ISIS-Inspired Drone War Plans Leaked From US National Security Council

Authored by José Niño via Headline USA,

According to leaked documents, British and American academics advised the U.S. National Security Council to encourage Ukraine to adopt ISIS-style drone tactics against Russian railways.

In a report published by investigative journalist Kit Klarenberg for The Grayzone on Monday, Project Alchemy, a secret academic-intelligence cell whose mission was “to keep Ukraine fighting” by imposing “strategic dilemmas, costs and frictions upon Russia” was revealed as the network allegedly behind these plans.

The academic recommendations were delivered to Colonel Tim Wright, who served as the Biden administration’s Director for Russia at the National Security Council from August 2021 to July 2022. The proposals came from three key drone experts within a broader Ukraine Working Group composed of “approximately 60 experts hailing from states throughout NATO” who sought to “assist Ukraine’s defense (short of deploying combat forces).”

Zachary Kallenborn from George Mason University’s Schar School advocated for “two-stage attacks like ISIS did frequently” on Russian railways, recommending Ukraine “break the track, and wait for the engineers to come to fix it, then use the drone to kill them.”

An unnamed Durham University researcher identified as “M.E.D.” cited Islamic State’s “innovative” use of drones as documented in a July 2018 West Point paper, suggesting commercial drones could be “modified via a simple drop mechanism… to serve as effective munitions delivery platforms.”

Dominika Kunertova, formerly of ETH Zurich’s Center for Security Studies and currently directing drone warfare research at the Atlantic Council, recommended targeting “anything that uses” railroads as opposed to the infrastructure itself.

These academic blueprints proved prophetic when Ukraine launched Operation Spider Web late last month conducting bold drone attacks inside Russia that killed seven people and injured more than 30, including two children.

The timing proved particularly significant as these attacks took place “on the eve of scheduled negotiations between Russia and Ukraine.”

Ukrainian forces subsequently destroyed a Russian fuel train late last month using a DJI Mavic III drone, one of the specific models Kallenborn had recommended for modification.

The attacks continued through this month with Operation Spiderweb 2.0, demonstrating how the “British-born strategy has heavily influenced the thinking of Kiev’s increasingly desperate military.”

Tyler Durden Wed, 06/25/2025 - 22:35

'Why Not An Islamic Bomb?': How Israel Planned & Failed To Stop Pakistan Going Nuclear

Via Middle East Eye

Former CIA Director George Tenet thought him "at least as dangerous as Osama bin Laden" and former Mossad Chief Shabtai Shavit regretted not killing him. But to almost 250 million Pakistanis, Abdul Qadeer Khan - the godfather of Pakistan’s nuclear programme - is a legend and national hero.

The nuclear scientist, who was born in 1936 and died in 2021 aged 85, was more responsible than anyone else for the South Asian nation developing a nuclear bomb. He ran a sophisticated and clandestine international network assisting Iran, Libya and North Korea with their nuclear programs. One of those nations, North Korea, ended up getting the coveted military status symbol. Israel - itself a nuclear power, although it has never admitted it - allegedly used  assassination attempts and threats to try and stop Pakistan from going nuclear.

Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan in January 2010, AFP

In the 1980s Israel even formulated a plan to bomb Pakistan’s nuclear site with Indian assistance - a scheme that the Indian government eventually backed out of.

AQ Khan, as he is commonly remembered by Pakistanis, believed that by building a nuclear bomb he had saved his country from foreign threats, especially its nuclear-armed neighbor India.

Today many of his fellow citizens agree.

‘Why not an Islamic bomb?’

Pakistan first decided to build a bomb after its larger neighbor had done so. On 18 May 1974 India tested its first nuclear weapon, which it codenamed Smiling Buddha. Pakistani Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto immediately vowed to develop nuclear weapons for his own country. 

"We will eat grass or leaves, even go hungry, but we will get one of our own," he said. There was, he declared, "a Christian bomb, a Jewish bomb and now a Hindu bomb. Why not an Islamic bomb?"

Born during British rule of the Indian subcontinent, AQ Khan completed a science degree at Karachi University in 1960 before studying metallurgical engineering in Berlin. He also went on to study in the Netherlands and Belgium. By 1974 Khan was working for a subcontractor of a major nuclear fuel company, Urenco, in Amsterdam.

The company supplied enriched uranium nuclear fuel for European nuclear reactors. Khan had access to top secret areas of the Urenco facility and blueprints of the world’s best centrifuges, which enriched natural uranium and turned it into bomb fuel.

In January 1976 he made a sudden and mysterious departure from the Netherlands, saying he had been made “an offer I can’t refuse in Pakistan”. Khan was later accused of having stolen a blueprint for uranium centrifuges, which can turn uranium into weapons-grade fuel, from the Netherlands.

That July he set up a research laboratory in Rawalpindi which produced enriched uranium for nuclear weapons. For a few years the operation proceeded in secret. Dummy companies imported the components Khan needed to build an enrichment program, the official story being that they were going towards a new textile mill.

While there is significant evidence indicating that Pakistan’s military establishment was supporting Khan’s work, civilian governments were generally kept in the dark, with the exception of Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (who had proposed the initiative). 

Even the late prime minister, Benazir Bhutto, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s daughter, was not told a word about the programe by her generals. She only found out about it in 1989 by accident - in Tehran. 

Iranian President Rafsanjani asked her whether they could reaffirm the two countries’ agreement on “special defense matters”.

“What exactly are you talking about, Mr President?” asked Bhutto, confused. “Nuclear technology, Madam Prime Minister, nuclear technology,” replied the Iranian president. Bhutto was stunned. 

Assassination attempts and threats

In June 1979, the operation was exposed by the magazine 8 Days. There was an international uproar. Israel protested to the Dutch, who ordered an inquiry. A Dutch court convicted Khan in 1983 for attempted espionage (the conviction was later overturned on a technicality). But work on the nuclear program continued.

By 1986, Khan was confident Pakistan had the capability to produce nuclear weapons.

His motivation was in large part ideological: “I want to question the holier-than-thou attitude of the Americans and British,” he said. “Are these bastards God-appointed guardians of the world?”

There were serious efforts to sabotage the program, including a series of assassination attempts widely understood to have been the work of Israel’s intelligence agency, Mossad.

Executives at European companies doing business with Khan found themselves targeted. A letter bomb was sent to one in West Germany - he escaped but his dog was killed. Another bombing targeted a senior executive of Swiss company Cora Engineering, which worked on Pakistan’s nuclear program.

Historians, including Adrian Levy, Catherine Scott-Clark and Adrian Hanni, have argued that the Mossad used threats and assassination attempts in a failed campaign to prevent Pakistan from building the bomb. Siegfried Schertler, the owner of one company, told Swiss Federal Police that Mossad agents phoned him and his salesmen repeatedly.

He said he was approached by an employee of the Israeli embassy in Germany, a man named David, who told him to stop “these businesses” regarding nuclear weapons. The Israelis “didn’t want a Muslim country to have the bomb”, according to Feroz Khan, a former official in Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program.

Imran Khan (L) walks with AQ Khan after a meeting at his residence in Islamabad on 7 February 2009 (AFP)

In the early 1980s Israel proposed to India that the two collaborate to bomb and destroy Pakistan’s nuclear facility at Kahuta in Pakistan’s Rawalpindi district.

Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi approved the strike. A plan developed for Israeli F-16s and F-15s to take off from the Jamnagar airbase in India’s Gujarat and launch strikes on the facility. But Gandhi later backed out and the plan was shelved.

In 1987, when her son Rajiv Gandhi was prime minister, the Indian army chief Lieutenant General Krishnaswami Sundarji tried to start a war with Pakistan so India could bomb the nuclear facility at Kahuta.

He sent half a million troops to the Pakistani border for military drills, along with hundreds of tanks and armored vehicles - an extraordinary provocation. But this attempt at triggering hostilities failed after the Indian prime minister, who had not been properly briefed on Sundarji’s plan, instigated a deescalation with Pakistan.

Despite Indian and Israeli opposition, both the US and China covertly helped Pakistan. China provided the Pakistanis with enriched uranium, tritium and even scientists. Meanwhile, American support came because Pakistan was an important Cold War ally. 

US President Jimmy Carter cut aid to Pakistan in April 1979 in response to Pakistan’s program being exposed, but then reversed the decision months later when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan: America would need the help of neighboring Pakistan.

In the 1980s, the US covertly gave Pakistani nuclear scientists technical training and turned a blind eye to its program. But everything changed with the end of the Cold War.

In October 1990 the US halted economic and military aid to Pakistan in protest against the nuclear program. Pakistan then said it would stop developing nuclear weapons. AQ Khan later revealed, though, that the production of highly enriched uranium secretly continued.

The seventh nuclear power

On 11 May 1998 India tested its nuclear warheads. Pakistan then successfully tested its own in the Balochistan desert later that month. The US responded by sanctioning both India and Pakistan.Pakistan had become the world’s seventh nuclear power.

And Khan was a national hero. He was driven around in motorcades as large as the prime minister’s and was guarded by army commandos. Streets, schools and multiple cricket teams were named after him. He wasn’t known for playing down his achievements.

“Who made the atom bomb? I made it,” Khan declared on national television. “Who made the missiles? I made them for you.” But Khan had also organized another, particularly daring, operation.

From the mid-1980s onwards, he ran an international nuclear network which sent technology and designs to Iran, North Korea and Libya.

He would order double the number of parts the Pakistani nuclear program required and then secretly sell the excess on.

In the 1980s the Iranian government - despite Ayatollah Khomeini’s opposition to the bomb on the grounds that it was Islamically prohibited - approached Pakistan’s military dictator, General Zia-ul-Haq, for help. Between 1986 and 2001, Pakistan gave Iran key components needed to make a bomb, although these tended to be secondhand - Khan kept the most advanced technology for Pakistan. 

The Mossad had Khan under surveillance as he travelled around the Middle East in the 1980s and 1990s, but failed to work out what the scientist was doing.

Then-Mossad chief Shavit later said that if he had realised Khan’s intentions, he would have considered ordering Khan to be assassinated to “change the course of history”.

Gaddafi exposes the operation

In the end, Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi blew Khan’s operation in 2003 while attempting to win support from the US. Gaddafi disclosed to the CIA and MI6 that Khan was building nuclear sites for his government - some of which were disguised as chicken farms. 

The CIA siezed machinery bound for Libya as it was being smuggled through the Suez Canal. Investigators found weapons blueprints in bags from an Islamabad dry cleaner.

When the operation was exposed, the Americans were horrified. “It was an astounding transformation when you think about it, something we've never seen before," a senior American official told the New York Times. 

"First, [Khan] exploits a fragmented market and develops a quite advanced nuclear arsenal. “Then he throws the switch, reverses the flow and figures out how to sell the whole kit, right down to the bomb designs, to some of the world's worst governments."

In 2004 Khan confessed to running the nuclear proliferation network, saying he had provided Iran, Libya and North Korea with nuclear technology.

In February, he appeared on television and insisted he had acted alone, with no support from the Pakistani government, which then swiftly pardoned him. 

President Musharraf called him “my hero”. However, reportedly under US pressure, he placed Khan under effective house arrest in Islamabad until 2009. Later AQ Khan said that he “saved the country for the first time when I made Pakistan a nuclear nation and saved it again when I confessed and took the whole blame on myself”.

He was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2006 but recovered after surgery. Enormously wealthy, in his later years, Khan funded a community centre in Islamabad and spent his time feeding monkeys. Those who knew him said Khan firmly believed what he had done was right.

He wanted to stand up to the west and give nuclear technology to non-western, particularly Muslim, nations. “He also said that giving technology to a Muslim country was not a crime,” one anonymous acquaintance recalled.

When Khan died of Covid in 2021, he was hailed as a “national icon” by then-Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan. And that is how he is still widely remembered today in Pakistan.

“[The] nation should be rest assured Pakistan is a safe atomic power,” the nuclear scientist had declared in 2019. “No one can cast an evil eye on it.”

Tyler Durden Wed, 06/25/2025 - 22:10

New COVID-Wave Scare-Campaign: A Massive Flop...

Authored by Rebekah Barnett via The Brownstone Institute,

Like the Marvel franchise, with its unlimited instalments and spin-offs, a new Covid scare campaign is underway in Australia.

Like the Marvel franchise, the entertainment content exists largely to create demand for merchandise. 

Unlike most Marvel films, this latest virus fear-mongering drive is turning out to be a massive flop.

The hook: There’s a new “highly contagious” Covid Omicron subvariant in town, catchily named NB.1.8.1. 

Sticking with time-tested tradition, health authorities, experts, and media are playing the ‘cases, cases, cases’ angle, as the latest variant “sweeps the nation” with what I calculate to be Australia’s twelfth Covid wave since the pandemic scare series kicked off in 2020.

Exposition: “According to Griffith University, the NB.1.8.1 variant makes up more than 40 per cent of total COVID cases tested in Victoria, around 25 per cent in Western Australia and New South Wales, around 20 per cent in Queensland and less than 10 per cent in South Australia,” reports ABC. 

“There are hundreds of different strains of Omicron, and the new subvariant NB.1.8.1 is driving up infections and hospitalisations, particularly in Asia and Western Australia,” reports the Daily Mail.

Narrator’s aside: Case counts and hospitalisations are well within the normal range in Western Australia (WA), and no one has been admitted to ICU with Covid for months, according to the latest WA Health reporting.

Source: Virus WAtch, 11 May 2025, WA Health.

Source: Virus WAtch, 11 May 2025, WA Health.

We’re not seeing anything out of the ordinary in national statistics either.

Source: Australian Respiratory Surveillance Report – 5 May to 18 May 2025.

Source: Australian Respiratory Surveillance Report – 5 May to 18 May 2025.

However, we mustn’t let this contextualising information get in the way of the narrative arc.

Climactic buildup: Back to cases, cases, cases. It’s “pretty much everywhere,” according to ABC. “Doctors are expecting a further spike in cases,” so “experts are urging people to get their COVID booster jab.”

Source: ABC

Endless vaccination is the only way out! 

Climactic escalation: But experts are furious that Australians are not vaccinating enough. You naughty, naughty Australians. In the past six months, only 6.6% of adults have received a Covid vaccine, according to recent federal figures, despite the vaccines being “free,” i.e., already paid for with your taxes.

Source: Daily Mail

Crisis response: Our protagonist takes action to meet the threat head-on. After all, the government has product to shift, so the vaccine advertorial must keep pumping.

Health Minister Mark Butler bravely does the media rounds, imploring anyone who can get a booster to “have a serious think” about following through.

Source: news.com.au

Hero falters: Unfortunately for Butler, boosters aren’t recommended for many cohorts in Australia anymore, because the risk-benefit profile is not favourable for most people.

Current Australian guidelines suggest adults aged over 75 should get a booster every six months, while those aged between 65 and 74, along with severely immunocompromised adults over 18 years of age, should get one every year. Outside of this, boosters are not recommended but are available to all Australian adults and to children who are severely immunocompromised.

Plot twist: Experts admit that the reason everyone needs another booster is that vaccinating against a fast-mutating coronavirus doesn’t work super well. 

“The virus gradually evolves so that some of its proteins are a little bit different so that it can avoid the antibodies that we’ve now got present at population level,” says one. 

“In this case, we’ve got mutations in the spike protein that seems to be making it easier for this virus to attach to our cells and it seems to be making this virus evade our antibodies better,“ says another.

Flashback montage: Every expert who warned of immune imprinting, immune suppression, immune tolerance, the role of vaccines in driving new variants, vaccine-associated enhanced disease (VAEDs), and the general futility of vaccinating against respiratory viruses. 

Slow roll a peer-reviewed article co-authored by Dr Anthony Fauci concluding that, “Durably protective vaccines against non-systemic mucosal respiratory viruses with high mortality rates have thus far eluded vaccine development efforts.”

Comic relief: Like the good lackeys they are, media outlets are beating up the BREAKING new variant story, to which the general public response has been LMAO.

An online Murdoch media poll indicates three-quarters of their readers just aren’t interested.

Denouement: Collective apathy. The failure of this latest scare campaign is unlikely to preclude a thirteenth scare campaign, as the government is generally unresponsive to market feedback, and it has mRNA investments and purchase commitments driving its decision-making.

Media will continue to uncritically print government press releases provided they convert to clicks – LMAO or otherwise.

Expect the next installment just in time for the summer Covid wave.

Republished from the author’s Substack

Tyler Durden Wed, 06/25/2025 - 21:45

Iran Confirms Death Of 'War-Time Chief Of Staff' After Israeli Attacks

Israel claims that its military campaign against Iran has resulted in the targeted killing of at least 14 scientists. Although these were key figures, the reality is that this is unlikely to completely halt any potential nuclear ambitions.

Speaking to The Associated Press, Israel’s ambassador to France has declared that assassinations would make it "almost" impossible for Iran to develop nuclear weapons with what infrastructure might remain. Other assessments say that all of this set back the Islamic Republic's program by a mere months.

And of course, nuclear scientists are replaceable - and it remains that the country's nuclear energy program has always been large, and a top national priority.

Also important is that on Wednesday Iran belatedly confirmed the death of Maj. Gen. Ali Shadmani, who succumbed to injuries sustained during Israeli airstrikes last week.

Shadmani had been appointed on June 13 to lead the Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters, which coordinates operations between Iran’s regular military and the elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

He filled the top spot following the death of his predecessor, Lt. Gen. Gholam Ali Rashid, in Israel’s earlier attacks that took the lives of several senior commanders.

Israel had called Shadmani Iran's ‘War-Time Chief of Staff’ upon claiming his death in a targeted operation last week. But Tehran has only now issued official confirmation of his death.

Ali Shadmani 

Additionally:

At least 35 Air Defense Force personnel were killed in the Israeli attacks between June 13 and Tuesday, Iran’s semi-official Student News Network (SNN) said today.

SNN published the names of those who were killed. Among them were two brigadier generals, seven colonels and three lieutenant colonels.

Below are some further casualty figures in Iran following what Trump dubbed the '12-day war':

At least 627 people were killed in Iran during its conflict with Israel in the period between June 13 and June 25, Iranian state media outlet IRIB reported on Wednesday, citing the country’s health ministry.

At least 4,870 other people were injured during that time, IRIB said.

The health ministry said 86% of the victims died at the scene of Israeli attacks, as cited by IRIB.

Currently a ceasefire is held, and Iran is assessing the damage - and likely rapidly trying to replenish losses both in terms of personnel and equipment and infrastructure.

Meanwhile The GrayZone's Max Blumenthal weighs in on where things stand regarding Trump's statements saying Iran's nuclear program has been completely destroyed...

Only the most deluded Trump cultists believe Orange McCain destroyed Iran's nuclear program, or that it's possible to do so in a Top Gun-style raid

Even Israeli nationalists admit Trump's attack was a PR stunt, complimenting a leaked DIA assessment, satellite imagery and more https://t.co/HMrnkujJDJ

— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) June 25, 2025

Among Iran's first pressing tasks will be to quickly try to reconstitute its destroyed anti-air defenses, given that Israeli warplanes apparently achieved total domination and freedom of action over Western Iran's skies.

Tyler Durden Wed, 06/25/2025 - 20:30

Martial Law In Mascara: How FDR Hijacked The Constitution And No One Told You

Authored by Maureen Steele via AmericanGreatness.com,

The Constitution wasn’t suspended... it was sidelined, buried under emergency powers, executive orders, and fear, while Americans barely noticed the quiet coup...

Let’s get this out of the way first.

No, the Constitution wasn’t officially suspended in 1933. But it was gagged, blindfolded, and tied to a chair while the federal government handed itself sweeping emergency powers and redefined “freedom” into a kind of bureaucratic improv comedy routine.

They didn’t declare martial law on paper because that would have looked bad. Instead, they declared it in practice and gave it a haircut, a press pass, and a desk job. Most Americans never noticed. Most still don’t.

The story begins with a “banking emergency.” On March 6, 1933, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed Executive Order 2039, effectively closing the banks. This wasn’t a request—it was a national lockdown of the financial system. Within days, Congress passed the Emergency Banking Relief Act, which amended the Trading With the Enemy Act of 1917 to allow the president to seize private property and control commerce even in peacetime. You read that right. The original act was intended for use against foreign enemies during wartime. Roosevelt’s administration simply redefined the term “enemy” to include American citizens. That’s not a conspiracy theory. That’s a matter of historical record. You can read it here and here. This wasn’t martial law with tanks in the streets. It was something more insidious: the silent transfer of authority from constitutional governance to executive fiat, wrapped in the language of patriotic crisis management.

Then came House Joint Resolution 192 in June of that same year. This little piece of legal sorcery declared that debts could no longer be paid in gold. Instead, all gold was to be surrendered to the Federal Reserve, and the American public would now transact in fiat currency—Federal Reserve Notes. In one move, Roosevelt erased the gold standard domestically, outlawed the most stable form of lawful money, and replaced it with an I.O.U. The people didn’t protest. They complied. It was all for the good of the nation, they were told. Never mind that their savings were now denominated in debt-backed paper. Never mind that the Constitution says only gold and silver shall be legal tender. Never mind that the American people’s wealth was effectively nationalized with the stroke of a pen.

By 1938, the Supreme Court put the nail in the coffin. Erie Railroad Co. v. Tompkins may sound like a mundane case about trains and trespass, but the decision fundamentally altered the legal landscape of America. Prior to Erie, federal courts operated under general common law principles—those ancient foundations rooted in natural law and the rights of man. After Erie, federal courts were now confined to statutory law. In other words, judges would interpret the rules written by bureaucrats and legislatures, not derive justice from first principles. The Constitution didn’t vanish overnight. It just became irrelevant in practice. What mattered now was what the statute said. If Congress wrote a law giving an agency the right to inspect your property, seize your earnings, or regulate your behavior, the courts would uphold it, even if it made a mockery of the Bill of Rights.

So no, martial law was never formally declared. But we’ve been living under a continuous state of emergency ever since. Roosevelt’s national emergency was never truly repealed. Instead, it became the precedent for every president that followed. As of this writing, there are at least 41 ongoing national emergencies in effect, some of them decades old. You can find the full list here. The 9/11 emergency is still active. The COVID emergency was extended multiple times before it was quietly phased out. New emergencies are declared regularly over foreign sanctions, trade disruptions, and cyber threats. Each declaration unlocks a set of executive powers that bypass the normal constitutional process. Congress almost never intervenes to end them. The public barely registers their existence. The result is a legal environment in which emergency governance is the norm, not the exception.

Why does this work? The answer lies in psychology. When people feel threatened, they surrender liberty for safety. The fight-or-flight part of the brain takes over. Critical thinking shuts down. This is not speculation. It’s basic neuroscience. Governments have long known that fear makes citizens more compliant. Tell them the banks are collapsing, the virus is coming, the terrorists are plotting, or the climate is boiling, and they’ll accept almost anything in the name of protection. Even the erosion of their most sacred rights. Once that pattern is set, it becomes permanent. Americans have been conditioned to believe that constitutional protections are optional—valid only when convenient and subject to immediate cancellation when the sirens start blaring.

Now let’s talk about the legal sleight of hand. Most Americans assume they live under the jurisdiction of the Constitution. But the courts increasingly operate under a hybrid system of statutory and administrative law, often enforced through what is functionally maritime law. Don’t believe me? Take a look at the gold-fringed flag in most courtrooms. That’s not just decoration. It’s a symbol of admiralty jurisdiction, meaning you’re not in a constitutional court. You’re in a corporate tribunal. And speaking of corporations, the United States is defined in 28 U.S. Code § 3002(15)(A) as a federal corporation. You are not a sovereign individual under natural law. You are a legal entity—an asset tracked by a Social Security number and collateralized against the national debt.

From Roosevelt to Biden, every president has expanded these powers. Truman declared emergency powers during the Korean War. Reagan authorized secret continuity of government plans. Bush signed the Patriot Act. Obama embedded indefinite detention into the NDAA. Trump launched Operation Warp Speed and accelerated the surveillance state through Palantir and FISA. Biden renewed and expanded nearly every emergency he inherited. The mechanisms of control don’t change. Only the branding does.

And here we are. The Constitution is still there, printed in pocket-sized booklets and waved around at rallies. But in most courtrooms, classrooms, and government buildings, it has all the force of a museum artifact. They didn’t suspend it. They just bypassed it. They didn’t tear it up. They just buried it under 90,000 pages of federal regulations. And when someone like you or me points this out, we’re called extremists, radicals, or conspiracy theorists. That’s fine. History is full of people who were slandered for telling the truth too early.

But the Constitution doesn’t give you rights. It recognizes the rights you already have. The paper is not the source. You are. And no act of Congress, no executive order, no foreign or domestic emergency can erase what God has written into your being. They can only convince you to forget it.

Until you remember.

Tyler Durden Wed, 06/25/2025 - 20:05

Note: Mortgage rates are from MortgageNewsDaily.com and are for top tier scenarios.

Thursday:
• At 8:30 AM: The initial weekly unemployment claims report will be released. The consensus is for initial claims to increase to 247 thousand from 245 thousand last week.

• At 8:30 AM: Gross Domestic Product, 1st quarter 2024 (Third estimate). The consensus is that real GDP decreased 0.2% annualized in Q1, unchanged from the second estimate of a 0.2% decrease.

• At 8:30 AM: Durable Goods Orders for May from the Census Bureau. The consensus is for a 4.5% increase in durable goods orders.

• At 8:30 AM ET: Chicago Fed National Activity Index for May. This is a composite index of other data.

• At 10:00 AM: Pending Home Sales Index for May. The consensus is for a 0.1% increase in this index.

• At 11:00 AM: the Kansas City Fed manufacturing survey for June. 

• During the Day: Census Bureau releases the Vintage 2024 Population Estimates

Hegseth Readies Presser For "Dignity of Great American Pilots" As FBI Probes Iran Strike Intel Leak

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says the FBI is probing the leak of an intelligence assessment indicating that the U.S. weekend strikes on three Iranian sites only delayed the country’s nuclear program by months rather than completely destroying it.

“We’re doing a leak investigation with the FBI right now because this information is for internal purposes, battle-damage assessments,” Hegseth said at the NATO summit in the Netherlands on June 25.

“And CNN and others are trying to spin it to make the president look bad when this was an overwhelming success.”

President Trump is furious:

Secretary of Defense (War!) Pete Hegseth, together with Military Representatives, will be holding a Major News Conference tomorrow morning at 8 A.M. EST at The Pentagon, in order to fight for the Dignity of our Great American Pilots.

These Patriots were very upset!

After 36 hours of dangerously flying through Enemy Territory, they landed, they knew the Success was LEGENDARY, and then, two days later, they started reading Fake News by CNN and The Failing New York Times.

They felt terribly!

Fortunately for them and, as usual, solely for the purpose of demeaning PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP, the Fake News (Times and CNN) lied and totally misrepresented the Facts, none of which they had (because it was too soon, there were no Facts out there yet!).

The News Conference will prove both interesting and irrefutable.

Enjoy!

In response to The Epoch Times’ Jackson Richman's request for comment, the FBI said, “In keeping with Department of Justice policy, the FBI can neither confirm nor deny conducting specific investigations.”

Hegseth stood by President Donald Trump’s assessment that the June 21 U.S. strikes on the Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan nuclear sites completely took out Iran’s nuclear capabilities.

“Given the 30,000 pounds of explosives and capability of those munitions, it was devastation underneath Fordow,” Hegseth said.

“And the amount of munitions, six per location, any assessment that tells you that it was something otherwise is speculating with other motives.”

Hegseth noted that the report, which was compiled by the Defense Intelligence Agency, was top-secret and preliminary and that its conclusion is one of low confidence.

“You make assessments based on what you know,” he said.

Hegseth said the leak of the report is motivated by politics.

The assessment—which was first reported by CNN and has been reported by numerous other outlets but not verified by The Epoch Times—said that the strikes did notable damage to the facilities but did not obliterate them.

It also suggested that Iran may have relocated some of its uranium ahead of the strikes.

Vice President JD Vance said on Fox News on June 23 that even if Iran has uranium, it cannot produce a nuclear weapon without the infrastructure.

“If they have 60 percent enriched uranium, but they don’t have the ability to enrich it to 90 percent, and, further, they don’t have the ability to convert that to a nuclear weapon, that is mission success,“ he said.

”That is the obliteration of their nuclear program, which is why the president, I think, rightly is using that term.”

The Trump administration has called the assessment “flat-out wrong,” and Trump said that the end result of the strikes “was obliteration.”

“These leakers are professional stabbers,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said at the NATO summit in the Netherlands on June 25.

Appearing on Fox News on June 24, Special Envoy for the Middle East Steve Witkoff called the leak “treasonous” and said that “it ought to be investigated.”

Tyler Durden Wed, 06/25/2025 - 19:40

Giant Leviathan Gas Field Offshore Israel Resumes Operations

Authored by Tsvetana Paskova via OilPrice.com,

The massive Leviathan gas field offshore Israel is resuming production on Wednesday, following two weeks in which it was shut down due to the Israel-Iran conflict.

Leviathan, operated by U.S. supermajor Chevron, was shut down on June 13, after the Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear sites that escalated hostilities in the region.

Following the ceasefire from earlier this week, Chevron’s unit, Chevron Mediterranean Limited, received a notice from the Israeli Ministry of Energy and Infrastructures, whereby the Leviathan platform may be restarted and prepared for production, Israeli firm NewMed, a partner in the Leviathan field, said on Wednesday.

Accordingly, Chevron is now working on restarting the platform and resuming regular production from the reservoir within a few hours, NewMed said.

Leviathan is a major supplier of gas to Egypt and Jordan, which scrambled in the past weeks to replace lost gas supply from Israel’s major gas field.

Another gas field offshore Israel that had stopped production during the conflict has also been cleared by the Israeli authorities to restart output.

UK-based oil and gas producer Energean plc suspended production from its offshore platform in Israel amid the escalation of tensions in the Middle East earlier this month.

After U.S. President Donald Trump announced a ceasefire earlier this week, Energean announced on Wednesday that it is working to safely restart production and resume normal operations at the Energean Power FPSO, after receiving notice from the Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure, instructing the safe restart and resumption of production and operations.

“We look forward to bringing production safely back online, in full coordination with the authorities, to deliver energy security to Israel and the broader region,” Energean’s chief executive officer, Mathios Rigas, said.

Resumption of Israeli gas field operations is set to ease concerns in Egypt and Jordan about gas supply and pressure downwards Europe’s gas prices, which had soared in the past weeks amid fears of gas supply disruptions due to the Middle East conflict.

Tyler Durden Wed, 06/25/2025 - 19:15

"Substantially In Excess Of $50,000": Hunter Biden's Law Firm Sues Him Over Unpaid Legal Bills

Hunter Biden, the crackhead son of former President Joe Biden who was sitting in on meetings in the waning months of his father's administration, is being sued by his lawyers for unpaid bills "substantially in excess of $50,000," according to a new complaint filed against him on Monday. 

"This is breach of contract action against Mr. Biden for unpaid legal fees," reads the complaint filed in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia by Winston & Strawn LLP - which notes that the 55-year-old bagman-in-chief hired the firm "to represent him in several complex matters, including criminal trial in the United States District Court for the District of Delaware,” and that the firm provided him “with extensive legal services in those matters which generated a substantial amount of fees."

According to the law firm, Hunter has dodged "repeated" efforts to collect those fees.

"Although a portion of those fees have been paid, Mr. Biden presently owes [Winston & Strawn] substantially in excess of $50,000 in fees and interest that are due and payable," reads the complaint. "Despite repeated requests for payment, Mr. Biden has failed to pay the amounts he owes."

"This action is brought to enforce [Winston and Strawn’s] contract rights against Mr. Biden through judgment for the amount due, and lien on all Mr. Biden’s assets."

The firm includes a copy of Hunter's "engagement contract" signed on Dec. 23, 2022, which details representation "with respect to any congressional oversight and investigation events in which you are involved, help your coordinate the work of other attorneys, advisors, related parties on pending issues and communications strategy, and assist in the investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice and US Attorney for the District of Delaware."

As the NY Post notes, Hunter's attorney Abbe Lowell - who has since left Winston & Strawn, has an hourly rate of $1,510," and that billing rates for other attorneys and services at the firm range from $230 to $1,945 an hour. 

The firm says it has "devoted substantial resources to defend" Hunter, which generated "substantial legal fees." 

"While some of Mr. Biden’s bills were paid between March 2023 and October 2024, a substantial amount remains due and owing," reads the filing. "Mr. Biden never objected to any of W&S’s invoices for the legal services rendered to him."

"As of April 30, 2025, the outstanding amount due, when factoring in invoiced amounts and interest, is substantially in excess of $50,000."

An initial hearing in the case has been scheduled for Sept. 19. 

Tyler Durden Wed, 06/25/2025 - 18:50



 

 

 

At The Money: Navigating War, Tariffs and Geopolitics (june 25, 2025)

The U.S. has just bombed Iran’s nuclear sites. This follows weeks of Israeli drone and aircraft bombing raids. This comes after months of noisy Tariff announcements and geopolitical wrangling. What are investors supposed to do when war breaks out?

(Full transcript coming tomorrow).

~~~

About this week’s guest:

Sam Ro is a veteran financial journalist and CFA known for his clear, data-driven insights into markets and and the economy. We discuss how to manage your way through war, tariffs and all manner of headline risks. He spent 2 decades of working in the trenches for Forbes, Yahoo Finance, Business Insider, and Axios he launched his own Substack, TKer. In 2022, TKer earned SABEW “Best in Business” award.

For more info, see:

Substack: TKer by Sam Ro

LinkedIn

Twitter

~~~

 

Find all of the previous At the Money episodes here, and in the MiB feed on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, and Bloomberg. And find the entire musical playlist of all the songs I have used on At the Money on Spotify

 

 

 

TRANSCRIPT:

 

~~~

Find our entire music playlist for At the Money on Spotify.

 

The post At The Money: Navigating War, Tariffs and Geopolitics appeared first on The Big Picture.

As reported by the Senate Committee on the Judiciary on May 20, 2025

What GAO Found Crisis line data show it had about 3.8 million customer interactions from fiscal year 2021 through 2024, with the number increasing each year. GAO found the crisis line faces challenges in several areas: Customers with complex needs. The crisis line provides specialized training to responders in a unit that addresses complex callers. However, these callers are increasingly being routed to responders who may not have received the training, raising service quality and staffing concerns that could put customers at risk. Chat and text. Procedures for staff in this unit—such as responding to more than one customer at once—as well as how the unit is staffed may have adverse effects. These include increased responder burnout, which could also put customers at risk. Chat routing process. The chat platform did not automatically change the status of responders who were not available to respond timely to a chat (e.g., responders who were on a break or experiencing internet outages). As a result, chat customers could be redirected between two unavailable responders, or the chats could be abandoned. Further, in July 2024, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) determined that, as a non-clinical service, the procedure the crisis line used to disclose incidents to customers or their representatives in cases when actions or inactions created a significant risk of harm to the customer was not applicable. The crisis line withdrew the procedure and a new one has not been established. This runs counter to VA's goal of building trust with stakeholders through transparency and accountability. Why GAO Did This Study An average of 17.6 U.S. veterans died by suicide per day in 2022—the most recent data available. Preventing suicide is a top stated priority of the VA. VA runs the Veterans Crisis Line: a 24/7 phone, chat, and text service, staffed by crisis responders who support veterans and their family and friends (i.e., customers). This testimony is based on GAO's report publicly released today on the Veterans Crisis Line (GAO-25-107182). In preparing that report, GAO obtained, reviewed, and analyzed crisis line documents as well as data from fiscal years 2021 through 2024; interviewed crisis line and VA officials; surveyed all crisis line responders; and conducted interviews with a non-generalizable sample of eight responders.

From J.D. Power: June New-Vehicle Sales Subdued After Reverse of Tariff-Driven Rush to Showrooms; Retail Sales Rise 7.5% in First Half of 2025 Brief excerpt:

The seasonally adjusted annualized rate (SAAR) for total new-vehicle sales is expected to be 15.0 million units, up 0.2 million units from June 2024.
emphasis added

From Haig Stoddard at Omdia: US Light-Vehicle Sales Slow Again in June (pay content).  Brief excerpt:

Much of June’s anticipated 12-month-low in the seasonally adjusted annualized rate is an offset from pre-tariff pull-ahead volume in March and April. But also dampening demand is worsening affordability and leaner inventory. Furthermore, a dent in the year-ago month’s sales caused by a cyberattack impacting dealers’ online systems is making year-over-year comparisons look stronger than they would have otherwise.

Click on graph for larger image.

This graph shows actual sales from the BEA (Blue), and J.D. Power's forecast for June (Red).

On a seasonally adjusted annual rate basis, the J.D. Power forecast of 15.0 million SAAR would be down 4.1% from last month, and up slightly from a year ago.
Car buyers rushed to buy in March and April to beat the tariffs.  As Stoddard noted, the year-over-year comparison is easy due to the cyberattack suppressing sales last June.

– by New Deal democrat This morning gives us the last of our three measures of home sales, prices, and inventory, new home sales. These are the most important of the three because while they are very noisy and heavily revised, they are the most leading of all housing metrics, and so they can tell us about […]

The post May new home sales decline, but prices firm, more evidence suggesting rebalancing appeared first on Angry Bear.

As reported by the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on June 18, 2025

Why This Matters An average of 17.6 U.S. veterans died by suicide per day in 2022—the most recent data available. This was more than double the rate for nonveterans. Preventing suicide is a top stated priority of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). VA runs the Veterans Crisis Line: a 24/7 phone, chat, and text service, staffed by crisis responders who support veterans and their family and friends (i.e., customers). GAO Key Takeaways Crisis line data show it had about 3.8 million customer interactions from fiscal year 2021 through 2024, with the number increasing each year (see figure). We found the crisis line faces challenges: Customers with complex needs. The crisis line provides specialized training to responders in a unit that addresses complex callers. However, these callers are increasingly being routed to responders who may not have received the training, raising service quality and staffing concerns that could put customers at risk. Chat and text. Procedures for staff in this unit—such as responding to more than one customer at once—as well as how the unit is staffed may have adverse effects, including increased customer wait times and responder burnout, which could also put customers at risk. Further, in July 2024, VA determined that, as a non-clinical service, the procedure the crisis line was using to disclose incidents to customers or their representatives in cases when actions or inactions created a significant risk of harm to the customer was not applicable. The crisis line withdrew the procedure and a new one has not been established. This runs counter to VA’s goal of building trust with stakeholders through transparency and accountability. Number of Veterans Crisis Line Customer Interactions, Fiscal Years 2021-2024 How GAO Did This Study We obtained, reviewed, and analyzed crisis line documents as well as data from fiscal years 2021 through 2024; interviewed crisis line officials; surveyed all crisis line responders and conducted interviews with a non-generalizable sample of eight responders.

"Gold Is Money Good" - Ed Dowd Warns "Deflationary Scare" Will Prompt Fed Panic

Via Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com

Former Wall Street money manager and financial analyst Ed Dowd of PhinanceTechnologies.com has been forecasting “Danger of Deep Worldwide Recession in 2025.”  It looks like his thesis is turning out correct. 

He predicted interest rates would be declining.  They did.  And inflation has been going down right along with the economy as illegal immigration was being stopped and deportations ramped up.  Dowd says:

“Our friend Joe Biden spent anywhere between $500 billion to $2 trillion to bring these people in and set them up.  Now, that’s all going the wrong way.  Trump has shut down the border crossings, and as deportations heat up, that will only add to the problem.  There will be a lot of supply, and prices have already started coming down in certain regions, and that is going to accelerate. 

Inflation is going to be coming down.  Chairman Powell is dead-ass wrong.  Tariffs are actually deflationary, and he’s holding rates higher for longer. 

That is going to end up being a big policy error.  We think interest rates have peaked for the year...

We think the Fed will be forced to cut rates when the hard data comes in the wrong way.”

What is Dowd looking at most?  Dowd says:

“If we did have an oil shock, our thesis of a deep world-wide recession would trigger even faster.  During the last twelve days of this Iran/Israel war, I said to my followers, I am watching one thing and one thing only, and that is the price of oil.  The price of oil did go up . . . I said if oil breaks out above $80 per barrel, then we’ve got problems. 

Oil has collapsed, and the oil markets are telling you the Iranians are not going to close the Strait of Hormuz.  So, for now, the economies of the world are not going to be experiencing an oil price shock.”

That does not mean we are set for clear sailing throughout 2025. 

Dowd is forecasting that commercial and residential real estate will be a huge drag on the economy as prices fall and fall hard.  Dowd says,

“We think shelter is going to trend lower, and there is going to be a deflationary scare coming.”

Dowd thinks the Fed will panic and have emergency rate cuts this fall.  The stock market will take some big hits.  Dowd says, “I think they freak out in the fall in October or November..."

"I will point out airlines have taken out previous lows, homebuilders are weak, the DOW Jones transports are not close to all-time highs. 

The real economy is rolling over.  Typically, when bubbles like this end, everyone is on the wrong side of the trade, and it’s going to happen quick. . .. Warren Buffett is telling you everything you need to know about this market.” 

Buffett has reportedly $350 billion in cash on the sidelines.

Dowd favors gold because the big banks like gold.  Dowd says,

“Gold counts as a quasi-asset because it is a Tier 1 asset.  That means they can create loans against that as an asset whereas before you couldn’t.  It was not Tier 1.  This is going to be misunderstood by a lot of people, and gold is now a big deal again...

If I am a long-term investor, I am going to do what the banks are doing.  They have made gold money again.  So, gold is money good...

I am going to go with what the banks are buying.”

Dowd wrote a popular book called “Cause Unknown,” which tracked the deaths and injuries that started after the CV19 vax rollout in 2021.  He’s still tracking the injuries that just added another 700,000 disabled people.  Since the CV19 injections started, that’s a hit a new high of 5.5 million permanently disabled Americans.  Dowd says,

“This looks like a bullish trend that isn’t stopping anytime soon.  It goes up to a new high, consolidates and breaks out again.  If this was a growth stock, I’d be all over it, and I’d be long disability... the meta data, the big data, says something drastically changed in 2021.  It’s a disaster. 

I think it’s the CV19 vaccine. 

I find it interesting there is no curiosity about this even with the new administration.  It’s an elephant in the room, and they don’t want to talk about it.”

There is much more in the 46-minute interview.

Join Greg Hunter of USAWatchdog.com as he goes One-on-One with money manager and investment expert Ed Dowd, as he talks about gold, the US dollar and the report called “Danger of Deep Worldwide Recession in 2025.”  Dowd has new reports and analysis on the big problems coming for real estate for 6.24.25.

* * *

To Donate to USAWatchdog.com Click here

If you want a copy of Dowd’s report called “Danger of Deep Worldwide Recession in 2025,” click here.  There are other new real estate reports there too.

Tyler Durden Wed, 06/25/2025 - 15:00

Stockman: Washington's Fiscal Doomsday

Authored by David Stockman via The Brownstone Institute,

If you don’t think Washington is in the maws of a Fiscal Doomsday Machine, think again. And the place to start is with the 30-year CBO projections, expressed as the dollar increase from the current $29 trillion level of publicly held US Treasury debt.

If Washington does nothing except leave current tax, spending, and structural deficit policies in place (i.e. baseline policy), the publicly-held debt will grow by $102 trillion over the next three decades, reaching a staggering 154% of what would be $85 trillion of GDP by 2054.

Moreover, that outcome assumes that Rosy Scenario does not lose her footing for even a moment through the middle of the century. Stated differently, the underlying CBO projections presume that there will be no recession during the 34-year span from 2020 to 2054, and that, in fact, there will be perpetual full employment at about 4% from here on out.

Of course, during the last 30 years there have been three recessions (shaded area) and no such full-employment perfection was even remotely achieved. The short spells of 4% unemployment or under, in fact, were few and far between—in stark contrast to the CBO baseline which presumes 4% unemployment year after year until 2054.

Monthly Unemployment Rate, 1994 to 2024

The CBO projections also assume that inflation stays strictly in its Fed-prescribed lane at around 2.0% for the next 30 years, as well. That hasn’t remotely happened during the last 30 years, when the inflation rate has exceeded the 2.0% mark during 17 years, and frequently by substantial amounts.

Y/Y Change In CPI 1994 to 2024

Likewise, it assumes that the bond pits will have no problem funding more than $100 trillion of new Treasury debt at yields which average just 3.6% over the next 30 years. Of course, the actual weighted average yield in the Treasury market today stands at 4.2% and the fulcrum 10-year note has been cycling around 4.4%, albeit at this point the prospective debt inundation is just getting started.

Again, judging by the last 30 years of history, the odds that interest rates will be pushed down into the mid-3% range and remain there for 30 years running would not seem very compelling, either.

Indeed, during the past 30-year period shown in the graph below the bond pits had the Fed’s big wind at their back as the latter monetized upwards of $8.5 trillion of US Treasury and GSE paper by the 2022 peak. Even then, yields were well above the CBO 3.6% assumption half the time, and were pushed lower only by the massive money-printing spree between 2008 and 2022—a feat not likely to be repeatable again without fueling even more inflation and speculation than we already have.

10-Year UST Yield, 1994 to 2024

Needless to say, with a baseline projection of $102 trillion of new debt riding on the back of a veritable Rosy Scenario, you would think that Washington might be forming a fiscal bucket brigade to begin bailing out the sinking budgetary ship. And most especially that it would be led by the GOP—the once and former party of balanced budgets and fiscal rectitude.

Not the Trumpified GOP, however. Again, as we showed yesterday, the Donald’s OBBBA—even with the egregious budget gimmick of terminating new tax cuts and bennies in the 2028 election year to make the cost look lower on the standard 10-year window—would add massively to the public debt.

The head-in-the-sand GOP leadership and White House economic policy pimps say not to sweat the extra debt because it is only $3 trillion on paper over 10 years, and, besides, much of that can be purportedly absorbed through enhanced “growth.”

Actually, what drives revenue growth is nominal GDP and the CBO baseline assumes an average of+3.7% growth per annum for the entire 30-year period through 2054. Given that nominal GDP growth averaged exactly 3.9% during the 20 years ending in Q1 2020—a period in which the Fed’s printing presses were running red-hot—we doubt there would be much additional nominal GDP growth tonic from essentially extending existing tax law (i.e. the expiring 2017 Trump tax cuts) through the next three decades of massive rising debt burdens.

In any event, on a 30-year basis, the OBBBA as written would add $117 trillion to the public debt, which would rise to an additional +$133 trillion when you price out OBBBA without the accounting gimmicks. Now, how anyone thinks that quintupling the public debt from $29 trillion to $162 trillion over the next three decades is a plausible route to the Golden Age of Prosperity actually extends well beyond our powers of imagination.

Even then, the truth is surely far worse. Just remove one brick from the edifice of Rosy Scenario—perpetually low interest rates—-and the fiscal dragons truly come surging from the budgetary vasty deep. That is, if you assume the weighted average UST yields will clock in at 4.25% rather than 3.5% over the next three decades, the added debt from the permanent extension of the OBBBA would amount to $156 trillion.

That’s right. Faced with a veritable Fiscal Doomsday Machine as embodied in the current CBO baseline, the Trumpified GOP has essentially embraced a budgetary path to a $185 trillion public debt by mid-century, representing a crushing 218% of GDP. In a word, the GOP has surrendered to fiscal calamity lock, stock and barrel.

But that’s not the entirety of the matter. As it happens, given the GOP’s allergy to taxes, cowardice on entitlements, and thirst for Forever Wars and a massive Warfare State, there is no way the nation’s runaway debts will be tackled from the Republican side of the aisle. To remind, when you set aside defense, which will cost $9.7 trillion over the next decade, Veterans at $4.1 trillion, Medicare and Social Security at $15.3 trillion and $20.6 trillion, respectively, and interest at $13.9 trillion, these GOP Sacred Cows add up to $63.4 trillion over the next decade.

That’s 71% of total baseline outlays of $89 trillion and when you add in $7 trillion of Federal Medicaid—from which the GOP has not yet agreed to cut only a small bite–there is only $18 trillion left. And that’s for the entirety of the Federal government from the NIH to highways, the national parks, farm programs, school lunches, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the BLM, the Federal judiciary, the Coast Guard and the Washington Monument, too, among countless others.

That is to say, the $89 trillion of spending built into the budgetary baseline is virtually immune to the budgetary knife because after decades of Dem demagoguery on these items the GOP has thrown in the towel, too.

Baseline Federal Spending For The GOP’s Sacred Cows, FY 2026 to FY 2035

At the same time, the UniParty has come to a frozen standoff on the revenue side of the ledger. When it comes to the possibility of a new revenue source such as a national sales tax or VAT, the Dems are dead set opposed because these taxes are allegedly too regressive, while the GOP is opposed in principle because they are a tax.

At the same time, the income tax is essentially tapped out from an economic perspective. At the present time fully 58.7% of Federal income taxes are paid for by the top 5% of households and 86% by the top 20%. In a word, the preponderance of the nation’s 160 million income tax filers pay no tax at all (about 45 million returns owe no taxes) or after the vastly enlarged standard deduction and increased child credits owe a single digit percentage of their income in Federal taxes.

Indeed, as shown below, in 2022 the bottom 80% of taxpayers paid only $292 billion in income taxes, amounting to just 13.7% of total collections. Against AGI, the effective tax rate was just 5.6%.

At the end of the day, the GOP and Dems have competed their way into a de facto income tax holiday for 80% of households. And we don’t see how you raise their taxes in that competitive environment, while recognizing that the GOP has every reason to staunchly oppose shifting even more income tax burden on the top of the economic ladder.

Distribution of 2022 Federal Income Tax Payments By Income Level

There is always the possibility of higher payroll taxes or returning the corporate income tax to the 35% level of pre-2017. But there is not a snowball’s chance in the hot place that organized labor would allow the former or that the vast phalanx of business lobbies would permit the latter.

In short, raising taxes is usually a bad idea—especially when the $7 trillion Federal budget is freighted down with Warfare State and Welfare State spending that should be drastically curtailed. But there is no visible combination of political factions within the UniParty arrangement that makes this even remotely feasible—even as the second-best solution of revenue increases is even more beyond the range of political possibility.

That is to say, there is really no escape from the Fiscal Doomsday Machine that has now tightly engulfed the nation’s very governing process.

A version previously published in Stockman’s private service 

Tyler Durden Wed, 06/25/2025 - 14:20

On July 1, the minimum wage will increase in Alaska, Oregon, and Washington, D.C.—lifting wages for more than 880,000 workers and collectively raising their earnings by more than $397 million (see Figure A). In addition to these two states and D.C., 12 cities and counties are also increasing their minimum wage this summer, including Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.

Figure A

While not as widespread as the minimum wage raises at the beginning of the year, these summer increases will nevertheless have a profound impact for lower-wage workers and will benefit a diversity of working people:

• 57.9% of affected workers are women.
• While more than half (54.6%) of the benefitting workers are white, the policy disproportionately affects Black and Hispanic workers.
• 86.2% of affected workers are 20 or older, and more than half (55.3%) are 25 or older.
• 45.0% of the affected workers work full-time.
