A prominent election-integrity activist has uncovered bombshell evidence suggesting that New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s 2025 election victory may not have been legitimate.
Marly Hornik, the founder of RealAmerica.Vote and NY Citizens Audit, has suggested that the 2025 election included large numbers of unqualified or nonexistent voters. But that’s only part of the problem.
“I actually don’t know whether Mamdani won the mayoral race, and I’m not here to say that he didn’t,” Hornik said during a July 22 interview on New York radio station WABC’s “Sid & Friends in the Morning” program
“The problem we uncovered is that the New York City and the New York State Boards of Elections have no idea if Mamdani won the mayoral election either. And that’s where the rubber meets the road here.”
After examining 1 million of the total 2.2 million voters who participated in the election, her organization discovered that 7 percent were nonexistent in records, 6 percent had fake Social Security numbers, and 10 percent didn’t even live in NYC.
In total, they identified 230,000 illegal votes, which exceeded Mamdani’s 207,000 vote margin of victory over former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who ran as an independent.
And this was despite Hornik needing to still review the remaining 1.2 million voters.
“So out of 2.2 million voters, we studied about a million of them, and we found more votes that are apparently illegal than his margin of victory,” she told host Sid Rosenberg.
“Again, the issue is not whether or not Mamdani won. The issue is whether or not the boards of elections in New York are actually counting fair elections so that we are properly represented as we are constitutionally granted.”
These statistics that we discovered … they implicate both in New York City and the New York State boards of elections in potential very serious misconduct, because we could not find 7 percent of the voters,” she said. “They don’t exist.”
“We were unable to verify any of their critical information as provided by the, by the boards of elections — their name, their date of birth, their voting address. They don’t exist. They’re fake people,” she added.
Asked what she intends to do with her findings, Hornik said she’s already forwarded them to federal authorities.
“This is in the hands of federal investigators and prosecutors right now, because again, when our right to choose representatives is diluted or harmed, injured in any way, that is a serious crime in America,” she said. “It’s not a minor thing, especially when you’re talking about 7 percent of the vote.”
Her findings have also piqued the attention of best-selling author and journalist Naomi Wolf — who served as political adviser to the campaigns of former President Bill Clinton and former Vice President Al Gore. Wolfe who used to be a liberal Trump hater until she woke up:
In the post above published to the social media website X, she referred to an earlier allegation from June in which she’d purported to have identified over 100,000 blank ballots on the New York City Board of Elections website that were improperly included/counted.
V. Saxena is a seasoned conservative news writer and commentator with a decade of experience in the industry. When not at work, he can be found working out or tending to his popular bird feeder.
Iran-backed Houthis claim to target crucial Yanbu oil port amid flare-up; Israel, Jordan down drones near Dead Sea as Iraq also reports attacks, officials don’t identify source
Israel, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Iraq reported drone attacks in their territory Monday amid a lull in US air strikes against Iran, after nearly two weeks of fighting between both sides.
The Israel Defense Forces said Monday morning that it shot down two drones over the Jordan border, near the Dead Sea, adding that the drones did not cross into Israeli territory. Their origin was under investigation, the army said.
Saudi Arabia’s defense ministry, meanwhile, said it shot down drones aimed at petroleum targets, some in its eastern province and others in the capital Riyadh. It said the drones had been launched from Iraq by Iran-backed militias, and it reserved the right to respond.
Iran-backed militias in Iraq have not claimed any attacks in the region since the resumption of hostilities between the US and Iran this month, after an April ceasefire broke down, but Saudi Arabia was repeatedly targeted by the groups at the height of the war with Iran that erupted in February.
Separately, Iran’s Houthi allies in Yemen said they had targeted transit sites carrying oil west to Saudi Arabia’s main Red Sea oil port of Yanbu, in retaliation for what it said were Saudi drone incursions into Yemeni airspace.
Riyadh did not immediately comment on the Houthis’ claims, which came after several days of strikes traded between the two sides. The fighting rekindled when the latter announced a blockade of Saudi Arabia’s oil industry in the Red Sea, sending oil prices even higher.
Saudi Arabia responded with airstrikes on what it said were Houthi military facilities in Yemen’s Hodeidah port, saying it would protect shipping.
The latest flare-up between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis marked the first time in years that the two sides have traded blows, threatening a 2022 truce that has held despite expiring.
Jordan also reported that its forces shot down two drones, and Iraqi security sources reported a series of drone attacks on camps housing Iranian opposition Kurdish forces in northern Iraq.
Neither Jordanian nor Iraqi officials identified the sources of those drones.
Jordan and northern Iraq were the locations where four US service members were killed during the two-week air campaign, which US President Donald Trump suspended abruptly over the weekend after his top brass advised him that the strategy had run its course.
Iran has said it will pause its own attacks for as long as Trump’s self-imposed ceasefire continues. But it also said it was still in control of the contested Strait of Hormuz, and was not seeking to resume peace talks with the US.
The US and Israel on February 28 launched a joint bombing campaign on the Islamic Republic in a bid to destabilize the regime and destroy its ballistic missile and nuclear programs.
Messages were still being passed between the sides through mediators and Iran had not forsaken diplomacy, but “reports about Iran requesting negotiations with the US are fabricated,” Baghaei claimed. “This is not in our DNA.”
Tehran also indicated it was still in control of the Strait of Hormuz.
Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.
Help us report truthfully on social media
Gabriella Jacobs, multimedia journalist
As a multimedia journalist, my job is to take the quality, fact-based journalism produced by The Times of Israel newsroom and make it accessible across every platform — from Instagram posts to podcasts to short-form videos.
This is how many, especially young people, consume news these days. But misinformation is rampant on social media. Our team at ToI produces accurate, responsible short-form reporting on Israel and the Jewish world.
