Putin has decided to talk peace with Trump while he dominates the battlefield in eastern Ukraine. His troops are closing in on Donetsk’s main urban centers, whose capture would give him total control of Donbas, where he already fully occupies the province of Luhansk. But it could be looking to get the best deal possible while he is ahead.

The prolonged sieges and intense urban warfare that capturing Donetsk’s cities of Kramatorsk, Kostyantynivka, and Sloviansk with a combined population of one quarter million and fortified by Ukrainian military engineers during months, risks dangerously overstretching his army and straining Russia’s overheated economy, whose oil revenues have dropped by 18.5 percent, due as much to sanctions as to persistent Ukrainian done strikes against refineries. (RELATED: Putin Caught in an Expanding Spiderweb)

These factors, combined with the secondary sanctions that the White House has just announced against India to start blocking Russian oil exports through third countries, are what’s driving him to meet Trump in Alaska this Friday. It’s Putin who requested face-to-face discussions with Trump, according to U.S. officials who say that he instantly agreed to hold the summit on U.S. territory in an unexpected show of deference that indicates much eagerness on his part.

Putin is losing everywhere except Donetsk, and as he focuses on encircling the Ukrainians, Trump is working to encircle him.

When talk of peace talks began soon after Trump took office last February, The American Spectator noted a brief statement by Putin saying that negotiations would start in “six months.” That was how long he might have projected it would take for his army to enter Donetsk’s main urban centers, containing Ukraine’s military logistical hub in Donbas and important industrial facilities and rare earth mines. (RELATED: Zelensky Has Left Ukraine With a Poor Hand)

Time is now up, and Russia has cut the main arteries connecting Kramatorsk and Kostyantynivka to the surrounded citadel of Pokrovsk at the southern end of Ukraine’s defensive lines in Donetsk’s defensive lines, which are effectively broken.

Last week, Russia finally cleared the hilltop fortress town of Chasiv Yar, controlling strategic high ground above Kramatorsk and Kostyantynivka — after a 16-month siege. Putin may be getting close to his objectives, but more intense fighting lies ahead as his generals increasingly opt for tactics of gradual encirclement rather than massed frontal assaults to spare the huge casualties that the army may no longer be able to sustain and adapt to a growing shortage of tanks.

Even as Putin moves on Kramatorsk from all directions, the heightened level of fighting anticipated as the U.S. starts squeezing Russia’s war machine with stepped-up sanctions has clearly incentivized Putin to get sincere with Trump after ignoring his previous calls for a ceasefire. He desperately needs to test whether Trump can arrange Ukraine’s handover of Kramatorsk in return for a cessation of hostilities, which is the U.S. president’s long-stated objective.

“It’s going to be very difficult,” said Trump, aware of the grim battlefield realities and President Zelenskyy’s doctrine of holding every inch of Ukrainian territory at all costs. Ukraine’s president has publicly opposed ceding territory to Russia as the latest plan gets unveiled, but Trump says that Zelenskyy should be included in future meetings with Putin, to which Vlad the Impaler has surprisingly agreed. (RELATED: Why Trump and Zelensky Don’t Get Along)

Trump talks about “land swaps” in which Ukraine might concede Donetsk in exchange for Russian withdrawals from other parts of eastern Ukraine. According to State Department sources familiar with the Moscow talks between Putin and White House special envoy Steven Witcoff, Russia would return the southern provinces of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson.

This seems unrealistic, and Witcoff has walked back statements attributed to him concerning Putin’s willingness to abandon the territories providing vital land corridors linking Russia and the Donbas to the strategic Black Sea peninsula of Crimea occupied in 2014 and incorporated through a referendum. The most that Putin could readily agree to are limited withdrawals from empty land surrounding a nuclear power reactor located along the outer layers of the Russian front lines. It has been operating under the protection of the U.N.’s IAEA since the start of the war.

Russia might also return areas it has recently occupied along the marshy Dnieper river delta, separating the Ukrainian-held part of Kherson on the west bank from the Russian-occupied east bank. Moscow is unlikely to have much of a problem in formally agreeing to divide the region with the waterway as the demarcation line in a prospective ceasefire.

Putin might also be expected to pull troops out of the northern province of Sumy, which he invaded in pursuit of Ukrainian forces expelled from Russia’s neighboring Kursk region last April. Zelenskyy gambled on holding Kursk for a big land swap with Putin but lost badly at great cost to his army, whose crack units got decimated.

Putin’s daily missile and drone barrages on Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities also seem to be taking their toll on Ukrainian morale. According to the latest Gallup polls, 69 percent of Ukrainians favor conceding territory for a peace deal with Russia, the inverse of where public opinion stood six months ago. (RELATED: New York Times Commits Sin of Honesty)

Putin has Zelenskyy squarely on the back foot but fears that a prolonged siege of Kramatorsk could exhaust his army, undermine his strategic position, and gradually weaken future negotiating leverage. Trump says that he wants to “stop the killing as soon as possible,” but may hold back on a deal with Putin and even up the ante economically and militarily to get concessions from him.

Aside from the sanctions that Trump is gradually implementing and will take some time to impact Russia’s war machine, there are reports that the administration is preparing to step up arms deliveries to Ukraine to enhance its defensive as well as offensive capacity.

According to unconfirmed reports, a $10 billion package is on its way to Kyiv that includes Patriot batteries scraped up from U.S. stocks over the objections of certain sectors of the Pentagon: large numbers of AMRAAM missiles for the 32 F-16s delivered by NATO allies allowing Ukraine to challenge Russia’s air superiority and new HIMARS systems and ATACMS missiles for added punch. (RELATED: While Trump Arms Ukraine, US Firms Arm Russia)

It’s telling that when Putin’s National Security Council chairman Dmitry Medvedev went on one of his customary rants about going nuclear against countries supporting Ukrainian missile strikes on Russian territory, Trump announced that he was moving two U.S. nuclear submarines closer to Russia. Trump also reportedly called Zelenskyy to ask if he could hit Moscow and St. Petersburg, according to what seems like a controlled leak to the Financial Times.

There are further reasons why Putin is suddenly jumping at the chance to talk to Trump. In the same week that the White House announced the Alaska summit, Trump met at the White House with the presidents of Russia’s neighboring Central Asian states of Azerbaijan and Armenia, which formed part of the former Soviet Union. He brokered a peace deal over a longstanding territorial dispute between them and established a U.S. strategic presence along Russia’s sensitive underbelly.

The agreement establishes rights of U.S. energy companies to manage a “South Caucasus transit corridor” for gas pipelines into Turkey and eastern Europe and lifts restrictions on defense cooperation between Azerbaijan and the U.S. In the aftermath of Putin’s manifest impotence against the U.S. and Israel in the war with Iran, closer ties between his Muslim neighbors and the U.S. are of serious concern to the Kremlin.

Putin seems to be losing everywhere except Donetsk, and as he focuses on encircling the Ukrainians, Trump is working to encircle him. Russia’s leader may be a dangerous sociopath but is not divorced from reality. Another major factor present in his mind is Trump’s deal with Europe for the purchase of $750 billion of American fossil fuels. This leaves Russia out of the European market, which has continued to consume Russian gas, eliminating Moscow’s economic leverage on America’s NATO partners. NATO’s agreement to raise its defense spending to 5 percent similarly vanishes any real chance Putin may have of reconstituting the Soviet empire and turning all of Ukraine into a vassal state.

