The White House on Tuesday said that Ukraine will be able to receive powerful Abrams tanks months sooner than expected under a new plan that will put an older model into action sooner.

The move, confirmed by White House national security spokesman John Kirby, comes amid reports that Ukraine will seek to begin a new push to regain territory lost to the Russian invasion even amid the hard-fought stand-off in Bakhmut. 

'The Pentagon is working as fast as they can, and I think they'll have more to say here soon about adjustments they're making to try to see if we can get Abrams tanks to Ukraine a little bit faster than previously expected,' Kirby told MSNBC Tuesday.

A 'bomb cyclone' slammed into San Francisco Tuesday evening in the latest severe storm to hit the West Coast, devastating the region with hurricane-force winds and torrential rainfall. 

The weather front is the latest major storm to hit the region this year, where it unleashed flash floods and blistering wind gusts throughout the Golden State.  

At least one person died after the gusts - which reached upwards of 78mph - caused a tree to fall near Portolla Valley. Meanwhile, more than 230,000 residents across California had their power wiped out in the storm.

The Justice Department successfully convinced a judge in Washington DC overseeing the Mar-a-Lago classified documents inquiry that Donald Trump used his lawyer to help him commit a crime.

Judge Beryl Howell on Friday stepped down as the chief judge of the court, after serving her seven-year term.

In one of her final decisions she ruled that Evan Corcoran, a lawyer for Trump, should be forced to appear again before the grand jury investigating the Mar-a-Lago documents saga. 

The Pentagon has blocked attempts by the US federal government to share alleged Russian war crimes in Ukraine with the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, according to a March 8 report by the New York Times.

The rationale behind this decision, according to the paper, is that “American military leaders oppose helping the court investigate Russians because they fear setting a precedent that might help pave the way for it to prosecute Americans.” This has now spawned an intra-agency battle within the administration of President Joe Biden over what’s right and wrong.

According to the NYT and officials they spoke to, “the rest of the administration, including intelligence agencies and the State and Justice Departments, favors giving the evidence to the court.” President Biden has yet to make a decision as to whether the US will stick to its commitment to help the European initiative to prosecute alleged Russian war criminals or avoid opening that can of worms altogether.

So much for weapons deemed inhumane and banned under UN-backed international treaties... apparently it's OK if they are used against Russians or other official enemies of the United States - at least according to the logic of some US lawmakers.

A group of four Republican members of Congress are urging President Biden to send Ukraine cluster munitions as part of the next major weapons package approval . "Ukraine is seeking the MK-20, an air-delivered cluster bomb, to release its individual explosives from drones, and 155 mm artillery cluster shells," according to prior reporting in Reuters. These Republican hawks want to provide it.

Given the damage the Left and the Left’s political party, the Democrats, are doing to America, you would think conservatives would understand that defeating the Left is by far their most important task. 

The Left’s damage includes, to name but a few examples, doing incalculable damage to America’s children by supporting and advocating mutilating surgeries, prescribing hormone blockers, promoting innocence-robbing “nonbinary” cross-dressing shows and discussions, and having ordered inexcusable school lockdowns; printing trillions of dollars, which in turn has led to devastating inflation, unprecedentedly high national debt, and a weakened dollar; and ruining every institution in the country including, but not limited to, the universities, the military, medicine, the arts, sports, journalism, religion, marriage, and free speech.

Yet, apparently, millions of conservatives, including some leading ones, do not understand that defeating the Left is their most important task. For many conservatives, it appears that whether to aid Ukraine or whether to support former President Donald Trump overshadows defeating the Left.

Let’s begin with Ukraine. 

Last week, the other shoe dropped on the Biden crime family. James Comer, chairman of the committee investigating the most disturbing scandal in the history of the White House, finally received the records from a bank—one of 12—that the Bidens have used to stash their payoffs from China’s Communist dictatorship. Comer had previously been stonewalled for two years by the corrupt and incompetent Biden Treasury head, Janet Yellen.

This first Biden bank record to be surrendered showed three members of the Biden family, including Beau Biden’s widow Hallie and one person identified only as “Biden,” received payments amounting to $1 million from a Chinese Communist State energy company. 

What were the payments for? Forget asking the Bidens, who have a long history of silence and denial on such material questions. When asked, Joe Biden denied he ever discussed Hunter Biden’s Chinese business affairs with him, even though he flew with Hunter on Air Force Two to China and met with his business associates. Never at a loss for brazen lies to extricate himself from difficult circumstances, Biden, without a second thought, denied that the bank records were “true.” 

To date, there hasn’t been one attempt by the Biden camp to try to explain what service the Bidens actually supplied to the Chinese Communists to earn such ample rewards. At the lowest levels of this corruption, Hallie Biden, who is a school counselor, received $25,000 from the Chinese Communist Party. For what?

When you have no answers to such material questions, when you lie continually about the operations themselves (“I never discussed Hunter’s business with my son!”) when you suborn your intelligence services to carry out an elaborate and expensive effort to suppress the story of an incriminating laptop, and do it right before a presidential election, you are in fact telling us that you are guilty of the obvious crime you are covering up. In this case, treason: colluding with an enemy power to hurt your own country.

Joe Biden recently released his proposed fiscal year 2024 federal budget, a budget he knows is dead on arrival. In a purely political move, Biden submitted a $6.8 trillion budget he claims will reduce the deficit by approximately $3 trillion over 10 years by raising taxes on Americans who earn more than $400,000, per Reuters. The truth, however, is that Biden’s budget is too woke, too expensive, and favors big government over the ingenuity of the American population.

At a time when we are experiencing stagflation, rising unemployment, and bank failures, Biden’s budget proposal mentions climate change 148 times, equity—which is never defined—63 times, environmental justice 25 times, and transgenderism eight times. The budget calls for $2.6 billion to advance gender equity and equality. He calls for an additional $1.45 billion to “bolster the EPA’s environmental justice efforts, $3.3 billion to support clean energy projects, and looks to include a $3.2 billion loan to the Clean Technology Fund to “finance clean energy projects in developing countries,” per the proposal. In addition, he wants to spend $367 million to support so-called police reform and efforts to “provide equitable access to justice.”

Biden also seems to love the word “free.” Not as in freedom, or live free, but as in no cost. It is apparent, however, that he does not understand the word. He calls for free “high-quality preschool and up to two years of free community college,” among other programs. Yet, unless the preschool and college teachers will volunteer their time, a benefactor donates land, buildings, books, and utilities, it will not be free. It will be paid for, but  by taking money from you and giving it to someone else.

The FBI and the Department of Energy have evidence that the COVID-19 pandemic began in a laboratory. The most likely place of origin is the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in China, a collaborator with the Galveston National Laboratory (GNL) from 2009 to 2021 headed by James LeDuc. For anyone investigating the COVID origin, LeDuc is a person of interest. 

The Californian earned a bachelor’s degree in zoology from Cal State Long Beach, a masters of public health in infectious and tropical diseases from UCLA, and a Ph.D. in epidemiology, also from UCLA. LeDuc began his professional career as a field biologist with the Smithsonian Institution’s African Mammal Project in West Africa, then served for 23 years in the U.S. Army’s Medical Research and Development Command. 

In 1992, LeDuc joined the Centers for Disease Control and the CDC assigned him to the World Health Organization (WHO) as a medical officer. LeDuc later became associate director for global health at the CDC’s National Center for Infectious Diseases (NCID), where his research interests included the epidemiology of arboviruses and viral hemorrhagic fevers. 

In 2006, LeDuc joined the faculty of the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB), home to the Galveston National Laboratory (GNL), a creation of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) headed by Dr. Anthony Fauci since 1984. Some officials thought Galveston Island, constantly threatened by hurricanes, was not the best place to contain the world’s deadliest and most contagious viruses. 

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors is talking about ideas to bring racial reparations to the Bay Area.

The proposals discussed during a recent board hearing, if adopted, would come with a significant financial cost for taxpayers. More on that in a bit.

The entire reparations plan is predicated on the idea that black residents of San Francisco need to receive massive financial benefits from the city to make up for slavery and systemic racism.

Now, plenty of arguments can be made against reparations. As a matter of justice and improving “equity,” which the Left obsesses over, these proposals leave a lot to be desired.

“Legal or not, reparation plans are deeply flawed and often create new injustices in implementation,” I wrote in September. “In the end, they are based on the premise that the only way to get ahead in society is to claim victimhood and shake down your neighbors.”

The case for reparations in California for U.S. slavery is particularly tenuous. California famously entered the Union as a free state. The number of black slaves brought to California before its statehood was marginal. 

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre dodged a question about whether President Joe Biden supported reparations for slavery Tuesday.

“We understand that there’s a legislation on the Hill currently on this, on the study of reparations … and we think Congress is the appropriate venue for consideration on such action,” Jean-Pierre said in response to a reporter’s question during Tuesday’s White House press briefing. “And so, we’re going to leave it there for Congress to decide to let them go through their process that they’re taking at this moment, but I would — I would lay out and speak to what the president has done.”

The White House has come out against a ceasefire in Ukraine ahead of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s trip to Moscow to potentially mediate between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his counterpart in Kyiv.

Xi is due to arrive in Moscow on Monday and is expected to speak virtually to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky following his talks with Putin. Xi’s trip comes after Beijing released a 12-point peace plan for Ukraine that called for the two sides to cease hostilities and for peace talks to begin.

A new lawsuit accuses Mark Zuckerberg and other Meta Platforms executives and directors of failing to do enough to stop sex trafficking and child sexual exploitation on Facebook and Instagram.

The complaint made public late Monday by several pension and investment funds that own Meta stock said Meta’s leadership and board have failed to protect the company’s and shareholders’ interests by turning a blind eye to “systemic evidence” of criminal activity.

Given the board’s failure to explain how it tries to root out the problem, “the only logical inference is that the board has consciously decided to permit Meta’s platforms to promote and facilitate sex/human trafficking,” the complaint said.

Donald Trump will likely be indicted on Wednesday but won't appear before a judge in New York until next week, DailyMail.com has learned.   

'There will be no arraignment this week,' a source familiar with the proceedings told DailyMail.com exclusively on Tuesday. 

The former president, who is currently in Florida, is expected to be formally charged tomorrow, after which the Manhattan District Attorney's office will reach out to Trump and his Secret Service detail to make arrangements for his surrender, according to the insider.

In a ceremony at the Kremlin, and on the second day of Chinese leader's Xi Jinping's visit, Putin and Xi kicked off formal talks which will focus on the Ukraine crisis. They shook hands and stood side by side as their respective national anthems played, aired on state television. Following the meeting, they held a joint press conference, to be followed by a state dinner at the Kremlin. 

Last night's greeting and starting 'informal' talks lasted about 4-and-a-half hours. In addition to Ukraine being high on the agenda for the ongoing summit, Xi outlined in initial comments Tuesday that China wishes to expand cooperation with Russia on trade, and hopes that Russia promotes liberalization, facilitation of trade and investment, alongside both sides maintaining security and stability of industrial and supply chains. Importantly, Xi invited Putin to travel to China at some point this year. Putin showed willingness on these points, also stressing that Russia stands ready to meet China's growing energy needs. 

Georgia has become the latest state to pass a bill banning doctors from prescribing cross-sex hormones or conducting surgeries related to a gender dysphoria diagnosis on minors.

On March 17, 2023, SB 140 passed the state house with an amendment that allows for doctors to be sued civilly and criminally for violating the law. On Tuesday, the bill passed with the amendment in the State Senate and is heading to Governor Brian Kemp's desk, where he is expected to sign. Monday Trans Rights activists filled the capital as the Governor issued remarks in support of the bill. 

Google defended its use of "history-off chats" for many internal communications, denying the US government's allegation that it intentionally destroyed evidence needed in an antitrust case. The history-off setting causes messages to be automatically deleted within 24 hours.

The US government and 21 states last month asked a court to sanction Google for allegedly using the auto-delete function on chats to destroy evidence and accused Google of falsely telling the government that it suspended its auto-deletion practices on chats subject to a legal hold. Google opposed the motion for sanctions on Friday in a filing in US District Court for the District of Columbia.

Harvard Law professor emeritus and ‘Get Trump’ author Alan Dershowitz slams Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg over a potential indictment of former President Trump and weighs what impact the alleged charges will have on the legal system.

“There will be no arraignment this week,” an unnamed source, said to be familiar with the proceeding, told the Daily Mail on Tuesday.

The Mail reports that “the former president, who is currently in Florida, is expected to be formally charged tomorrow, after which the Manhattan District Attorney’s office will reach out to Trump and his Secret Service detail to make arrangements for his surrender.”

After being flown to New York, he will be fingerprinted, arrested, and a mug shot will be taken.

On Tuesday, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office responded to a letter sent by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan demanding that he testify before Congress about his “unprecedented abuse of prosecutorial authority.” The prosecutor’s office said that they will not be “intimidated” out of filing charges.

Another Scientific Study finds myocarditis to be a potentially lethal complication following mRNA-based anti-SARS-CoV-2 vaccination.

The reason autopsies are not done in the case of vaccine-related deaths is to prevent the information from coming out that the Covid “vaccine” is deadly. 

Derivatives.  Not much being said lately on them but a lot has been said on bank failures of as late.  I do not understand why not, they are directly related.  In math a derivative of a function is, in the most simple terms, “the rate of change of the function's output relative to its input value”.   Easy enough, but in financial terms a derivative is “a type of financial contract whose value is dependent on an underlying asset, group of assets, or benchmark”.   Again, that sounds simple enough, but there is far more to it than the textbook mentions.  Yes, far more to it.  Ostensibly, they are used to “hedge a position, speculate on the directional movement of an underlying asset, or give leverage to holdings…. It's important to remember that when companies hedge, they're not speculating on the price of the commodity. Instead, the hedge is merely a way for each party to manage risk.”  As a matter of fact, the frantic meetings of financial masters on both sides of the Atlantic seem to be trying to keep the entire financial system from blowing out.  The collapse of Credit Suisse along with the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and First Republic Bank would blow out the entire derivatives financial bubble.  And what a bubble that is, as the rate of change is most assuredly NOT relative to its input value.

A magnitude 6.5 earthquake rattled much of Afghanistan and Pakistan on Tuesday, sending panicked residents fleeing from their homes and frightening people even in remote villages.

Twelve people were injured in northwest Pakistan in the quake, which was centered in Afghanistan and also felt in bordering Tajikistan.

The tremors were so powerful that many people fled their homes and offices in Pakistan's capital of Islamabad, some reciting verses from the Quran, Islam's holy book.

The scene was repeated in Kabul and other parts of Afghanistan.