You Simply Cannot Give Power to Lunatics. From Ceuta to Cuba to Tehran — and increasingly the American left — the same destructive ideas keep proving that reality is no match for ideological zeal.
I’m looking around the world right now, and what I see isn’t all bad. In fact, there are lots of indications of positive things happening or about to happen. What strikes me, though, in seeing the hopeful signs, is the contrast between those and the, er… other things going on in the world.
For example, the Moorish invasion of the Spanish town of Ceuta.
Much of the reporting, particularly on social media, that you’ve seen is overhyped and factually shaky. There was indeed a massive wave of migrants from Morocco into that North African town, which briefly doubled its population of 85,000. The migrants were almost exclusively male; most were Moroccans — unemployment in Morocco is as high as 29 percent in some parts of the country — and the remainder seems to be largely sub-Saharan Africans. That wave generated some utterly appalling video, to be sure, though the accusations made against the Spanish government, namely that it invited the wave and seeks to profit politically by it, appear not to be accurate. (RELATED: I’m a Spanish Taxpayer. This Is Why the West Doesn’t Need to Reward Illegal Immigrants.)
Pedro Sánchez, the socialist president of that country, actually sent in the army to repel that invasion, and as of Monday it seems that all but 3,000-5,000 of the migrants had been returned to Morocco. None have made it across the Strait of Gibraltar to the Iberian mainland.
But it’s fairly obvious that the human-trafficking cartels which control African migration — whether North African or sub-Saharan African — into Europe were simply testing the Spanish government’s resolve and capabilities, and with the better part of 100,000 people conducting a human wave into a small territory on a compressed timeline one can’t help but to see Ceuta as a textbook example of what happens when the bad guys go unchecked.
Sánchez’s government is not in the business of checking bad guys. He’s been Spain’s president since 2018, and he’s all but wrecked the country with terrible economic policies, catastrophic immigration policies and rampant corruption. In truth, those migrants were almost certainly attempting to enter Spain as a way station to someplace better in Europe. (RELATED: What’s Wrong With Spain? It’s Pedro Sánchez.)
Is that the U.K.? Some 2,000 illegal aliens have entered Great Britain through the English Channel since its new prime minister, Andy Burnham, was anointed to replace Keir Starmer as the captain of the sinking ship which is the Labour government, and the citizenry seems to be angrier than ever before. Burnham’s chief political opponent, Nigel Farage of the Reform UK Party, has come out publicly for employing the Royal Navy to blockade the English Channel and prevent crossings by migrants in small boats and rubber rafts, which has generated howls of opposition from the French, who have allowed their country to become the leading repository for African migrants
The current governing class in Western Europe seems to be unanimous in its approach to migration by non-Westerners into their countries — namely, that they want as much of it as they can hide from the public, and any resistance to that wave they’ll put up is mostly performative and never long-lasting.
Nobody really thinks the Moroccans turned back at Ceuta won’t eventually make it into Europe. It’s only a matter of time.
And so the lands of Ferdinand and Isabella, and of Charles Martel, are gradually being gobbled up by the modern-day Moors, with little real prospect of a Reconquista on the horizon.
One may come, but before it does there will need to be a wave of political revolution, and perhaps bloody conflict.
The old line that you can vote yourself into socialism but you’ve got to shoot your way out is very relevant here. Allow these people political power, and they will eat away at your democratic and cultural institutions until there is nothing left but the corruption they’ve installed, and those institutions collapse into themselves. And you’ll have to build new institutions to replace them.
Which is what you get when you allow the lunatics into power.
The serialization of my new novel The Necessary Men will begin here at The American Spectator in just more than a week, as I’ve noted, and in writing it I did more research into Cuba’s maladministration under the communist revolutionary tyranny which controls that country than I would have cared to. The only conclusion anyone can come to in surveying the 67 years since Fidel Castro and his cronies seized power there is that the Cuban revolutionaries are lunatics.
Crafty lunatics, who, as the State Department’s report on Cuban communism made clear, are far more dangerous and have been for a long time. That’s certain. But lunatics all the same. (RELATED: The Castroist Playbook Comes to America)
To get a good glimpse of what they’ve made of that country, I’ll direct you to a YouTuber who goes by Adventure Elliot; he’s from Wisconsin but actually lives in Spain, and earlier this year he traversed Cuba to produce 12 travelog videos exposing what the Castroites have done to the place.
They’ve turned it into a madhouse. Neighbor turns on neighbor. Every foreigner is mobbed and scammed. People live in filth, conditioned to accept what the revolution gives them — which is misery. Initiative is punished, and the supposed classless society now manifests itself in two tiers of people — those with relatives in the United States or elsewhere who remit money to them to pay for basic necessities in what private shops the communists allow, and those without who stand in line at the state stores.
As everyone’s house falls down around them.
Use Google Earth’s satellite view to navigate around Cuba, and you will see things which make no sense — there are literal ruins in every town on the island, buildings which collapsed from years of neglect and have just been left to molder. People raid those sites for bricks or other building materials; in some cases, the inhabitants of those collapsed houses remain in what shelter they can find.
And in less than five years, Cuba’s population has declined from 11 million to less than nine and a half million. Just as Venezuela, Cuba’s protege communist paradise, ran off a quarter of its own population in a decade.
To live like that is lunacy. Cuba won’t for very much longer; it can’t.
And yet the lunatics are somehow not discredited.