• 54.5% of these workers belong to households whose incomes are less than 200% of the poverty line, meaning they are either impoverished or struggle to maintain economic security.
• More than one in five (22.3%) of affected workers are parents.

These minimum wage increases will put more money in workers’ pockets, helping many of them and their families make ends meet. The average increase in annual wages for a full-time, year-round worker resulting from these minimum wage hikes ranges from $420 in Oregon to $925 in Alaska.

Workers across the nation continue to face high costs of living. According to EPI’s Family Budget Calculator, there is no county in the nation where a single adult working full time could cover necessities like housing, food, transportation, and health care on less than $17 an hour.1

Table 1

The increases this summer signal broad public support for increasing the minimum wage, as well as the long-lasting impact of state- and city-level action. As indicated in Table 1, Alaska’s July increase is the result of a 2024 ballot measure that will eventually increase the state minimum wage to $15 an hour. On the other hand, Oregon lawmakers last made a significant change to the state’s minimum wage policy in 2016, but the wage floor’s value is tied to inflation—meaning it is adjusted automatically each year to reflect price changes. As a result of this indexing, more than 800,000 Oregonians will get a raise this July. Oregon’s standard wage floor will reach $15.05, making it the 11th state to meet or surpass the $15 threshold.2 Indexing the minimum wage to price increases helps preserve its purchasing power over time—in stark contrast to the stagnation of the federal minimum wage, which lawmakers have allowed to erode to a poverty-level wage.

Lawmakers in several states seek to water down minimum wage ballot measures, particularly for tipped workers

According to EPI’s Minimum Wage Tracker, 30 states and D.C. have a higher minimum wage than the federal minimum. Many of these gains were achieved through the ballot initiative process. In the last decade, voters have directly passed state-level minimum wage increases in Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Missouri, Maine, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Washington.

In response to minimum wage increases and other progressive ballot measure victories, at least seven states have passed policies restricting access to ballot initiatives. Even policies that were successfully passed by voters are at risk of being clawed back.

In recent months, lawmakers have watered down a handful of minimum wage ballot initiatives. In 2024, Missouri voters approved a ballot measure that would increase the state minimum wage to $15 an hour in 2026 and index the minimum wage to inflation thereafter. But in May 2025, lawmakers stripped the inflation adjustment provision from the policy.3 Florida is also on the path to $15 an hour, but this year state lawmakers proposed a harmful minimum wage carve-out for interns and work-study workers. The Florida measure has failed for now.

Two jurisdictions have interfered with ballot initiatives that seek to eliminate the tipped minimum wage, a carve-out in federal and many state minimum wage laws which allows tipped workers like waiters and bartenders to be paid less than the regular minimum wage. In Michigan, after a seven-year legal battle over a ballot initiative that Republican state lawmakers had illegally undermined, the state legislature again shortchanged tipped workers by scrapping planned tipped minimum wage increases that would have eventually provided tipped workers the regular minimum wage.

In Washington, D.C., voters overwhelmingly approved a ballot initiative in 2022 to phase out the tipped minimum wage carve-out. However, in June, the D.C. Council voted to delay a scheduled increase of the tipped minimum wage from $10 to $12 an hour.4 The increase, which was scheduled for July, will now take place in October, denying a wage increase for 12,200 tipped workers in the District. Future wage increases for these workers are also in jeopardy since D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser is pushing to repeal the policy entirely.

Tipped workers are not a large percentage of the overall workforce, but they are disproportionately low-wage workers. They experience poverty at greater rates than other workers and are much likelier to experience sexual harassment. Both their low wages and vulnerability to mistreatment are shaped by the tipped minimum wage. Unlike the traditional employee-employer relationship where workers are paid predictably for their time working, workers subject to the tipped minimum wage often receive virtually all their earnings from tips—making their weekly income unpredictable and subject to a multitude of factors out of their control. Research shows that tip amounts are only weakly connected to the quality of service and Black workers receive fewer tips than their white counterparts for the same reported quality of service. This dependence on customer approval also compels workers to remain in situations where they might experience abusive treatment from customers and supervisors.

Opponents to increasing the tipped minimum wage say that industries that employ tipped workers, primarily restaurants, are experiencing acute hardships due to inflation, consumer spending changes since the pandemic, and economic uncertainty. In the District of Columbia, there is no question that the Trump administration’s cuts to the federal workforce and contracts with regional employers will weigh on the D.C. metro economy. At this point, however, the best evidence shows few signs of any restaurant underperformance in terms of employment or wage growth in the District relative to its regional neighbors—meaning that it would be seriously inaccurate to claim D.C. restaurants are exceptionally burdened by the rising tipped minimum wage. Economic headwinds like inflation and federal government cuts have affected workers as much as they have businesses; tipped workers should not have to bear the brunt of businesses’ response to those headwinds. Moreover, should conditions for the regional or national economy deteriorate significantly, supporting workers’ wages will be vital for renewing growth. Increasing wages for low-wage workers stimulates the economy because low-income households typically spend a greater share of their wages than higher-income households, injecting money into the economy that would otherwise be held back.

Table 2 Some state and local lawmakers are fixing long-standing gaps in minimum wage protections

Lawmakers in other jurisdictions are boosting wages for workers that have been historically excluded from minimum wage coverage. In Chicago (see Table 2), the tipped minimum wage will rise in July from $11.02 to $12.62 an hour as the city gradually phases out the lower tipped minimum wage by 2028. There are already seven states (Alaska, California, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington) without a tipped minimum wage carve-out. In Maine, lawmakers passed legislation that will extend the state’s minimum wage to agricultural workers, increasing the effective minimum wage from $7.25 to $14.65. Maine joins 21 other states that pay their agricultural workers more than the federal minimum wage, although many states have exemptions for certain types of agricultural workers.

More state-level increases could be on the way. The Rhode Island House and Senate have each passed bills set to increase the minimum wage to $17 an hour by 2027. Currently, approximately 82,000 Rhode Island workers earn less than $17 an hour, or around 17% of the state’s workforce. If fully approved by the chambers and the governor, Rhode Island will most likely join California, Connecticut, and Washington as the fourth state to adopt a minimum wage exceeding $17 an hour by 2027.5

The minimum wage continues to be a powerful, evidence-backed policy for increasing the wages of working people. States and localities must continue to strive for minimum wage targets that provide meaningful economic security to workers in their jurisdictions. This includes ensuring that all workers are subject to the minimum wage, regardless of occupation or industry.

1. Assuming the worker receives all their income from wages.

2. Oregon’s has three distinct minimum wage levels for different geographies in the state (Portland Urban Growth Boundary, Nonurban counties, and remainder of state). Nonurban counties remain at $14.05.

3. Missouri legislators also repealed the paid sick leave portion of the ballot measure.

4. D.C. is increasing its regular minimum wage in July as a result of the indexing provision in its minimum wage policy.

5. California, Connecticut, and Washington’s minimum wages are all projected to surpass $17 an hour by 2027 due to inflation adjustments to their minimum wage. The District of Columbia and numerous localities in Arizona, California, Colorado, Maryland, and Washington already have wage floors exceeding $17 an hour. By 2027, the minimum wages of Chicago, New York City, and the Oregon Portland Urban Growth Boundary will also reach or exceed $17 an hour.

Another update ... a few key points:
1) There is a clear seasonal pattern for house prices.
2) The surge in distressed sales during the housing bust distorted the seasonal pattern.  This was because distressed sales (at lower price points) happened at a steady rate all year, while regular sales followed the normal seasonal pattern.  This made for larger swings in the seasonal factor during the housing bust.3) The seasonal swings have increased recently without a surge in distressed sales.

Click on graph for larger image.

This graph shows the month-to-month change in the NSA Case-Shiller National index since 1987 (through April 2025). The seasonal pattern was smaller back in the '90s and early '00s and increased once the bubble burst.

The seasonal swings declined following the bust, however the pandemic price surge changed the month-over-month pattern.  
The peak MoM increase in NSA prices this year was the smallest since 2008!

The second graph shows the seasonal factors for the Case-Shiller National index since 1987. The factors started to change near the peak of the bubble, and really increased during the bust since normal sales followed the regular seasonal pattern - and distressed sales happened all year.   
The swings in the seasonal factors were decreasing following the bust but have increased again recently - this time without a surge in distressed sales.