President Donald Trump is reportedly considering eliminating the capital gains tax, which can boost investment, reward entrepreneurship, and strengthen the economy. By removing the tax on profits from stocks, property, and other assets, the president’s move aims to unleash private capital that has been held back due to taxation.

On Sunday, while speaking to reporters, President Trump said he is considering eliminating the capital gains tax on home sales.

“I think it can be a great incentive for a lot of people that really need money,” Trump said.

The reporter then suggested that eliminating the capital gains tax on home sales—combined with Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell stepping down—could help boost the housing market.

“Well, I think if Jerome Powell stepped down, it would be a great thing, I don’t know if he’s going to, but he should,” Trump responded.

Eliminating the capital gains tax on home sales could offer several potential benefits, including encouraging homeownership and boosting real estate market activity.

Without capital gains tax, homeowners may be more willing to sell and move, thereby freeing up housing inventory and making it easier for families to relocate for job opportunities, better school districts, or lifestyle changes. It could also increase buying and selling activity, leading to a stronger housing market, more construction, and greater demand for related services, such as home improvement, real estate agents, and movers.

In addition, taxing gains made from years of property investment or appreciation can be seen as a penalty on success. Eliminating the tax would allow homeowners to fully reap the benefits of their investment.

While President Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill doesn’t cut rates overall, it added additional loopholes and incentives for investors, especially in startups and real estate. Additionally, investors can continue to defer or eliminate capital gains taxes by reinvesting in distressed areas, especially rural ones, which provides a significant tax break for long-term investments in low-income communities.

Sarah Arnold, Townhall

EDITOR’S Note: There is no capital gains tax on the sale of one’s primary residence.  Only secondary residences like vacation properties.

“It’s dark on the Left now. They’ve reached that predictable moment where inflicting pain is all they have left.“ — Sasha Stone.

Theories on the Epstein mess fly around like a murmuration of starlings wheeling across an angry summer sky. The birds are just birds. They are not the storm clouds in the background. Mark the difference.

You can rightly say that Mr. Trump has handled this Epstein business rather awkwardly — especially last Wednesday’s little show of vexation in the cabinet meeting, barking, nothing to see. . . just move along. What? You’ve been watching the Epstein psychodrama unspool for nearly twenty years, so how can it possibly come to this?

Looks like Pam Bondi fumbled badly in those early days on the job, promising things she was less than fully informed about. The public was already convinced that the entire power structure of the nation — of all Western Civ, actually — was a convocation of perverts, and that a vast trove of evidence was sitting there waiting to be laid on them. And then Mr. Trump slammed the door shut. Mssers. Patel and Bongino at the FBI got caught flat-footed, and “Danny Boombatz” especially freaked, seeing his reputation as a truth-teller likely to shred all over cable TV. Most unfortunate, the whole appalling episode.

But then, Sunday, the president suggested on his social media that the Epstein business had become a Democratic Party op. He did not elaborate. And maybe it sounds suspiciously spurious. But, is it not worth considering? Consider also: In all of Epstein’s dark activities there was surely a there there. He did run a concerted blackmail enterprise for some combo of Israel’s Mossad, the CIA, and the UK’s MI6 intel outfit. And, since blackmail requires documentation, there was a ton of it, eventually scooped out of his various domiciles by the FBI.

The key is: had become a Democratic Party op. Didn’t start out that way, but might have turned into one. Consider: The Democratic Party was up to its eyeballs in ops against Mr. Trump since he rode down that fabled escalator in 2015. The “intel community” was the chief player in these operations. The intel community ran rings around Mr. Trump with all manner of fabricated nonsense during the election campaign of 2016 and throughout his first term. You could say — and I believe the DOJ under Ms. Bondi will say in cases waiting to be brought — that these many operations amounted to one continuous seditious conspiracy to overthrow a president. It ran from the Steele dossier, through the Mueller Investigation, through the Norm Eisen / Adam Schiff engineered impeachment No 1, through the gamed election of 2020, through the J-6 committee, and through all the nefarious lawfare gambits against Mr. Trump during the “Joe Biden” fake presidency.

Why wouldn’t the Epstein files now turn out to be an extension of these same operations? The DOJ first moved against Epstein in 2005. The case culminated in 2008 with a plea deal on some Mickey Mouse state prostitution charges and a non-prosecution agreement with the feds under US Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, Alex Acosta — who was reported later saying that Epstein “belonged to intelligence,” and that the case was therefore “beyond my pay-grade” to prosecute.

Between 2008 and 2019, Epstein returned to his international swashbuckling ways. Strangely, he was finally busted on June 6, 2019, by then-AG William Barr, whose father, Donald Barr, had been headmaster of New York City’s Dalton prep school, where Jeffrey Epstein, age twenty-one, was hired to teach math and physics in 1974, though he lacked a college degree. All that may just be coincidental, of course.

A little more than a month after his arrest on sex trafficking charges in the summer of 2019, Epstein died in the Manhattan federal lockup under mysterious circumstances. The outstanding question even afterward was: trafficking with-and-to whom? And the general assumption among the public was: trafficking teenage girls to a long list of public officials, movie stars, financial bigshots, and miscellaneous celebs such as Prince Andrew of the British royal family.

Astoundingly little was learned from the prosecution of Ghislaine Maxwell in 2021-22, which was led by Maurene Comey, daughter of former FBI Director James Comey (fired in 2017). Small world. The case only covered Ms. Maxwell’s activities between 1994 and 2004. Why only that period? Never explained. Rumors of a “client list” being among the evidence have never been substantiated, and were repudiated last week by AG Pam Bondi and President Trump.

has been in the possession of the FBI and the DOJ since at least the first Epstein case in 2005-08. If there was any evidence of Donald Trump caught in some indecent act, why did it not get leaked during the campaign of 2016, or any time since then? His political adversaries tried virtually everything else to knock him out of the arena, up to even assassination — but not that?

The DOJ and FBI were arguably in their most roguish phase as weaponized agencies during the “Joe Biden” years. All the Epstein evidence resided in the New York City field office of the FBI. These were also the years when the apparatus of the Democratic Party — and its rank-and-file — fell into a fugue of vicious, psychotic animus against Mr. Trump and the populist movement he led, not just in the USA, but spreading throughout Western Civ.

Do you suppose that the FBI might have worked some hoodoo with those Epstein evidence files, especially to set the table for the 2026 mid-term elections, when knocking a few Republicans out of office might flip the House and Senate back to the Democratic Party? I would suppose it’s not just a thing; I think it’s the thing. I would imagine that this is exactly what Mr. Trump was hinting at the other day when he referred to this business as yet another Democratic Party op. He knows the mainstream media will never investigate it or report it. And the alt-media is too momentarily disconcerted to entertain the idea. So, he just slammed the door shut.

Nobody likes it, but it may be necessary. Other storms are brewing: financial gales, geopolitical thunderheads, and apparently — we are officially informed — the coming cases against John Brennan, James Comey, and other figures who initiated the coup, which is a much bigger deal than who might have been having sex with whom sixteen years ago.

