The deal to raise the debt ceiling cleared a critical hurdle Tuesday night, after the House Rules Committee voted 7-6 to advance the bill to the full House for a consideration, with every Democrat on the committee voting against the bill - as did GOP Freedom Caucus members Chip Roy of Texas and Ralph Normal of South Carolina.

Prior to clearing the Rules Committee, speculation swirled over whether Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) would vote to approve the measure. A 'no' vote would have killed the bill.

In the small print detailing the end of the debt ceiling melodrama which, as we explained, is a farce as it boosts inflation-adjusted spending contrary to Republican promises, there was some actual news: the great student loan boondoggle is about to come to a screeching halt, after a three year "emergency pause" which redirected tens of billions in dollars away from mandatory student loan repayment to other forms of discretionary spending.

According to Goldman, the agreement announced on Saturday between uniparty leaders Joe Biden and Kevin McCarthy titled hilariously the “Fiscal Responsibility Act”, prohibits the Biden Administration from extending the pause on student loan repayments in place since March 2020, even if it does not block the Administration's student loan forgiveness plan, which would wipe out up to $20,000 in federal loans per borrower and is currently being weighed by the Supreme Court (the plan was announced last year but has not yet implemented).

Here are the details: late last year, Biden extended the repayment pause, which postpones roughly $5bn per month in student loan repayments, until 60 days after the Supreme Court ruled on the separate $400bn loan forgiveness plan the - the Supreme Court is likely to rule on loan forgiveness in June, so this likely would mean a restart of payments after August 2023.

NATO continues to strike residential centers inside of pre-war Russia. This morning Ukraine and NATO attacked Moscow using UAP's. In response Putin launched a devastating strike at NATO decision making centers inside of Ukraine. Patrick Lancaster joins us with the latest attacks on residential neighborhoods in Donetsk.

Before COVID-19 raged through Chile in all its lethal  power, Jorge Barrios sat in his living room using sanitation wipes to scrub a recently received package. “It’s from China,” he said. “You have to be careful with these things.”  

It was February 2020, and although most Chileans had heard of COVID and its ability to kill, they –- like most of the world –- were uncertain of how the “virus from China” would spread. So the then-66-year-old Barrios scrubbed away, hoping to protect himself, his wife, and his grandchildren who lived three doors down but spent more time with their abuelos than at home.

Weeks later, the first confirmed COVID case reached Barrios’ hometown of Arica, Chile. In the months and years that followed, he would be forced to close the bakery he operated from the back of his home, he would see economic devastation take hold in his small nation, and lose over 60,000 of his countrymen. 

Barrios quit scrubbing packages, but his suspicions of China only intensified.

During the pandemic, unfavorable views of China coursed throughout Latin America and much of the world as people heard reports of Chinese officials trying to cover up COVID’s outbreak and silence early whistleblowers.

But as the pandemic dragged on, China stood ready to court Latin American leaders with medical diplomacy, donating masks, gloves, ventilators and hazmat suits. Once skeptical of China, Argentina’s President Alberto Fernández wrote a letter in 2021 thanking China “for supporting Argentina’s fight against COVID-19.” In 2022, Fernández was one of the first world leaders to congratulate Xi Jinping for winning reelection, lauding China’s “impressive advances in the eradication of poverty.”

Chinese stocks slid into bear market territory after manufacturing activity contracted for a second month in May. The dismal data is more evidence that the post-Covid recovery in the second-largest economy in the world is faltering. Bad data might suggest additional policy easing is needed to prop up economic growth. 

On Wednesday, the National Bureau of Statistics announced that China's official manufacturing purchasing managers' index had dropped to 48.8 in May, down from 49.2 in April. This was the lowest reading since December 2022 and missed the median estimate of 49.5 in a Bloomberg survey of economists. It also marked the second consecutive month the index printed sub-50. 

Meanwhile, China's non-manufacturing PMI fell to 54.5 in May from 56.4 in April, also missing economists' expectations. 

Long after President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly in speeches railed against what he's described as Western attempts to push non-traditional lifestyles including LGBT ideology on the Russian public, a new bill being considered by Russian lawmakers proposes to officially ban gender change surgery.

The newly proposed bill would ban doctors from performing surgery to change people's primary or even secondary sex characteristics across the country, with the exception of surgery to treat congenital anomalies in children, according to state-run TASS.

Medical workers would be prevented under the legislation from "performing medical interventions designed to change the sex of a person."

In addition, it would be made illegal to alter legal documents on the basis of "gender-affirmation certificates" issued by doctors or any medical organizations. This would also apply to all identifying documents such as passports, which would only reflect the true biological sex of a person.

As demographics continue to shift in the 21st century, the world’s aging population will continue to be a focal point for many global decision makers.

Visual Capitalist's Freny Fernandes notes that most countries around the world have experienced population explosions, or are about to. Combine this with declining birth rates and falling mortality rates, and it’s clear that the global senior population will continue to reach new heights.

These graphics by Pablo Alvarez use data from the 2022 UN World Population Prospects to visualize this increasing aging population across countries.

A record number of Syrian nationals were handed German citizenship last year, as the country processed the largest number of naturalizations in a year in more than two decades, according to new figures published on Tuesday.

The data released by Germany’s Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) showed a total of 48,320 Syrian nationals were naturalized across Germany last year, more than double the 19,095 naturalizations of Syrians recorded in 2021 — a figure that was already three times higher than any other year on record.

The figure is 24 times higher than the 2,263 Syrian nationals handed citizenship at the peak of the migrant crisis in 2016.

Syrians accounted for 29 percent of all naturalizations recorded in Germany last year, as the country granted citizenship to 168,545 foreign nationals.

It can strike at any time and at any age. When someone develops a chronic disease, it can cause debilitating, life-altering changes that penetrate every aspect of daily life.

The prevalence of these conditions has surged over the past decade, creating a twofold health care and economic crisis affecting nearly half of Americans. By 2030, the number of U.S. residents struggling with at least one chronic illness is expected to surpass 170 million.

That’s more than half of the entire country, for perspective.

The expanding elderly population and adults aren’t the only age groups seeing an uptick. More than 40 percent of children and adolescents currently have at least one chronic illness, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

There’s also a tremendous cost burden. The spectrum of chronic diseases comprises a disproportionately large segment of U.S. health care costs. Of the nation’s $4.1 trillion annual health care expenditures, chronic diseases account for 90 percent.

That’s more than $3 trillion dollars of annual direct costs alone.

Larry Fink is a criminal bankster that runs BlackRock. His corporation is partners-in-crime with the UN, WEF, CFR, WHO, CIA, DoD, Pentagon, Rockefeller and Gates “nonprofits”, et al.

BlackRock is also “advising” the illicit private central Federal Reserve bank with the buying and selling of bonds and securities that it owns itself; in other words, the Fed is complicit in enriching BlackRock and vice-versa. This is nothing more than economic terrorism against We the People.

Psychopaths like Larry Fink also have a tendency to publicly admit their crimes. The whole ESG scam ties in directly with PSYOP-CLIMATE-CHANGE, “pandemics,” the mutilation of children with sex reassignment procedures, the BLM hoax and various other Cultural Marxism divide and conquer psyops, the wide open Southern border, and ultimately the total annihilation of the West.

“Free speech absolutist” fraudster Elon Musk is still blocking Tweets in Substack, so please click the image to view Fink make his terrifying admission.

These hedge funds, banks and various NGO’s are socially engineering the populace into their very own digital gulag dystopia. They conjure all of the money that they want out of thin air, manipulate “markets” and commodities with paper contracts (hypothecation), and drive policy to tax everyone into oblivion. Then they allow the UN through Agenda 21 and 2030 to pillage all of the “private property” while the next generations are rendered indoctrinated mental cripples and genetically modified sexless slaves. The illegal invaders are then promoted to the police force that despises their adopted nation, and what is left of We the People. Then these useful idiot cops are also easily eradicated.

This is the old Bolshevik Revolution playbook updated for today’s globalist technocommunism project.

The kits include three glass pipes, with design variations to accommodate the ways crystal meth, crack and heroin are smoked, Mims said. Meth pipes are called “pookies” and crack pipes “straight shooters.” Some pipes come with lollipops for dry mouth.

…

“We want to get them smoking; basically fentanyl is in everything,” she said.

…

At a backstreet once known as “Murder Alley,” a line of aging crack users sat on chairs along the wall. Juanita Richardson, 61, shuffled up on a walker to the outreach team.

“I want everything you guys have,” she said. “This fentanyl, it’s nothing to laugh at.”

Richardson is on methadone and said she doesn’t use illicit drugs every day. She planned to sell the supplies: $10 for a pookie, $2 for a rig or syringe and $5 for a crack straight shooter, she said.

At a moment tensions are on edge in the Balkans over a fresh crisis between the Serbian minority of northern Kosovo and ethnic Albanians, which over the weekend saw dozens of NATO peacekeeping forces injured while trying to quell fierce protests, the United States decided it was time for some muscle-flexing.

Two US Air Force B-1B Lancer bomber aircraft conducted a low flyover of Sarajevo and other cities in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) on Tuesday. It had been pre-announced at the start of this week and described as "a sign of the strong partnership between the United States and the Armed Forces of BiH, according to a statement in the English language news portal Sarajevo Times. A US Air Forces statement cited in the publication said it would serve further as a sign of the "permanent dedication of the US to the sovereignty, territorial integrity and multi-ethnic nature of Bosnia and Herzegovina."

Canadian oil and gas producer Crescent Point Energy Corp on Monday said it had brought back online full production volumes at its operations in the Kaybob Duvernay play that were shut in due to the wildfires in Alberta in the past few weeks.

Several other operators in Alberta have also resumed partial production after rainfalls helped stop some of the wildfires in recent days.

Following a brief respite in the middle of May, the wildfires in Alberta began raging again last week as temperatures rose, threatening the oil sands operations in the province and forcing operators to shut in oil and gas production.  

Earlier this month, the wildfires in Canada resulted in the shut-in of 319,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd) from the country’s oil and natural gas production or 3.7% of all output.

Yvonne Nevarez remembers her late uncle Raymond Mattia as a proud Tohono O’odham Nation member who always took a stand against injustice.

Mattias family spokeswoman Ofelia Rivas stands while propping a sign with a picture of Ray Mattia, who was shot and killed by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents on May 18, 2023. The photo was taken during a protest in front of the Ajo Border Patrol Station in Why, Ariz., on May 27, 2023. (Allan Stein/The Epoch Times)

He was a kind, respectful, peace-loving man, she said, making his shooting death by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents even harder to accept.

“I’m angry. I can’t believe it. I don’t want to believe it. Our lives will never be the same,” Nevarez said, struggling through tears.

“He was like a dad to me. And now, he’s gone.”

Family members say that on May 18, Mattia contacted tribal police to report illegal migrants trespassing on his property in Meneger’s Dam Village, a remote southern border community of the Tohono O’odham Nation reservation about 52 miles from Ajo by car.

During a brief encounter with CBP agents, family members say Mattia was shot approximately 38 times for reasons as yet unknown.

The world seems to be gripped by a really bad case of war fever.  National leaders all over the globe are rattling their sabers, and that should deeply alarm all of us.  The last time that there was a “world war”, tens of millions of people died.  This time around, it could be hundreds of millions or even billions of people.  Today, we literally possess the ability to destroy all of humanity.  So a worldwide conflict in which nuclear weapons are used should be avoided at all costs, but unfortunately those that are running things seem absolutely determined to push us toward such a conflict anyway.

Over the past couple of weeks, there have been so many alarming developments.  The following are 11 signs that global conflict could soon spiral completely out of control…

President Joe Biden and Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., announced a debt limit deal Saturday, with a vote expected Wednesday in the House of Representatives.

Heritage Foundation experts scrutinized the text of the 99-page bill, including provisions related to spending, pro-growth policies, student loan cancellation, and work requirements for welfare. The following is their latest analysis of the Fiscal Responsibility Act.

Spending

Early in the year, The Heritage Foundation called for total base discretionary spending to return to fiscal 2022 levels—a cut from current levels of around $130 billion. Whereas the House Republicans’ Limit, Save, Grow Act hit that mark, the Fiscal Responsibility Act would only cut discretionary spending by $12 billion in fiscal 2024—only 9% of what Limit, Save, Grow offered.

Under the hood, the bill would cut non-Veterans Affairs, non-defense discretionary spending by $40 billion and get those accounts down, roughly, to fiscal 2022 levels. However, it would spare VA funding and increase defense funding by $28 billion, leaving the total cut at only $12 billion.

Additionally, the bill would rescind only $28 billion in COVID money and $1.4 billion in IRS funds, far short of the roughly $50 billion in COVID and $70 billion in IRS money rescinded under Limit, Save, Grow. Worse, $22 billion of the $28 billion is made available to Democrats to spend through a single fund at the Department of Commerce.

The digital ID rollout is accelerating with little attention and not enough pushback. The European Commission has set aside €46 million (about $49 million) for the controversial European digital identity wallet, an upcoming smartphone app that will allow citizens of all 27 member states of the EU to store and share a digital ID. The money will be invested in pilot programs.

The wallet could be used for presenting travel credentials, registering a SIM card, opening a bank account, and accessing services like social benefits.

The for pilot projects will involve 250 public and private organizations in almost all member states, as well as Iceland, Norway, and Ukraine, and will run for a minimum of two years, Biometric Update reported.

The projects are supposed to help member states prepare for the European Digital Identity Regulation, which is currently being discussed in parliament. The projects will also put the bloc a step closer to achieving its goal of providing all citizens with a digital ID by 2030.

Some, however, have expressed security concerns with the project, arguing that storing so much data in one system would attract cyber attackers.

The quest to develop and refine technologically advanced means to commit mass homicide continues on, with Pentagon tacticians ever eager to make the military leaner and more lethal. Drone swarms already exist, and as insect-facsimile drones are marketed and produced, we can expect bug drone swarms to appear soon in the skies above places where suspected “bad guys” are said to reside—along with their families and neighbors. Following the usual trajectory, it is only a matter of time before surveillance bug drones are “upgraded” for combat, making it easier than ever to kill human beings by whoever wishes to do so, whether military personnel, factional terrorists, or apolitical criminals. The development of increasingly lethal and “creative” means to commit homicide forges ahead not because anyone needs it but because it is generously funded by the U.S. Congress under the assumption that anything labeled a tool of “national defense” is, by definition, good.

To some there may seem to be merits to the argument from necessity for drones, given the ongoing military recruitment crisis. There are many good reasons why people wish not to enlist in the military anymore, but rather than review the missteps taken and counterproductive measures implemented in the name of defense throughout the twenty-first century, administrators ignore the most obvious answer to the question why young people are less enthusiastic than ever before to sign their lives away. Why did the Global War on Terror spread from Afghanistan and Iraq to engulf other countries as well? Critics have offered persuasive answers to this question, above all, that killing, torturing, maiming, and terrorizing innocent people led to an outpouring of sympathy for groups willing to resist the invaders of their lands. As a direct consequence of U.S. military intervention, Al Qaeda franchises such as ISIS emerged, proliferated, and spread. Yet the military plows ahead undeterred in its professed mission to eliminate “the bad guys,” with the killers either oblivious or somehow unaware that they are the primary creators of “the bad guys.”

North Korea announced its plans to launch its first-ever military spy satellite – giving a lift for some South Korean and Japanese defense stocks.

North Korean military official Ri Pyong Chol said in a Monday statement that Pyongyang plans to launch a satellite with the aim to track “dangerous” actions by the U.S., pointing to its recent joint military drills taking with South Korea.

North Korea claimed the event “fully proves how the enemy is making preparations for the military act of aggression on the DPRK,” referring to its official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

Ri said the satellite — scheduled to be launched in June — will be “indispensable to tracking, monitoring, discriminating, controlling and coping with in advance in real time the dangerous military acts of the U.S. and its vassal forces openly revealing their reckless ambition for aggression.”

Target's share prices continued to plummet for an eighth-straight day Tuesday as the retailer faces its biggest losing streak in five years.

Shares fell 3.66 percent on Tuesday, resulting in the once-popular retail store losing a whopping $2.4billion in market capitalization amid widespread backlash to its Pride display, which included 'tuck-friendly' women's swimwear.

Tuesday's losses put the stock on its longest losing streak since November 2018, according to FOX Business, with shares at a 52-week low of $133.88 — down nearly 15 percent over the month.

In total, Target's market value fell over $12billion to $61.85billion as of Tuesday's closing. That is a stark difference from earlier in the month, when its market value was over $74billion.

In 2023, Republicans and Democrats are deeply divided on nearly every significant policy issue. But there is an exception to the rule. Both parties can always agree on sending more money to defense contractors. 

The agreement between President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) to raise the debt limit for two years, if approved by the House and Senate, will avert a potential economic catastrophe. Biden started off demanding a "clean" debt limit increase with no extraneous provisions. McCarthy sought deep cuts in domestic discretionary spending and large increases in military spending in exchange for raising the debt limit. 

The compromise, reached Sunday, includes a small decrease in domestic discretionary spending and a record $886 billion for defense, a 3.3% increase over the current year. The money allocated for the defense budget is exactly what Biden requested in the 2024 budget. Notably, about half of that money will go to defense contractors. 

In 2015, the United States spent $585 billion on its military. The United States has added more than $300 billion in military spending in less than a decade. (Had military spending kept pace with inflation, military spending would still be less than $700 billion annually.) Biden has added nearly $150 billion to the military budget since 2021, the last budget approved by President Trump. The budget of the Pentagon now exceeds "the budgets for the next ten largest cabinet agencies combined."  In 2020, Lockheed Martin received $75 billion in government contracts, more than 1.5 times the budget of the entire State Department. 

Last year, the United States spent more on its military than the next 10 highest-spending countries combined:

As NATO looms ever larger as a major actor in global affairs in the wake of the war in Ukraine, the lack of transparency that characterizes its long-range military planning processes poses a serious challenge to democratic oversight. 

That observation applies in particular to the regular tri-annual meetings of NATO’s most senior generals, the Chiefs of Defence, or CHODs. The latest of these meetings, in a format known as the NATO Military Committee, took place on May 10 in Brussels. While media coverage was marginally better than usual — see, for example, this Reuters article —concerns remain that member countries’ parliamentarians and publics are being kept in the dark about one of the most opaque but consequential processes within NATO.

At the Vilnius Summit in July, NATO’s political leaders will be asked to approve thousands of pages of secret military plans that will detail for the first time since the Cold War how the alliance would respond to a Russian attack. Most of these plans were drawn up behind closed doors by the permanent Military Representatives at NATO headquarters in Brussels and other NATO and national defense officials, without any prior scrutiny by parliamentary bodies and independent experts. 

Russian authorities said Tuesday that eight Ukrainian drones targeted civilian areas of Moscow, marking the largest attack on the capital city since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine last year.

Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said the drones only caused “insignificant damage” to residential buildings and that two people were treated for minor injuries but didn’t need to be hospitalized. The Russian Defense Ministry said five of the drones were shot down, and three were downed using electronic warfare capabilities.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said the drone attack was an attempt by Ukraine to intimate Russian civilians. The attack came as Russia has stepped up its bombardment of Ukraine, and Putin suggested it was a response to a Russia targeting Ukraine’s military intelligence headquarters a few days earlier.

Ukrainian covert attacks have increased inside Russia in recent months. Kyiv does not officially take credit for the operations, but Ukrainian officials strongly hint at their involvement.

NOT LONG AFTER the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration launched what it called the Office of Strategic Influence, which would seek to “counter the enemy’s perception management” in the so-called war on terror. But it quickly became clear that the office, operating under Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, would be managing those perceptions with its own disinformation.

As the New York Times reported at the time, its work was to “provide news items, possibly including false ones, to foreign journalists in an effort to influence overseas opinion.” In the nascent Internet age, observers worried the propaganda could boomerang back on Americans.

“The question is whether the Pentagon and military should undertake an official program that uses disinformation to shape perceptions abroad,” the Times reported in 2004. “But in a modern world wired by satellite television and the Internet, any misleading information and falsehoods could easily be repeated by American news outlets.”

Now, two decades later, “perception management” is once again becoming a central focus for the national security state. On March 1, 2022, the Pentagon established a new office with similar goals to the one once deemed too controversial to remain open. Very little has been made public about the effort, which The Intercept learned about through a review of budget documents and an internal memo we obtained. This iteration is called the Influence and Perception Management Office, or IPMO, according to the memo, which was produced by the office for an academic institution, and its responsibilities include overseeing and coordinating the various counter-disinformation efforts being conducted by the military, which can include the U.S.’s own propaganda abroad.

Add the Old Navy store in downtown San Francisco to the ever-expanding list of retail stores closing up shop this year. So far, Nordstrom and Nordstrom Rack, Saks Off 5th, Anthropologie, Coco Republic, Whole Foods, T-Mobile, and a slew of other retail shops have shuttered operations in the crime-ridden progressive-run city because officials are failing to enforce law and order, which has led to a massive surge in thefts.

According to NBC Bay Area, Old Navy's parent company Gap Inc. wrote in a statement that its store, located at 801 Market Street, will close its doors on July 1. The company is attempting to find a new location in the downtown district that "will better serve the needs of the business and our customers."

In other words, the company is relocating from the Market Street location because of out-of-control crime. The other retailers we noted above have specifically mentioned crime as the leading driver in shuttering downtown operations

If you’ve been following our reporting on the issue, you’ll already know that the new World Health Organization (WHO) pandemic prevention initiative, the Preparedness and Resilience for Emerging Threats (PRET), recommends using “social listening surveillance systems” to identify “misinformation.” But as more people are learning about how unelected bodies are being used to suppress speech and potentially override sovereignty, it’s starting to get more pushback.

According to documents from the UN agency, PRET aims to “guide countries in pandemic planning” and work to “incorporate the latest tools and approaches for shared learning and collective action established during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

The PRET document describes misinformation as a “health threat,” and refers to it as an “infodemic.”

“Infodemic is the overabundance of information – accurate or not – which makes it difficult for individuals to adopt behaviors that will protect their health and the health of their families and communities. The infodemic can directly impact health, hamper the implementation of public health countermeasures and undermine trust and social cohesiveness,” the document states.

If I wrote that we’re living in a world that bears an ever-increasing similarity to Communist regimes throughout history, a lot of people would scoff and say that I was being melodramatic. But research compiled by the Media Research Center and shared on social media by The Heritage Foundation shows, through documents acquired via the FOIA, that the Biden administration is using tax dollars to actively target political opponents and dissenters as potential domestic terrorists in a program with the acronym TVTP.

It’s an important read, and the supporting documents that follow the money are all here in this PDF. (I originally came across this information on a very interesting episode of Dan Bongino’s podcast.)

So, by definition, are you an extremist? A budding domestic terrorist? A violent threat?

Some 32 hospitals across the Sudanese capital of Khartoum have been seized and turned into military bases by both the army and Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitaries in their ongoing conflict, an international medical organisation said Monday.

Three doctors have also been kidnapped in Khartoum while one has been killed, Medecins du Monde said, without specifying who the perpetrators were.

Attacks on medical sites could amount to potential war crimes, according to legal observers. 

The World Health Organisation has called the use of hospitals as military infrastructure "a flagrant violation of international humanitarian law" that "must stop now".

Last week, deadly clashes broke out between Afghan and Iranian guards at their border raising fears of a new conflict.

Both sides have accused each other of initiating the shooting in which at least two Iranian and one Afghan guard were killed. However, they have issued measured statements aimed at de-escalating the situation.