We’re watching the Democrat Party come apart at the seams. As David Catron noted on Monday, James Carville says he won’t be in the same party as Hasan Piker, and that’s a noble sentiment, but it’s too late. Polling indicates the Democrats can’t stop Francesca Hong, a committed — well, in one sense; in another she’s uncommitted, and this is a problem — lunatic running for governor of that state whose Twitter/X feed contains some of the most insane, hateful drivel imaginable. Just recently, Hong dropped a post on X which accused the patrons of the Wisconsin staple Culver’s Restaurants of genocidal racism based on her own feelings and perceptions without any concrete substance to them, which generated national buzz, and yet the Democrat voters of that state don’t seem to be coming off her. She’s going to win her primary unless something massive changes. (RELATED: Why Republicans May Defy Midterm History) Politicalparty merchandise
And Piker just descended on Wisconsin to stump for her. Which doesn’t appear to be a scandal among the party’s voters. (RELATED: The New Brownshirts?)
Piker is also stumping for Abdul El-Sayed, who is now as much as a 15-point favorite over the more establishmentarian Heather Stevens in the Michigan Senate race. El-Sayed comes from an accomplished academic background and has apparently made a lot of money based on the properties he and his wife own, but we don’t know how he managed it. He’s an avowed DSA socialist whose speeches and pronouncements contain open rejections of the American founding and way of life, and it doesn’t seem to bother Michigan Democrat voters in the least.
Because Michigan Democrats, like Wisconsin Democrats, are now made up of a majority of lunatics who think that abandoning American culture, economics, and politics and putting people like Francesca Hong and Abdul El-Sayed, not to mention Darieliza Avila Chevalier and Zohran Mamdani, in positions of power will create something better.
And we see something else, which defines it as lunacy — namely, an utter refusal to recognize that these things do not work.
This isn’t stupidity. It’s lunacy. It’s pathological, because we already see, in the decline in Western Europe and the destruction in Cuba, what those belief systems create.
And we see something else, which defines it as lunacy — namely, an utter refusal to recognize that these things do not work.
That’s a problem. Dealing with lunatics whose worldviews are impervious to their own failures leads to intractable dilemmas. A perfect case of this involves the lunatics in charge of Iran. (RELATED: When the Villagers Finally Have Had Enough of the Pillagers)
It’s been five months since the current round of bombing started, and basically all of America is tired of the Iranian conflict, the off-and-on blockage of the Strait of Hormuz, the higher gasoline prices that blockage has fostered, and the intermittent reports of American casualties. President Trump is without a doubt looking for a suitable off-ramp from the conflict for domestic political reasons.
But the truth is that beyond the perception of this five-month staccato of air strikes and negotiations, there is indeed a forever war. It isn’t ours; it’s Iran’s. Since 1979, that regime has done everything it could to plunge itself into open conflict with the world’s largest superpower because the people in charge of Iran since their revolution believe that if they can start enough trouble, a 1,200-year-old man will climb up out of a well and perfect the planet.
That’s lunacy. Those are lunatics. And Trump and his team, who keep going back to the table again and again after beating on the lunatics, destroying their military infrastructure, taking apart their capabilities to make war and affect the geostrategic situation, and yet nonetheless offering them an offramp to their own inevitable demise, are finding that you can’t negotiate with lunatics because their math is not the same as yours.
Iran doesn’t want peace with us. Iran wants to destroy us. If we’re going to have peace with Iran, we’re going to need a different Iran.
Just like we’re going to need a different Cuba.
And just like there will have to be a different Western Europe if the continent is going to save itself from the demographic time bomb ticking ever more loudly as it packs migrant on top of migrant to weigh down an already sclerotic society. (RELATED: Spain’s Demographic Suicide: A Generational Error Europe Will Not Undo)
And just like we will eventually come back to a reality this country once embraced, which is that there can be no bread broken or accord made with the Francesca Hongs and Zohran Mamdanis.
You have to deny power to the lunatics. This is neither negotiable nor avoidable. It’s a lesson we seem doomed to repeat the hard way, and we will invariably learn it again soon.
Lansing—Democratic members of the Michigan Board of State Canvassers voted Monday against certifying the Americans for Citizen Voting initiative, leaving the proposed constitutional amendment to require proof of citizenship off the November ballot after a contentious debate.
The four-member board deadlocked 2-2, with Republican members Chair Richard Houskamp and Paul Cordes voting to certify the petition and Democratic members Vice Chair Mary Ellen Gurewitz and Heather Cummings voting against certification. Since the Board has four members in order to have a petition certified there must be at least three members who vote for it.
The initiative needed 629 valid signatures in the state’s random sample to receive a recommendation for certification. Bureau of Elections staff determined that 626 of the 1,000 signatures reviewed in the sample were valid, putting the petition below the required threshold.
Americans for Citizen Voting challenged the findings and submitted sworn affidavits from petition signers whose signatures had been rejected by election officials. Organizers argued the affidavits demonstrated that several signatures the state had deemed invalid were actually signed by registered voters.
The organization presented testimony from a notary who had notarized affidavits submitted by petition signers. The board reviewed 20 affidavits during the proceedings, with five becoming central to the final decision.
Houskamp argued the affidavits deserved special consideration because they came directly from voters who were willing to appear and attest that they had signed the petition.
“Those affidavits meant more than all the other signatures we were fighting for,” Houskamp told the media following the meeting. “Because those were you people, and you were stepping up to the plate.”
The Board of Canvassers has a rule that new evidence cannot be considered in their decision unless it was submitted 48-hours before the meeting, a rule the Democrat members cited as their reason to vote no.
“This was voters who had signed petitions, who were coming forward and saying, ‘You invalidated my signature. I’m coming forward to tell you that that really was my signature and that really was me on the petition,’” Houskamp said. “And so when it comes to the 48-hour rule, I think that’s different.”
The five disputed affidavits were the critical factor in the meeting. Had the affidavits been accepted, supporters argued the initiative would have reached 631 valid signatures in the sample, two above the 629-signature threshold.
The board ultimately remained deadlocked over the affidavits, with both Democratic members voting against certification.
Americans for Citizen Voting Chairman Paul Jacob sharply criticized the decision following the vote, arguing the board had rejected the testimony of voters who had personally sworn that they signed the petition.
“Even the two Democratic canvassers on the board … admitted that there are five people with sworn affidavits who are registered voters who signed our petition and we’re not getting credit,” Jacob told the media. “And how many are we short? Three. Do the math.”
Americans for Citizen Voting submitted 709,841 signatures in March, more than 260,000 above the statutory requirement of 446,198, according to the Michigan Fair Elections Institute.
The Bureau of Elections initially found 692 valid signatures in its 1,000-signature sample before challenges reduced the count to 612. The campaign subsequently sought to restore 149 challenged signatures, but election officials restored only 14.
The proposed constitutional amendment aims to require proof of citizenship and photo ID to vote, create a statewide citizenship verification system, and require the Michigan Secretary of State to vet voter rolls for noncitizens and report annually about those efforts to state lawmakers.
Jacobs told the media Americans for Citizen Voting will challenge Monday’s decision in court.
“The people of Michigan, 700,000 plus, signed this petition,” Jacob said. “People deserve a vote on this issue, and they’re going to get one,” he continued.
“I am more than frustrated. I am ready to continue to do battle because we’re not giving up,” Jacob said. “You can’t cheat the people of Michigan and get away with it.”
“We’re going to be back,” he added. “We’re going to go to every court we have to go to.”
The initiative is supported by Republican gubernatorial candidate John James, who signed the petition supporting the measure.
In a post on X on Monday, James blasted the Secretary of State office for blocking the initiative from the November ballot.
“She is using her office to fight voter ID and suppress the voices of 700,000 Michiganders who signed the petition to put Citizens Only Voting on the ballot this November,” James wrote.
Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, who has campaigned against proof of citizenship and photo ID to vote on both the state and federal level, is overseeing her own election for governor as the Democratic nominee.
The Michigan Fair Elections Institute warned before the vote that the initiative was running out of time to qualify for the November ballot. Monday’s Board of State Canvassers meeting was the only scheduled opportunity for certification through the ordinary process, and the proposal faces a Sept. 4 deadline for final ballot-summary certification, according to the institute.
“Look, all we can do is have faith in God and do the right stuff,” Jacob said. “We’re going to go to that court and we’re going to hope that they do the right thing.”
Unless a court overturns the board’s decision, the Americans for Citizen Voting initiative will not appear on the Nov. 3 statewide ballot.
Americans for Citizen Voting Chairman Paul Jacob: ‘You can’t cheat the people of Michigan and get away with it’
The proposed constitutional amendment aims to require proof of citizenship and photo ID to vote, create a statewide citizenship verification system, and require the Michigan Secretary of State to vet voter rolls for noncitizens and report annually about those efforts to state lawmakers.
Jacobs told the media Americans for Citizen Voting will challenge Monday’s decision in court.
“The people of Michigan, 700,000 plus, signed this petition,” Jacob said. “People deserve a vote on this issue, and they’re going to get one,” he continued.
“I am more than frustrated. I am ready to continue to do battle because we’re not giving up,” Jacob said. “You can’t cheat the people of Michigan and get away with it.”
“We’re going to be back,” he added. “We’re going to go to every court we have to go to.”
The initiative is supported by Republican gubernatorial candidate John James, who signed the petition supporting the measure.
In a post on X on Monday, James blasted the Secretary of State office for blocking the initiative from the November ballot.
“She is using her office to fight voter ID and suppress the voices of 700,000 Michiganders who signed the petition to put Citizens Only Voting on the ballot this November,” James wrote.
Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, who has campaigned against proof of citizenship and photo ID to vote on both the state and federal level, is overseeing her own election for governor as the Democratic nominee.
They say “democratic socialism” as if the “democratic” can wash away the poverty, the stagnation and despair. Interesting how we don’t say “democratic fascism.” Or “democratic Nazism.” Or “democratic Jihad.” Or “democratic slavery.” Why or how does the word “democratic” excuse the horrors of socialism while excusing nothing else? In America and the supposedly free Western world, we are drowning in propaganda as much as anyone ever has been.
*******
A Texas judge won’t grant Karmelo Anthony a new trial. And Karmelo’s mighty pissed. If he was determined to butcher a harmless high school student, he should have done so in New York, California, Chicago or Seattle. Not only would he walk free; they’d make him mayor, Governor or run him for President.
My question remains: Why did the bloodthirsty little demon only get 35 years in prison? In Texas, it should have been the death penalty or (at a minimum) life without parole. We have reached a point where a murdering psychopath says he should get away with it because of his race. Millions agree. America is sinking.
*******
The Democratic Party is a spiraling hot mess, descending into barbarism. And its supporters cheer them on.
“Watching this is painful to both ears and eyes. I did want to make sure, however, that all of you really see the person Florida Democrats elected as their preferred candidate for the United States Senate. Meet Angie Nixon, a Democratic Socialists of America member. Angie Nixon is proud of this video, for it comes from her own YouTube page. This is her preferred volume and intellectual level.” — from American Thinker
Integrity is one of those virtues that’s a little hard to get your mind around. It’s more than just honesty and kindness, it’s being true to a moral compass, even when it’s hard.
When people lack integrity, they end up saying and doing things that hurt others. Worse, they often fail to take accountability and refuse to hear the reality of how they make others feel. Without being able to do this, people with low emotional integrity struggle to keep healthy relationships.
People with low mental and emotional integrity usually say these 10 phrases:
1. ‘No offense, but…’
People who actually have mental and emotional integrity never need to say “no offense, but…” before saying something. Why? Because they will either not say the offensive thing or frame their harsh feedback in the most compassionate way possible.