As Putin tests Trump on getting him Donetsk so he can consolidate the only reconquest he is ever likely to make and sell it as a victory to the Russian people, Trump might gauge whether Putin could be scared enough to settle for a ceasefire demarcation line in Donetsk, somewhere east of Kramatorsk.

Martin Arostegui

Martin Arostegui is a terrorism analyst who has reported from conflict zones around the world for various news organizations, including Voice of America, the Wall Street Journal, the Daily Telegraph, Fox News, CNN, the Washington Times, the London Times, and Diario las Américas. He is author of a book on Special Forces called Twilight Warriors (Bloomsbury, St Martin’s).

The mayoral candidate’s support comes from a young, mostly white, often childless, likely temporary population insulated from the consequences of the urban decline they’re about to cause.

There is a version of American liberalism that treats progress as a shared destiny, social improvement being the gradual and unstoppable realization of the popular hope for a better country and world. This was the rhetoric of the Obama era, a time when the arc of history was bending ever forward and when liberals saw their coming accomplishments as the just and natural fulfillment of past movements and ideas. Leaving aside Zohran Mamdani’s statement that the now widely reviled Bill de Blasio was the best New York City mayor of his lifetime, the 33-year-old state assemblyman and Democratic Party mayoral candidate makes no claims to be completing something that somebody else began. Mamdani dreams of turning America’s capitalist engine into a national beacon of entitlement, a place where the authorities solve all major problems of body and spirit: “A life of dignity should not be reserved for a fortunate few,” Mamdani said in his victory speech on June 24. “It should be one that city government guarantees for each and every New Yorker.”

Who doesn’t want “a life of dignity” guaranteed by City Hall? Reality isn’t so accommodating: Leftist experiments in American municipal governance have been a bloody and wasteful disappointment, swiftly earning the hatred of the people these projects claimed to have wanted to help. In San Francisco, progressive district attorney Chesa Boudin lost a 2022 recall election amid the city’s nationally embarrassing deterioration. By 2021, Keisha Lance Bottoms, the once-renowned progressive mayor of Atlanta, was too unpopular to run for reelection. In New York, the left-wing de Blasio, an admirer of the Sandinistas in his youth and probably beyond, struggled to break double digits in polls for a Park Slope congressional primary after two unpopular terms in Gracie Mansion.

However unpopular he may now be, de Blasio looks like a civic giant, the early-21st-century New York mayor likely to have the deepest and longest impact on the city. The charismatic inheritor of de Blasio’s unfinished and unloved ideological project, Mamdani wants a $30 minimum wage, which would strangle law-abiding businesses or drive service jobs into the selectively tolerated informal economy; an indefinite freeze on government-regulated apartment rents, which would further warp an already distorted and exorbitant housing market; a halt on hiring police officers and a focus on a new Department of Community Safety, an experiment that might jeopardize the city’s significant but fragile recent reductions in crime; and free bus service, which would deprive the Metropolitan Transit Authority of about a third of a billion dollars in annual revenue in order to turn the city’s transit fleet into a rolling homeless shelter.

These are not changes that a majority of New Yorkers seem to want. The most optimistic polls for Mamdani have him at about 40 percent support among registered voters, good enough for a commanding lead over a four-way field that includes disgraced former governor Andrew Cuomo, semi-disgraced current mayor Eric Adams, and 71-year-old paramilitary leader Curtis Sliwa, the Republican candidate. Even with this shambolic opposition, Mamdani is on pace to post the weakest showing for a Democratic mayoral nominee since Bill Thompson cracked 46 percent of the vote in his losing bid against Michael Bloomberg in 2009. It has been generations since a Democratic candidate for the city’s top office polled in the mid-30s, as Mamdani has in several post-primary surveys.

Mamdani’s soft numbers aren’t surprising: His campaign comes at a time when New York has moved steadily to the right. Elected Republicans now represent sections of Queens, Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Staten Island in the City Council, the State Assembly, or in Congress. Donald Trump went from roughly 19 percent of the vote citywide in 2016 to more than 30 percent in 2024. The single Manhattan precinct that Trump won in 2024 was in Chinatown, reflecting Asian American frustration at “equity”-driven attempts to gut merit-based programs in New York City public schools. Dozens of Jewish, Black, and Hispanic neighborhoods were more pro-Trump in 2024 than they had been four years earlier.

Mamdani should be beatable, even with a field divided between unattractive alternatives. Endorsees of the Democratic Socialists of America, the hard-left activist network that pushed Mamdani to victory in his 2021 campaign for a state assembly seat in Queens, hold two of the 51 seats on New York’s City Council, the most ideological of the elected bodies representing the Five Boroughs.

The triumph of a leftism with limited appeal in New York and poor results in the rest of the country increasingly seems inevitable in the New York City that Bill de Blasio built. Inchoate plans for multiple anti-Mamdani super PACs are currently so disorganized that the consultants involved are trashing each other in public: “The usual gaggle of members of the political industrial complex are going to grab as much cash as they can,” Hank Sheinkopf, a longtime Democratic political operative, told The New York Times. Centrist Democratic donors in finance and real estate are hesitant to oppose the new face of their party, out of fear of never again being invited to join a museum board or a gallerist dinner or of having their children targeted by private school teachers and administrators who are part of the rising Mamdani voter class. Mamdani has paid just enough lip service to the idea of government-mandated density and policies geared toward preferred private-sector clients—a mix of half-hearted or nonsensical proposals, aimed squarely at the scared and credulous, that commentators have dubbed “Halal-cart socialism”—to earn the non-opposition of the market-friendly right wing of Democratic-aligned domestic policy voices.

The city’s Jewish leaders are approaching Mamdani as if he were already in Gracie Mansion. “No one thinks it’s going to be good for the Jewish community to be hostile and to be in constant war with the next mayor,” one unnamed source told Jewish Insider in an article stacked with similarly cowering and pathetic quotes from activists and foundation officials who would rather not be named. “For the community’s sake, we have to move on.” Who cares if Mamdani remains incapable of condemning would-be globalizers of the “intifada” against Israeli Jews and their supporters, or that he’s spent his brief and unimpressive career in Albany on a quixotic mission to strip many of the state’s Jewish charities of their tax exemptions? The potential costs for these so-called communal organizations opposing a Democratic nominee who got a record 565,000 votes in a mayoral primary are too high, even with his polling average stuck in the high 30s and top Democratic Party leaders declining to endorse him.

Armin Rosen, Tablet Magazine

Attending the sentencing of Abdiaziz Farah in the massive Feeding Our Future fraud trial last week has triggered me to review issues implicit in the two Feeding Our Future trials held in the case so far and in the 2016 trial of defendants who were convicted of material support for terrorism. I covered all three trials on Power Line. The Feeding Our Future case involves an almost entirely Somali cast of defendants that has now grown to 73. All nine defendants convicted in the terrorism case are Somali. Indictments in yet another fraud case will surely follow the execution of search warrants by federal authorities at eight locations around the Twin Cities last month. Those indictments will also feature a cast of Somali defendants.

