Republicans have the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) in their crosshairs, according to a Politico report that states the GOP has united against the independent legislative branch agency that monitors for wrongdoing within the federal government.

The GAO has repeatedly faulted the Trump administration as having illegally withheld money appropriated by Congress, opening almost 40 separate inquiries into whether President Donald Trump’s funding freezes have violated the law. Last week, the agency issued an opinion finding that the administration illegally withheld money appropriated for electric-vehicle infrastructure.

White House Office of Management and Budget director Russ Vought criticized the agency’s findings in a social media post saying, “They are going to call everything an impoundment because they want to grind our work to manage taxpayer dollars effectively to a halt. These are non-events with no consequence. Rearview mirror stuff.”

This week, Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso, R-Wyo., dismissed the agency’s authority in an opinion piece ahead of a vote on waivers to allow California to set its own pollution standards, a move that the GAO had concluded the Senate could not make with just a majority vote.

“The bureaucrats at the GAO can’t dictate the actions of the U.S. Senate or the will of the voters,” Barrasso wrote in The Wall Street Journal. “My colleagues can safely disregard the office’s decision in this case.”

Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., criticized Republicans for casting doubts on the GAO’s authority and accusing the agency of bias, noting on the floor of the Senate that “there are senators serving in this chamber, Republicans and Democrats, who have made use of the exact same process by going to the GAO. There have been more than 20 different opinions delivered by the GAO at the request of Republican senators and members of Congress in the last three decades.”

A spokesperson for the agency said in a statement that the GAO’s mission is to provide “nonpartisan, fact-based information to Congress to help it carry out its constitutional legislative, appropriations, and oversight functions and protect the power of the purse. Our legal decisions do not take a position on the policy goals of a program, they only examine the procedural issues and compliance with the law.”

Theodore Bunker   

Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.

A plan to cut staff at the Department of Veterans Affairs by 15% has led to morale falling at the agency, The Washington Post reported.

The cuts would see 83,000 employees laid off, although VA Secretary Doug Collins has pledged that frontline health care workers and claims processors will be spared, the Post said.

Thousands of employees have opted for early retirement, with many saying they took the early retirement believing they’d be laid off anyway, the Post reported.

Employees at the VA told the Post people feel “fearful, demoralized and paranoid,” with one saying veterans now check in on them.

A spokesman for the VA, Peter Kasperowicz, dismissed the concerns, pointing out the numerous issues under the Biden administration that the Post ignored.

“During the Biden Administration, VA failed to address nearly all of its most serious problems, such as benefits backlogs, rising health-care wait times and major issues with survivor benefits,” Kasperowicz said in a statement to the Post. “The far-left Washington Post refused to cover these failures because it would have made the Biden Administration look bad. The people you spoke with are probably being misled by The Washington Post’s dishonest, far-left fearmongering.

Cuts are expected to hit the agency’s central office that houses 19,000 employees at the Veterans Health Administration, the Veterans Benefits Administration, and the National Cemetery System, and the VA said it also looking at combining duplicate offices to cut staff, the Post said.

“No decisions have been made with respect to staff reductions,” Kasperowicz said.

Veterans groups have expressed concern that the cuts could harm veterans who rely on the VA for medical care while also noting that veterans make up a quarter of the agency’s workforce. The PACT Act, which expanded benefits for veterans exposed to toxics like burn pits, has led to a rise in disability claims but also allowed the agency to hit new milestones in claims processing speed, the Post reported.

“Iraq felt safer than being a VA employee currently does,” a veteran and VA communications worker privately told Hill staffers in a written submission shared with The Post. “My leadership in Iraq cared about me as a human and didn’t just see me as a number.

Sam Barron ✉

Sam Barron has almost two decades of experience covering a wide range of topics including politics, crime and business.

EDITOR’S NOTE:  I am truly devastated.   😂

Thank you for your patience. Apparently, public backlash from the Kash Patel and Dan Bongino interview with Maria Bartiromo has penetrated the membrane around them.

FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino announces the FBI “reform teams” will likely be in place next week. From there, they will begin reviewing subjects of interest to the American people, including: (1) the J6 pipe bomber, (2) the White House cocaine user, and (3) the Dobbs leaker.

…

The Director and I will have most of our incoming reform teams in place by next week. The hiring process can take a little bit of time, but we are approaching that finish line. This will help us both in doubling down on our reform agenda.

Shortly after swearing in, the Director and I evaluated a number of cases of potential public corruption that, understandably, have garnered public interest. We made the decision to either re-open, or push additional resources and investigative attention, to these cases. These cases are the DC pipe bombing investigation, the cocaine discovery at the prior administration’s White House, and the leak of the Supreme Court Dobbs case. I receive requested briefings on these cases weekly and we are making progress. If you have any investigative tips on these matters that may assist us then please contact the FBI.

The Director and I have done only one media interview together. We decided early on to limit our media footprint overall in order to keep the attention on the work being done. There are both positives and negatives to this approach. We have chosen to communicate, in writing, on this platform to fill some of the inevitable information vacuums. I try to read as much of your feedback as possible, but the workday is busy, and my office is a SCIF with limited phone access. In response to feedback, both positive and negative, from our interview last week we will be releasing more information which will further clarify answers to some of the questions asked in the interview.

Sundance, Conservative Treehouse

Story by Austin Ramzy, Thomas Grove, Timothy W. Martin

President Trump’s “Golden Dome” plan has riled the three countries whose weapons technology poses the greatest threat to American territory, with China, Russia and North Korea claiming the missile-defense project is driving a dangerous new arms race.

Trump wants a Golden Dome shield in place by the end of his term, which would combine ground-based interceptors with satellites to guard U.S. territory against high-tech threats, including hypersonic missiles.

The Chinese, North Koreans and Russians are all developing such missiles, as well as new weapons intended to evade U.S. defenses and combat America in outer space. The three are also increasingly helping each other militarily.

North Korea slammed the Golden Dome on Tuesday as the “largest arms-buildup plan in history.” China and Russia in a joint statement earlier this month called the project “deeply destabilizing.” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, in a briefing to journalists Tuesday, said the plan “represented a direct disruption to the foundations of strategic stability.”

All three countries have also denounced Trump’s call for space-based interceptors, saying they risk turning space into a battlefield.

Experts say that a potential risk of the Golden Dome is that a comprehensive defensive system encourages a proliferation of missiles, including nuclear-capable weapons. It comes as the last major nuclear treaty between leading nuclear powers Russia and the U.S. is set to expire next year, potentially leading Moscow to accelerate the deployment of nuclear warheads.

This missile-defense mirage gives you the illusion you can protect yourself but you’re driving all these countries to build all these hundreds and thousands of missiles so you end up in the worst of both worlds,” said Pavel Podvig, a senior researcher at the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research.

The U.S. says increasing threats make it necessary to build a more comprehensive missile-defense system and rejects criticism that the plan will militarize space.

“We have more recently observed China’s satellites engaging in what can only be described as dogfighting maneuvers in space,” said Brig. Gen. Anthony Mastalir, the U.S. Space Force commander in the Indo-Pacific, at a space conference in Australia on Tuesday. “These high-speed, combat-oriented operations on orbit serve as further evidence that Beijing is actively preparing to challenge the U.S. and our allies in space.”

The Golden Dome plan represents a dramatic transformation in how the U.S. aims to confront such threats.

The U.S. says its missile defenses are directed at so-called “rogue states,” primarily North Korea, which aren’t considered peer nuclear powers. Meanwhile, the U.S, Russia and China seek to prevent nuclear attack through deterrence.

Trump’s Golden Dome plan implicitly recognizes that the arms-control era has passed and mutually assured destruction is no longer a sufficient deterrent to nuclear war.

The threats

A major emerging concern for U.S. defense is hypersonic weapons, which can travel at least five times the speed of sound, fly low and maneuver before hitting a target, making them difficult to detect, let alone intercept.

In the hypersonic race, the U.S. is behind. China, the leader, tested such a missile in 2021, which flew at speeds of more than 15,000 miles an hour as it circled the globe before striking a target in China.

In a sign of the Pentagon’s progress, the U.S. military recently completed successful test flights of a reusable hypersonic rocket-powered aircraft.

When President Vladimir Putin first introduced Russia’s hypersonic weapons in 2018, an animated graphic showed a missile heading toward the West Coast of the U.S. “Missile-defense systems are useless against them, absolutely pointless,” he said.

Russia’s hypersonic weapons could potentially be stopped by a system such as the proposed Golden Dome because they travel at much slower speeds during initial launch and before hitting their target, leaving them susceptible to interceptors, said David Wright, a researcher at the Laboratory for Nuclear Security and Policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Intercepting Russia’s strategic intercontinental ballistic missiles could be much harder. At the first stage after launch, when a rocket pushes the missile up into—and out of—the atmosphere, an interceptor would have to be extremely close to respond to it in time.

That would mean covering the territory across all of Russia’s 11 time zones to intercept the missile in time, said Podvig.

“You need to have a lot of them so that some of them are close enough to every launch point,” he said.

North Korea already has a missile with the range to potentially strike the U.S.—and leader Kim Jong Un wants more long-range weapons that can fly farther, carry bigger payloads and be deployed more quickly.

The country is pursuing hypersonic technology, underwater nuclear-armed drones and tactical weaponry, although military experts say they aren’t yet combat-ready.

The threats

A major emerging concern for U.S. defense is hypersonic weapons, which can travel at least five times the speed of sound, fly low and maneuver before hitting a target, making them difficult to detect, let alone intercept.

In the hypersonic race, the U.S. is behind. China, the leader, tested such a missile in 2021, which flew at speeds of more than 15,000 miles an hour as it circled the globe before striking a target in China.

In a sign of the Pentagon’s progress, the U.S. military recently completed successful test flights of a reusable hypersonic rocket-powered aircraft.

When President Vladimir Putin first introduced Russia’s hypersonic weapons in 2018, an animated graphic showed a missile heading toward the West Coast of the U.S. “Missile-defense systems are useless against them, absolutely pointless,” he said.

Russia’s hypersonic weapons could potentially be stopped by a system such as the proposed Golden Dome because they travel at much slower speeds during initial launch and before hitting their target, leaving them susceptible to interceptors, said David Wright, a researcher at the Laboratory for Nuclear Security and Policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Intercepting Russia’s strategic intercontinental ballistic missiles could be much harder. At the first stage after launch, when a rocket pushes the missile up into—and out of—the atmosphere, an interceptor would have to be extremely close to respond to it in time.

That would mean covering the territory across all of Russia’s 11 time zones to intercept the missile in time, said Podvig.

“You need to have a lot of them so that some of them are close enough to every launch point,” he said.

North Korea already has a missile with the range to potentially strike the U.S.—and leader Kim Jong Un wants more long-range weapons that can fly farther, carry bigger payloads and be deployed more quickly.

The country is pursuing hypersonic technology, underwater nuclear-armed drones and tactical weaponry, although military experts say they aren’t yet combat-ready.

The shield

The U.S. installed dozens of ground-based interceptors in Alaska and California beginning in the early 2000s, and has tested interceptors fired by the Aegis combat system to shoot down intercontinental ballistic missiles, a system that was used successfully by Navy destroyers against Iranian weapons targeting Israel last year. Land-based versions of the system have been installed in Romania and Poland.

The U.S. also fields Patriot missile systems for shorter-range threats and the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, or Thaad, which is used for smaller areas including in South Korea and Guam.

Trump’s goal of seeing his Golden Dome shield in place in little more than three years would be difficult to accomplish, according to military experts.

Any missile-defense shield would likely only offer protection from about 85% of incoming missiles, said Podvig. That could promote a false sense of security, while also spurring rivals to produce more weapons, he said.

Golden Dome plans for space-based interceptors have also raised concerns of a surge in space-based systems. A Congressional Budget Office assessment said that such a system for downing one or two missiles fired by a smaller adversary such as North Korea could require more than 1,000 interceptors.

To defend against Russia or China, with many more warheads, such a system would require potentially tens of thousands of satellites.

Russia and China view such space-based interceptors “as indistinguishable from offensive weapons, arguing that a better-protected United States might be emboldened to pursue more aggressive military actions,” said Tong Zhao, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “This heightens the risk of Russia and China intensifying their development of anti-satellite and other counter-space capabilities.”

China has been rapidly building its own nuclear forces. It has added some 350 missile silos and several bases for road-mobile launchers in recent years, according to a report led by Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists.

Of China’s more than 700 launchers for land-based missiles that can carry nuclear warheads, 462 can be loaded with missiles capable of reaching the U.S., the report found.

China’s nuclear ballistic-missile submarines, the Type 094, are being equipped with a longer-range ballistic missile. A newer model, known as the Type 096, is now being developed to run more quietly than its predecessor. In 2019, China unveiled refit bombers with an air-launched ballistic missile that could potentially carry a nuclear warhead, the Pentagon said.

“It’s not driving up forces to the level that we saw in the early Cold War days—not yet,” said Kristensen. “But there’s no doubt that all of the factors that we can see at play, all the dynamics that are playing out in front of us, increasingly so, are the very ones that can create a nuclear arms race.”

Write to Austin Ramzy at austin.ramzy@wsj.com, Thomas Grove at thomas.grove@wsj.com and Timothy W. Martin at Timothy.Martin@wsj.com

May 26, 2025 (20 hours ago)

They told us DEI was progress. They told us these government jobs were building a better, more inclusive America. What they didn’t tell us is that this entire system was creating a class of emotionally broken dependents who tied their entire identity, purpose, and mental stability to a taxpayer-funded title.

Now, the house of cards is collapsing, and it’s getting really ugly.

Meet former federal worker Caitlin.

Caitlin was so devastated after being fired from her DEI federal job, her husband found her on the fire escape, contemplating whether it was high enough to jump. He later had her committed. Sadly, Caitlin, who suffered her entire life with mental health issues, committed suicide, and somehow, the Washington Post article made it seem as if this was Trump’s fault.

Washington Post:

The president had called federal employees “crooked” and “dishonest,” and his deputies had vowed to purge them from government and make them suffer. And now, on the sixth day of Trump’s second term, a federal health researcher was missing.

Her husband searched every room of their Baltimore townhouse, calling her name. “Caitlin?”

Caitlin Cross-Barnet had struggled with depression, and now her husband, Mike, found her on their narrow, third-floor fire escape. As he tried to coax her back in, she replied: “It’s not high enough to jump.”

Over the years, in her darkest moments, Caitlin had often told him she felt she didn’t measure up. She never felt adequate as a daughter, as a wife and mother, or as a researcher.

“Of course you’re enough,” Mike said over the phone. “You do so much. … You’re more than enough.”

Caitlin kept crying.

“You’re enough for me,” he tried to tell her. But soon after, she hung up.

The next call Mike received, 98 minutes later, was from a hospital in Virginia. He later learned that the mental health facility had staff checking on Caitlin every 15 minutes, but she saw an opening between checkups and killed herself.

Meet former federal worker Dick Midgette.

Richard was laid off from his IT job. This guy sat in his car sobbing to indie rock music and spiraled into suicidal thoughts. But he couldn’t call his parents for comfort because his dad voted for Trump.

Washington Post:

On the 26th day of Trump’s term, Richard Midgette, 28, was fired from his IT job at Yellowstone National Park. He drove to the only bridge in his town, stopping just past its edge. From the car, he listened to the rushing of the water and, for the first time, contemplated whether to end his life.

[…]

He pulled into a gas station next to the bridge and considered calling his parents. His dad had voted for Trump, and for weeks had been cheering the president’s promises to purge the government.

The Washington Post goes on to claim that Richard is “mentally healthy.” We beg to differ.

He had never suffered from depression or other mental problems, he said. But as he sat, newly unemployed, in his idling car just past the bridge, he was overwhelmed by dark thoughts.

And finally, you sadly can’t meet former federal employee Monique Lockett.

She collapsed at her cubicle after the DOGE dared to ask for access to her federal databases. But don’t worry, the Washington Post actually published a photo of her in the casket. Yes, they really did that, folks.

Look:

Monique was obese and had hypertension and high blood sugar, but somehow it was Trump and DOGE’s fault that she died.

Washington Post:

On the morning of Feb. 18, Monique and others returned from the Presidents’ Day weekend to an office tense with news of King’s departure and rumors of more cuts.

Monique was at her cubicle on the third floor of headquarters when she collapsed, co-workers said. The medical examiner listed the cause of death as “hypertensive, atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease.” Monique’s family and many close co-workers blamed her heart attack on stress at work.

Monique had risk factors for heart disease, including obesity, high blood sugar and high cholesterol, according to her medical records. Two experts who reviewed her records at The Post’s request said in cases like hers, stress, uncertainty and tension at work can contribute to cardiac arrest.

Sadly, this isn’t satire. This is what happens when emotionally fragile people are gifted jobs they don’t deserve and fed a delusion that they are freedom fighters on some noble crusade against “evil Republicans.” These aren’t resilient workers; they’re political cultists who’ve mistaken a job title for a mission.

READ MORE: Tributes pour in for Scott Adams…

For decades, these swampy bureaucrats have lived cozy off the backs of hard-working Americans, producing nothing of value and pushing policies that hurt the people who paid their salaries. Now that they’re feeling a small fraction of the disruption they heaped on the middle class, we’re all expected to mourn like it’s a national tragedy.

That’s the vibe from the Post article.

Business isn’t personal. Restructuring isn’t war. Cutting bloated federal agencies isn’t cruelty. But to these people, losing their cushy government job is like losing a father figure. The truth is, they don’t want work; they want Big Government Daddy protection.

READ MORE: Dems to spend tens of millions to find the new left-wing Joe Rogan…

What we’re seeing isn’t the result of “mean Trump policies,” it’s the total collapse of a fantasy gone wild. This taxpayer-funded DEI agenda gave broken people false status instead of the real help that they needed.

Revolver

EDITOR’S NOTE: I’m crying tears of joy.   A/D

You’d be forgiven for looking around Andrei Kozlov’s studio, dotted with paintings inspired by his eight months as a hostage of Hamas, and seeing only darkness — canvases splashed with gray and ocher, guns tucked into waistbands or resting against a wall, moments of angst and disbelief and pain.

He is a free man now, who often lets a wide smile spread across his face, who can’t believe his luck of surviving it all, and who urges you to look further.

A painting of a blackened street his captors led him down is drowned in darkness, but in the distance is a sliver of cerulean sky. A screaming man’s reflection is caught, but it’s in a mirror on a bubblegum-pink wall. A house beside barren trees is seen in the desolation of night, but its windows glow with lamplight.

When you’re surrounded by something dark,” the 28-year-old Kozlov says, standing in a shared art studio he works at in the Hudson Yards neighborhood of New York, “there always can be light inside.”

Nearly a year after his release from captivity, Kozlov is familiar with juxtapositions.

He is mostly happy and well-adjusted, able to matter-of-factly describe his ordeal, but sometimes returns in his mind to what he went through. He is alive and filled with gratitude but feels the weight of those not yet free. He is no longer a hostage but knows the world may always see him as one.

“I will be a former hostage forever,” he says. “It will forever be a part of my life.”

Kozlov grew up in St. Petersburg, Russia, but had long felt a sense of wanderlust. After serving a mandatory year in the military, he decided he wanted to live in Israel, arriving in August 2022 and taking part in Masa, a gap-year program that included an internship in motion design at a Tel Aviv company. His life was carefree, reflected in Instagram posts of beaches, biking, surfing, road-tripping and otherwise enjoying the days of a relaxed, unemployed 20-something.

That ended on Oct. 7, 2023, the deadliest day in Israel’s history. Kozlov had picked up a job working security at the Tribe of Nova music festival in southern Israel close to the Gaza border, barely sleeping in two nights keeping watch for ticketless intruders. On his third morning, daybreak unleashed hours of chaos and confusion, the sound of gunfire, mad dashes for escape, scaling down a cliff and ultimately being led to a vehicle that Kozlov believed would bring him to safety. He hadn’t been killed, he rationalized, so he would be rescued. He never considered kidnapping.

He sent no messages to his family. He was sure he would survive. He’d be home by night, he thought.

Soon, though, Kozlov was in Gaza, tied with rope. Reality set in. Guns were aimed and blows were delivered. He was certain he knew what would come next.

“You are sure that you will spend the last moments of your life like that,” he says, “and maybe tomorrow they will kill you.”

Those first days of Kozlov’s captivity were a “disgusting, terrible hell.” Over eight months, he says he was held in eight different houses, guarded by a rotating cast of two dozen militants who lived beside him.

Some, he said, feigned compassion; others treated their captives as animals. In some holding sites, he slept on a wet, sticky mattress that stunk of mold; others had far better conditions. Ropes were replaced by chains until restraints were removed altogether. He knows it could have been far worse.

“They didn’t pull out my nails,” he says. “They didn’t torture me with electroshock.”

In time, a weird normalcy set in. He spent time picking up Arabic from his captors and Hebrew from fellow hostages. They’d talk of music and women and life before. Days passed in endless hands of cards or invented games like listing 10 Will Smith movies or 100 songs with the word ‘love’ in the title.

He’d muse about escaping, but knew he’d never make it out alive. Sometimes, he wondered if he could telekinetically send a message to his parents. At others, this agnostic found himself trying to talk to God.

After a few months, his captors provided a small mercy: A pencil and a thin notebook.

Kozlov knew he had artistic talent from childhood, but it was a pastime that came and went. Sometimes, years went by without drawing. Now, with nothing but time, he drew daily — cartoonish aliens and Don Corleone of “The Godfather” and the summer home in Russia where he spent his happiest days of youth.

He wrote out goals, too. To go home the same person, or maybe better. To use his skills. To be free.

And, on the 247th day, it came. Israeli Defense Forces burst into the house in the Nuseirat refugee camp where Kozlov was held — a dramatic operation that rescued him and three other hostages, and killed at least 274 Palestinians caught in the cross-fire and an Israeli commando. In a moment, he was outside, feeling sun on his face for the first time in months, a Coke in his hand and a cigarette at his lips. A helicopter whirred him to safety.

“Euphoria,” he says. “You’re able to feel fresh air, to see a sea, beach, sand, sky without any clouds.”

He calls it the best day of his life.

In the days that followed, he’d be reunited with his family, crumpling and bawling at his mother’s feet at a hospital outside Tel Aviv, and recognized by passersby as that hostage on the news. Some nights, he’d wake up thinking he was back on that sticky mattress. Some days he had to pinch himself to believe he was truly free.

“Sometimes I feel what it means to have a war and sometimes I feel the pain of every hostage,” he says. “I feel pain of families who don’t know where their loved ones are right now. … I feel pain of people who left their houses in the south. I feel the pain of all the people who lost their houses. I feel pain.”

He says the vast majority of the time, he feels fine, but a day or so a month, the darkness returns. He spent his first few months of freedom in Israel, then traveling in the U.S. He was back in Israel for a time earlier this year, but found too many triggers, so he returned to the U.S.

Along the way, he’s made good on his goal, working on his art.

In his studio space a block from the Hudson River, he’s finalizing a planned exhibition of his work — a series of mostly acrylic paintings showing his capture, captivity and release. He wants to finish a few more pieces influenced by his time as a hostage before pivoting to new inspirations.

Maybe he’ll flit off to New Zealand, he says. Maybe he’ll write a book. So many doors are open to him. Maybe art will become his life and his work will be filled with color and happiness.

He sees that joy even in the paintings others might insist are dark.

“It’s not dark,” he says. “It’s about hope.”

___

Matt Sedensky can be reached at msedensky@ap.org and https://x.com/sedensky

___

Follow AP’s war coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war

Donald Trump has run out of patience with Brussels. Effective June 1st, the President announced via Truth Social that tariffs on imports from the European Union will rise to a staggering 50%. Did EU bureaucrats really believe they could quietly let the 90-day negotiation deadline lapse and return to business as usual?

Just as European officials were mentally transitioning into their weekend, Trump dropped a bombshell. The punitive move, he stated, is a response to chronic EU protectionism: discriminatory VAT regimes, “ridiculous” fines on American corporations, currency manipulation, and what he called “unjustified lawsuits.” Brussels, he argues, maintains an artificial export surplus with the U.S. through these tactics.

Since April, we’ve seen Trump using steep tariffs as bargaining chips. These numbers might shift during negotiations. But Brussels seems to have forgotten: diplomacy is fluid, not rigid decree.

Europe’s Subsidy Superstate

Europe’s lackluster response — beyond a frail threat of retaliatory tariffs — betrays either ignorance of the gravity of the situation or a mindset so encased in its own ideological bubble that it can no longer decode external reality. The EU’s once-vaunted foresight seems to have met its limits.

Trump’s attack targets the EU’s power core: a sprawling protectionist system tied to a mechanism of subsidies and centralized approvals. The bloc operates much like a secular indulgence market: obey Brussels, accept its regulation-heavy ethos, and you’ll be allowed to do business — or even politics.

Despite the EU’s talk of a single internal market, it is in truth a patchwork of protectionist engines. Estimates suggest Brussels and its member states together direct over €500 billion annually in subsidies to prop up domestic industries. But these very policies corrode economic dynamism — something anyone reading European business news can verify.

Trade regulations, climate edicts, and harmonization mandates span volumes. In practice, EU-Europe has become a paradise for internal rent-seekers but a nightmare for foreign competitors — and consumers. Higher prices, higher taxes: the bill for regulation is paid by the public.

Free trade advocates have always viewed Brussels’ interventionism — be it French industrial policy or German bureaucratic excess — as a threat to liberty and market efficiency. Politicians, keen on preserving social peace and shielding labor markets from crisis, have flooded the economy with veiled subsidies. This shortsightedness has become a killer of productivity, eroding the Eurozone’s economic vitality. Germany, sliding toward a European version of America’s Rust Belt, is now the symbol of this decline.

Export Surplus as ‘Bycatch’

One side-effect of the EU’s trade model has been a ballooning surplus with the U.S. In 2023, the EU racked up a record €236 billion trade surplus, aided by hidden barriers. Mercantilists may cheer, but libertarians see danger. Every party, however, ends — and Trump, since his self-declared “Liberation Day” on April 2, is on the offensive.

His high-impact tariff salvo has already provoked confrontations with China and, surprisingly, with traditional allies like the UK. Contrary to some media narratives, the U.S. — as the world’s economic titan — will now secure more favorable trade terms. Expect an increase in tariff volume, perhaps reaching $300 billion annually, and a gradual narrowing of America’s trade deficit.

For EU leaders, long nestled in the ideological cocoon of Brussels, this reality-based trade policy comes as a shock. They are now realizing that old tricks — media spin, distraction, or clandestine jabs at U.S. bond markets (as in April) — will no longer suffice. Reality has arrived, and with it, the need for a drastic learning curve.

Brussels Under Siege

Trump’s tariff campaign is a strategic gambit designed to force Europe to shed its bloated protectionist apparatus. For EU leaders, the time has come to reassess the balance between regional autonomy and Brussels’ growing central authority. Dissident voices across the continent are calling — louder than ever — for reform.

A true political movement focused on decentralization, personal responsibility, and free markets will only emerge when Europe hits rock bottom. Argentina is the current example. President Javier Milei rose to power amid a deep trust crisis and catastrophic central planning failures.

Against all odds, Milei slashed Argentina’s deficit, tamed runaway inflation, and posted 5.5% economic growth early this year. It was a liberating blow that could serve as a model for other ailing nations. Radical economic freedom, it seems, is contagious.

Of course, Milei’s path hasn’t been flawless. Painful adjustments were inevitable. But that is the nature of real reform: messy, difficult — and the only route out of structural decay.

Trump has now internationalized this battle against overreaching state power. Tariffs and dollar policy have become geopolitical tools. We must decipher this strategy if we are to understand how global power relations are being redrawn.

The Realignment of Global Power

Trump’s tariff policy — mocked by legacy media and dismissed by Europe’s political elites — may look like trade policy. But pull back the curtain, and you see the dawn of a new geopolitical alignment.

Whether Europe likes it or not, it is a resource-poor, energy-dependent economy losing access to global supplies. France’s retreat from its African ex-colonies — once its uranium lifeline — is a case in point.

In the coming months, U.S.-EU trade negotiations will expose a brutal truth: geopolitical power is tied to energy and resource access. That Germany — Europe’s industrial core — has chosen this moment to abandon nuclear energy speaks volumes about its infantile delusions. And Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s hesitance to reverse course suggests no immediate correction.

Without delving too far into speculation, one cannot ignore the West’s feverish Russophobia. Is it dawning on Brussels that its dependence is unsustainable? The EU’s recent musings — like top diplomat Kaja Kallas’s hint at dismembering Russia — suggest deeper strategic designs than its leaders admit.

Thomas Kolbe, born in 1978 in Neuss/ Germany, is a graduate economist. For over 25 years, he has worked as a journalist and media producer for clients from various industries and business associations. As a publicist, he focuses on economic processes and observes geopolitical events from the perspective of the capital markets. His publications follow a philosophy that focuses on the individual and their right to self-determination.

Trump says Putin has gone ‘absolutely crazy,’ warns of downfall of Russia

by Ian Swanson

President Trump in a new post on Truth Social on Sunday night accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of having gone “absolutely” crazy and said if he did not stop what he was doing, it would lead to the downfall of his country.

The social media comments came after Trump had issued some of his toughest comments about Putin earlier in remarks to reporters in New Jersey.

“I’ve always had a very good relationship with Vladimir Putin of Russia, but something has happened to him. He has gone absolutely CRAZY!,” Trump wrote.

“He is needlessly killing a lot of people, and I’m not just talking about soldiers. Missiles and drones are being shot into Cities in Ukraine, for no reason whatsoever,” Trump said.

“I’ve always said that he wants ALL of Ukraine, not just a piece of it, and maybe that’s proving to be right, but if he does, it will lead to the downfall of Russia!”

Trump then turned toward Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, who he has repeatedly criticized. Zelensky on Sunday had faulted the silence of the U.S. and other countries in the wake of the latest missile and drone barrage from Russia against his country, an assault that killed a dozen people.

“Likewise, President Zelenskyy is doing his Country no favors by talking the way he does,” Trump said.

“Everything out of his mouth causes problems, I don’t like it, and it better stop.”

Trump campaigned on a vow to end the war, which he has repeatedly said would never have started if he had been president.

He returned to that theme at the end of his statement on Truth Social.

“This is a War that would never have started if I were President. This is Zelenskyy’s, Putin’s, and [former President] Biden’s War, not ‘Trump’s,’ I am only helping to put out the big and ugly fires, that have been started through Gross Incompetence and Hatred.”

Ian Swanson, The Hill

I was just thinking about all the democratic cheating and the fake news cabal. So I came up with some possible 2028 democratic slogans.

1. I have not yet begun to cheat!

2. Don’t cheat until you see the whites of their eyes!

3. I regret I have but one cheat to give for my country!

4. Ask not what your country can do for you but ask how you can cheat your country!

5. I cheat, therefore I am! One small cheat for man one giant cheat for mankind!

6. You have nothing to cheat for but cheating itself!

7. We have chosen to cheat and do the other things! etc. etc. I know this is lame but this is how I spend my retirement!

President Donald Trump said he is open to the Senate making “fairly significant” changes to the reconciliation package that narrowly passed the House, which may complicate Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-La.) effort to preserve what he called a “very delicate” compromise.

“I want the Senate and the senators to make the changes they want, and we’ll go back to the House and we’ll see if we can get them,” Trump told reporters on Sunday in Morristown, New Jersey. “In some cases, the changes may be something I’d agree with, to be honest.”

think they are going to have changes,” Trump added. “Some will be minor and some will be fairly significant.”

The House passed the bill on Thursday by a 215–214 vote along party lines. Following the passage, Johnson urged the Senate to avoid major revisions, warning that too many changes could upend the narrow margin needed to get the bill through the lower chamber again.

“We’ve got to pass it one more time to ratify their changes in the House, and I have a very delicate balance here, a very delicate equilibrium that we’ve reached over a long period of time, and it’s best not to meddle with it too much,” Johnson told CNN’s Jake Tapper on May 25 on “State of the Union.”

Trump’s greenlighting of Senate changes may be encouraging to hardline fiscal conservatives who criticized the bill for not going far enough to balance the budget.

“This bill falls profoundly short. It does not do what we say it does with respect to deficits,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) said before voting “present” to allow the bill to advance for a full vote. “What we’re dealing with here is tax cuts and spending a massive front-loaded deficit increase.”

House Freedom Caucus Chair Andy Harris (R-Md.) also voted “present” in the House floor vote in protest. The congressman took issue with, among other things, the bill’s Medicaid overhaul that includes new work requirements that won’t take effect until 2029 and more frequent eligibility checks, calling it a “joke” that would do little to prevent fraud and abuse.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who calls for a return to pre-pandemic spending levels, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on May 25 that he believes there is enough GOP opposition in the Senate to block the reconciliation bill.

“I think we have enough to stop the process until the president gets serious about spending reduction and reducing the deficit,” the senator said.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) also said he wouldn’t support the bill without addressing its proposed $5 trillion debt ceiling hike.

“I think the cuts currently in the bill are wimpy and anemic, but I still would support the bill, even with wimpy and anemic cuts, if they weren’t going to explode the debt,” Paul said on Fox News Sunday.

“They’re going to explode the debt. The House’s [debt-limit increase] is $4 trillion. The Senate has actually been talking about exploding the debt by $5 trillion.”

For Trump, the Senate process could be an opportunity to pursue his policy goals left out of the House package.

For one, the House bill did not close what’s known as the carried-interest tax loophole, which allows private equity, venture capital, and hedge fund managers to pay a 20 percent long-term capital gains tax rate on the gains they receive from their investments that might otherwise be taxed as ordinary income at rates up to 37 percent.

Changing it could reduce the deficit by $13 billion over 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Another exclusion was Trump’s proposal to create a new top tax bracket for the nation’s highest earners. While the president wants to extend the tax cuts he signed into law in 2017, he has proposed letting the current 37 percent top marginal rate expire and revert to 39.6 percent for individuals earning more than $2.5 million, or $5 million for married couples.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) has not set a timeline for the upper chamber to pass its version of the bill, although Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said he is hoping that it would reach the president’s desk by July 4.

Due to the budget reconciliation process, the bill is not subject to the Senate filibuster and can pass with a simple majority.

With Republicans holding 53 seats, Thune can afford to lose three Republican votes and still pass the bill with Vice President JD Vance breaking the tie.

By Bill Pan, The Epoch Times • May. 26, 2025