Month: February 2024

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

One of the most interesting dynamics in this election is the impact of third party candidates from Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to Cornel West to a yet-to-be-named candidate with the No Labels ticket.

Both Democratic and Republican operatives have been actively dismissing the ability of any third party candidate to win, including claims that the No Labels group has waited too long to get on ballots. I do not believe that is true.

There is a path for a third party alternative to both Joe Biden and Donald Trump.

However, that path is rather narrow and rocky.

Sources with No Labels have pushed back on the media narratives by noting that Ross Perot did not enter the race until February of 1992. The group insists that it can make the ballot in all 50 states, but would likely seek a ballot spot in 32 states. The group noted that signature requirements are lower for candidates if they seek to run as individuals as opposed to seeking the addition of a party.

That is correct, though the signature requirements can still be daunting. Yet, No Labels did meet the requirement in Maryland recently for party recognition. What is clear is that the path is narrowing with the passage of time. No Labels currently has no candidate.

The requirements for states vary significantly. In California, they will need 219,000 signatures while, in Maine, they only need roughly 5,000 signatures. Joining an existing party like the Libertarian Party or Green Party allows a candidate to use an existing platform and infrastructure. Kennedy is rumored to be considering a run with the libertarians.

Even with third party candidates on the ballot, it is notoriously difficult for such a candidate to break through our duopoly of power given the hold of the two main parties on the process.

However, it is also important to note that an outright electoral victory is not necessarily the only option for these candidates. Polls  show that sixty-seven percent of voters want someone other than Biden or Trump.

Yet, in the primaries, neither Democrats nor Republicans are opting to make a change. Both Biden and Trump appear to be on an easy glide path to their respective nominations.

Much can change this year from convictions of Trump to a withdrawal by Biden. There could be a seismic event that leaves a “dark horse” candidate as the front runner.

The more intriguing path would be through the Congress. With the country bitterly divided between these candidates, there is a chance that neither candidate might receive the needed 270 electoral votes in the Electoral College. If there is a “contingent election,” the Twelfth Amendment kicks in with the House of Representatives selecting a president and the Senate selecting a vice president. In the House, the members vote as state delegations.

The divided Congress could make all of this . . . well . . . challenging. It is also not clear how the political dynamics will look for these politicians. In the mix, a third party candidate could emerge as a compromise candidate if the division leaves neither Biden or Trump with enough support.

We have only used the Twelfth Amendment a couple of times. However elections like 1825 and 1837 show that such conflicts can present unexpected alliances.

For example, Andrew Jackson secured a plurality of both popular and electoral votes. However, he needed 131 electoral votes out of the 261 votes of the college. He only had 99 votes after the election. John Quincy Adams had 84. The third candidate, William Crawford had 41. While Henry Clay had 37 votes, the first three went to the first round balloting. Clay eventually threw his support behind Adams who later made him Secretary of State.

If a third party candidate were to secure electoral votes, he or she could make that first balloting. If the Congress were to deadlock, a third party compromise candidate could become more attractive given the rejection of the majority for the two leading candidates.

Is that likely? No. However, to quote Maya Angelou,  “ain’t nothing to it, but to do it.”

Ukraine’s President Zelensky has grown increasingly bold in his criticisms of former US President Donald Trump – a risky move given he’s clearly the Republican frontrunner for president going into November. Kiev may soon have to deal with a Trump White House and ‘play nicer’ in the near future as it tries to survive the Russian onslaught.  “If Trump doesn’t know who he will support, Ukraine or Russia, he will have problems with his society. Supporting Russia means being against the Americans,” Zelensky boldly said in a new interview with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins.

Throughout the remarks the Ukrainian leader cast Trump as ‘weak’ on Russia, explaining that Trump doesn’t understand that Putin will “will never stop.” The implication is that Putin is waging an expansionist war threatening the rest of Europe and that a potential future Trump presidency might just sit on the sidelines.

“I think Donald Trump doesn’t know Putin,” Zelensky said in the Sunday interview, which is now widely circulating. “I know he met him … but he never fought with Putin. [The] American Army never fought with the army of Russia. Never … I have a better understanding.”

“I don’t think he understands that Putin will never stop,” Zelensky asserted while referencing Trump directly, which comes after fierce criticisms by Trump on the campaign trail which have highlighted the failure of NATO countries in Europe to spend enough on defense.

Zelensky’s words also tap into the longtime Democratic ‘Russiagate’ narrative that Trump has somehow been influenced by Putin. Zelensky was again asked about the former US president’s recent biting criticism of NATO wherein the Republican frontrunner said that he’d be OK with Russia doing “whatever the hell they wanted” if NATO countries refuse to meet defense spending targets.

That’s when Zelensky issued his sharpest criticism of Trump to date, explaining that it’s unclear whether Trump stands with Americans or with Moscow. The words ultimately questioned Trump’s patriotism and loyalty to America. Again, this is what Zelensky said… and it seems to call into question Trump’s ‘loyalties’:

“If Trump doesn’t know who he will support, Ukraine or Russia, he will have problems with his society. Supporting Russia means being against the Americans.”

As for Putin, he recently was asked in an interview who he would like to see become president of the United States. He shocked the West by answering “Biden” as he is more “predictable”. Putin called the Democrat incumbent a “more experienced, predictable, an old-school politician.”

Zelensky in the fresh CNN interview was asked about his preference. This is how he responded:

Zelensky would not answer whether he wanted to see Trump reelected to the country’s highest office, telling Collins that “the decision who will be the president is a decision of your society.”

Zelensky says he has a better understanding of who Putin actually is than Trump does. “That’s why I think Donald Trump doesn’t know Putin. I know he met with him…But he never fought with him. The American army never fought with the army of Russia.” pic.twitter.com/GSjCT0Tqny

— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) February 27, 2024

At a moment Biden’s proposed $60+ billion in Ukraine defense aid is still being held up by the Republican House, Zelensky’s increased attacks are only likely to harden GOP resistance to sending tens of billions more in taxpayer dollars to Kiev.

In some ways, his criticisms also give Trump license to heap criticisms back on Zelensky. There’s a likelihood we are about to see Trump say some things not favorable to Zelensky on the campaign trail. At the same time, Democrats will continue running with their Trump as ‘friend of Putin’ narrative, even though Trump himself in prior years did much to arm and militarize Ukraine in the lead-up to the Russian invasion. 

Authored by K.S. Bruce via American Greatness,

Recently, Democratic Party-cheerleading economist Paul Krugman declared, “Inflation is over. We won.” This is like a robber shooting you and then declaring, “The coma I put you in is over! We won!”

The truth is that the wild inflation, high interest rates, bank failures, and other economic harms of the last three years were all entirely avoidable and all entirely caused by President Biden and the Democrats’ arrogant and unwise policies.

This is not “Monday morning quarterbacking.” Some of us were saying this well before the fact. My May 7, 2021 column (“Joe Biden, Economy Killer”) accurately forecast the inflation, rising interest rates, and rising government debt service long before the Biden administration even acknowledged the risks were real.

The U.S. economy did not need another giant stimulus plan when Biden and the Democrats took control in 2021. The U.S. gross domestic product, knocked down by the COVID shutdown in the first half of 2020, had jumped up by a record 33% in the third quarter of 2020 and by another 4% in the fourth quarter, all before Biden took office. The S&P stock market had risen 16.3% in 2020. Employers were waiting for workers to come back to work, and another stimulus package had been passed with bipartisan support in the last quarter of 2020. Happily, the inflation rate was only 1.4% as 2020 ended, with a one-year Treasury rate of just 0.10% and a 10-year Treasury rate of just 0.95%

The outlook for 2021 was also favorable. As the Wall Street Journal reported on Jan. 28, 2021, “The International Monetary Fund expects the U.S. economy to grow 5.1% this year, while economists surveyed by the Wall Street Journal projected 4.3% growth … U.S. employers are poised to add more than five million jobs this year, according to economists surveyed by the Journal. That would make 2021 the best year for employment gains in records dating back to 1939.”

As Biden entered the White House in January 2021, a wiser new president would have allowed this recovery to continue without meddling. But what political fun is that? How can you be the “new FDR” unless you present matters as worse than they are, so that you can create giant new programs and be the savior? How can you transfer trillions of taxpayer money to build a Democratic Party political base?

Instead, Biden took office and quickly proceeded to do everything exactly wrong. He used the Reconciliation Act to jam through a $1.9 trillion stimulus bill (the “American Rescue Act”) without one Republican vote. This was an economic mistake, a knife in the heart of the regular political order, and made a lie of the bipartisan respect that he had campaigned upon.

When former Democratic Treasury Secretary Larry Summers warned Biden that his rescue bill was inflationary and six times the amount needed, Biden’s biographer Franklin Foer reports that “Biden called Summers and unloaded on him. His younger aides, many of whom had worked for Summers in the Obama administration, pumped their fists when they learned about the president’s fiery rebuttal. Biden had put their old mentor in his place.”

Even as Biden overstimulated demand, he moved to restrain supply. He temporarily slowed up oil and gas production with a series of jawboning and regulatory attacks against the Keystone Pipeline, fracking, and traditional energy companies. He increased incentives for workers to stay home, thereby exacerbating labor shortages and supply-chain bottlenecks. He berated governors like Florida’s Ron DeSantis, who sought speedy re-openings of their states. He praised teacher union leaders as they kept schools closed. His fecklessness with the U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan may well have emboldened Vladimir Putin to launch a ground invasion of Ukraine, leading to a host of other energy and supply chain shocks.

The foreseeable result of excessive demand stimulus, plus constrained supply, is inflation, which has been a terrible burden to the average American. In total, prices are up about 17% since Biden took office, and real wages are down about 2%. It takes the average American roughly $11,000 per year more just to maintain the same lifestyle now as pre-2021. Credit card debt has soared in the last two years to over $1 trillion as consumers struggle to keep up.

The Federal Reserve was slow to react to Biden’s errors. They then raised interest rates at a nosebleed pace in 2022 and 2023 to catch up, and to fight the Biden-fueled inflation that reached a height of 9.1% per month in the summer of 2022. The fact that the Fed had to raise rates once inflation began, however, was totally to be expected, and fully predicted in my May 2021 piece.

Rising interest rates mathematically translate into declining values for long-term, fixed-rate bonds, whose existing rates look relatively less attractive as other rates rise. As the Fed was forced to whip up rates to cure the Biden inflation, the U.S. long-term bond market suffered its worst annual losses since the Napoleonic Wars in 1803, a decline of 53% for 30-year U.S. Treasury bonds between March 2020 and October 2023.

The stock markets fell over 19% in 2022 as well. Workers’ pension plans were battered. Silicon Valley Bank (whose balance sheet was heavily invested in the now plummeting “risk-free” U.S. long-term government bonds) experienced a depositor run, which in turn triggered a bank panic that forced the government to intervene to save the bank sector. This Biden-induced panic has left banks weaker and more regulated, which is likely to result in years of reduced bank lending to Main Street borrowers. Bank loans are also increasingly hard to get for local real estate developers, who are themselves wounded by the impact of higher interest rates on their mortgages and on the relative value of their fixed rent incomes. More generally, the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco has recently estimated that every 100-basis point rise in real interest rates reduces total U.S. economic growth by 5% over the following 12 years.

The Biden administration now desperately seeks to avoid blame for U.S. inflation by pointing to the inflation in Europe, much like a fifth grader’s “everybody is doing it” defense. But the European Central Bank itself has made clear this defense is specious.

As the ECB Bulletin explained, U.S. inflation has been chiefly driven by excess demand and government over-stimulus, while Europe’s problems are chiefly due to supply shocks. Consumer demand in the U.S. had already recovered to pre-COVID levels by early 2021 when Biden (foolishly) applied an extreme amount of extra stimulus. In contrast, Europe had weaker demand but was hit hard by higher prices on Russian-supplied energy and natural gas, an increase which also increased electricity and food prices. The U.S. did not share in this inflationary supply shock because our country never depended upon Russian gas and was already energy self-sufficient before Biden took office. Additionally, inflation began in the U.S. several months earlier than in Europe, and this U.S. inflation, plus the rise in the U.S. dollar relative to the Euro, meant that the U.S. goods were themselves fueling higher prices for Europeans in their own currency.

Now, it is 2024. After years of Biden-induced economic hardship, the Federal Reserve rate rises are having their dampening effect, inflation is back down, and asset values can stop falling. The stock market is up in recent months, but even now, this rise is despite Biden, not because of him.

The best-performing sectors of the stock market are often those that Biden and the Dems have tried to cripple, and the worst performers are often those industries he tried to support. The fossil fuel stocks like Exxon were up over 50% in 2021 and 2022 as the stock market fell. The social media and tech companies that Biden browbeats are the largest part of the Magnificent Seven. Drug companies that charge very high prices, such as the makers of weight loss drug Ozempic, are way up. Meanwhile, Blackrock, which promoted ESG investing, is under siege, and the billions and billions of taxpayer money handed to the electric vehicle industry may prove to be largely wasted in the face of slowing consumer demand. Even green energy projects may have perversely suffered under Biden as, the Wall Street Journal reports, “Clean-energy stocks have fallen out of favor, with the pressure created by rising interest rates outweighing supportive government policies.”

Finally, even if current monthly economic numbers are acceptable, the cumulative harm and price increases that have already occurred under Biden are unlikely to reverse and so will live on like a giant weight around America’s collective neck. Even if Treasury interest rates drift back down by a percentage or two over coming quarters, they will still be at a level that is roughly 300 basis points higher than they were pre-Biden, or than they needed to be. These interest rates, now raised, appear likely to stay at this elevated level for years to come.

Biden’s economic legacy – the “Biden Burden” – will be that he made Americans poorer than they should have been, and needlessly moved America to a world of higher interest rates on a larger government deficit.

The Congressional Budget Office last week revised its government deficit estimates upward, expecting $48.3 trillion of government debt by 2034. Interest expense on the federal debt this year has already jumped up to $870 billion, which is larger than the defense budget. Additionally, Biden’s higher interest rates will continue to increase debt service costs as old government debt rolls off and is replaced at higher costs. The risk is stark: a 3% higher interest rate on even the existing $33 trillion level of federal debt equates to $1 trillion of extra federal interest expense each and every year, on top of the already giant existing debt service number.

There is no painless way to pay down this deficit or cover this extra annual government interest cost. The need for billions and billions of extra tax money or budget cuts will fuel fierce political fights, populist divisions, and national anger for years to come. All this public unrest will also be the legacy of the bad Democratic economic policies since 2021. Professor Krugman, when it comes to Bidenomics, “We lost.”

The US Army faces the most challenging recruiting environment in decades, if not ever, as America’s Generation Z doesn’t want to fight foreign wars driven by neocon warmongering politicians in Washington, the military-industrial complex, NATO, and mega-corporations.

For several years, the Army has been coming to terms with a recruiting crisis of historic proportions. We have documented these unprecedented challenges as the war cycle, in financial cycle expert Charles Nenner’s view, continues to ‘break out’: 

• Three Reasons Why Military Recruitment Is In Crisis

• US Army Struggling To Recruit White Soldiers And The Reason Is Obvious

• Fewer Americans Are Interested In Fighting Wars For The Regime

• The Army Is Begging Unvaccinated Soldiers To Return

Given the soaring threat of World War III, the Army is about to undergo a major restructuring, according to a document obtained by Fox News. 

The service calls for reducing its force by about 24,000, or about 5%. These cuts will only affect posts that have remained empty and not actual soldiers.

“The Army is not asking current soldiers to leave. As the Army builds back end strength over the next few years, most installations will likely see an increase in the number of soldiers actually stationed there,” the Army said.

The jobs on the cutting block are primarily counterinsurgency positions that ballooned during America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan over two decades. These jobs are no longer in high demand as World War III risks accelerate in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. Also, there is a conflict risk with China in the Pacific and around Taiwan. 

Fox noted cavalry squadrons, Stryker brigade combat teams, infantry brigade combat teams, and security force assistance brigades, amounting to about 10,000 jobs, will also be axed. 

The document described the service as “significantly over-structured” as a push for a much leaner and meaner force.

Here’s from from Fox:

The service is currently structured to have up to 494,000 soldiers, but the total number of active duty soldiers is about 445,000. The new plan has Army leaders looking to recruit enough troops through Fiscal Year 2029 to reach a goal of 470,000 active-duty soldiers.

Despite the cuts, the service plans to add another 7,500 troops for air defense and counter-drone units. 

There’s also a shift from close combat and counterinsurgency structure to large-scale or multidomain combat operations due to World War III risks. 

By Alex Kimani of Oilprice.com

Last month, large swathes of the United States grappled with sub-zero wind chills whereby freezing air from the Arctic set record-low temperatures leaving scores of people dead, created record-breaking energy demand and knocked out electricity to tens of thousands in the north-west. The frigid weather had another unintended consequence: it exposed just how vulnerable electric vehicles are to low temperatures with many EV drivers being left stranded after their vehicles prematurely run out of juice.

According to the American Automobile Association (AAA), an EV can lose as much as 12% of its range when temperatures drop to 20 degrees, and as much as 41% if you turn on the cabin heater. In other words, for every 100 miles of combined urban/highway driving at 20°F temperatures, the range of an EV drops to 59 miles. Range loss due to low temperatures varies according to the EV model, with a BMW 13s averaging 20.4% reduction in range at 21 F in combined HVAC on/off scenarios; Tesla Model S 75D loses 11.3% while a Volkswagen 3-golf sees a 6.9% deterioration. EV batteries work less efficiently in cold conditions while charging times can double or even triple for older EVs. 

Luckily, a handy solution could be around the corner: Researchers from the University of Birmingham are working on an energy storage system that combines microwave energy and a chemical heat pump to produce heating or cooling on demand. 

Dubbed e-Thermal bank, the system is designed as a secondary energy source for EVs that can harness electricity to drive a high-density (1600Wh/Kg) thermochemical-based system. The thermal bank is  ‘charged’ at the EV charging station by using microwave energy to dissociate a solid-vapor working pair.

During discharging, the process is reversed by feeding the vapor into a reactor to generate heat, while the opposite phase uses an evaporator to generate cooling simultaneously. In effect, this charging process stores microwave energy inside the car, in the e-Thermal bank.

“We aimed to offload these thermal management tasks to a microwave driven process. Microwave is a fast heating method, because microwaves penetrate uniformly through materials and so deliver energy evenly into the body of the material,” Professor Yongliang Li, who is chair in Thermal Energy Engineering in Birmingham’s School of Chemical Engineering, said, as reported by Coolingpost.com. 

The energy cost can be minimized by coupling with a smart meter to charge the system when energy is cheap, and the stored energy can then be used at any time. We predict that by replacing conventional HVAC and possibly a small portion of the battery pack, e-Thermal banks would provide efficient cabin temperature control and a range extension of up to 70%, at a lower cost than increasing battery capacity,” Li added. 

University of Birmingham Enterprise has already filed a patent application for the e-Thermal bank system and is seeking commercial partners for licensing collaboration or co-development.

Boosting EV Battery Capacity

University of Birmingham’s e-Thermal bank sounds like a simple yet effective way to boost EV driving range. Scientists everywhere have been working round on technologies aimed at boosting the energy capacity of EV batteries. 

Professor Soojin Park, PhD candidate Minjun Je, and Dr. Hye Bin Son from the Department of Chemistry at Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH) has developed a high-energy-density Li-ion battery using micro silicon particles and gel polymer electrolytes that increases battery energy density by 40%.

Using silicon as a battery material presents several challenges. First off, silicon increases in volume more than three times during charging then contracts back to its original size while discharging, negatively impacting battery efficiency. 

Employing nano-sized silicon (10-9m) addresses the issue; unfortunately, the production process is not only highly complex but also astronomically expensive, rendering it impractical for commercial batteries. The POSTECH research team has succeeded in developing an economical yet stable silicon-based battery system by utilizing gel polymer electrolytes. Unlike conventional liquid electrolytes, gel electrolytes exist in a solid or gel state in an elastic polymer structure that exhibits better stability than their liquid electrolytes. 

The scientists employed an electron beam to form covalent linkages between gel electrolytes and micro-silicon particles. These covalent linkages disperse internal stress caused by volume expansion, alleviating the changes in micro silicon volume and enhancing structural stability.

The outcome was remarkable: the new battery exhibits stable performance even with micro silicon particles (5μm), a hundred times bigger than those used in traditional nano-silicon anodes. The best part: the new battery has an energy density 40% higher than conventional li-ion batteries. Further, the straightforward manufacturing process makes its commercialization easier.

Here in the U.S., the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory has developed a lithium-air battery that uses a solid electrolyte that could potentially boost the battery’s energy density by as much as four times above Li-ion batteries.

“For over a decade, scientists at Argonne and elsewhere have been working overtime to develop a lithium battery that makes use of the oxygen in air. The lithium-air battery has the highest projected energy density of any battery technology being considered for the next generation of batteries beyond lithium-ion,”  Larry Curtiss, an Argonne Distinguished Fellow, said last year in a press statement.

Macy’s announced on Tuesday that it is entering “A Bold New Chapter,” this time focusing on a more luxurious store design as part of its turnaround strategy, which involves shifting its target market from lower-income to wealthier consumers.

“Our portfolio of iconic and globally recognized nameplates, healthy balance sheet and fortified operations position us to execute A Bold New Chapter. This strategy is designed to create a more modern Macy’s, Inc. that is expected to generate meaningful value for our shareholders in the years ahead,” Tony Spring, chief executive officer of Macy’s, wrote in the earnings report. 

The pivot first includes the big-box retailer closing 150 underperforming stores over the next three years. It expects to close at least 50 of these stores by the end of this year. By 2026, Macy’s footprint will shrink to about 350 stores, slightly more than half its number before Covid. 

Second, the turnaround strategy focuses on higher-end brands and will include 15 new Bloomingdale’s and 30 Bluemercury stores by 2026. 

Bloomberg noted, “The announcement, accompanied by fourth-quarter results, follows a $5.8 billion buyout offer from Arkhouse Management Co. and Brigade Capital Management in December. Macy’s rejected the offer, but last week, Arkhouse nominated nine directors to Macy’s board as the activist investor persists in its efforts.” 

The turnaround plan to chase wealthier shoppers comes as Spring, who had a four-decade career at Bloomingdale’s before shifting over as the head of the parent company, warned: “The shopper is still under pressure.”

David Swartz, a retail analyst at Morningstar, noted that there is far less competition for Macy’s in the luxury department space and expects a “great future.” 

The pivot comes as shares have crashed 71% since peaking at $69 a share in mid-2015. 

In summary, Macy’s is giving up on the working poor as the Biden administration says the middle class is doing better than ever. 

Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Former President Donald Trump has asked the judge in his so-called “hush money” case to issue pretrial rulings that would block certain evidence and witness testimony that the former president says his opponents want to exploit to undermine his 2024 presidential campaign.

The case centers on allegations that President Trump falsified business records to hide $130,000 in payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels (whose real name is Stephanie Clifford) in exchange for keeping quiet about her allegations about an affair.

President Trump has repeatedly denied any affair or wrongdoing, while calling the case a politically-motivated ploy to hurt his chances of winning the race for the White House.

With trial scheduled to start on March 25, President Trump is now ramping up his rhetoric, accusing prosecutors in a 47-page motion filed on Monday of planning to put forward “improper arguments” and “inadmissible evidence” in order to bolster their “listless ‘zombie’ case” and interfere in the upcoming presidential election.

At the top of the list of what President Trump wants New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan to block is any new testimony from his former personal attorney Michael Cohen, who has admitted to lying to Congress.

Other demands include blocking testimony from Ms. Clifford, former Trump doorman Dino Sajudin, and former Playboy model Karen McDougal, as well as other requests related to evidentiary and procedural matters.

More Details

President Trump’s motion challenges the credibility of the witnesses, including calling Mr. Cohen a “liar” and suggesting Ms. Clifford would offer “false” testimony.

“The People should be precluded from suborning additional perjury by Michael Cohen,” President Trump’ attorney, Todd Blanche, wrote in the filing. He said Mr. Cohen lied to lawmakers in 2017 and, more recently, perjured himself while testifying at President Trump civil fraud trial in October.

The judge in President Trump’s civil fraud trial said that Mr. Cohen’s testimony was “significantly compromised” by his misleading statements to Congress and by some “seeming contradictions” in what he said at trial.

Still, New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron, who fined President Trump $355 million for supposedly inflating the value of his properties to get better loan terms, said he found Mr. Cohen’s testimony “credible.”

Mr. Blanche wrote in the filing that prosecutors have an obligation to ensure that testimony presented to judges and juries is truthful. He argued that it was a “troubling” violation of prosecutors’ ethical and constitutional obligations for them to push for testimony from Mr. Cohen, whom he called a “serial liar.”

President Trump’s attorney also asked the judge to issue a pretrial ruling that would render as inadmissible testimony from Ms. Clifford.

“The People should be precluded from offering testimony from or regarding Stephanie Clifford, who has made clear through public statements that she intends to offer false, salacious, and unduly prejudicial testimony relating to President Trump,” Mr. Blanche wrote in the filing.

Ms. Clifford wrote a tell-all memoir that included salacious details of her alleged tryst with the former president at a celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe, California, in 2006.

She then promoted the book in a series of media interviews and talk show appearances, in which she claimed she was pressured to sign a non-disclosure agreement in return for $130,000 in hush money payments.

Ms. Clifford has also expressed enthusiasm to take the stand against President Trump.

Another of President Trump’s requests for a pretrial rulings is precluding prosecutors from characterizing the alleged hush money payments to Ms. Clifford as an attempt on his part to “improperly influence” the 2016 election.

“Essentially the People are arguing that efforts by a candidate to prevent adverse publicity about himself during a campaign equals an attempt to defraud,” President Trump’s attorney wrote in the filing.

“This argument has no basis in law and is an extraordinary perversion of our election system and the First Amendment,” he added.

President Trump’s motion also seeks to prevent prosecutors from introducing the so-called Access Hollywood recording, which “contains inflammatory and unduly prejudicial evidence that has no place at this trial about document and accounting practices,” as well as nearly 100 statements attributed to the former president that prosecutors have identified as potential exhibits but that “are largely irrelevant, stale, and cumulative.”

The motion comes on the heels of a Monday request by prosecutors  to impose a gag order on the former president, preventing him from making certain public statements about the case.

What’s the Case About?

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg indicted President Trump with 34 counts of falsifying business records in order to conceal $130,000 in payments to Ms. Clifford in exchange for keeping quiet about her allegations of an affair.

Mr. Cohen said he made $130,000 in a number of separate payments to Ms. Clifford via a shell company that was then reimbursed by President Trump’s company, the Trump Organization, and recorded as legal expenses.

In 2018, Mr. Cohen pleaded guilty to violating campaign finance law in connection with the payments. In his plea deal, Mr. Cohen claimed he made the payments at President Trump’s direction and that he was reimbursed by President Trump’s company, even though he earlier claimed he paid the money out of his own pocket.

Under New York state law, falsifying business records by itself is a misdemeanor. But if the records fraud was used to cover up or commit another crime, the charge could be elevated to a felony.

Mr. Bragg has charged President Trump with a felony falsifying records charge, which would require prosecutors to prove that it was done to hide the commission of a second crime.

A number of legal experts have challenged the validity of Mr. Bragg’s move to elevate the misdemeanor into a felony.

Jordan and France have been airdropping food into the Gaza Strip at a moment international organizations are warning of mass starvation of Palestinians. While Jordan has been doing this since the opening weeks of the war, France has recently increased its humanitarian activity, at a moment aid trucks are said to be backed up by the hundreds at the Rafah border crossing.

But sometimes these high-risk humanitarian overflight airdrops, which require approval from the Israeli government to conduct, go wrong—as is seen in fresh video which is circulating widely this week.

Part of the humanitarian air drops for Gaza, by the Jordanian air force, fell … in the sea 😐 pic.twitter.com/z5iGRvCES3

— Arya – آریا 🇮🇷 (@AryJeay) February 26, 2024

While Jordan has thus far conducted an estimated 16 airdrops to Gaza, Monday’s drop saw at least part of the aid destroyed as it was accidentally released over the Mediterranean Sea, reportedly outside Rafah. 

Arab media news source Al Mayadeen reported that “most of the supply drops were swimming with the fish before they made it to the hands of the people of Gaza as they were dropped straight into the Mediterranean Sea instead of on the coast of southern Gaza.” However, based on one of the videos to emerge, at least some of the aid was successfully recovered by men in small fishing boats.

Jordan’s air mission, which is directly authorized and overseen by King Abdullah, is “aimed at delivering aid to the population directly and drop it along the coast of the Gaza Strip from north to south.” It could be that Jordan’s military views the beach or shallow waters off the coast as potentially the safest place to drop it.

The aid is described as comprised “relief and food supplies, including ready-made meals of high nutritional value, to alleviate the suffering of the people of the Gaza Strip,” according to a Jordanian government statement. The aid drops also frequently contain vital medical supplies for field hospitals as well.

The images and footage from this week’s failed air drop were surreal…

في عملية استعراضية تم إنزال المواد للغذائية في مدينة رفح جنوب غزة بدلاً من تنفيذه في شمال غزة كما أبلغوا الوسطاء.
المساعدات أتلفت بشكل كامل لأنها سقطت في البحر ! pic.twitter.com/dbdOxwoCgZ

— بلال نزار ريان (@BelalNezar) February 26, 2024

Some UN officials have accused Israel of a policy of collective punishment which involves keeping food from the Strip’s Palestinian population. However, Israel has said it too has conducted humanitarian aid missions and food supply drops.

Michael Fakhri, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food, was cited in The Guardian Tuesday as saying, “There is no reason to intentionally block the passage of humanitarian aid or intentionally obliterate small-scale fishing vessels, greenhouses and orchards in Gaza – other than to deny people access to food.”

* * *

Below is a first-hand account from Middle East Eye of the dire lengths people are going through to find enough nutrition to survive as the war against Hamas grinds on…

The famine in northern Gaza, caused by Israel’s strangling siege, has reached extreme levels, Palestinian residents there have told Middle East Eye. There have been several reports of people dying from malnutrition, including infants. 

Life for over half a million people there now revolves around a single task every day: finding something to eat. In this following account, a resident of Gaza City, who did not wish to be named, recounts to MEE’s Lubna Masarwa the struggle to survive in a war-torn city.  

Things are difficult. Getting anything has become a difficult task, even simple things like sugar, salt and rice. We go on looking for them everywhere, even in old shops and abandoned homes. If and when we find them in shops, they are sold at crazy prices. 

About four days ago, around 800 bags of wheat flour came in. There are up to 700,000 people in northern Gaza. This means one bag for around every 1,000 people or so.

My cousin was among those people who managed to get a bag. It’s 25kg. He distributed it among our extended family and each of us got one kilo. Just like everyone else in Gaza, my sister and I mixed our share with corn and soy flour. We do this to increase the quantity.

I spent three hours in the morning starting the fire and cooking it, and in the end, it wasn’t good. It was hard, uncooked and tasted weird. My sister started crying and I tried to calm her by saying we could add thyme to it and eat it that way. 

Then I visited my aunt’s house and they were struggling to get the fire started because the remaining wood in Gaza is not good. So I spent the next three hours helping them. After that, I went to my uncle’s house and they had the same problem, so I helped them. 

My uncle didn’t seem right to me during the visit. I asked him what was wrong and he didn’t answer. Later, his son told me he hadn’t eaten. He gave the small thyme pies they made to the children and refused to eat. At the end of this very long and tiring day, an air strike hit nearby. I was terrified because I was on the upper floor. It was very close.

Dying en masse

We’ve reached our limit. Things are miserable and get worse every day. It’s beyond famine. I’ve become so frail. I was a healthy guy. I used to ride horses and run. Now I can’t even go up the stairs without feeling very exhausted.

I have completely forgotten what food tastes like. I no longer know what fruit or chicken taste like. We had only rice and even that is scarce now.

If found, one kilo of rice costs 80 shekels ($22), when before the war it cost seven shekels ($1.90). We are running out of things like cooking oil, yeast, corn and barley. Even animal feed that we were forced to eat at some point is running out. Every day something runs out.

I know people who started to eat wild herbs. If we stay like this for another week, I think we will start seeing people die from starvation en masse. There’s nothing left here. Healthy people are getting sick and sick people are dying. 

It doesn’t matter whether you have money or not. It doesn’t matter whether you stored food at the start of the war or not. Everything has run out. We’re all the same. There’s no way around it.

To die from the bombs is better than to die from this hunger. At least with air strikes, you die right away. But now, we keep going round and round each day just to find a bite to keep us standing.

Authored by Nikolai Hubble via FortuneAndFreedom.com,

• When it rains, it pours for those in power

• Have the people suddenly woken up?

• How will the Establishment respond?

Our Betters have been very busy these last few years. Climate change, diversity equity and inclusion, ESG, net zero, vaccine rollouts, lockdowns, wars, political scandals, court cases and investigations, causing and then preventing inflation, bank meltdowns, government bond market meltdowns, debanking, sanctions, CBDCs, transgenderism, renewable energy, crypto crackdowns and so much more.

 

There’s no challenge too big for the powerful. Even the global climate and the definition of a woman is in their control.

But what’s truly striking is that, all of a sudden, things don’t seem to be going according to plan on any of their initiatives. Nobody seems to believe anything they say anymore.

It’s all gone so dreadfully wrong for our Betters.

The Establishment, the Deep State, the Davos crowd, the Elites, the House of Lords, the Globalists, and whoever else you’d like to add to the totalitarian mix – they’re on the retreat, right across the board.

From climate change to migration policy to the economy, if you were to make a list of their pet policies, you could cross them right off again given the news stories coming thick and fast. I’ve never seen so many top-down initiatives flop in such rapid succession.

I mean, I expected net zero to prove problematic. But I thought they’d at least give it a good go. They seem to be giving up at the first hurdle.

There’s probably no need to add insult to injury. But let’s do it anyway by providing a quick summary of what’s unravelling, and then get to why I’m telling you about it.

On the climate change front, it’s all gone so dreadfully wrong. Even the EU is pulling the plug on its own green initiatives. Heck, the German Greens are leading the charge to water down the EU’s green policies.

No prizes for guessing why – the EU’s farmers are up in arms, literally. It’s totally bizarre to see what was the EU’s most coddled interest group, its farmers, rise up against it.

Remembering that the union was originally a protectionist coal and steel trade zone, it’s worth noting that those two groups of workers didn’t exactly kick up half as much of a fuss as they were phased out by their own protectors. But the farmers had other ideas.

The UK was one step ahead of the EU, watering down a long list of climate change policies over the past few months. You’ve heard plenty about all that already.

In central London, Robin Hood and his merry men have been keeping everyday motorists safe from the sheriff by sabotaging his Ultra Low Emission Zone cameras which punish motorists who can’t afford to pay their green taxes or get an EV. “Let them eat cake to avoid the crippling ULEZ charge,” scream the Elites. Or is that bugs?

But what chance have 15-minute cities got if ULEZ faces this much opposition?

The German government, green virtue signallers extraordinaire, have upped their game from transitioning back to coal by felling windmills. Instead, they now want to fill the gap left by shutting down carbon-emission-free nuclear power with billions of euros of new gas power stations.

To be fair, the idea is that they will be converted to hydrogen at some point in the future. With the hydrogen produced… somewhere, somehow, by someone using something other than nuclear power.

The announcement out of Germany was, of course, carefully timed for an announcement from the US to freeze approvals of new natural gas exports. Cue what must have been a truly bizarre diplomatic spat, with the Europeans complaining that the Americans weren’t exporting enough fracking fossil fuels to support the green energy transition. I mean, what was Nord Stream 2 blown up for?

It’s like an episode of Hogan’s Heroes.

In Australia, a landmark wind farm was hung out to dry by the government over environmental damage it would’ve done to a wetland. To be fair, we’ll have a lot more wetland should climate scientists be right about climate change. But it leaves everyone wondering what sort of power is permissible in a world where the environment comes first. And it’s not like fossil fuels will be kept online for a lack of renewables… or will they?

Even if we did decide to build a green energy system, we still haven’t figured out where the metal will come from. The German government has walked back EU plans to ensure that the metals used in the energy transition are sustainably sourced. In a truly bizarre twist of fate, it’s the Australian mining billionaire Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest who is complaining about it.

What sort of bizarre world do we live in where Australian mining magnates complain about the lack of green regulation coming out of the EU!? And what will the EU shift do to investment in sustainably sourced metal in the future?

Not that the EU needed to add to the existing damage there. The Australian Financial Review newspaper recently had this headline: “Rich List fortunes gouged by green metals slump”. The idea is that those who invested in green metals projects in Australia have lost a fortune, literally.

One executive responded to his stock losing 52% as only a green dream believer could: “I’m not really wealth motivated to be honest.” I wonder if his shareholders are pleased to hear this.

Capitalism’s greatest strength is that it acts as an accountability mechanism. It forces people to put their own money where their mouth is and parts the gullible from said money if the scheme was never going to work.

That’s why car rental companies are trying to offload their EVs at an eyewatering pace. They’re not just refusing to buy more. And they’re not selling them off slowly to avoid crashing the market either. They’re running for it, presumably because the cars won’t take them where they need to go.

The environmentalists are getting so desperate in their plan to save the planet that they’re turning on the world’s cutest animals to try and save it. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry at this Telegraph headline: “Squirrels will be chemically castrated and deer will be culled, cooked and served to prisoners under net zero plans to protect England’s trees.”

My first thought was to ask what Australia will do? They don’t have any squirrels to cull to save the planet. And the last time the country had a war on Emus, it lost.

Ironically enough, not so long ago, it was trees that were getting vilified over climate change, with Ohio State News complaining, “Climate change is turning the trees into gluttons,” and theories that trees only temporarily sequester carbon because they eventually die off and release it all again. If trees were to live 26 years, those planted today would wreak havoc on our 2050 net zero goals by dying off…

So, for climate change activists, it’s difficult to tell whether squirrels or trees are the real villains in the story of stopping human caused climate change. Why not go after both?

What we do know is that the targets we set ourselves in the fight against climate change are falling left right and centre. The Renewable Energy Magazine reports, “UK solar target for 2035 obliterated by inflated costs and gridlock.” The French have dropped their renewable energy targets. Bloomberg reports, “California’s ‘Ambitious’ Offshore Wind Goal Seen as Unachievable,” and they’re being polite about it. Fossil fueller Shell calculated in its report on liquefied natural gas (LNG) that the world could fall miles short of net zero because of booming gas demand.

Governments are responding to this shortfall in style. The Labour Party plans to cut its green investment pledge by half…

The current government’s much publicised easing of onshore wind farm regulations have resulted in a grand total of zero new onshore wind turbine project applications, a bit like that offshore wind farm auction we had last year.

The world’s leading wind energy companies are running for the hills, with Orsted and Siemens Energy both shuffling their way out of the wind industry.

EVs, the pride and joy of the environmental movement, are struggling in a surprisingly long list of ways. Even the sceptics couldn’t have come up with such a list. Their share of sales, their ability to move in cold weather, their ability to retain value and plenty more is accumulating into a rather large embarrassment. China’s EV graveyards are in the news, drawing allusions to the ghost cities of a decade ago.

Never afraid to take the moral high ground, the UK’s House of Lords found someone to blame for the EV disappointment: Mr Bean. Apparently he had given EVs a bad review.

It’s of course beautifully ironic that EVs don’t work in the sorts of weather conditions that climate change makes more likely, or less likely, but still rather prevalent, depending on which climate change activist you’re listening to.

More and more governments are abandoning bizarre policies to promote EVs as their various shortfalls and links to China become ever more obvious. The same goes for other vanity projects like heat pumps, electric boilers and more.

Soon the scandals will emerge. Things like the thousands of households in Spain that were left high and dry by the government after overinvesting in solar power based on subsidy promises that evaporated.

Nuclear power, the painfully obvious solution to all this, is becoming ever more difficult to ignore. But that just makes the attempts to ignore it ever more unhinged. The EU is implicitly demanding the French shut down nuclear power to increase the share of renewables on their grid to the EU target of 40%…

But it’s not just climate change that is falling apart for the Globalists. It’s everything else too.

Russian sanctions are proving to be laughable as the Houthis manage to disrupt more shipping than the Western world’s combined efforts against Russia, and Western exports to Russia’s neighbours just happen to go berserk.

Good reason to add more sanctions then, isn’t it? This time for the death of a jailed Russian opposition leader.

While Tucker Carlson is reporting from Moscow about their lavish subway stations and cheap food, Western economies are in or skirting recession.

The only thing that does seem to be going in favour of the Establishment is the stock market. On the days recessions were announced in the UK and Japan, for example, stocks in both places rallied healthily.

That’s because, these days, the only thing keeping markets alive is government and central bank intervention. And recessions make more intervention more likely.

But is that really the basis of a sustainable rally? And what does it do to society to see stocks go up on the misery of everyone else?

Inflation is proving to be “sticky” in many places, just when central bankers were ready to declare victory. Some are even threatening to hike interest rates again, instead of cutting as the markets demand! If the markets are wrong, stocks could plunge.

Facing this difficult situation, the European Central Bank is behaving like my four-year-old who runs around Kindy telling everyone, “You’re not my best friend any more!” One of the ECB’s governors recently said this about those who see the ECB’s climate change agenda as being contrary to its legal mandate: “I don’t want these people anymore.” You know what? We don’t want you either.

The verdict on pandemic era policies are growing increasingly embarrassing, putting all other Globalist mandate plans at risk. Masks, social distancing and lockdowns are viewed by many as debunked, the origin of the virus is looking ever more likely to have been manmade, and vaccines are proving rather unpopular. Sometimes, even government policymakers are the obvious.

In the US, the sitting president, for he can barely stand, has been described as too senile to stand trial for the same crimes that his opponent is sitting trial for. The crime would seem to qualify you for president though, given the response from both supporter’s camps about their own candidate’s performance. But then there’s Hillary Clinton, who also mishandled classified information, but didn’t win an election for it.

With Donald Trump leading polls, the Democrats’ new plan is very American: import voters from overseas. But the consequences of opening borders seem to be costing the Democrats more voters than they can gain. Those who argued for open borders and defunded police are begging the police to remove the migrants on their doorsteps.

Indeed, the mass migration policies which voters associate with the Globalists, because no national government that expects to be held to account at the ballot box would approve them, are triggering protests in some of the most welcoming nations I’ve ever migrated to.

I lived in Austria when the Syrians arrived in 2015. I lived in Ireland before Schengen opened the country to mass migration and visited again several times after. I lived in Germany and the UK when the EU established freedom of movement and the right to reside. I lived in Australia when Tony Abbott’s campaign against illegal immigration began and when the country was flooded with economic migrants from Europe after 2008. Let me tell you, perfectly ordinary people are furious about the current surge in migration. They must have taken a turn for the far right…

Most damning of all are of course the excess deaths figures which continue to bubble away without any government panic, let alone investigation. If only someone would model the deaths instead of reporting on actual ones, then something would be done about it. For now, it’s left to the conspiracy theorists to ponder what’s behind them. And they are getting ever closer.

To be honest, the collapse of these supranational policies is happening so fast it resembles the end of every Star Wars movie, when two hours of accumulated problems and challenges suddenly evaporate in one fell victorious swoop of a spaceship, leaving no loose ends to worry about. But there always has to be another sequel, right?

The collapse of so many campaigns has been very amusing, especially for the people who manage to avoid the disastrous consequences of all the government policies gone wrong. It’s not so funny for German factory workers who burn wood to keep warm in winter as their employer moves to Texas or China. Nor for the Irish who can’t go to their favourite pub for fear of being mugged.

I’m moving to Japan in two weeks, where a lot of this chicanery simply doesn’t fly. And my Japanese isn’t good enough to understand what sort of nonsense the local politicians get up to instead. But, let me tell you, they know what a woman is.

For those of you stuck living in a Western democracy, especially in Europe, the consequences are plain to see. People are taking to the streets and abandoning the mainstream political parties like it matters who you vote for. This is where things get dangerous.

A 2022 survey found trust in government in the EU had fallen from 4.7 out of 10 to 3.6. Can you imagine what it is at now?

For those of you who feel vindicated by all the changes happening around you, don’t. Because they aren’t finished with you yet.

I want to raise the old mantra about dangerous and being cornered. It applies to our leaders, including the ones behind the curtains. Can they really stomach such a defeat across the board without raising the stakes? Or are we going to discover a new disease, asteroid, or social cause imminently to justify a new round of eye-watering government intervention in our lives?

What would you do if you were Klaus Schwab and your agenda began to melt away?

Do the do-gooders slink back into their Swiss caves, universities and think tanks whence they came? Do they give up on trying to engineer the world?

Or do they turn to more drastic measures to keep you in line?

Billionaire investor and Harvard University alumnus Bill Ackman voiced concerns on X on Monday about the health of the woke university’s endowment. This came in the wake of a Bloomberg report earlier that day, indicating the university was “considering” the sale of $1.65 billion in bonds – nearly two months after the resignation of Harvard president Claudine Gay. 

According to a “Voluntary Notice of Potential Issuance of Bonds” from the Ivy League school, it’s planning to sell $750 million of taxable fixed-rate bonds the week of March 4 and $900 million of tax-exempt bonds in April. 

“Proceeds of the Series 2024A Bonds will be used for general corporate purposes,” the notice read. 

As for the Series 2024B Bonds, the university said the use of proceeds will be for “new capital projects and may also include refinancing, including through a tender and/or exchange, of a portion of the University’s Series 2016A bonds.” 

Ackman wrote a brief note on X, highlighting the challenges facing Harvard’s endowment, including “illiquid assets” and a “dramatic decline in donations” as probable factors behind the university’s recent bond offering announcement: 

The substantial majority of the @Harvard endowment is invested in illiquid assets, principally private equity, real estate, and venture capital. Not reflected on the balance sheet are commitments to new funds of the same type.

Like most endowments, @Harvard models expectations of fund distributions when considering its liquidity and when making future commitments.

Harvard also makes assumptions about inflows from alumni donations.

The model likely did not predict a decline in liquidity events from private equity, real estate, and venture capital and the dramatic decline in donations. That is likely why Harvard announced this recent bond offering, which is being done in a substantially higher interest rate environment than where the funds could have been raised a couple of years ago.

It would be interesting to understand how much the modeled cash flows have declined since original expectations.

I wouldn’t be surprised to see Harvard announce a substantial cost reduction program soon.

I suspect that alumni donations won’t be coming back for some time. At a minimum, alumni will want to know who the next president is, and the status of DEI and antisemitism on campus before resuming donations.

The substantial majority of the @Harvard endowment is invested in illiquid assets, principally private equity, real estate, and venture capital. Not reflected on the balance sheet are commitments to new funds of the same type.

Like most endowments, @Harvard models expectations…

— Bill Ackman (@BillAckman) February 26, 2024

Besides Harvard tapping the muni market for financing, Princeton University sold bonds earlier this month and is selling more debt this week. 

So what’s next for Harvard? Is a “substantial cost reduction program” in the works and could be announced soon as Ackman suggested?