Covering the 2016 Somali terrorism trial before Judge Michael Davis in Minneapolis was an incredibly rich experience. The case was located at the intersection of Islam, immigration, and terrorism. The group of Somali Minnesotans charged in the case or gone to ISIS in Syria without being charged numbered 12 or 13 or 14. It’s not a small number, and it only represented the Twin Cities’ contribution to the problem.

From the time that I first started following pretrial proceedings, I was struck by the Muhammads involved in the case. They seemed to represent a variation of the town hall meeting in Blazing Saddles featuring one speaker after another named Johnson — Gabby Johnson, Howard Johnson, Samuel Johnson, and so on. Their appearance inverted the Marxist adage. Here history repeated itself, but first as farce, then as tragedy (or something like it).

The first Muhammad is of course the prophet of Islam. Charles Lister was the prosecution’s expert witness at trial. Lister is the author of The Syrian Jihad: Al-Qaeda, the Islamic State and the Evolution of an Insurgency. At trial Lister gave an account of the mess in Syria as of 2016 and of the evolution of ISIS. In his testimony he referred without fail to “the prophet Muhammad.” Prophet or not, he is the man without whom…well, you know what I mean.

The second Muhammad is Mohamed Farah [photo above]. Farah was one of the three defendants at trial. Like his friends who pleaded guilty or who were convicted along with him, Farah’s recruitment to ISIS didn’t take much. Growing up Muslim in the Twin Cities’ large Somali community, he attended local mosques and supplemented his education with Islamic studies. Adding a large dose of ISIS videos to the mix was apparently enough to move Farah et al. to aspire to live under the caliphate declared by ISIS. He yearned to chop heads and die as a martyr.

In November 2014 Farah left Minneapolis by bus for JFK International Airport to catch a flight that would get him to ISIS. At JFK Farah was intercepted by the FBI. Asked where he was headed, Farah said he was taking a solo vacation to sunny Sofia, Bulgaria. The FBI sent him back home to Minneapolis. He was ultimately arrested in San Diego the following April in the sting conducted by the FBI.

The third Muhammad represented Farah at trial. Murad Mohammad was Farah’s attorney. On the first day of trial Farah sought to replace Mohammad with another attorney. Farah was unhappy that Mohammad had advised him to plead guilty to the charges. Farah told Judge Davis that Mohammad warned him, “Judge Davis will ‘f’ you if you don’t plead guilty.” After interrogating both Farah and Mohammad, Judge Davis denied Farah’s motion.

In 2019 Mohammad was was disbarred for failing to handle 11 client matters with the appropriate diligence. He also misappropriated nearly $13,000 from three clients and failed both to return unearned fees to clients and account for the use of clients’ funds. He attributed his misconduct to four murder trials in 2016, a divorce, and single parenting that led to stress and mental health issues. The Minnesota Supreme Court’s disbarment order did not include the names of affected clients, although Mohammad told the Star Tribune that Farah was not one of them.

The fourth Muhammad is a legal assistant who withdrew as a member of Farah’s defense team. His name is Hassan “Jaamici” Mohamud. Mohamud wore many hats. His home base is the Minnesota Da’wah Institute, where he serves as the imam. Mohamud was born in Somalia. He memorized the Koran at the age of thirteen. He is an expert in Islamic law. In 2009 the local FOX affiliate found Mohamud advising Muslims to avoid the “hellfire that comes with living in America.”

Mohamud turned up on the recordings made by informant Abdhirahman Bashir. Before trial the prosecution put defendants on notice that it intended to introduce a recording that cited Mohamud’s instruction in the battlefield prayer for jihad. At the hearing Judge Michael Davis held on this matter, Mohamud and his boss (attorney P. Chinedu Nwaneri) resolved the issue by withdrawing from the defense. I wrote about the hearing in “Sheikh Hassan’s retreat.”

As a result of the hearing, we learned that Mohamud had sought to persuade Abdirizak Warsame against pleading guilty. In connection with the hearing Warsame attorney Jon Hopeman filed an affidavit setting forth Mohamud’s efforts to interfere with the deal Hopeman had worked out on behalf of Warsame. On the evening before Warsame was to plead guilty, Mohamud counseled Warsame “that all the defendants should stick together and go to trial, and if they did, good things would happen.” Hopeman, it should be noted, is a prominent and respected member of Minnesota’s defense bar. In his remarks to Judge Davis, Murad Mohammad told Judge Davis that he had emphatically warned Hassan Mohamud not to speak to defendants other than Farah. It was among the first points that Mohammad made.

Before his disgrace in this case, Mohamud would frequently turn up in the news as a Somali “community leader.” In the photo at right he was holding forth outside the federal courthouse in Minneapolis in his accustomed style. That’s some “community leader” you’ve got there.

As a “community leader,” Mohamud had been invited to participate in the annual tour of secure areas at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport given by DHS to local Muslim leaders. As Jack Paar used to say, I kid you not. I wrote about the airport tour for Somali “community leaders” in the 2017 City Journal column “Magical Mystery Tour, Minneapolis Version.”

Mohamud took part in such a tour in 2015 but was disinvited before the 2016 tour took place. The Star Tribune reported that the disinvitation discouraged Mohamud “because, he said, his mosque has sponsored several events bringing together Homeland Security and the Muslim community.” Mohamud asserted his disinvitation derived from his criticism “of U.S. anti-terror tactics in Minnesota.” On the contrary, however, it’s probably what got him invited in the first place.

The fifth Muhammad turned up late in the trial. His name is Burhan Mohumed [photo above]. Mohumed is a Somali “community organizer” and friend of defendants. He faithfully attended the trial to support his friends.

Mohumed was removed by marshals three times for violation of the protocol prohibiting cell phone use in the courtroom. He was brought before Judge Davis when he got involved in the fight that broke out in the hallway outside the courtroom one morning right in front of me. Mohumed refused to let the marshals take his photograph, as Judge Davis’s protocol also required. Mohumed said he had interceded in the fight, trying to break it up. After interrogating Mohumed in open court, Judge Davis banned him from the courthouse for the duration of the trial.

That wasn’t the last we heard of Mohumed. He turned up in the two New York Times stories on the trial. The Times found Mohumed to be a go-to guy to opine on the purported insufficiency of the evidence to support the guilty verdicts returned by the jury against defendants.

Scott Johnson, Powerline

By Steve McCann

After sixteen years, the most consequential political revolution in the history of the United States is drawing to a close. The current Ruling Class’s domination of the two major political parties is in shambles as the Democrat party is now controlled by true believers in Marxist Wokeism, and the Republican party has been taken over by Donald Trump and America First populists. The tentacles of the ruling elites that have long encircled both parties have been severed.

Over the years, the current Ruling Class, which can trace its beginning to the Woodrow Wilson administration, has choreographed the two parties into unique and complementary roles. The Democrat party was portrayed as the party of “the people” and the superior political strategists and tacticians promoting an increasingly active government. Meanwhile, the Republican party’s role was to be the token to limit, while still accommodating, the big-government policies of the Democrat party and thus the ever-increasing power of the Ruling Class.

