Trump Says He Won’t Fire “Numbskull” Powell, But Demands Rate Cuts

Trump Says He Won’t Fire “Numbskull” Powell, But Demands Rate Cuts

President Trump said he did not plan to fire Fed Chair Jerome Powell, days after saying he would “soon” pick his nominee – to lead the central bank next, with Polymarket odds suggesting Hassett, Warsh and Bessent are favorites to replace Powell.

“The fake news is saying, ‘Oh, if you fired him, it would be so bad, it would be so bad.’ I don’t know why it would be so bad, but I’m not going to fire him,” Trump said at a White House event on Thursday.

Trump went on to reiterate his complaints that the Fed has not moved quickly enough to cut interest rates, as more evidence emerged of cooling inflation. Powell’s term as chair expires in May 2026.

Trump went on to complain that “we’re going to spend $600 billion a year because of one numbskull that sits here, ‘I don’t see enough reason to cut the rates now.’… Cut your rates now, there’s no inflation.”

“We call him ‘Too Late,’ right?” Trump said, adding he was frustrated that the current rates were increasing the federal government’s borrowing costs. The president said the Fed could always increase rates if inflation returned.

“Let’s say there was inflation. In a year from now, raise your rates. I don’t mind, raise your rates. I’m all for it. I’ll be the one to be calling you,” Trump said. “He’ll be too late for that too.”

Tyler Durden
Thu, 06/12/2025 – 12:17

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Army General Says Marines May Temporarily Detain Protesters In LA

Army General Says Marines May Temporarily Detain Protesters In LA

Authored by Katabella Roberts via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The 700 Marines and 4,000 National Guard troops ordered to Los Angeles by President Donald Trump in response to protests over immigration enforcement operations lack the authority to arrest protesters but may temporarily detain them if necessary, an Army general said on Wednesday.

California National Guard members stand guard outside the Federal Building as protests continue in response to federal immigration operations in Los Angeles on June 10, 2025. Apu Gomes/AFP via Getty Images

Strictly for the protection of the federal personnel and the protection of the federal buildings, they’re allowed to temporarily detain and wait for law enforcement to come and arrest them,” Maj. Gen. Scott Sherman said of the troops.

They do not do any arrest, they are strictly there to detain and wait for law enforcement to come and handle those demonstrators.”

The Marines are trained to use their weapons for personal protection, but their rifles will not be loaded with live ammunition during the deployment, said Sherman, who is leading the deployment of the troops.

Not in their rifle, no,” he said when asked whether rifles would carry live ammunition.

The Marines are undergoing “civil disturbance training and the standing rules of force training” for two days, Sherman said. The Marines will not be deployed to the streets of Los Angeles on Wednesday, but will be there soon, he added.

In a statement issued Wednesday, U.S. Northern Command (USNORTHCOM) confirmed that the Marines will conduct the same missions currently being performed by the National Guardsmen under Title 10 status.

They can and have accompanied Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents on missions, but they are “not a part of the operations,” Northern Command said.

Northern Command said forces are authorized to temporarily detain an individual in specific circumstances, such as “to stop an assault, to prevent harm to others, or to prevent interference with federal personnel performing their duties.”

A firework explodes near the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department officers in Paramount, Calif., on June 7, 2025. Apu Gomes/Getty Images

Any temporary detention will end immediately when the individual can be safely transferred to the custody of appropriate civilian law enforcement personnel, Northern Command stated.

According to Northern Command, approximately 2,800 service members have been deployed to the greater Los Angeles area as of Wednesday.

Trump has said the military deployment in Los Angeles prevented violence—which has included protesters throwing projectiles at officers—from raging out of control, an assertion California Gov. Gavin Newsom and other local officials have said was untrue.

Newsom and California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed an emergency motion in court on Tuesday seeking to block the federal government’s deployment of troops, arguing that the mission “orders soldiers to engage in unlawful civilian law enforcement activities in communities across the region, beyond just guarding federal buildings.”

Bonta said on Tuesday that allowing federal troops to protect ICE personnel could also violate an 1878 law that generally forbids the U.S. military, including the National Guard, from taking part in civilian law enforcement.

Protecting personnel likely means accompanying ICE agents into communities and neighborhoods, and protecting functions could mean protecting the ICE function of enforcing the immigration law,” Bonta said.

The protests continue to spread from Los Angeles to other cities in the United States, with hundreds of nationwide demonstrations planned for Saturday.

Protests have been held in Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle, Denver, Dallas, Washington, New York, Atlanta, and Chicago.

In Austin, Texas, police fired tear gas and pepper balls in a standoff with demonstrators on Monday.

Further demonstrations are set to take place in Austin this weekend, as well as in other parts of the state, including Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio. In advance of those protests, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott said he would deploy the National Guard to ensure they remain peaceful.

Reuters contributed to this report.

 

Tyler Durden
Thu, 06/12/2025 – 12:00

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South Korea Lab Makes Bird Flu 100% Lethal In Mammals: ‘Virology Journal’

South Korea Lab Makes Bird Flu 100% Lethal In Mammals: ‘Virology Journal’

Authored by Jon Fleetwood via JonFleetwood.com (subscribe here),

South Korean scientists have conducted a lab experiment that made a purported wild avian influenza “bird flu” virus 100% lethal in mammals, achieving total death in infected mice by enabling the virus to adapt inside their bodies and spread to others.

The dangerous move comes as the U.S. develops a “next-generation” universal vaccine platform called ‘Generation Gold Standard’ that will focus on avian influenza jab creation, signaling a coordinated international push to engineer and preemptively vaccinate against lab-enhanced bird flu strains with pandemic potential—despite worldwide fallout from similar COVID-era strategies.

Published June 2025 in Virology Journal, the study describes how researchers at Konkuk University infected mice with a highly pathogenic H5N1 avian influenza strain—one that already contained a small percentage (4%) of a mammalian-adaptive mutation known as PB2-E627K.

That tiny minority of mutant virus was enough to take over and kill every infected host.

“All challenged mice died by 8 dpc. Transmission through direct-contact occurred in 100% of cases, and all contact mice died within 12 days.”

This was not an accidental discovery.

Researchers intentionally infected mammals with a virus they knew contained a mutation that helps bird flu spread and replicate more effectively in mammals, including humans.

Once inside the mice, the mutation exploded to near-total dominance—not just in the lungs, but in the brain, where it caused seizures, ataxia, and fatal neurological damage.

“The PB2-E627K variant, initially present at 4% in the virus stock, was selected and reached near-fixation (~ 100%) in the lungs and brains by 6 days post-challenge and was subsequently transmitted.”

“In dead direct-contact mice, the E627K mutation in PB2 was found at a proportion of 99.8–100% in both the lungs and brains.”

The virus became neurotropic—targeting the brain—and caused seizures and other neurological symptoms before death.

“Two out of three direct-contact mice displayed significant neurological symptoms, including seizure, ataxia, and bradykinesia.”

This is precisely the kind of gain-of-function-style research that Congressional hearings and federal reports have linked to the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic—a disaster that killed over a million Americans and possibly far more if COVID vaccine injury data is fully accounted for.

“Even a small proportion of mammalian-adaptive mutations can quickly become dominant as the virus serially transmits between mammals.”

The virus strain used in the study—isolated from a wild duck in Korea—was given to mice intranasally at high dose.

After just one round of infection, the mutation that enables efficient replication in mammals (PB2-E627K) went from 4% to nearly 100%, and was then passed to other mice who also died.

“In experiment 2, with a 1:1 challenge-to-contact ratio, all the challenged mice died. Transmission occurred in 50% of cases; three out of six contact mice died.”

This was not nature running its course—this was a deliberate laboratory setup that triggered a lethal evolutionary pathway, with full awareness of the risks.

No genetic engineering was needed—just the right environment and host to favor viral adaptation.

This is exactly the kind of procedure that reportedly allowed a bat coronavirus to become a pandemic-capable human pathogen in Wuhan.

“These findings highlight the need for continuous genomic monitoring to detect mammalian adaptation markers and assess interspecies transmission risks.”

Yet this isn’t the only high-risk bird flu experiment South Korea is conducting.

Just a month earlier, South Korean scientists published another Virology Journal paper revealing that they had engineered a chimeric H5N1 virus using hallmark gain-of-function (GOF) techniques—combining gene segments from three different influenza viruses to increase the virus’s heat resistance, alter host targeting, and enhance human cell entry.

“Recombinant viruses were generated using a pHW2000 plasmid-based reverse genetics system.”

“Combining the R90K and H110Y mutations (22W_KY) resulted in a synergistic increase in thermal stability and maintained HA activity without measurable reduction even after 4 h at 52 °C.”

“22 W HA and 22 W NA genes, along with six internal genomic segments (PB2, PB1, PA, NP, M, NS) from PR8 and a PB2 gene from 01310 containing the I66M, I109V, and I133V (MVV) mutations”

The study also confirmed enhanced antigen uptake and intracellular penetration in human cells:

“The highest level of intracellular entry was observed for BEI_22W_KY, confirming its superior effectiveness in penetrating cells.”

These GOF enhancements—increased thermostability, host retargeting, and replication modulation—were achieved without any mention of special oversight or biosecurity risk assessments, despite the White House having confirmed that the COVID-19 pandemic was caused by a virus engineered using similar techniques.

The timing raises concern, especially as the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recently launched a $500 million “next-generation” bird flu vaccine initiative, drawing direct parallels between vaccine development programs and risky virological engineering.

If any of these engineered viruses escape containment—accidentally or intentionally—they could ignite a global pandemic, ironically the very scenario these experiments claim to prevent.

This particular mouse-killing study was performed in Biosafety Level 3 facilities at Konkuk University, sanctioned by the university’s Institutional Biosafety and Animal Care Committees:

“All experiments involving viable HPAI H5N1 viruses were conducted at a Biosafety Level (BSL)-3 facilities (Konkuk University) in accordance with procedures approved by the Konkuk University Institutional Biosafety Committee (approval no. KUIBC-2024-06).”

“Animal infection studies were reviewed, approved, and supervised by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee of Konkuk University (approval no. KU24080).”

The COVID pandemic taught the world what happens when supposed mammal-adaptive viruses leak from research settings.

Yet instead of a global moratorium on these reckless experiments, labs are still running trials that kill every mammal they infect—and worse, documenting how to do it again.

Follow us on Instagram @realjonfleetwood & Twitter/X @JonMFleetwood.

Tyler Durden
Thu, 06/12/2025 – 11:20

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Appropriations Process In Disarray As House Moves to Slash $9 Billion In Federal Programs

Appropriations Process In Disarray As House Moves to Slash $9 Billion In Federal Programs

The House is expected to vote Thursday on a sweeping $9 billion-plus rescissions package that would slash foreign aid and cut $1.1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funds NPR and PBS, even as deeper dysfunction in the congressional appropriations process threatens another government shutdown this fall.

Sen John Kennedy (photo: Eric Lee / Bloomberg)

The legislation, drafted by the White House and backed by Republican leadership, is likely to pass despite resistance from some GOP moderates and unified Democratic opposition.

The vote arrives amid growing uncertainty over the fiscal year 2026 spending process. With little progress in either chamber on the 12 annual appropriations bills, lawmakers are increasingly resigned to the likelihood of another continuing resolution (CR) to keep the government open past September, Punchbowl News reports.

If I were betting man right now, given the current environment, we will appropriate money by CR for the foreseeable future,” said Senator John Kennedy (R-LA), a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee. “So if you have a chance to change from the Approps Committee to Finance, you probably ought to do it.”

The House Appropriations Committee is expected to complete markup of four spending bills by Friday, all written to match the lower spending levels in former President Donald J. Trump’s budget proposal. The package includes tens of billions in cuts to domestic programs, making it a nonstarter for Democrats and the Democratic-controlled Senate.

Complicating matters further, Senate appropriators have not yet agreed on a topline number for spending. Senators Susan Collins, Republican of Maine and chair of the Appropriations Committee, and Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington and the committee’s ranking member, are not expected to reach a deal until after Republicans pass their reconciliation bill — likely no earlier than July.

“We just don’t know yet,” said Representative Tom Cole (R-OK), chair of the House Appropriations Committee. “Let’s assume we pass the ‘Big Beautiful Bill.’ I don’t think we know what that does. Does that break things loose or not?

There’s plenty of people on our side who like a CR,” he added. “It could easily happen again. It’s bad governance.

The so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” – a Trump-endorsed initiative – includes $175 billion for border security, $150 billion in military spending, and a two-year increase in the debt ceiling. Democrats have rejected the measure, citing deep cuts to domestic programs and the absence of accountability mechanisms on executive spending.

Some Republicans, however, suggest that Trump and his advisers may prefer the flexibility afforded by a CR – or even a government shutdown, particularly if the BBB is signed into law.

I think there are probably some people in the administration who think quite frankly that they have more flexibility under a CR or even a shutdown,” said Representative Ken Calvert (R-CA), chair of the Defense Subcommittee on House Appropriations. “I think that shocks a lot of members here.”

Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), warned that repeated use of CRs undermines congressional authority.

“If we do two CRs in a row, it will be a self-inflicted wound by Senate Republican appropriators and Senate Republicans to diminish not just the power of the committee but to diminish Congress’s power of the purse,”  he said.

Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), said the effect is to sideline legislative input on federal spending. “Any long-term CR plays into what it seems this administration would like, which is bills with no guardrails,” she said.

The underlying tension is a struggle over control of federal spending between Congress and the executive branch. Democrats blame Trump and Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russ Vought for flouting the 1974 Budget and Impoundment Control Act, which requires presidents to spend money as appropriated by Congress.

Republicans counter that Democrats stalled earlier efforts to reach a compromise, particularly over efforts to restrict Trump’s spending discretion. “You’re not gonna have a Republican Senate and the House limit a Republican president,” said Cole.

The political cost of such battles has already been significant. Former Speaker Kevin McCarthy lost his position over a CR. Speaker Mike Johnson vowed early in his tenure to avoid repeating that path, but growing pressure within his conference suggests another short-term funding bill is increasingly likely.

Representative Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, offered a grim assessment.

“To hell with the Congress,” she said. “It’s bad for the American people. It’s bad for the American people. They’re lying about what’s in these bills. That’s the tragedy.

Meanwhile, on a lighter note, Republicans defeated Democrats 13–2 in Wednesday night’s Congressional Baseball Game – their fifth straight win. More than 31,000 tickets were sold, raising $2.8 million for charity.

Big Beautiful Bill

Meanwhile, House Republicans have successfully amended their party-line tax and spending package, eliminating policies that would have ruined the Big Beautiful Bill’s ability to be passed without a simple majority, and would have been subject to Democrat filibuster.

Among the major items deleted, “$2 billion for Pentagon military intelligence programs and more than $500 million for developing missiles, as well as removing a crackdown on the “employee retention” tax credit that became a magnet for fraudsters during and after the pandemic,” according to Politico

Republicans are now hoping to rewrite some of these policies tossed by the House and fold them into the Senate’s version of the package before their target passage date of July 4th. 

Tyler Durden
Thu, 06/12/2025 – 11:00

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The FTC Risks Chilling Speech With Its Advertising Boycott Investigation

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) opened an investigation into Media Matters for America, a progressive nonprofit dedicated to “monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media,” for its role in an advertising boycott of X in May. On Monday, the FTC expanded the investigation to major advertisers, including Omnicron Group and the Interpublic Group, both of which are founding members of the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA). The FTC’s investigation follows not only Elon Musk’s intimate involvement with the Trump administration but also lawsuits filed by X Corp. against Media Matters and the WFA.

In November 2023, X Corp. filed a lawsuit against Media Matters in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas accusing the nonprofit of making false and malicious statements disparaging the quality of X, which led to the subsequent loss of advertising contracts. In its complaint, X Corp. accuses Media Matters of publicly smearing the company by “knowingly and maliciously manufactur[ing] side-by-side images [of] advertisers’ posts…beside Neo-Nazi and white-nationalist fringe content.” X Corp. cites “99% of [its] measured ad placement in 2023 [appearing] adjacent to content scoring above the Global Alliance for Responsible Media’s [GARM] brand safety floor” as contradicting Media Matter’s portrayal of the platform.

X Corp. filed an antitrust lawsuit against GARM’s parent organization, the WFA, in August 2024. After Musk acquired Twitter (now X) in November 2022, members contacted GARM for advice on whether to continue advertising on the platform. At this time, the suit alleges, GARM “conveyed to its members its concerns about Twitter’s compliance with GARM’s standards”—concerns exacerbated by critical coverage from progressive nonprofits like Media Matters—prompting a boycott that caused revenues to dip 80 percent below forecasts. X Corp. alleges that WFA members violated the Sherman Antitrust Act’s prohibition of conspiracies in restraint of trade by “withholding purchases of digital advertising from Twitter.”

Supreme Court precedent strongly suggests this allegation is meritless.

Vikram David Amar and Ashutosh Bhagwat, both professors at the University of California, Davis School of Law, cite NAACP v. Claiborne (1982) as evidence that the First Amendment applies to politically motivated boycotts. Amar and Bhagwat explain that, in Claiborne, “the Court insulated the boycotters from liability under state laws seeking to protect fair economic competition and held that ‘the nonviolent elements of [the boycotters’] activities [were] entitled to the protection of the First Amendment.'”

Amar and Bhagwat also invoke 303 Creative v. Elenis (2023), where the Court ruled that “a seller of inherently expressive services…can’t be compelled [by a consumer] to provide speech.” It stands to reason that consumers (like advertisers) may not be forced to buy expressive services they disagree with. Forcing companies to pay for speech with which they disagree is unconstitutional.

The FTC’s advertising boycott investigation is a waste of the commission’s time and taxpayers’ money because, even if advocacy groups and advertisers colluded to boycott X, the First Amendment forecloses antitrust prosecution given the expressive nature of the X platform and its advertising service.

The post The FTC Risks Chilling Speech With Its Advertising Boycott Investigation appeared first on Reason.com.

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Are We Going to War With Iran or Not?

It sure looks like the United States is getting ready to go to war in the Middle East. On Wednesday afternoon, the U.S. government suddenly announced the evacuation of embassy staff and military dependents across the region. Gen. Erik Kurilla, commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, then cancelled his planned testimony to Congress.

As those evacuations were happening, the British government’s shipping industry security office issued a bulletin about “increased tensions within the region which could lead to an escalation of military activity.” Asked what was happening, President Donald Trump ominously told reporters, “you’re going to have to figure that one out yourself.”

While the administration wouldn’t publicly say what was going on, its officials were happy to leak the source of the panic to the press. Israel was preparing an attack on Iran, sources told NBC and CBS. The NBC report included a detail that somewhat changes the picture: Israel would attack “most likely without U.S. support.”

Still, Iran isn’t treating the U.S. and Israel as separate actors. There is a round of U.S.-Iranian talks scheduled in Oman on Sunday, and an Iranian official told Reuters that the alleged warnings about an Israeli strike were a form of “psychological warfare” aimed at building leverage.

Israel’s “only option is one that is combined with the United States, and at a minimum, they would need the U.S. to protect them from the barrage of missiles that would be coming from Iran in retaliation,” Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, where I used to work, told Al Jazeera. “It’s unclear at this point whether this [series of evacuations] is just part of the choreography or whether this is real movement towards taking military action.”

Whether the warnings are a bluff or a prelude to a real war, they highlight a deeper problem with the way the U.S. is run. War is the most serious decision a government can make, and Americans shouldn’t find out about it through cryptic omens or fat-fingered group chat leaks. If the president feels the need to keep his options open—whether to start a war or stand in the middle of one—he should have to go to Congress and get a war authorization.

Recent polling by the University of Maryland shows that 69 percent of Americans, including 64 percent of Republicans, want a diplomatic deal with Iran, and only 14 percent of Americans want war.

Even the Bush administration, not exactly believers in congressional oversight or limits on presidential power, took more care to build a public case for war in Iraq. (The fact that they lied about an Iraqi nuclear weapons program shows, perversely, that they cared what the public thought.) But the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations all demonstrated that it’s easier to jump into a war and dare Congress to stop it, correctly betting that Americans’ indifference or hostility to the Middle East would be enough to sustain the war politically.

Worse yet, all of these administrations took the decision about war with Iran out of American hands. Since the late Bush administration, Israel and the U.S. have been conducting the Juniper exercises to practice for a joint military campaign. Although the target was never named, and U.S. officials explicitly denied in 2023 that the exercise was based on “mockups of Iranian targets or of any other adversary,” the drills were clearly designed with Iran in mind.

Unclassified U.S. military emails from the time of the Juniper Falcon 21-2 exercise in July 2021, revealed by the group Distributed Denial of Secrets in October 2024, show the heavy involvement of officials from the “Iran Branch” of U.S. Central Command’s planning directorate. They also include references to a classified U.S.-Israeli communications system called SEAGULL, nicknamed the “bird phone” or “chicken.”

Neither U.S. Central Command nor the Israeli defense ministry responded to Reason‘s requests for comment.

When the war in Gaza began, the U.S. Air Force deployed intelligence-sharing teams to help the Israeli military. (The Biden administration, which insisted from the beginning that it wasn’t involved in targeting decisions, admitted that the U.S. military was helping Israel “locate and track” targets in October 2024.) And there are still U.S. troops manning a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery in Israel, who have been there since October 2024 and were shooting at Yemeni missiles as late as last month.

All that is to say that the U.S. will be enmeshed in any Israeli war unless it makes an effort to extract itself. And Iran knows it, too. Last month, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said that his country would treat the U.S. as a “participant” in any Israeli attack. On Wednesday, Iranian Defense Minister Aziz Nasirzadeh added that “all U.S. bases are within our reach and we will boldly target them in host countries.”

There’s a big political incentive for Israel to start a war that the U.S. is expected to finish. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is poised to lose the next election, has used the threat of Iran as an argument against early elections. Amb. Mike Huckabee, the U.S. envoy to Jerusalem, publicly said that Israel would look weak if it voted out its government in the face of a “possible nuclear threat from Iran.” Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid accused Huckabee of inappropriate political interference.

War with Iran is also tied to one of Trump’s self-imposed deadlines. In April, he gave Iran two months to come to an agreement over its nuclear program. At first, the administration insisted that Iran could continue low-level uranium enrichment for its civilian power plants, then changed its mind. The Iranian government is insisting that, while it is willing to accept limits and swear off nuclear weapons, it won’t give up civilian enrichment.

“It would be nicer to do it without warfare, without people dying,” Trump said in a podcast interview with the New York Post published on Wednesday. “Yes, so much nicer to do it. But I don’t think I see the same level of enthusiasm for them to make a deal.”

The Trump administration has started to more publicly sell the threat of an Iranian nuclear bomb. Although Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard testified in March that Iran was not building a nuclear weapon, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth told Congress that there are “plenty of indications” Iran has been “moving their way toward something that would look a lot like a nuclear weapon.”

That’s more a change in U.S. rhetoric than the underlying facts. The Department of Defense told Al Monitor, a magazine based in Washington, that there hasn’t been any change to the intelligence assessment made in March.

On Thursday morning, the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) board voted to declare Iran was violating the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The resolution, put forward by the United States and European countries, cited Iran’s current stockpile of highly-enriched uranium and its failure to answer questions about past nuclear research.

The irony is that Israel, which the U.S. is relying on to play enforcer, has never signed the Non-Profliteration Treaty. Israel is believed to have an undeclared arsenal of around 90 nuclear bombs, which were built partially by stealing and smuggling materials out of America. The same University of Maryland poll found that 69 percent of Americans, including 63 percent of Republicans, think the Middle East would be safest with neither an Iranian nor Israeli bomb.

But the result of war might be the opposite.

“A strike could potentially have an amalgamating effect, solidifying Iran’s determination—I will say it plainly—to pursue a nuclear weapon or withdraw from the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons,” IAEA Director-General Rafael Grossi told The Jerusalem Post last week. “I’m telling you this because they have told me so directly.”

The post Are We Going to War With Iran or Not? appeared first on Reason.com.

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Divorcing Real Housewife’s Posting About Impotence Can Be Seen as Implying Her Husband Is Impotent

So concludes Guobadia v. Williams, decided Mar. 31 by Judge Mark Cohen (N.D. Ga.):

Plaintiff is an entrepreneur and philanthropist who currently resides in the United Arab Emirates, and is the founder and CEO of SIMCOL Group, an investment company involved in various industries, including energy and hospitality…. Defendant is known for her role on the Real Housewives of Atlanta and large social media presence, which includes 7.7 million followers on Instagram.

Plaintiff and Defendant were married on November 26, 2022, in a widely publicized ceremony. In February 2024, “news broke” that Plaintiff and Defendant “were splitting,” an announcement that came after news that Defendant would return to RHOA. On or about July 9, 2024, Defendant published a series of statements about erectile dysfunction (“ED”) on her Instagram account.

The first statement was a black background with “ED” written in bold white letters. Defendant’s posts continued and provided definitions of ED and details about its symptoms and treatments, including statements such as, “ED can cause stress, affect self-confidence, and contribute to relationship problems,” and “it is common for men with ED to feel anger, frustration, sadness, or lack confidence.” These statements included the hashtag #MensHealthAwareness.

Defendant’s statements were disseminated to a large audience via her Instagram account. They were also disseminated via multiple media outlets:

All About the Tea: On July 10, 2024, this celebrity gossip website posted an article titled “Porsha Williams Claims Simon Guobadia Suffers from Erectile Dysfunction!” and referencing Defendant’s social media posts. Plaintiff alleges that the article “highlighted that members of the public clearly recognized the Defendant’s comments as referring to the Plaintiff,” including citing to numerous social media user posts reflecting this interpretation. [Other examples omitted. -EV]

Plaintiff alleges that he does not have ED and has never suffered from or been diagnosed with this condition. Plaintiff alleges that the inclusion of “#MensHealthAwareness appeared to give the posts the tone of health awareness, though the timing and context made it clear they were directed at Plaintiff.” Plaintiff further alleges the following:

The nature, timing, and context of these posts, amidst the couple’s public separation, led reasonable viewers to infer that Defendant’s statements were referring to Plaintiff—because they were.  Importantly, Defendant’s statements were not made as expressions of opinion but instead presented as factual assertions regarding Plaintiffs health, stating or strongly implying that Plaintiff suffers from ED.

Additionally, Plaintiff alleges that, as his former spouse, Defendant’s statements were perceived by the public as having legitimacy and insider knowledge such that the public would be more likely to believe they were true.

As a result of Defendant’s statements, Plaintiff alleges that his “credibility and image within his community and professional networks” has been affected. Plaintiff also “endured significant emotional distress and personal anguish” and has suffered reputational harm, including the loss of business relationships. Plaintiff’s personal and professional relationships have pulled away from associating with Plaintiff. Plaintiff alleges that, because Defendant’s statements were disseminated widely across the internet, her statements associating Plaintiff with the symptoms of ED remain publicly available indefinitely, making it “nearly impossible” for Plaintiff or his business to maintain a positive reputation online. Further, whenever Plaintiff posts on his own social media page or is referenced in a publication, commenters frequently reference Defendant’s statements; Plaintiff alleges that Defendant “clearly intended” this online ridicule of Plaintiff.

The court allowed plaintiff’s defamation claims to go forward. First, it concluded that reasonable viewers could interpret the statements as implicitly referring to him, even though the statements don’t mention him expressly:

Plaintiff alleges that Defendant’s statements could be interpreted as concerning Plaintiff because they were made after Plaintiff and Defendant announced their separation, and because Defendant’s status as his ex-wife gave the statements an air of legitimacy and insider knowledge. Further, Plaintiff alleges that multiple media outlets interpreted Defendant’s statements as referring to Plaintiff. “[T]he language under consideration here was at the very least reasonably susceptible of a construction by the average reader which would render it libelous … it cannot be said as a matter of law that the alleged libel was not of and concerning [P]laintiff.”

Second, the court concluded that, though the statements weren’t “defamation per se” that is actionable without proof of special damages—”defamation per se” is generally limited to accusations of crime, professional incompetence, certain kinds of communicable disease, or serious sexual misconduct—plaintiff had sufficiently alleged special damages:

Here, Plaintiff adequately pleads special damages because he alleges that Defendant’s statements caused business and reputational harm, damaged his credibility, resulted in permanent association of himself and his businesses with ED, and caused online ridicule. These are not vague allegations but identify specifically how Plaintiff experienced the loss of business due to Defendant’s statements…. “The requirement of special damages is also satisfied where the plaintiff can, under the circumstances, only know that the flow of his business as a whole is diminished, and it would be impossible to point to any specific customers, or orders which have been lost.” …

The court also allowed plaintiff’s false light invasion of privacy claim to go forward:

Generally, [under Georgia law,] to survive as a separate cause of action from defamation, “a false light claim must allege a nondefamatory statement. If the statements alleged are defamatory, the claim would be for defamation only, not false light invasion of privacy.” However, at the motion to dismiss stage, a plaintiff may plead inconsistent claims and is not precluded from pleading both a claim for defamation and for false light.

But the court rejected plaintiff’s intentional infliction of emotional distress claim, concluding that “Defendant’s statements do not rise to the level of extreme and outrageous conduct required to support an intentional infliction of emotional distress claim.”

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New Jersey Business Owners Sue City of Perth Amboy Over Bogus Blight Designation

Perth Amboy, New Jersey, is trying to seize the property of two businesses. Now, these business owners are suing the city. 

On Wednesday, Honey Meerzon, an owner of a four-unit apartment building in Perth Amboy, and Luis Romero, whose family-owned Quick Tire shop has operated for over 40 years, announced that they’ve filed a lawsuit against the city for its arbitrary and capricious designation of blight in a bid to seize their properties using eminent domain. 

Reporting by Reason’s Christian Britschgi details the flimsy allegations of blight leveled by the city—minor litter, stray cats, and building proximity—as reasons to seize the properties. 

Flanked by dozens of residents holding signs in support of Meerzon and Romero, Robert McNamara, deputy litigation director at the Institute for Justice (I.J.), which is representing the business owners in the case, accused the city of using “an outrageous and bogus” blight designation to clear the way for a $110 million city-backed redevelopment project. New Jersey law limits the use of eminent domain to clear public uses, not for economic redevelopment that benefits private developers. 

As part of their dispute, Meerzon and Romero point to factual errors in the city’s blight study, including incorrectly drawn property lines and misrepresentations about alleged safety hazards. During the press conference, I.J. Litigation Fellow Bobbi Taylor noted that if Perth Amboy’s criteria were upheld, it could lead to countless property seizures based on similarly scant declarations of blight.

Meerzon, whose parents fled religious persecution in the Soviet Union, spoke at the press conference about the irony and injustice of facing property seizures in a country her family believed would protect their investments and rights. “This isn’t about public need, this is about private greed….We’ve invested over $150,000 in upgrades…we’ve kept the property up to code and never received a violation,” she said. 

Romero, whose family fled from Cuba, echoed Meerzon’s sentiments, saying, “What happened in my country in Cuba is happening here; the only thing right now is it’s happening legally.”

The lawsuit, filed Wednesday, seeks to overturn the city’s blight designation. Whether they go to trial depends on the city, Taylor told Reason. “If they see our lawsuit and they reconsider and want to lift the blight designation, then that’s great for our property owners. But if not, there will be a court hearing. Hopefully, we’ll get to present evidence and the court will rule.” 

Despite repeated attempts by Meerzon and Romero to negotiate improvements or resolve concerns directly, city officials have remained unresponsive.

The post New Jersey Business Owners Sue City of Perth Amboy Over Bogus Blight Designation appeared first on Reason.com.

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Are We Going to War With Iran or Not?

It sure looks like the United States is getting ready to go to war in the Middle East. On Wednesday afternoon, the U.S. government suddenly announced the evacuation of embassy staff and military dependents across the region. Gen. Erik Kurilla, commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, then cancelled his planned testimony to Congress.

As those evacuations were happening, the British government’s shipping industry security office issued a bulletin about “increased tensions within the region which could lead to an escalation of military activity.” Asked what was happening, President Donald Trump ominously told reporters, “you’re going to have to figure that one out yourself.”

While the administration wouldn’t publicly say what was going on, its officials were happy to leak the source of the panic to the press. Israel was preparing an attack on Iran, sources told NBC and CBS. The NBC report included a detail that somewhat changes the picture: Israel would attack “most likely without U.S. support.”

Still, Iran isn’t treating the U.S. and Israel as separate actors. There is a round of U.S.-Iranian talks scheduled in Oman on Sunday, and an Iranian official told Reuters that the alleged warnings about an Israeli strike were a form of “psychological warfare” aimed at building leverage.

Israel’s “only option is one that is combined with the United States, and at a minimum, they would need the U.S. to protect them from the barrage of missiles that would be coming from Iran in retaliation,” Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, where I used to work, told Al Jazeera. “It’s unclear at this point whether this [series of evacuations] is just part of the choreography or whether this is real movement towards taking military action.”

Whether the warnings are a bluff or a prelude to a real war, they highlight a deeper problem with the way the U.S. is run. War is the most serious decision a government can make, and Americans shouldn’t find out about it through cryptic omens or fat-fingered group chat leaks. If the president feels the need to keep his options open—whether to start a war or stand in the middle of one—he should have to go to Congress and get a war authorization.

Recent polling by the University of Maryland shows that 69 percent of Americans, including 64 percent of Republicans, want a diplomatic deal with Iran, and only 14 percent of Americans want war.

Even the Bush administration, not exactly believers in congressional oversight or limits on presidential power, took more care to build a public case for war in Iraq. (The fact that they lied about an Iraqi nuclear weapons program shows, perversely, that they cared what the public thought.) But the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations all demonstrated that it’s easier to jump into a war and dare Congress to stop it, correctly betting that Americans’ indifference or hostility to the Middle East would be enough to sustain the war politically.

Worse yet, all of these administrations took the decision about war with Iran out of American hands. Since the late Bush administration, Israel and the U.S. have been conducting the Juniper exercises to practice for a joint military campaign. Although the target was never named, and U.S. officials explicitly denied in 2023 that the exercise was based on “mockups of Iranian targets or of any other adversary,” the drills were clearly designed with Iran in mind.

Unclassified U.S. military emails from the time of the Juniper Falcon 21-2 exercise in July 2021, revealed by the group Distributed Denial of Secrets in October 2024, show the heavy involvement of officials from the “Iran Branch” of U.S. Central Command’s planning directorate. They also include references to a classified U.S.-Israeli communications system called SEAGULL, nicknamed the “bird phone” or “chicken.”

Neither U.S. Central Command nor the Israeli defense ministry responded to Reason‘s requests for comment.

When the war in Gaza began, the U.S. Air Force deployed intelligence-sharing teams to help the Israeli military. (The Biden administration, which insisted from the beginning that it wasn’t involved in targeting decisions, admitted that the U.S. military was helping Israel “locate and track” targets in October 2024.) And there are still U.S. troops manning a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery in Israel, who have been there since October 2024 and were shooting at Yemeni missiles as late as last month.

All that is to say that the U.S. will be enmeshed in any Israeli war unless it makes an effort to extract itself. And Iran knows it, too. Last month, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said that his country would treat the U.S. as a “participant” in any Israeli attack. On Wednesday, Iranian Defense Minister Aziz Nasirzadeh added that “all U.S. bases are within our reach and we will boldly target them in host countries.”

There’s a big political incentive for Israel to start a war that the U.S. is expected to finish. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is poised to lose the next election, has used the threat of Iran as an argument against early elections. Amb. Mike Huckabee, the U.S. envoy to Jerusalem, publicly said that Israel would look weak if it voted out its government in the face of a “possible nuclear threat from Iran.” Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid accused Huckabee of inappropriate political interference.

War with Iran is also tied to one of Trump’s self-imposed deadlines. In April, he gave Iran two months to come to an agreement over its nuclear program. At first, the administration insisted that Iran could continue low-level uranium enrichment for its civilian power plants, then changed its mind. The Iranian government is insisting that, while it is willing to accept limits and swear off nuclear weapons, it won’t give up civilian enrichment.

“It would be nicer to do it without warfare, without people dying,” Trump said in a podcast interview with the New York Post published on Wednesday. “Yes, so much nicer to do it. But I don’t think I see the same level of enthusiasm for them to make a deal.”

The Trump administration has started to more publicly sell the threat of an Iranian nuclear bomb. Although Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard testified in March that Iran was not building a nuclear weapon, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth told Congress that there are “plenty of indications” Iran has been “moving their way toward something that would look a lot like a nuclear weapon.”

That’s more a change in U.S. rhetoric than the underlying facts. The Department of Defense told Al Monitor, a magazine based in Washington, that there hasn’t been any change to the intelligence assessment made in March.

On Thursday morning, the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) board voted to declare Iran was violating the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The resolution, put forward by the United States and European countries, cited Iran’s current stockpile of highly-enriched uranium and its failure to answer questions about past nuclear research.

The irony is that Israel, which the U.S. is relying on to play enforcer, has never signed the Non-Profliteration Treaty. Israel is believed to have an undeclared arsenal of around 90 nuclear bombs, which were built partially by stealing and smuggling materials out of America. The same University of Maryland poll found that 69 percent of Americans, including 63 percent of Republicans, think the Middle East would be safest with neither an Iranian nor Israeli bomb.

But the result of war might be the opposite.

“A strike could potentially have an amalgamating effect, solidifying Iran’s determination—I will say it plainly—to pursue a nuclear weapon or withdraw from the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons,” IAEA Director-General Rafael Grossi told The Jerusalem Post last week. “I’m telling you this because they have told me so directly.”

The post Are We Going to War With Iran or Not? appeared first on Reason.com.

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