June 23, 2026

00 First Filter

Originally published May 8, 2026 for our weekly Issue of Mindful Intelligence Advisor.  Subscribe to get weekly issues.

FINAL THOUGHT – SEX AS CHRISTIAN SPIRITUAL FULFILMENT

By Bill Collier, Publisher

“Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice in the wife of your youth, a lovely deer, a graceful doe. Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight; be intoxicated always in her love. Why should you be intoxicated, my son, with a forbidden woman and embrace the bosom of an adulteress?” – Proverbs 5:18-20

Sex is a spiritual communion between two souls meant to be together for life. Marriage is the place God pre-ordained for this union, because marriage, in its totality, is a shadow and representation of the love between Jesus Christ for the church, the Body of Christ, and between the church, who are the Bride of Christ, and their Lord.

This is so holy and sacrosanct; I can hardly find the words to convey how eternal and sacred this institution is. It does not end but changes from just between two people to the whole Body of Christ and Jesus Himself.

When I die, I will not be my late wife Dora’s husband nor will she be my wife; we are the bride of Christ forever, married to God in a perfect union.

People do not seem to understand marriage and sex from a pure Kingdom perspective. They miss the best God has to offer. We all miss it to some degree, but those who treat intimacy like a short round of sexual pleasure, while they treat marriage like dating with paperwork, are denying THEMSELVES God’s best for their lives.

I’m not here to judge any one person. I will discern and judge between what I see as right and wrong, from the absolute moral standards down to personal preferences, but not individuals.

If you are reading this and feel defensive, because this isn’t something you have lived, understand that I hadn’t lived it myself, I came to live it, but I spent a lot of my youth violating it and didn’t even understand what I was doing.

I invite you to consider God’s way.

You say, “who are you to say what God’s way is?”

Well, I have 66 sacred books and thousands of years of moral and doctrinal orthodoxy behind what I believe. In short, I didn’t just wake up one day and pretend I was hearing the voice of God or that my opinion about things was the utter sacred truth of God’s design.

Nonetheless, you may still think you understand what God wants better. You may reject the very notion of God’s existence. That’s between God and you.

I don’t judge you as a bad person or someone beneath me because you don’t agree that what I’m saying is God’s blueprint for marriage and sex. I just feel that you are missing God’s best, and my desire is for everyone to have God’s best for their lives with excellence.

I can have a viewpoint about God’s design for sex, marriage, and family, without judging you as a bad person or beneath me.

When it comes to God’s righteousness, I have fallen utterly short and throw myself at the foot of the Cross in total obedience and surrender. As St. Paul stated, “The good I would do I do not do and the bad I do not want to do, I do” (Romans 7:19). But thanks be to God for the sacrifice and resurrection of Jesus Christ that saves me from this body of sin.

So, I present not a judgement against you but an offer of a better way. I went down my own unrighteous sexual path.

It was 1986, or maybe early 1987, while I was still confusing sex for love and love for sex, when that confusion finally broke me, for the better.

At one moment, after an indulgence that left me empty, I chose to deny myself any sexual gratification until I met the woman I would marry until death did part us.

I was still in denial of Christ. Yet even without Christ, I came to understand the unfruitfulness of sex outside of marriage. I would still do other awful things after I was sexually broken before truly repenting and renewing my covenant with God by faith in Jesus Christ.

After I came back to Christ, the vow became even more meaningful, as my views of healthy sexuality aligned with God’s. It is because of this vow that my wife and I didn’t so much as kiss until after the Pastor declared us married.

We could never bring back our virginity, we could not give that gift to each other; but we had both made a choice years before we met to refrain from sexual gratification until marriage.

The perfection of love is found in marriage and the pinnacle of that love shared is sexual intimacy, which, while gratifying, is about the connection; the gratification being a side effect, not the main show.

Experiencing pleasure is a good thing in marriage and finding ways to bring this type of pleasure to each other is an adventure; at least it can be, and optimally will be.

What do you do now if you have pretty much trashed God’s righteous standards in love, sex, and marriage? You stop. You search God’s Word for His standards. Don’t just read a book that tells you what the Bible says. Use modern tools, like a concordance and a Bible Dictionary, to find every reference, and judge for yourself what it says.

If you are part of a congregation, you should seek council within the parameters of your congregation. Yet continue in the steps that follow, for no institution, no human is infallible.

Next, find authors who have addressed these things, from the ancient to the modern, and judge for yourself, knowing, however, that you should treat this as something vital, holy, and urgent. You want to get it right for your own happiness and completeness. You want to be circumspect.

While people, including me here, may teach on the subject and claim they are teaching the right way, in the end, you alone are responsible for what you choose to believe and do.

This is why I am double careful when I share things to express them as a fallible man, not the arbiter of the meaning of the Word of God, lest I become a stumbling block to others through my own arrogance, or mislead them from God’s path through my own “sincere” error.

I strongly urge against sex outside of marriage, not as a prude, but because sex outside of marriage is, at best, in my considered opinion based on my faith, spiritually vapid and invalidating to your soul in ways that are hard to see in the moment of pleasure.

Many sometimes feel its emptiness but this passes and is forgotten as they seek a new dose of pleasure.

I can testify that sex inside of marriage with Christ as the head of our marital union was something almost mystical and affirming in ways I cannot describe, so much that years after the last time I was intimate with Dora, the blessedness of those encounters still fills me with joy.

I have theorized that IF I end up never remarried and thus never have sex again, it will be because what I had filled me for the rest of my life.

On the other hand, IF I remarried it would be with someone who holds the same view on intimacy and sex within a holy marriage. They would treat sex as a gift to be freely shared, not a chore, nor just a way to get physical pleasure, although it’s a definite benefit to have between you.

I would likely also refrain from any physical intimacy or kissing until marriage, not that I think it is wrong for everyone (you can kiss your boyfriend or girlfriend!), because for me that feels right.

If you are single, and Christian, let God choose your spouse and follow His plans.

I have presented what I have concluded is the best representation of God’s blueprint for marriage and sex that I possibly can.

It is up to you to judge whether I am close or far from the truth. But if you see that I am right or already know the same thing I do yet haven’t lived by it, now is the chance to repent, to re-center yourself in the center of God’s will, and to proceed forward into a new pattern and practices that are truly Kingdom centered and lead to blessings and happiness for all.

Originally published May 8, 2026 for our weekly Issue of Mindful Intelligence Advisor.  Subscribe to get weekly issues.

Bellwether Report – Week Ending May 8., 2026

By Paul Gordon Collier, Editor

“Our children long for realistic maps of the future that they can be proud of. Where are the cartographers of human purpose?”Carl Sagan

“The world can doubtless never be well known by theory: practice is absolutely necessary; but surely it is of great use to a young man, before he sets out for that country, full of mazes, windings, and turnings, to have at least a general map of it, made by some experienced traveler.”Lord Chesterfield

INTRODUCTION

This past week has seen the fall-out of the Supreme Court Ruling on race-based gerrymandering begin to form the new reality of power in American politics going forward.

We chose this news story because it is not only a bellwether for the new American political reality of power, but also a bellwether for the debate that cannot be rationally, logically held, how essential is biological ethnic unity and commonality to human thriving?

Were we a species studied by a distant advanced species would they conclude the human must fundamentally organize around biological ethnic unity?

For the record, this writer strongly suspects the essential binding unity is in our shared presuppositions regarding the nature of valuing, being, and knowing (axiology, ontology, epistemology, respectively).

This topic deserves further inquiry, but I don’t want to get too far afield from this narrower focus, the race-based dynamic at play here that puts the “left” in the position of defending ethnic biological unity necessity.

This report is not about the debate, but about the dynamics of power being shifted here because of this ruling.

Race essentialism has a connotation of supremacism and inferiority that makes it an unfit term to use to describe what’s going on here, though semantically, it perfectly describes it.

For this reason, I will use the term race necessity (or race necessitarianism) to describe what’s going on here. While all race essentialists are also race necessatarians, not all race necessatarians are race essentialists.

Race necessitarianism is all I am “accusing” anyone here of, be they on the “left” or the “right.”

The “left” has risen to power in this country mostly under the claim it will end racism, which is race essentialism. But what it offered instead was race necessitarianism. It concealed this fact by changing the definition of race to simply mean being white in the western world.

So, they could continue to have NFL endzones dog whistle to leftistsEnd Whitey” whenever the endzones had signs that said, “end racism.”

Whatever the reality, the motte of the left is to be decidedly against both race essentialism AND race necessitarianism, whereas a significant minority of the right has more openly embraced race necessitarianism while claiming not to be race essentialists.

The bailey of the left is the belief the white devil invented evil, a decidedly race essentialist mindset.

With this issue, the right must now reject the notion of not only race essentialism (which this writer believes the overwhelming majority already do) but also race necessitarianism (which perhaps most of them do).

This isn’t a one-off battle that will force the right to engage with this position, then move on; this is the foreseeable future of American political reality.

This report will give you the basic facts of this developing story, as we know them so far, then an assessment of what’s going on at what I call the base of action level. That base of action will return us to race necessitarianism and the question of gerrymandering in and of itself.

We will close this report with recommendations, which will be given from the perspective of the Americanist. We deliver this report loosely following the Sitrep model.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

The Supreme Court’s historic Louisiana v. Callais (April 29, 2026) ruling has redefined the terms of constitutional engagement at a foundational level.

The burden of proof to trigger Federal intervention in racial discrimination cases includes disproportionate outcomes. This means that any result that produces unequal results in proportion to population will justify discriminatory actions to assure proportional outcomes occur.

In drawing new voting districts, at all levels, from local to Federal, the Voting Rights Act was interpreted to allow race-based districts to be created to assure proportional racial outcomes in elections, at all levels of government. It not only allowed race-based districts, but it also mandated their creation.

Now, the new standard is PROOF of the intention to prevent other races from successfully running and winning elections, not simply the failure of the electorate to racially proportionally choose their representatives.

A key result of this is that Federal standards for drawing district maps are now no longer valid. All districts will be drawn by the bodies they represent. From the U.S. Congress to State Courts, the standards for district-drawing can be as many as there are districts, though no intentionally race-based districts can be created.

What’s at stake in this ruling boils down to political power. The results of this ruling are not certain, but as of right now the chances are fair to good that the Republicans will come out 5 to 13 seats ahead of the Democrats in the U.S. House gerrymandering wars.

This is only for the 2026 midterm elections.

Over the course of the next three years, Republicans will gain close to 200 state legislative seats in the South as a result of this decision.

The midterms are one thing, the Presidential election is another, and GOP gains through this ruling will only get deeper after many more Republican states finally have opportunities to act to change their districts.

The ruling invites gerrymandering war perpetuation at all levels of government for the foreseeable future, as every election will be as much about being able to draw the next round of district maps as executing policies (maybe even more so).

James Woodall, a former NAACP president in Georgia, was quoted by Stateline. He offered some encouragement to the progressives, suggesting there may still be some legal room to enforce the principles of the Voting Rights Act.

He also offered a sobering take on the new dynamic of race in this country following this ruling.

He declared, “Practically, what this now means is that Black voters equal Democrat. And in order for Black people to have political power, we will need to separate ourselves – and I hate to say this – we are going to have to separate ourselves practically from that assumption.”

The days of the black voter being a reliable Democrat in a reliable black district are over.

Race politics itself could be over, or at least significantly blunted. The Democrat Party, if it survives its inundation of anti-American progressivism, will have to treat the black voter like a human voter. The power of the white devil has been reduced, if not ended, if the black victim identity is no longer an effective political tool.

BACKGROUND

  1. THE CAJUN FIGHT – In June of 2022, a Federal Judge ruled the 2022 Louisiana District Map was unconstitutional because it did not have enough black districts to assure proportional black representation.

In 2023, Louisiana created SB8, a second black majority district, to meet the de facto racial quota. In early 2024, a class action suit was filed from plaintiffs who are referred to as the Callais plaintiffs. They claim the racially created district violates their 14th Amendment Rights.

The plaintiffs are looking at two recent rulings that began to question the constitutionality of race-based districts. One was Alexander v. South Carolina NAACP (2024; upholding a map) and Allen v. Milligan (2023; VRA enforcement in Alabama),

In November of 2024 another case was joined with this case, assuring this case would be the bellwether for voting district standards for decades to come.

  1. THE RULING – By a 6-3 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the standard for determining racial discrimination in voting is not in the results, but in the proof the results were intentionally manipulated. Failure to show more than disproportionate outcomes will result in no relief from the courts.

Justice Alito wrote for the majority. He wrote, “Held:  Because the Voting Rights Act did not require Louisiana to create an additional majority-minority district, no compelling interest justified the State’s use of race in creating SB8, and that map is an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.  Pp. 17–36. (a) The Constitution almost never permits a State to discriminate on the basis of race, and such discrimination triggers strict scrutiny.

“Section 2(b) establishes that a violation occurs when political processes are ‘not equally open to participation by’ members of a racial group ‘in that [they] have less opportunity than other members of the electorate to . . . elect representatives of their choice.’

“The key concept is ‘less opportunity than other members of the electorate,’ which sets a baseline against which to assess the opportunity of minority voters.  That baseline—the opportunity that any given group of voters has to elect their candidate of choice—depends on the voting preferences of other voters in the district. 

“For example, in a district where most voters prefer Democratic candidates, a Republican voter in that district will have a low chance of securing the election of his or her preferred candidate.  The roster of voters who end up in a given district depends, in turn, on the districting criteria the State uses to draw a legislative map.

 “Thus, the ‘opportunity’ of these ‘members of the electorate’ to contribute their votes to a winning cause is whatever opportunity results from the application of the State’s combination of permissible districting criteria.

That is what a randomly selected individual voter and group of voters can expect regarding their opportunity to elect their preferred candidate. Under §2, a minority voter is entitled to nothing less and nothing more.”

Justice Kagan wrote the dissent. In her dissent, racial voting to assure your representatives are the same race as you is more important than assuring Americans don’t vote based on race. If race is more essential than the political issues, than what is the legitimization of that political system at all?

Her dissent reflects the progressive worldview that race is essential to the self and having the self’s race represent them is more essential than establishing a rule of law standard that could be called “color blind.”

Continuing to perpetuate racial sectarianism is a sacrifice Kagan is willing to have us all pay, for the good of race-driven politics.

She asserted, “Even if the State has deprived those citizens (but not their majority neighbors) of all opportunity to ‘elect representatives of their choice,’ the law will not protect them.

“…The majority has made its own assessment of current needs… and concluded that preventing racial vote dilution does not count among them.  So once again, ‘in the absence of proof of intentional discrimination,’ the right to vote gives minority citizens ‘nothing more than the right to cast meaningless ballots.’ 

“The consequences are likely to be far-reaching and grave. Today’s decision renders Section 2 all but a dead letter.  In the States where that law continues to matter—the States still marked by residential segregation and racially polarized voting—minority voters can now be cracked out of the electoral process.”

  1. THE IMMEDIATE FALLOUT – Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry suspended six U.S. House elections so the legislature would be able to draw a new map eliminating the two black districts. This move was challenged in the courts by civil rights groups.

This triggered an expedited judgment request by the “non-African” plaintiffs in Callais, who argued their rights would be violated if the elections went through with the unconstitutional districts. On May 5, 2026, the judgment was fast-tracked by Justice Samuel Alito. This created opportunities for a few Republican states to move before the midterm elections to change district maps in their favor.

Alito’s decision has been challenged by black voters in the districts being eliminated. In addition to Louisiana, South Carolina, Alabama, and Tennessee are now looking to draw new district maps as well in special legislative sessions.

Georgia MIGHT have a path to redraw some maps, but that path is less clear than the others mentioned.

UPDATE: Tennessee has already passed a new districting bill, which triggered a physical altercation in the legislature.

CURRENT SITUATION

Now that the legal eagles have had time to digest the new reality of power, Republicans and Democrats are looking for ways to maximize opportunity (for the GOP) and minimize harm (for the DNC). Only a handful of GOP states can move to take advantage of this ruling before the midterm elections.

Underneath the national drama are 50 state dramas and hundreds of local dramas being played out across America even as we create this report.

The fundamental question, the constitutionality of “gerrymandering” at all, has yet to be addressed, and both sides seem more than content to preserve that political weapon for themselves.

Republicans are looking for cheap, easy ways to eliminate black (and thus Democrat) districts. One way is to reinstate versions of existing maps with minor edits. Some GOP states have laws that allow for off-cycle redraws, which would allow for state and local districts to be redrawn before the 2026 midterms.

With SCOTUS effectively ruling that partisan gerrymandering (within reason) is ok, Map Makers are mostly only constrained by their imaginations when it comes to creating political advantage for the party in power.

Democrat states are looking to pass state laws protecting their state from the SCOTUS ruling, though it is not certain this path will be fruitful. The next legal challenge might come from these states, where race-based districts were not ordered or approved by the Federal government.

ASSESSMENT

The initial unfolding of the new political reality of power suggests the rise of the map maker, the one who draws the maps of the new districts, the constantly new districts, perhaps after each switch of party in power.

This is not a predictive analysis, rather, this seems to be the foregone conclusion, and the new reality of power they are operating under.

District maps are now drawn by the powers they represent, with the only Federal guidance being this; you can’t use disproportionate outcomes to justify the creating of a race-based district. Gerrymandering as a practice has been given even more free rein than it did before.

Race-based politics has taken a serious hit, but the check is in the mail for that effect, as the activist power of the left is existentially formed around the white devil narrative. Without the white devil, who can dismantle an argument with the charge, “but you’re a white male!”

The dissent by Kagen shows the fundamental divide between Americanists and progressives. Americans seek a world where our merits, our talents, and our integrity, are the central determiners of our fate, though not the sole determiner (for there is grace, mercy, and charity as well).

Progressives see a world where discrimination based on race in and of itself is not an existential issue, for their rule of law is based on interpreting the constitution through the lens of social justice.

We have described social justice in the past as being a de facto caste system, where the circumstance you are born into determines your value to society, and your role.

Kagen demonstrates this by assuming a minority black community in a white dominant community could not be equally divided politically as that white community, and that the central unity in that political action was not around race but around values, principles, and standards.

If Kagen is right, America is not a legitimate power, for it is built on the assumption that a people can be united around an idea alone, not a biological unity necessity. This, in part, is why American slavery became so vicious, for its people had to make the black man something less than human.

But it is also why that spirit couldn’t hold in a land whose very government was built on the spirit that kills such assumptions.

Kagen reveals a mind incapable of seeing the black race, or any race, as anything but a borg collective of samethink predetermined politically by the melanin levels in their skin. Kagen is a race necessitarian, at the very least, and an anti-Americanist at her core.

For Kagen, she recognizes that the shift in standards from a burden of outcome to a burden of intent fundamentally guts not only the Voting Rights Act’s Section 2, but the heart of race-politicking progressive power.

Now that that black race cannot simply be an easily contained collective, progressives will have to address the individual needs of individual blacks, who will, by necessity, want to find a political opportunity for power, which can now only be found outside of racial necessity.

Immediately, the stage is set for the action that could kill race politics in America, the SCOTUS gerrymandering decision, becoming the accelerant of that fire in the short-term as GOP-held districts prepare to cull the black districts from their lands.

  1. NOTE: Be sure to read our May 2026 MIA Report on May 29 when we will offer our Predictive Analysis in our Situation Report.

The fallout of this ruling is sure to be part of that report, for it has the likely potential of fundamentally altering American political gamesmanship at a time when AI is already doing similar work across multiple institutions.

RECOMMENDATIONS

There are Americanists in all walks of life, across all biological, socio-cultural, and even sacred lines. So, we presume there are Americanists in government, in political parties, and in activist groups.

What we are recommending can be implemented, or initiated, in various ways according to the context of the institution you as an American find yourself in.

Where you have the power, these are the goals we recommend your individual action contribute towards making happen.

We believe there are two fronts that must be pursued at the same time, challenging partisan gerrymandering and creating American political parties.

The first one is to challenge the notion of partisan gerrymandering in the first place. This is a principle that is anathema to the American spirit.

While we recognize mapping districts is complex, and that there are no neat, cut and dry solutions, having little to no standards nationally seems anti-thetical to individual-based politics. This is Americanism versus social politics, progressivism (and apparently US conservatism as well).

While relying primarily on geographical contiguity in and of itself cannot be the only standard for drawing just districts, we suggest it becomes the heavily favored outcome. Where exceptions become the rule, as they do today, tribal partisanship takes the place of free and open political discourse, development, and governance.

Tribal partisanship is social justice.

The parties become identified by their tribe, not their ideas. The ideas are the ones that give your tribe coercive advantage over other tribes, nothing more.

The individual dies under the pressure of not voting against his tribe’s own interests, even if their “useful” ideas don’t align with the individual’s own self-stewarded ones.

The right’s willingness to use gerrymandering for its own tribal ends is as anti-American, by our standards, as the left’s willingness to use gerrymandering to do the same, even if it means fueling racial partisanship.

Where local and state laws can be changed to create district mapping standards more aligned with Americanism, this should be done. Where you have the power to make this happen, through appeal or as a government representative, do so.

Nationally, we should move to pass an amendment that would create a national district map standard aligned with individual liberty, not tribalism, be it social justice or US conservatism.

The second front is far more difficult, and one we’ve been calling on for a while now, the creation of American political parties that reflect the “natural” political divide of an American people.

We say this because neither major party represents American individual liberty. The Democrats are progressives, a nation born from within America, but ultimately in disagreement with her.

The Republicans are Conservative US, not America. They’re much closer to Americanism than the progressives, but they’re not quite there. They sacrifice liberty for the sake of American “Greatness,” for instance.

We argue the conservatives are mostly within a social justice mindset, it’s just that their social classes are defined by being born and raised “American.”

The paths those thoughts lead to sometimes create real white devils, but mostly they create “progressives” as afraid of seeing their ideas be rejected consensually by the public as progressives are.

These US Conservatives are multi-ethnic and are mostly more Americanist in their race politics views than not, though a significant minority are race necessitarians, and a much smaller minority are race essentialists. From that group, there be real white devils for the progressives to find and amplify.

Among these groups are yet Americans within, people who just can’t yet see how anti-American their own parties are.

Outside of these groups, most Americans don’t know who their fellow Americans are. They might assume there are too few left, or they may have given up altogether.

We believe the number of Americans in this country is 60% or more, that when people confront the reality of power difference between no American constitutional protections under progressive standards of governance and American rule of law, they will run back to American rule of law. Let us hope they don’t realize this before running back is no longer an option.

So far, we have yet to see any serious new American political party grass-roots efforts emerging. We have the domain Americanist.Party, as one suggested placeholder for such a movement.

We believe it must come from one central party that recognizes its goal is to vanquish the Democrats and Republicans, then become 2-3 parties that reflect the natural divisions of a people willing to see their ideas die in the hearts of their neighbors consensually.

We believe the natural divisions of political power outside of tribalism, are to fetishize the weak to vanquish the strong or fetishize the strong to vanquish the weak. The party that rises through fetishizing the weak will simply redefine the strong in fact as still being the weak in spirit, like progressives do when they gain power today.

This is what the claim of “systemic racism” creates, a de facto strong class that is still spiritually weak. This is a job that can never be completed, lest the champion of the weak lose its purpose, its justification for power.

Within Americanism, this type of political exploitation can be contained so that even when one party dominates the other, the people outside of political power have no existential threat from it in terms of their own capacity to pursue being a self-stewarded individual.

This is America’s superpower, the home of the brave power, the power to resist violence when you fairly lose or even when you fear you MIGHT fairly lose.

This spirit has been seen in traces throughout known human history, from China to Rome to Aksum, but never has a land like ours had such an opportunity to let that superpower thrive.

Let us hope and pray and work to overcome the spirits, the factions that seek in their ignorance to end that superpower either for the good of the whole or the good of being great.

FURTHER RESOURCES:

One Person, One Vote: A Surprising History of Gerrymandering in America – Nick Seabrook

Gerrymandering in America – Michael Latner, Charles Anthony Smith, Anthony J. McGann

Gerrymandering: The Politics of Redistricting in the United States – Stephen K. Medvic

By STAFF

This digest covers political, world, cultural, market, and sci-tech news from May 11-12, 2026.

This digest contains the Global Outlook, Headlines Missed, and People Advance Report.

TOP NEWS TAGS

  1. Gerrymandering Wars
  2. Iran War
  3. UK Local Elections
  4. Election 2026
  5. Progressive Virginia

GLOBAL OUTLOOK

  1. ANOTHER DEMOCRAT ARRESTED FOR BEING A CCP SPYThe former Mayor of Arcadia, California has pled guilty to being a Chinese Communist Spy, Eileen Wang pled guilty to charges she cooperated with the Chinese Communist Party through a website called “US News Center.”
  2. PURGE THE COURTS, VA PROGRESSIVES SAYAfter the Virginia Supreme Court threw out a new congressional district map that eliminated four GOP seats, progressives want to purge the court and replace it with more loyal progressives. The plan is to lower the mandatory retirement age of judges to below the youngest member of the VA Supreme Court so they can put progressive activists in to take their place.
  3. NYC MOB ATTACKS JEWISH SYNAGOGUE, MINIMUM ARRESTS FOLLOWA mob of far-left progressive anti-Israel terrorists assaulted Jews as they were coming out of their synagogue. When cops arrived, the mobs attacked the cops. The response from Mamdani’s office has been tepid, with only three arrests announced as a follow-up.

HEADLINES MISSED

  1. ICE MIGHT HAVE YOUR PERSONAL DATA SOONImmigrations and Customs Enforcement have been using a Palantir tool to track far more than illegal aliens, critics allege. ICE has over 20 million people worldwide in a database that some suspect includes American citizens.

DHS told 404 Media, “U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is committed to achieving the nation’s mandate to clear the backlog of illegal aliens who pose a threat to the security of our communities. Like other law enforcement agencies, ICE employs various forms of technology while respecting civil liberties and privacy interests.”

  1. CCP AND CANADA’S COPS HAVE SECRET SECURITY AGREEMENTCanadians are asking questions after learning in a foreign interference trial that the Canadian Royal Mounted Police have a secret security agreement with the Chinese Communist Party. The suspicion is that Canada’s cops are enforcing CCP laws against CCP dissidents living in Canada.
  2. DID CHATGPT COMMIT MANSLAUGHTER?A Texas couple is suing OpenAI, alleging their product, ChatGPT, led to their son’s overdosing on drugs after following the AI platform’s advice.

OpenAI released this statement, “This is a heartbreaking situation, and our thoughts are with the family… ChatGPT is not a substitute for medical or mental health care, and we have continued to strengthen how it responds in sensitive and acute situations with input from mental health experts…”

PEOPLE ADVANCE

  1. PAKISTAN PLAYS MODERATOR WHILE SIDING WITH IRANNew evidence has revealed Pakistan has been allowing the Iranians to park their warplanes in its territory for safekeeping. Pakistan is currently playing the role of mediator in ceasefire negotiations between Iran and the U.S. (and Israel).
  2. AMERICA SAYS NO TO UN PLANVASIONThe American State Department released two recent statements that break with the mass migration strategy of the UN. One release made it clear America stands in direct opposition to the plan, and one exposes how the UN is working to “assure” Britian’s recent “migrants” aren’t deported.
  3. PA SCOTUS JUDGE NIXES DEMS OVER ISRAEL – Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice David Wecht has announced his intentions to leave the Democrat Party. He accused them of being antisemitic. He stated, “… acquiescence to Jew-hatred is now disturbingly common among activists, leaders and even many elected officials in the Democratic Party. I can no longer abide this. So, I won’t. I am no longer registered with any political party,”

 

Top Newslinks

 

A mob of far-left progressive anti-Israel terrorists assaulted Jews as they were coming out of their synagogue. When cops arrived, the mobs attacked the cops. The response from Mamdani’s office has been tepid, with only three arrests announced as a follow-up.

NYC Police Arrest Three After Anti-Israel Mob Ambushes Synagogue legalinsurrection.com
News Source
EXCERPT:

 

New York City police arrested three people after an anti-Israel mob swarmed the Young Israel Senior Services of Midwood in Brooklyn on Monday night.

The synagogue hosted “an event promoting real estate in Israel and the West Bank.”

The anti-Israel group Pal-Awda NY/NJ organized the protest. The group uses “slogans such as ‘No settlers on stolen land’ and ‘Stop the sale of stolen Palestinian land.’”

New York State Sen. Sam Sutton condemned the event.

“Neither of these protests would have happened had these venues not chosen to host illegal sales of stolen Palestinian land,” the group responded. “The people of New York will not stand by while the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people is aided and abetted by institutions in our own city.”

From The New York Post:

The anti-Israel mob chanted “Palestine is ours alone,” and several carried a wide banner that read “Israel is killing children.”

During one fight, a person who concealed their face with a medical mask yanked a girl’s hair — and nearly threw her against a parked car in the process, according to a video obtained by The Post.

Shortly after, another man squared up against a squad of young men carrying a Palestinian flag.

“Let’s go, motherf–kers, c’mon! C’mon, motherf–kers!” the man yelled.

At least two teenage pro-Israel protesters were detained. As the NYPD marched them down the streets, their supporters followed and chanted for the cops to “let them go.”

An anti-Israel protester was also detained, cops said.

All three individuals taken into custody had thrown items during the heated protest, according to the NYPD.

Originally published May 8, 2026 for our weekly Issue of Mindful Intelligence Advisor.  Subscribe to get weekly issues.

 

By STAFF

This digest covers political, world, cultural, market, and sci-tech news from May 1-7, 2026.

This digest contains the Global Outlook, Headlines Missed, and People Advance Report.

newslinkia.com

TOP NEWS TAGS

  1. 2026 Elections
  2. Iran War
  3. Gerrymandering Wars
  4. China US
  5. Strait of Hormuz
  6. Epstein Files
  7. Trump Deportation
  8. Ukraine War
  9. Judgefare
  10. Anti-ICE Action

GLOBAL OUTLOOK

  1. RUBIO CLAIMS “OPERATION EPIC FURY” IS OVERSecretary of State Marco Rubio announced the end of “Operation Epic Fury,” claiming the offensive part of the war with Iran is over.

Rubio claimed in a White House press briefing, “The operation, Epic Fury, is concluded. We achieved the objections of that operation. This is the first step toward reopening the strait,” he added. “We are doing it not only because we were asked, but because we are the only ones that can.”

  1. WALL STREET IGNORES IRAN’S UNCERTAINTYWhile the signals from Iran continue to be conflicting and often changing from one moment to the next, the U.S. stock market seems to have adapted to this uncertainty.

The Strait of Hormuz remains unopened, mostly, and the President does not seem hard-pressed to settle on a ceasefire or resume “offensive” actions.

After Iranian small vessels attacked U.S. destroyers, only to be repelled, the President claims the ceasefire is still in effect. Strikes against Iranian military instillations have been called retaliatory in response to the U.S. destroyer attack.

  1. MAGA WINS BIGLY IN INDIANAFive of the seven republican Indiana state senators that voted against a GOP redistricting measure have lost decisively to Trump-endorsed candidates in the GOP Primary. The redistricting measure would have eliminated Democrat seats in the U.S. House. Four other Trump-endorsed candidates won their primaries decisively as well.
  2. BOND FOR ILLEGALS SAYS APPEALS COURTThe 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel ruled 2-1 most illegals should get bond releases while awaiting deportation hearings.
  3. ABORTION PILL MAILER BAN LIFTED BY SCOTUSAfter a lower court issued an injunction temporarily blocking the abortion pill from being delivered through the mail, SCOTUS has lifted the injunction. The abortion pill will continue to be available online until the matter is fully adjudicated in the courts. The ruling could make abortion an issue in the 2026 midterms. This is an issue that favors the Democrats.
  4. SPIRIT AIRLINES LOSES ITS SPIRIT – Spirit Airlines had a 34-year run that came to an end this month after the company declared bankruptcy. They shut down all operations and are now in the process of selling off their assets, including their planes.
  5. OMAR THUMBS STATE INQUIRYDemocrat Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota is under investigation for suspicion of fraud by the state of Minnesota. She failed to meet a deadline to turn over documents related to that investigation.
  6. SENATE HOPEFUL ARRESTED FOR THREATENING TO KILL TRUMPRaymond Chandler III of Alleghany County, PA was a Democrat U.S. Senate candidate until he was arrested for threatening to murder President Trump. His plan was to threaten a U.S. Senator’s daughter if the Senator didn’t walk into the oval office and assassinate President Trump.
  7. DYING GAMESTOP GRABS FOR EBAYAs GameStop continues to struggle to stay afloat, it looks to make a $56 billion bid to buy eBay. The problem is they cannot show how they could pay for it.
  8. PROGRESSIVE HOUSE MEMBER CONFESSESRepresentative Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) publicly confessed to working with foreign governments to undermine U.S. policy in Cuba.

She declared, “I was in conversations with the ambassadors from Mexico and some other places, other countries in Latin America trying to figure out how to get oil there. I’ve called these sanctions an economic bombing of the infrastructure of Cuba.”

HEADLINES MISSED

  1. U.S. AI FIRMS TO GO THROUGH GOVERNMENT SAFETY SCREEN – America’s major AI companies, including Google and Microsoft, have agreed to submit all new AI models to the Federal government’s Commerce Department for a national security safety review. This review will be conducted by the Commerce Department’s Center for AI Standards.
  2. HOMESCHOOLERS FACE CPS CALL IN CONNECTICUT If you want to take your child out of the public school system in Connecticut, your family will be subject to a visit from the Department of Children’s Protective Services.

The bill requiring a CPS visit for homeschoolers passed the Connecticut legislature. Homeschoolers successfully stopped the curriculum requirement from being added to the now-passed bill. The governor is expected to sign the new requirement into law.

  1. CHINA GATEKEEPING U.S. MILITARY FROM CHINA DEFENSE INDUSTRY THREATSThe U.S. is allegedly paying a CCP-connected firm to help identify potential stealth risks from embedding Chinese technology into the U.S. military.
  2. CCP TERRORIZES DISSENTERS ON AMERICAN SOILA former CCP agent told CBN News he was part of an operation to identify and silence former Chinese citizens in America who spoke out against the party. He told CBN they use threats, entrapment, and even kidnapping.
  3. EPSTEIN RANCH WAS EUGENICS PARADISE?New leaked Epstein Files point to forced pregnancies of teens in Eugenics experiments conducted on Epstein’s ranch, Zorro Ranch.

PEOPLE ADVANCE REPORT

  1. LABOUR VAPORIZED IN LOCAL UK ELECTIONS – Reform UK look to be the biggest winners after a round of local elections in the UK, while Labour and the Conservatives were the biggest losers. Reform UK will gain almost 400 local seats while Labour will lose at least 250. The Conservatives could finish with similar results to Labour.

Rupert Lowe’s Restore Party failed to win a single local seat in Greater Yarmouth, the one locality his party was able to field a full slate of candidates. This is also Lowe’s home seat as the sole MP for the party.

Final Results will not be posted before this issue is finalized for publication.

  1. SICKLE CELL CURE MIGHT SOON BE ON THE WAYIf not an outright cure, a new discovery could turn Sickle Cell Anemia from a deadly and painful chronic disease to a curable, or at least manageable, disease. The discovery comes from Swee Lay Thein and Stuart Orkin.
  2. FLORIDA GOP GERRYMANDERING MAP SIGNED – Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis has signed a new U.S. House redistricting plan that will give the GOP 4 more seats. The law was immediately challenged in state and federal courts.
  3. AMERICA’S EUROPEAN TROOP CUTS BEGINPresident Donald Trump announced a 5,000 troop cut in Germany, adding more is to come. He said, “We’re going to cut way down. And we’re cutting a lot further than 5,000.”
  4. ALBERTA WANTS TO LEAVE CANADALeaders of the separatist movement of Canada’s western province Alberta claim to have enough signatures to trigger a vote on separation from Canada.
  5. KEEP YOUR PERSONAL DATA AT HOME EVEN WHEN YOU BUY ONLINEHarvard has created a digital open-source wallet that keeps your private data from being shared online. The digital wallet keeps your personal data on your phone, validating your purchases without relying on a third-party source to do so.
  6. TRUMP GIVES TEEN FIGHTING CHANCE AGAINST CANCERA 15-year-old teen boy from Louisiana was running out of options in his fight against cancer. A viral video brought his plea to President Trump, who promptly moved to get the boy the special treatment he needs to continue his fight for life.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced plans to phase of U.S. financial support of its military down to zero.

He stated, “I want to draw down to zero the American financial support, the financial component of the military cooperation that we have,” he said. “Because we receive – we receive $3.8 billion a year. And I – I think that it’s time that we weaned ourselves from the remaining military support.”

Netanyahu says Israel should draw US financial support ‘down to zero’ www.washingtonexaminer.com
News Source
EXCERPT:

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that he wants to immediately begin phasing out American financial support for Israel’s military in a 60 Minutes interview that aired Sunday night.

Netanyahu said he wants to draw that aid “down to zero” and do so during the current Congress, adding that he’s said this to President Donald Trump.

By STAFF

This digest covers political, world, cultural, market, and sci-tech news from May 6-7, 2026.

This digest contains the Global Outlook, Headlines Missed, and People Advance Report.

TOP NEWS TAGS

  1. 2026 Elections
  2. Gerrymandering Wars
  3. Iran War
  4. Trump Deportations
  5. AI Markets

GLOBAL OUTLOOK

  1. WALL STREET IGNORES IRAN’S UNCERTAINTYWhile the signals from Iran continue to be conflicting and often changing from one moment to the next, the U.S. stock market seems to have adapted to this uncertainty.

The Strait of Hormuz remains unopened, mostly, and the President does not seem hard-pressed to settle on a ceasefire or resume “offensive” actions.

  1. BOND FOR ILLEGALS SAYS APPEALS COURTThe 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel ruled 2-1 most illegals should get bond releases while awaiting deportation hearings.
  2. PROGRESSIVE HOUSE MEMBER CONFESSESRepresentative Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) publicly confessed to working with foreign governments to undermine U.S. policy in Cuba.

She declared, “I was in conversations with the ambassadors from Mexico and some other places, other countries in Latin America trying to figure out how to get oil there. I’ve called these sanctions an economic bombing of the infrastructure of Cuba.”

HEADLINES MISSED

  1. KIM DROPS UNITYNorth Korea is no longer seeking unity with South Korea. It was once a part of their constitution, but now that article has been dropped.
  2. SUPERCARRIER OCTOBER – There is a growing realization by many that the U.S. Supercarrier is no longer the decisive military advantage it once was. Now, more analysts are coming down on the side that claims the supercarrier’s days are gone or soon will be.
  3. SCIENTISTS FIND ANOTHER DNA LAW BREAKERScientists have discovered an example in nature of genetic exchange of information through DNA that defies their understanding. A microscopic organism’s genetics was able to reassign gene-stopping signals to amino acids, a feat not imagined possible for life before this observation.

PEOPLE ADVANCE

  1. 2020 ELECTION FRAUD EVIDENCE STAYS – A motion by Fulton County election officials to have the 2020 ballots seized by the FBI returned has been denied by a Federal Judge, meaning the case will go on.
  2. VIRGINIA’S GERRYMANDER CHAMPION RAIDED BY FBIThe woman behind the Virginia special election to effectively eliminate 4 GOP U.S. House seats is now under FBI investigation. Virginia’s State Senator L. Louise Lucas saw her offices raided, along with other businesses connected to her.

So far, only anonymous sources are cited as claiming this is connected to a corruption investigation directly linked to her. She is considered the main driver of the Virginia gerrymander election plan that is currently under legal scrutiny.

Stories We Are Watching:

On Our Radar:

While the signals from Iran continue to be conflicting and often changing from one moment to the next, the U.S. stock market seems to have adapted to this uncertainty.

The Strait of Hormuz remains unopened, mostly, and the President does not seem hard-pressed to settle on a ceasefire or resume “offensive” actions.

There continues to be troubling signs for the world economy should the Strait of Hormuz continue to remain unopened, especially for Europe, but so far, the U.S. has yet to feel the pinch, save for at the gas pump.

Iran War Live Updates: Tehran and U.S. Offer Conflicting Messages on State of Negotiations www.nytimes.com
News Source
EXCERPT:
President Trump said his administration had had “very good talks” with Tehran in the last 24 hours. An Iranian official said an American plan to end the war was under review. Israel struck targets near Beirut.

A motion by Fulton County election officials to have the 2020 ballots seized by the FBI returned has been denied by a Federal Judge, meaning the case will go on.

Judge denies request to return 2020 ballots seized from Fulton County, Georgia – The Washington Post
News Source

Excerpt:

A federal judge on Wednesday rejected a request to order the return of more than 600 boxes of voting material seized earlier this year by the FBI amid an investigation involving a Georgia county at the heart of President Donald Trump’s grievances about his 2020 election loss.

Originally published May 1, 2026 for our monthly Issue of Mindful Intelligence Advisor.  Subscribe to get weekly issues.

RISE OF THE PROGRESSIVE NATION

In our March 27, 2026, MIA Quarterly, Paul Gordon Collier did a bellwether deepdive on the rise of the progressive nation from within the American nation.

In that analysis, Collier concluded, “We believe the GOP is no longer a viable alternative to the progressive nation, as it mostly exists within it. If we could compel Americans to act, we would encourage them to explore what American rule of law is for themselves and with their family, friends, and neighbors.

Identify Americans in your community and fellowship primarily with them.

We need conversations, public ones, that invite an exploration of American Rule of Law, of what makes us American, so we know what we are fighting for and what we are fighting against.

From this, we need American parties to emerge that are pledged to not offer policies that violate our American Rule of Law standards. That standard is to have state power bounded by the self-stewardship agency power of its citizens.

Most likely, there will be a left party that favors the weak over the strong and a right party that favors merit over social hierarchies. Yet BOTH will offer no threat to the individual’s capacity to be a self-stewarded individual.”

One step that could be taken is organizing meetups, physical and virtual meetups, with people in your community (real or virtual) to have conversations, presentations on American rule of law and how Americans might organize OUTSIDE of the GOP and DNC institutions altogether.

If you feel so inclined and equipped, here are some resources to help you learn how to create such events, virtually and in real life.

  1. How to Host Community Events – VIPTOGO
  2. How to Create an Event on Facebook: Public or Private – Wikkihow.com
  3. How to Organize a Convention: Step-By-Step Checklist Guide – Crowdultra.com
  4. The Essential Conference Planning Checklist – Eventbrite
  5. THE STATE OF THE AI STATE

In the April 17, 2026, issue of MIA, Paul Gordon Collier and Staff did a Deep Dive Report on the current state of rising AI States. In the Deep Dive, they wrote, “AI is here, and it will touch every part of your life. Whatever you do, if it involves repetition or thinking, AI will be replacing you or aiding you.

As we have said in our earlier AI report for our Futureq series, becoming adept at using AI as a tool to augment whatever you do to make a living, or whatever you hope to do to make a living, is not only advantageous, but it’s also essential. Your competition is already using these tools, and the best ones are the most adept at getting the tools to effectively do what they want them to do.”

While we will be working to keep you up to date on the emerging AI state, we always recommend you rely on multiple sources to steward your understanding of the world (more on this later).

Here are some top AI News websites, all of which have some degree of capture by corporate and/or state authority, but all of which are still useful for learning what’s really going on in AI development.

We ourselves monitor these sites.

We will start our list with our own website:

  1. Mindful Intelligence – AI Watch News Tag
  2. MIT Technology Review – AI Topic
  3. The Rundown AI – Main Site
  4. Wired – Artificial Intelligence Tag
  5. Venture Beat – AI Category
  6. Stanford HAI – News

HOW IRAN KILLED NATO

In our April 24, 2026, issue of MIA, our Military Affairs Correspondent, Michael Cessna, wrote a Deep Dive on the current state of the Iran War. In that Deep Dive, Cessna noted: “Even if Donald Trump commits political suicide by ending Operation Epic Fury prematurely, and unilaterally withdrawing U.S. combat forces from the Persian Gulf Theater, the regime in Tehran has been fatally compromised by combat operations to date.

“They have lost too many experienced leaders – those capable of holding down the tensions and rivalries between the various factions of their state – too many physical assets, as their air force, in addition to their navy, is now functionally non-existent.

“Even their oil production capacity has been so badly damaged, it is effectively a non-entity in contributing to Iranian state revenues…and that’s before addressing the looming water crisis.

Where Iran had been the major proxy supporter of terror groups throughout the Middle East, they can no longer do so: their internal currency is worthless, and with the current loss of oil revenue, they have no meaningful way to pay for their mercenaries imported from Lebanon, Gaza and Iraq.”

After all the Iranian people withstood, after the military has been essentially wiped out, the regime is still standing because they still have small-arms power while their citizens remain unarmed.

Learning how to make your own guns, for personal use, and following all local, state, and federal laws, could be a great way for you to enjoy the still-existent right to bear arms most Americans continue to enjoy, a right that the Iranian people sure wish they had.

If they had arms in the first place there would be no need for U.S. and Israeli air strikes to topple the regime. If they had arms in the first place, most of the draconian laws would not been proposed, let alone been enforced.

Learning how to make guns in an emergency, to get to other guns, within the boundaries of all local, state, and federal laws, might be a more practical, and easier-to-learn skill you will hopefully never has to use. It is also a great way to introduce yourself to full home gunsmithing.

  1. RESOURCES FOR MAKING GUNS:
  1. RESOURCES FOR MAKING EMERGENCY GUNS:
  1. TRUMP’S DINNER THEATER

This month’s Deep Dive Report is on progressive violence as seen through the bellwether event, the White House Correspondents Dinner Shooting.

Our staff noted, “The President has chosen to call for the firing of Jimmy Kimmel over his “expecting widow” comments, while Trump’s FCC now moves to challenge ABC affiliate broadcast licenses. The move is clumsy and the justification for it is not clear, especially when it doesn’t target the whole broadcast industry.

IF ABC has violated broadcasting licensing standards, so has the rest of the industry.

In U.S. law, the standard is not what we know but what we can prove. We know Kimmel’s statement was intentionally broad enough that you can assume he’s inciting violence against the President but proving that in a court of law would be, well, extremely challenging.

The FCC move in and of itself would be great if it had already happened, and if it happened for every major broadcast corporation AFTER a study ACTUALLY showed violations of broadcast licensing had been occurring systematically for decades.

We think a serious study would most likely reveal this decades-long systemic pattern of violations to be true, but it would also expose both the GOP and DNC’s involvement in perpetuating this unofficial alliance between the government and corporate media, or rather, between political parties and corporate media.

This soft power appears to be a tool the President doesn’t want to completely forfeit, even if it means not vanquishing one of the two hearts of progressive power, the progressive corporate media control of socio-cultural production, signaling, and gatekeeping.

What this means is the average news reader will continue to find it difficult to understand the reality of power with a news industry filled with battling narrative war machines, the political party press.

Our site, mindfulintelligence.news, is not a comprehensive news aggregate site, but rather it is a bellwether aggregate and news analysis site. We have an American bias in our aggregation selection process, but that American bias compels us to give you samples of both major factions, the conservatives and republicans, in our aggregation.

It goes without saying we recommend our own site to get a sense of competing narratives that allow you to discern for yourself for your own self-stewarded understanding of the reality of power.

Here are a few pure news aggregators that focus on capturing more of the totality of major news coverage on a given day:

  1. AllSides
  2. Ground News
  3. Memorandum
  4. SmartNews

 

Originally published May 1, 2026 for our monthly Issue of Mindful Intelligence Advisor.  Subscribe to get weekly issues.

Dates: 26-04-01 to 26-04-30

By STAFF

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

April 2026 was dominated by the Iran War and the continued breakneck development of AI and the institutions now forming around the technology.

The world continues to adjust itself to rapidly shifting dynamics of both AI’s development and the culmination of a century-plus “debate” between local national sovereignties and a global governance model, a debate muddled by the question of the role of ethnicity in that dynamic.

In the U.S., two competing nations, Conservative US and Progressive US, are becoming clearer to see, while America is still harder to see among the two and between them.

There have been no sudden downturns or upturns in the economy, which is still largely responding to the Iran War and AI development.

U.S. POLITICS

BACKGROUND:

1.1. 2026 ELECTIONSA lot of major shifts in the GOP’s midterm prospects occurred this month, ending with the most recent, the SCOTUS ruling overthrowing race-based gerrymandering. It began with a major loss for the GOP, a Virginia referendum that promises to eliminate 4 GOP seats in the U.S. House. That election has yet to be certified, and there are serious doubts it will ever be certified.

President Trump’s executive order attempting to eliminate mass mailer elections may be more show than substance, though Red States have been moving to end mass mailer elections, as well as require Photo ID to vote.

While the Democrats were still celebrating their Virginia win, the GOP managed to hold the Marjorie Taylor Greene seat. Finally, SCOTUS delivered another victory for the GOP by approving a Texas redistricting map that eliminates 4 Democrat seats in the House.

1.2. CONSERVATIVE USTwo recent actions connected to FISA highlight the difference between Conservative US and America. The first action saw efforts by some members within the GOP to kill the Biden Vehicle Kill Switch mandate defeated by the top leadership of the GOP.

The second action saw the FISA courts challenging the use of a search spy tool by the government, only to see the Trump administration appeal their decision.

In previous reports, we’ve described this land as being occupied by three nations, Progressive US, Conservative US, and America. Within Conservative US and Progressive US there are still Americans who have not quite figured that out yet.

Here, with FISA, we see how conservatives consistently side with Law and Order over Dangerous Liberty when it comes to national security threats.

1.2. PROGRESSIVE FUNDINGWhile we at MIA are skeptical about the efficacy of the charges against the Southern Poverty Law Center by the DOJ, we have little doubt the organization is part of a network of progressive operations intended to use fear of the white devil to raise money and gain real market power.

Charges against the SPLC have at least gotten conservatives to look closer at the methodologies deployed by progressives to infiltrate institutions and win billions in contributions from the targeted corporations.

Unions are a part of that network, especially public-school teachers’ unions, which have become powerhouses in terms of boots on the ground action (from the teachers and their coopted children) and capital.

At least $1 billion in the last 10 years, that we know of, have been contributed by teachers’ unions to progressive organizations, including protest organizations.

1.3. TRUMP DEPORTATIONSOn the last day of the month, the U.S. House passed funding of the DHS, essentially ending the shutdown and allowing more robust deportation operations to pick back up (but nowhere near the peak levels of the first few months). This comes as over 1,000 TSA officers have quit during the DHS shutdown.

A 9th circuit panel restored ICE’s right to use non-violent force to clear crowds before they turn violent, but by only a 2-1 vote. The majority offered an excoriating rebuttal of the District Judge.

An Appeals Court panel ruling struck down the Trump administration’s assertion it can hold immigrants indefinitely without bond hearings. The ruling was unanimous, and it included a Trump appointed Judge.

The panel wrote, “The government’s interpretation…would send a seismic shock through our immigration detention system and society, straining our already overcrowded detention infrastructure, incarcerating millions, separating families, and disrupting communities.”

The idea of holding an individual, even a non-citizen, indefinitely, without any attempt at a resolution of their case, seems on its face unconstitutional, and a dangerous precedent to want to set. This is another example of Conservative US, not America, in action.

Progressive states continue to pass legislation designed to punish ICE agents and protect illegal aliens. Tom Steyer, the Democrat’s Gubernatorial front runner in the California jungle primary, is promising to lock ICE officers up. California is also working to pass a law that would pay for legal fees for illegal aliens.

1.4. THE FIRST CASUALTIES? – Two high-profile Democrats have faced significant consequences, with one, James Comey, facing charges related to allegedly threating the President online, and the other, Eric Swalwell, losing his political career.

Comey’s charges seem hard to prove, even if we all understand the intent behind the message, “86 47” in the season of political violence we find ourselves in. If Comey is intended to appease the people without satisfying the people, the appeasement won’t work. Conservatives want convictions and prison cells with progressives locked in them.

Seeing Swalwell be abandoned so quickly by his party for accusations of sexual abuse that remain to be clearly proven suggests he was becoming a liability for far more reasons than the sexual abuse charges.

This is the man who had a Chinese Communist Party spy girlfriend. He is now out of the California Governor’s Race (where he was once a frontrunner) and out of congress altogether.

ASSESSMENT – The 2026 Election is looking more and more like an election no one wants to win, though surely, they do. While conservatives aren’t talking about the Epstein files with regularity, it’s not often far away from the conservation.

The growing skepticism with the Iran war, along with the still unresolved Epstein Files controversy is causing the GOP and Trump to lose support.

The courts have delivered some big wins for the GOP that have unleased a ripple effect which is sure to be the lead political story over the coming weeks and months. Progressive and conservative states are now scrambling to react to those rulings, especially the SCOTUS ruling ending race-based gerrymandering.

Progressives appear to have committed to the narrative that they can’t be the violent ones if they are using violence to stop violent people. They are escaping accusations they are responsible for the political violence by claiming their targets deserve it. Watch to see if Progressives start to use a new term to define their nation, a term that distinguishes them from America.

GEOPOLITICS

BACKGROUND – A quiet announcement by Secretary of State Marco Rubio that the U.S. might reduce its military presence by 80% in Europe sets the backdrop for the geopolitical bellwethers we have identified for April 2026.

1.1. CHINA China has been pushing a narrative many nations, especially in the West, want to hear, the U.S. World Order is crumbling and the world needs a new order. China is positioning itself to be the alternative to the U.S.

The fecklessness of its military hardware as used by Iran against U.S. forces might have an effect China has yet to see. For now, China is still seemingly making inroads into Europe through nations like Croatia. It is also competing healthily for influence in Africa in ways that are interfering with U.S. policy.

At home it faces fear of mass riots, a fear it is hoping to assuage with AI-led robot and drone riot control armies.

Iran has had a significant impact on its economy, and it continues to do so, yet the progressive media at home paints China as the winner in the Iran War so far.

1.2. IRAN WARAn increasing number of nations are either coming out against the U.S. war with Iran, or claiming the U.S. is failing. Germany and the UK are two nations that have joined that list. The narrative that the dominance of the U.S. military is now over is proliferating in progressive corporate news not just domestically, but internationally as well.

The administration reaching out to car manufacturers for weapons manufacturing help has only strengthened the failing U.S. effort narrative.

The Russians, for the first time, perhaps emboldened by the corporate news narrative, are now staking their public reputation on protecting Iran from another massive U.S. assault. The Chinese have not joined them in that boldness, so far

With Iran’s Supreme Leader recently making comments that the U.S. is about to be destroyed in the Strait, Trump seems satisfied to mostly stay pat, for now, despite dipping approval numbers overall and on the war.

1.3. UKRAINE WARAfter a terrorist attack in Kyiv, President Zelensky of Ukraine has ordered personnel purges at the Ministry of International Affairs. The attacker opened fire on civilians in a supermarket, killing 8 and injuring 13 others. No one in the supermarket was allowed to carry a gun legally. There is talk of softening gun laws so terrorists can’t simply target unarmed populations.

Right before he lost his re-election bid, Prime Minister Orban of Hungary accused the Ukrainians of being essentially a money-laundering scheme for progressives in America. The Ukrainians would get the war funding and a certain amount would be siphoned off and sent back to the states to fund progressive organizations, including protest organizations.

1.4. UKWhile Kier Starmer Watch has started, the Prime Minister of Britian has not yet resigned or hinted at resigning after it has been made clear he protected associates of Jeffrey Epstein that later became leading members of his government.

Yet even as he faces this pressure, he is yet attempting to maneuver to push Britain back into the EU without having a vote on it.

Their King came over to America and made a political speech challenging most of Trump’s important policies, including his deportation policy, his anti-DEI policies, and his war in Iran.

After another terrorist attack by an Islamist, this time targeting Jews, Restore Britian is becoming an increasing threat to the Conservative and Labour world order. Restore Britian is to America what no political party is to America today, a party that truly represents the nation from which multiple nations have sprung.

In Britian, there are the progressives of Britian, Labour, though the Greens are increasingly becoming the mantle-holders of that movement. There are the conservatives, who, like the conservatives in America, have a lot more Britishers within them than the progressives do, but they’re not quite truly “British” either.

They don’t stand for the same standards as the country that bore them.

Like the progressives of America, the progressives of the UK are very much anti-British in whole and in part, and like the progressives of America, they use the white devil trope as the primary means of creating moral-supremacist political power (backed up first by progressive corporations, including the media, and now by the government itself).

The fruit of progressivism in the UK is seeing shoplifting across the country hit record highs and the country’s birth rate going negative, meaning there are more deaths than births each year.

ASSESSMENT – The UK is becoming the bellwether of the progressive agenda, having aggressively pursued it more than any other western nation, including Canada (which is not far behind). Now, that ideology is coming to a head as its allies, namely the Islamists, appear ready to claim power under their own banners.

The response is the formation of a national party with a national interest serving specific indigenous ethnicities.

Nations of the world that have embraced progressivism, especially European ones, should be studying the results to come in the UK over the next two years. How the UK goes will largely indicate how Europe’s progressive nations go.

Does nationalism win without becoming fascistic or authoritarian in general? Do the Islamists remain the last faction standing? Or does the UK balkanize or descent into civil war?

Here, the battleground is largely built on the old-world order. In Iran, that war is increasingly becoming one that is both built on the new world order and creating it. On that front, the U.S. appears to have needed a pause, and the world has figured that out, which has emboldened its critics.

This strengthens China’s foreign presence as they look like an increasingly attractive alternative.

As we have said in a previous Sitrep, nations that cannot build impressive AI machines of their own must be useful to those that can. Germany is the only Western European country well-suited for AI machine development, though they are years away from reaching that potential.

CULTURE

BACKGROUND:

1.1. ABORTIONThere have been a few victories this month for the pro-life camp and setbacks, but the biggest victory comes from the news that undercover reporters who exposed Planned Parenthood for selling deceased fetuses will no longer face charges which have loomed over them for years.

1.2. EUTHANASIAAfter a U.S. citizen was euthanized by Spanish authorities, President Trump has questions. The person had been gang raped and soon after sought euthanasia. Signs she was second-guessing were ignored.

Euthanasia is spreading worldwide and gaining ground even here in the U.S. Wherever it is legalized, the fight to expand those eligible for suicide starts, and the expanders usually win.

Canada is leading the world in its embrace of euthanasia, with efforts to include children as eligible candidates now happening. They recently allowed a partially blind man to be euthanized. There is a pushback, which includes a bill that would halt the expansion for good. In Belgium, euthanasia is becoming big business. In Oregon, assisted suicides are increasing every year, with no end in sight.

1.3. WOKE – Red states continue to enact legislation designed to kill “woke” policies, while blue states seem to be doubling down on them.

SCOTUS appears to be afraid to address public school treatment of children claiming to be non-binary or transgendered, having rejected two challenges to schools that allow for stealth transitioning of the gender of students without parental knowledge or consent.

The Trump administration is also continuing to push policies that challenge any “Woke” policy such as DEI. RFK Jr. just announced hoe would replace the “woke” Obamacare panel determining what type of preventative care is covered.

Progressive judges seem to interpret wokeness as being rule of law rather than the constitution, with a recent ruling by another Federal district judge attempting to stop the Trump XO banning transgender surgery and chemical therapy for children.

Worldwide, “wokeness” is mostly advancing. In Canada, they are preparing to outlaw passages of the bible being publicly read because they condemn homosexuality.

The biggest blow to the woke cause was the indictment of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which allegedly uses threats of market assassination to get funding for progressive organizations.

They also get to insert activists into corporations who can do more work transforming the company from within. This story is a strong contender for a near-future Deep Dive Report, should the charges have substantive evidence behind them.

ASSESSMENT – As we observed in our last SitRep, where Republicans rule, action continues to be taken to stop “woke” or socio-progressive policies, while where Democrats rule, they are accelerating their socio-progressive programs and becoming increasingly overtly hostile to opposition to it.

NOTE: Expect us to start using the term socio-progressive instead of “woke,” as the latter term is more difficult to pin down than the former, and the former more accurately describes the ideology.

Worldwide, euthanasia is advancing more than it’s retreating. Abortion in the U.S. is becoming mostly about taking a pill, not going to a clinic, which is sure to undermine Planned Parenthood’s alleged fetus-selling business.

There is no great movement against euthanasia in America today, and the public opinion polls on abortion have not significantly changed. Abortion continues to be one of the key centers of power for the progressives, who rely on this issue to capture and retain the white female vote.

MARKETS

BACKGROUND:

1.1. IRAN WARThe war is having an increasingly negative effective on much of the world’s economies, though the U.S. stock market has yet to feel the pinch. Even if the war were to end today, the lingering economic impact of the war will last for months, if not years.

Europe is more impacted by the war than the U.S. is, with China also taking a heavy toll from the war.

1.2. TARIFFSThe tariff refund window has opened and corporations around the world are forming virtual lines, each hoping to collect millions. In the case of GM, they’re hoping for over $500 million from the refund window. The total refund amount is $166 billion, which is how much the tariff program collected before SCOTUS struck the tariffs down.

1.3. MEDIA AND TECHNOLOGY – AI is fast on its way to becoming a utility as the number of users of AI continue to explode even as its popularity doesn’t. Opposition to Data Centers, for instance, is only growing, and politicians are picking up that scent.

Salesforce is claiming 1,000 new hires are the result of AI, reversing the overall trend of AI replacing human jobs.

Progressive media continues to take hits, with Disney announcing 1,000 more layoffs and Marvel announcing layoffs as well. The biggest announced layoffs come from Meta, which will cut 10% of its workforce, 8,000 jobs, starting this May.

ASSESSMENT – The U.S. economy continues to be trending mostly upward, with inflation holding steady, along with unemployment. What Americans are feeling, however, might not align with some of these numbers, as most Americans are employed in ways that might be replaceable by AI.

The world economy is restructuring itself, with the shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz forcing alternative trade routes that might just survive the re-opening. Most of this reshuffle is being driven by preparation for and anticipation of the AI transformation everyone knows is already here.

The geopolitical fallout of the AI reality of power of nations has yet to emerge, and thus a new stable global market order is also going to have to wait until more is known about which nations have what kind of AI power.

The sheer capital need of AI development should create opportunities for flourishing for those paying attention to the industry.

SCI-TECH

BACKGROUND:

1.1. SUSTAINABLE FLOURISHINGHere are four bellwether discoveries from April 2026 that could advance sustainable flourishing for all (even if they were discovered by institutions antithetical to it):

Cryopreservation breakthrough could allow for freezing of transplant organs, extending the time dramatically available to deliver a donor organ to a patient in need.

Forest Waste to become high-performance bioplastics. The breakthrough could create an organic source for plastics which can easily be recycled.

Dirt will power our network of mini devices. Microbes in the soil will become fuel cells for low-power-requiring micro-devices that could be used in a variety of applications, including smart clothing.

Fuel Cell turns coal into electricity without burning it. This breakthrough could enable China to use a resource they have a lot of, coal, without polluting the atmosphere to do so. China is the number one coal producer in the world.

1.2. DEFENSE TECHThe Pentagon is seeking a record $1.5 trillion budget to pay for more ships, drones, AI development and integration, and even pay raises.

AI is becoming an increasingly dominant aspect of defense tech, with AI set to soon become the design leader, not fulfiller. AI will reshape the battlefield in ways that not even AI can currently predict.

The frontline of defense tech is AI integration and cheap drone hordes, along with cheap drone horde defense. Ukraine continues to be the frontline of drone development in the world, but the Iran War is teaching the U.S., and Iran, as well as observers, significant lessons as well. Yet those lessons might soon be moot after drone development starts to come from AI itself.

1.3. AI WATCHWe have mentioned AI creating 1,000 jobs in Salesforce. Now, AI has created the “Omniverse,” a place where you can test your whole manufacturing process in virtual environments that mimic the real close enough to make the results transferable to the material world. You can test your product from design to build to test, and cycle through until the design works.

The Americans have claimed they’ve created a computer chip that can survive temperatures as high as 1300 degrees Fahrenheit. The current chip max temperature tolerance is around 200, which is what makes data centers so water dependent. A chip such as this would significantly reduce the need for cooling, which is why data centers require so much water.

Thanks to AI, robots are becoming more high functioning, which can be seen in war. In the Ukraine War, the first ever military surrender of troops to robots was recorded when Russian troops surrendered to Ukrainian robots. China is now working on creating riot bots and drones in anticipation of mass protests.

The AI wars are only going to get hotter, with China signaling the way when it prevented an American company, Meta, from purchasing a Chinese AI agent company, Mantus. The U.S. has also ordered companies to stop sending certain chips to a Chinese chipmaker.

ASSESSMENT – Opportunities for sustainable flourishing technological development continue to happen on a near-daily basis. Yet opportunities for authoritarian technological development also continue to happen as well. AI is an aid to both.

The key technological developments we are looking for are ones that shrink the cost and resource demand of building and sustaining AI machines and their remote brains (data centers). We have little doubt breakthroughs like the computer chip that can sustain super-hot temperatures are on the way.

Be wary of building too big, too fast, for the next generation of AI machines and remote brains might be a lot less demanding, but every bit as powerful, as those massive AI machines.

OVERALL ASSESSMENT

President Trump is settling in to being a professional politician leading Conservative US, not America. It seems like more Americans are realizing this. His support is not flagging because MAGA has changed their mind, it is flagging because Americans within his movement are starting to see his un-American tendencies.

While the Democrats are doubling down on their violent rhetoric, news of their demise seems hasty, as they continue to do well in the 2026 midterm polls.

The republicans are losing support from a base that sees them as what we at MIA see them as, the rear guard of the progressives, controlled opposition. Their passage of DHS funding will help offset that trend.

We continue to wait for an American movement similar to Restore Britain in the UK, sans the ethnic element. Britian is a nation-state, an ethnic-based state, while America is not. An American party would put Americans first, but that would not be race-dependent, it would be citizen-dependent.

As humans begin to adjust to an AI reality, they are also seeing the culmination of two radically different approaches to human organizing, the ethnic-based nation state versus the global state.

The progressives support the end of local sovereignties and the creation of a global sovereignty, where most of human history has followed more ethnic-based states. Even empires, more often than not, had a ruling ethnicity (like the Persians over their Empire).

Islamists are aligned with a global state, though theirs is a caliphate. This is one of the many reasons Islamists and Progressives are natural early allies. The more they both face beliefs that create local and individual sovereignty, the more likely they will form alliances.

Nations have been torn apart by the progressives’ attempts to reform landscapes ethnically so a global structure could more easily emerge. By inserting foreigners into localities, they hoped to destroy the local sense of sovereignty. They certainly hoped to do this at the national scale as well.

Now, the battle has come to a head, and we are about to find out how it might all play out, and the UK might just be the first nation to clearly show the results.

Originally published May 1, 2026 for our monthly Issue of Mindful Intelligence Advisor.  Subscribe to get weekly issues.

By Staff

“There is a point in the history of society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides even with those who harm it, criminals, and does this quite seriously and honestly. Punishing somehow seems unfair to it, and it is certain that imagining ‘punishment’ and ‘being supposed to punish’ hurts it, arouses fear in it.

‘Is it not enough to render him undangerous? Why still punish? Punishing itself is terrible.’ With this question, herd morality, the morality of timidity, draws its ultimate consequence.”Friedrich Nietzsche, from Beyond Good and Evil

INTRODUCTION

Last week, we did a deep dive on the Iran War, which could be considered our deep dive of the month even considering the attempted assassination of the Trump administration at the White House Correspondents Dinner.

By itself, the attempted shooting did not reach the room the President was in, so the seriousness of the attack was considerably lower compared to Pennsylvania’s attempt. But connected to this story is the story of splitting narratives, conservative ones and progressive ones, that are increasingly giving permission to take matters into your own hands, for the good of the whole.

In this story, we are focused on progressive violence, but we suspect we might soon be doing a report on conservative violence (though it hasn’t happened at any significant scale yet, and we certainly pray it doesn’t happen, for it is not predestined to happen).

So, our Bellwether of the month is really progressive violence, which is systemic, from street fighter to top Democrat Politician, but that violence is the result of their national framing. Within the progressive framework, conservatives, Americans, the staff of MIA, are all in a category of systemic violence that gives progressives permission, even compulsion, to violently respond to us.

Our very institutions commit social murder, which makes us all eligible for death.

Progressives can assume they are not violent for, in their minds, they are only responding to violence.

In America, a homosexual can expect to hear a person of influence boldly say on a major national platform that homosexuality is a sin without fear of being economically assassinated as a result.

In Progressive US, that person might go to jail.

If the law doesn’t send him to jail and even allows him to continue to have a public presence, then the progressive is compelled by their moral code to use violence to end the systemic violence that person is perpetuating against a disenfranchised class of people. This is their government, not the constitution.

A hierarchy of social class informs their governance code. It is the prescription for the description, that the white devil invented evil, and his continued existence is an existential threat to the planet and the non-evil people, the POC (person of color).

In America, a person can expect no significant consequences for publicly declaring support for Hamas and opposing Israel. In Conservative US, that person might lose their college career. If authority doesn’t gatekeep this person, the conservative will not take the matter into their own hands (yet). Their government is the constitution, not hierarchies of social class.

For the progressive, every objection to their program can be rooted to white supremacism. This is not hyperbole; this is observable fact. Recently, progressive Governor Tim Walz called a conservative journalist’s efforts to expose fraud in his state nothing but dog whistles to white supremacism.

For this reason, we are making Progressive Violence as seen through the bellwether event, the White House Correspondents Dinner shooting, our bellwether of the month.

Our Deep Dives now generally follow a Situation Report format, though you will get more analysis and opinion within the Background and Current Situation section than you will in our Situation Reports (like the one in this issue on pg. xx).

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

On April 26, 2026, around 8:30PM, a man attempted to break into the White House Correspondents’ Dinner and assassinate President Donald Trump and members of his administration.

Leading up to the shooting, this publication recently surmised the polarization between Progressives and Americans was only deepening, as the rhetoric from progressives was becoming increasingly violent.

Now, even conservatives are expressing fatalistic finality in response. While Progressives want acts of violence, conservatives do too, in the form of arrests that produce convictions, which is how conservatives are currently expressing their violent response, for now.

The aftermath of the shooting has seen further divides and further disconnects from one another’s’ realities, as both major factions, the progressives and conservatives, double down on their own narratives.

At this point this attempted assassination was like a pre-season NFL game because the shooter didn’t come close to the President and no blood was drawn.

BACKGROUND

The shooter’s manifesto would reveal a profound connection between the framing of reality by the most rhetorically violent progressives and the shooter’s heart. The fact that the shooter was a schoolteacher who won a “Teacher of the Month” award reveals he is also a bellwether of the public school system under progressive stewardship.

If true, this would suggest more “shooters” have already been programmed either through the teacher training and screening process or through the progressive-trained-and-screened teachers’ teachings.

THE PROGRESSIVE RHETORIC – This publication has documented the recent history of progressive rhetoric becoming increasingly hostile. This rhetoric started with the two phrases, “Punch a Nazi” and “Freedom of Speech doesn’t mean Freedom from Consequences” right as President Trump announced his candidacy for President in 2015.

Here we present two recent bellwethers in April of progressive rhetoric, along with a mention of the shooter’s manifesto which reflects progressive talking points. For more on progressive rhetoric, go deeper on progressive violence.

1.1. HASAN PIKER – Days before the attempted assassinations, progressive thought leader Hasan Piker said in response to a caller on a podcast that it was ok to kill landlords that don’t rent their properties. He said, “Yeah, kill them. Kill those mother f*ckers. Murder those mother f*ckers in the street. Let the streets—let the streets soak in their f*cking red capitalist blood, dude.”

1.2. JIMMY KIMMEL – Progressive corporate spokesperson Jimmy Kimmel joked on his show days before the attempted assassinations that Melania Trump looked like an expectant widow. Under normal circumstances, the comment could be dismissed as being distasteful but innocuous.

We are not living under normal circumstances. In the wake of numerous recent acts of political violence, it seems ill-timed at the very least. It is not unreasonable to assume something worse, though proving that legally might be nearly impossible.

1.3. RECEIPTS – Shortly after the shooting, progressive media challenged the administration’s assertion that it was progressive rhetoric which led to the shooting. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt presented evidence that shows the shooter was parroting the same exact rhetoric Democrat Politicians and Progressive thought leaders like Hasan Piker has been speaking.

She revealed Allen’s manifesto, which she claims reads like Democrat talking points.

THE SEQUENCE OF EVENTS – Before the shooting, the shooter allegedly traveled from California to Washington D.C. by train, checking into the Washington, D.C. Hilton one day before the scheduled White House Correspondence Dinner.

First the shooter had to get past security on the outside perimeter of the hotel. This was not a challenge as he was a guest at the hotel. The shooter himself would note on the way that security was lax, and that if he had wanted to stage a mass casualty event, he could have easily done this.

His race past the next line of security was caught on video. The President was later seen commenting he moved “like a flash.” He never reached the actual dining hall where the President was located. After he breached security he shot a secret service agent in the chest, but the agent was not injured seriously as he was wearing a bullet-proof vest.

The agents returned fire as he ran until he tripped, where he was then apprehended.

President Trump’s take on the shooting: “I wanted to see what was happening, and I wasn’t making it that easy for them. I wanted to see what was going on… And by that time, we started to realise maybe it was a bad problem, different kind of a problem, bad one, and different than what would be normal noise from a ballroom, which you hear all the time.”

THE SHOOTER AND THE MOTIVE – Cole Thomas Allen, 31, from Torrance, CA, has been identified as the suspect in the White House Correspondents Dinner. He is a schoolteacher who notably recently won a teacher of the month award.

His social media presence reveals a man who holds to progressive Christian values, who equates Donald Trump with Hitler, and uses a lot of the same phrases, the same talking points, including false talking points, that progressive thought leaders and Democrat politicians continue to use even as we create this report.

In most instances, a deeper dive would be warranted on the shooter and the motive, but in this case, the shooter and his motive fit so almost stereotypically into the progressive violence memetic, that there isn’t much depth of discovery there beyond what you see at the surface.

Also, the less time focusing on the shooter the better, as their mythologization is one of the motivations behind why such psychopaths act out in the way this shooter did. The real heart of this bellwether is the progressive spirit at war with everyone else, not the shooter himself, who became a mere avatar of that larger story.

One narrative suggests the shooter was allegedly led by progressive talking points equating President Trump and his supporters with Nazis. For this reason alone, he justified his attempt to murder the President and his administration. The counter-narrative is that the shooter was motived by Trump’s rhetoric and actions.

While some progressives fall short of saying this justifies the attempt, many not only don’t, but they are also once again upset the attempt failed.

CURRENT SITUATION

The two nations we have been describing for a while, Progressive US and Conservative US, are becoming clearer every day. The fallout from the shooting makes that even clearer.

The interpretation of the shooting is as radically different as it can be between progressive and conservative. For Americans, they (we too) need to sift through both narrative war machines to discern something closer to the truth that either side might care to see.

NOTE: We’d like to offer a caveat regarding our progressives and conservative neighbors; in both camps there yet resides true Americans who haven’t quite figured out the un-American parts of their coalitions of power.

We recognize there are most likely far more Americans among conservatives than progressives as this point, as most Americans have already left the progressive coalition of power (which is why it is becoming increasingly openly anti-American).

Conservative US is also much closer to Americanism than Progressive US is (which is fundamentally opposed to it).

The prevailing narratives are these: secret service and security deficiencies have been laid bare; Trump is using the shooting to get tax-funding for a new White House ballroom; Progressives are calling the shooting staged by Trump to save flagging opinion polls; and the emergence of an ‘offensive war against progressives’ narrative from the conservatives

PROTECTION – Shortly after the shooting had stopped, questions began flooding in about how a man got so close to putting shotgun blasts on the President and his administration. The shooter himself would call for reform to security after a sane President is in power. He claimed he could have committed a mass murder event had he wanted to because the security was so bad (yes, this bears repeating).

The White House immediately praised Secret Service and their handling of the attack. The President even claimed he got in their way.

A Fox News employee who was present at the dinner wrote on X: “The first exterior security for me was on the street outside of the hotel. I flashed my ticket and was waved through in one second. My name was not checked against any list, I showed no ID, I was not patted down and did not go through a metal detector. I probably could have shown a ticket from a prior year or a fake one as they barely looked at it. (I don’t know who that exterior security was, they were guys in suits).

From that point, I walked into the hotel with no further security check, and I walked down to the Fox pre-party where there were multiple ballrooms that were absolutely PACKED with attendees. Still did not go through any security at that point.”

PROGRESSIVE MEDIA REACTION – A title by PoliticsusUSA summarized the progressive response to the shooting, “The White House Correspondents Dinner Gunman Changes Nothing.” The story is about Trump using the shooting to try to push tax funding of the new White House ballroom, but the headline is intended to speak beyond that story, we believe.

Crooks and Liars finds it incredulous Fox would blame the progressive media for the shooting. Politico also found it incredulous that Republicans would blame Democrat leaders’ political rhetoric for the WHCD shooting.

Also from Crooks and Liars is this headline, “WHCD Faked? Trump’s Numbers Worse Than Any I’ve Ever Seen.”

Daily Kos is upset Melania wants ABC to let Jimmy Kimmel go for saying the First Lady looked like a widow in waiting. Kimmel said that just before the shooting. Remember, these are the same progressives that have ruined whole careers for opposing forced transgender morality compliance.

The biggest bellwether of the progressive media reaction to the shooting might be Nora O’Donnell’s attempt to try to read the shooter’s manifesto to the President just after the shooting. This publication has decided not to reprint the manifesto in whole or in part. It adds little value to the this report’s focus, the overall progressive spirit of war.

This is not a judgment on publications that choose to publish the whole or parts of the manifesto.

Here, O’Donnell is willing to use the CBS platform to reward a man who attempted to murder the President of the United States by delivering his manifesto to his intended target.

As of April 29, 2026, CBS News had still not revealed to their audience the shooter’s party affiliation, Democrat, or his known attendance of progressive events like the “No Kings” protests.

FALLOUT – There has been no slowdown in rhetoric on the progressive side. If anything, conservative rhetoric is now just beginning to heat up beyond the defensive to the offensive. We have seen a growing call for convictions, not indictments, and those calls have only greatly increased after the shooting.

After the shooting, progressive activists protested outside the Hilton Hotel. They held up signs that said, “death to tyrants,” “death to them all,” and “yes, they deserve to die, and I hope they burn in hell.”

Leading up to the shooting, a recent study showed that anti-government violence is spiking. We expect that trend to continue.

Illinois’ Progressive Governor JB Pritzker blamed the attempted assassination of Trump on Trump himself, further seeming to tacitly legitimize the act. Trump is either a Nazi deserving assassination, or he is not. Here, Pritzker is suggesting he IS a Nazi, further emboldening progressive teachers to be the next wave of attack.

An article in politicsususa suggests “Many Americans Don’t Care About 3rd Assassination Attempt On Trump.” This might be true, but only of progressives, not conservatives, who seem to have crossed a threshold in their minds that has shifted them from defensive to offensive violent rhetoric.

This is politicsususa’s assessment of the fallout, which isn’t completely incorrect, “If you spend five minutes on any form of social media, you’ll soon learn that the consensus reaction is people claiming the gunman was staged, MAGAs who think a White House ballroom will solve everything, and some version of the sentiment that the American people have already seen this movie twice before, and they are bored.”

What they’re missing is the MAGA part, the switch that happened after this last attempt. The PA assassination attempt shifted conservatives from American civil language to aggressive defensive anti-insurrectionist language. Now, the language shift appears to be going from defensive to offensive in nature.

A headline from PJ Media summarizes that shift: “The Time for Playing Nice is Over.”

ASSESSMENT

The third direct Trump assassination attempt has pushed the conservative base past the point of reconciliation with the progressives, who have expressed no desire at reconciliation with anyone for the past decade.

The progressives appear more frustrated their latest savior didn’t deliver the goods than anything else. A narrative quickly emerged that the whole thing was staged, as it often does no matter who was the target.

When the target is a non-progressive, the progressive media will tamp down the signals that make the shooting real at the very least, if not amplify false signals that push the staged shooting narrative (without ever having made the claims themselves). This is what they’ve done here.

Yet even though the staged narrative has received top-down corporate signaling and support, progressive communities’ rank and file street fighters had already come up with that narrative all on their own.

One thing about an ideology based on granular morality codes enforced with violence is that they tend to produce same-speak all on their own. This is ESPECIALLY true when that morality code is loaded with unique terms and redefinitions of anchor terms from the culture under attack.

This is similar to a Large Language Model in AI, but with considerably less variation.

So, the top-down signal was redundant, for the most part, at least among the true converts. To the casual viewer of corporate news, the shooter was a Christian and Trump’s own rhetoric and action is why it happened. Also, Trump and the conservatives are still white supremacist Nazis.

Among these casual viewers are true Americans, Americans who still don’t understand they are watching narrative warfare disguised as news.

There are some conservatives fighting the White House ballroom battle, but most seem more concerned with two things, cleaning up Secret Service and figuring out how to deal with the nation they are starting to recognize, Progressive US.

They haven’t given it a name, but they recognize the “left” as having its own national identity, customs, and standards for law that are mostly antithetical to both Conservative US and America (with America being the number one impediment to the progressive dream).

At this point, conservatives are still hoping for elections but are also now demanding arrests that lead to convictions. Support for the GOP and the President has been trending downward. They don’t just want arrests, though, they want first serious and clear indictments, and then convictions with serious consequences, up to and including death (though execution talk is fortunately limited, for now).

While some conservatives are excited about the recent Comey indictment, many are skeptical the indictment will hold weight and wonder when the clear-evidence-showing-treason charges will happen.

They want those charges targeting the top suspected leaders of the “coup,” the ones allegedly behind the Russia Hoax, the “stolen” 2020 election, the J6 Operation, the Open Borders policies, and the Biden Committee Presidency, to lead to convictions that lead to lifetime sentences, at minimum.

Anything less will result in the GOP and the President continuing to bleed support.

Conservatives and Americans are becoming more concerned with American survival than economics, while non-activist Americans seem mostly driven by economics and the freedom to choose abortions or the desire to see them outlawed that in preserving, restoring, and fulfilling American Rule of Law standards.

Progressives want nothing short of a reboot of the country and a purging of the land of all non-progressives, including conservatives and Americans, including the staff of MIA.

This event has not significantly moved the progressives or the non-activist Americans, but it has significantly moved conservatives and Americans. They both now clearly recognize the reality of two nations in one land, Progressive US and Conservative US, with neither nation fully embracing the America that bore them both.

Still, so far, a clear American “movement” has yet to emerge, as Americans mostly find themselves outside the camps, frustrated they can’t easily see what’s really going on behind the veil both camps’ narrative war machines cast.

We hope more of them find this publication and others like it. If you have a friend or a relative you think would like to receive our weekly news analysis, buy them a subscription at MIA subscriptions.

RECOMMENDATIONS

The President has chosen to call for the firing of Jimmy Kimmel over his “expecting widow” comments, while Trump’s FCC now moves to challenge ABC affiliate broadcast licenses. The move is clumsy and the justification for it is not clear, especially when it doesn’t target the whole broadcast industry.

IF ABC has violated broadcasting licensing standards, so has the rest of the industry.

In U.S. law, the standard is not what we know but what we can prove. We know Kimmel’s statement was intentionally broad enough that you can assume he’s inciting violence against the President but proving that in a court of law would be, well, extremely challenging.

The FCC move in and of itself would be great if it had already happened, and if it happened for every major broadcast corporation AFTER a study ACTUALLY showed violations of broadcast licensing had been occurring systematically for decades.

We think a serious study would most likely reveal this decades-long systemic pattern of violations to be true, but it would also expose both the GOP and DNC’s involvement in perpetuating this unofficial alliance between the government and corporate media, or rather, between political parties and corporate media.

This soft power appears to be a tool the President doesn’t want to completely forfeit, even if it means not vanquishing one of the two hearts of progressive power, the progressive corporate media control of socio-cultural production, signaling, and gatekeeping.

Like the move against Comey, the effort might do more to strengthen progressives than hurt them. If, once again, Comey’s charges are dismissed, or a jury finds him not guilty, this will only embolden progressives’ sense of violent injustice being perpetrated on them every day America continues to exist.

This is not hyperbole; this is the spirit already emerging in street activist level progressive discourse.

We recommend the President halt the FCC call to review ABC affiliate licensing and instead conduct the comprehensive study that could, theoretically, show the clear illegal entanglement between corporate media, American political parties, and even foreign governments and corporations.

If we are right, the study will show the public the corporate media is not the free press, it’s a criminal operation (by American standards, not progressive ones). If so, the prosecutions of the corporate media will be far more profound, and it will have public support, even from the “normies” who still get their news indirectly through that same corporate media (through the influencers who use corporate media to create content).

From here, our next move would be on Public Schools, especially Teachers’ Unions, who have been allegedly illegally using their non-partisan donations to support anti-American progressive actions, including illegal interruption operations against ICE officers (this is not referring to the lawful protests which also occurred).

The study would first happen, followed by exposure to the public, followed by prosecutions. This would be the second heart of progressive power, control of our education system.

We recommend not pursuing the death penalty and giving everyone but the top leadership an opportunity to confess with immunity and be forgiven, with a path back to the American family preserved.

Originally published May 1, 2026 for our monthly Issue of Mindful Intelligence Advisor.  Subscribe to get weekly issues.

By Paul Gordon Collier, Editor

Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.” – Edmund Burke

“The best antidote I know for worry is work. The best cure for weariness is the challenge of helping someone who is even more tired. One of the great ironies of life is this: He or she who serves almost always benefits more than he or she who is served.”Gordon B. Hinckley

Our Hope Exit Castle project has become our Hope Estates project. We started this project off attempting to build a working model of an extended family household running a Castle, a building that combines private residence with public service space.

While that is still our goal, we now have another property that could eventually become a similar type of space (Castle Space) and two other properties that are too small to become Hope Exit Castles. They could become satellites for future Castle builds.

In purchasing our church, we came to learn of a growing movement to convert churches to living space. What we did not see was any great effort to both preserve the church’s capacity to service the community through its space alone and create private space for the castle’s stewardship family.

Optimally, the extended family would have no less than 5 members and no more than 10. Ours might start around 6 or 7.

Churches remain a potential future opportunity for Hope Exit Castle plants, including in the communities where our small properties are located. What we learn through our Riqueday Castle project in Canton, PA will help us with future potential church to castle conversions.

Apartment buildings could also become future Hope Exit Castles. Our Harrisburg project will prepare us for such future potential Apartment building to castle conversions.

Hope Exit Castles are not exits from the controlling world, but rather exits from dependence on the controlling world. Yet they are also servants to the victims of that same controlling world. They are still connected to the controlling world through service to those it forgets.

Among our readers we are certain there are those who have perhaps more resources than we do to attempt something similar. If you decide to start, write to us at MIAMAILROOM@gmail.com, subject Hope Exit Castle. If you have already begun, or have built a successful model, write to us as well with the same subject, Hope Exit Castle.

Either my brother or I will write you back. We will hope to regularly communicate with you, to learn from you while you learn from us. Whatever is relevant to our readers that you’d freely share, we will share with them.

While we are looking primarily to convert what is to what might be, churches and apartment buildings to castles, we are also hoping to live long enough to break ground on our first experimental community of 10k people, where every space is designed and built from scratch.

The primary impediment to sustaining extended family structures is the capacity to provide for yourselves through your own actions a sustainably flourishing standard of living and the training that makes such an outcome possible.

Outside of very large cities, the capacity of a community to provide sustainably flourishing vocations to whole extended families decreases the smaller it gets. Even a city of 100,000 will have a hard time keeping extended families together for a few reasons.

One major reason is that the highest skilled will gravitate towards the few most wealthy corporations that can pay them. Generally, those positions are in cities like New York, NY, not Allentown, PA, and certainly not in Canton, PA.

We believe we have the technology, ESPECIALLY with AI, to create communities that can design, plan, create, and serve 80% of its FLOURISHING wants and needs and 95% of its essential needs with a population of 10,000 people.

If a community can do that, it can provide the kind of high-skilled vocation high-skilled people would need to feel fulfilled, at compensations that allow them and their immediate families to live flourishing lives.

The community would be 2-3 square miles, populated by extended family homes (15-20 people each), which would in turn have the capacity to meet 1/3 of its flourishing wants and needs and 80% of its essential needs.

We will share more ideas about this concept in our upcoming special publication, Hope Exit, scheduled to be released with our Quarterly issue on July 10, 2026. This is part of your subscription.

Back on solid ground, three of our four properties have updates to report. In our current home, we recently had a crisis with a broken lawn mower and broken washer. We have been able to replace our broken lawn mower with one that works a lot better than the last. As I am the one who mows, this has been a godsend for me.

Our broken washer has also been replaced, and that washer is significantly better than our last one. My wife primarily does our wash, while my daughter (who is going to college) does her own. For my wife and daughter, the washer does 3 times the amount in one load than the old one did, and in a little less time, with significantly less noise (our washer was very loud towards the end).

In both instances, brokenness led to more flourishing outcomes in the end, though the extra cost, in and of itself, is not sustainable. In our case, we can meet this need, thankfully.

The Riqueday Castle has had plastering done to patch up some holes. We’ve identified a leak in the roof that is affecting one of our window wells in the sanctuary. We are in the process of considering contractors for a bid on a new roof, and contractors for a new bathroom and laundry hookup.

Mowing season is back in action, so our unofficial caretaker, Anthony, is on the job once again.

We have been saving towards our property taxes (we have 3 that come to a total of around $7K) and are about ready to pay one of them (the $4K one) soon. We will be opening up a bank account in the name of Riqueday Castle; with myself, my wife, and my brother being the authorized users.

After we do this, we will start paying our Castle bills through that account. We can also then have a shared account to throw money in so we can build it up for needed future investments.

We have a mystery in our electric bill that saw a bit of an unexpected spike (not significant, but not unnoticeable either). So far, we haven’t figured out what the culprit is. We will see if it continues with the next bill.

We have procured donated furniture which I have not yet seen. Brother Bill and Anthony will be taking the furniture to the Castle where we will all decide what goes where, though a few pieces are specifically for Bill’s future living quarters.

In Harrisburg, Bill, Anthony, and one of Bill’s close friends, cleaned up the third-floor apartment. Anthony painted the front room. Bill ordered furniture for the apartment which has yet to be assembled. Bill has also ordered a new toilet to be installed in the bathroom.

After the apartment is livable, Bill will be able to make more trips to DC where more opportunities for clients are. I will go with him on some occasions, but not often. We are seeking more business to raise more funds for our Hope Estate project. If you need website marketing, design, or building, or reputation protection, or research, ping us at MIAMAILROOM@gmail.com, subject Business Query.

Had we not chosen to embark on this project, both my brother and I were in comfortable circumstances. The level of business we had was more than sufficient to sustain us at this comfortable level. Yet I would not trade that comfort (which I do sometimes miss) for the opportunity I have to contribute to human understanding through my success or failure.

Can we redesign our very home life to accommodate extended family living that serves the community as well? It is better for me to fail than to have lived in comfort never having tried to answer that question for myself when I had the resources to do so.

I say this to appeal to you, the reader, who might have such resources, to consider trying something similar yourself. If you choose to start, or if you’ve already started, or if you’re well into doing what we’re calling “Castle living,” let us know at MIAMAILROOM@gmail.com. It could be the start of a fruitful conversation for all.

Originally published May 1, 2026 for our monthly Issue of Mindful Intelligence Advisor.  Subscribe to get weekly issues.

This report covers political, world, cultural, market, and sci-tech news from April 1-30, 2026.

This report contains the Global Outlook, Headlines Missed, and People Advance Report.

For an analysis of this month’s news, read our Situation Report on pg. xx.

Top Ten Tagged News

  1. Iran War
  2. 2026 Elections
  3. Trump Dinner Shooter
  4. Trump Deportations
  5. Strait of Hormuz
  6. Gerrymandering Wars
  7. Eric Swalwell Investigation
  8. Ukraine War
  9. AI Planning and Design
  10. Anti-ICE Action

GLOBAL OUTLOOK

NOTE: Read about the White House Correspondents Dinner Shooting on pg. 2 in our Deep Dive Report.

AS IRAN’S LEADER RE-EMERGES, U.S. FAILS TO FINISHPresident Trump has rejected the latest proposal by Iran to continue the ceasefire, which seems to be de facto over. The Supreme Leader has allegedly emerged and promised to free the Strait of Hormuz from U.S. presence. The progressive media is casting doubts on U.S. power while Trump’s base buckles in its support for the war.

PUTIN THREATENS TRUMP OVER IRANPresident Vladimir Putin of Russia is claiming he has warned Trump of “extremely harmful consequences” if the U.S renews attacks on Iran. The public declaration puts Russia’s power reputation with its allies on the line should the U.S. attack and not suffer “extremely harmful consequences.”

IMPEACHMENT HOAX? – The 2019 Trump Impeachment was based on dubious, or fake evidence, concocted by “Democrat partisans,” or so a report from the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard suggested.

PUBLIC SCHOOL UNIONS FUEL PROGRESSIVE POWERPublic School Teachers Unions have contributed more than $1 billion to progressive organizations, causes, and candidacies in the last 10 years alone. The two heaviest hitters are the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the National Education Association (NEA). These two unions combined to account for $669 million alone. This means progressives could count on teachers’ unions to give them $100 million a year for the last 10 years.

AI IS BECOMING A UTILITY – More and more Americans have begun making AI subscription services a part of their essential household budget. Since 2024, paid AI subscriptions have increased by 38%. The paid AI subscription service market is expected to exponentially expand over the next two years.

AI LEADERSHIP ASSASSIN CAUGHT – A man who tried to kill OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has been caught. Included in the evidence is a hit list of AI leaders the man hoped to kill. An FBI Affidavit claimed the suspect wanted to kill AI by killing its human leaders.

The suspect allegedly wrote, “Also if I am going to advocate for others to kill and commit crimes, then I must lead by example and show that I am fully sincere in my message.”

OPEC LOSES UAEThe United Arab Emirates is officially separating from the OPEC alliance. They declared, “During our time in the organisation, we made significant contributions and even greater sacrifices for the benefit of all. However, the time has come to focus our efforts on what our national interest dictates and our commitment to our investors, customers, partners and global energy markets. This is what we will focus on going forward.”

WAS CHATGPT BEHIND A MASS SHOOTING? Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier thinks ChatGPT may have had a hand to play in a recent mass shooting event on the Florida State University campus. He declared, “My prosecutors have looked at this and they’ve told me if it was a person on the other end of that screen, we would be charging them with murder.”

He is referring to ChatGPT, whom he accuses of aiding and abetting the shooting. The AG has opened a criminal investigation into ChatGPT.

TRUMP JESUS – President Trump posted a meme depicting himself as Jesus while he was also in the midst of a back and forth with the Pope of the Catholic Church, Pope Leo XIV. This followed his f bomb on Easter where he threatened to end the Iranian civilization. The President deleted the meme.

VIRIGINIA SAYS YES TO PROGRESSIVE GERRYMANDERINGThe Progressives won a major battle in the ongoing gerrymandering wars, this time scoring a narrow victory in Virginia. The ballot measure allows the progressives to change U.S. House Districts to effectively take 4 Republican seats away. The now-passed ballot measure faces legal challenges. The results have yet to be certified.

COMEY’S 86 47 GETS INDICTEDThe Department of Justice has garnered two new indictments targeting former FBI Director James Comey. The indictments are connected to a social media post by Comey that showed seashells on the beach laid out to signal “86 47.” One charge is “knowingly and willfully making a threat to take the life of — and to inflict bodily harm on — the president.” The second charge is “knowingly and willfully transmitting in interstate commerce a threat to kill the president.”

STARMER HOLDS ON AS EPSTEIN SNARE TIGHTENSThe UK’s Prime Minister Kier Starmer is holding on amidst increasing calls for him to resign. Evidence already revealed Starmer fully knew the man he appointed to be Ambassador to the U.S. had Epstein ties before the appointment. Now, it is revealed he willfully lied when confronted before Peter Mandelson, the man in question, was finally appointed.

SWALWELL IMPLOSION CRATERS CONGRESSThe Democrat congressman turned California Senate candidate is now former in both categories. Eric Swalwell is now out of the Senate race and congress after more women have come forward, accusing him of sexual assault and harassment. The fallout could affect other members of congress on both sides of the aisle, who may have similar credible accusations against them.

SPLC ACCUSED OF FUNDING HATEThe FBI has leveled multiple criminal indictments against the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). SPLC is accused of spending millions of dollars to fund numerous far-right hate groups, including the group behind the now-infamous Charlottsville, VA white supremacist rally. The SPLC’s initial defense is it was simply paying informants.

EU WINS IN HUNGARY?After Victor Orban’s ouster in Hungary’s elections, his replacement, Péter Magyar, a former member of the Orban government, might not be on the EU’s side after all. The election was characterized as the EU versus national sovereignty movements, with Magyar representing the EU. But soon after winning, Magyar announced plans to double down on blocking immigration to the country.

Claims of Magyar being an Orban sleeper candidate seem plausible, but not credible. We will continue to evaluate Magyar’s policies in action after his government takes power in May.

CHARLES STEALTH BOMBS TRUMP IN CONGRESS – Using extremely veiled language, Charles III, King of Britian, appeared to tell the U.S. congress Trump should end the war in Iran, stop deportations, and embrace DEI. Progressives tend to agree with this assessment, claiming Charles “owned” Trump in front of congress.

This is our interpretation after reading between the two clear focal points of his speech, diversity and religious tolerance, both target Trump deportations of immigrants and his war on Islamist Iran.

SPACE DEFENSE AND NUCLEAR SCIENTIST APOCOLYPSE? The FBI is now looking into the disappearance and deaths of numerous scientists working in the nuclear and space defense industries. The cases go back to 2022. U.S. House Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) said in a letter to the FBI, “If the reports are accurate, these deaths and disappearances may represent a grave threat to U.S. national security and to U.S. personnel with access to scientific secrets.”

He later added, “Once you see the facts, it would suggest that something sinister could be happening and it would be a national security concern… Congress is very concerned about this. Our committee is making this one of our priorities now because we view this as a national security threat.”

POPE PROMISES NOTHING MORE THAN INFORMAL BLESSING FOR SAME-SEX MARRIAGEPope Leo XIV has affirmed he has no plans to go beyond allowing priests to bless gay marriages. In other words, he will not approve formalizing blessings for gay marriages.

Leo declared, “When a priest gives the blessing at the end of Mass, when the Pope gives the blessing at the end of a great celebration like the one we had today, there are blessings for all people. Francis’s famous expression, ‘everyone, everyone, everyone,’ expresses the Church’s conviction that everyone is welcomed, everyone is invited, everyone is invited to follow Jesus, and everyone is invited to seek conversion in their own lives. To go beyond this today, I believe, could cause more disunity than unity, and that we should seek to build our unity on Jesus Christ and on what Jesus Christ teaches.”

TRANSGENDER CARE FOR KIDS, SAYS DISTRICT JUDGEUnited States District Judge Mustafa Kasubhai has ruled on the HHS’s declaration that gender-affirming care for children is unsafe and ineffective. The progressive judge has ruled the HHS declaration to be unconstitutional.

The judge sided with the 22 progressive-led states, which argued the federal government did not have the legal authority to make such a determination.

META’S DOWNSIZING CONTINUES – The parent company of Facebook, Meta, has announced plans to lay off nearly 10% of its total workforce, 8,000 positions, starting in early May 2026. These layoffs may not be the only layoffs, as more might be announced after May of this year.

HEADLINES MISSED

FISA PASSES HOUSE, BIDEN VEHICLE KILL SWITCH SURVIVESRepresentative Chip Roy (R-TX) is still trying to kill what is being called the Biden Vehicle Kill Switch. This is a requirement by the government that all car manufacturers create a vehicle kill switch that car owners cannot deactivate. So far, he has failed. This latest effort has also failed, with the Johnson-led House passing FISA renewal ahead of Thursday’s deadline.

Roy proposed an amendment to the FISA renewal act that effectively kills the Biden kill switch. Roy said, “Republicans should not be continuing a blatantly invasive Biden-era policy that enables round-the-clock monitoring of Americans in their own cars. That’s why I introduced an amendment to FISA to eliminate the ‘kill switch’ and stop this Big Brother technology from being built into new vehicles.”

SCOTUS ALLOWS STEALTH TRANSITIONING OF KIDSSCOTUS rejected a petition by parents to challenge a Massachusetts law that allows schools to treat their children as a gender not aligned with their biological sex without parental consent. The schools also have a policy permitting teachers to conceal the child’s school-affirmed trans or non-binary gendered identities from the parents.

FISA COURT QUASHES SPY TOOL, TRUMP DISSENTSThe Trump administration is fighting a FISA court ruling that prevents the government from specifically searching for individuals online who have contacted a foreigner.

The administration is challenging the FISA court as the court’s existence comes up for renewal this April 30. The GOP-led House extended the program by unanimous consent vote during a late-night session.

CANADA GIVES LIBERALS BIG MAJORITY WINCanada’s coalition government is effectively over after two special elections have secured a simple majority for Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberal Party. The possibility of gaining a simple majority happened after five members of opposition parties defected to join the liberals. The wins secure a majority for the Liberals until 2029.

MALI BUCKLES, RUSSIA WITHDRAWSAfter Islamists led a successful offensive across Mali, Russian forces withdrew, while junta forces failed to stop the assaults. Not only did the Islamists successfully disrupt multiple cities, but they also killed the country’s defense minister and gained territory in northern areas. The assault puts the junta’s power in jeopardy, especially given Russia’s disengagement.

FINLAND RULES CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE IS “HATE SPEECH” – Finland’s Highest Court has ruled two Christian pastors who created a Christian marriage pamphlet in 2004 violated hate speech laws.

One of the “guilty” pastors said, “I am shocked and profoundly disappointed that the court has failed to recognize my basic human right to freedom of expression. I stand by the teachings of my Christian faith and will continue to defend my and every person’s right to share their convictions in the public square.”

CANADA TO CRIMINALIZE BEING “ANTI-GAY”If you read scripture in public that condemns homosexuality, you might soon be jailed in Canada if Canada’s latest Bill C-9 passes. The proposed law would define “harm” as making public statements protected groups would find offensive.

HOW AMERICA IS DEVELOPING CHINA’S WEAPONS OF WAR – American tech companies warn the world that China’s domestic tech companies are really military tech companies in disguise. We are China’s free defense tech research and development department now.

CHINA’S MANTUS CUT OFF FROM U.S. PURCHASE China has made a decisive move in the emerging AI race and war with the U.S., halting the purchase of a Chinese-created AI-agent company called Manus. The purchaser was the U.S.’s Meta. China did not offer an explanation, though it reflects AI nationalization trends both in China and in general.

HUMANS SURRENDER TO ROBOTS – According to Ukraine’s Prime Minister, Volodymyr Zelensky, Russian troops surrendered to Ukrainian drones and robots, making it, allegedly, the world’s first human surrender to a robot in a field of battle.

Zelensky claimed the machines “carried out (the mission) without infantry and without losses on our side. For the first time in the history of this war, an enemy position was taken exclusively by unmanned platforms – ground systems and drones.”

RIOT BOTS AND THE CCP – China hopes to soon deploy robots to control future rioters. The People’s Armed Police Force (PAP) is already testing the possibility in preparation for a potential mass riot event.

SOUTH OF THE BORDER GOING CASHLESS – The Progressive-led Mexican government is looking to aggressively push towards a cashless society and a national digital ID system.

CONCEALING SIN FOR THE GOOD OF THE GAMEA Christian Homeschool League in Texas is accused of knowingly hiring a registered sex offender to be a baseball coach without informing anyone of his convicted sex offender past.

PEOPLE ADVANCE REPORT

SCOTUS KILLS RACE-BASED GERRYMANDERING. – There were three big wins this month for the Republicans in the Gerrymandering Wars that culminated with a major SCOTUS ruling on race-based gerrymandering.

First, the Virginia Supreme Court continues to refuse to certify the special election that saw the Progressives win the “right” to use gerrymandering to eliminate 4 GOP U.S. House Seats.

Second, SCOTUS has confirmed the Texas gerrymander map that switches 5 Democrat-held seats to 5 likely GOP seats. In Florida, a gerrymander plan is advancing in the legislature that would net the GOP 4 more seats in the U.S. House.

Third, SCOTUS has struck down race-based gerrymandered districts in a move that is existentially threatening to the Democrat Party in its current iteration.

HOUSE ENDS DHS SHUTDOWN – The U.S. House has passed partial funding of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), sending the bill to the President for an expected signing. The passage ends the 76 days of DHS shutdown.

NO MORE MASS MAILER ELECTIONS? – President Trump’s XO attempts to stop mass mailer elections in America. Lawsuits have already been filed.

PRO-LIFE JOURNALISTS FREED FROM LAWFARE – After years of being under the weight of criminal prosecution, undercover journalists have now seen all their charges dropped. They exposed Planned Parenthood in a series of undercover videos selling parts of aborted babies.

SHUTTING DOWN IN NATO – Rubio hints at 80% reduction of U.S. military presence in Europe in the near future.

CHARLIE KIRK HONORED WITH 1A PROTECTING LAWS – Kansas joins a growing list of states which passed laws honoring the late assassinated American activist Charlie Kirk. The laws have one thing in common, they both protect rights enumerated in the 1st Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. These rights are the right to religious liberty and the right to freedom of speech.

WOKE HEALTH PANEL NO MORE – RFK Jr. is vowing to replace the “woke” panel currently in charge of choosing what preventative care gets covered by Obamacare. Kennedy plans on replacing the current allegedly “woke” members of the U.S. Preventative Service Task Force, saying “We’re now bringing new members on who have a clear mission.”

U.S. MILITARY GETS VACCINE FREEDOM – Department of War Secretary Pete Hegseth has ended mandatory flu vaccines for military personnel. While flu vaccines will still be offered, military personnel can now opt out of them if they so choose.

NO MORE MEN IN WOMEN’S CELLS – A Federal Appeals Court has upheld President Trump’s XO requiring biological sex to be used to determine which prison an inmate is assigned to. The argument hinged on the claim biological males faced “cruel and unusual punishment” by being forced to be imprisoned with men.

JESUS RESTORED BY ITALIANS IN LEBANON – Italian Peacekeeper Troops in Lebanon delivered a new Jesus statue to a Lebanon village that saw their previous Jesus statue smashed by an Israeli soldier in a now-viral video. The IDF has apologized and punished the solider responsible.

HOLDING MTG’S SEAT – Clay Fuller holds on to Marjorie Taylor Greene’s seat in Georgia in a special election that at least gave the Democrats a consolation prize, he failed to win by as great a margin as Greene did in the election prior. With Republicans holding a slim majority in the U.S. House, this was a big win for the GOP.

AI CREATES 1K JOBS AT SALESFORCE – Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff announced online plans to hire 1000 new college graduates to drive the “exponential” potential of AI. He said in his X post, “… they said AI would kill entry-level jobs. Meanwhile these grads & interns are building it.”

PRINCIPAL HALTS MASS SHOOTER – Oklahoma’s Paul’s Valley High School witnessed a heroic miracle when their principal, Kirk Moore, stopped a wanna-be-mass-school shooter, 20-year-old Victor Hawkins. The principal stopped the shooter before he could harm or injure anyone, other than the principal himself. The principle survived the shooting with only minor injuries.

MOONSHINE LIBERTY – The U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has essentially struck down a 158-year-old law that made moon shiners run, the law making home liquor distilling illegal.

LINCOLN REFLECTING POOL RESTORATION SAVES AND DAZZLES – President Donald Trump oversaw an upgrade of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool that saved the nation hundreds of millions and left the monument looking better than ever before.

 

Bellwether Digest – MAY 9, 2026

By STAFF

This digest covers political, world, cultural, market, and sci-tech news from May 8-9, 2026.

This digest contains the Global Outlook, Headlines Missed, and People Advance Report.

TOP NEWS TAGS

  1. 2026 Elections
  2. Iran War
  3. AI Culture
  4. China US
  5. 2020 Election Fraud

GLOBAL OUTLOOK

  1. U.S. AI FIRMS TO GO THROUGH GOVERNMENT SAFETY SCREEN – America’s major AI companies, including Google and Microsoft, have agreed to submit all new AI models to the Federal government’s Commerce Department for a national security safety review/ This review will be conducted by the Commerce Department’s Center for AI Standards.
  2. MAGA WINS BIGLY IN INDIANAFive of the seven republican Indiana state senators that voted against the redistricting measure that would eliminate Democrat seats in the U.S. House lost decisively to Trump-endorsed candidates in the GOP Primary. Four other Trump-endorsed candidates won their primaries decisively as well.
  3. RUBIO CLAIMS “OPERATION EPIC FURY” IS OVERSecretary of State Marco Rubio announced the end of “Operation Epic Fury,” claiming the offensive part of the war with Iran is over.
  4. OMAR THUMBS STATE INQUIRYDemocrat Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota is under investigation for suspicion on fraud by the state of Minnesota. She failed to meet a deadline to turn over documents related to that investigation.

HEADLINES MISSED

  1. CHINA GATEKEEPING U.S. MILITARY FROM CHINA DEFENSE INDUSTRY THREATSThe U.S. is allegedly paying a CCP-connected firm to help identify potential stealth risks from embedding Chinese technology into the U.S. military.
  2. CCP terrorizes Dissenters on American SoilA former CCP agent told CBN News he was part of an operation to identify and silence former Chinese citizens in America who spoke out against the party. He told CBN they use threats, entrapment, and even kidnapping.

PEOPLE ADVANCE

  1. SICKLE CELL CURE MIGHT SOON BE ON THE WAYIf not an outright cure, a new discovery could turn Sickle Cell Anemia from a deadly and painful chronic disease to a curable, or at least manageable disease. The discovery comes from Swee Lay Thein and Stuart Orkin.
  2. TRUMP GIVES TEEN FIGHTING CHANCE AGAINST CANCERA 15-year-old teen boy from Louisiana was running out of options in his fight against cancer. A viral video brought his plea to President Trump, who promptly moved to get the boy the special treatment he needs to continue his fight for life.

STORIES WE ARE WATCHING

  1. ‘RINO’ Indiana Senate incumbents lose BIGLY to Trump-endorsed challengers– www.theblaze.com
  2. Trump orders military to pause effort to reopen the Strait of Hormuz – The Washington Post
  3. US Proposes Resolution to UNSC to Defend Free Navigation, Secure Hormuz; Rubio Says ‘Test’ for UN – Republic World
  4. Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump-backed Vivek Ramaswamy wins Republican nomination for Ohio governor– timesofindia.indiatimes.com
  5. Reporter Uncovers Stunning Fraud Red Flags in America’s Second-Biggest Somali Enclave– www.westernjournal.com
  6. Romanian government collapses after losing no-confidence vote – Europe live | World news– www.theguardian.com
  7. Post-poll violence in Bengal leaves 4 dead, dozens injured – The Times of India
  8. Education Department probes ‘all-women’ Smith College for admitting trans students– www.thecollegefix.com
  9. Trump tells shocked kids Iran ‘was two weeks away from killing you’ | World | News– www.express.co.uk
  10. Fed-up Justice Alito Just Leveled 5 Humiliating Insults at Justice Jackson in Withering Majority Opinion– www.westernjournal.com

Radar Links

  1. Leftist Censorship Groups Advise AI Company Anthropic– www.dailysignal.com
  2. Top Trump advisers urge China to leverage Iran ties to reopen Strait of Hormuz to global traffic– www.euronews.com
  3. Final Persian Gulf Oil Shipment Reaches California Amid Supply Fears– legalinsurrection.com
  4. IDF kills Hamas commander linked to Oct. 7 Nova massacre in Gaza airstrike– www.foxnews.com
  5. Black Democrat Elected Mayor In Deep-Red Texas City– crooksandliars.com
  6. Greene wins Michigan Senate special election, Democrats retain control of chamber – Michigan Advance
  7. 3 killed in latest U.S. strike on suspected drug boat in eastern Pacific, Pentagon says– www.cbsnews.com
  8. Syria says it dismantled Hezbollah-linked cell plotting assassinations | Conflict News– www.aljazeera.com
  9. Europe’s jet fuel supplies should fall below the key 23-day shortage threshold in June– fortune.com
  10. US ‘Welcomes’ Vatican Input on AI Regulation, Says Ambassador Burch – National Catholic Register
  11. REVEALED: Far-left UVU groups celebrate Charlie Kirk assassination, target TPUSA, Trump admin | The Post Millennial– thepostmillennial.com
  12. Louisiana Bill Would Educate Teens About Development of Unborn Babies– www.lifenews.com
  13. Planned Parenthood Gender Drugs Raise Fertility Concerns– www.standingforfreedom.com
  14. Social Media Threats: Comey’s Indictment Trivializes Serious Online Attacks Against Politicians | American Enterprise Institute– www.aei.org
  15. When strength in numbers stops working: Climate extremes rewrite monkey society in Costa Rica– phys.org

 

America’s major AI companies, including Google and Microsoft, have agreed to submit all new AI models to the Federal government’s Commerce Department for a national security safety review/ This review will be conducted by the Commerce Department’s Center for AI Standards.

US government expands vetting of frontier AI models for security risks – Politico
News Source
EXCERPT:
The Commerce Department’s Center for AI Standards and Innovation will conduct safety testing of new AI systems before they are released publicly.

Top artificial intelligence firms Microsoft, xAI and Google DeepMind have inked deals with the Commerce Department that will allow the government to vet their AI models for national security risks ahead of release.

The Center for AI Standards and Innovation, an office within the Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology, announced Tuesday that it will conduct pre-deployment evaluations and “targeted research” on AI models developed by the companies.

 

By STAFF

This digest covers political, world, cultural, market, and sci-tech news from April 1-16, 2026.

This digest contains the Global Outlook, Headlines Missed, and People Advance Report.

TOP NEWS TAGS

  1. Iran War
  2. 2026 Elections
  3. Gerrymandering Wars
  4. Trump Assassins
  5. AI China

GLOBAL OUTLOOK

  1. ABORTION PILL MAILER BAN LIFTED BY SCOTUSAfter a lower court issued an injunction temporarily blocking the abortion pill from being delivered through the mail, SCOTUS has lifted the injunction.
  2. SPIRIT AIRLINES LOSES ITS SPIRIT – Spirit Airlines had a 34-year run that came to an end this month after the company declared bankruptcy. They shut down all operations and are now in the process of selling off their assets, including their planes.
  3. SENATE HOPEFUL ARRESTED FOR THREATENING TO KILL TRUMPRaymond Chandler III of Alleghany County, PA was Democrat U.S. Senate candidate until he was arrested for threatening to murder President Trump. His plan was to threaten a U.S. Senator’s daughter if the Senator didn’t walk into the oval office and assassinate President Trump.
  4. DYING GAMESTOP GRABS FOR EBAYAs GameStop continues to struggle to stay afloat, it looks to make a $56 billion bid to buy eBay. The problem is they cannot show how they could pay for it.

HEADLINES MISSED

  1. HOMESCHOOLERS FACE CPS CALL IN CONNECTICUT If you want to take your child out of the public school system in Connecticut, your family will be subject to a visit from the Department of Children’s Protective Services.
  2. EPSTEIN RANCH WAS EUGENICS PARADISE?New leaked Epstein Files point to forced pregnancies of teens in Eugenics experiments conducted on Epstein’s ranch, Zorro Ranch.

PEOPLE ADVANCE

  1. FLORIDA GOP GERRYMANDERING MAP SIGNED – Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis has signed a new U.S. House redistricting plan that will give the GOP 4 more seats. The law was immediately challenged in state courts.
  2. AMERICA’S EUROPE TROOP CUTS BEGINPresident Donald Trump announced a 5,000 troop cut in Germany, adding more is to come. He said, “We’re going to cut way down. And we’re cutting a lot further than 5,000.”
  3. ALBERTA WANTS TO LEAVE CANADALeaders of the separatist movement of Canada’s western province Alberta claim to have enough signatures to trigger a vote on separation from Canada.
  4. KEEP YOUR PERSONAL DATA AT HOME EVEN WHEN YOU BUY ONLINEHarvard has created a digital open-source wallet that keeps your private data from being shared online. The digital wallet keeps your personal data on your phone, validating your purchases without relying on a third-party source to do so.

 

Stories We are Watching

  1. Child Struck by Gunfire as Secret Service Neutralizes Alleged Gunman Near White House– www.westernjournal.com
  2. ‘I think they’re getting some guns’– www.washingtonexaminer.com
  3. Trump’s Approval Ratings Sink Even Lower– crooksandliars.com
  4. Ukraine and Russia Declare Separate Truces– www.themoscowtimes.com
  5. Trump & Republicans Float Deal to Flip Fetterman from Democrat to GOP– slaynews.com
  6. Russia Lost Ground in Ukraine in April, a First Since Mid-2023 – AFP Analysis– www.themoscowtimes.com
  7. Fulton County moves to block DOJ subpoena for 2020 election workers’ personal data, calls effort “harassment” – CBS News– news.google.com
  8. U.S. sinks 7 small Iranian boats as Iran launches attacks on UAE and ships in Strait of Hormuz– www.cbsnews.com
  9. Young Voters Swing Back To Democrats As Republicans Are In Big Trouble– www.politicususa.com
  10. House sexual harassment payouts exceeded $300,000– www.politico.com

 

On Our Radar

  1. White House Considers Vetting A.I. Models Before They Are Released– www.nytimes.com
  2. SCOTUS declines to hear Stockton lawsuit over doctors penalized for allegedly spreading COVID-19 misinformation – krem.com
  3. DCCC Caught Putting ‘Thumb on the Scale’ in 2026 Primaries, ‘Narrowing Democracy’ – RedState– redstate.com
  4. Canada to host NATO-backed global defence bank, Vancouver awaits HQ decision | Daily Hive | Urbanized – Daily Hive
  5. The US fights to reopen the Strait of Hormuz as the UAE comes under attack in a test of Iran truce – AP News– news.google.com
  6. Staffer for Dem Sen. Cory Booker Who Brought Gun Into Capitol Without a License Saw Charges Quickly Dropped: DOJ– www.westernjournal.com
  7. Mamdani Calls ICE ‘Cruel and Inhumane’ After Anti-ICE Mob Violently Riots in Support of Criminal Illegal › American Greatness– amgreatness.com
  8. The Redistricting War Has Just Begun– www.dailysignal.com
  9. America’s AI Rules Are Being Written in Courtrooms | American Enterprise Institute– www.aei.org
  10. China Construction Bank (CICHF) Receives a Buy from Goldman Sachs – The Globe and Mail
  11. Trump considering federal AI model oversight – Mashable
  12. EU Leaders Respond to Question on National Identity and Globalism at EPC Summit in Yerevan – The Armenian Report
  13. ‘Nature’ Retracts Paper on the Benefits of ChatGPT in Education– www.404media.co
  14. Trump Goes All In On Regime Change In Cuba– thefederalist.com
  15. Earth’s origin mystery cracked? Meteorites may hold the secret to life’s ingredients |– timesofindia.indiatimes.com

 

After a lower court issued an injunction temporarily blocking the abortion pill from being delivered through the mail, SCOTUS has lifted the injunction. The abortion pill will continue to be available online until the matter is fully adjudicated in the courts. The ruling could make abortion an issue in the 2026 midterms. This is an issue that favors the Democrats.

Abortion pill rulings bring the issue back to the forefront in a midterm election year – 10TV
News Source

Excerpt:

Back-to-back court rulings on abortion pill access are thrusting a contentious political issue back into the spotlight ahead of this year’s midterm elections that will determine control of Congress for the second half of President Donald Trump’s term.

Friday’s ruling from a federal appeals court restricted mail access to mifepristone prescriptions, one of the most common abortion methods around the country, in the biggest shift to federal abortion policy since the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision allowing states to enforce abortion bans.

The Supreme Court then temporarily restored broad access to the drug on Monday while it further considers the case, setting the stage for a potential decision that could have wide-ranging consequences for patients and providers.

The U.S. House has passed partial funding of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), sending the bill to the President for an expected signing. The passage ends the 76 days of DHS shutdown.

Congress ends record-shattering DHS shutdown – Politico

News Source

EXCERPT:

On the 76th day since Department of Homeland Security funding lapsed, Congress passed a bill Thursday restoring the flow of federal dollars to most of its agencies — without solving any of the policy disagreements that led to the record-breaking shutdown.

The House approved by voice vote the partial DHS funding measure the Senate passed more than a month ago. President Donald Trump is expected to swiftly sign the bipartisan legislation, fully funding the Coast Guard, TSA, Secret Service, FEMA and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, along with other offices within DHS that don’t deal with immigration enforcement.

News Source
EXCERPT:

It’s been a long week for the gerrymandering Democrats.

On Monday, attorneys representing Virginia Democrats’ absurdly gerrymandered rewrite of the commonwealth’s congressional maps faced some pointed questions from a skeptical-sounding Virginia Supreme Court.

On Tuesday, the high court denied a motion brought by Virginia Attorney General Jay “Two Bullets” Jones to appeal Tazewell County Circuit Court Judge Jack “Chip” Hurley Jr.’s immediate ruling declaring unconstitutional last week’s referendum to change Virginia’s constitution. Voters narrowly approved a ballot question seeking to “temporarily” rip out a 2020 amendment that put political map-making in the hands of an independent commission — an inconvenient impediment to Democrats’ drive to change the current congressional maps to grab four more seats in Congress in the midterms. If all goes as the Dems planned, the new maps would give them a 10-1 advantage in Virginia’s congressional delegation.

Also on Tuesday, a three-judge panel dismissed a leftist lawfare group’s “novel” lawsuit seeking to rewrite Wisconsin’s congressional maps further to the Democratic Party’s advantage. The ruling marked the second rejection of the Democrats’ efforts to nix congressional maps drawn by the Red China-sounding People’s Maps Commission, handpicked by far-left Gov. Tony Evers. They have hopes a liberal-led Wisconsin Supreme Court will come to their rescue.

News Source
EXCERPT:

The Trump administration has removed the entire board of independent overseers for the National Science Foundation (NSF), CBS News reports. The decision, announced Friday, eliminated all 22 members of the board, which had planned to meet next week.

“I wasn’t entirely surprised, to be honest,” said one dismissed board member in an email.

Another dismissed board member noted the vast changes the Trump administration hopes to accomplish regarding the move.

“I think this is one more indication of the sweeping changes that the administration has in mind for the NSF.”

The board members were released via an email from the Presidential Personnel Office which noted that “on behalf of President Donald J. Trump,” their positions were to be terminated, “effective immediately.”

News Source
EXCERPT:

“The First Amendment does not protect vandalism, criminal trespass, or obstruction of law enforcement,” wrote Judge Kenneth Lee in the court’s decision.

The US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled against a group of anti-ICE protesters, blocking a lower court judge’s order that barred federal officers from using less-lethal munitions to disperse unruly crowds at the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in Portland, Oregon. The facility has been the site of ongoing violent demonstrations since June 2025.

The 2-1 panel decision, issued on Monday by judges Kenneth Lee, Eric Tung, and Ana de Alba, the last of whom dissented, states that protesters failed to show that federal officers deployed crowd-control munitions as a means of retaliation, rejecting the plaintiffs’ arguments that their First Amendment rights were violated. The decision is a permanent administrative stay granted to the Department of Justice (DOJ) pending further appeal proceedings, in which the panel ruled that the Trump administration is “likely to succeed on the merits” of the case.

President Vladimir Putin of Russia is claiming he has warned Trump of “extremely harmful consequences” if the U.S renews attacks on Iran. The public declaration puts Russia’s power reputation with its allies on the line should the U.S. attack and not suffer “extremely harmful consequences.”

Putin issues ‘extreme consequences’ warning to Trump on Iran www.mirror.co.uk
News Source
EXCERPT:

Vladimir Putin has reportedly warned Donald Trump that there will be “extremely harmful consequences” if the US attacks Iran again, as the pair reportedly discussed a potential Ukraine ceasefire in a 90-minute call.

Vladimir Putin has issued a warning to Donald Trump that there will be “extremely harmful consequences” should the US launch further attacks on Iran, according to reports.

It came as the two leaders discussed the Iran conflict and floated a temporary ceasefire in Ukraine during a 90-minute telephone conversation on Wednesday.

Public School Teachers Unions have contributed more than $1 billion to progressive organizations, causes, and candidacies in the last 10 years alone. The two heaviest hitters are the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the National Education Association (NEA), who combined to account for $669 million alone. This means progressives could count on teachers’ unions to give them $100 million a year for the last 10 years.

Teachers Unions Have Funneled More Than $1 Billion to Left-Wing Causes › American Greatness amgreatness.com
News Source
EXCERPT:

A report from Defending Education says teachers unions across the nation have quietly spent more than $1 billion in member dues on political activism and left-wing causes over the past decade.

Breitbart reports that two national teachers’ unions, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the National Education Association (NEA), spent a combined $669 million over the past ten years.

The figure skyrockets to over $1 billion in total political spending when state and local affiliates are included, showing a growing emphasis on activism rather than education.

The United Arab Emirates is officially separating from the OPEC alliance. They declared, “During our time in the organisation, we made significant contributions and even greater sacrifices for the benefit of all. However, the time has come to focus our efforts on what our national interest dictates and our commitment to our investors, customers, partners and global energy markets. This is what we will focus on going forward.”

United Arab Emirates quits OPEC alliance www.washingtonexaminer.com
News Source
EXCERPT:

The United Arab Emirates on Tuesday said it is exiting OPEC and the broader OPEC+ as of May 1, marking a major loss for the oil producing bloc as global energy markets remain volatile in light of the Iran war.

The UAE said it has participated in the organization for the greater global benefit, but it is leaving the group to focus on internal interests.

Representative Chip Roy (R-TX) is still trying to kill what is being called the Biden Vehicle Kill Switch. This is a requirement by the government that all car manufacturers create a vehicle kill switch that car owners cannot deactivate. So far, he has failed. This latest effort has also failed, with the Johnson-led House passing FISA renewal ahead of Thursday’s deadline.

Roy proposed an amendment to the FISA renewal act that effectively kills the Biden kill switch. Roy said, “Republicans should not be continuing a blatantly invasive Biden-era policy that enables round-the-clock monitoring of Americans in their own cars. That’s why I introduced an amendment to FISA to eliminate the ‘kill switch’ and stop this Big Brother technology from being built into new vehicles.”

Roy Pushes Amendment to End Biden Surveillance Mandate www.dailysignal.com
News Source
EXCERPT:

The vehicle kill switch may be getting another chance to be killed in Congress this week as a member of the House Rules Committee wants to repeal legislation that directs automakers to install surveillance technology on all new vehicles starting in 2027.

Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, a committee member and influential congressman on the conservative House Freedom Caucus, says the Biden-era mandate poses “a direct threat to our Fourth Amendment rights.”

“Republicans should not be continuing a blatantly invasive Biden-era policy that enables round-the-clock monitoring of Americans in their own cars,” Roy told The Daily Signal while the possibility of the amendment was still being discussed by the Rules Committee.

“That’s why I introduced an amendment to FISA to eliminate the ‘kill switch’ and stop this Big Brother technology from being built into new vehicles.”

This is Roy’s second attempt at killing the kill switch this year.

The need for an amendment already has large support from House conservatives, including Reps. Thomas Massie, R-Ky.; Scott Perry, R-Pa.; and Keith Self, R-Texas.

“The government should never have the ability to remotely kill your car or anything else you own,” Self told The Daily Signal. “When a group of us conservatives in the House tried to repeal this Joe Biden-era mandate set to take effect next year, 57 Republicans teamed up with 211 Democrats to stop us. That’s unacceptable.”

House passes FISA extension ahead of Thursday’s deadline – WGHN

News Source

EXCERPT:

A powerful surveillance authority that the U.S. government uses to spy on foreigners cleared the House on Wednesday, resolving one stalemate that threatened to derail its renewal before it expires this week.

It now faces hurdles in the Senate.

The controversial spy tool, known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, is set to lapse Thursday. Congress approved a 10-day extension ahead of the original April 20 deadline.

After House GOP opposition forced days of delay, the lower chamber advanced the measure earlier Wednesday in a procedural vote that was held open for about two hours as leaders worked to convince holdouts to flip their votes.

The House passed the measure — which is formatted as an amendment to an unrelated bill — in a 235 to 191 vote later in the day.

Section 702, which was first authorized in 2008, allows the government to collect the communications of noncitizens located outside the U.S. without a warrant, though it can also sweep up the data of Americans who are in contact with the targeted foreigners. The FBI is able to search Americans’ data gathered through the program without a warrant.

National security officials have long argued that the law is vital for disrupting terrorist plots, foreign espionage, international drug trafficking and cyber intrusions.

If you read scripture in public that condemns homosexuality, you might soon be jailed in Canada if Canada’s latest Bill C-9 passes. The proposed law would define “harm” as making public statements protected groups would find offensive.

What Canada’s Bill C-9 will do to Christians www.lifesitenews.com
News Source
EXCERPT:

She quoted Leviticus. Now she faces prison. Finnish MP Päivi Räsänen did not incite violence. She did not threaten anyone. She simply stated what Christians have believed for 2,000 years: that certain behaviors are sinful according to Scripture. For this, she has been prosecuted, threatened, and targeted — and now watches as Canada races down the same road with Bill C-9.

This is not about one law in one country. It is about a global redefinition of “harm” that criminalizes the very act of holding traditional religious beliefs. Räsänen’s case reveals the new logic: Offense is violence. Disagreement is hate. And the state now decides which doctrines are permissible and which are punishable.

News Source
EXCERPT:

President Trump says Iran is “in a State of Collapse” and wants the Strait of Hormuz opened “as soon as possible” while talks continue.

That is the pressure point right now: Tehran wants relief, global energy markets want the waterway open, and the U.S. blockade is still being used as leverage.

Fox News highlighted Trump’s latest comments Tuesday afternoon:

Axios put Trump’s Tuesday claim in the larger negotiating picture:

Trump said Iran had told the United States it wanted the Strait of Hormuz opened quickly while it worked through a leadership crisis. The key caveat is that Tehran has not publicly confirmed Trump’s version of the message, so the claim still sits inside a live diplomatic standoff rather than a settled public agreement.

President Trump has rejected the latest proposal by Iran to continue the ceasefire, which seems to be de facto over. The Supreme Leader has allegedly emerged and promised to free the Strait of Hormuz from U.S. presence. The progressive media is casting doubts on U.S. power while Trump’s base buckles in its support for the war.

Iran’s Missing ‘Supreme Leader,’ in Written Message, Vows ‘Future Free of America’ for Strait of Hormuz www.breitbart.com
News Source
EXCERPT:

The alleged, but missing, “supreme leader” of Iran Mojtaba Khamenei reportedly issued a written message on Thursday declaring that his country will impose a “new legal framework and management system for the Strait of Hormuz” that will result in a future “free of America” in the waterway.

Khamenei’s message declared the Strait, in which Iran has for over a month attempted to endanger commercial traffic, a “divine blessing” for his nation that the Islamist terror regime takes seriously. His statement, issued on the occasion of Iran’s “National Persian Gulf Day,” also contained a commitment to continue the regime’s illicit nuclear development — the main issue that the administration of President Donald Trump is seeking to settle with Iran.

The message follows weeks of attempts to end hostilities between Iran and America that began on February 28, when the Pentagon launched Operation Epic Fury and killed Khamenei’s father, longtime brutal dictator Ali Khamenei. President Trump announced a ceasefire this month that was initially intended to last two weeks, but has since been extended indefinitely. In public statements on his website, Truth Social, President Trump has explained that the extension was necessary given the large number of senior leaders in the Iranian regime that have been killed, resulting in unclear leadership and an intense power struggle within the terror state’s government apparatus. Iranian officials have attempted to deny the discord among their ranks but also have not at press time been able to organize a coherent response to the White House’s attempts to construct a long-lasting peace agreement.

Originally published April 24, 2026 for our weekly Issue of Mindful Intelligence Advisor.  Subscribe to get weekly issues.

By Michael A. Cessna, Military Affairs Correspondent

“I think NATO is obsolete. NATO was done at a time you had the Soviet Union, which was obviously larger – much larger than Russia is today. I’m not saying Russia is not a threat. But we have other threats. We have the threat of terrorism. And NATO doesn’t discuss terrorism. NATO’s not meant for terrorism. NATO doesn’t have the right countries in it for terrorism.”President Donald J Trump

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Beginning in the first week of January 2026, US President Donald Trump launched into a high-stakes gamble, with a large number of moving parts, and a high chance of failure. The Trump administration’s Panama-styled “Operation Just Cause” takedown of Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro opened the year.

Delta Force “operators” swiftly inserted themselves into the country and captured the drug-trafficking dictator and his wife, then successfully extracted them from the country. Both are now in custody in New York City on Federal drug charges.

No sooner was Maduro in custody than the Machine inside the Washington, DC Beltway turned its attention to the other side of the world.

In Iran, economic protests that began on December 28th of 2025 had suddenly morphed into a massive ‘street revolution.’

For the first time in forty-seven years, these protests seemed to have the potential to overthrow the financial lynchpin that held many of the worst terror groups in the Middle East together, keeping them in operation for far longer than they should have been.

Now, as we enter the third week of April of 2026, a massive month-long air and naval campaign – the largest the United States has conducted since the 2003 invasion of Iraq – has severely degraded the military and governmental structure of the Islamist regime in Tehran.

A. BACKGROUND

THE CLERICS – When the late Shah of Iran, Reza Muhammad Pahlavi, was forced to flee Iran in February of 1979, what had been our strongest ally in the Middle East – stronger by far than Israel at that time – suddenly, almost literally overnight, became a blood-enemy.

When the religious zealots in charge of the country led chants of “DEATH TO AMERICA!”, they meant it. This continued, even as the country was invaded by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in 1980, kicking off the bloodbath now known as the Iran-Iraq War.

Today, the radical Shi’a clerics controlling the country – many of them not at all Iranian – not only still chant “Death to America!” and “DEATH TO ISRAEL!”, but directly sponsor all manner of proxy terror groups throughout the Middle East.

They don’t just sponsor Hezbollah, who were the group that carried out the bombing of the Marine Barracks in Beirut in 1983, they also sponsor Hamas, who perpetrated the gory bloodbath of the October 7 attacks in Israel.

In addition to Hamas, they’re also supporting the Houthi Movement in Yemen. These same Houthis just recently effectively closed off the Red Sea to commercial merchant vessel traffic for a time, while launching Iran-supplied SCUD-derived ballistic missiles at anyone within range.

These are the major agents of the Islamic Republic, but many other such agents, or groups, exist, albeit smaller and less capable, but no less bloodthirsty.

The clerics were able to sustain this for the last forty-odd years, because of the succession of administrations. Democrats seemed to want to appease Iran while Republicans seemed to want to simply detain, not destroy Iran.

However, Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Iran drove the bulk of the people on the side of the mullahs – not because the people liked the mullahs, but because they were loyal to the idea of Iran.

The blunders and missteps of these U.S. administrations, examined through a neutral lens, display either unimaginable levels of incompetence, or outright treasonous behavior; there really are no third options.

THE PROTESTS – Throughout it all, the religious zealots in Tehran have engaged in levels of open and naked corruption internally such that the Iranian Rial collapsed on December 28, 2025, to a staggering IRR 1.4 million to $1.

At the same time, corrupt regime leaders – religious, secular and military – have pushed out so many worthless dam projects, they have critically damaged the nation’s artesian water supplies.

This has led to many villages in the country’s interior being abandoned for lack of water, with the population migrating to the large cities, further increasing stress on those water systems.

The industrial sector has fared no better.

While Iran still has some level of civilian industrial production, it is hamstrung by old plant equipment and gross inefficiencies.

Car and truck manufacturing does continue, but those exports bring in only minimal revenue, under $9 million. Exports of mining and agricultural equipment, while better, have highly suspicious and unreliable sourcing, making hard figures not worth reporting.

The one area where Iranian industry has been working overtime is in the war-materials production sphere.

Iran does have the capability to manufacture battalion-organic weapons and ammunition (from handguns to mortars, heavy machine guns, light artillery and some light anti-tank missiles).

It also remains capable of at least making bespoke spare parts for things like main battle tanks and some jet aircraft (the fact that a few F-14 ‘Tomcat’ fighters left over from the Shah’s air force are still flying is frankly astounding), but the main Iranian arms export is its unmanned drone fleet.

While presented as an impressive array of remote weaponry, the regime’s drone fleet has been very underwhelming when pitted against an active and ready air defense network.

Their drone and missile exchanges with Israel in 2024 and 2025 saw Iran fire c.1800 drones and ballistic missiles at Israel in total, with fewer than fifty actually hitting close to any targets.

All the same, Iran has supplied a steady stream of its Shahed-131 and -136 drones to Russia for its long-running war in Ukraine…but significantly, Russia has to extensively modify them for use against a Ukrainian air defense network supported by U.S. and NATO air defense systems.

Lastly, there is the dilapidated state of Iran’s oil production industry. Iran, as of 2026, is no longer able to refine the oil that emerges from its own fields. It can pump raw crude to tankers for export, but it has to import refined fuels for all of its internal vehicles and aircraft.

Decades of mismanagement, corruption, lack of internal investment and an inability to maintain the physical plant have severely hampered Iran’s ability to push out oil, which is the country’s main financial lifeline.

B. CURRENT SITUATION

BEFORE EPIC FURY – After an initial period of confusion and fear inside the Islamic regimes’ leadership over what to do about the mass protests throughout the nation, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its Basiji Militia adjunct moved into the streets in forces, and commenced a series of massacres across the country.

Concentrated on January 8 and 9, and continuing throughout January, the numbers of dead Iranian civilians could be somewhere around 40-45,000 people, conservatively.

In a direct response, the USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72) and its escorting strike group were ordered to the vicinity of the Arabian Sea, adjacent to the Strait of Hormuz, in mid-January. It was here that the first danger point appeared.

As of January 1, 2026, the United States had only two out of eleven aircraft carriers and their strike groups ready to deploy. The Lincoln was in the South China Sea, while the USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78) and its strike group were operating in the Caribbean, overseeing operations against Maduro’s Venezuelan regime and keeping an eye on Cuba (which is still a developing situation).

All of the other nine carriers were in various states of maintenance; only the USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN 71) and the USS George H.W. Bush (CVN 77) were “active”, in that they were in the process of “work-ups” – the process of ensuring that all of the many working components of a carrier strike group are functional and capable of working together – but were weeks from being available for deployment. The USS Eisenhower (CVN 69), in January, was still five or six months from being able to deploy.

This is a critical fail-point that had been building since the defense budget sequestrations of the Obama-era. Severe cuts had to be made to comply, which caused a long-term backlog in critical maintenance required to keep ships in fighting order to begin backing up.

This was aggravated by the Biden administration’s COVID-19 workplace restrictions, which had the immediate effect of delaying the refueling of the USS Stennis’ (CVN 74) nuclear refueling, extending a process that should have taken two years out to five; Stennis is not expected to leave the fueling process until the end of 2026.

This has obviously cut severely into deployment schedules, as the USS Ford – as of April 15, 2026, has been at sea in an operational posture for over 296 days, breaking a record set during the Vietnam War. This is brutal pace for both ship and crew.

This was the prelude to combat operations commencing on February 28th. Even given the terrible posture of the United States Military, the surge of air and naval forces into the region that began in earnest at the end of January was remarkable.

OPERATION EPIC FURY – When “Operation Epic Fury” (or “Operation Roaring Lion” for Israel) commenced on February 28th, US and Israeli forces – to the surprise only of those with no concept of reality – began to destroy Iran’s military and political structure in detail.

The Iranian navies (the regular national navy, as well as the IRGC ‘mosquito fleet’ of armed speedboats) ceased to exist within the first week. This led to the sinking of the 1,500-ton Moudge-class frigate IRIS Dena on March 4th by the Los Angeles-class attack submarine USS Charlotte. This was the first sinking of a hostile vessel by a US Navy warship with a torpedo in combat since World War 2.

In the air, US and Israeli planes hammered the Islamic Republic’s command and control structure with an opening of some 1,500 reported strikes on government and military targets, including the first successful “decapitation strike” – the direct targeting of a nation’s leadership – since the term was coined in the popular vernacular in the 1980’s/

That strike apparently killed the “Supreme Leader” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, some parliamentary officials and several senior IRGC commanders.

The regime responded with a massive barrage of ballistic missile and drone attacks on almost every country within range. While most of the strikes aimed at Israel failed to hit many targets of consequence, some strikes did get through, hitting and damaging mostly civilian housing complexes.

In the Persian Gulf, however, the Gulf Emirates and their populations – previously quiet supporters of the Tehran regime – suddenly discovered why that was a very poor choice of friends.

The regime in Tehran (such as that is, since it remains unclear who, exactly, is in charge, as of April 23rd) began firing barrages of Shahed drones at seemingly random targets in all of the Gulf Emirates, including Oman.

While a few military targets associated with the United States were hit, the vast majority of the drone strikes hit residential areas not associated with the US in any way. The attacks continued after the ceasefire began on April 8th.

At sea, with most of the Iranian Navy[s] sunk at anchor, or in suicidal sorties against US forces, on April 20th, the USN disabled, boarded and captured the Iran-flagged M/V TOUSKA in the Arabian Sea after it refused to halt its attempt to enter Iranian ports. Board-and-stop operations continue as this Deep Dive goes to print.

Diplomatically, Operation Epic Fury has brought the fundamental cracks in the NATO alliance into stark focus. Once stalwart allies like Britain and France have refused, point blank, to aid the United States in any way against Tehran, with Leftist-controlled Spain joining in, the whole value of NATO to the U.S. seems to crumble.

Notably, those three countries lack the combat power to aid the US in any way beyond acting as unsinkable aircraft carriers.

C. ASSESSMENT

As of publication, the facts on the ground are clear and stark:

There is no path to victory for the Islamic Revolutionary regime.

Even if Donald Trump commits political suicide by ending Operation Epic Fury prematurely, and unilaterally withdrawing U.S. combat forces from the Persian Gulf Theater, the regime in Tehran has been fatally compromised by combat operations to date.

They have lost too many experienced leaders – those capable of holding down the tensions and rivalries between the various factions of their state – too many physical assets, as their air force, in addition to their navy, is now functionally non-existent.

Even their oil production capacity has been so badly damaged, it is effectively a non-entity in contributing to Iranian state revenues…and that’s before addressing the looming water crisis.

Where Iran had been the major proxy supporter of terror groups throughout the Middle East, they can no longer do so: their internal currency is worthless, and with the current loss of oil revenue, they have no meaningful way to pay for their mercenaries imported from Lebanon, Gaza and Iraq.

This is the trap Machiavelli warned about in The Prince – but then, Machiavelli was an infidel…that rather limits one’s educational options.

And that opens the door to the real endgame.

D. RECOMMENDATIONS

If I were President Trump, I would lean into “staying the course”. The midterms are approaching in November of 2026 and right now, Trump is already facing enough setbacks.

Backing out with a lame deal that leaves the Islamic Revolutionary apparatus in place, even as a rump, would be a major blunder on his part. It would only compound his growing issues at home. A victory, however, in due time, will buoy his flagging support.

If there is one thing to understand about Donald J. Trump, it is that assuming that he will make some colossally stupid blunder is the surest route to handing him a huge win.

However – no one is perfect, and there is always the chance that Trump could decide that continuing to pound the regime is approaching a zero-sum state, and that withdrawing under an agreement is a good strategy. That seems unlikely, but not improbable.

PREDICTIVE ANALYSIS

As of Friday, April 24th, the regime in Tehran – what is left of it – will fail to placate Trump, sparking a massive internal collapse (which is already in progress), and a renewed air offensive that will destroy what little coherent leadership and logistics infrastructure remains under regime control.

The secondary impacts will shape the region for the next century.

Trump’s ploy with the ceasefire – which he must have supposed even an intact regime in Tehran would not be able to adhere to – was more to allow US combat forces to rest and refit for the resumption of combat operations.

While the U.S. rests and re-arms, the regime is not able to do the same. The regime is unable to dig itself out of the rubble and repair its infrastructure for the next round.

When this second hammer comes down in full, the regime will lose the ability to sustain supply to its remaining military strength – the light infantry forces of the IRGC, the Basiji Militia, and their foreign mercenaries – with basic supplies, like rifle and machine gun ammunition…

…Which is the point at which the Iranian Street will reemerge, as it did in the first week of January. But this time, instead of peaceful protestors, the regime’s debilitated forces will face an aroused and enraged civilian population, intent on bloody revenge for the January massacres. It will get very ugly, very fast.

This would be a very dangerous situation, if there were no transitional government waiting in the wings

In Iran’s case, there is a real exile government in all but name, waiting to step in: the Iran Prosperity Project (IPP).

POST-CLERICS – Led by Crown Prince Reza II Pahlavi, the IPP is the only organization in the greater Iranian Diaspora that has an actual plan for national recovery and governance.

Despite relentless propaganda from the worldwide Left-wing media, most Iranians in and outside of Iran support Pahlavi as at least a transitional leader.

Some are even calling for him to take the Imperial throne outright. This is not hyperbole, and the movement is not insignificant.

Videos of Iranians shot down in the streets of the country writing “JAVID SHAH!” (“Long Live the King!”) on the walls in their own blood create a visual representation of how real and profound that sentiment is.

The “ripple effect” of the regime’s collapse, however, looks to be closer to a global tsunami than a ripple.

Aside from the aforementioned impact in cutting off funding to terror groups and movements like Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis – which, alone, would reshape the Middle East – there would be an immediate cessation of support and sales to Russia. While this would not be a a huge impact on the Russian war effort, it would yet be impactful, nonetheless. The real impact is far greater than this.

NATO – Donald Trump and the main movers and shakers in his administration are done with Europe in general, and NATO, in particular…and what Europe is only now beginning to realize, is that the vast majority of the American people – and the voters – are done with them as well.

For decades, NATO member nations have left the United States and its taxpayers holding the bag to pay for European defense, offering only tepid support – at best – when the United States committed troops and cash in operations that directly benefited them.

And now, they have refused, point-blank, to help the United States finally deal with a criminal regime responsible for terror attacks on their own soil.

What is the track record of the “Orange Man Is Always Bad” global leader crowd? Nations that fit that bill, nations like Britain, France and Spain – have shown just how feckless and corrupt their leadership really is.

BRITAIN – Britain has allowed its military to deteriorate to the point that it is unable to “surge” a single warship to protect its own territories in the Mediterranean.

Keir Starmer should be deliriously happy that Javier Milei is in charge of Argentina, as Milei wants nothing to do with the Falklands.

Looking deeper, the once-mighty Royal Navy now has about twenty-five combat vessels in commission, with another thirty or so support vessels. They have one hundred and thirty-four (134 – not a typo) admirals on active duty. This ratio makes the Republic of South Africa’s 27 admirals for 12 ocean-capable ships appear downright efficient in comparison.

And coupled to this, is the degradation of the British Army, with many of their top tier forces losing personnel to what some might consider lawfare. Members of the SAS (Special Air Service) have been facing prosecution for “crimes” supposedly committed during “The Troubles” in Ireland.

These service members face prosecution based on EU human rights laws ex post facto, including possible “violations” in Afghanistan and Syria, in the form of political point-scoring many would simply call “lawfare”.

FRANCE – In contrast to Britain, France does have about one hundred ships in commission, including roughly thirty combat vessels. The current French political leadership, however, is more dysfunctional than Britain’s, although that may be changing in the aftermath of Emil Macron’s disastrous handling of French relations in Africa.

SPAIN – Meanwhile, Spain – although having a similar-sized navy to France, including minesweeping vessels that would be critical to clearing the Strait of Hormuz – is buried under yet another Leftist government that opposes “Trump-anything” on general principles.

CONCLUSION

The “Trumpian Trap”, here, is that the United States and Israel do not actually need Anglo-French-Spanish support to make Epic Fury work.

Trump asked for help from NATO and the various allied members individually, betting that they would refuse, publicly and messily…which they did. This is the leverage Trump can now use to present unilaterally exiting NATO to the American public, if he chooses to do so, post-EPIC FURY.

It’s not whether a nation has tools, but whether they will use them to aid you when you ask politely for help.

Europe is still quaking in terror at the thought of an all-out Russian invasion of Western Europe, should Ukraine collapse…and is only now starting to grasp that they have abandoned their own national defense – both internal and external – for so long, that alienating the only nation actually capable of defending them, was almost literally “cutting off their nose to spite their face”.

England needs an Alfred the Great. France needs a Charles Martel. Spain needs an El Cid…What they have are Starmer, Macron and Sanchez. But at least the United States has its own Charlemagne, warts and all.

And this is only early 2026, remember – Donald Trump’s term will not end until January of 2029.

FURTHER RESOURCES:

Deterring Armageddon: A Biography of NATO – Peter Apps

NATO: The Dangerous Dinosaur – Ted Carpenter

Iran: A Modern History – Abbas Amanat

The Ayatollahs and the MEK: Iran’s Crumbling Influence Operation – Lincoln P. Bloomfield