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Mayor Zohran Mamdani of New York, taking a page from communist predecessors, is moving to assure that he has a pliant, ideologically aligned press corps to serve as props for his policy initiatives. (Snip) A July 10 press conference by Mayor Mamdani, billed as "a consumer protection announcement," had the mayor announcing a crackdown that is supposed to make it easier for New Yorkers to cancel online subscriptions. That itself is an effort to starve free-market-oriented, or at least non-communist, press outlets from revenue that helps to guarantee their independence.
The press conference featured lines like this: "We’re going to start with Praj at the Nation.
Chamath Palihapitiya is an investor who manages a portfolio worth billions of dollars. He also co-hosts the ‘All In’ podcast with David Sacks, Trump’s Bitcoin Czar.
Despite his relationship with Sacks, he was not a fan of President Trump, and now admits that he suffered from Trump Derangement Syndrome.
During an appearance on CNBC this week, he explained how he changed his mind about Trump and offers his story as advice for others.
CHAMATH PALIHAPITYA: There are enough people that I hear who are lazy and reductive, and they’re going to end up where they’re supposed to end up—in a little cul-de-sac of their own making.
Well, here's something that doesn't happen too often.
On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Darrin P. Gayles in Miami awarded $314 million in damages to three U.S. citizens who were imprisoned and tortured by Nicolás Maduro’s regime in Venezuela before being freed in a 2023 prisoner swap. The three men were Jerrel Kenemore, a Texas computer scientist who'd moved to neighboring Colombia to be with a woman he met. He was kidnapped by paramilitaries in 2022 while visiting a grocery store near the Venezuela-Colombia border and held for over 600 days before being charged with "espionage" and "counterintelligence activities."
As my colleague Ward Clark reported on Friday, the U.S. House of Representatives moved the Sunshine Protection Act, which would make Daylight Saving Time permanent throughout the United States, from committee to the House floor for a vote. On Tuesday, the full House voted and passed the Act, 308-117. This is performative theater and nothing more. There are more pressing issues for our country and on the House docket, like national security appropriations, bills to combat fraud, and government controls over AI and data centers. But fresh off the House's July 4th recess, this was first up for consideration. According to Independent Rep. Kevin Kiley (CA-03),
The world that we’re looking at today is radically different than that of just five years ago, radically different in the sense that it is much more in the interest of the United States. And I know that seems controversial because [President Donald] Trump is written off as someone who is too fluid and volatile.
His tweets, his verbiage, can put people off, but that’s the art-of-the-deal unpredictability of his nature. Some of it can be a drawback, some of it an advantage, but overall, it doesn’t help analysis to just look at what he says. It’s more important to see what he’s done.
Oil producers in the Persian Gulf are making plans to bypass the Strait of Hormuz with new pipelines and a new port after Iran has repeatedly attacked ships and blocked traffic.
The idea is to minimize Tehran’s leverage on the waterway that once saw 20% of the world’s oil pass through it as the war stretches into its fifth month.
Iran has already insisted that it will impose tolls on the strait, which could cost tens of billions of dollars. And in some cases, it is extracting millions of dollars of protection money per oil tanker. Two such projects are already underway in the United Arab Emirates and Iraq —
Iraq’s Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi arrived in Washington on July 13 for a long-anticipated visit. The new prime minister is seeking to increase ties with the United States.
Iraq is at another crossroads today as the Iraqi leader seeks to rein in Iranian-backed militias while also managing the withdrawal of US forces stationed in Iraq as part of the war against ISIS.
The US had withdrawn from Iraq in 2011 but returned in 2014 to help it fight the terror organization. The US also has an important presence in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.
Big Brother has a name, it's Gavin Newsom, and he's coming to inspect the trash of California residents.
Starting this month, Sacramento is sending city workers out to peer into residents' garbage, recycling, and organic waste bins, all in the name of complying with a mandate from Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.). The California legislature passed the law behind this intrusion, SB 1383, in 2016, and it took effect in 2022. The stated goal was to cut organic waste disposal by 75% by 2025 to reduce methane emissions and slow climate change. Is it working? Well, that’s the question, isn’t it? That’s why Sacramento apparently decided the best way to find out
The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) hosted a Marxist, virulently anti-Israel conference last weekend which openly celebrated terrorism, introduced fledgling activists to "the growing BDS movement," and called on its members to support Iran’s "axis of resistance" and prepare for violence against the United States and Israel. "We are all here to toughen our knuckles," Ryan Delaney, chair of communications for Jacksonville Palestine Solidarity Network, told attendees at the conclusion of events Saturday.
"I hope that everybody leaves here ready to fight when they get home," he told roughly 200 cheering attendees.
Sara Flounders, a member of the Secretariat of the Marxist-Leninist Workers World Party, thundered to the crowd
CARLISLE, Pa. — Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, pleaded with defense contractors to “go faster” as fears grow that the country’s stockpile of weapons is dangerously low after a series of attacks on Iran.
“What I need you to know — and I know this is simple for me to say but hard to do — but go faster, please, go faster, think bolder,” he told the Pennsylvania Defense and Innovation Summit.
“We all need to deliver quality weapons, delivered on time with shortage of lead times and lower costs,” he said. Defense contractors gathered at the US Army War College to discuss
William Kristol, the NeverTrump icon and supporter of President George Bush, wants to destroy the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency that protects Americans from nation-changing, wage-slashing mass migration.
“Abolish ICE. Now,” Kristol posted on Monday, prompting a vigorous response from ordinary Americans. On Tuesday, Kristol celebrated the news that the Department of Homeland Security has temporarily halted the detention of migrants in vehicle stops, following the second fatal shooting of an illegal-migrant driver:
If ICE is telling the truth here, the lesson should be not be to declare victory (ok, take one minute to enjoy the victory), but to redouble pressure on the whole indecent mass deportation regime.
Kristol was an establishment
Labor Department reports annual inflation
in June was 3.5%, biggest monthly drop
in over six years replies
in June was 3.5%, biggest monthly drop
in over six years replies
The annual inflation rate in June was 3.5%, according to the Labor Department's consumer price index report released Tuesday.
The report by the department's Bureau of Labor Statistics attributes the drop in consumer prices, in large part, to a decrease in the cost of energy.
The consumer price index is a broad measure of costs for goods and services across the U.S. economy.
The June rate also marked a 0.4% decrease from the annualized rate in May.
This decline in June was the largest 1-month decrease since April 2020 when the CPI fell 0.8%.
President Donald Trump announced Tuesday that he is replacing his proposed 20 percent reimbursement fee on cargo ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz with trade and investment deals involving Gulf states, while maintaining a blockade on ships traveling to or from Iranian ports or carrying Iranian cargo.
“Oil is flowing like never before, thanks to the awesome Power of the United States Military,” Trump wrote Tuesday on Truth Social, crediting Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine, U.S. Central Command Commander Adm. Brad Cooper, and American service members.
BIDDEFORD, Maine - As bewildered Maine Democrats face a deadline to replace Graham Platner after his U.S. Senate campaign imploded, a fatal ICE shooting has raised the stakes. Community organizers quickly assembled a rally near the site of the shooting, drawing scores of protesters who marched from City Hall and Republican Senator Susan Collins' office, disrupting local traffic as they chanted for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to get out of Maine. Zach Heiden, chief counsel at the ACLU of Maine, told rallygoers that their small town had joined the likes of Houston, Minneapolis and other communities where encounters with
President Trump’s proposed 20% toll on commercial shipping through the Strait of Hormuz could generate nearly $200 billion annually in revenue — a windfall large enough to cover about half of the federal civilian payroll.
Trump announced the concept on Monday — after months of rejecting Iran’s plan for post-war tolls — in what could amount to a negotiating tactic.
Brandon Daniels, CEO of supply chain AI company Exiger, told The Post that the annual volume of international commerce in the strait was between $880 billion and $970 billion before the war.
Want to make banker money without stepping foot on Wall Street? Try plumbing for the New York City Housing Authority.
From July 2024 through June 2025, NYCHA plumber supervisor Jakub Markowski earned $465,000, including $332,000 for nearly 2,600 hours in overtime — more than the mayor and City Council speaker make combined.
While he collected these checks, Markowski also operated two private plumbing companies.
The Buildings Department is now investigating him.
As the city’s ascendant socialist left pushes for more housing in public or nonprofit hands, NYCHA’s history presents a sordid tale of dysfunction and corruption, with Markowski the latest apparent example.
Lest we forget, Shola Olatoye, NYCHA’s chairwoman under Mayor Bill de Blasio,
They Want You Dead (cont)
replies
Happy Bastille Day to our many French readers.(Snip)In the two centuries between the assassination of Prime Minister Spencer Perceval and the killing of Labour MP Jo Cox, six members of the House of Commons were murdered, all by Irish republicans. Since then, what Churchill called "the dreary steeples of Fermanagh and Tyrone" have muted their quarrels somewhat, and yet political violence in a once peaceable kingdom has become more general, to the cheers of the crowd.
It’s a move obscene on so many levels: Members of the City Council are looking to vote themselves a fat pay hike.
Just days after they approved a gargantuan $126 billion city budget, they took up a measure to boost their salaries more than 18% retroactive to Jan. 1 — plus automatic 2% hikes every year thereafter.
The hikes would push members’ pay to $175,500, upper middle-class income territory and more than twice the city’s median income ($81,228).
So the move shows complete contempt for city voters, who the pols plainly think won’t notice, as well as for the City Charter, which sets out an entirely different procedure for upping their pay.
Actress and Filmmaker Justine Bateman
Writes EPIC Response to Shrieking, Angry
Rep. Rashida Tlaib replies
Writes EPIC Response to Shrieking, Angry
Rep. Rashida Tlaib replies
People all over the political spectrum are getting tired of the antics of people like Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan. Every time the woman speaks, it’s a fire and brimstone diatribe about the evils of America.
She doesn’t talk like a member of congress. She sounds more like the unhinged leader of an invading force, threatening to take down the very country she claims to represent. Everyone is sick of it.
Actress and filmmaker Justine Bateman is not a conservative. If anything, she is a centrist, yet even she has had it with this. You will want to read what she wrote in response to Tlaib.
Bateman was reacting to this video:
In 2024, 24% of births in the EU were to foreign-born mothers. This figure exceeds 30% in Germany, Belgium, Spain, Austria and others, and reaches 68% in Luxembourg. Within five to ten years, Luxembourg will cease to exist as a country furthering Western values.
Assimilation of immigrants has not taken place.... When one imports the Third World, one becomes the Third World.
Under the influence of green ideology and European policy commitments such as the Green Deal and carbon taxes, Europe has voluntarily sabotaged its energy markets.
In the coming years,
The Dutch town of Ter Apel has a population of just 10,000 and was just sabotaged by its own government. (snip) An American transsexual man who applied for asylum in the Netherlands due to “oppression in Trump’s America” has been placed in the infamous asylum center Ter Apel famous for Islamist extremists and knife violence.
He says he regrets his decision…“It’s scary. It’s legitimately scary. I decided that my mental health is degrading so substantially, being here, that I just need to get out,” the dude in a dress said.
The Mexican government is using lawyers to block ICE’s repatriation of migrant Mexicans back to Mexico, according to Reuters.
The news service reported:
Mexico has begun filing criminal complaints with state prosecutors in the United States over the deaths of its citizens in U.S. immigration custody and during enforcement operations, the foreign ministry said on Tuesday.
Mexico’s government has also sent cease-and-desist letters to U.S. detention centers where Mexican nationals have died, the ministry added in a statement.
“I don’t think this situation appears acceptable to anyone,” Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said on Monday. “This is an issue for all Mexicans,” she said, portraying the legal intervention as a nationalist cause for Mexicans.
The United States has launched a government-wide campaign aimed at limiting the ability of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate or take action against American officials and military personnel.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, through the US State Department, announced the initiative on Monday, which includes plans for diplomatic pressure, possible sanctions and travel restrictions targeting ICC personnel and organisations linked to the court. The campaign, the Department added, will include efforts to persuade other countries to reject the ICC’s authority over American personnel, particularly nations that cooperate with the US military and law enforcement agencies or benefit from US security assistance.
President Trump announced on Tuesday that he would scrap his proposal yesterday for a 20 percent tolling fee on cargo transiting the Strait of Hormuz, and would instead pursue trade and investment deals with Gulf states.
Trump made the pitch a day ago as part of efforts to unlock commercial shipping through the crucial waterway.
“Based on highly productive conversations with Middle East leadership, I have decided to replace the 20% United States Reimbursement Fee with Trade and Investment Deals that the various Gulf States will be making into the United States,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
“Those Investments will be MASSIVE but, at the same time,