For example, if you have integrity and need to broach a sensitive topic, you’d say, “This might be tough to hear, but it’s important to me that I’m honest with you about how I’m feeling right now” instead of simply asking them not to be offended.
As professor Louay Safi argues in her book Leading with Compassion, people committed to healthy connection lead with compassion in their conversations, always looking for opportunities to create space and empower the people around them.
When you lead a hurtful comment with a phrase like “no offense,” not only does it dismiss and invalidate a person’s response, it cultivates a relationship where they don’t trust you. You are saying you don’t want to offend them, but it’s clear you don’t actually care if you do.
2. ‘Trust me’
We all know trust is essential in all sorts of close relationships. In fact, it’s almost impossible to fucntion without it. Saying, “trust me” is totally OK when you have a strong relationship where trust has been earned and maintained.
In other relationships, it feels like they’re either they’re trying to convince you of something or push you to rearrange your personal boundaries. It can feel deceivingly reassuring. People who are trustworthy generally don’t need to ask for trust. They show you who they are and let you decide whether you can, indeed, trust them.
3. ‘Don’t take this personally, but…’
Someone who has your best intentions in mind, especially in a close or long-term relationship, typically won’t use a phrase like this. Instead, they’ll know when something might hurt your feelings and frame it differently.
Not only is this phrase a way for someone to avoid accountability (hoping that their warning will remove some of the responsibility they don’t want to take on) it’s actively dismissive of a person’s true vulnerability and emotions in conversation.
According to a study published in the Personality and Individual Differences Journal, a person who fails to take accountability or uses a phrase like this to set up their future victimhood can be driven by a pathological need for validation or moral superiority. To address a person like this, ensure you’re actively communicating and setting appropriate boundaries.
4. ‘I’m just saying!’
A person with low mental and emotional integrity may reveal their true intentions by using a phrase like “I’m just saying” instead of apologizing or rewording their misguided perspectives. Unless this phrase is used as a joke, it’s almost never helpful.
Psychology expert Leon F Seltzer argues that defensiveness from an emotionally manipulative person may take many forms, from denying and dismissing other people’s responses to using phrases like this one that defend their hurtful statements. Instead of owning up to their actions, they encourage other people to adopt the shame or discomfort they feel, arguing that it’s another person’s fault for reacting in a certain way, rather than their own.
While it may seem subtle in passing conversations or heated arguments, this defensiveness and innate sense of victimhood can sabotage healthy relationships, leading to less productive communication and growing resentment.
5. ‘I’m fine’
A phrase like “I’m fine” can be subtly convincing in passing conversations, but for people with low emotional integrity, it’s a way for people to camouflage their true emotion and keep your attention as you wonder what they really feel. It can also be, as psychologist Margaret R. Rutherford suggests, about their own emotionally disconnect from vulnerability and honest emotional expression.
Often recognized as a phrase with deeper meaning in many relationships (and our society as a whole), the phrase “I’m fine” can encourage people to avoid truly addressing their emotions. Instead, they suppress them, leaving them to grow unacknowledged and resentful because the person they said it to didn’t manage to read their mind.
6. ‘You wouldn’t understand’
Especially in a relationship with someone you’re supposed to trust and feel secure with, a phrase like this can reveal someone’s true intentions and feelings about you (or themselves!). After all, they’re implying you’re just not capable of understanding or even empathy.
Sometimes this is a reflection of how bad and weird they feel about themselves. They truly believe something is so off about them, nobody would even be able to understand them. This is tragic. But it’s not your fault that they feel this way and you shouldn’t feel ashamed of it.
Especially in a relationship with someone you’re supposed to trust and feel secure with, a phrase like this can reveal someone’s true intentions and feelings about you (or themselves!). After all, they’re implying you’re just not capable of understanding or even empathy.
Sometimes this is a reflection of how bad and weird they feel about themselves. They truly believe something is so off about them, nobody would even be able to understand them. This is tragic. But it’s not your fault that they feel this way and you shouldn’t feel ashamed of it.
7. ‘You’re being dramatic’
According to Sherri Gordon, CLC, many emotionally manipulative people rely on subtle gaslighting phrases, like this one, to invalidate another person’s emotions or response to their hurtful actions or language. Not only is it intended to convey a sense of superiority over a moment of vulnerability, highlighting their hidden need for control, it sabotages healthy connection and trust in impactful ways.
Someone with your best interests in mind will be supportive, even if it’s uncomfortable or they don’t agree with your perspective, to ensure you feel heard. People who care more about their own needs and control will do the opposite, urging you to suppress your emotions and take on the burden of responsibility for their discomfort.
8. ‘Don’t take it personally’
Everything we do, from our interactions at work to our conversations with friends and moments of mindfulness amid the chaos of our routines, is personal. What we choose to say, not say, act on, and react to is personal. People who have integrity know that there isn’t anything people do in relationships that isn’t somehow personal.
People who are honest may say this and actually mean, “This wasn’t done intentionally to hurt you”. But you’lll know the difference between this and when someone hurts you or says something dismissive only to follow it up with this.
It’s not your reaction or “overreaction,” as a toxic person may try to suggest, that’s encouraging them to use a phrase like this, it’s their discomfort with having open conversations and apologizing for hurtful behavior. They’d prefer to attack and dismiss your reaction to their manipulation or condescension than take accountability for their bad behavior.
9. ‘You owe me’
When someone says this in a non-joking way, you know immediately it feels bad. People with integrity have no interest in making someone feel guilty or like they are owed.
The ones who say things like this likely struggle with entitlement in their relationships, feeling like they’re owed something by a partner simply because of who they are. This misguided superiority sabotages the healthy balance required to connect with others, often causing disconnect and resentment that hurts everyone’s emotional wellbeing and understanding.
A phrase like this may be camouflaging their desire for control, power, or dominance over a peer or partner, which is a big reason to keep an eye out for language like this.
10. ‘You’re acting crazy’
A gaslighter can often be subtle. While they may outright call you crazy, they are likely going to say things that mean the same thing but less directly. Look out for phrases like, “you know how you get” and “I’m actually concerned about you at this point because that didn’t happen at all” or “you seriously need to calm down” and “stop screaming at me”.
Obviously, these common gaslighting phrases only apply when you you haven’t been doing the thing you’re being accused of. An angry voice can feel like a scream to someone, especially if they grew up in a loud, chaotic house. But a person with high emotional integrity can admit that they may be sensitive to perceived shouting.
When someone uses gaslighting phrases, it has much more to do with their own insecurities and fear of rejection than your worthiness (or their own pathological need for control). Consider a phrase like this a reminder that you deserve someone who uplifts and actively creates space for communication, rather than invalidates your words or emotions.
Zayda Slabbekoorn is a senior editorial strategist with a bachelor’s degree in social relations & policy and gender studies who focuses on psychology, relationships, self-help, and human interest stories.
Iranian state media broadcast a chilling three-minute video fantasizing about killing Barron Trump in a disturbing escalation against President Trump and his family — as Tehran braces for an onslaught of additional crushing economic penalties.
The clip titled “Where to kill Barron Trump” claimed to show the movements of President Trump’s 20-year-old son, claiming he is “fully monitored” and showing depictions of the dorms at New York University’s Constance Milstein & Family Global Academic Center, according to a translation of the video by Euronews.
It further stated that it uncovered Barron’s accounts for Xbox, FIFA video games, and Discord, as well as those of his classmates, naming two of them.
In addition to the disturbing video, multiple reports indicated that the regime placed a $10 million bounty on Barron Trump’s head. The Post could not independently verify the alleged bounty, the claims about his movements or the statements about his classmates.
“This is just the beginning! Barron Trump, wait for us!” the video concluded.
The sickening video of the president’s youngest son was distributed in media linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), according to Middle East news outlet Al Bawaba.
It comes on the heels of another video paraded around IRGC-linked media from July, in which Tasnim News Agency released a video, “Where to Kill Melania?” that similarly claimed to know Melania Trump’s location.
That same month, a billboard emerged in Tehran’s Islamic Revolution Square showing the president appearing to be dead in a coffin with the English caption, “We Kill Trump.”
Iranian-backed media also pushed out a video titled “Where to Kill Trump?!” similarly claiming to present the routes that his presidential motorcade takes when traveling to and from his residences in Florida and New York.
A TV segment in Iran purportedly details the place of residence and habits of Barron Trump.@IsraelWarRoom/X
The segment claims a $10 million bounty has been placed on the US president’s youngest son, with a voiceover claiming ‘many would be willing’ to assassinate him.@IsraelWarRoom/X
It further stated that it uncovered Barron’s accounts for Xbox, FIFA video games, and Discord, as well as those of his classmates, naming two of them.
In addition to the disturbing video, multiple reports indicated that the regime placed a $10 million bounty on Barron Trump’s head. The Post could not independently verify the alleged bounty, the claims about his movements or the statements about his classmates.
“This is just the beginning! Barron Trump, wait for us!” the video concluded.
It comes on the heels of another video paraded around IRGC-linked media from July, in which Tasnim News Agency released a video, “Where to Kill Melania?” that similarly claimed to know Melania Trump’s location.
The video says that Barron’s movements and routine are “fully monitored.”@IsraelWarRoom/X
The Treasury could use its General Account to help fund purchases of government bonds, according to two senior Treasury officials.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has built up the TGA to around $950 billion currently.
The Treasury surprised markets last week by doubling the size of bond buybacks, but the impact on yields was short-lived because of skepticism over the firepower available to Bessent.
The Treasury could use its near $1 trillion General Account to help fund its recently announced plans to increase purchases of government bonds, according to two senior Treasury officials.
Using the TGA would provide the Treasury with considerable firepower to influence long-term bond yields. The Treasury surprised markets last week with an announcement that it would be doubling the size of buybacks of off-the-run securities on the long end from $2 billion to at least $4 billion. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on CNBC such operations could be even larger than the new higher minimum.
However, the Treasury made no mention of how it would fund the purchases. Most market participants assumed it would do so by selling short-term bills. The senior Treasury officials did not rule that out. Bessent in the CNBC interview called the operation a “Treasury Twist,” a reference to a government or Federal Reserve operation where long-term Treasurys are bought and paid for with short-term issuance. That also implied that short-term bonds would be sold.
But since the surprise announcement, bonds have retreated from an initial rally, sending yields higher, in part because of skepticism voiced by many market analysts about how effective the operation would be and whether the Treasury’s resources were too limited.
Using the TGA could change that perception. The TGA is essentially the government’s checking account, a rainy day fund of sorts held at the Federal Reserve. It is already funded with existing tax collections. Bessent has built up the TGA to around $950 billion currently, compared with a stated goal under the Biden administration of around $550 billion to $600 billion.
The officials would not say how much, if any, of the TGA would be used or when such an announcement could be made. There was no implication it could be used beyond the purchase of off-the-run securities that were the focus of last week’s announcement.
But they were clear that it is considered to be available.
Don’t need the Fed’s help
The TGA’s size is discretionary. When Janet Yellen ran the Treasury, officials said the goal was to set the TGA at a “week ahead of cash needs.” The current Treasury says it sets the account “consistent with Treasury’s long-standing cash balance policy.” Assuming any of it is used, and the Bessent Treasury wanted to maintain the near $1 trillion level, additional bonds would have to be sold to build it back up.
But running it somewhat lower would not appear to entail any immediate risk. Reducing the TGA would mean the government would have less cash on hand in the event of a new debt ceiling impasse. But the latest estimates are that a new limit won’t be hit until the winter of next year and perhaps not until the early spring. That would give time to build it back up if needed. Meanwhile, bond yields could be influenced by even a small use of the TGA or even just the recognition that the Treasury would use it to buy government bonds.
It also would limit any concern, also voiced by some bond market participants, that the Fed could be asked to help the Treasury in such operations. (The Fed holds the TGA like a bank, but does not consider it part of its monetary policy toolkit.)
The Treasury officials pushed back on criticism that the Treasury, in its surprise announcement, had abandoned its long-standing practice of being “regular and predictable” about bond sales and that it was gaming the market. The announcement of the enhanced buybacks came two weeks after the quarterly refunding announcement, when such information would normally be relayed to markets.
But the senior officials said that no change had been made to the actual official auction schedules. They added that the announcement was made nearly three weeks before the first operation will take place on Sept. 9, giving markets time to prepare. The Treasury also announced the plan for the entire quarter in its Aug. 19 announcement.
They added that since the first auction is not scheduled until Sept. 9, it was too early to judge the market impact.
Bessent told CNBC last week that the Treasury’s intent was to get the market to “focus on the fundamentals and not trade the headlines during … a quiet period in a thin market. So we are trying to keep the market in equilibrium.”
He said he expected progress in the deficit when tariff revenue returns after court-mandated refunds are replaced by new tariffs. And he said that top officials would be meeting soon to forge plans that would improve the fiscal situation.
Key Points
The Treasury could use its General Account to help fund purchases of government bonds, according to two senior Treasury officials.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has built up the TGA to around $950 billion currently.
The Treasury surprised markets last week by doubling the size of bond buybacks, but the impact on yields was short-lived because of skepticism over the firepower available to Bessent.
The Treasury could use its near $1 trillion General Account to help fund its recently announced plans to increase purchases of government bonds, according to two senior Treasury officials.
Using the TGA would provide the Treasury with considerable firepower to influence long-term bond yields. The Treasury surprised markets last week with an announcement that it would be doubling the size of buybacks of off-the-run securities on the long end from $2 billion to at least $4 billion. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on CNBC such operations could be even larger than the new higher minimum.
However, the Treasury made no mention of how it would fund the purchases. Most market participants assumed it would do so by selling short-term bills. The senior Treasury officials did not rule that out. Bessent in the CNBC interview called the operation a “Treasury Twist,” a reference to a government or Federal Reserve operation where long-term Treasurys are bought and paid for with short-term issuance. That also implied that short-term bonds would be sold.
But since the surprise announcement, bonds have retreated from an initial rally, sending yields higher, in part because of skepticism voiced by many market analysts about how effective the operation would be and whether the Treasury’s resources were too limited.
Using the TGA could change that perception. The TGA is essentially the government’s checking account, a rainy day fund of sorts held at the Federal Reserve. It is already funded with existing tax collections. Bessent has built up the TGA to around $950 billion currently, compared with a stated goal under the Biden administration of around $550 billion to $600 billion.
The officials would not say how much, if any, of the TGA would be used or when such an announcement could be made. There was no implication it could be used beyond the purchase of off-the-run securities that were the focus of last week’s announcement.
But they were clear that it is considered to be available.
Don’t need the Fed’s help
The TGA’s size is discretionary. When Janet Yellen ran the Treasury, officials said the goal was to set the TGA at a “week ahead of cash needs.” The current Treasury says it sets the account “consistent with Treasury’s long-standing cash balance policy.” Assuming any of it is used, and the Bessent Treasury wanted to maintain the near $1 trillion level, additional bonds would have to be sold to build it back up.
But running it somewhat lower would not appear to entail any immediate risk. Reducing the TGA would mean the government would have less cash on hand in the event of a new debt ceiling impasse. But the latest estimates are that a new limit won’t be hit until the winter of next year and perhaps not until the early spring. That would give time to build it back up if needed. Meanwhile, bond yields could be influenced by even a small use of the TGA or even just the recognition that the Treasury would use it to buy government bonds.
It also would limit any concern, also voiced by some bond market participants, that the Fed could be asked to help the Treasury in such operations. (The Fed holds the TGA like a bank, but does not consider it part of its monetary policy toolkit.)
The Treasury officials pushed back on criticism that the Treasury, in its surprise announcement, had abandoned its long-standing practice of being “regular and predictable” about bond sales and that it was gaming the market. The announcement of the enhanced buybacks came two weeks after the quarterly refunding announcement, when such information would normally be relayed to markets.
But the senior officials said that no change had been made to the actual official auction schedules. They added that the announcement was made nearly three weeks before the first operation will take place on Sept. 9, giving markets time to prepare. The Treasury also announced the plan for the entire quarter in its Aug. 19 announcement.
They added that since the first auction is not scheduled until Sept. 9, it was too early to judge the market impact.
Bessent told CNBC last week that the Treasury’s intent was to get the market to “focus on the fundamentals and not trade the headlines during … a quiet period in a thin market. So we are trying to keep the market in equilibrium.”
He said he expected progress in the deficit when tariff revenue returns after court-mandated refunds are replaced by new tariffs. And he said that top officials would be meeting soon to forge plans that would improve the fiscal situation.
Bessent could tap near $1 trillion Treasury General Account to fund bond buybacks, sources said.
The commentary in a recent Wall Street Journal by Senator Phil Gramm and Representative Jeb Hensarling did the nation an immense service by dismantling the persistent myth that private market greed and financial deregulation caused the 2008 financial crisis. As they rightly pointed out, inflation-adjusted mortgage rates during the bubble era were historically high, and financial institutions were suffocating under increasingly strict federal mandates, not running wild in a deregulated vacuum.
Yet, for nearly two decades, the public has been fed a completely fabricated baseline narrative. Having served as the Chief Economist at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and later as the Chief Economist at Freddie Mac during critical regulatory shifts, and as an expert in securitization—having structured the first CMO with Larry Fink at First Boston, the first CBO with Mike Milken at Drexel, the first unique MBB with Lou Ranieri at Salomon, and later the first CLO—I watched the true mechanics of this disaster play out from the inside. The reality is uncomfortable for the political class: the real crime of 2008 was not a failure of capitalism, but a catastrophic failure of central planning.
The subprime crisis was deliberately engineered in Washington. Through affordable housing quotas managed by HUD, progressive policymakers systematically weaponized government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. To meet arbitrary, politically-motivated homeownership targets, these institutions were forced to aggressively buy up low-quality, high-risk mortgages.
The mechanics of this distortion were devastatingly simple. To satisfy Washington’s mandates, the GSEs had to continuously lower their credit scoring thresholds, accept zero-down-payment structures, and purchase loans with unverified incomes. This top-down command economy completely erased private market discipline. Private lenders—knowing they could instantly dump these toxic, subprime originations onto the balance sheets of government-backed entities—stopped underwriting for risk and began underwriting for political compliance. By forcing the financial system to accept trillions of dollars in low-quality debt, Washington single-handedly fueled the historic housing bubble.
When the house of cards inevitably collapsed, the economic devastation was staggering. The direct government fiscal costs alone reached an estimated $2 trillion domestically and topped $12 trillion globally in banking interventions and stabilization efforts. But the indirect, structural costs were far worse: a permanent loss of up to $14 trillion in US economic output and the immediate vaporization of over $19 trillion in household wealth.
Faced with a disaster of their own making, policymakers pulled off a multi-trillion-dollar ideological cover-up that may ultimately prove to be far more damaging than the original crime.
To shift the blame entirely onto private capital, Washington weaponized the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC). The commission’s partisan majority report was custom-built to exonerate the state’s progressive interventions. To achieve this, the political class relied heavily on a curated roster of nationally-recognized academic contributors. These individuals perfectly embodied what Nobel laureate economist Friedrich Hayek famously labeled “armchair intellectuals”—theorists with zero actual industry experience whose abstract models merely confused the public and distracted attention from the fundamental, government-driven causes of the collapse.
This academic misdirection, operating in tandem with Marxist-driven street movements like Occupy Wall Street, successfully captured the public imagination. By framing a state-engineered credit crisis as an inherent flaw of the free market, Washington channeled public rage away from regulators and straight onto Wall Street. This manufactured consensus provided the perfect pretext to pass the Dodd-Frank Act—a massive expansion of state regulatory power that heavily penalized the private sector while leaving the government’s destructive, highly leveraged dominance over housing finance completely untouched.
The long-term consequences of this deception are playing out in real time today. We see the latest fruit of the 2008 cover-up in the radical economic platforms of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). Because the true history of the crash was erased, a new generation of progressives now uses the false narrative of “market failure” to demand national rent controls, a federal tenant bill of rights, and the aggressive expansion of state-owned “social housing.” They are deploying the exact same rhetoric used by the FCIC majority and the Zuccotti Park occupiers to advocate for the complete central planning of American real estate.
By shielding Washington from accountability, the 2008 cover-up institutionalized systemic moral hazard and permanently crippled market discipline. When central planning fails, the state’s universal response is to demand even more centralized control. Unless we aggressively correct the historical record and expose the armchair intellectuals who enabled this deception, the ongoing ideological cover-up will succeed in setting the stage for a new generation of even more devastating, state-engineered economic collapses.
Iran’s Parliament speaker has issued an unusually stark warning about the country’s deepening economic troubles, declaring that even a powerful military cannot protect the Islamic Republic if its people are hungry and the economy continues to deteriorate.
Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, one of the country’s most senior political figures, made the comments during a meeting with Iranian and Iraqi economists in Baghdad, according to Middle East news outlet Al Bawaba.
“No matter how strong our military power becomes, if we are hungry, we will not be able to endure,” Qalibaf warned, according to the report.
The comments represented a striking acknowledgment from inside Iran’s leadership that the country’s economic crisis could threaten its ability to maintain national security and political stability.
Qalibaf said military power cannot be separated from economic strength, describing security and the economy as “two wings” that depend upon one another.
Without security, he said, investors will not risk their capital. But without economic growth, domestic production, and sufficient income for ordinary citizens, the government cannot sustain security indefinitely.
His comments come as Iran continues to face severe economic pressures after years of international sanctions, regional conflict and enormous government expenditures on its military and regional allies.
Iran’s inflation has been reported at around 90%, while GDP has contracted sharply. More than 1 million jobs have been lost, and oil exports are now close to zero because of the U.S. naval blockade.
Meanwhile, Iran continues to invest heavily in ballistic missiles, drones, and other weapons while also supporting armed groups and allies across the Middle East.
But Qalibaf’s remarks suggest Iranian leaders are increasingly concerned that military capabilities offer little protection against growing economic hardship at home.
We are hungry, we cannot survive,” news outlet Al Bawaba summarized Qalibaf’s warning in its headline Saturday.
Qalibaf, a former commander in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, has long been considered a major figure in Iran’s conservative political establishment.
His willingness to publicly link hunger and economic weakness to Iran’s national security problems could therefore carry particular significance.
The Parliament speaker emphasized that Iran needs economic growth, investment, financial activity, and increased domestic production if it hopes to remain resilient.
His message was straightforward: missiles and military power alone cannot guarantee the survival of the Iranian state.
For Iran to remain strong, Qalibaf said, the government must also provide an economy capable of supporting its people.
Without both, he warned, Iran “will not be able to endure.”
THE ARTFUL DILETTANTE 