “falling debris” from a “successful interception by air defense systems” of an Iranian air-delivered munition.  “Abu Dhabi authorities are responding […]

“Make A Deal Before It’s Too Late”: Trump Threatens Tehran (Again) As Iran/Oman Draft Protocol To Re-Open Hormuz Summary World’s most important oil price hits record high as Trump threatens Iran: “make a deal before it’s too late” Oil drops on reports of Iran-Oman coordination to reopen strait. Iran issues Israel/Gulf logistics hubs target list; IRGC targets Amazon Cloud computing center in Bahrain US intelligence […]

Germany’s Economy Minister Urges Nuclear Rethink As Energy Prices Surge, Growth Forecasts Slide Germany’s Economy Minister Katherina Reiche has openly called for a fundamental reassessment of the country’s long-standing rejection of nuclear power, warning that heavy dependence on gas has left Europe’s largest economy dangerously exposed to repeated energy shocks. Speaking at the launch of a new international investor […]

Foreigners Commit Nearly Half Of All Rapes In Austria, Syrians Largest Foreign Group Of Suspects Via Remix News, The number of rape suspects in Austria has more than doubled since 2015, with foreign nationals — and Syrians in particular — driving a disproportionate share of the increase. In addition, foreigners nare now responsible for nearly half of all rapes, a major increase from 2015 as well. The figures, provided by […]

Iraq Revives Syria Land Route, Post-Assad, To Export Oil To Europe Via Middle East Eye Iraq has restarted overland oil exports through Syria, marking a significant shift in regional energy logistics as the US-Israeli war on Iran continues to wreak havoc on traditional shipping routes through the Strait of Hormuz. Ali Nazar, director general of Iraq’s state oil marketer Somo, said on Wednesday that the company had agreed […]

Ukraine Becomes World’s AI Weapons Laboratory By Craig S. Smith of Eye on AI,  I was in Ukraine in February and wrote this piece before the start of the war with Iran, but its implications are even more relevant today. My interest in lethal autonomous weapons dates back to my time with the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, where full autonomy was debated but largely dismissed as ethically unacceptable. […]

Allegations Of Pentagon “Casualty Cover-Up”: The Intercept Well-known national security news site The Intercept has issued fresh reporting which alleges a Pentagon cover-up when it comes to mounting US casualties from Trump’s Operation Epic Fury. Speculation and questions have lately surged among the public and analysts given that casualty updates put out by the Pentagon have been very few and far between. It actually accuses the […]

Why States Are Right To Reject AI Legal Personhood Authored by Siri Terjesen and Michael Ryall via The Epoch Times, A quiet but consequential legal movement is gathering momentum. Idaho and Utah have enacted statutes declaring that artificial intelligence systems are not legal persons. Ohio’s House Bill 469 proposes to declare that AI systems are “nonsentient entities” and bars them from acquiring any form of legal […]

Putin To Saudi Crown Prince: Russia Ready To Do Everything To Stabilize Mideast Crisis Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday that Russia is willing to do anything toward bringing stability to the Persian Gulf and Iran crises.  “Russia is counting on an early end to the conflict in the Middle East, and is ready to do everything to bring the situation back to normal,” Putin’s words were paraphrased in state media as telling […]

DOJ Sues New Jersey Town Over Natural Gas Ban Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours), The Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a lawsuit against Morris Township in New Jersey over its ban on natural gas and other fossil fuels in newly constructed buildings, the department said in an April 1 statement. Blue flames from a gas stove at a home in Arlington, Va., on May 3, 2023. Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty […]