None of us ever would have heard of Jeffrey Epstein had the government not brought him up.

It was the government that brought charges against him. The government told us that he was “the most prolific child sex trafficker in history.” The government said he was “with intelligence.” The government cut him a sweetheart deal. The government was taken to court by “John Doe” over what the government called “client lists.” The government courts made a ruling about the “client lists” not being released. Senator Dick Durbin blocked the release of the “client list” in the legislative branch of the government.

The government said it had “client lists” on its desk. The government was the entity that created the term “client list” as it relates to Epstein.

And as much as I would love to blame some of this on the media, their source on all things Epstein…was the government.

Now, I’m going to pause and ask readers: Has someone ever cheated on you? If the answer is “yes” (first, I’m sorry that happened to you), then doesn’t the government’s behavior vis-à-vis Epstein remind you of that episode in your own life?

Weird lies and “disclosures” for seemingly no reason, contradictory statements, and the inability to produce a coherent explanation for anything. 

The few times that a person in my life was acting like the government now is, I found out later that the person was cheating.

The government is lying about Jeffrey Epstein. Either they were lying then, or they’re lying now, maybe both. They don’t get to claim that there are no client lists after issuing statements going back over a decade saying there were “client lists.”

Were they lying then when they described Epstein as a “large trafficking ring”? Or are they lying now when claiming that the “ring” consisted of exactly two people and Prince Andrew?

The government doesn’t get to split themselves out of this. The Palm Beach Police Department, the CIA, and the DoJ all fly the same flag in front of HQ—they’re all “the government” on this one, one entity, working together, just as happened during COVID.

Was the government lying then when they said they had thousands of hours of videos showing the most disgusting things imaginable? Or are they lying now when they maintain that the only thing that happened was 17-year-old girls giving Jeffrey a back massage with a happy ending (while gross, a far cry from “most disgusting things imaginable”)?

Speaking of video, the government claimed that the cameras outside of Epstein’s cell were malfunctioning (while the guards were napping), but now it posts 10 hours of video from the malfunctioning devices?

How did Epstein make his money? Why doesn’t the government know? Did he build a billion-dollar empire $9,999.99 at a time, and avoid reporting anything to the IRS ever?

Government officials start sounding like gender nonbinary people the second Epstein’s name comes up. They always talk about what he wasn’t and never about what he was. (“A nonbinary person is someone who doesn’t adapt to gender norms.” Well, duh, we asked for a definition of what nonbinary is, not what it isn’t.)

The government is and has been lying about Epstein… the question is why?

And one more thing. I purposely avoided all Epstein conspiracy videos on the internet this entire time. I’ve not gotten one sentence about Epstein from Alex Jones. Every conspiratorial view I’ve gotten about Epstein came from the mainstream media (so from a governmental press release, as the MSM do no investigating of their own). Why is the government now calling statements the government made internet “conspiracy theories”?

I’ve got theories about what they are really up to with Epstein…and so do you. Go with that, it’s more truth than we’ll be getting from the government on this issue.

Nick Lopez

American Thinker

David’s view

With the passage of Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill,” the GOP won a generational victory. It did so by co-opting key Democratic messages and building a MAGA-based story of America and what ails it.

Democrats are getting used to that. Most of them consider Trump as a sui generis political figure who voters don’t associate with the GOP’s least popular ideas.

Ironically, Trump built that reputation in 2020, before he lost the presidency. He had scrapped the GOP’s old commitment to reforming Social Security and Medicaid in his 2016 campaign, denying Democrats one of their best issues. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he implemented bipartisan relief bills that expanded health care coverage and gave direct cash payments to most Americans.

In 2024, when he pledged to cut more taxes and protect welfare programs — trimming only “waste, fraud, and abuse” — swing voters remembered 2020 and found it credible. His policies added $7.8 trillion to the national debt, but Democrats voted for some of them, and Republicans never really blamed him for that number. Nikki Haley criticized Trump for growing the debt, and he beat her in South Carolina by 20 points.

Democrats built their anti-megabill campaign on what had worked in 2017, when they got enough Republican votes to save the Affordable Care Act. The GOP was more aligned with Trump than it had been then, which they knew going in. But it also had a more coherent story to tell, which Democrats unwittingly helped with.

The MAGA story in 2025 was that America needed to be saved from internal drift and external threats, which this legislation would do. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr’s entrance into the MAGA coalition was an important part of the story. Neither party denied that Americans needed to be healthier, but Kennedy and his allies — now in the administration — described the government’s health apparatus as an impediment, a waste of money that had been captured by the pharmaceutical industry.

“We are spending $900 billion, and our people are getting sicker every single year,” Kennedy, now health secretary, said during his confirmation hearing. That statistic is one that the left and Democrats have used to argue that the for-profit health care system is less efficient than a single-payer system. But Kennedy used it to explain how most Americans need to make personal choices to be healthier, and that Medicaid needs to focus on the truly needy.

By the time he endorsed Trump, Kennedy had also embraced his future boss’ position on immigration: Democrats had let the US-Mexico border get “out of control,” and Republicans needed to seal it.

This was harder for Democrats to campaign around. New ICE funding for agents and camps, new funding for a border wall — all of this was part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act pitch, and Democrats did denounce it. But at the same time, they were divided on whether talking about immigration, one of Trump’s stronger issues, was a diversion from Medicaid and tax cuts for the wealthy, two of his weaker issues.

Republicans made a zero-sum argument that expelling migrants and denying them benefits would help American citizens; Democrats invited reporters with them as they demanded access to ICE facilities. They tried to make a connection, arguing that Trump was distracting from his unpopular tax cut push by targeting immigrants.

But Republicans were happy to talk about all of it. Yes, they would cut taxes for Americans and cut Medicaid for people who didn’t earn it or need it; yes, doing that would be easier if they expelled millions of migrants, they argued.

Now, Republicans who said they couldn’t vote for the bill have done so. One Democratic project for the next 17 months will be blaming any cutbacks to services on Trump and the GOP.

Democrats remember how badly it hurt their party when Barack Obama said that anyone who liked their pre-ACA insurance plan “could keep it,” because millions of people couldn’t keep theirs. They now have plenty of video and audio of Republicans exuding the same confidence about their health care policies — that the only people who might lose out will be migrants who shouldn’t be here, or lazy thirty-somethings who should get employer insurance instead.

And they’re a little more cynical now. At this point four years ago, Democrats believed that Joe Biden’s 2021 stimulus plan would deliver benefits that Americans would thank them for. Two years ago, they hoped that Biden’s record of infrastructure funding, student debt relief, prescription drug reform, and union pension bailouts would convince voters to reelect him.

That optimism won them nothing. Inflation overwhelmed any good feelings for Biden’s policies, and they faced Trump, whose approach to welfare programs was the kind of populism Franklin Roosevelt once made fun of: “We will do all of them; we will do more of them; we will do them better; and, most important of all, the doing of them will not cost anybody anything.”

Eighty-nine years later, it sounds less like a joke — and very hard to run against.

The View From Republicans

As they convinced the last holdouts to support the legislation, Republicans celebrated the achievement of long-held conservative policy goals — some of them lost in frenzied coverage of the negotiations.

“We have a defunding of taxpayer-funded abortion in this bill,” said Ralph Reed, the founder of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, at a lunch with reporters before the bill passed. “We want to increase the child tax credit. We have this extraordinary provision that creates a tax credit for the entire nation for contributions for K-12 school choice programs.”

The new Medicaid work restrictions were better-known, and more popular, though they have led people to lose coverage whenever they’ve been tried. To validate Trump’s promise that he would not cut Medicaid, Republicans said that reducing the rolls would improve the program overall, an argument that Paul Ryan once made about his conservative Medicare and Medicaid reforms.

“Go out there, do entry-level jobs, get into the workforce, prove that you matter,” CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz told Fox News last month. That was a reversal for Oz, who once supported Democrats’ goal of universal health insurance.

The View From Democrats

The bill undid more of the party’s work than some Democrats had expected. Republicans who looked moveable on the bill’s Medicaid cuts, saying on the record that they would oppose them, adopted the Trump line that the cuts were not cuts and would make the program stronger. Funding and investments that the party had directed to red states, hoping to make them politically robust, turned out to be expendable.

“The clean energy incentives may be pared back but because they have produced investment that overwhelmingly benefits Republican congressional districts, much of it is probably safe,” wrote Bharat Ramamurti, former deputy director of Biden’s National Economic Council, one week before Trump took office. Ramamurti told Semafor that he had been too optimistic: “I underestimated how much GOP members would be willing to throw their own constituents and business community under the bus, if that’s what Dear Leader demands.”

In 2024, Democrats failed to convince voters that keeping them in the White House would benefit them economically. In 2026, they intend to run as populists who’d tax the rich and restore the welfare state.

“Republicans have talked a big game about becoming the party of working people,” said Texas Rep. Greg Casar, the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. “This vote should be the final nail in the coffin of that idea.”

David Weigel, Semafor

On July 4 President Trump signed what everyone is now calling the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.” (Doesn’t it cease being a “Bill” when it becomes an “Act”? Not this one, apparently.). The Act is a compendium of dozens of provisions relating to all aspects of the federal budget and taxation. As a result, many summaries that you may have read focus on things like income tax rates and deductions, and other such matters directly relevant to individuals. That leaves some other important subjects of the Act getting short shrift, particularly the provisions dealing with various aspects of the ongoing green energy scam. So I will try to hit the highlights on that subject here.

I previously had a post on May 24 covering the provisions on this subject in the version of the Bill that had just been passed by the House. That post was highly optimistic that the House’s language, if it could survive wrestling with the Senate, could essentially put an end to almost all of the green energy subsidies. Unfortunately, as you might expect from the swamp of Washington, the final language will likely let some of the scam continue.

But let’s start with the positive news. For your reference, in case you want to read the actual provisions of the Act, here is a link to the Table of Contents, with ongoing links to each section.

Rescission and repeal of green energy handouts from the Inflation Reduction Act

The fraudulently-named Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 contained more than twenty open-ended handouts to various sorts of programs supposedly related to decarbonization of the economy and saving the planet. Most this was to be administered by the EPA, representing a vast expansion of its prior mission. These grant programs were generally structured like open-ended entitlements, so that nobody could know the total amounts that would actually get spent in the end. These were essentially unlimited slush funds for left-wing activist groups. Estimates of the ultimate spend under these programs ranged into the trillions.

Title VI of the OBBBA goes through these things one by one and rescinds or repeals them. There are some twenty-four sections, from 60001 to 60024, providing for the rescissions. To give you just a smattering: Section 60001 rescinds funding for “clean heavy-duty vehicles”; section 60002 rescinds a “greenhouse gas reduction fund”; in section 60003 it’s funding for “diesel emissions reductions”; in 60005, it’s “air pollution in schools”; 60006 rescinds funding for the “low emissions electricity program”; in 60010 it’s “greenhouse gas corporate reporting”; etc., etc., etc.

In each case, the language of the OBBBA limits the rescission to “unobligated balances.” E.g., “The unobligated balances of amounts made available to carry out section 132 of the Clean Air Act (42 U.S.C. 7432) are rescinded.” (That’s the one that relates to heavy-duty trucks.). In other words, the statute unfortunately does not touch the “gold bars off the Titanic” extravaganza that took place in the closing weeks of the Biden administration. However, current EPA Administrator Zeldin and the Department of Justice may well have remedies available for some of the most abusive spending, even if supposedly already “obligated.”

Repeal and termination of tax credits

Title VII of the OBBBA is where we find the tax provisions. Chapter 5 of that is headed “Ending Green New Deal spending, promoting America-first energy, and other reforms.” Subchapter A is then headed “Termination of Green New Deal subsidies.” And there then follows a long list of tax credits and benefits getting terminated. Unfortunately, none of them gets terminated immediately; but many get terminated expeditiously.

For example, there’s Section 70502, “Termination of clean vehicle credit.” That amends another statute making the “clean” (electric) vehicle tax credit available until December 31, 2032, and replaces that date with September 30, 2025. That’s less than three months from now. You can see why Elon Musk is so upset.

There are varying dates for different credits getting terminated. For “residential clean energy credits” (e.g., putting solar panels on your roof), the date moves up from December 31, 2034 to December 31, 2025 — less than six months away. The new termination date for the “energy efficient home credit” moves up from 2032 to December 31, 2026 — now we’re talking a year and a half. The new termination date for the “new energy efficient home credit” is June 30, 2026.

But now let’s get to the big money — the tax credits that subsidize wind and solar electricity generation facilities. Here, unfortunately, the OBBBA falls short. As discussed in my May 24 post, the House version of the Bill provided for an effective ending of the massive tax subsidies to these projects by leaving only a 60-day window to commence construction, and a required “in service” date of 2028. The 60 day window to commence construction was particularly significant, because the program would be effectively ended before any more legislation to extend the deadlines could be making its way through Congress.

Well, now the period to commence construction on a qualifying wind or solar project has been extended until a year after enactment of the legislation. The “placed in service” date has supposedly been accelerated to December 31, 2027 (Sections 70511 and 70512), but energy analyst Alex Epstein points out that this is likely illusory:

[U]nder [a] last-minute carveout [inserted into the Bill], Big Green has 12 months to initiate as many subsidized projects as it wants using the insanely-easy-to-meet “construction” threshold. (All you need to do is commit 5% of expected project cost to buying re-sellable assets like solar panels.) Once they declare “construction”—e.g., in July 2026—they’ll have 4 years (e.g., July 2030) to “place in service.” And then some of those projects, e.g., most wind projects, will get 10 years of subsidies.

These tax credits are something that a taxpayer can qualify for by meeting the tests of the statute, without need to apply for some grant from an executive agency. In other words, there may be little or nothing that Trump can do to stop this.

So unfortunately, the bottom line is that the OBBBA is a mixed bag in terms of getting rid of outrageous subsidies for useless wind and solar generation. Big wind and big solar have lived to fight another day. It remains to be seen whether there will be another chance to try to get rid of these tax breaks during Trump’s term.

I’d like someone on Congress or staff to name names as to who slipped these last-minute changes into the Act.

Francis Menton, Manhattan Contrarian

Progressive and liberal activists and supporters are telling Democrat lawmakers “there needs to be blood” in their fight against President Donald Trump and Republicans.

House Democrats told Axios that their base is so angry, there’s even a disregard for U.S. institutions and the rule of law.

“Some of them have suggested … what we really need to do is be willing to get shot” when visiting Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities or federal agencies, one Democrat told the outlet.

Our own base is telling us that what we’re doing is not good enough … [that] there needs to be blood to grab the attention of the press and the public.”

The call for blood could be related to Trump surviving two assassination attempts during his 2024 campaign, including one in which he was shot in the ear during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.

One Democrat lawmaker, among more than two dozen who spoke to Axios, said constituents have told them “civility isn’t working” and to prepare for “violence … to fight to protect our democracy.”

Another House Democrat said that “people online have sent me crazy s***… told me to storm the White House and stuff like that,” though they added that “there’s always people on the internet saying crazy stuff.”

Yet another Democrat said “people who are angry” don’t want to hear that they should channel their frustration into trying to win a majority in Congress in 2026.

“They’re angry beyond things,” the lawmaker said.

Another House Democrat said: “It’s like … the Roman coliseum. People just want more and more of this spectacle.”

While Democrats in Congress, as NPR reported, feel that Trump’s megabill is giving them an opening ahead of the midterms, the pleas to fight dirty apparently are resonating.

One House member told Axios that a “sense of fear and despair and anger” among Democrat voters “puts us in a different position where … we can’t keep following norms of decorum.”

Democrat lawmakers said many of the angry voters tended to be white, well-educated, and live in upscale suburban or urban neighborhoods.

“What I have seen is a demand that we get ourselves arrested intentionally or allow ourselves to be victims of violence, and … a lot of times that’s coming from economically very secure white people,” one House Democrat told Axios.

“Not only would that be a gift to Donald Trump, not only would it make the job of Republicans in Congress easier if we were all mired in legal troubles … [we are] a group that is disproportionately people of color, women, LGBTQ people — people who do not fare very well in prison.”

Charlie McCarthy ✉

Charlie McCarthy, a writer/editor at Newsmax, has nearly 40 years of experience covering news, sports, and politics.

Recently, I heard someone criticize Big Media for only caring about money.

I don’t mind the media doing things for commercial purposes. I love trade and capitalism.

What sickens me is the media’s fawning, disingenuous and self-conscious faux embrace of self-sacrifice and Communism — while caring more about money (and money alone) than the stereotypical capitalist on his most materialistic day. Leftists (and make no mistake: the media is unadulterated in its leftism) are wretched, deplorable, sneering, irredeemable hypocrites.

*******

Former CIA Director John Brennan may be exposed to perjury problems after current CIA Director John Ratcliffe released an internal review of the agency’s Russia hoax materials, Breitbart News has learned exclusively.

We are not the United States again unless or until this savage in a suit — Obama’s own “CIA Director” — ends up in an orange jumpsuit, in Guantanamo Bay, or (my personal favorite) drifting from a hangman’s noose.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

The Supreme Court’s ruling in Trump v. CASA that universal injunctions “likely exceed the equitable authority” Congress has granted federal courts has been framed as a victory for a Trump administration stymied by an unprecedented barrage of them. 

But the majority’s 6-3 opinion in favor of the administration’s challenge to universal injunctions — via its appeal of several such rulings in cases consolidated under CASA, whereby courts halted its executive order curtailing birthright citizenship — is far greater than a win for one president. It is a triumph for the rule of law and our republic over judicial tyranny, though it comes with loopholes that Resistance 2.0 is already plotting to drive a truck through in its ongoing lawfare campaign.

First, the good. The status quo ante, whereby an opponent of a presidential policy needed only to find a single favorable district court judge to prohibit the enforcement of that policy against anyone, everywhere, was an absurdity and an abomination. 

Courts exist to decide cases and controversies concerning the parties before them. The idea that an unelected judge in any district would deign to effectively expand his jurisdiction to the entire country by adding everyone as a plaintiff to a suit was an affront to our Constitution and common sense. Judges effectively coronated themselves as presidents in overriding executive decisions on personnel, policy, and practices. Thus the pre-CASA judiciary effectively disadvantaged and disenfranchised tens of millions of Americans who elected the commander-in-chief.

Inferior court judges elevated themselves not only above the president but Supreme Court justices too in unilaterally rendering opinions with nationwide effects, “invert[ing]” the typical appellate process, as Solicitor General John D. Sauer put it in oral arguments.

The Supreme Court’s ruling, however, rightly focused not on political or practical matters, but on first principles. The prevailing universal injunction regime, it argued, was anathema to American jurisprudence and its antecedents.

“Neither the universal injunction nor any analogous form of relief was available … at the time of the founding,” Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote for the majority. 

As the court noted, universal injunctions are a novel remedy that arguably emerged in the 1960s. But they really only exploded in recent decades, namely under the first Trump administration, as I have chronicled at RealClearInvestigations.

“The bottom line,” Barrett wrote, is that “[t]he universal injunction was conspicuously nonexistent for most of our Nation’s history. Its absence from 18th- and 19th-century equity practice settles the question of judicial authority.”

Removing universal injunctions as a weapon of lawfare undermines the Resistance 2.0’s primary effort to stymie and sabotage Trump’s second term and the MAGA agenda. It neutralizes the judicial tyrants who have worked hand-in-glove with the Resistance in that effort. It also vindicates the jurisprudence of Justice Clarence Thomas, who once again was years ahead of the court but ultimately won it over in challenging universal injunctions.

Furthermore, it puts radicals in robes in the lower courts, who have suffered from delusions of grandeur, in their rightful place by disarming them of this legal WMD.

But the majority’s opinion is no panacea. Setting aside the fact that the court withheld judgment on whether universal injunctions would be legitimate should Congress permit them by law, and remained silent on what some perceive to be their analogues such as vacatur, it also refused to resolve pivotal questions of standing and channeled plaintiffs seeking widespread relief to potential universal class-action lawsuits.

Justice Samuel Alito addressed the latter two caveats in a critical concurrence joined by Thomas. As the associate justice noted, states, including in cases consolidated in Trump v. CASA, have sued on behalf of litigants, including their residents, with judges conferring “third-party standing” on them. Alito posed a hypothetical likely to become very real then, when asking in his concurrence whether injunctions granted to states will protect all of their citizens.

“If so, States will have every incentive to bring third-party suits … to obtain a broader scope of equitable relief than any individual resident could procure in his own suit,” Alito said. “Left unchecked, the practice of reflexive state third-party standing will undermine today’s decision as a practical matter.”

Justice Alito’s other concern is that lower court judges may not vigorously enforce the requirements necessary for plaintiffs to obtain class certification, pursuant to Rule 23 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. These strictures are seen as a check on plaintiffs’ ability to secure injunctions as expansive as those under the pre-CASA regime. 

If judges take a lax view of the requirements to obtain class certification, Alito warns, “the universal injunction will return from the grave under the guise of ‘nationwide class relief,’ and today’s decision will be of little more than minor academic interest.”

Shortly after the court issued its opinion, so-called “immigrants’ rights advocates,” led by the ACLU, filed a “nationwide class-action” lawsuit challenging the birthright citizenship order challenged in the CASA cases.

Norm Eisen, one of the leaders of Democrats’ lawfare efforts against President Trump, revealed almost immediately after the Supreme Court’s decision that Resistance 2.0 plaintiffs would be filing class-action lawsuits in pursuit of de facto universal injunctions.

Further vindicating Alito’s concerns, D.C. District Judge Randolph Moss certified a massive class in an injunction entered shortly after CASA, halting President Trump’s first-day proclamation and guidance suspending asylum claims for those crossing the southern border. The class consists of all those who are or will be subject to the policy, who are or will be present in the U.S. In other words, Judge Moss entered something approaching a universal injunction.

The Supreme Court has raised the bar significantly for those seeking to block presidential policy via the courts. But ultimately, as Alito’s opinion reflects — and as is already being demonstrated by some on the federal bench — the courts will only be as good as the judges presiding over them.

Unless the Supreme Court reins in lower-court judges with blunt deterrent force or Congress asserts its power over the courts it established, judicial tyranny may persist.

Ben Weingarten is editor at large for RealClearInvestigations. He is a senior contributor to The Federalist, columnist at Newsweek, and a contributor to the New York Post and Epoch Times, among other publications. Subscribe to his newsletter at weingarten.substack.com, and follow him on Twitter: @bhweingarten.

President Donald Trump’s plan to create a sovereign wealth fund that’s the world’s envy remains undefined.

In the meantime, Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global is among the largest in the world, with more than $1.8 trillion in assets.

In February, Trump told Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick they had 90 days to present him with a plan for a sovereign wealth fund. That time has passed and no plans have been released.

“Treasury and Commerce Departments have formulated plans for a Sovereign Wealth Fund, but no final decisions have yet been made,” White House spokesperson Kush Desai said.

Ana Nacvalovaite, a sovereign wealth funds research fellow at the University of Oxford’s Kellogg College, said the fund’s appearance depends on the details, including funding mechanisms, investment strategies, fund structure, and governance.

Nacvalovaite noted that relatively little information is known about the U.S. plans for a sovereign wealth fund. However, she said many other countries have established funds that the U.S. could follow, but the U.S. will likely face challenges.

Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, with $925 billion in assets, was established by royal decree in 1971. That could be one roadmap, but America has a different culture and government.

“There is a huge difference between a fund run by a country … where the Royals rule everything, versus an American system where it doesn’t quite work that way,” Nacvalovaite said.

Another question that remains unanswered is how the administration would seed the fund and whether it would need help from Congress, which traditionally allocates federal revenue. The U.S. has $36.2 trillion in debt and hasn’t had a surplus budget since 2001. The White House noted in February that the U.S. government holds about $5.7 trillion in assets. The administration said the U.S. holds far more in natural resources.

Trump also is bringing in new revenue through tariffs. Just how much that generates could vary based on the final terms of trade deals the White House initially hoped to complete by July 9. Tariffs are taxes on imported goods paid to the federal government by the company that imports the goods.

In Norway, the government declared it owned all offshore oil in the North Sea in 1963. Much of the money in the Government Pension Fund Global now comes from a mix of investments, including stocks and real estate. The fund reports it owns nearly 1.5% of total shares in the world’s publicly listed companies.

Nacvalovaite said some SWFs share more information publicly than others.

Most SWFs don’t report everything, which could raise concerns in the U.S.

“Any state-owned investment vehicle must have a focused mandate and a highly transparent and accountable governance structure,” Adnan Mazarei, Anna Gelpern and Edwin M. Truman wrote in a report for the Peterson Institute for International Economics after Trump’s executive order.

“Let’s not forget that there are some sovereign wealth funds which are not transparent,” she told The Center Square.

Four months ago, Bessent said the U.S. would have a fund “within the next 12 months.” That timeline could prove challenging.

Control in the U.S. would almost certainly be an issue. Some nations assign the task to a central bank or government agency.

Norway’s Ministry of Finance has overall responsibility for the fund. It also issues management guidelines. Norges Bank manages the fund.

Norway’s government gets some of the money to spend.

“The Norwegian government can spend only a small part of the fund, but this still amounts to almost 20% of the government budget,” according to the bank.

On average, the Norwegian government spends only the returns – estimated to be around 3% per year – not the fund’s capital.

The report from Peterson Institute for International Economics said the proposal carries risks, especially in absence of more information

“Without much greater clarity and a broadly shared understanding on these issues, a US SWF risks becoming a misplaced fiscal gimmick and an inefficient and potentially corrupt diversion of public resources that could do long-term damage to the US and global economy and financial markets,” it concluded.

Brett Rowland | The Center Square

A United Nation’s report issued last month calls for the criminalization of spreading “disinformation and misinformation” about global warming. Is it the desperate act of a dying crusade – or business as usual for the climate fanatics?

While our hope is the former, it’s more likely the latter.

According to Elisa Morgera, the U.N. special rapporteur on climate change, governments should “criminalize misinformation and misrepresentation (greenwashing) by the fossil fuel industry” as well as “criminalize media and advertising firms for amplifying disinformation and misinformation by fossil fuel companies.”

This is disturbing. Who gets to decide what is “disinformation and misinformation”? We’ve already seen, thanks to COVID-19, that the meaning of those words is determined exploitatively by the ruling class and the loudest voices, not by any objective means.

Just the News quotes experts who say the call for criminalization shows a growing desperation among the climate alarmists. Given that global warming has cooled off considerably as a pressing issue for the public, this rings true.

Yet demanding that skeptics be arrested and tried is not a fresh fantasy for the eco-fascists. They’ve been dreaming about a 21st-century inquisition of those who hold dissenting views (the Galileos of our time?) for more than a decade:

– Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island urged the Justice Department “to consider filing a racketeering suit against the oil and coal industries for having promoted wrongful thinking on climate change,” author Walter Olson noted in 2015.

– Twenty “scientists” wrote a letter to President Barack Obama to “strongly endorse” Whitehouse’s “call for a RICO investigation.”

– In 2016, a year after 17 attorneys general pursued fraud allegations against climate change skeptics, Obama Attorney General Loretta Lynch told the Senate Judiciary Committee that “the FBI was looking into information regarding climate change dissent and ‘whether or not it meets the criteria for what we could take action on,’” the Washington Times reported.

-Even before that, a hack writing for Gawker claimed that “man-made climate change kills a lot of people,” that “it’s going to kill a lot more,” and insisted that “it’s time to punish the climate-change liars.”

– Bill Nye, “The Science Guy,” who is actually an engineer, said “we’ll see what happens” when asked about Robert Kennedy Jr.’s 2014 wish that there was a law to “punish” skeptics and “deniers.” Nye said he thought the “chilling effect” of punishment against “scientists who are in extreme doubt about climate change” was “good.”

– Fifteen years ago, a “British lawyer-turned-campaigner” was agitating for “the United Nations to accept ‘ecocide’ as a fifth ‘crime against peace,’ which could be tried at the International Criminal Court,” the Guardian reported. Supporters wanted to use it “to prosecute ‘climate deniers’ who distort science and facts to discourage voters and politicians from taking action to tackle global warming and climate change.”

– A U.S. attorney subpoenaed the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s donor lists for the purpose of punishing “CEI by making people less willing to donate,” University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Reynolds and Instapundit founder wrote in USA Today.

– Earlier this year, a screed from a “climate justice” academic writing under the imprimatur of UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, asked if “international criminal law” should “be used against those who promote this dangerous trend” of “climate denial.” She answered the question thusly: “Criminal sanctions are the most potent tools we have to mark out conduct that lies beyond all limits of toleration.” The time has arrived, she added, “to prosecute them.”

– Michael Mann of the hockey stick graph tried to put National Review out of business with a lawsuit.

Rather than debate the science and weigh the evidence, global warming zealots have long preferred shutting down those who don’t agree with them, those who dare say things they don’t like. They’d rather silence heterodoxy with jail time, prison sentences, and economic sanctions, which neatly sums up who they are and what their goals are.

Issues and Insights Editorial Board

Former Vice President Kamala Harris faced backlash after sharing a July Fourth photo on social media that conveyed a bleak outlook for America’s future—and appeared to crop out former President Joe Biden.

Rather than celebrating America and its freedoms, Harris portrayed a bleak view of the country, claiming it is in a difficult place due to President Donald Trump’s leadership.

“This Fourth of July, I am taking a moment to reflect. Things are hard right now. They are probably going to get worse before they get better,” Harris posted on X. “But I love our country — and when you love something, you fight for it. Together, we will continue to fight for the ideals of our nation.”

The photo appeared to crop out Biden.

Social media users were quick to call out the hypocrisy in Harris’s post, pointing to the country’s decline under her leadership.

While Charles de Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the Laws was an oft-cited source during the federal convention of 1787, his observations weren’t limited to the balance of powers in government. He also touched on the nature of educational systems in republics and despotisms.

Parents and educators form our first impressions. They prepare people for civil life in republics and for servitude in despotisms. From previous chapters, Montesquieu had explained the springs, the forces which propel nations. Public Virtue is the propellant in republics, while the bayonet of fear prods despotisms.

Education in despotic countries debases the mind. The mind of the despot and his slaves are made servile, for both fear and are enslaved to each other. Excessive obedience presupposes ignorance in the person that obeys. The tyrant is also beset by ignorance because he has little need to deliberate, to doubt or to reason. All he has is will.

Every home in despotic states is its own little government; its education is limited to filling hearts with fear and a little religion. Actual learning is dangerous, for its emulation outside the home is fatal. Montesquieu agrees with Aristotle that slaves are without virtue. Education here is practically pointless, for it cannot work toward forming a good citizen. Actual citizens refuse to share in public misery, and as patriots, they will work to relax the springs of despotic government. If they fail, they are dead. If they succeed, they expose themselves, the prince and the country to ruin.

Republican education lifts the heart as well as mind. Virtue, which Montesquieu defines as “love of country” permits men to promote public prosperity, peace of mind, and independence. Love of country translates into love of laws; such love requires a constant preference of public over private interest. Love of country is the source of all private virtues; for they are nothing more than this very preference itself. Such love is peculiar to republics. In these alone the government is entrusted to private citizens. In this sense, republican government is like any other earthly creation or possession; in order to preserve it, we must love it.

Everything therefore depends on establishing this love in a republic. To inspire it ought to be the principal business of education, and the surest way of instilling it into children is for parents to set the example. Parents have it generally in their power to communicate their ideas to their children; but they are better able to transfuse their passions. If it happens otherwise, it is because the impressions made at home are effaced by those they have received elsewhere.

Young people do not degenerate; if they are corrupted, it done by those of mature years already sunk in corruption.

American taxpayers direct enormous sums toward government schools. To what purpose? Do schools uplift or debase? How many promote love of country? Does government promote or discourage the foundation of republics: two-parent families which form the next generation’s first impressions?

Rodney Dodsworth