James Howard Kunstler

We all should have a profound sense of gratitude for the many blessings our nation has given us.

Editors’ Note
This a lightly edited version of Vice President Vance’s remarks as prepared for the Claremont Institute’s 2025 Statesmanship Award Dinner.

California generally—and Claremont in particular—has produced some of the most profound and revolutionary conservative thinkers of the last half-century.

And for a great many of them, it’s because they understood what’s at stake if we abandon our American identity.

And we’re lucky enough to have a few of them, like Michael Anton, now working in the administration with us.

Now, Claremont Institute President Ryan Williams asked me to speak a little bit about statesmanship and, more to the point, about how to respond to some of the challenges our movement will need to confront in the years to come.

It’s an interesting question.

And I think it’s useful to reflect on the state of the Left in 2025’s America.

Last week, a 33-year-old Communist running an insurgent campaign beat a multimillion-dollar establishment machine in the New York City Democratic mayoral primary.

I don’t want to harp on a municipal election, but there were two interesting threads. The first is that it drives home how much the voters in each party have changed.

If our victory in 2024 was rooted in a broad, working- and middle-class coalition, Mamdani’s coalition is the inverse.

Look at his electoral performance, which the Left is already talking about as a blueprint for future electoral success. The guy won high-income and college-educated New Yorkers—and especially both young and highly educated voters—but was weakest among blacks and those without a college degree. He did better in Bangladeshi areas of New York, and worse in Chinese areas.

Mamdani’s strongest vote share was in New York’s gentrifying neighborhoods, like Ridgewood and Bushwick.

His victory was the product of a lot of young people who live reasonably comfortable lives but see that their elite degrees aren’t really delivering what they expected. And so their own prospects, with all the college debt, may not in fact be greater than those of their parents.

And I think in the results, we can start to see the future of the Democrats: as the party not of dispossession, but of elite disaffection.

The party of highly educated but downwardly mobile elites who comprise a highly energetic activist base—one, critically, supplemented by carefully selected ethnic blocs carved out of the electorate, using identity politics as the knife.

That, by the way, explains all of Mamdani’s bizarre appeals to foreign politics intended to signal to one diaspora community or another in New York.

Why is a mayoral candidate in our nation’s biggest city whining about banning Bibi Netanyahu from visiting and threatening to arrest him if he tries? Or attacking Narendra Modi as a “war criminal”? Why is he talking about “globalizing the intifada”? What the hell does that even mean in Manhattan?

But what might seem like a contradiction makes sense if you peel back the onion a bit. Consider: a movement that rails against the billionaire class despite the fact that the billionaire class remains firmly in its corner. It idolizes foreign religions even as it rejects the teachings of those faiths. It rails against white people even as many of its funders and grassroots activists are privileged whites.

I was once comforted by these contradictions. How could privileged whites march around decrying white privilege? How could progressives pretend to love Muslims despite their cultural views on gender and sexuality?

But the answer is obvious, isn’t it? The radicals of the far Left don’t need a unifying ideology of what they’re for, because they know very well what they’re against.

What unites Islamists, gender studies majors, socially liberal white urbanites, and Big Pharma lobbyists? It isn’t the ideas of Thomas Jefferson or even Karl Marx. It’s hatred. They hate the people in this room, they hate the president of the United States, and most of all, they hate the people who voted for him.

This is the animating principle of the American far Left. It isn’t true of most of the people who vote for Democrats, of course. Most of them are good people, even if they’re misguided in their politics. But pay attention to what their leadership says outside of glossy campaign ads or general election-tested messaging, and it’s obvious that this is what animates the modern Democratic Party.

The far Left doesn’t care that BLM led to a spike in violent crime in urban black neighborhoods, because it also led to anarchy in middle-class white neighborhoods.

They don’t care that Islamism hates gays and subjugates women, because for now it is a useful tool of death against Americans.

They don’t care that too many pharma companies are getting rich from experimental hormonal therapies, because it destroys the “gender binary” that has structured social relations between the genders for the whole of Western civilization.

They don’t care that deporting low-wage immigrants will raise the wages of the native-born, because they don’t mean to create higher living standards for those born and raised here—black, white, or any other skin color. They mean to replace them with people who will listen to their increasingly bizarre ethnic and r

eligious appeals.

They are arsonists, and they will make common cause with anyone else willing to light the match. It’s why Mamdani himself is such an appealing instrument to the Left. He captures so many of the movement’s apparent contradictions in a single human being: a guy who describes the Palestinian cause as “central” to his identity, yet holds views—abortion-on-demand and using taxpayer money to fund transgender surgeries for minors, for example—that would be incomprehensible on the streets of Gaza.

This politics doesn’t make sense as a positive political program. But it’s very effective at tearing down the things the Left hates.

One task of statesmanship is to recognize what the Left wishes to do to American society. But the most important thing is to be for something. And that’s the second thread I want to touch on today: if the Left wishes to destroy, we must create.

The most obvious way to do that is to ensure that the people we serve have a better life in the country their grandparents built. This is why the president cares so much about tariffs—in a globalized economy, we must be willing to penalize those who would build outside of our own nation.

And it’s why he worked so hard to pass the OBBBA—if tariffs are the stick, then lower taxes and regulations are the carrots. We want to make it easy to save and invest in America, to build a business in America, and most of all: to work a dignified job and earn the kind of wage that can support a family in comfort.

But this is not a purely material question, because we are not just producers and consumers. We are human beings, made in the image of God, who love our home not just because we earn a living here but because we discover our purpose and meaning here.

Every Western society has demographic problems. There is something about Western liberalism that is socially suicidal or parasitic—that tends to feed off of a healthy host until there’s nothing left.

America in 2025 is more diverse than it has ever been. And yet the institutions that form culture are also weaker. We are confronted with a society that has less in common than ever, and whose cultural leaders seem totally uninterested in fixing that.

Just four years ago we had people promoting alternative national anthems at one of the few remaining national pastimes that transcend ethnic and cultural differences. Too many of our current crop of statesmen remain unable to break out of that moment, destined to erode the very thing that makes Americans put on a uniform and sacrifice their lives for something.

Part of the solution—the most important part of the solution—is to stop the bleeding. This is why President Trump’s immigration policies are so important. Social bonds form among people who have something in common. If you stop importing millions of foreigners, you allow social cohesion to form naturally.

But even so: if you were to ask yourself in 2025 what an American is, very few of our leaders would have a good answer. Is it purely agreement with the creedal principles of America?

That definition is overinclusive and underinclusive. It would include hundreds of millions, maybe billions, of foreigners. Must we admit them tomorrow? But, at the same time, that answer would also reject a lot of people the ADL would label domestic extremists, even though their own ancestors were here at the time of the Revolutionary War.

So perhaps the most pressing thing to build now is the meaning of American citizenship in the 21st century.

The Right needs to do a better job articulating what that means. And while I don’t have a comprehensive answer for you, there are a few things I’d suggest off the top of my head:

For one, it means sovereignty. More precisely, American citizenship must mean belonging to a nation that guards the sovereignty of its people, especially from a modern world that’s hellbent on dissolving borders and differences in national character.

That means having a government that vigorously defends the basic qualities of sovereignty—that secures the border from foreign invasion; that protects its citizens and their enterprises against unfair foreign tax schemes; that erects tariff walls and similar barriers to protect its people’s industry; that avoids needlessly entangling them in prolonged, distant wars.

media reports, never once publicly mentioned America’s Independence Day in earnest. But when he did so this year, this is what he said:

“America is beautiful, contradictory, unfinished. I am proud of our country even as we constantly strive to make it better.”

There is no gratitude here. No sense of owing something to this land and the people who turned its wilderness into the most powerful nation in the world. 

Zohran Mamdani’s father fled Uganda when the tyrant Idi Amin decided to ethnically cleanse his nation’s Indian population. Mamdani’s family fled violent racial hatred only for him to come to this country—a country built by people he never knew, overflowing with generosity to his family, offering a haven from the kind of violent ethnic conflict that is commonplace in world history.

And he dares, on its 249th birthday, to congratulate it by paying homage to its incompleteness, and to its, as he calls it, “contradiction.” Has he ever read the letters from boy soldiers in the Union Army to parents and sweethearts they’d never see again? Has he ever visited a gravesite of a loved one who gave their life to build the kind of society where his family could escape theft and violence? Has he ever looked in the mirror and recognized that he might not be alive were it not for the generosity of a country he dares to insult on its most sacred day?

Who the hell do these people think they are?

Yesterday, I visited the construction site for the Teddy Roosevelt presidential library. We went hiking in the badlands of North Dakota. My five-year-old so desperately wanted to see a buffalo, and he saw a dozen of them. My eight-year-old spotted a bald eagle perched on a low cliff. And my three-year-old brought me a dandelion.

Her little lungs weren’t strong enough to send the dandelion seeds over the hillside, and so she asked me to do it. Watching her face light up as she watched those seeds blow over the hills, I felt a profound sense of gratitude for this country. For its natural beauty, the settlers who carved a civilization out of the wilderness. For making the love story of that little girl’s mother and father possible. For the common yet profound joy of watching a three-year-old’s beautiful eyes light up as she watched a dandelion’s seeds dance in the wind against an ancient rock formation.

This country is not a contradiction. It’s a nation of countless, extraordinary people across many generations, a land of profound ingenuity and tradition and beauty. But more importantly, it’s home. For the vast bulk of Americans, it’s where we’re born, it’s where we will raise our children and grandchildren, and it’s where we ourselves will one day be buried. And when that day comes, I hope my kids can take solace knowing that their inheritance as Americans is not some unfinished or contradictory project, but a home that provided their parents shelter, and sustenance, and endless amounts of love.

Thank you, and God bless you.

Vice-President J. D. Vance

Zohran Mamdani, the Democrat Party’s anti-Semitic, socialist nominee for mayor of New York City, apparently proved he’s extremist enough to earn the backing of the political machine of America’s most notorious billionaire.

The New York Post reported July 12 that George Soros poured $37 million into a litany of leftist groups backing Mamdani, which is ironic given the latter’s phony, public dog-and-pony show disdain for billionaires. As the Post summarized, “[I]t’s unlikely [Mamdani would be] be the front-runner to become the Big Apple’s next mayor if it wasn’t for” the left’s “kingmaker” Soros.

The Soros fortune went into a collective of at least 10 groups behind get-out-the-vote efforts that helped Mamdani upset former New York governor Andrew Cuomo in the NYC Democratic primary, including the infamous Working Families Party (WFP). MRC Business profiled WFP in its most recent report documenting George and his son Alex’s financing of the radical, global climate change movement. 

We reported WFP and its advocacy group WFPower, are both prominent leaders of a Soros-financed coalition known as the Green New Deal Network.  Soros’s Open Society Foundations gushed this group is “working to build a movement to pass local, state, and national policies that create millions of family-sustaining union jobs, ensure racial and gender equity, and take action on climate at the scale and scope the crisis demands.” It’s packed with ESG overtones. 

In the NYC primary, WFP — which pocketed the lion’s share of the Soros funding ($23.7 million) — “helped score Mandani the Democratic line by brokering cross-endorsement deals that squeezed out Cuomo,” the Post reported. The entire Soros-backed cohort is backing Mamdani’s “Marxist agenda that includes advocating for criminal migrants and condemning Israel.”

MRC was also one of the first to report on how Soros was financially supporting groups that celebrated Hamas’s genocidal attack on Israel October 7, 2023. This is right on par with Mamdani’s absurd defense of the grotesque anti-Semitic catch-phrase, “Globalize the intifada.”

Soros’s own anti-Israel political stance is well-documented. MRC resurfaced a horrific pro-Hamas 2007 op-ed by the billionaire calling on America and Israel to “open the door to Hamas.” As Harvard Law School Professor Emeritus Alan Dershowitz wrote in 2023, “no single person has done more to damage Israel’s standing in the world, especially among so-called progressives, than George Soros.”

It looks like the Soros machine has found its lackey to embed its anti-Israel extremism into the NYC framework for the foreseeable future.

Joseph Vasquez, MRCBusiness

President Donald Trump was reportedly caught “flat-footed” when the Pentagon abruptly announced it was freezing shipments of critical weapons to Ukraine, including Patriot missile interceptors, precision-guided GMLRS, and artillery rounds.

The rationale for halting shipments of defensive weapons to Ukraine stems from a review that found that the U.S. only has about 25 percent of the Patriot interceptors needed for all Defense Department military plans.

Yet just days later, Trump reversed course. “They’re getting hit very hard now,” he said. “We’re going to send some more weapons — defensive weapons primarily.”

The rapid pivot back to arms transfers to Ukraine illustrates just how deeply embedded interventionist reflexes remain not just in Congress and the Pentagon, but even within Trump’s own orbit.

US Running Low

At the center of this internal tug-of-war is Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby, a leading voice for a more restrained, realist approach to America’s military posture, which is a position that has reportedly frustrated some hawkish members within the Trump administration.

Colby has warned that U.S. weapons stockpiles are running low, defense manufacturing is lagging behind adversaries, and that it is time for Europe to take primary responsibility for Ukraine, while America focuses on shoring up its limited resources by preparing for a far more dangerous geopolitical challenge: China.

A recent analysis by Foreign Affairs aligns with Colby’s assessment, stating that the United States “has low stockpiles of munitions, its ships and planes are older than China’s, and its industrial base lacks the capacity to regenerate these assets. In war games that simulate a conflict in the Taiwan Strait, Washington runs out of key munitions within weeks.”

The U.S. Air Force’s fleet is showing its age, with planes averaging 32 years old, and some exceeding 50 years. Developing new major weapons platforms like these can take more than eight years, however if the F-22 Raptor is any indication, the process could take more than 15 years.

The U.S. Navy is in an equally perilous situation. Though the average U.S. naval vessel is 19 years old, some vessels like cruisers are pushing almost 30 years old. To meet future demand, the Navy may require extending the lives of some non-nuclear surface ships to over 50 years old.

In stark contrast, 70 percent of China’s naval ships have been launched since 2010. China’s annual shipbuilding capacity is an astounding 26 million tons, which is 370 times greater than the United States’ capacity of 70,000 tons. The U.S. industrial capacity is so limited that it cannot even produce a single 100,000-ton Ford-class aircraft carrier annually.

Still, Washington clings to a WWII-era fantasy, believing that it can arm the world while neglecting its own arsenal.

Two Systems in Low Supply

Two systems that are in high demand and low supply are the National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System (NASAM) that Ukraine can’t get enough of, and the GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrators that were recently used in coordination with Israel against Iranian nuclear sites.

It takes around two years to manufacture and deploy a NASAM battery, which is capable of launching 72 missiles into the sky at once and is jointly produced by Norwegian Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace and U.S. RTX Corporation.

Why so long? While Kongsberg, like most Western defense firms, designs and assembles its weapons systems, it doesn’t manufacture most of the components in house. Unlike the mass production lines that made the weapons used to fight World War II, more than 1,500 suppliers across two continents contribute to the weapons produced at just one Kongsberg factory, with the U.S. defense contractor RTX supplying the radar and the actual missiles.

In terms of the 30,000-pound GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrators (MOP), the situation is even worse.

Before Trump’s airstrikes on Iran, the United States possessed only 20 MOP bombs, however 14 of these were expended on two targets in Iran, leaving only six. According to National Interest, it took more than a decade to produce the initial 20 GBU-57s, and their production line has been closed while the Pentagon currently awaits bids from American defense contractors for a Next Generation Penetrator (NGP) contract.

Embracing Realism

The truth is simple: the United States is under no obligation to indefinitely bankroll Ukraine’s war effort or come to Israel’s defense, especially not at the expense of our own military readiness.

These weapon systems are not only costly, but limited in their ability to be mass produced, and should be reserved first and foremost for the defense of American troops in any future conflict. It’s long overdue for the United States to reevaluate its foreign policy and embrace a path of prudent foreign policy realism, while focusing on rearmament through reindustrialization.

This is not isolationism, it’s prioritization. A foreign policy rooted in realism begins by recognizing limits: of production, of attention, and perhaps most of all, of obligation.

Rebuilding American strength starts at home, not in Kyiv, not in Tel Aviv, and not in another foreign aid or weapons package.

America will not compete in the 21st century if it’s stuck in a 20th-century mindset.

Adam Johnston, The Federalist

People talk of “liberty” as if its achievement signals the end of history.

Even most of America’s founders did. They implemented liberty — through a Bill of Rights that a government must honor to remain credible — and that was that.

Ben Franklin, perhaps the smartest of the Founders (other than Jefferson) famously quipped, “We’ve given you a republic … now you have to keep it.”

Franklin clearly understood that just because people say they want liberty doesn’t mean they really want liberty; nor does it mean that future generations will necessarily want liberty, either.

Ronald Reagan brilliantly observed that even when free, man is only a generation away from the possibility of total tyranny. America’s experiences under the era of COVID fascism and the Biden regime illustrated that more chillingly than anything we have yet seen, in our nation. The Communist fascist totalitarian Democratic Party looms over us like a shadow of death, waiting to strike the final blow to the liberty they so loathe.

Ayn Rand, author of “Atlas Shrugged,” astutely observed that liberty is only a byproduct of the human will to live. Man survives by thought, by reason, and by self-responsible action, said Rand; if man ever decides he doesn’t wish to live by those values, then liberty will vanish, and liberty will also be beside the point. When humans stop thinking for themselves, either tyrants or anarchy take over by default.

And here we are. From what I can see, most Americans still say they want liberty. Most human beings claim they want freedom, which is why most of them flood our borders. But I’m not at all convinced that most people on earth grasp what liberty requires. I’m not saying it necessarily requires sacrifices. But liberty does require a love of life, and a willingness to embrace the personal responsibility that happiness always demands. Happiness comes from an accumulation of smart choices, over time. I am a therapist, and I am here to tell you that millions and millions of people out there feel that happiness is something that happens TO you, not something you must accept as a life’s mission to generate on your own.

Happiness should happen to me? I’m entitled to it? Many people seem to feel this way: I see this as a very, very serious problem.

Liberty is not the end of history. 1776 was only the beginning. It’s up to the rest of us, and forthcoming generations, to figure out exactly why liberty is so necessary and important.

*******

I understand President Trump’s defense of Pam Bondi. I also understand the pent-up frustration and rage over the Epstein letdown. I interpret this not as a divided MAGA movement. Instead, I see it as a healthy expression of anger and an indication that Trump’s two hugely important terms in office are only the prelude to what has yet to come: Nothing less than an American version of the French Revolution against the elites who comprise the unholy union of economics and state that never should have happened in a free country.

Put bluntly: Watch your backs, and your heads, Commiefascist elitists. The anger out there is far worse than you realize.

*******

“I’d rather be an American than a Democrat,” says a sign.

I would rather be a mobster than a Democrat. A Tony Soprano has a sliver of accountability and integrity in his warped quest to prop up his murderous empire. He’s a saint when compared to Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama or George/Alex Soros. Democrats pay absolutely nothing for their errors. They are morally smug billionaires who are never on the run, and instead are the celebrated. They have absolutely nothing to offer other than parasitism, willful ignorance and wild-eyed destruction. Not even a tiny shred of redeemability. In a rational world, they’d be visible only as the repugnant derelicts they truly are.

*******

From Breitbart and the New York Post: Anti-money/anti-capitalism Communist-Muslim candidate for mayor Mamdani of New York City reportedly benefited from $37 million of George/Alex Soros money.

Communists and Democrats (exact same thing) are so pitifully predictable. They LOVE money. Money, in fact, is the only thing they value. What they despise: money in the hands of people who actually produced and earned it.

This thug in New York is a woke child mutilator, Muslim beheader and Marxist poverty-maker rolled up into one horrific hybrid. The media, academia and hordes of stoned, brainwashed and mortally ignorant young people think he’s cool and love him.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

By Anony Mee

As of December 2024, there were approximately 40 million illegal aliens (or people who should be classified as illegal aliens) living in the United States. Before Biden entered office, there were roughly 20 million illegal aliens in America. Two-thirds of that number were people who had overstayed lawful admissions

Under Biden another approximately 20 million entered, some of whom were apprehended at the border and released into the country, some were allowed to apply fraudulently for asylum and be admitted, some crossed illegally without interception, some were admitted under the bogus CBP-1 humanitarian parole program, and some came flooding in from Temporary Protected Status countries for whom Biden extended the program.

All of them should leave the US, either on their own or by deportation. With perhaps a few exceptions (maybe CPB-1), they are all criminals. Every day, we hear stories of violent illegal alien felons and their pitiful victims.

We need to understand that unauthorized entry or overstay is a crime. Working without authorization, without paying mandatory payroll deductions (federal and state), and using a SSN or name not their own are all crimes. Accessing federal and state benefits under a false identity is criminal. Using another’s identity to access medical care, obtain bank loans, go to university, or buy a car is criminal fraud.

It is a corruption, and it is corrupting the soul of the nation. We are not a people who should wink at the commercial advantages gained by those who break immigration law by hiring illegals and not giving them the pay and benefits to which workers are entitled. Illegal aliens force everyone to pay more for housing—whether rental or by purchase—because illegal-driven demand exceeds supply.

Their presence forces longer waits for both routine and emergency medical care because hundreds of thousands fill the waiting rooms here rather than in their own countries. Americans are facing rising taxes to fund education from a shrinking base because of the number of children of illegal aliens filling up the classrooms. We all might not have been carjacked by an illegal, but their presence here is costing everyone far too much.

Despite this tremendous burden on Americans, even some conservatives are calling for a sort of softened legalization, motivated by misplaced sympathy for those illegally in this country, rather than for Americans or those who are following the rules to be here. History says that this is a foolish effort.

Let’s look at our big previous legalization program. The late David North of the Center for Immigration Studies wrote an excellent analysis of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1982 (IRCA). Among his conclusions were (1) much larger numbers than had been anticipated applied; (2) there was a great deal of fraud in the program; and (3) the fraud rarely resulted in a denial.

Enacting a legalization/amnesty program invites millions to “try their luck.” I can’t tell you how often I heard that from unsuccessful or ineligible visa applicants. They will swarm into the country by any possible means and route. Putting a limiting date on presence in the United States to determine program eligibility will only fuel innumerable fraudulent document mills, unscrupulous public notaries, and unethical immigration lawyers.

And who would these folks be? Current estimates are that 44% of illegals are Mexican, 3% are Filipino, 2% are Indian, 2% are Chinese, 25% are from other Central and South American countries, and 24% from the rest of the world.

Meanwhile, 4 million potential immigrants, just 10% of the number who should not be here, are currently waiting (some more than 20 years) for their legal immigration interview (due to congressionally-mandated numerical limitations). Of them, 30% are Mexican, 7% Indian, 7% Filipino, and 6% Chinese. See where this is going? We have millions waiting to join us the legal way, yet we’re considering letting criminal millions jump the line ahead of them.

I’d like to see all the illegals removed and if we decide as a policy that we need more immigrants, we should process as quickly as possible those already waiting in the legal way.  We can establish a cutoff of those already processed by USCIS and pending in the system.

Gad Saad’s next book, Suicidal Empathy, cannot be released soon enough. The title says it all. I’m afraid we’re headed down this path with a soft amnesty for the “good guy” illegals in the country. So, here’s a hybrid and much better proposal:

Should we choose to initiate a program to legalize aliens who are unlawfully present in the United States, it should be limited to those who entered the United States lawfully and overstayed their legal admission. We already have their data in our system (e.g., their names, dates and places of birth, passport numbers, dates admitted, and durations of stays authorized).

With these “overstays,” we don’t have to worry about fraudulent identities. They had a security check in our systems before receiving their visa or admission from a visa waiver country. They had a reason to be here. Many of them already had friends and relatives here who, if needed, can help them overcome the public charge ineligibility. Any who have committed crimes or obtained federal benefits via fraud can be excluded. Give the program a cut-off date that accepts only those here before November 3, 2020, to weed out those whose visas came when the Biden Administration took over.

We do not have to give them a path to citizenship. They can be granted conditional legal residency for life, as long as they avoid criminal behavior. This will take an act of Congress, something they need to get started on immediately. It can be a limited immigration bill, speeding up processing for those waiting, and permitting lifelong conditional residency for visa overstays not otherwise ineligible.

As it seems we may well go down this amnesty/legalization path, this proposal will make it as easy as possible for ourselves. We will not be rewarding those who entered illegally, with each one of them knowing they were committing a crime as they did so. We will also not be rewarding traffickers and trafficking.

This plan will partially satisfy the immigration hawks as well as the doves. A quasi-quasi for both sides of the debate.

Anony Mee is the nom de blog of a retired public servant .

Ken Martin is the Chairman of the Democrat National Committee (DNC). He’s the primary fundraiser and spokesman for America’s Democrats. Zohran Mamdani is the Democrat Party’s candidate to be the next Mayor of New York City. Mamdani has been caught cheerleading to “globalize the Intifada,” which means he wants to see Islamist terror everywhere. Given many opportunities to repudiate that slogan and its genocidal meaning, Mamdani has steadfastly refused:  

One would think the head of the DNC would understand Islamist terror is about as popular in America as shingles or festering cold sores. One would think wrongly.

During a recent PBS interview, Martin was given a chance to distance himself from Mamdani’s lunatic assertion. He didn’t:

There’s no candidate in this party that I agree 100% of the time with, to be honest with you. There’s things that I don’t agree with Mamdani that he said.

But at the end of the day, I always believe, as a Democratic Party chair in Minnesota for the last 14 years, and now the chair of the DNC, that you win through addition, you win by bringing people into your coalition.

We have Conservative Democrats. We have centrist Democrats. We have labor progressives like me, and we have this new brand of Democrat, which is the leftist. And we win by bringing people into that coalition and at the end of the day, for me, that’s the type of party we’re going to lead. We are a big tent party.

Yes, it leads to dissent and debate, and there’s differences of opinions on a whole host of issues. But we should celebrate that as a party and recognize at the end of the day, we’re better because of it.

Martin taught us something surprising: leftists are a “new brand of Democrat.” He also taught us something unsurprising: globalizing the intifada is just one more of many “differences of opinion on a whole host of issues” under the Democrat “big tent party.” Why, it’s practically like preferring Doritos over Cheetos! Martin had a clear opportunity provided by PBS(?!) to say the Democrat Party rejects world-wide Islamist terrorism. He didn’t take that opportunity.

It’s common knowledge many American Jews are staunch Democrats, but Donald Trump has been peeling away a substantial number post October 7. Jewish organizations were not amused by Martin’s refusal to clearly condemn Mamdani and his call for world-wide genocide. Apparently, there are cooler, smarter heads at the DNC; Martin tried to backpedal:

Graphic: X Post

Martin is partially right. In the PBS interview he didn’t specifically say he supported or condoned “globalize the Intifada,” but he certainly didn’t say he “unequivocally condemned” it. So, Martin is lying about the “right-wing lie machine” lying about what he said or didn’t say. Particularly funny—in a disturbing way–is Martin’s assertion that “there’s no place for rhetoric that can be seen as a call to violence,” which is pretty much the only kind of rhetoric Democrats are speaking these days, whether it’s calls for the assassination of President Trump, calls for insurrection, calls for violence against federal immigration officers or calls for violence against Normal Americans in general. That’s a pretty big tent.

There can be no doubt Mamdani is an Islamist with Communist leanings. One might think those ideologies mutually exclusive but both are totalitarian systems that brook no opposition to their rule. Muslims are also taught, culturally and through their faith, to lie to infidels the better to spread Islam. 

Mamdani is certainly lying, but he’s a little too slick to specifically repudiate “globalize the Intifada.” Instead, he won’t even speak the phrase and dances around it, allowing his Islamist followers and supporters to understand he’s lying to the infidels, while simultaneously giving infidel useful idiots an excuse to claim he doesn’t support global Islamist terror. Ken Martin is playing the same, useful idiot, game.

Is Martin simply stupid? Doesn’t he understand Mamdani’s candidacy is deadly to Democrat’s political aspirations? Can he really be so dense as to fail to understand Mamdani’s election could wipe out Democrat hopes to seize the House and Senate in 2026 and the presidency in 2028? Doesn’t he know electing an Islamist Communist as Mayor of New York City, which has America’s largest Jewish population, is deadly to the Democrat Party? Doesn’t he know all sane, decent Americans condemn Islamism, terrorism, antisemitism and genocide?

Or is Martin merely “dancing with them what brung him?” Is he forced to play to the lunatic, violent, antisemitic, anti-American base of his party, the base that all but fills that DNC big tent?

Martin’s refusal to condemn “globalize the Intifada,” his furious, unconvincing backpedaling when caught, and his refusal to distance himself and the DNC from Mamdani eloquently answers those questions.

On a different subject, if you are not already a subscriber, you may not know that we’ve implemented something new: A weekly newsletter with unique content from our editors for subscribers only. These essays alone are worth the cost of the subscription. 

Mike McDaniel is a USAF veteran, classically trained musician, Japanese and European fencer, life-long athlete, firearm instructor, retired police officer and high school and college English teacher. He is a published author and blogger. His home blog is Stately McDaniel Manor. 

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As Peter Schweizer noted in a short report for the Hoover Institution on Christmas Day 2000, twenty-five years ago the United States was “spending less on defense as a percentage of GNP than anytime since the Great Depression.”  That all changed nine months later when the so-called “peace dividend” from the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War was reinvested in a “Global War on Terrorism.”  

Eight trillion dollars later, and what do Americans have to show for their sacrifices in blood and treasure?  The Taliban is in control of Afghanistan, al-Qaeda is in control of Syria, an apologist for Islamic jihad is about to become mayor of New York City, and a pro-Hamas contingent of lawmakers wields too much power in Congress.  

In an article that resembles an obituary for U.S. foreign policy during the twenty-first century, writer Daniel McAdams dryly observes in the headline, “‘Global War on Terror’ Is Over.  Terror Won.”  That’s quite the gut punch for everyone who lived through 9/11 and its aftermath.  Yet it’s hardly inaccurate.  

A quarter-century after Islamic terrorists murdered three thousand Americans, politicians are more concerned about “Islamophobia” in the United States than providing adequate care for veterans who confronted Islamic barbarity head-on.  The hurt feelings of those who risked nothing to defend the homeland matter more than the damaged bodies and minds of those who risked everything.  

The significance of 9/11 has been so watered-down that Congresswoman Ilhan Omar remembers it only as a day when “some people did something.”  For the victims we lost, their families, members of the military who fought and died on the global battlefield, and the families of those servicemembers who never saw their loved ones again, that “something” was — by far — the most consequential event in their lives.  Now it’s just an opportunity for foreigners who become members of Congress to guilt-trip white people for their imaginary “privilege.” 

After 9/11, everybody insisted that we left our guard down and somehow brought the tragedy upon ourselves.  If we had only continued spending on defense at the same high levels that we had been spending since WWII, then we could have prevented the worst attack on American soil since the Japanese Empire bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941.  That was the supposed lesson.  It didn’t matter that we were still spending more than every other country in the world; as soon as we cut back on Cold War military spending, we suffered another surprise attack.  We were vulnerable, everyone agreed, unless we rededicated tax dollars toward huge military budgets.  

Everybody in the defense sector got big buckets of money after that.  Weapons manufacturers, research and development firms, intelligence think tanks, and foreign policy consultants made out like bandits.  The FBI got new domestic surveillance powers.  The Department of Homeland Security and Transportation Security Administration came into existence.  The CIA positioned itself once again as the unofficial quarterback of the U.S. government.  Unelected bureaucrats, in other words, became much more powerful than they were before 9/11, and the defense industry started cashing much bigger checks.  All the institutions that experienced a diminishment of clout and prestige after the Cold War found their clout and prestige supercharged in the post-9/11 world.  That’s a pretty sobering reminder that some people always benefit from tragedy.

How did the American people make out?  Not so well.  In return for a foreign attack on U.S. soil, American citizens lost any claims to their privacy.  The Patriot Act (apparently already written and ready to be signed into law as soon as a sufficient emergency could justify its passage in Congress) birthed the modern national security surveillance State.  Americans lost control over their bank records, phone calls, text messages, and emails.  It became common to hear politicians justify this loss of personal privacy as a trifling matter for Americans with nothing to hide.  On 9/11, foreign terrorists murdered U.S. citizens; after 9/11, the U.S. government murdered the Fourth Amendment.

Americans also saw the accelerated migration of foreign nationals into their local communities.  Both George W. Bush and Barack Obama seemed to agree that American citizens were responsible not only for prosecuting a “Global War on Terrorism” but also for resettling “refugees” from newly occupied territories into the United States.  The end result has been a confusing and disruptive injection of multiculturalism this century.  Had Americans known that defending their way of life would involve importing millions of foreign nationals with a different way of life, many never would have supported post-9/11 wars in parts of Asia and Africa and across the Middle East.

Effectively, the U.S. government responded to the worst attack since WWII by going to war for two decades, tearing up parts of the Constitution, and undermining Americans’ shared culture.  Those politicians and bureaucrats in D.C. who have seen their powers expand this century believe the enormous costs in lives and dollars are justified.  Those industries that profit from endless war have had much to celebrate.  For many Americans, however, the butcher’s bill from this century’s military conflicts has not been pretty.

Right now the drumbeat of war is growing louder.  U.S. and European interests see Ukraine as an expendable chess piece in a larger NATO-led war against Russia.  As the death toll in Europe rises, Western war-hawks continue to demand that every last Ukrainian man be press-ganged into service.  I have made no secret of my contempt for those who insist that Ukrainians die in this war when they are not permitted to vote for elected representatives or even to dissent publicly from the government currently hanging onto power through martial law.  There is nothing “democratic” about this Ukrainian dictatorship.

I dislike the Council on Foreign Relations types who lick their chops over the possibility of defeating Russia and dismantling its enormous territory into more digestible parts.  I dislike the BlackRock vultures that can’t wait to gobble up the region’s natural resources while making trillions of dollars from government-subsidized rebuilding projects across the war-torn terrain.  I dislike the bloodthirsty loudmouths, such as Lindsey Graham, who speak of war as if it’s a playground game.  I dislike the Machiavellian politicians (particularly in Europe) who see the War in Ukraine as a convenient distraction from the exorbitant energy costs of “climate change” communism presently destroying Western economies.  I dislike those who would risk miscalculations between nuclear powers over former Soviet lands whose peoples largely identify as Russian.  I dislike those who prefer that Russian and Ukrainian Christians kill each other rather than seek peace.

Before we ratchet up the slaughter in Europe and expand the Russia-NATO proxy war in Ukraine into something even more devastating than it already is, consider how much we’ve sacrificed this century.  The “peace dividend” following the Cold War didn’t even last a decade.  When the United States committed itself to a post-9/11 “Global War on Terrorism” for the next twenty years, we watched our Bill of Rights and culture slip away.  Whether one thinks the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were worth their costs, those costs will look minuscule next to the butcher’s bill that will come due in a full-out war between Russia and U.S.-NATO.  Those European and American parents who believe that their children will never be drafted into service should remember that Ukrainian parents once believed the same thing.

There is an abyss before us.  If we fall into it, we will lose ourselves.  The madness will be bloody and awful, and we will be lucky to see it through.  War takes everything.  It robs everyone.  I pray that we can avoid it.

J. B. Shurk, American Thinker

Could a gold revaluation be on Trump’s mind? Below, we consider the options facing a debt-sick America.

A Bug Racing for a Windshield As we’ve been warning for years, the US and USD are a bug rapidly seeking a debt-hard windshield.

The trend and speed of this collision (and debt trap) are becoming increasingly more obvious with each passing day and headline.

In simplest terms, as US debt levels soar moon-bound, trust and interest in its IOUs (and the currency/dollar backing those IOUs) are sinking toward the ocean floor.

The evidence of such otherwise “dramatic” statements is literally everywhere.

Hard Questions For example, although not at war, the US is running World War 2 debt-to-GDP ratios at the 120% level.

Gold Revaluation: Trump’s Red Button Option? How did this happen? What’s the “emergency” behind this grotesque ratio?

And more importantly, how can Uncle Sam save himself?

Simple Answer Answering the first question is fairly simple.

We arrived at this appalling turning point because the US has been getting debt drunk for decades.

Gold Revaluation: Trump’s Red Button Option? Ever since Nixon took away the gold chaperone from the USD, politicians have been buying temporary prosperity, debt-based “growth” and duped voters by taking US public debt levels from $248B in 1971 to $37T (and counting) today.

This number alone is staggering.

Trillions Matter The difference between “billions” and “trillions” is not merely alphabetical, it’s brutal.

1 BILLION seconds ago, for example, places us in 1997. Bit 1 TRILLION seconds ago places us at 30,000 BC.

Let that sink in for a moment.

If this shocks or bothers you, well… you’re not alone.

The World Has Called the USA’s Bluff The rest of the world is shocked too, which explains why its central banks have been quietly net-dumping USTs and net-stacking physical gold since 2014.

This further explains why freezing the FX reserves of Russia in 2022 only accelerated the distrust of a now weaponized (and once neutral) world reserve currency.

De-Dollarization… What followed was a well-telegraphed and carefully forewarned trend of de-dollarization from the BRICS+ coalition.

Tier-1 Status… This trend took off around the very same time that the BIS, the mother of all central banks, officially classified gold as a Tier-1 reserve asset, making an open mockery of its “sister Tier-1 asset,” the UST.

Central Bank Gold Stacking… Gold stacking by central banks, of course, continued to skyrocket at the same time:

COMEX Panic… If such signs of US dollar and debt woes/distrust were not obvious enough, the COMEX and LBMA exchanges out of New York and London then began scurrying like headless chickens.

Why?

Because they were trying to find enough physical gold to meet delivery demands to get the gold off of these exchanges, which, since 1974, were once just derivative schemes used to manipulate rather than deliver gold.

But the hidden facts (and implications) were far simpler. Counterparties to this legalized price-fixing scam now wanted their actual gold more than their paper contracts.

Why?

Because they saw physical gold’s growing, inevitable and superior role in a future monetary system moving away from the debt-discredited USD and UST.

Petrodollar Signposts… To add insult to the USD’s injury, a growing and simultaneous trend away from the petrodollar during the same period was as obvious as it was media-ignored.

But the message was clear: Faith in a USD-driven future was openly in decline.

The Denial Stage? Defenders of the USD, of course, were quick and right to remind the world that no other nation or currency could beat or replace the mighty Dollar.

After all, it is the world’s reserve currency.

It still holds the majority position in global FX reserves and, let’s be honest, neither China, Russia, nor any other nation has the reputation or bond market to replace the dollar, right?

Right.

Reality Check: Gold’s Future in a Fiat Swamp But, here’s the kicker.

Nations like China or Russia aren’t trying to replace the USD with their Ruble or Yuan.

They, like the rest of the world, are slowly going to replace the USD with gold.

This doesn’t mean a gold-backed world reserve currency, just a gold-based world settlement system.

China Playing Chess Take China as an obvious example.

They have no problem de-valuing their fiat currency when measured against gold, an asset they’ve been quietly stacking and misreporting for decades in a chess game of common sense as the USA plays checkers with QE.

Nor does China have much love for USTs…

Gold Revaluation: Trump’s Red Button Option? As I type this, China continues to pair gold to the oil it imports from Russia and Iran (conveniently dubbed “evil” by the weaponized US media).

In just over a decade, China’s gold-to-oil ratio was 8 barrels of oil to one ounce of gold. Today, that same ounce of gold buys China 50 barrels of oil.

Meanwhile, China has no problem seeing its Yuan price of gold rise from 7000/ounce in 2014 to 24,000/ounce today.

In short, the Yuan has collapsed against gold but not against the USD.

But China can live with this for the simple reason that it sees a gold-based new world order, and it has been stacking that gold for years.

Why?

Tier-1 Status… This trend took off around the very same time that the BIS, the mother of all central banks, officially classified gold as a Tier-1 reserve asset, making an open mockery of its “sister Tier-1 asset,” the UST.

Central Bank Gold Stacking… Gold stacking by central banks, of course, continued to skyrocket at the same time:

COMEX Panic… If such signs of US dollar and debt woes/distrust were not obvious enough, the COMEX and LBMA exchanges out of New York and London then began scurrying like headless chickens.

Why?

Because they were trying to find enough physical gold to meet delivery demands to get the gold off of these exchanges, which, since 1974, were once just derivative schemes used to manipulate rather than deliver gold.

But the hidden facts (and implications) were far simpler. Counterparties to this legalized price-fixing scam now wanted their actual gold more than their paper contracts.

Why?

Because they saw physical gold’s growing, inevitable and superior role in a future monetary system moving away from the debt-discredited USD and UST.

Petrodollar Signposts… To add insult to the USD’s injury, a growing and simultaneous trend away from the petrodollar during the same period was as obvious as it was media-ignored.

But the message was clear: Faith in a USD-driven future was openly in decline.

The Denial Stage? Defenders of the USD, of course, were quick and right to remind the world that no other nation or currency could beat or replace the mighty Dollar

After all, it is the world’s reserve currency.

It still holds the majority position in global FX reserves and, let’s be honest, neither China, Russia, nor any other nation has the reputation or bond market to replace the dollar, right?

Right.

Reality Check: Gold’s Future in a Fiat Swamp But, here’s the kicker.

Nations like China or Russia aren’t trying to replace the USD with their Ruble or Yuan.

They, like the rest of the world, are slowly going to replace the USD with gold.

This doesn’t mean a gold-backed world reserve currency, just a gold-based world settlement system.

China Playing Chess Take China as an obvious example.

They have no problem de-valuing their fiat currency when measured against gold, an asset they’ve been quietly stacking and misreporting for decades in a chess game of common sense as the USA plays checkers with QE.

Nor does China have much love for USTs…

Gold Revaluation: Trump’s Red Button Option? As I type this, China continues to pair gold to the oil it imports from Russia and Iran (conveniently dubbed “evil” by the weaponized US media).

In just over a decade, China’s gold-to-oil ratio was 8 barrels of oil to one ounce of gold. Today, that same ounce of gold buys China 50 barrels of oil.

Meanwhile, China has no problem seeing its Yuan price of gold rise from 7000/ounce in 2014 to 24,000/ounce today.

In short, the Yuan has collapsed against gold but not against the USD.

But China can live with this for the simple reason that it sees a gold-based new world order, and it has been stacking that gold for years.

Why?

Because the BIS, the IMF, and, of course, the BRICS+ nations see a world in which gold is superior to the debt-discredited USD as a strategic reserve asset.

Gold: Far More than an “Allocation” Gold is no longer an allocation, hedge or subject of debate—it is the future of global trade and currency settlements. Period.

My colleague, Egon von Greyerz, saw this decades ago.

Of even date, for example, gold is now 20 % of global FX reserves. The USD percentage is falling dramatically to a 46% position, and the Euro holds a 16% slot.

But if central backs and BRICS+ nations continue to stack gold at current levels, gold may not be an official “world reserve currency” in substance or title, but it will be the new leading FX reserve asset in both title and power.

In sum, each of the foregoing themes, of which we have detailed and warned in numerous prior articles, explains the debt “emergency” facing the USD.

The Real Question: What Can the USA Do Now? But what about the corollary question? That is: What options do the US have left to solve its debt (and hence currency) crisis?

This, too, has been on our minds for years.

More Fantasy Money? Ultimately, there are no easy solutions or good scenarios left.

MMT fantasy, for example, of solving a debt crisis with more debt that is paid for with mouse-clicked money has been tried in earnest since the QE guns took the Fed from a pre-08 balance sheet of $800B to a 2022 high of nearly $9 9T.

As reminded above, that difference between a Billion and Trillion is just plain madness.

The US, faced with solving its debt crisis (and bond market) at the expense of its paper dollar, is running out of time, options and global patience.

So, again—what can the US do today?

More War? For Hemingway, at least, the most obvious next step is further currency debasement and war, which the past, current and even future headlines seem to confirm, from the Middle East to Eastern Europe:

But with distrust in US politics and foreign policies rising in alternative media platforms highlighting left and right scandals on everything from Russia-Gate laptops to Epstein cover-ups and AIPAC-guided uh-ohs, trust in the left and right stirrups of the DC saddle is tanking at a rapid rate.

Re-sets, DOGE Cuts & Tariff Walls? Meanwhile, the IMF has been telegraphing a great reset since COVID, and the current Trump administration has been trying to use DOGE cuts and tariff wars to bring debt and spending levels down.

But regardless of one’s political bias, let’s be mathematical: None of these policies is enough, and none of them, as of today, are even working – as the Elon/Trump social media war intensifies in a backdrop of rising rather than falling deficit levels.

More Financial Repression? I also expect, and have warned of, more financial repression and capital controls around the corner.

But again, not much of a solution given current and future debt levels, debased dollars (worst DXY Q3 in 40 years) and a middle class already on its knees.

The Red Button Option: Gold Revaluation? But DC has another option, which even the Fed’s recent May 2025 Manual openly hints toward.

I call it the “red-button option” of a radical gold revaluation to effectively use a precious metal (rather than a Fed mouse-click) to achieve QE-like monetization without having to issue more unloved USTs.

One can read the Fed’s lengthy May report on their own, but the Fed-speak boils down to this:

The Fed can add gold certificates to its balance sheet, which can then become assets of the Treasury Department’s TGA account to pay down a sliver of its $37 37-TRILLION-dollar public debt.

But the trillion-dollar question remains: How will these $42.00 gold certificates be re-valued?

Doing the Math In a February Forbes article, for example, there was talk of marking these certificates to market.

If that were the case, the 8131 tons of US gold (roughly 260 million ounces) at the current spot price would give Uncle Sam about $850B in instant new money to pay off some debts.

This is nice, but hardly a solution to getting the aforementioned 120% debt-to-GDP figure down to pre-08 levels at a ratio compelling enough to restore trust in—and demand for—Uncle Sam’s unwanted IOUs.

But what if the US government put in a bid for $20,000 gold?

This would create a new price floor for the precious metal while simultaneously placing newly revalued gold certificates ahead of UST’s and mortgage-backed-securities on the Fed’s balance sheet?

Sound crazy?

If you read the May Fed Report, they hint at such a balance sheet “example” but shy away from naming a new price valuation on the gold certificates.

This means we can only guess at what comes next.

An emergency gold re-valuation of $20,000, by way of just one example (perhaps lower, perhaps higher?), would create instant trillions in liquidity to address Uncle Sam’s otherwise mathematically unsustainable bar tab.

Such a measure would buy time for US IOUs and votes for a beleaguered White House.

Such considerations, once thought extreme, must now be considered with desperate seriousness in a backdrop of only desperate options.

Desperate Times, Desperate Measures? But desperate times require desperate measures, and there is nothing more desperate than the USA (and balance sheet) in its current form.

Nixon made a radical change in 1971. Can a red-button gold revaluation in 2025 or 2026 be equally ignored?

Let’s wait and see.

Be Careful of What You Wish For And regardless of whether the inflationary red button is pushed or not, gold wins either way, as the dollar’s purchasing power in such a debt landscape has no absolute direction left to it other than downward.

Gold, as the ultimate, most stable, stacked and historically most trusted anti-fiat asset, has no direction left than upward.

Let’s also not forget that if gold is so re-valued, then the nation with the most gold will have the most leverage in this new system.

But as I’ve suggested elsewhere, that nation is more likely to be China than the USA. It has a lot more gold than the World Gold Council reports…

If so, like all empires whose average hegemonic age hovers around 250 years, the era of the American empire is coming to an obvious turning point, no matter how you stack it.

Matthew Pipenburg