In Leo XIV’s new society, ‘the poor, the sick, the migrants and the least among us — will become the cornerstone’ and not Jesus Christ.

On May 8, 2025, Leo XIV spoke these words from the loggia of St. Peter’s:

We want to be a synodal Church.

Now, on May 25, 2026, he has published a detailed manifesto for its construction.

Magnifica Humanitas is a blueprint for the construction of a new society, which Leo variously calls the “city,” “Jerusalem,” and a “civilization of love.” The words “building” and “rebuilding” are used 40 times in the text.

This “Jerusalem” is not the Catholic Church founded by Jesus Christ, or is the term used to refer to the heavenly Jerusalem to come. In fact, the term “Catholic Church” does not appear even once in Magnifica Humanitas. Leo XIV does use the term “synodal Church.” ^[1]

Leo XIV’s new “civilization of love” is founded on the rationalistic principles of liberalism that have been progressively imposed on Christendom over the past two centuries while being continually condemned by the Catholic Church.

Magnifica Humanitas is a massive document. Indeed, with more than 40,000 words, five chapters, and 245 paragraphs, it is better described as a short book – a book that is also a manifesto for the destruction of the Catholic Church.

In this initial article, I wish to give an overview of its most destructive elements; further detailed examination of individual sections will follow later.

Leo XIV sets out his agenda

The first two paragraphs of the text reveal Leo XIV’s agenda, with the opening sentence introducing two images that will repeat throughout the texT.

“Humanity,” Leo writes, “is today facing a pivotal choice: either to construct a new Tower of Babel or to build the city in which God and humanity dwell together.” ^[2]

The “Tower of Babel” is the present world, moving in directions that give Leo XIV grave cause for concern. The “city in which God and humanity dwell together” is the alternative way of living that Leo proposes to us.

This city, however, is quite different from the “city of God” as conceived in traditional Catholic thought, that is, as the Catholic Church and the Christian social order that is the fruit of her teaching and her sacraments.

On the contrary, Leo tells us that every generation “inherits the task of shaping its own era” and of “guiding history” to “become a place where the dignity of every person is safeguarded, justice is promoted and fraternity is made possible.” ^[3]

In this first paragraph, Leo establishes that his society has a natural rather than a supernatural end. In Leo’s vision, man, not God, is in the driving seat of history, and the world he is called to build is a “fraternity” centered on man. ^[4]

In the second paragraph, Leo XIV assures us that “the powerful and mysterious action of the Holy Spirit” allows us to “diligently contribute to every initiative that builds a more just world, and we can call others to collaborate in promoting the integral development of every human being.”

For Leo, the “integral development of every human being” is the goal, but there are few grounds for thinking he considers such development as reaching beyond the bounds of this life.

At no point in the document does Leo make reference to man’s true destination – eternal supernatural union with God in the beatific vision of heaven – which is the very meaning and purpose of his life. Or does the document in any way allude to the possibility of eternal separation from God in Hell. ^[5]

The word “spiritual” is occasionally found. It is never used with reference to the spiritual life as understood by the Catholic Church but always in a way which embraces a wide variety of meaning and could be used by people of all religions and none. Indeed, Leo states that there are many “great spiritual paths” to be found among the religions of the world. ^[6]

The preaching of the faith replaced by ‘dialogue’

The Church’s contribution to man’s integral development is to be found in “dialogue,” Leo writes, in the document second introductory paragraph:

We wish to engage in dialogue with all men and women of our time, with whom we share in the events, questions and aspirations of humanity. Together with them, we seek to identify new paths for the common good and for promoting a dignified life for all. Indeed, openness to dialogue is an integral part of the Church’s vocation because, constituted in Christ as “a sacrament… of communion with God and of the unity of the entire human race,” she recognizes history as the place where the Gospel challenges and directs human experience.

This paragraph introduces two major themes that will run through the document.

First, Leo identifies “dialogue” as an “integral part of the Church’s vocation.” However, the Church was not established by Jesus Christ to dialogue with the world but to judge it. Our Lord entrusted His Church with the “Great Commission” to preach the gospel. He instructed His Apostles:

Go ye into the whole world, and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized, shall be saved: but he that believeth not shall be condemned. (Mk 16:15-16)

The Catholic Church teaches with authority truths that have been revealed by God. These are not matters for dialogue, but doctrines that must be obediently received by mankind, and that are necessary for our salvation.

The salvation of souls is the core mission of the Church. It is why she was founded. Yet this is the mission excluded from consideration in Magnifica Humanitas.

Secondly, the Church can only be considered “a sacrament … of communion with God and of the unity of the entire human race” to the extent that men are united with Christ in His Mystical Body, which is none other than the Catholic Church.

Unity in the Catholic Church strictly requires three conditions: baptism, public profession of the faith proposed by the Magisterium, and obedience to the legitimate authority of the hierarchy.

Yet, as we will see, this need for unity is precisely what Leo XIV does not require in his “Jerusalem,” his “civilization of love,” or his “synodal Church.”

Fatal threads that run through the text

The first two paragraphs of Magnifica Humanitas introduce two key approaches that run throughout the text: (i) the substitution of a natural end for the “church,” (ii) the avoidance of the “church’s” claims to possess a body of true doctrine that must be taught with authority. These errors, found in seed in the introduction, bear abundant bad fruit as the document proceeds.

I speak of the “church” because the society described by Leo in Magnifica Humanitas cannot be the Catholic Church. Indeed, as noted above, Leo does not even use that term. Leo’s “church” is better described by the term that he used on the day of he was chosen to succeed Francis and that he repeats in this text, that is, “synodal Church.”

Leo’s secular liberal Jerusalem

In the next section of this article, I will give some idea of how these ideas develop as the document proceeds. The examples given in the next section are far from being comprehensive. In future articles, specific errors will be examined in more detail.

In the ninth paragraph of Magnifica Humanitas, Leo reintroduces the image first presented to us in the introduction, namely the choice between “constructing Babel or rebuilding Jerusalem.” Jerusalem is here identified with “fraternal coexistence” rather than the Church. ^[7]

The next paragraph further emphazises that this “rebuilding” refers to “the possibility of building together, of transforming diversity into a resource and of making listening and dialogue the common ground upon which to cultivate justice and fraternity.” ^[8]

The role of Christians in this process is, “through the practice of synodality,” to become “the space in which humanity rediscovers its solid foundations and its final end.” ^[9]

Leo XIV notes that “in the Book of Revelation, John sees the New Jerusalem “coming down out of heaven from God” (Rev 21:2) as a gift for all humanity.” ^[10] But for Leo, the “new Jerusalem” is not the Church Triumphant. On the contrary, in the next sentence, he explains that “this vision of grace is an invitation for us Christians to work together in order to foster a peaceful, just and dignified life in community within today’s ‘cities.’” ^[11]

Leo clearly replaces a vision of our eternal life with God with one of an improved life on this earth.