As long as there was peace and ever-growing prosperity, that arrangement went unnoticed by the vast majority of an apathetic electorate as the wealth and influence of the nation’s elites increased geometrically.

While the Ruling Class reveled in their power and influence, they ignored the gradual infiltration of die-in-the-wool Marxists into the hierarchy of the Democrat party. They were certain that a comparatively small cadre of true believers would never be able to take over a major political party. The ruling elites over-confidently believed they would always maintain their hegemony within the Democrat party.

Further, as long as the Ruling Class maintained its influence within the Republican party hierarchy, the Marxists’ gradual infiltration into the upper reaches of the Democrat party could be tolerated as part of the Ruling Class’s orchestrated charade of caring for the welfare of all Americans.

However, in 2008, Barack Obama’s election lit the fuse of a bloodless revolution that would eventuate in the decline and fall of the current Ruling Class.

In the run-up to the 2008 election, the ruling elite’s preferred candidates were Hillary Clinton and John McCain. They knew that a glib Barack Obama was steeped in Marxist ideology and had long been a foot soldier for the cause. But two factors they could not control were his ability to portray himself as a “moderate” and his skin color, which would almost certainly guarantee his winning the Democrat nomination against an unlikeable Hillary Clinton and the presidency against a feckless John McCain. Thus, the Ruling Class was forced into tacitly endorsing Obama’s candidacy despite being uncertain if they could control him, his radical left-wing policies, and his declared intent to transform the Democrat party and the nation.

Once elected, Obama and his minions almost immediately exploited his unique position as the first black president, a weapon Obama himself never failed to wield in order to manipulate, intimidate, and marginalize the Ruling Class, who were the ultimate target of dedicated Marxist true-believers.

During the length of Obama’s two terms, many of these so-called best and brightest became increasingly afraid of losing their status and lifestyles if they condemned his far-left governance and overt racial animosity, the latter of which was a major part of Obama’s plan to foment nationwide discontent. As a byproduct of their cowardice, they were increasingly reluctant to confront the ongoing and stealthy success of Obama’s transformation of the Democrat party.

While the Marxists continued their takeover of the party, there was a tenuous understanding on power sharing. The Ruling Class duped themselves into believing they would continue to dominate the corridors of power in exchange for their implicit acquiescence to the Marxist transformation of America via the culture and society under the umbrella of Wokeism. When faced with the choice of a de facto alliance with the radical left or purging them from the party and maintaining the status quo, they chose expediency over pragmatism.

Nonetheless, the elites still had their domination of the Republican party to fall back on. They were certain that their tentacles in the party would allow them an alternative to maintain their power if the Marxist takeover of the Democrat party ever became a fait accompli.

That all changed in 2015 with Donald Trump’s announcement that he was going to pursue the nomination of the Republican party because of the misgovernance and chaos brought about by the Ruling Class’s tacit endorsement of Barack Obama’s policies and anti-Americanism.

Donald Trump possessed a trait that the ruling elites and their Marxist-inspired allies could never match. Trump could not only relate to and empathize with the “unwashed masses,” but he also thought, acted, and spoke like many of them. The possibility of having a man they perceived to be the composite of their stereotypes of “deplorable” Americans occupying the White House and unshackling the Republican party from the Ruling Class infuriated the self-styled best and brightest.

The Ruling Class viewed Trump’s ability to connect with the American people and create a new powerful political movement as an existential threat to its power. Instead of working with Trump for the betterment of the country, its members, including once conservative “Never Trumpers,” descended into uncontrolled rage and further allied themselves with the Marxist/Woke left. This alliance committed some of the biggest blunders in American political history.

The anger at Trump mutated into a frenzied obsession to leave no stone unturned in either forcing him to resign, or effectively neutering his presidency, or impeaching, and, if necessary, imprisoning him. In their addled thinking, nothing, even if it alienated half of the citizenry, was out of bounds to achieve their single-minded goal of destroying Donald Trump and the political movement he inspired.

Despite their incessant ankle-biting, in his first four years as president, Donald Trump rebuilt the economy, significantly curtailed illegal immigration, secured peace agreements no one thought possible, did not embroil the United States in any new foreign wars, and began the transformation of the Republican party into a populist America First party.

These successes further enraged the ruling elite/radical left alliance. This cabal foolishly threw caution to the wind and overtly and massively engaged in voter fraud in 2020 in order to elect a senescent Joe Biden, thereby permanently alienating over half of the electorate. They then stupidly acquiesced to the disastrous policies of their Marxist allies in governing the nation.

Perhaps most significantly because of its symbolism, in 2023-24, they mindlessly attempted to manipulate the legal system in order to imprison Trump for the rest of his life, increasing his popularity among the vast bulk of the citizenry. Trump’s landslide victory in the 2024 election sealed the fate of the current Ruling Class.

Thanks to their avarice, megalomania, and myopia, the ruling elites have effectively destroyed their power base. They have lost virtually all their influence in the Democrat party as it is now fully controlled by its Marxist/Woke wing. Their reckless determination to destroy Trump and the MAGA movement eventuated in the squandering of all their influence in the Republican party.

The political landscape in the United States now consists of an anti-American Marxist/Woke-obsessed Democrat party versus an egalitarian Republican party. With the elimination of the outsized influence of the Ruling Class, not since the decade prior to the Civil War have the political battlelines been so clearly delineated.

The last election shattered the complacency of the ruling class. For the first time in a long time, the men and women who believed that the future belonged to them, no longer did. The culture war, they began admitting in the post-election moratoriums, had gone against them. They had not just lost an election, they had fallen away from the zeitgeist into their own echo chamber.

And no one wanted what they were selling.

The Democrats and the larger movement around them has stumbled trying to make a comeback. But they have had a consistent strategy beyond the clumsy efforts to revive the BLM riots as the ICE riots or to file endless lawsuits that even liberal Supreme Court justices are growing tired of, and that is to fracture the successful coalition that President Trump built.

Ever since Trump took office, the media, which acts as the ideological attack dog for the movement, has been trying to find wedge issues. Some have been conventional economic ones meant to split away the emerging working class base, but others are ideological wedge issues targeted at dividing MAGA, first around foreign policy, and then around Jeffrey Epstein.

The issues themselves are less important than what they reveal about Democrat tactics.

The Left has closely analyzed the Trump coalition, found weak points and is running information operations to exploit those weaknesses and, when successful, playing divide and conquer. It belatedly figured out that MAGA, unlike past Republican coalitions, was virtually invulnerable to external criticism, shaming and moral blackmail because it was unconcerned with respectability.

Shaming Trump supporters no longer worked because MAGA did not care what the media or anyone outside the movement thought. Or at least that was supposed to be how it worked.

But the Trump coalition was a big tent and was a mass of agendas, some contradictory, quarreling factions, and personalities who were more opposed to things than for them. Once Trump began governing, he would have to pick and choose, make decisions and take sides. The question was how the movement would cope with these internal disagreements.

Early on it became obvious that the ‘leak’ problem that had pervaded the first Trump administration was far from gone. The media enjoyed no shortage of leaks, many of them coming from a Koch libertarian faction that had tried to seize control over foreign policy and has now spent months trying to drive out Secretary of Defense Hegseth after he fired the leakers.

Beyond the anonymous leakers from inside and outside the administration, certain named personalities have taken to texting the media their criticisms of President Trump and his administration. These figures want the mantle of MAGA even as they aid Politico and the New York Times in attacking the administration. Rather than elevating themselves by aiding the media, they’re demonstrating their untrustworthiness to be leading figures in the movement.

Still all of this was small potatoes until a small group of leftists, libertarians and far-righters began vocally claiming that there was a ‘split’ among MAGA on Israel and Iran. Polls pretty clearly showed that there was no split, but as long as the media could keep on quoting influencers like Tucker Carlson and a handful of more obscure figures, along with leftists like Joe Rogan who had briefly glommed on to MAGA, they could manufacture stories about a split.

Epstein was more damaging because it was and is a legitimate split. The sense of anger and betrayal is real, and while it’s misdirected at Trump, it damaged the movement, sabotaged the legislative agenda and depending on the electoral outcome going forward, that may make the difference between national survival and national destruction. And it was also the first time that the losers of 2024 felt like they had won a culture war victory and had a pathway forward.

Democrats, including those who had previously shown no interest in the Epstein saga, embraced it because for the first time they had hit a vulnerable point. They keep calling for the ‘release of the Epstein files’ not because they have any concern about Epstein’s victims, because they care about what’s in the files or because they even know anything about the subject, but because it’s the first line of attack that legitimately hurt President Trump.

“Inside Every Progressive Is A Totalitarian Screaming To Get Out”—David Horowitz

Understand the pattern to avoid falling into it.

August 13, 2025 by Daniel Greenfield 1 Comment

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The last election shattered the complacency of the ruling class. For the first time in a long time, the men and women who believed that the future belonged to them, no longer did. The culture war, they began admitting in the post-election moratoriums, had gone against them. They had not just lost an election, they had fallen away from the zeitgeist into their own echo chamber.

And no one wanted what they were selling.

The Democrats and the larger movement around them has stumbled trying to make a comeback. But they have had a consistent strategy beyond the clumsy efforts to revive the BLM riots as the ICE riots or to file endless lawsuits that even liberal Supreme Court justices are growing tired of, and that is to fracture the successful coalition that President Trump built.

Ever since Trump took office, the media, which acts as the ideological attack dog for the movement, has been trying to find wedge issues. Some have been conventional economic ones meant to split away the emerging working class base, but others are ideological wedge issues targeted at dividing MAGA, first around foreign policy, and then around Jeffrey Epstein.

The issues themselves are less important than what they reveal about Democrat tactics.

The Left has closely analyzed the Trump coalition, found weak points and is running information operations to exploit those weaknesses and, when successful, playing divide and conquer. It belatedly figured out that MAGA, unlike past Republican coalitions, was virtually invulnerable to external criticism, shaming and moral blackmail because it was unconcerned with respectability.

Shaming Trump supporters no longer worked because MAGA did not care what the media or anyone outside the movement thought. Or at least that was supposed to be how it worked.

But the Trump coalition was a big tent and was a mass of agendas, some contradictory, quarreling factions, and personalities who were more opposed to things than for them. Once Trump began governing, he would have to pick and choose, make decisions and take sides. The question was how the movement would cope with these internal disagreements.

Early on it became obvious that the ‘leak’ problem that had pervaded the first Trump administration was far from gone. The media enjoyed no shortage of leaks, many of them coming from a Koch libertarian faction that had tried to seize control over foreign policy and has now spent months trying to drive out Secretary of Defense Hegseth after he fired the leakers.

Beyond the anonymous leakers from inside and outside the administration, certain named personalities have taken to texting the media their criticisms of President Trump and his administration. These figures want the mantle of MAGA even as they aid Politico and the New York Times in attacking the administration. Rather than elevating themselves by aiding the media, they’re demonstrating their untrustworthiness to be leading figures in the movement.

Still all of this was small potatoes until a small group of leftists, libertarians and far-righters began vocally claiming that there was a ‘split’ among MAGA on Israel and Iran. Polls pretty clearly showed that there was no split, but as long as the media could keep on quoting influencers like Tucker Carlson and a handful of more obscure figures, along with leftists like Joe Rogan who had briefly glommed on to MAGA, they could manufacture stories about a split.

Epstein was more damaging because it was and is a legitimate split. The sense of anger and betrayal is real, and while it’s misdirected at Trump, it damaged the movement, sabotaged the legislative agenda and depending on the electoral outcome going forward, that may make the difference between national survival and national destruction. And it was also the first time that the losers of 2024 felt like they had won a culture war victory and had a pathway forward.

Democrats, including those who had previously shown no interest in the Epstein saga, embraced it because for the first time they had hit a vulnerable point. They keep calling for the ‘release of the Epstein files’ not because they have any concern about Epstein’s victims, because they care about what’s in the files or because they even know anything about the subject, but because it’s the first line of attack that legitimately hurt President Trump.

And it hurt Trump by splitting the MAGA movement.

That is the larger objective here. And it is important to be aware of that strategy in play because while some of the concerns and debates on various issues are legitimate, some are being advanced by paid influencers and operatives, along with bot armies, to split the movement.

The leftist strategy contains an enormous admission. And the admission is that they have no way forward as a national movement except by splitting the MAGA movement. It’s not a competition, but a zero sum game in which the Left does not have enough room to grow because its message has become fundamentally alienating to even sections of its base.

But at the same time some of the same forces that helped build MAGA threaten its long term survival. The movement embraced controversy and shock tactics, but some influencers were not using shock tactics to achieve something bigger, but to get attention by being contrarian. Stirring up controversy, hurling accusations and sabotaging everything is all they ever do.

Some of those who went MAGA because it was shocking are turning against MAGA because it’s the next ‘shocking’ phase in their attempt to stay relevant. Others saw MAGA as a one-time chance to build their own brand and are splitting off in the hopes of building their own movements. (That is another reason why third parties don’t work. Once you splinter, new splinter groups keep forming. And there’s no longer a good argument against them.)

MAGA naturally attracts individualists and many of them resist larger agendas, but the only way Trump can succeed is if he’s given elbow room to pursue a larger agenda. Previous conservative movements resolved conflicts through inaction and so nothing got done.

President Trump leads MAGA. What he wants to do, right or wrong, becomes the strategy, and he is the reason that things are actually getting done. The House Republicans have already shown us how useless a leaderless or a movement of weak leaders can be. And that’s the alternative. Infighting has never worked for MAGA. It can only work against it. The entire leftist strategy is to create and exploit divisions because they either bring the second term machine to a halt or they force a breach in the movement. And thus far, they are making inroads.

That doesn’t mean that there isn’t room for debate or lobbying for one approach or another. Those who believe President Trump is making the wrong decision on an issue should say. But when leftists hop on their bandwagon, they should get off, and they should never cooperate or coordinate with leftist media operations. That’s no longer an argument: that’s treason.

Daniel Greenfield

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and 

In a meeting with foreign journalists, the PM blasted the international media’s malicious caricature of Israel as a cruel, warmongering Jewish state.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks at a press conference for the foreign media in Jerusalem on August 10, 2025. Photo by Haim Zach/GPO.

Fiamma Nirenstein

Dr. Fiamma Nirenstein is an Italian-Israeli journalist, author, and senior research fellow at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. An adviser on antisemitism to Israel’s foreign minister, she previously served in the Italian Parliament (2008–2013) as Vice President of the Foreign Affairs Committee. A founding member of the Friends of Israel Initiative, she has written 13 books, including Israel Is Us (2009), and is a leading voice on Israeli affairs, Middle Eastern politics, and the fight against antisemitism.

(Aug. 11, 2025 / JNS)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is not known for seeking out journalists, especially not the foreign press corps that has, for years, attacked him personally and politically while accusing Israel of the worst imaginable crimes. But on August 10, he broke form.

In flawless English and with his trademark communicative vigor, Netanyahu met face-to-face in Jerusalem with representatives of the very media outlets that have turned Gaza into a theater of blood libels and the IDF into their chief villain.

The reason? To take the fight directly to the “eighth front” of the war—the avalanche of disinformation that has become as dangerous as rockets or tunnels. Since Israel announced its expanded operations in Gaza, anti-Israel activists and complicit journalists have gleefully called it an “occupation,” reviving the same tired propaganda Hamas has relied on for decades.

Palestinian leaders openly admit this is their greatest weapon. Fatah’s Jibril Rajoub called Oct. 7, 2023, “the Palestinian Holocaust—our winning card.” Hamas leader Ghazi Hamad boasted, “The whole world is now against Israel, accused of genocide and ethnic cleansing.”

Netanyahu knows the stakes. As he spoke, he faced a storm at home: Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich threatening to quit, hostage families calling for a nationwide strike, and critics accusing him—yet again—of political opportunism, corruption, even “fascism.”

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Yet he pressed forward with a single message while blasting the international media’s malicious caricature of Israel as a cruel, warmongering Jewish state: Israel will dismantle Hamas and rescue its hostages.

He forcefully rejected the lies that Israel uses hunger as a weapon of war, seeks to destroy an entire people or wages battle out of some “perfidious” national instinct. On the contrary, he reminded the press that Israel has allowed in two million tons of food into Gaza—aid Hamas seized and the United Nations failed to distribute.

He stressed that Israel’s goal is not occupation but security—handing civil power in Gaza to trustworthy Arab partners, not to the corrupt Palestinian Authority or genocidal Hamas.

“Contrary to false claims, this is the best way to end the war and the best way to end it speedily,”  he insisted. Seventy-five percent of Gaza is already under IDF control, with Hamas holding only Gaza City and the central refugee camps. Israel is pushing civilians to safe zones before final operations.

And he made one thing clear: The Palestinians have never wanted a state of their own that we offered since 1948—they only seek Israel’s destruction.”The Palestinians were offered a state many times, including in the partition resolution and they turned it down,” he said. “They were offered statehood by my predecessors, with lavish, lavish concessions. They turned it down.”

Netanyahu’s analogy was stark: You would not have left the Nazis in Berlin in 1945; neither will Israel leave Hamas in Gaza in 2025. His strategic vision extends beyond Gaza, toward the defeat of Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Iranian regime—with the backing of the United States.

Despite political fractures at home and the anguish of hostage families, Netanyahu is betting on a larger transformation—a postwar Middle East in which Israel survives not by begging for sympathy but by winning decisive victories. The foreign press may not want to hear it, but for Israel, victory is not optional.

Protestant Bible scholar and author Jeremiah Johnston explained in detail why the famous Shroud of Turin was Jesus Christ’s actual burial cloth.

Tucker Carlson interviewed a Bible scholar who highlights the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin, proving Jesus’ resurrection from the dead.

In a recent interview with Carlson, Protestant Bible scholar and author Jeremiah Johnston explained in detail why the famous Shroud of Turin was Jesus Christ’s actual burial cloth and how it proves the resurrection.

Johnston said that the shroud, which has been extensively studied, shows “pre-mortem and post-mortem blood all over the shroud.”

“ This tells us that someone died a torturous death,” he continued. “He was flogged. We see scourges. There are hashes all over the front and back images.”

The blood type, AB, is the same type that has consistently been found in scientific analyses of Eucharistic miracles, such as Lanciano (eighth century), Buenos Aires (1996), Tixtla (2006), and others.

”Between rib five and six, (we see) a gash in the side,” Johnston told Carlson. “Jesus, we know from John’s gospel, he is penetrated through rib five and six by a spear and that spear, John says, blood and water come out.”

“That’s post-mortem blood. We know that that blood, it differs from the other pre-mortem blood on the shroud.”

He noted that the crucifixion wounds can clearly be seen on the palms, forearms, and feet of the image.

Since all the wounds and other characteristics of the shroud fit the description of Jesus’ passion in the gospels perfectly, mathematician Bruno Barberis stated that “ there is a one in 200 billion chance it’s anyone other than Jesus of Nazareth” depicted on the shroud.

Johnston said that the interest in the shroud spiked after it was first photographed in 1898 by Italian amateur photographer Secondo Pia. The photo revealed a positive image of a man and a face that strongly resembled the early depictions of Jesus, and that was not visible with the naked eye on the shroud itself. This photograph revealed for the first time that the shroud showed a perfect negative image of a man.

Even more remarkably, the image is only burned into the very top layer of the linen cloth, something that, as Johnston explained, is impossible to replicate as forgery even with today’s technology.

“The image is only two microns thick,” the Bible scholar said. “It does not absorb all the way through. So, if this was a hoax, if this was a work of art, if there was pigment, if there was dye, if there was paint, it would absorb fully.”

“But if we took a razor to the actual shroud, we could shave off the image because it’s that thin, and this is what the best scientists in the world cannot replicate.”

”That’s what’s fascinating about the shroud … there’s no paint, there’s no dye, there’s no ink. The image is actually something that chemically has happened, and we believe it happened at the moment of resurrection,” he concluded.

Johnston said that physicist Paulo de Lazo, who spent five years examining the shroud, concluded that it would take “34,000 billion watts of energy in on 40^th of a billionth of a second” to create such an image in the linen cloth.

As additional proof that the shroud is authentic, researchers have found pollen on the artifact that can only be found in spring in the Jerusalem area, which would fit perfectly with the timing of Jesus’ passion.

Moreover, Johnston explained that there is “ Limestone and clay soil that is native only to Jerusalem, and it’s on three parts of the crucified man in the shroud.”

The limestone and clay can be found on the feet, the knees, and the tip of the nose of the man depicted in the shroud, fitting in with the fact that Jesus collapsed under the weight of his cross that he had to carry, his knees and face hitting the ground.

Johnston said that if we ever doubt God’s love for us, we only need to contemplate on his immense sufferings for our sins in his passion.

According to the scholar, the image shows “over 200 wounds” on the back and 172 on the front of the body, many likely inflicted by the scourging.

”There is not an area of Jesus’ body that has not been tortured, including the pelvic region,” Johnston stated.

He said that the image also makes it look as though his right eye was blinded, likely as a result of the scourging.

Johnston showed Carlson a re-creation of the crown of thorns, which, according to the 50 puncture marks found on the shroud, looked more like a helmet than a wreath.

Binary thinking won’t promote progress

This piece is the first in a series exploring the foundational players in the U.S. healthcare system: payers, providers, policymakers, and the pharmaceutical industry.

Ever since Bill and Hillary Clinton advanced healthcare reform in the first term of the Clinton administration, the debate about how to improve access and affordability has been politically fraught and full of pejoratives. Everyone comes to the table with opinions and preconceived notions, many of which go unchallenged.

In my classroom, I encourage my business school students to look beyond headlines, rhetoric, and reductive soundbites. Tropes like “All that insurance companies care about is profits” and “Doctors don’t understand business” are simplistic and do a disservice to patients trying to navigate a profoundly complex system while maintaining their health, dignity, and humanity.

In my nearly 30 years in healthcare — as a physician, executive, educator, and founder — I have worked in almost every corner of the system. Here is what I have found: most people who work in the healthcare industry, from the well-compensated insurance exec to the pharma salesperson, are mission-oriented. They want to positively affect people’s lives; they care deeply about finding and facilitating cures, and they certainly do not want to keep patients from accessing preventive or life-saving care.

It is the system in which these individuals operate that is flawed, not the people themselves.

In this editorial and those that follow in the series, I will look at the four p’s — providers, payers, policymakers, and pharma – and their place within the system. My goal is to uncover solutions that will improve the U.S. healthcare marketplace for all the players in it, especially for that fifth “p”: patients.

Let’s start with the pharmaceutical industry.

Fact: The U.S. Pharma Industry Is a Global Engine of Innovation

“Pharma is evil.”

Have you heard this trope? I cannot tell you how many times I have heard it. And, I will admit that when reading stories about the cost of insulinopens in a new tab or window or other drugs, there have been times when I thought it as well.

But here is the truth: the U.S. leads the world in clinical researchopens in a new tab or window and healthcare innovation. This outcome is not an accident. It is because these companies work hard to advance cures.

According to a study released last yearopens in a new tab or window by Amitabh Chandra, PhD, a professor at Harvard Business School and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, global biopharma research and development (R&D) investment totaled $276 billion in 2021, including a significant portion from the U.S. Over time, these investments have yielded transformative therapies, from immunotherapies in cancer to mRNA vaccines for COVID-19, to cures for hepatitis C, to groundbreaking treatments for rare genetic diseases. They have turned once-fatal diagnoses into manageable chronic conditions and extended, even saved, millions of lives.

For example, in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, we witnessed the industry’s capacity for rapid innovation in the U.S. Vaccines that would traditionally take a decade to develop were researched, tested, and distributed within a year due to unprecedented partnerships between industry, government, and academia. This example illustrates the best of what pharma can offer: coordinated action, rigorous science, and life-saving solutions.

Beyond innovation, the pharmaceutical industry also makes a substantial economic contribution. It supports more than 4 million U.S. jobs opens in a new tab or windowand contributes hundreds of billions to the national GDP. Entire communities depend on it — not just for medication, but for employment, research opportunities, and economic stability.

Given their work and ingenuity, Chandra emphasizes that pharma companies are, by and large, not exactly raking in the dough. In a webinar mentioned by R&D Insightopens in a new tab or window, Chandra argued, “This is not some super-profitable industry,” and pointed out that net income margins are around 15%, comparable to public utilities.

The Darker Side: Cost, Complexity, and Mistrust

I believe the pharma industry, and the vast majority of players in it, are not evil. But criticisms of the industry also are not baseless.

In the U.S., drug prices are much higher than in other countries. Essential medications, from the aforementioned insulin to asthma inhalers, are unaffordable for many Americans, leading to skipped doses, delayed treatments, or worse.

If that outcome is not due, as Chandra says, to exorbitant profits, why is it?

The complexity of the system is to blame. Pharmaceutical companies set the initial list price of their drugs, but then a byzantine system of rebates, discounts, pharmacy benefit managers, wholesalers, and insurers kicks in. Most of these policies are set by entities operating behind closed doors. This opacity makes it nearly impossible to understand the true cost of a drug, much less who is responsible for it. Pharma is often the easiest-to-explain scapegoat.

That said, the pharma industry engages in some questionable practices of its own that, while legally permissible, do raise ethical concerns. “Evergreeningopens in a new tab or window” strategies — making small, incremental changes to existing drugs in order to extend patent life — can delay the introduction of cheaper generics. “Pay-for-delayopens in a new tab or window” deals, in which brand-name companies pay generic manufacturers to postpone launching a competitor drug, do prioritize profits over patient access.

And of course, the role of certain companies in fueling the opioid crisis cannot be overlooked. Aggressive marketing tactics, suppression of addiction risk data, and relentless sales targets contributed to a public health emergency that we are still trying to contain. These practices erode public trust and obscure the very real and positive contributions of the industry.

Toward a More Balanced Future

So, is pharma the problem or the solution? The answer, as with most things in healthcare, is both.

The U.S. pharmaceutical industry is part of the problem in that it contributes to unsustainable drug pricing, exploits regulatory loopholes, and sometimes prioritizes shareholder value over public health. But it is also an essential part of the solution, leading the world in life-saving innovation and powering the next generation of therapeutics. Binary thinking — pharma is evil or pharma is our savior — prevents policymakers from addressing real issues: a fragmented payment system, regulatory lag, lack of transparency, and misaligned incentives across the ecosystem.

Innovation should be rewarded, but not at the expense of access. And profit motives can drive breakthroughs but should be balanced with public accountability.

What does a more balanced future look like?

*Transparency in pricing: Patients, providers, and policymakers should be able to understand how drug prices are set and where the money goes.

*Regulatory reform: Closing loopholes that delay generic drugs and revisiting patent laws would help improve access while preserving innovation.

*Value-based pricing models: Paying for drugs based on outcomes, rather than volume or exclusivity, could better align incentives.

*Continued investment in neglected areas: Antibiotics, maternal health drugs, and global health medications are hungry for attention and funding, even if the profit margins are lower. Pharma companies could go a long way in repairing mistrust by investing in underserved areas.

*Better public-private partnerships: COVID-19 showed us what is possible when government and industry collaborate with urgency and purpose.

*When it comes to solving the problem of high drug prices, we need to elevate the conversation. If we reduce entire sectors of healthcare to villains, we stop looking for solutions.

And we all suffer.

N. Adam Brown, MD, MBA

While Democrats are claiming that President Donald Trump unveiled a comprehensive plan to “liberate” Washington, D.C. is a distraction from the Jeffrey Epstein case, an unlikely source is pouring cold water on their plans.

On CNN, pollster Harry Enten reported that “Google searches for Epstein are down 89% from just 3 weeks ago,” “Trump’s approval rating is holding steady & much higher than term 1 at this point in his presidency,” and “less than 1% say it’s the nation’s top issue.”

“The Epstein saga,” Enten noted, “is becoming a political dud & nothingburger.”

CNN’s findings confirm what many across America have maintained; that Democratic attempts to tie Trump to the disgraced convicted sex offender are amounting to nothing.

Trump, his allies note, is unlikely to be implicated in any way in Epstein’s crimes; Democrats had full control of the government for years in which they weaponized the Department of Justice (DOJ) against him and his allies, and no evidence surfaced of a connection between the president and Epstein’s crimes.

Nevertheless, Democrats like Rep. Ted Lieu (D., Calif.) insist that “Trump is engaged in another political stunt.”

“He’s now taking over the local police and deploying the National Guard in DC. (Remember when he delayed deployment on January 6?),” Lieu continued. “He’s doing everything he can to distract from the Epstein files, and nothing to lower prices.”

Watch the full CNN segment here.

The Epstein saga is becoming a political dud & nothingburger.

-Google searches for Epstein are down 89% from just 3 weeks ago.
-Trump's approval rating is holding steady & much higher than term 1 at this point in his presidency
-Less than 1% say it's the nation's top issue pic.twitter.com/rnp2M8qzdf

— (((Harry Enten))) (@ForecasterEnten) August 11, 2025

* A recent European study found that all tested breads – including organic – contained trifluoroacetic acid (TFA), a PFAS compound linked to reproductive and developmental harm. TFA levels were up to 400 times higher than in drinking water.

* TFA is spreading through air, rain and water – affecting even farms that haven’t used herbicides or pesticides in decades. These chemicals accumulate in wheat and cannot be filtered out by baking or washing.

* Most commercial bread is made using the Chorleywood Bread Process, a high-speed, additive-heavy method that sacrifices nutrition and health for shelf life. softness and cost-efficiency.

* Many ingredients – like GMO-based emulsifiers, preservatives. processing enzymes and other additives – are not listed on food labels. Some are allergens or linked to gut issues, thyroid disruption and more.

=========================================================================

It looks innocent enough on the plate. A soft sandwich. A slice of toast. Maybe a warm dinner roll. But that comforting crust hides a disturbing reality: Your bread isn’t what it used to be – and it hasn’t been for decades.

Today’s commercially baked bread is a far cry from the four- or five-ingredient staple your grandparents knew. Instead of just flour, salt, water and yeast, modern bread often contains a cocktail of chemicals, processing agents and synthetic additives – many of which you’ll never find on the label. And some, like trifluoroacetic acid (TFA), a newly identified “forever chemical,” may be putting your health at serious risk.

TFA in every slice: A new chemical culprit

You’ve probably never heard of TFA, but it may be in your daily bread, your morning cereal or the pasta on your dinner plate.

TFA is a highly potent acid widely used in chemical laboratories – especially in the making of pharmaceuticals and proteins. But what most people don’t know is that TFA is also a persistent environmental contaminant – not because you add it to food, but because it forms when fluorinated chemicals break down in the environment. Once it’s there, it stays. TFA doesn’t biodegrade. It is highly water-soluble and mobile – meaning it can travel long distances through rain and runoff, settling into groundwater, rivers and cropland.

In a new study, researchers found TFA in every wheat-based food tested – from bread to breakfast cereal to pasta. Even long-organic farms weren’t spared. Because TFA behaves like other PFAS or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances – often referred to as “forever chemicals” – it accumulates quietly in food and the body, raising concerns among health experts and environmental scientists alike. (Related: Austrian study warns: “Forever chemicals” found in all tested cereal products, including organic brands.)

Researchers found TFA levels up to 400 times higher than those in drinking water, even in products labeled “organic.” Farms that hadn’t used herbicides or pesticides in 25 years were still contaminated. Why? Because TFA travels through air and rain, settling onto crops and into the soil across the planet.

Worse still, TFA levels in food have tripled in less than a decade. Experts now warn it may pose a global reproductive and developmental health threat. Children, who eat more bread and cereal than most adults, are especially at risk – consuming four times the so-called “safe” limit, according to European health authorities.

The hidden technology behind your bread

While TFA grabs headlines, another culprit has been hiding in plain sight for over 60 years: the Chorleywood Bread Process (CBP).

Developed in the 1960s in the U.K., this industrial method revolutionized bread-making – not for better nutrition, but for speed, volume, softness and shelf life. CBP relies on high-speed mixing, low-quality flour and a battery of chemical additives to create that fluffy, squishy texture now associated with mass-produced bread.

Here’s the kicker:

Over 80 percent of all U.K bread (and much of what’s sold worldwide) is made this way. You won’t see “Chorleywood” on the label. But if your bread stays soft and edible for two weeks or more and sticks to the roof of your mouth, you’ve likely eaten it.

Here’s a break down of the ingredients – and non-ingredients – you might be chewing on:

Undeclared enzymes

Many commercial bakers use enzymes to make dough rise faster and stay soft longer. Some are genetically engineered, while others are derived from fungi, mold or animal byproducts. Because they’re classified as “processing aids,” they don’t have to be listed on the label, even though they can cause allergic reactions and may remain active in the final loaf.

One enzyme, transglutaminase, is suspected of making wheat more toxic to people with gluten sensitivity.

Dough conditioners and additives

To withstand factory machinery, commercial dough gets a chemical makeover.

* Azodicarbonamide (ADA) – A chemical also used in foam yoga mats, ADA is banned in many countries and is linked to asthma and respiratory issues.

* L-cysteine (E920) – Used to relax dough, it is often derived from animal hair or feathers.

* Potassium bromate – A suspected carcinogen that’s banned in California and Europe, it is still allowed in many U.S. breads. It strengthens the dough but disrupts thyroid function.

Emulsifiers and preservatives

Soft bread that never molds? Here’s why:

* Calcium propionate – A preservative that inhibits mold but is linked in some studies to behavioral changes in children.

* Mono- and diglycerides, DATEM, sodium lactylate – These additives help create soft, pliable loaves but are often made from genetically modified soy or corn oils.

Bleaching and whitening agents

Want bright white flour fast? Here are the chemicals that make them just that:

* Chlorine dioxide – A bleaching gas used to “whiten” flour, it is not permitted in the European Union but is still allowed in the United States.

* Soya flour – Often genetically modified, it also bleaches and softens dough.

Hidden sugars

Bread shouldn’t taste like cake, but many commercial loaves do. Manufacturers sneak in cane sugar, corn syrup, dextrose and maltose under different names. Even “light” and “healthy” breads often have three to five teaspoons of added sugar per loaf.

GMOs and pesticides

Most conventional breads contain GMO-derived ingredients like corn starch, soy flour or soybean oil. These crops are typically drenched in glyphosate, a herbicide the World Health Organization (WHO) classified as a “probable carcinogen.” Some GMO crops are engineered to produce their own pesticides internally – the same trait that makes insect stomachs explode may not be something you want in your sandwich.

Health risks that can’t be ignored: Why it matters

The hidden ingredients and shortcuts in industrial baking have been linked to a range of health concerns:

* Allergic reactions and asthma from allergens, enzymes and preservatives

* Gut inflammation, gluten intolerance and autoimmune reactions

* Hormone disruption and thyroid issues from bromate and PFAS

* Obesity, diabetes and metabolic issues from added sugars and refined grains

* Possible developmental and reproductive harm from PFAS like TFA

In a world where even “organic” bread may carry invisible toxins, the answer isn’t fear – it is knowledge and action. You deserve to know what’s in your food. You deserve better bread. And now you know where to start.

Olivia Cook Noah, 100 % Fed Up