California’s Regulations, Not Price Gouging, Cause High Gas Prices, USC Study Finds Authored by Jill McLaughlin via The Epoch Times, Gov. Gavin Newsom stands behind his claim that “Big Oil” is responsible for California’s higher gas prices and vowed on April 1 to continue his fight against the industry. The pledge comes after new research put the blame on state regulations and policies for the high prices at the pump. […]

Seattle Economic Crisis: Proof That Democrat Wealth Taxes Lead To Disaster To look at the Pacific Northwest today one would never know that 25 years ago the region was an economic powerhouse at the forefront of technology and business innovation.  At the time Portland and Seattle were known for constant rain as well as raining cash, and the “millionaire density” of the Seattle area was at historic highs.  The tech boom and […]

Trump Plans To Announce ‘TikTok America’ As US Ban Deadline Looms Update (1704ET): The Information reports that the Trump administration plans to announce a newly proposed company called ‘TikTok America,’ which would be 50% owned by new U.S. investors and would license TikTok’s algorithm from the Chinese company ByteDance. Existing ByteDance investors would retain a 33% stake in the new company, while ByteDance itself would hold […]

The Swirling Vortex Of Weaponized Lawfare Authored by Ramesh Thakur via The Brownstone Institute, Like a bad ‘When a chicken walked into a pub’ type of joke, when activist litigants walk into a courtroom and meet injunction-happy judges, the result is a swirling vortex of weaponised lawfare. In discussing the current jurisdictional kerfuffle between the US federal executive and judiciary, I find it impossible to overlook the […]

Alec Baldwin Says Quiet Part Out Loud As Democrats Become More Unhinged  As the Democratic Party spirals into disarray—polling in freefall, far-left activists firebombing Tesla showrooms and vehicles, and USAID funds cut for its sprawling NGO network used for domestic color revolution operations—struggling actor Alec Baldwin has openly said the quiet part out loud: “You can see now that we are in a pre-civil war culture.”  […]

Futures Tumble As President Trump Delivers “Declaration Of Economic Independence” Update (1630ET): “Well we have some very, very good news today,” Trump began his address exclaiming that “This is Liberation Day.” “April 2, 2025, will forever be remembered as the day American industry was reborn, the day America’s destiny was reclaimed and the day that we began to make America wealthy again,” Trump says. “For […]

Big Balls To The Rescue: DOGE Saves A Terabyte Of Data Destroyed By Exiting USIP Employees Authored by Monica Showalter via AmericanThinker.com, I’ve never heard anything good about the United States Institute for Peace. It’s been in bed with neocons, coupmeisters, and the Soros color revolution crowd for years. The quasi-government agency that runs like a private NGO is always sneaky and non-transparent. So it didn’t surprise […]

“Yeah, Fake News”: Musk Denies Politico Musk Report Update (1605ET):  Aaand here’s the denial. White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt has called Politico’s scoop “garbage,” adding “lon Musk and President Trump have both *publicly* stated that Elon will depart from public service as a special government employee when his incredible work at DOGE is complete.” “Yeah, fake news,” Musk replied. Yeah, fake news […]

Will Today Go Down In History As The Beginning Of A New Era? To paraphrase Michael Every’s earlier take, “will today go down in history, marking the end of one era and the beginning of another?”  That’s the question asked by DB’s Jim Reid who notes that only time, and subsequent negotiations, will tell. However, as the DB credit strategist notes, “tariff announcements today could well take us into uncharted territory.” According […]

If You Needed Any More Evidence Leftism Is A Mental Disorder… Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news, Social media users have alerted the FBI after a clearly deranged leftist woman posted a video ‘joking’ about assassinating President Trump with an assault rifle. The bespectacled Karen declares in the video that board games can help “if you’re struggling with your mental health,” before pulling out some sort of […]

Trump Mulls ‘Indirect’ Talks With Iran As 2nd Carrier Group Dispatched To Mideast Various international reports have said that the White House is seriously considering Iran’s proposal for indirect nuclear talks, however, on Tuesday the US slapped more sanctions on the Islamic Republic as part of the Trump’s restored ‘maximum pressure’ campaign. The Treasury Department in this latest move sanctioned several entities based in Iran, […]

New FAA Rule Allows Private Jet Owners To Hide Travel Information From Public Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours), The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is implementing a data privacy policy that allows people with private jets to hide travel information from the public. Private jets are seen on the tarmac at Friedman Memorial Airport ahead of the Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference in Sun […]

Judge Blocks Trump Admin From Firing Federal Employees On Probation In 19 States Authored by Katabella Roberts via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours), A federal judge on April 1 indefinitely blocked President Donald Trump’s administration from quickly firing thousands of probationary federal workers in 19 states and Washington, narrowing a nationwide order issued last month. Protesters hold signs at a rally in support of federal […]

Will Today’s Trump Moves Force The Fed To Act? Authored by Peter Tchir via Academy Securities, Apparently today at 4:00 pm we will learn the details of this wave of tariffs. Treasury Secretary said yesterday that this will represent a “cap” on tariffs and basically the starting point of negotiations from here (we will see if that messaging sticks). What I think we know: Relatively little “negotiating” has occurred, […]

Putin Envoy Visits Washington For Talks In First Since 2022 Ukraine Invasion Earlier this week the Kremlin said it has given the Trump White House formal notification and evidence showing that Ukraine has continued attacking Russian energy sites, despite the US-backed agreement for each side to refrain from hitting this infrastructure. On Wednesday Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that so far there’s been no response from the […]

How Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ Tariffs Are Set To Reshape Global Trade Authored by Emel Akan and Andrew Moran via The Epoch Times, President Donald Trump is set to announce reciprocal tariffs for all nations starting April 2, the date he has dubbed “Liberation Day.” Companies, markets, and governments are on edge, expecting the move to send shockwaves across the globe. Liberation Day will impact all countries, Trump told […]

China Restricts Local Firms From Investing In US As Trump’s Reciprocal Tariffs D-Day Arrives Hours before President Trump is set to announce reciprocal tariffs—threatening to unleash a global trade war on what he has called “Liberation Day”—the Chinese Communist Party is already preparing a financial counteroffensive.  Bloomberg cites people familiar with the matter who say Beijing plans to restrict local companies from […]

WTI ‘Steady’ Near 5-Week Highs As ‘Drill Baby Drill’ Lifts US Crude Production Crude prices continue to tread water above $70 (WTI) this morning (holding Monday’s gains on potential sanctions on Russian oil), drifting modestly lower aftr API reported a large crude build overnight ahead of new supply coming this month as OPEC+ begins to unwind 2.2-million barrels per day of production cuts. However the new supply is being offset […]

Why The Global Recession Will Be Deeper And Longer Than Pundits Anticipate Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog, The global recession will be deeper and longer than those relying on models based on the past two decades of hyper-globalization and hyper-financialization anticipate. While everyone focuses on conflicts between nations, few look at the problems shared by nations. Richard Bonugli and I discuss both sets […]

US Factory Orders Surge Near Record Highs In Feb (Ignoring ‘Soft’ Data Slump) Despite all the ‘soft’ data slumping and legacy media narrative creation that a recession is imminent, US Factory Orders (hard data) surged for the second month in a row (beating expectations). Headline factory orders rose 0.6% MoM (+0.5% MoM exp) in March and February’s 1.7% MoM jump was revised up to +1.8% MoM. This left Factory Orders up 2.5% YoY… […]

Meta To Expand Ray-Ban Smart Glasses Lineup With Display-Enabled Model Since late summer or fall of 2024, Ray-Ban Meta Glasses have surged in popularity with US consumers, a trend we previously highlighted citing several Goldman reports. The data was primarily based on app downloads worldwide.  Source: Goldman’s Jack McFerran Building on this momentum, Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta’s Reality Labs division is preparing to […]

T-Day By Michael Every of Rabobank “I have also to announce to Congress that during the night and the early hours of this morning the first of the series of tariffs in force upon the European Continent has taken place. In this case the liberating assault fell upon the coast of France. An immense armada of upwards of 4,000 tariffs, together with several thousand smaller tariffs, crossed the Channel. Massed airborne tariffs have […]

Kitchen Sink? Tesla Delivers 336,681 Vehicles In Q1, Missing Wall Street’s Lowest Expectations This morning Tesla announced Q1 deliveries of 336,681 vehicles, falling below even the lowest expectations that Wall Street had set for the automaker and marking a -13% plunge in deliveries from the year prior period.  In its press release, Tesla said “the changeover of Model Y lines across all four of our factories led to the loss of […]

Bipartisan Senators Prepare 500% Uranium, Oil Tariffs If Russia Doesn’t Negotiate  A bipartisan group of US senators have prepared an anti-Russia sanctions nuclear option in the case that Moscow refuses to sign on to Trump efforts to negotiate an end to the Ukraine war. The 50 Republicans and Democrats which introduced the sanctions package Tuesday are led by Senators Lindsey Graham and Richard Blumenthal, and their bill would […]

Unearthed FBI Chat Logs Reveal ‘Gag Order’ On Biden Laptop Exposé Authored by Luis Cornelio via Headline USA, Internal FBI chat logs revealed that the bureau imposed a “gag order” on agents regarding the New York Post bombshell story on the Hunter Biden laptop. Along with showing Hunter’s depravity, the laptop revealed Joe Biden’s involvement in his son’s foreign business dealings.  The chat logs, published […]