In the next paragraph, Leo makes clear that building this new Jerusalem “means accepting the limits and weakness of humanity without considering them an error to be corrected.” ^[12] Conversion, therefore, will not be required. Indeed, in paragraph 13, he makes clear that all “faith communities” have “their own section of the wall.” ^[13]

This new society does have “standards of discernment,” but they are of a purely natural, temporal kind: “the dignity of the human person, the universal destination of goods, the preferential option for the poor, care for our common home and peace”. ^[14]

Leo’s “city” will “translate these standards into practices such as responsible planning, the assessment of human and social impact, the inclusion of the most vulnerable, the promotion of digital literacy and guiding research and industry toward justice and peace.”

This is a technocratic vision of secular human society and one in which Leo wants all mankind to merge. In paragraph 16, Leo addresses his appeal to join this new city to all mankind: “to all the Catholic faithful, to all Christians and to all men and women of goodwill.” ^[15]

The cornerstone of this new society will not be Jesus Christ but rather “the “rejected stones” — the poor, the sick, the migrants and the least among us — will become the cornerstone, and a solid, welcoming common home will emerge on the earth.” ^[16]

The Synodal Church replaces the Catholic Church

For the new society, there will be a new church. The age of the Catholic Church, established by God and exercising divine authority, is over. Leo’s church is one which carries out “her particular vocation of listening, dialogue and service, and of being responsive to everything concerning the lives of contemporary men and women.” ^[17]

This church “stands alongside the world without overpowering it” because its doctrine is not “a handbook of principles and norms to be applied, but a process of shared discernment.” ^[18] It is “committed to reflecting on the concrete reality of historical situations, rather than abstract concepts.” ^[19]

This church has the “mission” of “transforming the structures of society from within and forging paths toward a greater humanity.” ^[20]

Such a church cannot, of course, be the Catholic Church founded by Jesus Christ, hence Leo XIV gives it a new name: “a synodal Church, a Church that ‘walks together,’” ^[21]

He calls on us to transform ourselves into the new church through “the adoption of a synodal style.” ^[22] He urges Catholics to carry out an “examination of conscience” to “ensure that the principles outlined in this chapter are applied, especially within its own structures.” ^[23] These include “a synodal approach for mission.” ^[24]

What will the Synodal Church look like?

Paragraphs 118-126 are among the most dangerous of the whole text. It is here that the real nature of the “synodal Church” is made clear. In a future article, I will examine them in more detail, but a summary can be given here.

For Leo XIV, religion does not consist in shared faith and worship but rather in the cultivation of internal religious experiences. This is the religious approach of Modernism. I have already explored its relationship with synodality here, and with the teaching of Francis here.

Religion, for Leo XIV, comes from within, from our internal experiences, and finds its expression not just in worship but also in art. Leo finds “an almost prophetic significance” in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, Pablo Picasso’s painting Guernica and Steven Spielberg’s film Schindler’s List. ^[25]

In paragraph 123, Leo praises humanity for being “capable of creating institutions that protect our shared life,” but the institutions named are not Catholic institutions but the Red Cross and the United Nations. ^[26]

The document mentions the word “sin” only three times. Two of these occasions are in reference to “structures of sin” rather than individual sin. ^[27] The third is a statement that sin does not remove human dignity. ^[28] There is no reference to sin with relation to the offense caused to God or to its eternal consequences. “Moral corruption” is mentioned in paragraph 121, but only as something that harms humans and society.

Leo XIV’s religion has in fact lost its “religious” character. It is nothing more than secular humanism. Everyone is welcome in his “civilization of love.” Among the individuals presented as examples for us are Nelson Mandela, Benazir Bhutto, and Martin Luther King Jr. ^[29]

These are secular saints for Leo XIV’s new secular religion.

Leo XIV tries to preempt his critics

Leo XIV was clearly aware that his introduction to the document, discussed in some detail above, would raise alarm bells in readers who still possessed some sense of the authentic Catholic faith.

Therefore, as early as the third paragraph of the document, he tried to preempt criticism by associating himself at the outset with the great pontiff Leo XIII. “Criticize me,” he seems to say, “and you criticize him.” Leo XIV writes:

When some objected that the Church should not waste energy on worldly matters, but instead focus on communicating the message of eternal life, Leo XIII responded with realism and wisdom, saying that the proclamation of the Gospel cannot overlook the concrete lives of people. ^[30]

However, consideration of the teaching of Leo XIII only reveals the stark contrast between the two men. While Leo XIV completely neglects the eternal welfare of mankind, Leo XIII places it at the center of his teaching. His great encyclical Rerum Novarum was indeed focused on social and economic problems, but the Holy Father was careful to place his social doctrine in its proper context.

Leo XIII taught:

The working man, too, has interests in which he should be protected by the State; and first of all, there are the interests of his soul. Life on earth, however good and desirable in itself, is not the final purpose for which man is created; it is only the way and the means to that attainment of truth and that love of goodness in which the full life of the soul consists. ^[31]

He continued:

What advantage can it be to a working man to obtain by means of a society material well-being, if he endangers his soul for lack of spiritual food? “What doth it profit a man, if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his soul?” This, as our Lord teaches, is the mark or character that distinguishes the Christian from the heathen. “After all, these things do the heathen seek … Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His justice: and all these things shall be added unto you.” ^[32]

He went on to place his entire teaching on the economic order in the light of these eternal principles:

Let our associations, then, look first and before all things to God; let religious instruction have therein the foremost place, each one being carefully taught what is his duty to God, what he has to believe, what to hope for, and how he is to work out his salvation; and let all be warned and strengthened with special care against wrong principles and false teaching. Let the working man be urged and led to the worship of God, to the earnest practice of religion, and, among other things, to the keeping holy of Sundays and holy days. Let him learn to reverence and love holy Church, the common Mother of us all; and hence to obey the precepts of the Church, and to frequent the sacraments, since they are the means ordained by God for obtaining forgiveness of sin and for leading a holy life. ^[33]

These are the salutary truths that the Church was founded to preach and that Leo XIV fails to transmit.

Conclusions

In his encyclical Humanum Genus, Pope Leo XIII, like Leo XIV, made use of St. Augustine of Hippo’s language of two cities. Commenting on a quotation from the saint, he wrote:

“Two loves formed two cities: the love of self, reaching even to contempt of God, an earthly city; and the love of God, reaching to contempt of self, a heavenly one.” At every period of time each has been in conflict with the other, with a variety and multiplicity of weapons and of warfare, although not always with equal ardor and assault. ^[34]

The Vicar of Christ continued:

At this period, however, the partisans of evil seems to be combining together, and to be struggling with united vehemence, led on or assisted by that strongly organized and widespread association called the Freemasons. No longer making any secret of their purposes, they are now boldly rising up against God Himself. They are planning the destruction of holy Church publicly and openly, and this with the set purpose of utterly despoiling the nations of Christendom, if it were possible, of the blessings obtained for us through Jesus Christ our Savior. ^[35]

Pope Leo XIII’s age is our own. We are still living out the battle between the City of God and the City of modern, liberal man.

Magnifica Humanitas of Leo XIV represents the next stage of Satan’s assault on the Catholic Church, aiming for its complete destruction and the ruin of what remains of Christian civilization. In its place, Leo XIV will continue to build the “synodal Church” to keep the true Catholic Church in eclipse.

This is not a conspiracy theory; it is a plan laid out in the pages of Magnifica Humanitas.

It is also a plan that is ultimately doomed to fail.

In Humanum Genus, after exposing out the diabolic scheme in which the enemies of the Church were engaged, Pope Leo XIII directed us to a remedy that will not fail:

So vehement an attack demands an equal defense — namely, that all good men should form the widest possible association of action and of prayer. We beseech them, therefore, with united hearts, to stand together and unmoved against the advancing force of the sects; and in mourning and supplication to stretch out their hands to God, praying that the Christian name may flourish and prosper, that the Church may enjoy its needed liberty, that those who have gone astray may return to a right mind, that error at length may give place to truth, and vice to virtue. ^[36]

And he entrusted our cause to “the Virgin Mary, Mother of God … who from the moment of her conception overcame Satan” to “blessed Michael the prince of the heavenly angels, who drove out the infernal foe,” to “Joseph, the spouse of the most holy Virgin and heavenly patron of the Catholic Church,” and to “the great Apostles, Peter and Paul, the fathers and victorious champions of the Christian faith.”^[37]

With heavenly intercessors like this on our side, we may be confident that the synodal Church will never prevail against the Catholic Church, no matter the earthly powers with which it may align.

For decades, politicians in Washington have paid lip service to “fiscal responsibility” as they practice fiscal irresponsibility on a scale unprecedented in American history.

Jim Cardoza | May 28, 2026

For decades, politicians in Washington have paid lip service to “fiscal responsibility” as they practice fiscal irresponsibility on a scale unprecedented in American history. The national debt of the United States has now climbed beyond $35 trillion, a number so large that it has ceased to register emotionally with most citizens. Yet numbers do not lose their consequences simply because they become difficult to imagine. A trillion dollars is a thousand billion dollars. Thirty-five trillion dollars represents obligations so enormous that future generations may spend much of their lives paying for promises made long before they were old enough to vote.

What is particularly remarkable is not merely the size of the debt, but the normalization of it. Politicians announce deficits in the hundreds of billions as casually as a family discusses grocery expenses. News reports treat another trillion added to the debt as routine political weather. Meanwhile, the same people who lecture ordinary Americans about budgeting, sustainability, and sacrifice routinely spend money the government does not possess.

No household can survive indefinitely by spending more than it earns. No business can remain solvent by perpetually borrowing to finance daily operations. Yet somehow, we are expected to believe that the federal government alone has discovered a magical exemption from economic reality. It has not.

The laws of economics do not disappear because politicians vote against them.

For years, America enjoyed advantages that concealed the danger. The U.S. dollar served as the world’s reserve currency. Foreign governments eagerly purchased Treasury bonds. Interest rates remained relatively low. These conditions allowed Washington to postpone consequences that would have arrived swiftly in less fortunate nations. But postponing consequences is not the same thing as eliminating them.

Already, interest payments on the national debt consume staggering amounts of federal revenue. The government is increasingly borrowing money merely to pay interest on money already borrowed. That is not financial management. It is the fiscal equivalent of using one credit card to pay another. Families attempting such a strategy are usually described as headed toward bankruptcy. Governments use softer language — ”stimulus,” “continuing resolutions,” or “necessary investments” — but arithmetic remains unmoved by rhetoric.

Massive debt crowds out productive investment. As government borrowing expands, capital that might otherwise finance businesses, innovation, factories, or job creation instead finances political promises. Economic growth slows. Wages stagnate. Productivity suffers.

Inflation becomes another danger. Governments deeply addicted to debt often discover that devaluing currency becomes politically easier than controlling spending. Inflation is particularly cruel because it operates as a hidden tax. It punishes savers, retirees, and working people whose wages fail to keep pace with rising prices. The wealthy often possess assets that rise with inflation. Ordinary citizens watch groceries, gasoline, insurance, and housing consume larger portions of shrinking paychecks.

There is also the matter of national security. A heavily indebted nation becomes vulnerable. Dependence on foreign creditors constrains policy choices. Economic weakness invites geopolitical weakness. History is filled with great powers undone not merely by military enemies but by internal fiscal decay.

Rome debased its currency. Britain declined under mounting financial strain after two world wars. Numerous modern nations — from Argentina to Greece — have learned that debt crises arrive gradually, then suddenly.

Yet perhaps the most destructive consequence is moral rather than economic.

When politicians spend money they do not have, they are effectively voting to obligate people not yet born. Future taxpayers inherit liabilities without consent. One generation enjoys benefits while another gets the bill. Such conduct would be considered irresponsible within a family. In government, it is often celebrated as compassion.

The central problem is incentives.

Members of Congress face incentives to spend, not to save. Government programs create constituencies. Spending purchases votes, headlines, influence, and campaign contributions. Fiscal restraint, by contrast, creates enemies. Every dollar cut has a visible loser. Every dollar borrowed postpones pain until after the next election cycle.

In other words, Congress behaves rationally according to the incentives it faces.

That reality suggests a solution far simpler than the thousands of pages of budget gimmicks and bipartisan commissions produced over the years.

Congress should not be paid if it spends more money than the federal government collected in revenue during the previous fiscal year.

The principle is straightforward. If Congress approves expenditures exceeding prior-year revenues, salaries for members of Congress are automatically suspended until a balanced budget is restored. No exceptions. No accounting tricks. No “emergency” loopholes broad enough to drive entire spending bills through. If lawmakers insist on spending beyond available revenue, they must do so without compensation.

Suddenly, incentives would change.

The people deciding whether to overspend would personally experience consequences from overspending. Remarkably, this is the same standard applied daily to ordinary Americans.

A contractor who fails to manage costs does not receive a bonus for exceeding the budget. A worker who continually overspends household income eventually confronts unpaid bills. Yet Washington operates under precisely the opposite logic. Politicians spend recklessly and continue collecting salaries, pensions, speaking fees, and media contracts.

Imagine if every congressional debate over spending included immediate personal stakes. Imagine if legislators knew that another trillion-dollar deficit meant their own paychecks disappeared. One suspects budget negotiations would become serious rather quickly.

Critics would object that congressional salaries are relatively small compared to the federal budget. That misses the point entirely.

The issue is not whether suspending congressional pay alone would erase the deficit. The issue is whether incentives influence behavior. They do. They always do.

James Madison once observed that to preserve liberty, government must be bound by chains of constitutional restraint because men are not angels. Yet modern government increasingly operates on the assumption that politicians, unlike ordinary citizens, can be trusted with limitless financial discretion.

Experience suggests otherwise.

Others would argue that emergencies require deficit spending. Certainly, there are moments — major wars, catastrophic attacks, national crises — where extraordinary expenditures become unavoidable. But Washington long ago ceased treating deficits as emergencies. Deficits have become the default operating condition of government under both political parties.

Temporary emergency measures became permanent habits.

Moreover, the proposal would produce something almost extinct in Washington: accountability. Politicians frequently campaign against debt while voting for spending once elected. Under this system, rhetoric would become expensive. Promises would carry consequences.

Most importantly, such a reform would restore a forgotten principle: government officials should bear responsibility for the results of their decisions.

Today, Congress socializes costs while privatizing benefits. Politicians gain electoral advantages from spending while taxpayers absorb the burden. That imbalance explains much of modern fiscal irresponsibility.

A Congress forbidden to pay itself while overspending would finally encounter the same reality faced by every American family: resources are finite.

The national debt is not merely an accounting issue. It is a warning sign of a political system increasingly detached from restraint, discipline, and consequences. Nations rarely collapse overnight. More often, they slowly normalize behavior that would once have seemed unthinkable — until arithmetic finally reasserts itself.

America cannot borrow indefinitely against the future while pretending prosperity requires no sacrifice. Eventually, reality presents the bill.

The question is whether we will restore fiscal discipline voluntarily or have it imposed upon us by economic crisis.

Jim Cardoza is the author of The Moral Superiority of Liberty and the founder of LibertyPen.com. Read more of his essays 

Published Thu, May 28 20268:00 AM EDTUpdated 2 Hours Ago

Phil LeBeau@Lebeaucarnews

Published Thu, May 28 20268:00 A

Published Thu, May 28 20268:00 AM EDTUpdated 2 Hours Ago

Phil LeBeau

• Experian Automotive’s analysis of more than 5 million open auto loans and leases in the first quarter shows nearly 19% of new vehicle loans include a monthly payment of at least $1,000.
• Almost 74% of the auto loans requiring owners to pay $1,000 or more every month are for non-luxury models.
• The top five models for the $1,000-plus payments were popular pickup trucks including the Ford F-150, Chevrolet Silverado 1500 and Ram 1500, according to Experian.

country where big trucks are a big deal, those pickups and SUVs represent a big percentage of auto loans that come with a sizable monthly payment, more than $1,000 a month, according to new data.

Experian Automotive’s analysis of more than 5 million open auto loans and leases in the first quarter shows nearly 19% of new vehicle loans include a monthly payment of at least $1,000. That’s up from roughly 17.4% year over year.null

“The assumption is that it’s all luxury, it’s high-line, and that is not the case,” said Melinda Zabritski, head of automotive financial insights for Experian Automotive.

Almost 74% of the auto loans requiring owners to pay $1,000 or more every month are for non-luxury models, with the top five models being popular pickup trucks including the Ford F-150, Chevrolet Silverado 1500 and Ram 1500, according to Experian.

Just five years ago, auto loans with monthly payments over $1,000 accounted for just 5.4% of the market. Then the global chip shortage hit in 2021 and 2022, and automakers around the world prioritized production of higher-end, more profitable models. Vehicle prices soared, and so did the amount borrowed for auto loans.

Zabritski said those higher prices have changed how car and truck buyers look at what it takes to finance the purchase of a new vehicle.

“We haven’t seen a reduction in that MSRP, and in those high loan amounts,” she told CNBC. “I think as time goes on, I think more consumers are getting used to the $1,000 payment.” 

The average amount borrowed is now at an all-time high of $43,952, and the average monthly payment has also climbed to an all-time high of $770, according to Experian Automotive. Both are a reflection of a new auto market that is relatively strong.  

As for auto loan delinquencies, the percentage of loans that have payments more 30 days late has edged up to 2% of all new vehicle loans, with the 60-day delinquency rate also increasing.  

Still, Zabritski noted that delinquency rates remain below 2018 levels. 

“The driving force in the 60-day delinquency really does fall within the subprime market. Lower credit scores are going to have a higher likelihood of default,” she said.

In a country where big trucks are a big deal, those pickups and SUVs represent a big percentage of auto loans that come with a sizable monthly payment, more than $1,000 a month, according to new data.

Experian Automotive’s analysis of more than 5 million open auto loans and leases in the first quarter shows nearly 19% of new vehicle loans include a monthly payment of at least $1,000. That’s up from roughly 17.4% year over year.

“The assumption is that it’s all luxury, it’s high-line, and that is not the case,” said Melinda Zabritski, head of automotive financial insights for Experian Automotive.

Almost 74% of the auto loans requiring owners to pay $1,000 or more every month are for non-luxury models, with the top five models being popular pickup trucks including the Ford F-150, Chevrolet Silverado 1500 and Ram 1500, according to Experian.

Just five years ago, auto loans with monthly payments over $1,000 accounted for just 5.4% of the market. Then the global chip shortage hit in 2021 and 2022, and automakers around the world prioritized production of higher-end, more profitable models. Vehicle prices soared, and so did the amount borrowed for auto loans.

Zabritski said those higher prices have changed how car and truck buyers look at what it takes to finance the purchase of a new vehicle.

“We haven’t seen a reduction in that MSRP, and in those high loan amounts,” she told CNBC. “I think as time goes on, I think more consumers are getting used to the $1,000 payment.” 

The average amount borrowed is now at an all-time high of $43,952, and the average monthly payment has also climbed to an all-time high of $770, according to Experian Automotive. Both are a reflection of a new auto market that is relatively strong.  

As for auto loan delinquencies, the percentage of loans that have payments more 30 days late has edged up to 2% of all new vehicle loans, with the 60-day delinquency rate also increasing.  

Still, Zabritski noted that delinquency rates remain below 2018 levels. 

“The driving force in the 60-day delinquency really does fall within the subprime market. Lower credit scores are going to have a higher likelihood of default,” she said.

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A group of former federal probationary employees surveyed more than 300 of their fired colleagues to assess their job searches, mental health and several other topics.

Sean Michael Newhouse | 

May 27, 2026 12:56 PM ET

The Trump administration fired thousands of probationary employees in February 2025. Jackyenjoyphotography / Getty Images

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They were told they’d move on. A year later, many fired federal employees say they haven’t been able to

A group of former federal probationary employees surveyed more than 300 of their fired colleagues to assess their job searches, mental health and several other topics.

Sean Michael Newhouse | 

May 27, 2026 12:56 PM ET

• Firings

As part of its effort to downsize the federal workforce in February 2025, the Trump administration conducted a mass firing of thousands of agency employees in their probationary periods, which generally last for the first year after a worker has been hired by or promoted within the government. Such staffers have weaker civil service job protections. 

In September 2025, U.S. District Judge William Alsup ruled that the removals were unlawful. He didn’t order agencies to reinstate affected employees, however, due to an earlier Supreme Court decision and because, as he put it, “The terminated probationary employees have moved on with their lives and found new jobs.”

So, a group of former probationary employees sought to find out if their colleagues had, in fact, “moved on.” Between February and March, they conducted a survey of more than 300 individuals impacted by the firings, representing 12 federal departments as well as 43 states and one territory.  

The results show that many fired probationers haven’t found new jobs, are experiencing poor mental health and remain concerned about their former agencies’ effectiveness with reduced workforces. 

Unemployment

The most frequent answer to a question in the survey asking how long it took to find a new job was “still unemployed.” Relatedly, around 80 participants reported that they have submitted more than 100 job applications. 

Jacob Saunders, a respondent who worked at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services for five weeks before he was fired, said that he still hasn’t found a full-time job. In the meantime, he is a high school lacrosse coach, has taken on sporadic gig work and sells items on eBay. 

“It does annoy me when somebody thinks that it’s pretty simple. I’ve applied to 15 jobs in one week. I might apply for three jobs a day or two jobs a day,” he said. “I’ve applied to a lot of jobs.”

The president in January defended his cuts to the civil service by claiming that employees who were pushed out are now in the private sector making double or triple their government salaries. 

In contrast, the probationary survey found that, among respondents who found new roles, 49% reported that their salary is “significantly lower” than what they made in the federal government with another 19% saying their salary is “lower.” 

The survey data was published by 27 UNIHTED, an organization of former National Institutes of Health employees established in response to the second Trump administration. 

Mental health 

In the survey, 95% of participants responded that they experienced “new mental health symptoms that had negative impacts on personal wellbeing” after being terminated.

Liz Crandall, one of the respondents and a fired field ranger from the U.S. Forest Service, wasn’t surprised by that result. 

“I’m seeing it still from friends that were probationary employees that were fired. They’re still not doing well. I would almost argue they’re doing worse because it’s grief mixed with embarrassment and shame that they’re still not able to get through it,” she said. “A lot of people have had to go on new medications and take out loans. And our health insurance is obviously taken away since we were fired.” 

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Crandall had been in her position for more than one year but had not yet received full civil service job protections because she was hired under Schedule A, a mechanism for agencies to bring on workers with disabilities that has a two-year probationary period. 

Many civil servants hired under Schedule A who had been in their jobs between one to two years have argued that they wouldn’t have been impacted by the probationary firings if they were recruited through another pathway. 

Nearly 85% of survey respondents said that their agencies were not transparent about their firings. Crandall, for example, thought she might have been spared from the removals because initially only probationary employees with less than one year in her division were terminated. But she was let go the next day. 

“Nothing made sense, no one had answers, HR had no idea what was happening. No one had any idea,” she said. “It was so bizarre and unprecedented and chaotic and even my conservative [coworkers] were crying.”

Likewise, Saunders said that his supervisor didn’t know he had been fired. He was the one who informed him. 

Effect on agency operations 

The two most common responses to a question in the survey asking about negative impacts to the public due to the probationary firings were: “larger (sometimes unmanageable) workload for remaining employees” and “loss of institutional knowledge.” 

Crandall is worried, in particular, about her former agency’s continued ability to combat wildfires. Like many other USFS employees who were fired or otherwise pushed out by the Trump administration, she held a “red card” — meaning she was certified for firefighting duties and could be deployed as needed. 

Government Executive previously reported that at least 1,400 USFS employees with “red cards” left the agency, but officials asked some of them to volunteer to return for the 2025 fire season.

Beyond personnel numbers, Crandall said that she possessed localized knowledge like locations of non-designated campsites and unofficial roads. 

“Instead of people having to risk their safety to go in and navigate this insane spider web of roads, they would look to people like me and say ‘Where are the sites so that we can just go in and evacuate those directly? So we don’t have to wander while a fire is creeping up on us,’” she said. “That was really important. That’s the mixture of institutional knowledge, on-the-ground knowledge, local/regional knowledge as well as personnel.”

Both Saunders and Crandall said that they were offered their positions back following court orders but declined due to fears that they would still lose their jobs through layoffs under reduction in force procedures, which is another method the Trump administration has used to reduce agency headcounts. 

“You can’t put the toothpaste back into the tube,” Saunders said. “Once I had already gotten fired, what’s stopping it from happening again?”

Crandall now works for a conservation nonprofit. 

The Office of Personnel Management, which Judge Alsup determined illegally required the probationary firings, did not respond to a request for comment by press time. 

Additional findings

The former probationers who conducted the survey noted that respondents’ participation was based on self-selection rather than a random sample. 

A quarter of respondents reported that they were reinstated to their federal jobs. Another 15% said they got their positions back but were then terminated later. 

While probationary periods are associated with workers who are new to government, around 45% of survey respondents said they previously worked for a federal agency as a contractor.

The Trump administration recently launched several efforts to recruit early-career workers to serve in a federal agency.

If you have a tip that can contribute to our reporting, Sean Michael Newhouse can be reached securely at seanthenewsboy.45 on Signal.

Israel Gershoni’s Colonial Propaganda Masquerading as “Evidence.”

More on the push by Achcar (who, outrageously, compared genocidal Palestinian Oct 7 onslaught to the 1943 Warsaw Uprising) and Gershoni attempts to downplay widespread Nazi sympathies in Arab Palestine.

Gershoni’s use of Arabic newspapers from the Second World War period as reliable evidence is methodologically worthless. These newspapers, during the WWII, did not operate under conditions of press freedom, but under a strict British wartime censorship regime that monitored, edited, suppressed, and directed political reporting in Mandatory Palestine. As British records show, and as laid out by Mustafa Kabha and David Sharfman, the wartime press functioned under extensive colonial supervision, where publication was conditioned by political control and security considerations rather than independent journalism.

Sharfman demonstrates that wartime censorship formed an integral part of British propaganda and internal security policy, while Kabha’s work likewise highlights the pressures, restrictions, and interventions imposed upon the Arabic press during the Mandate period. Under such conditions, newspapers cannot seriously be treated as transparent reflections of public opinion or political reality. To rely on them uncritically, while ignoring the coercive framework under which they were produced, strips the argument of historical credibility altogether.

______

Sharfman, D. (2023). Jerusalem in the Second World War: Part 2. Living in wartime. 3. Civil defence, rationing, and press censorship. Taylor & Francis. https://books.google.com/books?id=B7_mEAAAQBAJ&pg=PT29

Censorship and the Jewish and Arab press – political issues.

The government’s censorship policy was severely criticised by Trevor in a book published by the end of the Mandate. She claimed that: ‘While the censorship thus accumulated the worst features of all the different systems known in other belligerent countries, it worked on certain principles peculiar to Palestine … For example, the ex-Mufti of Jerusalem al-Husseini was taboo. In June 1939, the papers had been informed that as he was officially excluded from Palestine ‘on account of his nefarious activities’, any publication concerning him or his movements was likely to endanger the public peace and might lead to suspension of the paper. The authorities also suppressed any criticism of the administration: ‘down to the slackness of post office clerks and the accents of radio announcers’. Another forbidden topic was Zionism, and any expression of sympathy for it in the outside world was to be kept from the knowledge of Arabs and Jews in Palestine: ‘However theoretically or moderately phrased the plea, however high the standing of the pleader – be it Dr. Weizmann or Mr. Churchill himself – the axe fell’.

The censors banned articles or excerpts from them in almost every field….

Kabahā, M., Caspi, D. (2011). The Palestinian Arab In/outsiders: Media and Conflict in Israel. United Kingdom: Vallentine Mitchell, pp. 58-59.

The Palestinian Press During the Second World War.

When the Palestinian revolt subsided and ended in the early months of the Second World War, which broke out in early September 1939, all activities of the Palestinian National Movement and its various Palestine branches were suspended. One reason was the absence of the senior leadership, whose members were either under arrest or in forced exile (by the British) or had joined Mufti Haj Amin in his wanderings among Baghdad , Rome and Berlin. Another reason was the developing economic reliance of the Palestinian bourgeoisie on the British market: the financial circumstances of significant parts of the bourgeoisie depended on their engagement in supplying the needs of the British army and its war efforts in the East, leading to compromising and conciliatory views towards Britain and its allies. Those who refused to compromise felt the wrath of the British censor: the authorities often used newsprint quotas and restrictions of other technical services in order to punish newspapers voicing criticism and to reward more compromising news-papers (interview with Fawzi al-Shanti, Jerusalem, 5 June 1995). During the Second World War eighteen new newspapers appeared, of them three dailies, six weeklies, six monthlies and three that appeared erratically (Mawsou’a 1994, Volume 4 , pp.448-9). Two of the most prominent, al-Muntada, ‘Discussion Forum’, and Huna al-Quds, ‘Here is Jerusalem’, were published by British authorities, with the aim of influencing Palestinian public opinion in favour of Britain and its allies. These two newspapers were virtually the only available sources of information on the fighting on the different fronts, even for other newspapers, although the news they presented was probably censored and edited at the discretion of the authorities. Two other newspapers, al-Ittihad and al-Ghad, ‘The Tomorrow’, were leftist-oriented and expressed the increasing influence of popular elements and labour unions which began to assemble at the time, challenging the senior political leadership, many of whose members were absent.

federal judge on Thursday cleared the way for President Donald Trump to implement his executive order tightening mail-in voting, slapping down Democrats’ arguments for now that federal efforts to police voter rolls with citizenship checks was illegal.

U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointed jurist, ruled that Democrats failed to show they have standing at present to challenge the order or have suffered any harm that would warrant a preliminary injunction.

“Given that the Executive Order does not command Plaintiffs to do anything, and that no agency has yet acted pursuant to the Order in a way that could harm Plaintiffs, they have not suffered any harm at present,” the judge wrote.

You can read the ruling here.

Nichols rejected several of the Democrats’ arguments that Trump’s executive order could disenfranchise millions of voters, including that creating state-by-state citizenship lists to check voter rolls would somehow be harmful, even if they were inaccurate.

“It remains speculative whether the State Citizenship Lists, if and when they are initially compiled, will contain inaccuracies,” he wrote. “Even if they contain initial inaccuracies, the Executive Order requires the adoption of procedures that will allow individuals to access and, if necessary, update or correct their information in the Lists.”

The judge also rejected the notion that the federal government sending information to the states about voters would somehow violate voters’ privacy.

“Plaintiffs fail to demonstrate that such action—that is, the sharing of name, age, and residence information between and among government agencies, if already known to the federal government—would cause a harm sufficient to establish Article III standing,” he ruled.

Just the News

Ocean “acidification” is a somewhat unique branch of the overarching climate scare. It differs from other branches of the big scare in that it does not depend on atmospheric heating as the driver of the supposed scary consequences. Instead, with ocean “acidification,” the idea is that increased CO2 in the atmosphere (from the burning of fossil fuels) leads to increased CO2 dissolved in the oceans, which leads to lower pH of ocean water, which then becomes the driver of the alleged scary consequences. Thus, ocean “acidification” can theoretically work as a scare even if the atmosphere fails to heat with increasing CO2 content to the extent predicted by advocates’ climate models.

But the ocean “acidification” claim has its own frailties. For advocates of apocalyse, it is a problem that the ocean is (somewhat) alkaline, rather than acidic, and that the change in ocean pH from even large increases in CO2 in the atmosphere is small. Some might even call the change in ocean pH “slight.” And the pH change, even in worst-case scenarios, is not nearly enough to bring it down to the level of neutrality, let alone acidity. The last point is the reason that I have been putting the term “acidification” in quotes.

So, how can advocates make ocean “acidification” into something sufficiently scary to motivate lots of people to hate or fear fossil fuels? Well, perhaps they could manufacture a claim that somewhat lower pH would kill all the tropical fish. OK, but the claim could not be that slightly lower pH will directly kill the fish — nobody would ever buy that. There would have to be a different mechanism.

Several years ago (May 2021) I had a post covering the work of a pair of researchers in Australia who had come up with a claim fitting just this description. The researchers in question were Philip Munday and Danielle Dixson of James Cook University in Queensland. Over the course of multiple years and some 22 peer-reviewed papers, those two (and co-authors) had put forth a claim that lower ocean pH would drive tropical fish crazy, or at least cause the fish to experience “profound behavioral and sensory impairments” that would imperil their survival. As should be obvious, this claim gave extraordinary support to the anti-fossil fuel narrative, independent of any claim of global warming, and as a result gave the papers a very high profile, and brought the authors great acclaim.

But it was too good to be true. The occasion for my May 2021 post was a paper that had appeared in Nature in 2020, by authors Timothy Clark, et al., reporting on the results of efforts to reproduce the Munday/Dixson results. Excerpt from the abstract:

Here, we comprehensively and transparently show that—in contrast to previous studies—end-of-century ocean acidification levels have negligible effects on important behaviours of coral reef fishes, such as the avoidance of chemical cues from predators, fish activity levels and behavioural lateralization (left–right turning preference). Using data simulations, we additionally show that the large effect sizes and small within-group variances that have been reported in several previous studies are highly improbable. Together, our findings indicate that the reported effects of ocean acidification on the behaviour of coral reef fishes are not reproducible, suggesting that behavioural perturbations will not be a major consequence for coral reef fishes in high CO2 oceans.

The abstract does not contain the word “fraud,” but the article contains strong suggestions of data manipulation. This was a very unusual piece for Nature to publish, given the harm it caused to a significant underpinning of the anti-fossil fuel narrative.

Here we are now, five years on. Does anything remain of the “ocean acidification” narrative as a reason to hate fossil fuels?

The past few months have seen pieces laying out the cases both for and against believing that “ocean acidification” is a significant environmental concern. On the side of “ocean acidification is really bad and scary,” I will highlight a piece by Dana Nuccitelli that appeared in something called The Invading Sea in March, title “Fossil fuel pollution’s effect on oceans comes with huge costs.” On the side of “ocean acidification is way overblown,” I will highlight a May 13, 2026 paper by van Wijngaarden, Ridd, Cornell and Happer, title “Acidification of Water by CO2.”

Nuccitelli is a frequent writer at Yale Climate Connections (yet another black eye for Yale). In Nuccitelli’s piece, he appears to have given up on trying to claim that changing pH is killing off the tropical fish. So instead, here, he emphasizes the effect on coral. He claims that “acidification” is killing off coral, but can’t attribute dying coral just to pH, so he throws in warming as well:

Florida’s barrier reef is in trouble – and it’s costing us. The reef has been experiencing a severe outbreak of stony coral tissue loss disease over the past decade. The likely cause: stress from the warming climate and acidifying waters, both the result of burning fossil fuels. . . . Human burning of fossil fuels affects Earth’s oceans via the one-two punch of warming and acidifying waters, which occurs as carbon dioxide is absorbed into the ocean.

No quantitative information is provided for the amount of coral loss, if any. The “likely cause” of the disease is said to be a combination of “warming” and “acidifying waters.” How does he know that? How much from each? Is there any actual proof? If so, Nuccitelli does not choose to cite it. I guess it’s just obvious to his readership.

After asserting the “likely cause,” Nuccitelli moves on to calculating the cost, not of the portion of the coral that may be lost, but of the entire tourism industry related to all the coral:

The financial stake of losing the reef is high. Florida’s coral reefs are estimated to draw in over $1 billion in tourism revenue each year, provide $650 million in flood protection benefits and support over 70,000 jobs. What’s more, coral reefs protect people and property by dissipating up to 97% of wave energy, lessening storm surges.

And then Nuccitelli goes on to rely on a recent paper from Nature Climate Change (from January 2026) that purports to calculate a new measure of “social cost of carbon” on an assumption that global warming will significantly decrease the productivity of the oceans, not just for coral, but all other life. The NCC paper does not appear to deal with the acidification issue at all.

Top Democratic officials and lawmakers are breaking with Democratic Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner as his past blunders and online history stack up.

Platner’s ascendency to the top of the ticket in Vacationland broke with the Democratic establishment in Washington, D.C., and since Maine Gov. Janet Mills exited from the race, questions about whether he is the right choice to take on Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, have exploded.

Much of that is fueled by scandals that have cropped up seemingly week after week, be it a tattoo on his chest of a Nazi symbol or inflammatory posts online.

Some in the Democratic Party warn that it’s spurring a “civil war” between the moderate and left wings of the party.

Melissa DeRosa, former New York Mayor Andrew Cuomo’s chief of staff, told Fox News’ Bret Baier that Platner’s rise and ensuing questions of his fitness as a candidate are demonstrative of the bubbling conflict within the Democratic Party.

“The main race really demonstrates the civil war that’s happening within the Democratic Party, and there are a lot of Democrats, moderate Democrats like myself, who will not cry tears should we lose Maine,” DeRosa said.

“I mean, that would be a pickup to begin with.”

Senate Democrats view Maine as one of the most viable pickup opportunities in the 2026 midterm cycle in their quest to regain control of the upper chamber.

Platner is not the candidate that party bosses wanted, but since jumping into the race last year, he has built a growing national profile that reached new heights earlier this month when he landed on the cover of Time magazine.

The left’s glamorization of political violence begins as performance, but history shows how quickly chic nihilism can become something far darker.

Brian Thompson’s shooter suspect in hostel CCTV. (security camera, Wikimedia Commons)

On the morning of May 18, 2026, on the granite steps of Manhattan’s Criminal Courts Building, three chic women arranged themselves like starlets at Cannes. The heels. The practiced hip-thrust. Weight cocked to one side, chin down, eyes up. With enough mascara between them to repaint Gracie Mansion. But the most revealing part, the part that showed the most skin, was the laminated press credential blessed by the office of Mayor Zohran Mamdani. It certified they were card-carrying members of the working press. Only they were not here to cover a criminal. Luigi’s Angels, or as they call themselves, more affectionately, the Mangionistas, were there to worship a charismatic idol and to defend his violence.

Brian Thompson was the chief executive of UnitedHealthcare. Was is the operative word here. He was walking to his company’s investor conference in broad daylight. A bullet went into his back. He arched and stumbled and hit the concrete hard. Then the killer stepped closer, took a look and fired again into the man’s leg. The cold December sidewalk against Thompson’s face, the blood spreading, the bystanders frozen, the normal morning around him with its coffee cups and crossing signals, while the spine that had just been torn through sent up whatever a body sends up in its last conscious minute. The shooter walked off and rode his bike through Central Park.

Outside the courthouse, the three women told reporters, breathlessly, what they thought of the dead man. “F-ck Brian Thompson,” said Ashley Rojas. “I don’t give a flying f-ck he died. F-ck his mom.”

Lena Weissbrot pronounced his two grieving children “better off without him,” told them to enjoy the “blood money,” and rated the murdered executive responsible for more deaths than Osama bin Laden. To watch a group of women cheer, loud and unembarrassed, for the assassination of a man who was guilty of holding a job somebody did not like looks like a crazy one-off kind of crime.

Except that it isn’t. We heard it in 1932. In Berlin.

In the breakthrough election of July 1932, British historian Dick Geary documented, some 6.5 million German women voted for the Nazis, nearly half of the party’s 13.7 million votes, and they did it even as Hitler promised to drive hundreds of thousands of them out of the workforce to make room for men. They voted in force for a movement that despised their independence. By the time the regime held power, some 13 million of Germany’s 40 million women were active in its organizations, according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The surge ran strongest among young women and first-time voters who had never been political before.

That dynamic fits another electorate closer to home. Eight decades later, the CIRCLE project at Tufts University found that 82% percent of women under 30 in New York City voted for Mamdani against 65% of the men, a gap so wide it has stopped being a curiosity and become a movement, and one so 1932 that the comparison no longer feels like a coincidence. The Chicago Tribune, cabling from Paris on the German 1932 election results, described the Nazi program as “anti-Republican, anti-Semitic, and anti-capitalist.” The Nazi Party had a more official name – the National Socialist German Workers’ Party – and it ran against finance and big business as hard as it ran against Jews. Where have we heard that lately?

Sen. Bernie Sanders, who twice came in second in the Democratic Party’s presidential nominating process, calls the wealthy “the billionaire class” and says they have spent 40 years “looting the country.” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tells a cheering hall that “no one ever makes a billion dollars; you take a billion dollars.”

The shape is familiar: a productive people, a small moneyed few who produce nothing and drain the rest, a demand that the few be stripped and made to pay. Where the Nazi press wrote of the parasite bleeding the productive nation, the contemporary U.S. “progressive” Democratic denounces the billionaire, the corporate parasite, the bloodsucking insurer, the Wall Street ghoul. Some even go so far as to name several prominent Jews. The point is not that today’s democratic socialists are Nazis. It is the demonizing grievance that built the movement, a productive nation set against a parasitic moneyed few, is a theme. And themes recur.

Mamdani’s own record supplies the text. He spent months refusing to condemn “globalize the intifada,” conceding at last only that he would “discourage” a movement that led to the murder of so many Jews. He also had the temerity to liken the phrase to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, a comparison the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum pointed out was historically outrageous and deeply offensive to survivors. He has backed the boycott of Israel since college. He declines to affirm Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state. He told a Democratic Socialists panel that when the boot of the NYPD is on a New Yorker’s neck, “it’s been laced by the IDF.” It would be naive to call this the language of the death camp. But the same office that parses Israel so carefully also handed a press badge to the woman who said, “I don’t give a flying f-ck he died.” That is not a mindset interested in sensible solutions.

Mamdani’s own wife supplies more of it. Rama Duwaji, the illustrator he married in early 2025, has been documented liking posts that celebrated the October 7 Hamas attack and one that called the New York Times investigation into the sexual violence of that day a “mass rape hoax.” She illustrated an essay for a writer who has called Jews “vampires,” “demons,” “ghouls,” and “parasites.” The through-line runs into Luigi Mangione, the defendant who wrote in the notebook he was carrying when apprehended that the “parasites simply had it coming.” Vampires, demons, ghouls, parasites: This is not language that is merely adjacent to Nazi antisemitism. It is the same language, transcribed without a single substitution. Here is where anti-free market rhetoric and anti-Jewish hatred stop being a theory and start becoming a hit list.

In the months around Mangione’s arrest, an arsonist firebombed the home of Pennsylvania’s Jewish governor while his family slept, for what the governor “wants to do to the Palestinian people.” A gunman shot two young Israeli embassy staffers, a couple about to be engaged, outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, and chanted “Free Palestine!” as he was handcuffed by police. A week later, an Egyptian living in Colorado firebombed a march for the Israeli hostages, and an 82-year-old Holocaust survivor died of her burns. The cult of violence on the extreme American left is not a metaphor.

We call it madness because madness is consoling. Madness is rare, it is individual, it is always somebody else. But the celebration of a killing is no glitch in human nature; it is one of the oldest and most dependable things about us. It is what let Stalin starve millions and call it progress, and it has stood beneath every public stoning, every sacrifice on every altar since people first gathered to watch someone die for the good of the group. The horror is that the impulse is among the most ordinary things we do, and that it always begins with decent people deciding that the death of someone outside the circle is deserved. The women on the steps are not an aberration. They are the system’s most reliable signal of what is coming. They are not the noise. They are the tell.

The lesson is not about women or female nature. The Hausfrau who pulled the lever for Hitler and the young American who livestreams her devotion to Mangione share a single vulnerability: Under the right conditions, an otherwise non-violent woman, devoted to chic causes, will give herself completely to a charismatic man who frames killing as the solution to her perceived problems. The irony is that she often seeks liberation and ends up handing over her own agency. She is not the author of a totalitarian movement. She is its warmth, its alibi, its stooge, and she is the last to know it. That is why a press pass is not a small story. Confronted with the outrage, Abril Rios declared that no pressure would make her bow to her “oppressors.”

There may be a reason it is happening now. The world has grown too complex to hold in the head, a blur of systems and supply chains and feeds and AI trillionaires that no one can fathom, much less trace to a source, and the mind under that load looks for an exit. The simplest exit ever devised is a charismatic man who has already done the thinking, and an enemy who, conveniently, seems to deserve whatever he gets. That second half is the lie, the one that gets perpetrated every generation: the substitution of a hated group for an innocent one, the murderer dressed up as the new sheriff in town. For a moment, the mind that wants the madness to stop in a single click, a decisive ending, is the whole appeal. So we shoot Kennedy. We shoot his brother. We shoot MLK. We shoot Reagan, Ford, and Trump. The chic women applaud. This is the cult of the simple answer when the true answer has become too heavy to lift.

Karl Marx wrote that history arrives the first time as tragedy and the second as farce. Berlin in 1932 was the tragedy. Three women in heels doing a hip-thrust for the cameras on a courthouse step, badges on their chests, cheering a man who shot a father of two in the back, is the farce. But the farce is not the harmless version of the tragedy. It is the tragedy that has not yet remembered what it is. 1932 is a date. It is also a temperament, and the temperament is back.

Jeff Cunningham, American Greatness

Hong Kong has overtaken Switzerland as the world’s biggest cross-border wealth hub for the first time, as an influx of investment from the Chinese mainland helped it eclipse the traditional haven.

Wealth managers in the Chinese territory booked $2.9tn of international assets in 2025, according to estimates from the Boston Consulting Group. About 60 per cent of that came from mainland China, with BCG forecasting that the rapid increase in Asian fortunes would widen the gap between Hong Kong and Switzerland to almost $600bn by the end of the decade.

China’s growth has been bolstered by a return of equity capital markets activity in Hong Kong that has allowed companies to raise funds offshore, as well as the country’s manufacturing dominance in sectors such as electric vehicles.

But the rise of the Asian city as a cross-border hub also reflects broader shifts in global wealth flows, with clients seeking to spread their assets across multiple jurisdictions to hedge against geopolitical tensions, sanctions risks and political instability. “This is a completely new phenomenon. I haven’t seen anything like it,” said Michael Pellman Rowland at Baseline Wealth Management, a Swiss-based independent manager with global clients….