The German economy contracted 0.3% on a quarterly basis, according to the Federal Statistics Office. Germany’s stronghold on manufacturing is at risk. The government implemented new provisions to bypass the constitution and spend in perpetuity on the incoming war. Spending is up, revenues are down—the German economy is in a recession.

Annual GDP reached 0.2% in Q2, a 0.1% decline from Q1. Around 10% of all German exports are sent to the US, and some are blaming tariffs for the downfall without seeing that the trend was already in motion. Germany’s economy has been in a multi-year downturn caused by ignorant economic policies that directly damaged Germany’s mercantile stronghold in Europe.

German Net Worth

Politicians suffocated automobile manufacturing through net-zero regulations. Sanctions on Russia caused Germany to lose 50% of its oil imports. Its willingness to bend to Brussels has reshaped the demographic landscape with a spike in the population due to migration.

Lawmakers have adopted a war posture and are pushing to increase military spending while abandoning their austerity policy. Germany may be the wealthiest nation in the European Union, but individual households are not experiencing any benefits. In fact, the average German has far less than those living in countries with a smaller GDP. The cost of living has never meaningfully dropped since the pandemic and lockdowns.

Germany has not experienced such economic weakness since post-World War II. Estimates believe that the economy will decline 0.3% for the year or remain stagnant at best. Manufacturing has dropped 10% below pre-pandemic levels. Construction has shrunk by around 3% in recent quarters due to high costs. Exports, which are 34% of Germany’s GDP, are down as demand from the US and China wanes.

If Germany tanks, then the entire European Union will sink, as Germany alone comprises nearly a quarter of the Union’s entire GDP.

Martin Armstrong, Armstrong Economics

Thursday, the Supreme Court announced its opinion in National Institutes of Health v. American Public Health Association. The case involved the fate of approximately $783 million in NIH research grants that were tied to DEI initiatives rather than to general scientific research. By a 5-4 vote, the court ruled that a single federal judge could not compel the federal government to spend nearly $1 billion on nonsensical pseudo-research it no longer wished to fund.

This case may ultimately prove more important than the money it saved because it indicated the Supreme Court was losing patience with inferior courts and with one of its members.

Neil Gorsuch used a concurring opinion that effectively read the Riot Act to lower courts.

Lower court judges may sometimes disagree with this Court’s decisions, but they are never free to defy them.  In Department of Ed. v. California, 604 U. S. ___ (2025) (per curiam), this Court granted a stay because it found the government likely to prevail in showing that the district court lacked jurisdiction to order the government to pay grant obligations. California explained that “suits based on ‘any express or implied contract with the United States’” do not belong in district court under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), but in the Court of Federal Claims under the Tucker Act. Id., at ___ (slip op., at 2) (quoting 28 U. S. C. §1491(a)(1)).  Rather than follow that direction, the district court in this case permitted a suit involving materially identical grants to proceed to final judgment under the APA. As support for its course, the district court invoked the “persuasive authority” of “the dissent[s] in California” and an earlier court of appeals decision California repudiated. Massachusetts v. Kennedy, ___ F. Supp. 3d ___, ___ (Mass. 2025), App. to Application 232a (App.).  That was error. “[U]nless we wish anarchy to prevail within the federal judicial system, a precedent of this Court must be followed by the lower federal courts no matter how misguided the judges of those courts may think it to be.”  Hutto v. Davis, 454 U. S. 370, 375 (1982) (per curiam).

He concluded with this summary:

If the district court’s failure to abide by California were a one-off, perhaps it would not be worth writing to address it. But two months ago another district court tried to “compel compliance” with a different “order that this Court ha[d] stayed.” Department of Homeland Security v. D. V. D., 606 U. S. ___, ___ (2025) (KAGAN, J., concurring) (slip op., at 1).  Still another district court recently diverged from one of this Court’s decisions even though the case at hand did not differ “in any pertinent respect” from the one this Court had decided. Boyle, 606 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 1). So this is now the third time in a matter of weeks this Court has had to intercede in a case “squarely controlled” by one of its precedents.  Ibid. All these interventions should have been unnecessary, but together they underscore a basic tenet of our judicial system: Whatever their own views, judges are duty-bound to respect “the hierarchy of the federal court system created by the Constitution and Congress.”  Hutto, 454 U. S., at 375.

Red State

By Susan Quinn

The Democrats and many Republicans are crying foul over the raid on John Bolton, former National Security Advisor to Donald Trump during his first term. They say that these actions are retribution for the nasty things that Bolton has said; that he included classified information in his book; and that he is being punished for alienating President Trump:

Federal investigators went to Bolton’s house in Bethesda, Md., at 7 a.m. in an investigation ordered by FBI Director Kash Patel, a Trump administration official told The Post. Agents later went to Bolton’s office in downtown DC, but did not enter until a judge signed a warrant for that location late Friday morning.

‘NO ONE is above the law… @FBI agents on mission,’ Patel said in a cryptic post to X shortly after the raid began. 

Although people are pointing to Bolton’s use of classified information for his book, the reasons identified for the raid are speculation. Another suggestion was made for the probe:

Investigators reopened a dormant probe into Bolton’s alleged use of a private email to send classified national security documents to his wife and daughter from his work desk before his dismissal by Trump in September 2019, according to a senior US official.

‘While Bolton was a national security adviser, he was literally stealing classified information, utilizing his family as a cutout,’ this person charged.

The probe was initially opened in 2020, and continued into the Biden administration, which froze the investigation.

People are prepared to criticize Trump for almost anything, but I think, so far, they are barking up the wrong tree. There is much speculation for the raid on Bolton’s home and office, but the facts are not available. It is true that both men disliked each other — hated, might be a more accurate term — but that premise still misses the point: If there is reason to think a person has broken a law, then an investigation is warranted. It doesn’t matter how much they hate each other.

As more andeople are investigated, Trump will probably suffer more attacks. For example, Adam Schiff is being investigated for mortgage fraud. So is Letitia James. So is Lisa Cook on the Federal Reserve Board. Eventually, the DoJ will probably look into Alvin Bragg’s outrageous case against Donald Trump. Are these retribution, too?

It would be difficult to deny that Trump must be getting some satisfaction from these pursuits. Would anyone feel inclined to defend any of these people? Does anyone think that they are innocent of the charges or implications of their acts?

Democrats shouting “retribution” don’t surprise me; they are mainly projecting their own reactions onto Trump, whom they would love to endure more prosecutions. But it is time, at least for Republicans, to acknowledge that even if you are a Never Trumper, sometimes pursuing the truth and justice and the facts are more important than taking revenge.

It would be difficult to deny that Trump must be getting some satisfaction from these pursuits. Would anyone feel inclined to defend any of these people? Does anyone think that they are innocent of the charges or implications of their acts?

Democrats shouting “retribution” don’t surprise me; they are mainly projecting their own reactions onto Trump, whom they would love to endure more prosecutions. But it is time, at least for Republicans, to acknowledge that even if you are a Never Trumper, sometimes pursuing the truth and justice and the facts are more important than taking revenge.

More than that, has anyone noticed that these actions are putting cracks into the edifice of the Deep State?

If you take a careful look at the decision of a New York appellate court today to throw out the unconstitutional and disgraceful $500 million penalty on President Trump and his businesses…

And then you keep your nose in the newspapers and watch New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, getting busted for mortgage fraud…

And then you go back a bit and look at all the declassified documents released by Tulsi Gabbard and John Ratcliffe and Kash Patel that show the entire Russiagate hoax was quarterbacked by President Obama and Senator Hillary Clinton…

And then you just think about this whole rotten sequence — what you see is the collapse of the legal and Deep State forces against Mr. Trump.

In many ways, you could argue it’s the collapse of the Democratic Party.

Not only because the Deep State couldn’t bust Mr. Trump, and the forces of treachery and sedition couldn’t break Mr. Trump, and the prominent liars are themselves now facing criminal indictment, and making it all worse for that crowd — Mr. Trump himself was re-elected.

Which was the Obama-Clinton Deep State’s worst nightmare.

And as far as the Deep State goes, it appears that all of those people who participated in the Russian hoax and various other phony trials — well, they’re getting fired from their jobs. And they’re all lawyering up.

And on top of all that, here’s Mr. Trump running a vastly successful administration — in terms of economic policy, domestic policy, foreign policy, you name it.

Wait a minute, though, don’t forget the president is going to inspect Washington, D.C., this evening — so let’s add law and order to that list.

And he closed the wide open border.

So that adds to the Deep State’s nightmare.

Not only could they not put him in jail for 750 years… Or bust his businesses… Or throw him off the ballot… Or tie him to the so-called Russia hoax…

The worst thing of all for the lawyered up Deep State crowd, though, is that Mr. Trump is succeeding in virtually every initiative he’s put forward.

And, not to rub it in, but I want to quote Mr. Trump’s Truth Social post today: “a great win for America” — which describes his victory in the New York appellate court.

It’s a great win for America for many different reasons.

What comes to mind to me, though, is that it shows that eventually, the American judicial system works.

As bad, inept, and corrupt as some of these judges and spies have been, with all of their political biases and weaponization and lawfare against Mr. Trump…

As bad as they are — as the cases moved up the judicial totem pole, Mr. Trump has won them all.

Larry Kudlow is a columnist for the New York Sun. From Mr. Kudlow’s broadcast on Fox Business Network.

 Democratic mayoral frontrunner Zohran Mamdani and his comrades at the Democratic Socialists of America want to wipe out the enforcement of all misdemeanor offenses, The Post has learned.

In its most recent platform, the group blasts policing and detention as “instruments of class war” designed to “guarantee the domination of the working class” — and demands an end what it calls “the criminalization of working-class survival.”

“For all of the working class to achieve collective liberation we must constrain, diminish, and abolish the carceral forces of the state — from prisons and police themselves, to their manifestations in all forms throughout society,” according to the national party’s latest platform, adopted in 2021.

On the campaign trail, Mamdani has repeatedly called for police to stop focusing on what he’s referred to as “non serious crimes.”

“Police have a critical role to play but right now we’re relying on them to deal with the failures of our social safety net, which is preventing them from doing their actual jobs,” he said in a campaign video posted to X Wednesday.

The DSA has also pushed to slash arrests, gut prosecutors’ budgets, abolish cash bail and all forms of pre-trial detention, scrap electronic monitoring, and end imprisonment for parole violations.

Mamdani, a Queens assemblyman and member of the NYC chapter of the DSA and its endorsed mayoral candidate, has questioned the purpose of prisons and repeatedly called to roll back punishment on so-called “non-violent offenses” – both as an Albany lawmaker and in his Gotham mayoral campaign.

On the campaign trail, Mamdani backtracked from his prior ‘defund the police’ views in the wake of the Park Avenue massacre, insisting he’d keep the NYPD roughly at its current size and redirect officers to focus only on “serious” crimes.

Critics remain unconvinced he can lead law enforcement and tame NYC crime.

“I don’t buy for a second that he is moderated on any of these policing questions because he has yet to really articulate in any deep way why he’s moderated or how he’s moderated,” said Rafael Mangual, a legal policy expert at the Manhattan Institute. “All he has really said is that he no longer wants to defund the police, even though police and prison and jail abolition are core tenets of the DSA party platform.”

And Mamdani has even tried to challenge the definition of a violent offense.

“What violent crime is – is defined by the state,” he said at a 2021 protest outside the Manhattan DA’s office to nix cash bail and shut down Rikers – a promise he’s still making. ” Violence is an artificial construction,” he said at the time.

The misdemeanors the DSA wants to erase aren’t minor slip-ups. In the Empire State, they include theft or shoplifting up to $1,000, drug possession, assault without a weapon and even driving while intoxicated.

“They’re driving the city into a hole that’s never going to recover,” said Susan Ginsburg, a resident of Greenwich Village, which has descended into a lawless drug den since soft on crime policies created what neighbors have decried as a revolving door of justice.

“People will break the law with impunity. There has to be deterrent for breaking the law,” she said.

“It’s astonishing that we’re even having this conversation,” said Maria Danzilo, an Upper West Side resident who ran in the Democratic primary for state Senate in 2022 and founded the group One City Rising.

Everybody is so sick and tired of this, and we just want to have a normal, functional, reasonable way of getting through our day without worrying about being hurt. This is exactly the opposite of what New Yorkers need right now.”

To end misdemeanor arrests, Albany would have to pass a bill decriminalizing or downgrading those charges.

Gov. Hochul – who has yet to endorse her fellow Democrat – doesn’t back defunding the police.

If elected mayor, Mamdani can’t change state laws, but does have influence over how they’re enforced. He could force the NYPD to deprioritize certain arrests or pressure district attorneys not to prosecute certain cases – much like Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg did in his controversial “day one” memo telling staff to go soft on armed robberies and drug dealing.

“That will create an EZ-Pass for criminals, enabling them to repeatedly commit misdemeanor crimes,” lambasted Republican mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa. “This will make the police even less effective at enforcement. Ultimately, this will cause the quality of life to decline dramatically, leading to a breakdown of law and order and resulting in chaos and disorder.

New Yorkers like Chelsea resident Alexander Kaplan are stunned by the pro-crime push.

“It’s just difficult to imagine how adults in their right mind could come up with it. I’m not exaggerating, I’m completely serious,” he said. “We’re already suffering from terrible crime. This is going to make it a thousand times worse. And perception matters – just the notion of this would embolden criminals.

Gabrielle Fahmy, New York Post

James Jackson, Yahoo News

The German welfare state is no longer financially sustainable, Friedrich Merz said on Saturday.

The chancellor argued for a fundamental reassessment of the benefits system as spending continues to soar past last year’s record of €47bn (£40bn).

In a state-level party conference meeting on Saturday, Mr Merz said: “The welfare state as we have it today can no longer be financed with what we can economically afford.”

Once the export champion of Europe, Germany’s economy has slowed dramatically since 2017, with GDP growing by only 1.6 per cent since then versus 9.5 per cent for the rest of the eurozone.

Germany’s economy shrank by 0.2 per cent last year following a 0.3 per cent dip in 2023 – the first time since the early 2000s the economy has retreated two years in a row.

Industrial production fell under the Left-leaning “traffic light” coalition of Olaf Scholz and continues to slide under the new government, with GDP declining by 0.3 per cent in the second quarter of 2025.

Meanwhile, spending on social welfare has exploded, and is set to increase further this year as Germany’s population ages and unemployment rises. Although the majority of benefit recipients are German, large numbers are non-German citizens.

The grim warning from the German chancellor will fuel concerns about the parlous state of Britain’s finances. Despite Mr Merz’s concerns, Germany’s financial problems pale in comparison to the UK.

At 62.5 per cent, Germany’s debt as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) is one of the lowest in the eurozone and far below the UK’s at 96.3 per cent.

Higher welfare spending, especially on disability benefits in Britain, has helped make the UK’s debt-to-GDP the fifth highest in the developed world.

In the UK, welfare spending costs about 10.8 per cent of GDP, with welfare payments at £326bn this year rising to £373bn over the next five years. Pensions are the biggest factor – predicted to rise from £159bn this year to £182bn by 2030.

State pensions in the UK are far lower than in Germany and account for about 5.1 per cent of GDP. In Germany, by contrast, state pensions alone account for about 12 per cent of GDP, according to Eurostat. Benefits for families and children added a further 3.4 per cent.

However, the UK has a higher disability benefit bill, which cost £36bn in 2023-24 but which is set to hit £56bn in 2029-30. That’s a 56 per cent increase over six years or about 8 per cent a year – far in excess of inflation.

Germany has in place a so-called “debt brake”, which limits how much the government can borrow to fund its spending plans.

Mr Merz’s views on the welfare state are likely to provoke discontent among his Social Democratic Party (SDP) coalition partners, whom he relies on for a thin majority in the Bundestag.

The SDP have typically seen themselves as defenders of the welfare state, but Mr Merz, a former corporate lawyer with little governing experience, said he would not be scared away from making necessary reforms by discontent within the party.

The German chancellor added that he was not satisfied with what his government had achieved during its time so far, saying: “Let’s show together that changes and reforms are possible.”

He called on both the SDP and the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) to commit to making tough decisions and to forming a joint “anti-migration and business-friendly” coalition path.

Radically curbing migration is one key policy area where the coalition is in agreement. Both parties have called for Germany to increase its ability to detain migrants pending deportation and to expand a list of safe countries that migrants could be returned to.

This stronger migration stance follows a new study by the German Economic Institute that listed migration as a “watershed” moment in the decline of German school performance after 2015.

The coalition’s more hard-line approach on migration has also aligned with an uptick in support for the far-Right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.

The AfD are now polling level with Mr Merz’s CDU among voters, while a survey by the INSA institute found that 59 per cent of voters were unhappy with the chancellor’s performance in his first 100 days in office. His performance among voters is notably worse than that of Mr Scholz, who was removed from office in February after the SPD’s worst result in modern history.

Lars Klingbeil, the SPD leader and vice-chancellor, hit back at Mr Merz’s announcement with calls for increased taxation on top earners.

He called for a summit focused on helping industry leaders respond or adapt to US tariffs and said “no option is off the table” when it comes to plugging the 30-billion-euro gap in Germany’s budget.

It’s commonly known blue states are experiencing enormous and financially debilitating out-migration from their people’s republics. Renting a U-Haul for the trip from LA to Austin is massively more expensive than renting one from Austin to LA. That trip is doing U-Haul a favor, so it’s accordingly and dramatically cheaper. My U-Haul experience when we retired and moved from Texas to Wyoming was pleasantly inexpensive. Most Americans haven’t yet discovered the joys of life in Wyoming, a situation with which Wyomingites in the least populated state in the union are satisfied.

Fortunately for red states, most people escaping blue utopias are refugees, not missionaries. They’re not making the mistake of transferring blue voting lunacy to their new homes. Unfortunately—my heart does not bleed—for blue states, most of the people fleeing are solid citizens who can afford to leave, people who take considerable tax revenues with them. Fleeing too are businesses small and large whose loss in tax revenue to blue states easily runs into the billions.

But’s that’s not the worst of what may be adding up to a Democrat death spiral. Democrats are losing millions of registered Democrat voters while Republicans are picking virtually all of them up.

“Of the 30 states that track voter registration by political party, Democrats lost ground to Republicans in every single one between the 2020 and 2024 elections — and often by a lot,” the report reads. “That four-year swing toward the Republicans adds up to 4.5 million voters, a deep political hole that could take years for Democrats to climb out from.”

Encouraging news, but it’s always wise to remember Republicans daily earn the mocking title: “the stupid party.” They have a genius for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory and often have spines made of linguini. 

“All told, Democrats lost about 2.1 million registered voters between the 2020 and 2024 elections in the 30 states, along with Washington, D.C., that allow people to register with a political party,” the report adds. “(In the remaining 20 states, voters do not register with a political party.) Republicans gained 2.4 million.

Many blue states, like massive California, register voters by party while many red states, including Texas, do not, so the number of nationwide registered voters by party does not tell the full story. But in those 30 states with partisan voter registration, Democrats’ eleven-point edge over Republicans on Election Day 2020 plummeted to just over six points in 2024, an alarming trend for Democrats. [skip]

By 2024, the Republican party’s share of new registered voters nationwide “had overtaken Democrats’,” rising by nine points compared to 2018, the report details, while Democrats’ fell by almost eight percent.

Democrats have always relied on huge networks of NGOs/nonprofits and massive fundraising and vote fraud. Even that has been badly disrupted, primarily with the extinction of USAID. Immediately after that agency–with eventual and grudging court blessings–was dismantled the Democrat Party announced it was out of money, which I’m sure was just a coincidence. Donald Trump has since been methodically obliterating Democrat’s other traditional government sources of illicit funding.

Democrats have also always relied on 90%+ of black votes, but since 2020, and particularly in 2024, an alarming number of blacks, and particularly young black men, have voted Republican. Democrats can’t afford to lose blacks. Without them, it’s nearly impossible for them to win.

DOGE staffer fights off a mob and sparks a national conversation on violence and virtue, the presidential medal of freedom, and celebrating what this country needs — balls.

Thug life. It was 3AM or so a few weeks back when Edward Coristine, a 19-year-old working with the Social Security Administration in Washington D.C., walked Emily Bryant back to her car after a party, and a small mob attacked them — around ten people, according to police who witnessed the assault. Edward shoved Emily in the driver’s seat, slammed it shut, and squared off against the assailants. A couple got around him, opened the door, and Edward slammed it shut again. This time, Emily managed to lock the car. Frustrated, the gang tried punching through the windows, Edward threw himself between them one more time, and then, finally, they focused on him. But Emily was safe. By now, most of you have seen the aftermath, as a photo of Edward shirtless and bloodied, with a concussion and a broken nose, went massively viral after President Trump shared it on Truth Social and threatened to take federal control of the nation’s capital due to runaway violent crime. And I recognized the kid at once.

You probably know Edward by another name, a nickname given to him by his friends, which was amplified around the world when earlier this year he took a job with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE): “Big Balls,” they call him. I call him. We all call him. A legend of a young man who already, entirely against his will, loomed large in our minds by the time of the attack. From here, the discourse could only be chaos.

There is no crime in Washington. Or, there’s never been so little crime. But on the other hand, there’s never been so much. I mean holy shit, it’s Fallujah out here, in fact it’s literally worse than Fallujah — at least, depending on the politics of your chosen talking head. The same is true of course of how we’re all responding to the crime that is or isn’t real, and how the White House has addressed this crime. Donald Trump’s a fascist. Donald Trump dissolved the D.C. government! He seized the police. He is presently putting innocent kids in concentration camps. But actually, he’s following the law, to the letter. And actually, a lot of residents have noticed things are kind of nice without the gunshots overhead, and the roving mobs of pillaging, plundering, straight-up Clockwork Orange kinda teenaged lunatics.

But actually, but actually, but actually.

Our national conversation will carry on like this at least through Trump’s presidency, and in all likelihood forever. Chaos is the nature of the internet, and of our president who was born inside the internet like Bane was born inside the darkness. But today I’d like to focus on the living breathing human in our actual reality, who was actually brutally attacked by a mob, and became the early focal point of our most recent never-ending media circus freak show: an actually good person, doing actually good things, and not just depending on your favorite talking head, because none of them have actually talked to him. But I have.

I talked to Edward last week. It was a very brief conversation, after I asked for details of the attack, which have been distorted across the internet. The guy hates attention, and wouldn’t get into much more than that beyond his own personal motivations, which is really all he wanted to express, and I’ll touch on those in a moment. But our brief conversation inspired me. Because that feeling, today, which I might describe as a feeling of hope for the future, is incredibly rare.

When I asked Edward about the attack, he was humble and adamant: “it wasn’t some conscious heroic act.” He wasn’t even thinking. Everything happened very fast. He just… did a bunch of stuff.

But what he did, of course, was save another person’s life. Despite the following noise, and despite what you think about this person who — again — you do not know anything about, all evidence of the night, including not only the police report but this first-hand account, indicates the same thing: in the face of life-threatening danger, Edward, a 19-year-old kid, took immediate action to protect a young woman from a violent mob. He was wildly outnumbered. He threw himself directly into harm’s way. The girl was saved.

Edward is a hero, in other words. Unambiguously.

But that is really not how this story was told.

If you keyword search “Big Balls” on Threads, there are only celebrations and conspiracy theories (ex, ex, ex, ex). On Bluesky, it was a mix of similar psychopathy and also a lot of mentally unwell older men insisting they are capable of defeating Big Balls in a fight? Which they would really love to do (ex, ex, ex). On X, the reaction was far more supportive. Though as Trump moved forward with his plans to police the city, X was also home to some of the most viral posts diminishing the attack (ex, ex), including a distorted portrait of the mob (lie) echoed by the New Republic.

Why would a man post something like this about a much younger man who just saved a girl’s life? Why frame it like this? Why, rather than focus on Trump, would even the most committed hater focus on Edward, whose actions were unambiguously good?

Sawyer’s reaction, along with the reaction of most of the trolls of his ilk, is a classic moral inversion. This is a modern phenomenon I’ve written about with horrified fascination for years, in which the good is not only ignored or marginalized, but actually framed as evil, while the evil is framed as good. It’s a tool of demoralization, and dehumanization. When our national political tide finally turns, and the left takes control, I will not be surprised when Sawyer calls for draconian retribution against his political enemies. That is the purpose of rhetoric like this — to justify evil.

But in this case, and increasingly online, the inversion was met with an inversion of the inversion. The louder Edward’s haters mocked and twisted his story, the louder his supporters praised him, which ultimately led to the following phenomenal headline from the Daily Beast:

An ex-DOGE staffer known as ‘Big Balls’ could end up receiving the highest civilian honor in the United States,” wrote Farrah Tomazin of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, “placing him in the company of luminaries such as Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr. and Mother Teresa.”

And literally no single piece of this sentence is honest. The first half is total speculation, the second half requires a s[***] ton of context, which I’m about to provide, and the headline is simply, objectively, a lie.

This entire story was woven from a single offhand comment from the president’s press secretary. The day the Daily Beast decided to be crazy, the Presidential Medal of Freedom wasn’t on Karoline Leavitt’s docket. Trump, to the best of our knowledge, had never even discussed this medal by the time of that day’s press conference. Really, this entire story was cooked up after some Trump glazing social media guy asked the press secretary if Balls would get the medal. “Perhaps it’s something he would consider,” Leavitt replied of Trump. And that was it. That was the whole thing.

The Daily Beast then ran a piece effectively imagining what it would be like if the story they just invented were real, and framed it dishonestly for rage clicks — obviously on purpose, and with malice. At the time of the piece’s publication, nobody in government had seriously floated anything even close to what the story suggested.

However.

While I have you here.

Why shouldn’t Big Balls get the medal?

Rosa Parks, who received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Bill Clinton back in 1996, holds a place of semi-sacred space in the hearts and minds of most Americans, given we were for some reason taught her story with the same reverence as George Washington. But — and you may be shocked to hear this — a lot of people have received this thing. Some of them? Dweebs. Losers. And very bad people. (quote me)

Like most of you I’m sure, the first loser recipient I thought of was Joe Biden, who infamously received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Obama while the two of them were serving together in the White House.

The Presidential Medal of Freedom was created by John F. Kennedy in 1963. Importantly, he expanded the award from an earlier version established by Truman in 1945 to recognize World War II service, and intended the medal as the country’s highest civilian honor. According to its official dot gov website:

“It is awarded by the President of the United States to individuals who have made exceptional contributions to the security or national interests of America, to world peace, or to cultural or other significant public or private endeavors.”

It is a medal for heroes, in other words. Though it has since… evolved.

You can find a complete list of recipients on Wikipedia. But in addition to a wide range of fantastic, truly-deserving men and women, as well as a heavy helping of duds in politics who obviously only got this thing as a favor, there are several — let’s say — interesting choices, and they have only grown more — let’s say — interesting over time.

Sure, Barack gave the medal to Bill and Melinda Gates for their charity work (*cough* Democratic fundraising), and Warren Buffet for the Giving Pledge I guess (jk, also Democratic fundraising). He gave it to Stephen Hawking for being a very inspiring smart guy, John Glenn and Sally Ride for being astronauts (we love this actually, no notes), and a handful of deranged left-wing political activists for being deranged left-wing political activists. But he also gave the medal to athletes, musicians, actors, and media personalities he obviously just wanted to party with in Cape Cod. He gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Oprah Winfrey, to Ellen DeGeneres, to Meryl Streep. Trump followed with some of the same, though on a much smaller scale (24 medals to Obama’s 118). Then, most controversially, he gave it to Rush Limbaugh, which opened the door to Biden’s bats[***] crazy countermedals.

Anna Wintour? Bill Nye the Science Guy? Megan f[-]ing Rapinoe? By the time Biden, or whoever was running the country while Biden was officially in charge, got to the fifth or sixth most popular female soccer player, this thing had already lost most of its legacy meaning. But then, finally, he awarded it to the pro-crime left-wing megadonor George Soros, and the entire country discussed the decision, furiously, for weeks.

The Presidential Medal of Freedom was created by John F. Kennedy in 1963. Importantly, he expanded the award from an earlier version established by Truman in 1945 to recognize World War II service, and intended the medal as the country’s highest civilian honor. According to its official dot gov website:

“It is awarded by the President of the United States to individuals who have made exceptional contributions to the security or national interests of America, to world peace, or to cultural or other significant public or private endeavors.”

It is a medal for heroes, in other words. Though it has since… evolved.

You can find a complete list of recipients on Wikipedia. But in addition to a wide range of fantastic, truly-deserving men and women, as well as a heavy helping of duds in politics who obviously only got this thing as a favor, there are several — let’s say — interesting choices, and they have only grown more — let’s say — interesting over time.

Sure, Barack gave the medal to Bill and Melinda Gates for their charity work (*cough* Democratic fundraising), and Warren Buffet for the Giving Pledge I guess (jk, also Democratic fundraising). He gave it to Stephen Hawking for being a very inspiring smart guy, John Glenn and Sally Ride for being astronauts (we love this actually, no notes), and a handful of deranged left-wing political activists for being deranged left-wing political activists. But he also gave the medal to athletes, musicians, actors, and media personalities he obviously just wanted to party with in Cape Cod. He gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Oprah Winfrey, to Ellen DeGeneres, to Meryl Streep. Trump followed with some of the same, though on a much smaller scale (24 medals to Obama’s 118). Then, most controversially, he gave it to Rush Limbaugh, which opened the door to Biden’s bats[***] crazy countermedals.

Anna Wintour? Bill Nye the Science Guy? Megan f[-]ing Rapinoe? By the time Biden, or whoever was running the country while Biden was officially in charge, got to the fifth or sixth most popular female soccer player, this thing had already lost most of its legacy meaning. But then, finally, he awarded it to the pro-crime left-wing megadonor George Soros, and the entire country discussed the decision, furiously, for weeks.

What the hell is this thing for?

I guess you could say it’s a kind of cultural project. To receive the medal is to be “good.” Not actually, of course. Soros, for example, is definitely evil. But “good” is what the award means. That stamp of “good” is why men like Soros want it. And recipients, when not so transparently receiving it in exchange for money, are I think intended to define “good behavior.” Biden didn’t give the medal to Rapinoe because she’s, again, the most mediocre of our best female soccer players. He gave it to Rapinoe because Rapinoe is a very loud left-wing political activist, which is a kind of behavior he wanted to encourage. I’m assuming this is because (while trying my absolute best to steelman the decision) he believes more of her behavior will lead to a better country.

Disrespectfully, I disagree.

The United States of America is over $37 trillion in debt. We have outsourced most of our manufacturing capacity, and almost all of our capacity to process most of the essential stuff of modern civilization: rare earth metal mining and processing, semiconductors, battery production integral to solar power and electric vehicles, large power transformers, and pretty much all uranium enrichment. We have a housing crisis. We have a student debt crisis. We have, depending on who you ask, a rather large crime problem on our hands, and the reason this depends on who you ask is our even larger problem of a fractured information ecosystem, which has shattered our common identity. Americans in 2025 will have to fix this country, but — insanely — before we can do that we’ll have to agree on whether the existence of this country is even legitimate, as radical Boomer philosophy has metastasized over these past five decades into a pathological self-hatred among (mostly) well-meaning Millennials suffering from a politics that looks suspiciously like mental illness.

We are facing a lot of problems, in other words. Dying your hair purple and taking a knee at a soccer game is not going to solve them. The only thing capable of solving these problems is first accurately identifying them, and then working on a solution.

Edward joined DOGE because he was inspired by the mission, which was to fix the government’s ability to work by shattering our bureaucratic paralysis. That paralysis is a problem so enormous, and so apparently intractable, it has kept competent people from working with the government for generations, which constitutes another huge problem: nobody good, who you would actually want working in Washington, wants to work in Washington. DOGE addressed both of these problems, and despite constant, obsessed maligning from the media, the team has achieved some important wins.

I asked a couple of high-ranking DOGE officials about their work beyond identifying billions in waste and fraud, and while the project is still ongoing, I did discover a bunch of interesting, overlooked accomplishments. On the ground floor, the unit empowered career bureaucrats to raise efficiency roadblocks they’ve long since identified, but never had a path to surface. DOGE has rationalized… the entire federal fleet, apparently? In terms of acquisitions waste, the team is currently rewriting the Federal Acquisitions Regulations (FAR), which governs how and what the government buys. And they have also employed an AI deregulation tool to analyze something like 200,000 federal regulations no longer required by law, which can now safely be ignored. There are no shortage of regulations that still need to be eliminated. But you can’t kill what you can’t see, and using agentic tools to identify bottlenecks in need of deregulation is just a smart good thing all of us should be excited about.

Still, maybe the most important thing DOGE did was make, for the first time in any of our lives, the prospect of working for the government on difficult projects seem cool to competent people, and especially young people in tech. But for people who have made a career of hiding extremely unpopular policies and pet projects inside our crippled bloated government, the prospect of efficiency sounds like a threat, which is why they’ve ratcheted the volume on their histrionics up to 9, and why younger guys like Edward especially have been targeted. Not that he seems to give a s[***].

“I don’t care for what people have to say online,” he said. “I haven’t from the start, just trying to do what is right, public opinion is just a wave.”

That shook me to be honest.

“Is Big Balls… wise?” a colleague of mine asked.

I thought about that picture of him covered in blood. “Just trying my best,” he told me. “Just trying to do my work, and do a great job at that work.” “Just trying to make a better future.”

He hates the spotlight, but the spotlight is drawn to him. That is because he has exhibited rare degrees of goodness, which — in this fallen a[**] world of darkness — makes him a target. But we could all stand to have a pair as big as Edward’s.

We notice problems every day. I’ve written about them for years. But Edward noticed one and did something. Despite all of the attention he never wanted, Edward did the hard, right thing. And as of this month, it’s now apparent he has a habit of doing the hard, right thing. Which means he is exactly the kind of person who, in 2025, should be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

There’s not a chance in hell he wants this thing, given his aversion to attention. But if he could do the hard, right thing just one more time and accept this, maybe with all of the younger DOGE guys, the country would be better for it. Because America doesn’t need another athlete who hates America. We don’t need another athlete at all, in fact, nor do we need another musician, or actor, or megalomaniacal partisan political donor. Today, right now, what we need is a generation of young men willing to do the hard, right thing, even as millions of people across the world tell them that they’re wrong and bad, and wish them harm because of it.

Today, America needs balls. And so balls are what we must reward.

Mike Solana, Pirate Wires

In what is being called the largest single-year cut in civilian federal employment since World War II, 2025 will end with 300,000 fewer workers employed by the United States government.

Trump is called a dictator. But dictators EXPAND the power of government; not deplete it. Trump has cut the government more than any political leader in modern history–maybe ever. I find it hilarious that leftists view this as dictatorship. Leftists actually feel victimized when they don’t get to loot and control productive people. Leftists feel crazed and spat upon when rapists and murderers are deported and imprisoned. For doing what should be done, and for making life on earth sane and possible, leftists call you evil.

And then there are the self-proclaimed lovers of liberty (establishment Republicans, libertarians, the Ayn Rand Institute) who stand ready to bear any burden and suffer any fate to get rid of Trump. They would rather have Stalin as President than Trump, even though Trump has done more to advance their policies and principles than any American president for a century or more.

Psychologists will study the anti-Trump hysteria for generations to come. Whatever they conclude or discover, it will have something to do with what gave us Nazi Germany. But today’s leftists and faux conservatives are just so pitiful, so lightweight, so unimportant. They’re not really Darth Vaders so much as mosquitos. How did we get to a place where the metaphysically insignificant get to have any influence at all?

Trump’s greatest achievement is something that he did not directly do. He showed us what’s wrong with not just the government, but our whole way of thinking. By not buying any of the brainwashing, and displaying his uncanny immunity to it, he showed us that we never needed to tolerate any of the madness. He is a heroic figure in his willingness to take unconscionable legal harassment and literal bullets for daring to state the plainly obvious. Now it’s up to the rest of us to embrace this lesson, and run with it.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

I don’t trust the actor (and his wife with her American taxpayer financed Fifth Avenue shopping sprees) in charge of Ukraine any more than I trust Putin. He clearly is in it for the money and the fame. Putin, an obvious meglomaniac, wants it for the power.

You can debate which motive is worse, but the end result is the same. Neither Ukraine nor Russia are free, nor will they ever be under the stewardship of these two torpid tyrants. There are good people in Russia and Ukraine, of course. But not in their governments. Their governments can wipe each other out for all I care. After these two, there’s nowhere to go but up.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason