Rising interest rates, record insolvencies, and permanent recession — the looming economic crisis in the EU is taking shape.

Thomas Kolbe | September 2, 2026

Rising interest rates, record insolvencies, and permanent recession — the looming economic crisis in the EU is taking shape. Brussels is responding by preparing the ground for capital controls. The regulators’ latest target: European citizens’ foreign bank accounts.

Starting January 11, 2027, trouble looms for EU citizens with foreign accounts. From that date, banks from third countries — Switzerland, the UK, the US, or Singapore — will be prohibited from offering so-called core banking services to European citizens. In essence, this covers three core functions: classic deposit-taking (checking, savings, or fixed-term accounts), lending, and the guarantee business. Banks wishing to continue offering these services to EU citizens will then be required to maintain a specifically licensed, fully supervised branch in exactly the member state where the customer resides.

Existing customers who held a foreign account as of July 11, 2026, may keep it, as long as the contractual basis is not fundamentally altered. Here lies a gray zone, an area of interpretive discretion for European authorities — one that will almost certainly be used in the future to pull these customers back inside the EU’s walls as well.

Officially, this new EU initiative is called Directive 2024/1619, better known as CRD VI — the sixth Capital Requirements Directive. It was adopted through the ordinary legislative procedure by the European Parliament and the Council, on a proposal from the European Commission. As is so often the case with new EU regulations, the process simmered quietly in the background for a long time, largely unnoticed by public awareness. It formally entered into force on July 9, 2024, though it only becomes binding for affected third-country banks from January 11, 2027. The Commission itself officially markets this regulation as mere “harmonization of market access” for third-country banks — a technocratic-sounding term that, in practice, amounts to a gatekeeping mechanism over the customer. The European Banking Authority (EBA), which published its final guidelines on the authorization of third-country branches on July 7, 2026, likewise speaks soberly of a “harmonized regulatory framework.”

A typical EU euphemism, one that points to something else entirely at its core: growing capital control.

The re-territorialization of bank accounts — and thus of customer deposits — intended by the European Commission fits into the larger picture of a new financial market architecture.

There has been much recent talk of a banking union, a common rulebook for institutions and credit markets, which in the end will likely serve above all to deepen the pools of capital available for sovereign financing.

The European Commission and the European Central Bank are working together with national legislators on measures to strengthen the liquidity position of the EU banking sector. This will also be necessary given continually rising interest rates — a trend that, in a worst case, will not only place heavy strain on public finances. The real economy, too, is facing rising borrowing costs, which many businesses may not survive after the long era of low rates.

We are witnessing the construction of an entire bundle of new rules to shore up financial institutions. Crypto regulation under MiCA falls into this same pattern. Full transparency, complete regulation — the era of hiding money from the euro and the European tax authorities is, in this domain, definitively over within the EU.

The digital euro is meant to serve as the overarching framework tying these individual measures together. It is a technologically ambitious — perhaps overly ambitious — project: together with the ECB, the EU is setting out to build a digital central bank currency, a CBDC, on the basis of blockchain technology.

That would mean total control over the transaction activity of every economic actor in the eurozone — a concentration of power in the hands of the ECB, an institution long since subordinated to the political machinery of Brussels.

Each of these measures, taken individually, could function as a capital control in a crisis scenario. Europeans’ capital would then be trapped within the EU, should a severe financial and sovereign debt crisis occur.

For bank customers, this effectively marks the end of international diversification options. Safeguarding savings outside an increasingly volatile and heavily indebted financial and monetary system will, for many, become impossible — a kind of Neo-Bretton Woods is emerging, a classic control framework of the sort that over-indebted states — including, by now, the EU bloc itself — have repeatedly applied throughout history in order to secure, ultimately, access to their citizens’ private wealth.

The so-called reverse solicitation loophole offers no relief here either. This refers to the theoretical exemption allowing foreign banks to continue serving EU customers if the initiative demonstrably came from the customer alone — meaning the customer approached the bank on their own, without any active solicitation on the bank’s part. The burden of proof rests entirely with the bank, and even a German-language website or a single instance of active outreach can be construed as improper market solicitation, voiding the exemption. The result: banks, out of sheer caution, would rather forgo EU customers altogether than rely on a barely provable claim of customer-initiated contact in a dispute.

Ultimately, the European Commission’s strategy points clearly toward one goal: looking without rose-tinted EU glasses at the fiscal trajectory of Paris, Madrid, Rome, or, by now, even Berlin, coercive measures for capital control and euro stabilization will, from the perspective of those in power, become unavoidable.

AMERICAN THINKER

With midterms rapidly approaching, Republicans had appeared to catch a break on the economy.

After a year in which the war with Iran sent gas prices soaring and pushed inflation to multi-year highs, both June and July’s Consumer Price Index came in tame. Even grocery prices slipped for the first time in months.

But then President Trump returned to his longtime obsession: tariffs.

Indeed, last weekend, talks between the White House and Canada collapsed, and Trump immediately slapped 50 percent tariffs on billions of dollars’ worth of Canadian goods, reviving what the Wall Street Journal called “The Dumbest Trade War in History.”

The timing could hardly be worse for Republicans, who had spent months straining to soothe voters’ concerns over the cost of living and attempting to build a midterm message around affordability. Now, tariffs and trade chaos are back in the news, and Republicans are likely going to pay the price.

As the Wall Street Journal noted, “Republicans are already getting pounded on the campaign trail over [Trump’s] tariffs and inflation.” The data confirm that. A majority of Americans, 56 percent, ranked cost of living concerns among the top issues facing the country, according to polling by Politico. Even among Trump voters, a plurality of 33 percent cite rising prices as “among the biggest failures of Trump’s second term.”

To be sure, voters have long disliked tariffs. March’s Harris Poll revealed that 72 percent of Americans — including 60 percent of Republicans — believe Trump’s tariffs have a negative impact.

Opinions have not changed, and evidence of the political implications is emerging. A 54 percent majority of likely voters in battleground states disapprove of the tariffs, according to New York Times-Siena polling, which surveyed voters in Alaska, Iowa, Maine, North Carolina, Ohio and Texas.

The result? Reuters-Ipsos polling showed that voters now prefer Democrats’ approach to affordability over the Republicans’ approach by an 8-point margin (36 percent to 28 percent). Moreover, Democrats’ lead in the generic congressional ballot now sits slightly above 6 points, the widest margin of the cycle.

Trump’s overall approval rating is hovering just under 40 percent — more than 17 points underwater. Even key GOP constituencies like ranchers are angry at Trump’s efforts to improve affordability elsewhere by removing tariffs on imported beef.

On the economy, once Trump’s signature strength, his approval has sunk to 34.5 percent and more than 62 percent disapprove.

Republicans recognize the danger, but are powerless to stop it, even as it threatens to undermine what should have been a favorable Senate map. Republican Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) warned that the tariffs are causing “tension” and that “the party that owns that tension…will probably suffer the consequences in November.”

Compounding Republican concerns is that the states most affected by these new Canada tariffs are vital to Republicans’ hopes of holding onto the Senate. Maine, Michigan, New Hampshire, Alaska and Ohio are all extremely vulnerable to Canada’s retaliatory tariffs, and all have hotly contested races this fall.

Aware that tariffs are deeply unpopular and hoping to defend a key Senate seat, Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) called the Canada tariffs a “mistake” before skipping an event with Vice President JD Vance in the state last week, where he defended the duties.

Former Sen. John Sununu (R-N.H.), who is trying to win back his old seat in New Hampshire, piled on, saying, “It makes no sense to start a trade war with our closest neighbor.”

Democrats are ready to take advantage, as the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee spokesperson made clear, and the data suggests voters will be receptive to arguments that Trump and Republicans are “making life more expensive.”

While it is true that Trump is not entirely responsible for inflation, which has raged since the COVID-19 pandemic, that may matter little when voters are increasingly pessimistic about the economy, struggling to afford basic necessities, and looking for someone to blame.

Trump should know this well. In 2024, he benefitted from extreme discontent with “Bidenomics”. But now, Trump is actively keeping prices and tariffs in the headlines rather than telling voters how Republicans are working to lower costs.

At the same time, by waging trade wars, doubling down on tariffs, and dismissing affordability as “a fake word,” Trump lets Democrats off the hook for their own vulnerabilities, including an insurgent far left and a party favorability that is 14 points underwater.

Trump may not care about the midterms since he is not on the ballot, but he is seemingly intent on speeding up the date he will become a lame duck. And, in doing so, drastically increasing the chances of the “all-out oversight” investigations into himself and his family that Democrats are already preparing.

Ultimately, the 2026 midterms were always going to be an uphill battle for Republicans, as they always are for the party in power. In order to keep both the House and Senate — or at least one — the GOP needed a coherent affordability agenda and policies which lowered costs and strengthened the economy.

Instead, Republicans got renewed tariffs, for which they will likely pay the price in November.

Douglas E. Schoen and Carly Cooperman are pollsters and partners with the public opinion company Schoen Cooperman Research based in New York. They are co-authors of the book “America: Unite or Die.“

“Lindsay Clancy, 36, is charged with three counts of first-degree murder in the killings of her three children: Cora, 5; Dawson 3, and Callan, 8 months. The children’s bodies were found by their father, Patrick Clancy, in their Duxbury, Mass., home in January 2023.

She pleaded not guilty and claimed she was suffering from postpartum psychosis and bipolar disorder. The jury has not yet reached a verdict. The judge might have to declare a mistrial.”

Why the confusion? How does an emotional state force you to do anything? If we are helpless over all our emotions, then every single action of our lives can be explained away and excused — because emotions are part of everything.

The day someone in the American Psychiatric Association decided emotions are illnesses which make choices no longer relevant? That was the day civilization ended. The rest is only a matter of time.

With or without strong emotions, choices are choices. Plenty of people experience states of depression, which actually is a lack of motivation, purpose and energy. People who kill their children do not lack energy. The vast majority of depressed persons would not kill their three children, even on a bad day. As for psychosis, which refers to delusion and hallucinations, how does this change the nature of murder?

Grow up, America.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

Within Western societies, there persist subcultures that treat institutions as resources to be harvested while simultaneously scorning the normative order those institutions sustain. 

Lars Møller | September 2, 2026

he ideal of a democratic polity rests upon a fragile consensus: that citizens will, by and large, restrain immediate appetite in favor of reciprocal forbearance, that private property will be treated as more than a provisional convenience, and that elected officials will refuse to dignify predation as justice. While rule of law and a free press are necessary conditions for such restraint, they are not sufficient.

Civil society’s everyday virtues — queueing, mutual non-interference, the tacit assumption that shops will open tomorrow — are routinely taken as natural rather than as hard-won and easily eroded. Within Western societies, there persist subcultures that treat institutions as resources to be harvested while simultaneously scorning the normative order those institutions sustain. When elected representatives cynically pander to these attitudes, they accelerate the corrosion.

In August 2026, New York State Assemblywoman Emily Gallagher, a democratic socialist from Brooklyn, offered a textbook illustration. After her group monitored 360 arraignments over four days outside a Manhattan courthouse, she declared that more than half the cases were low-level misdemeanors and that the theft of soap and toothpaste constituted a “crime of poverty” driven by “biological need.” Society, she insisted, should not prioritize the protection of billion-dollar pharmacy chains over the survival of the destitute; diversion into treatment rather than prosecution was the proper response.

Gallagher’s remarks spread rapidly. Legal analysts observed that poverty may explain theft without licensing it. Retail observers noted the practical consequence: chains already lock everyday goods behind plastic barriers or close stores altogether. Organized rings, not starving individuals, account for a substantial share of contemporary retail loss. Gallagher’s framing nevertheless supplied moral cover for an attitude that is simultaneously parasitic — living off the residual productivity of others — and hostile to the very legal order that makes residual productivity possible.

Gallagher’s attitude — apparently naive and out of touch with reality, if not simply anti-Western and terrorist — did not arise ex nihilo. Classical anarchist and Marxist texts already supplied the conceptual architecture. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon’s 1840 declaration that “property is theft” inverted the moral polarity: the owner who extracts surplus without labor is the true robber; the poor who seize goods merely reclaim what was unjustly withheld. Karl Marx’s 1842 articles on the Prussian wood-theft laws performed a parallel operation, portraying the criminalization of customary gathering rights as class legislation that transformed traditional use into felony.

Later illegalists — Ravachol, the Bonnot Gang — translated the doctrine into practice, treating burglary and expropriation as individual reappropriation rather than crime. In each case, the existing distribution of property is treated as presumptively illegitimate; therefore, the act of taking is corrective rather than predatory.

Contemporary digital subcultures have democratized the same logic. Mid-2010s Tumblr communities of “lifters” celebrated theft from Sephora or Whole Foods under a Robin-Hood banner, arguing that corporations already practice wage theft and that insurance and shrinkage budgets absorb the loss. TikTok and Reddit leftism distilled the maxim still further: “if it’s a chain, it’s a free-for-all.” Academic philosophers of distributive justice occasionally explore the boundary conditions under which necessity and proportionality might license redistributive theft when a polity leaves some in deep want while others command surplus. The cumulative effect is a cultural repertoire that reframes predation as justice and compliance as complicity with injustice.

The practical test of such repertoires arrives when ordinary deterrents momentarily weaken. Historical blackouts supply one revealing data set. The 1965 Northeast outage and the far larger 2003 blackout — affecting fifty million people — produced low crime rates, mutual aid, and spontaneous traffic direction. Arrests in New York actually fell relative to ordinary summer nights. These episodes demonstrate that darkness alone does not dissolve restraint. The 1977 New York blackout remains the salient exception: occurring amid severe economic distress, high unemployment, and the “Summer of Sam” panic, it triggered widespread looting and arson, and more than three thousand arrests.

Sociologists of disaster emphasize that pre-existing social conditions — economic desperation, eroded legitimacy, ambient unrest — determine whether the temporary absence of light and formal control yields cooperation or predation. “Elite panic” often overestimates the threat; the public more frequently defaults to altruism. Yet the 1977 case shows that when the surrounding fabric is already frayed, the same absence can license predation.

A more recent and larger-scale demonstration occurred during the civil unrest that followed George Floyd’s death in late May and June 2020. While protests were insistently characterized as “peaceful,” a nihilistic fraction produced the costliest civil disorder in modern American history: insured losses of one to two billion dollars, exceeding the 1992 Los Angeles riots. In Minneapolis-St. Paul alone, more than 1,300 buildings were damaged or burned, with a five-mile stretch of Lake Street especially devastated. Looting and arson spread to high-value commercial corridors in at least 140 cities. Commercial burglaries in major cities roughly doubled in the first week of June before collapsing once curfews and National Guard deployments restored a measure of deterrence.

Opportunistic actors and organized rings exploited the temporary withdrawal of police resources — whether from overwhelmed capacity or deliberate pullback — to conduct rapid smash-and-grab operations. Concurrently, homicide rates in major cities rose more than fifty percent relative to 2019, while clearance rates for violent crime declined. Criminologists debate the precise causal weights of legitimacy loss versus de-policing, yet the temporal correlation is difficult to dismiss: when formal restraint thins, both property and personal violence can expand rapidly among those already disposed to treat the law as optional.

Those recent episodes of institutional collapse illuminate the deeper point. Civil society’s everyday order is not self-maintaining. It depends upon a critical mass of citizens who internalize restraint even when immediate detection is improbable, and upon office-holders who refuse to supply ideological alibis for those who do not. Subcultures that simultaneously draw upon the material surplus generated by productive institutions and profess hostility to the normative order sustaining those institutions are parasitic in the precise sense: they consume without reciprocal contribution and actively corrode the conditions of their own subsistence.

When legislators of Gallagher’s stripe translate that corrosion into official rhetoric — perversely recasting low-level theft as biological necessity and corporate property as presumptively illegitimate — they perform a dual disservice. They weaken the deterrent signal sent to potential offenders, and they signal to the broader public that the legal protection of ordinary commerce is negotiable. The resulting equilibrium is unstable. Retailers respond with barriers, reduced hours, or exit; residual law-abiding residents confront a landscape of inconvenience and elevated risk; opportunistic actors update their expectations of enforcement probability downwards.

Modern Western cities concentrate both extreme wealth and extreme deprivation, amplify grievance through instantaneous digital media, and house political entrepreneurs ready to convert grievance into electoral capital. Blackouts and riots merely render visible dynamics that operate, more quietly, under normal illumination. The 2003 blackout’s relative calm and the 1977 exception both confirm that social context, not the mere absence of light, governs outcomes. The 2020 data confirm that when police presence is strained, and ideological justification for property seizure is already circulating, commercial districts can be stripped with remarkable speed. Gallagher’s intervention belongs to the same continuum: an official endorsement of the claim that certain forms of theft are not truly theft.

In a polity that still aspires to democratic legitimacy and the rule of law, anarchistic-style and morally irresponsible endorsements are not merely imprudent; they are corrosive of the minimal mutual forbearance without which free institutions cannot endure. The lights need not go out for the fragility to become apparent; it is already measurable in the locked toothpaste aisle and the boarded storefront.

AMERICAN THINKER

Thursday night, New Orleans. I have flown in from Los Angeles for work and am walking off the jet bridge, thinking about dinner, when 15 men in vests coalesce around me. I have never been arrested before. Even they find it strange, because I am British, and I am in Balenciaga, and I am ever so nice about it all.

They take my belt, wallet, every piece of identification, my rosary and Missal, cash. They put me in chains. Real chains. Every man they arrest, whatever he has done, ends up garlanded in steel like this: wincing, hopping, clattering. It hurts more than they make out on TV.

Yes. I am being deported.

Somewhere in Miami, at hearings nobody told me about, a judge has ordered me removed. My work permit has been canceled without a word. The notices were sent to a Florida address I left ten years ago, which, I realize, must have been on purpose. The same agencies have been writing regularly and without incident to my new address for years.

Three of the five warning letters were even returned, marked “addressee unknown.” The arresting agents told me so. When I said I could not find my lawyer’s number, an agent read it to me off his computer screen. But somehow my lawyer had never been informed about any of the past year’s developments. I am stripped, starved, shipped between three detention centers in 12 hours.

A few of the agents knew my face from 2016, when I was Donald Trump’s biggest fan. Back then, I called him Daddy. “Yeah, I’m not doing this,” said one officer. “This is not what I got into this for,” muttered another. I’m certain I saw at least one walk off the job while I was being booked.

The last pair, who drove me to Houston for the flight, said they were getting “calls from Washington” every 20 minutes. They agreed that none of this was normal. “You must have pissed someone off.” My photo is already on the ICE Twitter account, though I won’t know it for another 18 hours.

I spent years demanding this agency be let off the leash. And so it is. Yet, I am torn about the fact that I am the only person arrested by ICE in August who has not killed or raped anyone. I might be the only person arrested by them at all: In each new jail, I am the only prisoner. Long corridors of empty cells. Gleaming 2026 SUVs in the parking lot. Agents on steroids in virgin tactical gear. They’ve spent the money. But I don’t think they’ve done much deporting.

Well-connected friends confirm a few days later that this theatrically cruel performance is my punishment for turning on Trump. On air with Candace Owens, I’d accused him of betrayal, cowardice, and capitulation to warmongering Israeli psychopaths.

Like it or not, this makes me a political prisoner, a persecuted human rights icon. I am Mahatma Gandhi. I am Nelson Mandela. I’m not exactly sure who Aung San Suu Kyi is, and can’t be bothered to look it up, but, yes, I am him too.

They keep moving me to keep ahead of my lawyers, who, when they call, are given the name of wherever we just left. I am handed a note and told it’s where I am being taken next; this is a lie. I am promised a phone call, a nurse, medication, a chance to be heard by a judge. All lies. Twenty-four hours without food. Longer without sleep.

No sign of my lawyer. But – of course! – there is a photographer. He, at least, has been given truthful directions. I mean to stare into his lens with defiance and stoicism, but I am fat and covered in filth and stains and drool and I am crying and even border czar Tom Homan can’t bring himself to tweet this one. But he does go on on television to say I have “had my due process.”

As ever, my critics fail to meet the moment. Laura Loomer, who is not a Congresswoman thanks to me, took credit for my bruises, proclaiming “a great day for America.” I will not be cruel about her; I do not think she is well. Ben Shapiro, citing the wrong visa class – because he is stupid – wondered how I ever got into the States, since it has “plenty of nut jobs” already. Ben has written five New York Times bestsellers. I have ghostwritten 17. Let us not punch down.

Nonetheless, I stand exposed as a hypocrite who got what he asked for. I wanted millions indiscriminately deported, and said so – loudly, and in worse words. You have me.

Monday, London. For years I told people I’d never come back to the UK “because I don’t speak Arabic.” It is time to learn. I have been back at work for two days. I manage lawyers, which can be done from anywhere with good enough wifi and bad enough grievances. So things are mostly OK.

But then, last night, I trip on the stairs – nothing in itself, I am clumsy. But something in me, as I fall, remembers being shoved down steps. I reach for the graze on my forehead, and weep for an hour like an old woman.

Without my rosary, I prayed on the plane with open hands instead. That still works. So do motions to reopen. I’ll be fine. I had a frightening weekend; this will be an expensive few months. I will make it home eventually. I miss my Bengals more than any American person. There, see, still a git. But not so cruel as America, still wedded, at age 250, to brazen corruption and barbarism.

Milo Yiannopoulos, The Spectator

Raúl Castro turned 95 years old in June, so this isn’t exactly a big news flash, but if rumors are true, he’s not doing too well.

Various Miami-based Cuban exile media outlets have reported that a source inside his inner circle says he has had a stroke and is in the hospital in critical condition. Some are even reporting that he’s intubated and that machines are keeping him alive.

Dr. Andy S. Gomez of Local 10 in Florida has also confirmed that Cuban sources tell him Castro is hospitalized, but he refused to say more or speculate about his condition. The Miami Herald said that sources inside Cuba say there is no public activity that would reflect the former dictator’s impending death.

The regime, of course, has not confirmed or denied any of this. If you’ll recall, there were a lot of false rumors leading up to his brother Fidel Castro’s death in 2016, so this could very well end up being one of those situations.

Raúl has made some public appearances in recent months, though he’s also skipped a few notable ones. When he does appear in public, he looks frail and unwell. His most recent appearance was on August 13 when he attended public events to celebrate Fidel’s 100th birthday. He has reportedly had some health issues in recent years, like cancer, but again, the regime has never confirmed any of it.

Sarah Anderson, PJ Media

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced Monday, August 31, that the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is removing 110 commercial driver’s license training schools from the federal Training Provider Registry and issuing notices of proposed removal to more than 160 additional schools, a combined total of about 270 locations. The removals come as the Trump Administration continues to crack down on illegal aliens operating commercial vehicles on American roads.

The 110 schools must immediately stop administering curricula, using training facilities, and conducting behind-the-wheel instruction. Officials said those providers were linked to more than 5,000 drivers later cited for failing English-language proficiency checks during roadside inspections.

Each of the 110 schools had passed at least 10 such drivers, according to a press release from the Justice Department.

Duffy described the first group as the largest sources of those violations. “Today, what we are announcing is an emergency executive shutdown of 110 driving schools,” he said. “These are driving schools that account for 5,000 of the violations for English proficiency.”

The secretary went on to stress the administration’s emphasis on English proficiency tests that have often been ignored by many of the affected locations. “You have to speak English to operate a commercial motor vehicle. I didn’t create that rule. President Trump didn’t create that rule. That rule has been in place for decades,” he noted.

For the additional 160 locations that were given notices of proposed removal, Duffy cited inadequate space for required maneuvers, unlicensed instructors, missing documentation, and classrooms that did not meet federal standards.

The announcement comes after investigators inspected nearly 400 providers in 40 states and reported that about 40 percent did not meet registry rules. Drivers certified by schools in the proposed-removal group were linked to 239 commercial motor vehicle-related fatalities, according to federal officials.

A Department of Transportation breakdown of the emergency shutdowns listed the largest counts in Pennsylvania (13), Texas (13), California (11), Florida (10), Utah (9), and Ohio (7), with smaller numbers in other states and 23 online-only schools with no physical site. Named examples included Platinum Plus Truck Driving School in California, which certified 36 drivers later cited for language violations, and ASC Technical Institute in Texas, which certified 58 such drivers.

Duffy further stated that officials identified 10 third-party skills testers in one state who issued more than 2,000 commercial licenses to people who later could not meet English requirements

Since June 2025, more than 28,000 commercial drivers have been placed out of service for English-proficiency violations, and the department says states have been required to cancel more than 30,000 licenses issued to foreign drivers that did not meet federal rules.

“USDOT has spent the last year-and-a-half strengthening the rules of the road and removing dangerous foreign drivers from our trucking industry. To fully root out the scourge of fraud, hold criminals accountable, and restore safety, we need the support of federal law enforcement,” Duffy said in a written statement.

“I am so grateful for President Trump raising the alarm on this issue, and to Vice President Vance for leading the charge to crack down on fraud nationwide. From states failing to follow the law to shady training schools and illicit companies, together we will tackle every link in the chain.”

Cullen McCue, Trending Politics

Nova Scotia’s only Catholic hospital will lose its religious identity at the end of this month.

And with the ditching of its Catholic affiliation, the hospital will begin killing babies in abortions and euthanize patients.

The facility was founded by nuns more than a century ago, but St. Martha’s Regional Hospital will become Antigonish Memorial Regional Hospital on October 1 after the Mission Assurance Agreement expires September 30. The Sisters of St. Martha, who founded the hospital in 1906, are withdrawing their name and ending their sponsorship role.

Provincial officials say the publicly funded hospital’s services and policies will then more closely align with those of other secular hospitals across Nova Scotia.

The 1996 agreement, signed when the sisters transferred ownership to the province, had protected the hospital’s Catholic mission and barred killing babies in abortion. Medically assisted dying, initially prohibited on campus, has been available since 2019 in a separate building.

The expiration of the agreement removes those remaining religious restrictions on abortions and “assisted suicide” inside the hospital itself.

Health and Wellness Minister Michelle Thompson announced in March that the province would not accept another Catholic sponsor after the sisters said they could no longer continue in that role.

“When the current agreement concludes, the services and policies at St. Martha’s will more closely align with all other hospitals across Nova Scotia,” the Department of Health and Wellness said. Thompson has said the government wants all hospitals to have the same services, policies and procedures.

The sisters proposed Catholic Health International, based in New Brunswick, to carry on the mission. The government declined.

Sister Brendalee Boisvert, congregational leader of the Sisters of St. Martha, said the congregation decided after discernment and prayer that it was time to step back because of aging membership and fewer sisters in health care.

“We decided as sisters, after we took a discernment time, prayed and thought about it, that in order for people to realize it’s not the same hospital we will have to take the name back,” she said.

Boisvert, who opposes euthanasia, added: “I don’t believe in MAID, I believe in palliative care and that people need support, and St. Martha’s has a strong palliative care service.”

She called the loss of Nova Scotia’s only Catholic hospital “a great loss.”

“People have come to St. Martha’s knowing they will receive good care and be treated with respect,” she said. “The difference was that every month we would talk about the mission, how we’re living it and how we can do it better. I don’t think the government has any idea what the loss will be when you lose that kind of focused attention.”

Bishop Wayne Kirkpatrick of the Diocese of Antigonish expressed deep concern in a March 7 letter, describing more than a century of “Gospel-inspired care rooted in compassion, dignity and respect for life at every stage.” He wrote that Catholic health care bears witness to “the inviolable dignity of every human person” and the duty “to serve and defend human life at every stage.”

Without the agreement, he said, “the Catholic ethical framework that has guided the hospital’s mission will diminish.”

Fr. John Barry, a senior priest of the diocese, wrote to the sisters that the government’s refusal undermines “the very essential reasons for our basic existence. Above all, the sanctity of human life from its very inception, ongoing care and provision to its natural end. St. Martha Hospital has constantly and consistently, from its very beginning, upheld and promoted these principles.”

Steven Ertelt, Lifenews

I consider this my country, but not my government.

The government is (self-evidently) a group of (bipartisan) toxic grifters and legalized mobsters masquerading as a champion of the rights of man. Most people live under intellectual sedation where the government is concerned, and there will be no moving them until things get so bad it will be too late.

The Democratic Party is now hard socialist and Communist. As early as 2028, they will regain the White House and Congress. Or a little later. When–not if–that happens, they will impose the totalitarian agenda without hesitation. This includes red states, who will either roll over or secede or break apart from the federal regime imposing all the socialist directives. Communism is coming. It doesn’t mean most want it; but it’s coming. The only choice will be the response.

Doomsday scenario? Not so much. It’s an objective fact that the Democratic Party has radicalized. Democrats are voting for the Communists, which may even include AOC (or some equivalent) for President in 2028. The Communist can win, and sooner or later will win, because the Democratic Party is one of our two major parties, and wins about half the time. This is what we’re getting. Will enough of us keep fighting back to make any kind of difference? That remains to be seen.

America may be the first civilization in history whose government-run schools taught generations of students to hate their OWN country and to root (and vote) for its destruction. Not just the destruction of America, but destruction of reason and Western civilization itself. It’s logically inverted and indicative of suicidal self-destruction and insanity.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason