Occupy Banksters & Crony Capitalism & GREED

Trump's Supreme Court wins hit one wall: the economy
Axios | Courtenay Brown,Andrew Pantazi | 06/30/26

The Supreme Court this term gave President Trump powers over the federal government that no modern president has held. But it blocked his administration on two of the biggest issues for markets: the Fed and tariffs.

Why it matters: Its rulings hand the president firmer command of the federal bureaucracy, signaling to businesses that regulatory policy will be less stable - and more political - with every election.

But the cases preserve limits around the Fed and emergency tariff powers, where investors feared political interference could unsettle markets.

Between the lines: Case by case, the court gave Trump a freer hand to fire, deport and act before judges could catch up.

1. The court gave his administration major immigration wins, including on asylum access and immigrants' temporary protected status.
2. It repeatedly sided with Trump on emergency appeals, letting contested policies take effect while litigation continued.
3. It also let him fire Federal Trade Commission officials at will, weakening the ability of Congress to create independent agencies outside direct White House control. ...

How Peter Thiel Plans To Profit Off The Collapse of Democracy | More Perfect Union | 06/29/26 | 14:58

MIT Forecasts Civilization Will Fall By 2040 | Cooper Academy | 06/29/24 | 16:57

Civilization will be very different soon... | Pursuit of Wonder | 05/29/26 | 17:32

GOP reboots the Red Scare as young Democrats embrace socialism
Axios | Avery Lotz | 96/30/26

70 years after the Red Scare and 35 years after the fall of the Soviet Union, President Trump and Republicans are trying to re-introduce a national fear of "godless communists" ahead of the critical midterms.

it matters: A wave of resounding victories by Democratic Socialists has the GOP trotting out a message that last worked when most of those candidates weren't even born.

It's too soon to know if the message is working - but Trump and Republican strategists see an opening with voters old enough to remember Soviet-era nuclear drills and spy dramas. ... Read more

U.S. and Iran agree to halt strikes, hold talks in Qatar this week: U.S. officials
Axios | Barak Ravid | 06/28/26

The U.S. and Iran agreed to stop attacking each other, according to a senior U.S. official, as the two sides plan to hold talks this week in Qatar's capital to work out their dispute over the Strait of Hormuz.

Why it matters: The ceasefire is barely 11 days old and already on shaky ground with renewed strikes by both sides and President Trump's threat to restart the war and "complete the job."

The renewed fighting was sparked by competing interpretations of the memorandum of understanding (MOU) to end the war - especially its terms on the Strait of Hormuz.

The latest: "We decided to stop all the kinetic activity," a senior U.S. official tells Axios, using the military's term for strikes and other attacks. ... ... ... Read more

Senior care providers shaken by protected status ruling
Axios | Adriel Bettelheim | 06/29/26

Nursing homes and other providers of senior care are predicting upheaval and cutbacks in the wake of last week's Supreme Court decision to terminate temporary protected status for Haitian and Syrian immigrants.

Why it matters: Individuals who in some communities represent 8% or more of the staff and caregiving workforce could quickly lose their jobs, with no replacements at the ready, provider groups say.

1. The Haitian Temporary Protected Status workforce includes an estimated 13,000 nursing assistants and 8,000 caregivers, according to Americans for Immigrant Justice.
2. Some of the highest concentrations of health workers are in South Florida, Massachusetts and New York. ... ... ...

Washington Week with The Atlantic full episode, June 26, 2026 | PBS/Washington Week | 06/26/26 | 26:46

Supreme Court rejects Trump effort to toss $5 million E. Jean Carroll verdict
Axios | Ben Berkowitz | 06/29/26

The Supreme Court on Monday rejected an effort by President Trump to toss a $5 million civil verdict that found he sexually abused and defamed writer E. Jean Carroll.

Why it matters: It's another loss for Trump after years of trying to get the verdict thrown out. He has denied wrongdoing and alleged Carroll made false, politically motivated accusations. ... Read more

Nobody's sure where the Federal Reserve is heading
Axios | Neil Irwin | 06/26/26

Predicting what the Federal Reserve will do next has become an exercise in trying to game out the tactical instincts of a new chairman who isn't giving the world much to work with.

Why it matters: While it's early days in the Kevin Warsh chairmanship, his reaction function - the way he is likely to respond to incoming information about the economy - is a black box.

1. It means that a wide range of possibilities for interest rate policy this year remain in play - from multiple rate hikes starting in late July, to leaving rates steady indefinitely.
2. Warsh's policy direction should become clearer once he speaks more publicly and as incoming data sheds light on how quickly the inflationary pressures unleashed by the Iran war will recede. ... ... ...

Europe swelters under record June heat
Axios | Rebecca Falconer | 06/26/26

New June temperature records were set in the U.K. and France this week as a deadly heat wave grips much of Europe.

Why it matters: A new World Weather Attribution analysis found human-caused climate change made this week's extreme heat "virtually impossible" 50 years ago.

The big picture: Extreme heat warnings have been issued across the continent this week, from Ireland to Slovenia.

"The heatwave will spread over large parts of Western, Central, and Southern Europe within the next two weeks," the UN's World Meteorological Organization said in a statement. ...

By the numbers: 45% of cities analyzed across 30 European countries have "already, or are predicted to, break their highest ever heat stress levels," per a World Weather Attribution statement on its study findings. ... ... ... Read more

China's AI progress strains U.S. alliance pitch
Axios | Ashley Gold | 06/26/26

Washington is racing to sell the world on American AI just as China's cheap and capable models are becoming harder to ignore.

Why it matters: Chinese models don't have to beat OpenAI or Anthropic to reshape the global AI order. They just have to be useful, available and widely adopted.

Between the lines: Experts argue that two key things are kneecapping the U.S. government's desire to export American AI:

1. An erratic export controls strategy that involves making decisions about access to advanced models on the fly.
2. Not paying sufficient attention to China's efforts to spread its open-source AI models abroad while deploying AI at scale across manufacturing, health care and other industries domestically. ...

$8 TRILLION Just LEFT America's Banks... | Wall Street Truthbombs | 06/26/26 | 9:08

Behind the Curtain: America's great political implosion
Axios | Jim VandeHei,Mike Allen | 06/25/26

American politics, reordered and reimagined by a decade of President Trump's rise, fall and resurrection, is imploding in substantial ways.

Trump asks Congress for $87.6B, mostly for Iran war
Axios | ebecca Falconer | 06/25/26

The Trump administration asked Congress on Wednesday for $87.6 billion in supplemental funding, most of it to cover costs related to the Iran war.

Why it matters: The request is likely to intensify debate over presidential war powers as lawmakers in both parties question whether Congress should have authorized military action against Iran.

By the numbers: $67 billion of the request would go to the Defense Department, including $21 billion for munitions, $17.3 billion for operational costs and $12.1 billion for classified programs, according to the letter. ... Read more

Americans think the Founders would be disappointed in today's U.S.
Click to enlarge
Axios | Avery Lotz | 96/25/26

Back in 2001, most Americans thought the Founding Fathers would be pleased with how our country turned out.

Today, fewer than one in five agree, according to a recent poll.

Why it matters: Few things unite Americans in its 250th year like their shared conviction - across party, age, race and income - that the country has let its founders down.

By the numbers: More than three in four Americans (77%) say the signers of the Declaration of Independence would be disappointed by the United States we see today, the highest level of disappointment Gallup has ever seen. ... Read more

Behind the Curtain: Global AI wars
Axios | Jim VandeHei,Mike Allen | 06/24/26

The Five Eyes intelligence alliance issued a rare joint warning this week that frontier AI capable of crippling governments and businesses is close. The fast rise of Chinese and Japanese models helps explain the urgency and fear, officials tell us.

Why it matters: Yes, Anthropic's Mythos model is the most cyber-lethal threat in the world. But OpenAI is close here in America. And China and Japan, using much cheaper models, have gotten closer, faster than intelligence agencies anticipated.

"The timeline is not years, it is months," Five Eyes warned.

Five Eyes, composed of the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia and New Zealand, is considered the world's most comprehensive and powerful spy network.

Three new disruptions show just how fast it's happening: ... Read more

Europe braces for Trump's wrath
Axios | Mike Zapler | 06/24/26

What looked like a typical round of President Trump insulting European leaders last weekend could turn into a wholesale reordering of the trans-Atlantic relationship.

Why it matters: Administration officials are pointing to Europe's reluctance to get involved in Iran to question why the U.S. should continue underwriting its defense.

Against that backdrop, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte is due in Washington tomorrow for what may be the alliance's most consequential encounter with Trump since his return to office.

Zoom in: In the course of a few days late last week, Trump and his top officials rattled some of America's closest allies.

1. Trump said Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni "begged" him to take a picture with her at the G7. Meloni, once one of Trump's closest allies, said his claim was "completely fabricated," sparking a nasty social media war of words between them.
2. He broke the news of U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer's resignation before he could do it himself - a move British journalist Robert Peston called "extreme, even by his standards."
3. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth vowed in a speech to NATO defense ministers that the U.S. would conduct a six-month survey to determine which European countries aren't paying their fair share. The U.S. will cut its military presence in those places.

At the same time, Trump lavished praise on strongmen like China's Xi Jinping ("a very smart man"), India's Narendra Modi ("a great leader") and Russia's Vladimir Putin (who he said shouldn't have been kicked out of the G8) in an interview with Marc Caputo for "The Axios Show." ... Read more

'No one wants to talk about Iran': White House hopes to pivot back to economy
Politico | Alex Gangitano | 06/23/26

Inside the White House, the plan is to move on from the war in Iran and focus on the domestic issues that polls show matter most to voters. It’s proving hard to do.

The Iranians and the administration are offering conflicting accounts of what has been agreed to in the latest peace deal, undermining the effort to sell the proposed agreement as an American victory. Israeli troops on Tuesday fatally shot two people in Lebanon, threatening the fragile ceasefire. Conservative criticism of the deal abounds in the Wall Street Journal, on Fox News and throughout social media. ... Read more

Inside "Regime Change," by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan: How Trump has changed
Axios | Mike Allen | 06/23/26

Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan tell me these are the top two themes of their book on President Trump's second term, "Regime Change," out Tuesday:

His greater willingness to use power in his second term — like no other president, period.

How four years out of office built up his determination to project that power globally.

The latest: In the duo's first live interview about "Regime Change," Haberman said Monday night on Lawrence O'Donnell's "The Last Word" on MS NOW that people got used to Term 1: Trump didn't really know his government, and he was surrounded by aides who saw his behavior as dangerous.

"There's none of that now," Haberman said. ... ... ... Read more

After $86 billion IPO, SpaceX to borrow $20 billion
Click to enlarge
Axios | Matt Phillips | 06/23/26

After just recently securing $86 billion in a record IPO, Elon Musk's SpaceX plans to raise at least $20 billion more by selling bonds.

Why it matters: SpaceX's public offering earlier this month spotlighted the importance of the stock market to the AI boom. But giant tech companies are also leaning heavily on the corporate bond market to source cash for AI investment.

Last week, JPMorgan corporate bond analysts noted that data center–related debt was "the single largest driver of near-record debt issuance to start the year."

"We are not yet at the midpoint of the year and the hyperscalers, data centers and semiconductor financings total $165 billion or already $27 billion more than what was done in the full-year 2025," they wrote. ... ... ... Read more

Britain's lost decade
Click to enlarge
Axios | Zachary Basu | 06/23/26

On June 23, 2016, the Brexit referendum unleashed a populist tide that rewrote the rules of Western politics.

Ten years later, a diminished and fractured United Kingdom is preparing for its seventh prime minister - still haunted by the future it was promised.

Why it matters: Keir Starmer was elected as a competent, level-headed antidote to 14 years of Conservative rule - a period consumed by austerity, ideological warfare and the chaos of leaving the European Union.

His resignation on Monday, less than two years after a historic Labour landslide, reveals Britain's chronic instability has outgrown partisan explanation. ...

Instead, a succession of Conservative prime ministers plunged the country into deeper dysfunction: Theresa May was broken by the Brexit negotiations, Boris Johnson by scandal, Liz Truss by market panic, and Rishi Sunak by electoral humiliation.

Today, Britain remains marooned in a low-growth cycle - saddled with trade friction, high prices, strained public services and a hyper-sensitive electorate that tolerates virtually no political failure. ... Read more

Trump's messy path to peace
Axios | Ben Berkowitz,Barak Ravid | 06/22/26

Last Wednesday, the U.S. and Iran signed a deal to end the war.

Since then, Iran said it was closing the Strait of Hormuz again (though it didn't in practice, per U.S. officials), Israel intermittently bombed Lebanon and President Trump threatened to seize and toll the strait, kill Iran's peace negotiators, and send Syria in to fight Hezbollah.

Why it matters: A week after the cease-fire deal was announced, both the U.S. and Iran are pushing it to the limit.

At the same time, the two sides are meeting in Switzerland to hammer out a longer-term nuclear agreement - a sign that both sides remain engaged despite significant differences. ... Read more

El Nino is back with a vengeance - and fears of 'Godzilla' strength may be the least of our worries
Click to enlarge
TheGuardian | Ajit Niranjan | 05/21/26

UN's World Food Programme and agriculture agency issue joint appeal for funds to avert global hunger crisis before it happens

Adugna Woyessa was a little boy the first time drought tore his country apart. As harvests failed in rain-starved regions of Ethiopia in the early 1970s, and his school turned a classroom into a grain store for farmers to send aid, he had no idea that scientists were beginning to connect the force parching its fields with cyclical shifts in trade winds that had long supercharged violent weather from South America to Australia.

The now notorious El Nino - Spanish for "little boy" - was named by fishers in the Pacific in the 1800s, but it was not until the 1970s that scientists understood its global nature and began to piece together the historical impact of the natural weather pattern characterised by hot years and brutal extremes.

The 1972-73 El Nino warmed Peruvian waters to levels that collapsed the world's largest anchovy fishery - prompting scientists to conduct the first forecast of its state the following year - and brought harsh drought to south Asia, the Sahel and parts of east Africa ahead of an oil crisis that deepened global hunger. In Ethiopia, protests against the emperor's handling of the famine helped a military coup that ushered in a communist dictatorship.

"El Nino is one of the most challenging climate phenomena," said Woyessa, who grew up to become an epidemiologist at the Ethiopian Public Health Institute and has studied its effects on malaria epidemics. "Nutrition is everything for your capacity to withstand the challenges of its negative impacts on human health." ... Read more

What Larry Ellison Is Building Is Way Sicker Than We Thought | Dangerously Informed with Evie | 06/20/26 | 18:26

Google and the World Brain | Best Documentary | 06/18/26 | 1:29:02

Trump's all-powerful "Great Man" theory
Axios | Zachary Basu,Marc Caputo | 06/19/26

President Trump declared on "The Axios Show" on Thursday that he's discovered "no limits" to his power since going to war with Iran.

A forthcoming book reveals he's been entertaining an even grander idea: that he may be the most powerful man in history.

Why it matters: Trump is no longer merely testing the limits of the presidency. He's describing power in world-historical terms - placing himself in the lineage of conquerors, dictators and strongmen who bent nations to their will.

In a wide-ranging, soon-to-be-released 45-minute interview with Axios' Marc Caputo, Trump repeatedly measured power by submission: G7 leaders believed him when he joked "I'm the boss," he said, while Israel has "a lot of respect for me" and will "do as I say." ... Read more

Warsh's Fed Flips From Cuts to a Hike Despite Trump | Steve Rattner on Morning Joe | 06/19/26 | 7:49

U.S. claims Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire back on
Click to enlarge
magazine | author | date

Two U.S. officials told Axios on Friday that Israel and Hezbollah had agreed to a renewed ceasefire in Lebanon, but clashes continued even after it was supposed to be in effect.

Hezbollah sources told Reuters the group would observe the ceasefire, but a spokesperson for Israel's military declined to confirm its participation.

Why it matters: The continued fighting between Israel and Hezbollah led to the postponement of U.S.-Iran talks planned for Friday. U.S. officials hope the talks can now be launched.

The conflict has displaced more than one million people and Israel is still occupying a swath of southern Lebanon.

The U.S.-Iran deal includes a ceasefire in Lebanon, but Israeli officials have raised doubts about their commitment to any such truce. Political allies of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have openly attacked the deal. ... Read more

Inside the White House's AI power center
Axios | Maria Curi | 06/18/26

Like its AI policy, the Trump administration's AI team is taking shape on the fly.

Why it matters: Departures among key White House officials, combined with rapid advances in technology, are shaking up who's taking the lead on AI policy in the administration.

The big picture: Silicon Valley figures David Sacks and Sriram Krishnan have served as key architects of the administration's AI agenda. But with Sacks stepping back from day-to-day involvement and Krishnan preparing to leave, influence is shifting inside the White House to a broader group of officials and aides.

Here's who's running the show - for now.

1. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick
2. Chris Fall at Commerce's Center for AI Standards
3. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent
4. National Economic Council's Ryan Baasch
5. National Cyber Director Sean Cairncross

Arizona emerges as test case for AI's energy and water crunch
Axios | Amy Harder | 06/18/26

PHOENIX - This desert region has become a bellwether for the nation's data center growth as the tech sector grapples with rising temperatures and scarce resources.

Why it matters: Arizona is an extreme microcosm of the challenges the AI boom is running into across the country as tech companies race to build data centers demanding massive amounts of power and testing local water supplies.

"What took our utilities 100+ years to build, we need to double that within the next four to five years to keep up with demand," said Kevin Thompson, who serves on the Arizona Corporation Commission, a powerful utility regulator whose members are elected statewide.

'AWFUL': Trump's Iran deal sparks widespread criticism | MSNow | 06/18/26 | 9:32

JD Vance Instantly THROWN UNDER BUS as GOP PLOT his OUSTER!!!! | MeidasTouch | 06/18/26 | 16:17