THE NEWS

As America gets set to celebrate the nation’s 250th birthday this July, Dr. Ben Carson is on a mission to share how faith and religious principles are central to our founding and identity. Carson, a former secretary of Housing and Urban Development as well as a retired neurosurgeon, said schools are failing to teach accurate history lessons about America — and are instead influencing students with ideas that undermine patriotism and traditional values.”A lot of people really don’t understand the role of faith in our country,” he told Fox News Digital. “They say, ‘We’re not a faith-based country.’ I wonder if those people have read our founding document, the Declaration of Independence, which says that our rights come from our creator.”RARE AND ORIGINAL AMERICA FOUNDING DOCUMENTS TO FLY ON FREEDOM PLANE ACROSS NATIONCarson cited George Washington’s faith — noting that the father of our country prayed a lot and was dubbed “bulletproof Washington.””During the Battle of Monongahela, during the French and Indian War, he was the only courier” to escape uninjured, said Carson. “He had two horses shot from beneath him, had four bullet holes in his coat, bullet fragments in his hair — no flesh wounds.”Before he was elected president, Washington was approached by one of the Indian chiefs who was marveling at how Washington was not wounded.”‘I’m an expert marksman and I shot you 17 times, and my men shot you, and pretty soon I told [my men to] stop shooting at this man who’s protected by the Great Spirit above,'” Carson said, paraphrasing the Indian chief’s legendary words.During the Constitutional Convention of 1787, when those assembled in Philadelphia struggled with disagreements, Carson recounted how Benjamin Franklin stood before the delegates — and famously reminded them that throughout the American Revolution, they had frequently turned to God for guidance.JONATHAN ROUMIE VOWS THAT 40-DAY FAITH CHALLENGE CAN CUT THROUGH ‘THE NOISE IN THE CULTURE’ “He said, ‘We need to talk to God.’ And they prayed, and they got up, and they put together the Constitution of the United States, which has lasted as a single constitution for 250 years,” said Carson.”I don’t think there’s any other country that can say that they’ve had a constitution without changing it for 250 years. And I think it was a God-inspired document,” said Carson. “And if we continue to follow it, we will continue to do well.”In celebration of America’s 250th, Carson’s new children’s book, “Built on Faith,” makes the case for America’s founding. It will be published in late June, just ahead of July 4.The book is part of a joint “America Wins” campaign that includes Kirk Cameron and Riley Gaines, each authoring their own book, through the faith-based children’s publishing company Brave Books.”Instead of being taught fundamentals — reading, writing, arithmetic, appropriate history — [children] are being manipulated,” said Carson.CLICK HERE FOR MORE LIFESTYLE STORIESCarson noted the importance of instilling the belief of American exceptionalism in children.”I have been to 68 countries, will go to my 69th country this year. And there’s no place like America,” he said. “We need to do everything we can to teach our children and to preserve it.”With both Passover and Easter fast approaching, Carson noted the holidays connect us to the story of Jesus and to the story of redemption.”There is such a thing as good and evil. The Bible and our Christianity teach us to love our neighbor — not to cancel your neighbor if they disagree with you,” he said.A spiritual revival has been emerging among younger Americans, as has been widely reported, with members of Gen Z leading church attendance across generations.CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR OUR LIFESTYLE NEWSLETTER”One of the encouraging things is you may have noticed that a lot of Gen Zers are starting to go back to church, and are starting to realize that the path we were on can’t possibly lead to a good place,” said Carson. “They just put their brains in gear.”A recent Barna Group poll found that Gen Z is leading a resurgence in church activity, attending about 1.9 times per month— nearly double their 2020 rate — and now outpacing every other generation in regular worship.TEST YOURSELF WITH OUR LATEST LIFESTYLE QUIZOlder generations, such as boomers and elders, attend less frequently, averaging around 1.4 times per month, according to the same research. 

UK’s Ofcom To Investigate Complaints Of Climate-Change Denial

Authored by Paul Homewood via notalotofpeopleknowthat blog,

This is frightening. Indeed it is truly Orwellian…

From the Guardian:

A U-turn by the UK’s broadcasting regulator Ofcom means it will investigate complaints of climate change denial on television and radio for the first time since 2017. The move marks a victory for campaigners who have accused the regulator of allowing some broadcasters “to spout dangerous climate lies” and “flout” rules on accuracy and impartiality.

Complaints about programmes on TalkTV and TalkRadio were assessed by Ofcom, which then decided not to investigate, the same result as more than 1,000 other climate complaints since 2020. However, after a letter from the Good Law Project (GLP) in January, requesting an explanation for the rejections, Ofcom said it had withdrawn its original decision and would “consider afresh” the complaints.

One complaint was about comments from a Talk guest who said in November that climate change “was a deliberate effort to create fake anxiety … out of something that is false”. In the second case, also in November, another guest said the Labour government’s energy policies were “suicidal”, “driven by pseudoscience in many cases” and “a kind of cultish behaviour”.

A reassessment led Ofcom to conclude its approach to “due impartiality” in the broadcasts “required reconsideration”, with the results of the investigations to be published in due course. Ofcom stuck by its decision to not investigate three other climate complaints.

“Rightwing channels have been allowed to spout dangerous climate lies, unchecked, for too long,” said a GLP spokesperson. “We’re glad Ofcom is finally listening and await the conclusion of the investigations. Should it fail to take action against Talk’s misinformation, we will not hesitate to hold them to account.”

An Ofcom spokesperson said: “In re-examining the programmes, we concluded that they raise potentially substantive issues under the broadcasting code which warrant investigation. We have, therefore, opened investigations [on] whether they breached our rules on due impartiality and material misleadingness.” Ofcom said it had also opened another climate-related investigation after a viewer complaint about another TalkTV programme.

A spokesperson for Talk said: “We, as we always would, will cooperate with Ofcom in these matters.”

Full story here.

The first point to make is that there are already rules in place to address factually inaccurate news reporting. But this is not what is at issue here.

OFCOM, it appears, now want to police free speech. Both of these new complaints concern the views of guests, not the journalists or presenters.

Guests on these sort of shows make all sorts of outlandish, and sometimes patently false, comments about all sorts of topics. That is their right. We still have something called freedom of speech in this country.

OFCOM does not get involved in these other cases, so why should they intervene when the topic is climate change?

This decision to intervene in free speech by OFCOM opens a whole new barrel of worms.

What will happen in future if somebody challenges the establishment line on, say, hurricanes?

There is a wide variety of scientific opinion on most climate topics. Will OFCOM be the new arbiter of which version is “correct”?

Will they ban anybody who dares offer a different opinion, or, heaven forbid, dare to quote some facts?

Maybe OFCOM will also ban all use of fraudulent weather attribution models, but I somehow doubt it!

This is a chilling suppression of free speech. “Truth” is fine, but who decides what is true and what is not? OFCOM? The Government? BBC? UN?

And it won’t stop with climate change. How long before we are not allowed to call Starmer the worst PM ever? Or dare to criticise his Government?

We will end up with George Orwell’s Ministry of Truth, where the Government decides what is right and what is wrong.

“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command”

Tyler Durden
Sun, 03/29/2026 – 07:00

The Supreme Court is poised to answer a fundamental constitutional question largely ignored for more than a century: Who qualifies as an American citizen?The justices on Wednesday will hold oral arguments to review President Donald Trump’s efforts to limit birthright citizenship in the U.S., a landmark case with the potential to upend the lives of millions of Americans and lawful residents.At issue is the executive order the president signed on his first day back in office, which would end automatic citizenship for nearly all persons born in the U.S. to undocumented parents, or parents with lawful temporary status in the country — a seismic legal, political, and social shift that critics note would break with more than 150 years of legal precedent. A ruling is expected within three months but until then, Trump’s plans remain on hold.HOW TO MAKE PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP’S IMMIGRATION PAUSE STICK IN COURTThe case is the fourth of a five-part series of appeals the Supreme Court will consider this term on the merits of Trump’s sweeping executive agenda.The nine-member bench has already tossed out his reciprocal tariffs on most other countries, which relied on an economic emergency law. A separate dispute over ending protections for migrants with temporary protected status will be argued later in April.Still pending are rulings on the president’s ability to fire members of independent agencies, including Federal Reserve governors.But the administration has been winning most of the emergency appeals at the Supreme Court since Trump took office again, which dealt only with whether challenged policies could go into effect temporarily, while the issues play out in the lower courts– including immigration, federal spending cuts, workforce reductions, and transgender people in the military.Trump’s order now before the high court for final review would reinterpret the 14th Amendment, which states, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside” — a provision the president argues has been misinterpreted.Executive Order 14160, entitled “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship,” would deny it to those born after February 19, 2025 whose parents are illegal immigrants, or those who were here legally but on temporary non-immigrant visas.And it bans federal agencies from issuing or accepting documents recognizing citizenship for those children.”The privilege of United States citizenship is a priceless and profound gift,” says part of the order. “But the Fourteenth Amendment has never been interpreted to extend citizenship universally to everyone born within the United States.”A Supreme Court ruling on the issue could have sweeping national implications for an issue Trump officials argue is a crucial component of his hardline immigration agenda, which has become a defining feature of his second White House term.BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP SUPPORTERS GET THE LAW WRONG BY IGNORING OBVIOUS EVIDENCEIn its high court petition, the Trump Justice Department said all lower court decisions handed down last year striking down the executive order had relied on a “mistaken view” with potentially “destructive consequences.””The lower courts’ decisions invalidated a policy of prime importance to the president and his administration in a manner that undermines our border security,” said John Sauer, U.S. Solicitor General, who will make the case in person at oral arguments.”Those decisions confer, without lawful justification, the privilege of American citizenship on hundreds of thousands of unqualified people,” he added.Opponents argue the effort is unconstitutional and “unprecedented,” and would threaten some 150,000 children in the U.S. born annually to parents of non-citizens, and an estimated 4.6 million American-born children under 18 who are living with an undocumented immigrant parent, according to data from the Pew Research Center.Separate coalitions of about two dozen states, along with immigrant rights groups, and private individuals — including several pregnant women in Maryland — had filed a class-action lawsuit.The plaintiffs — including those originally from Taiwan and Brazil — seek to preserve access to citizenship-related benefits including Social Security, SNAP, and Medicaid.To date, no court has sided with the Trump administration’s interpretation of the 14th Amendment, and blocked the order from taking force.The ACLU and other immigrant advocacy groups in the U.S., have accused Trump of attempting to “unilaterally rewrite the 14th Amendment.””The federal courts have unanimously held that President Trump’s executive order is contrary to the Constitution, a Supreme Court decision from 1898, and a law enacted by Congress,” said ACLU legal director Cecillia Wang, who will argue for the plaintiffs in the courtroom session. “We look forward to putting this issue to rest once and for all in the Supreme Court this term.”Much of the public session is expected to focus on a phrase in the Constitution that the government asserts limits the citizenship right.”The Fourteenth Amendment has always excluded from birthright citizenship persons who were born in the United States but not ‘subject to the jurisdiction thereof,'” said Trump’s original order, which the Justice Department essentially interprets as “being subject to U.S. law” — which would give the government discretion to exclude those whose parents are in the country illegally.But lawyers for the plaintiffs say a century-old Supreme Court ruling affirmed the phrase only excluded automatic citizenship to children born to foreign diplomats or hostile forces.Supporters of a broad, traditional interpretation point to the 14th Amendment’s origins — passed after the Civil War to end the practice of excluding individuals of African descent, including slaves and free persons, from ever becoming U.S. citizens.TRUMP ADMIN PUTS KEY BIDEN-ERA IMMIGRATION POLICY ON NOTICE: ‘UNSUSTAINABLE CYCLE’Thirty-one years after its enactment, the Supreme Court for the first time decided the status of children born in the U.S. to alien parents, creating the precedent of how the Citizenship Clause would be applied in future cases.Plaintiff Wong Kim Ark was born in San Francisco and became a cook, but was subject to the Chinese Exclusion Act and denied reentry to the U-S after a trip abroad.In its landmark ruling, the high court concluded, “A child born in the United States, of parents of Chinese descent, who, at the time of his birth, are subjects of the Emperor of China, but have a permanent domicil and residence in the United States… becomes at the time of his birth a citizen of the United States, by virtue of the first clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution.”A recent Pew Research poll asked Americans whether they wanted children of immigrants, temporary immigrants or any immigrants lawfully present in the United States to be citizens, and 94% said yes.Critics of the administration’s plans fear a chaotic and unfair patchwork of enforcement that would apply in some states and not others, some families and not others, and that it could be sweeping in scope.”Under the executive order, that child is born a non-citizen,” Amanda Frost, director of the Immigration, Migration and Human Rights Program at the University of Virginia School of Law. “Denied all the benefits and privileges of citizenship and theoretically deportable on day one of their life. And then every single American family having a child will now have to prove their status before that child is considered a citizen by the U.S. government. And that doesn’t matter if they go back to the Mayflower. That’s what everyone will have to prove going forward.”But immigration reform advocates point to what they call abuses in the system.JUSTICE JACKSON AUTHORS UNANIMOUS SCOTUS OPINION HANDING TRUMP AN IMMIGRATION WIN”That is the exploitation of America’s birthright citizenship policy… particularly those by nationals of the People’s Republic of China,” Peter Schweizer, president of the Government Accountability Institute. “Birth tourism is essentially an industry that provides concierge service at every step of the way for a foreign national, in this case China, to pay the firm roughly $100,000, they will transport them to the United States, arrange medical care, arrange citizenship for the child,” he added. “And as soon as the child is old enough to travel, they will return back to China.”In oral arguments last May when the Supreme Court first looked at Trump’s birthright citizenship order, many on the bench were skeptical of the Trump administration.The government’s position “makes no sense whatsoever,” said Justice Sonia Sotomayor, saying it could leave some children “stateless.””So as far as I see it, this order violates four Supreme Court precedents,” added Sotomayor. “And you are claiming that not just the Supreme Court, that both the Supreme Court and no lower court can stop an executive from universally violating those holdings by this Court.” “On the day after it goes into effect — it’s just a very practical question of how it’s going to work,” asked Justice Brett Kavanaugh. “What do hospitals do with a newborn? What do states do with a newborn?” when it comes to determining citizenship on the birth certificate.”I don’t think they do anything different,” replied Sauer. “What the executive order says in Section Two is that federal officials do not accept documents that have the wrong designation of citizenship from people who are subject to the executive order.””How are they going to know that?” asked Kavanaugh, shaking his head.  The case is Trump v. Barbara (25-365), a pseudonym for a Honduran citizen who fears for her and her family’s safety. Her child was born in the U.S. in October, months after she joined the lawsuit as the named plaintiff.

 “Wake up before 6 a.m. to the Russian winter. Walk to the construction site as a group. Work from 7 a.m. until 10, 11 p.m., sometimes even midnight. Without breaks. There is no set end time. You finish when the target is met. Rain, snow, it does not matter. We worked with no gloves, no heating, no protective equipment. My hands cracked so badly I could not grip the tools. But you do not stop.”This was the reality for “RT,” identified by his initials to protect his identity, a former reported victim of North Korea’s overseas forced labor, who described his experience to Fox News Digital. The man was one of the 100,000 workers sent overseas under North Korea’s state-sponsored labor program.AS WAR LOSSES NEAR 2 MILLION, RUSSIA ACCUSED OF TRAFFICKING FOREIGN RECRUITS FROM AFRICA, ASIA”I was told I could earn money,” he claimed to Fox News Digital. “That was all. Nobody mentioned a quota. Nobody told me that most of what I earn would be taken. I thought if I went to Russia and worked hard, I could save enough to build a better life for my family. When I arrived, I realized none of that was true. The money was not mine. It was never going to be mine.”A new report published by the international human rights organization Global Rights Compliance shares firsthand testimonies from North Koreans working in Russia.The report found that Russian companies are employing North Korean workers in violation of United Nations sanctions, often obscuring their identities so laborers do not even know who they are working for. U.N. Security Council resolutions require member states to repatriate North Korean workers, making their continued presence in Russia a potential breach of international sanctions.The findings offer one of the clearest pictures yet of how North Korea is allegedly sustaining its regime under sanctions: exporting its citizens as labor, extracting their wages, and maintaining total control even beyond its borders.Global Rights Compliance North Korea advisor Yeji Kim told Fox News Digital, “Every North Korean worker deployed abroad must pay a mandatory monthly sum to the state, known as the gukga gyehoekbun. As one worker told us, it must be paid ‘no matter what, dead or alive.’”A typical worker earns roughly $800 a month for up to 420 hours of labor. From that, between $600 and $850 is deducted for the quota, along with additional payments for travel debt and communal living expenses, Kim said. What remains is approximately $10. If workers fall short, the deficit carries forward, leaving some in debt for an entire year, according to Kim. One worker described the quota as a “lump on his back” that dictated every aspect of his life abroad.SHE HELPED NORTH KOREA INFILTRATE AMERICAN TECH COMPANIES”Every month you must pay,” RT claimed. “There is no negotiation. If you fall short, the debt carries forward to the next month. We were told, ‘The quota must be met by any means necessary, even if it meant paying out of their own pocket.’ You came to earn and you leave with nothing. And if you fail too many times, they send you home. Home does not mean relief. It means blacklisting, interrogation, and sometimes your family paying the price.”Fox News Digital reached out to the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and North Korea’s mission to the United Nations for comment and did not receive a response in time for publication.The report identified what it said are all 11 International Labour Organization indicators of forced labor across 21 testimonies from workers in three Russian cities who did not know each other. These include debt bondage, restriction of movement, withholding of wages, excessive overtime, physical violence, surveillance, deception, isolation, abuse of vulnerability and abusive conditions.Upon arrival in Russia, passports are immediately confiscated and retained by North Korean security officials, according to the report. NORTH KOREA EXECUTED TEENS FOR LISTENING TO K-POP, WATCHING ‘SQUID GAME’: REPORT”My passport was taken the day I arrived,” RT said. “I never held it again. I could not leave the worksite freely. The city was right there, beyond the fence, but we were sealed off from it. A few times a year, we were allowed out, but only in groups, heads counted, with a fixed time to return.”Physical violence was reported in several cases, including one instance in which a worker was beaten so severely he could not work for two weeks. Surveillance onsite was described as constant, with collective punishment used to force workers to monitor one another.Workers described living in overcrowded containers infested with cockroaches and bedbugs, with access to only one or two showers per year and in some cases just a single day off annually. One worker told investigators they were forced to “lead lives worse than cattle.”When asked how central the program is to North Korea’s economy, Kim said: “The U.N. Panel of Experts estimates approximately $500 million annually from the labor program alone. For a country under the most comprehensive sanctions regime in U.N. history, that is a critical revenue stream. It sustains the political elite, funds internal patronage networks and underwrites military ambitions, including nuclear development.”The findings come as North Korea also is reported to have supplied weapons and troops worth as much as $14 billion to support Russia’s war in Ukraine.The report’s authors warn that host countries play a critical role in enabling the system by allowing it to operate within their borders.The people who made it into the report are among the few who managed to escape the system. RT said he now feels an obligation to speak out.”We are people just like you but working like a cow,” he said. We have families. We left home because we wanted to give our children something better, and what we found was a system that took everything from us.”He said thousands remain trapped.”I want people to know that right now, today, there are men on construction sites in Russia working 16 hours a day, sleeping in containers, earning nothing, with no way to call home and no way to leave. Their names are not in any report. Nobody knows they are there. But they are there. And if I could say one thing to them, it would be — the world is starting to listen. Please hold on.”

A Texas woman is dead after being shot in an alleged carjacking while visiting her cancer-stricken best friend. Marietta Allison traveled from Austin to Houston to accompany friend Cassie Daniel to her second treatment for stage 4 ovarian cancer on Saturday, March 7. Following a day at the hospital in which Allison took care of Daniel as she received a round of chemotherapy, the pair of friends left around 10:30 p.m. to spend the night at a nearby friend’s house. When there was no parking at the building, Allison dropped Daniel and her father off and circled the block to find somewhere to leave the car. REPEAT OFFENDER WITH 20-PLUS PRIOR CHARGES ALLEGEDLY KILLS 23-YEAR-OLD IN HIT-AND-RUN, THEN WALKS AWAY”We were putting our things away, and I heard a scream and then a gunshot,” Daniel told Fox News Digital. “I felt like something large dropped to the floor, and I was like, ‘Was that a gunshot?’” When Daniel realized Allison had not returned from parking the car, she began to worry. “I stepped out into the living room and told my friends, ‘Was that a gunshot?’” Daniel said. “She was like, ‘Have you heard from Marietta?’ and I said no. And my friend said, ‘Well, I just tried to call her, and she didn’t answer.’” Feeling as though something was wrong, Daniel went to the last known location of Allison’s phone, where she found Allison lying on the sidewalk surrounded by police officers. “She was lying on the ground, and the paramedics were around her and I could see her purse down on the sidewalk,” Daniel said, adding Allison’s wallet was left at the scene.REPEAT OFFENDER WITH LONG RAP SHEET ALLEGEDLY GUNS DOWN MAN WHILE FREE ON PROBATION, BONDS DESPITE VIOLATIONSAuthorities quickly learned that the vehicle Allison was driving was missing, launching a frantic search for an apparent carjacker as her loved ones watched helplessly as she was transported to a hospital, where she later died from her injuries.  “She was almost instantly killed, if not just a few seconds later,” Daniel told Fox News Digital. “She was shot kind of through the neck and through the head.”Following a brief search, officers found 18-year-old Darius DeWayne Hall driving the victim’s stolen vehicle, resulting in a high-speed chase, according to KHOU 11. COLORADO REPEAT OFFENDER FREED FROM JAIL LESS THAN TWO WEEKS BEFORE ALLEGEDLY KILLING MOTHER OF THREE: REPORTHall subsequently crashed the vehicle along the Southwest Freeway and attempted to flee on foot, sparking an hours-long standoff in a nearby residential area, according to the outlet.”I opened my door around 4:15 a.m., and there was an officer on his knees with a shield and one behind him with a gun pointing right down the stairs to that unit where they found him,” neighbor Ken Knisely told KHOU 11.GOT A TIP?Hall was later taken into custody at around 7 a.m. and charged with capital murder stemming from Allison’s death.FOLLOW US ON XIn the immediate aftermath of the shooting, Daniel is choosing to remember Allison as a loving individual who spent her last moments taking care of her friend in need. GET BREAKING NEWS BY EMAIL”She was literally sitting in the hospital bed, spoon-feeding me a fruit bowl,” Daniel told Fox News Digital as she recalled her final day with Allison. “And I was like, ‘Love like this exists.’”CLICK HERE FOR MORE US NEWS”So I could see the tender care, compassion, empathy and just the love that was there. And at the same time, I was like, this is a precious moment. I had no idea that it would be one of my last moments with her.” The Houston Police Department did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment. 

Aluminium Bahrain, or Alba, hosts the world’s largest smelter and the attack adds to the pressure on global supplies of the metal.

Republican Sen. Ted Cruz is staying neutral in the combustible GOP Senate nomination showdown in Texas between longtime Sen. John Cornyn and state Attorney General Ken Paxton.”I like John. I like Ken. They’re both friends of mine. I have supported both of them in the past. I’ve worked closely with both of them. I’ve endorsed both of them. I’ve campaigned with both of them, and so I’m staying out,” the conservative firebrand three-term senator said in a Fox News Digital interview on Wednesday.The winner of the May 26 Republican runoff election will face off with Democratic nominee state Rep. James Talarico in this autumn’s general election in a race that’s among a handful which may decide if the GOP keeps its Senate majority in the midterms. The GOP currently controls the chamber, 53–47.BRUISING GOP SENATE PRIMARY SHOWDOWN HEADS INTO OVERTIMECornyn edged Paxton by a point in the March 3 primary, as they were the top two contenders among a crowded field of Republican candidates. But since neither of the heated rivals cracked the 50% threshold to win the nomination, the race headed into overtime.While some of Cruz’s top outsider political advisers are supporting Paxton, the senator is declining to take sides.”I trust the voters of Texas to make this decision,” the senator said.‘OPEN BORDERS, TRUMP-HATING RADICAL’—REPUBLICANS QUICKLY POUNCE ON TALARICOTalarico, who is considered a Democratic Party rising star, topped progressive firebrand Rep. Jasmine Crockett, a vocal Trump critic, in their party’s primary. Talarico is trying to become the first Democrat in nearly four decades to win a Senate election in right-leaning Texas.The Cornyn campaign and aligned super PACs have spent big bucks to run ads attacking Paxton, arguing that Democrats will flip the seat in the general election if Paxton’s the GOP’s nominee.Cornyn, his allies, and the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), the campaign arm of the Senate GOP, repeatedly pointed to the slew of scandals and legal problems that have battered Paxton over the past decade, as well as his ongoing messy divorce.Paxton, a longtime supporter and ally of President Donald Trump and a MAGA firebrand who grabbed significant national attention by filing lawsuits against the Obama and Biden administrations, has pushed back by repeatedly questioning Cornyn’s conservative credentials and past support for Trump.The president, whose sway in Republican nomination battles remains immense, stayed neutral during the primary campaign.Hours after Cornyn and Paxton advanced to the runoff, Trump took to social media to announce, “I will be making my Endorsement soon.”Trump added that Trump added that he would “be asking the candidate that I don’t Endorse to immediately DROP OUT OF THE RACE!”All signs at the time pointed to Trump backing Cornyn.But more than three weeks since his social media post, Trump still remains neutral. And that has the MAGA faithful, many of whom are backing Paxton, hopeful that the president will stay out of the race, which would be a major victory for the Texas attorney general.Paxton traveled to the president’s Mar-a-Lago residence last weekend for a Palm Beach County GOP dinner, where he briefly met with President Trump, two sources with knowledge of the encounter confirmed to Fox News Digital. One of the sources called it a ‘check in’ between Trump and Paxton. The news was first reported by Politico.There’s been a dearth of public opinion polling in the runoff, but the two surveys that have been released suggest Paxton holds a single-digit lead.The race between Cornyn and Paxton is viewed by many Republicans as a battle between MAGA world and the grassroots versus the party establishment for the soul of the GOP.

Escobar: The Long And Winding Petro-Gold Road

Authored by Pepe Escobar,

The 15-point plan that Team Trump presented to Iran is already D.O.A.

It’s an imposed capitulation: a surrender document disguised as “negotiation”.

The non-plan plan – imposing demands while begging for a one-month ceasefire – includes zero uranium enrichment on Iranian soil; full dismantlement of Natanz, Isfahan and Fordow installations; all enriched uranium out of Iran; the missile program extremely restricted; no funding for Hezbollah, Ansarallah and Iraqi militias; the Strait of Hormuz totally opened.

All that in exchange for a vague “cancelling the threat of reimposing sanctions”.

The only realistic Iranian response to this accumulated wishful thinking might be Mr. Khorramshahr-4 showering his business card across selected targets – consistent with leveraging economic and military deterrence to dictate the real terms.

And the real terms are harsh:

Closure of ALL US military bases in the Gulf; guarantee of no more wars; end of the war on Hezbollah; lifting of ALL sanctions; war damage reparations; a new order in the Strait of Hormuz (already in effect: collecting fees just like Egypt in Suez); missile program intact.

Conclusion: the infernal escalation machine keeps rolling.

A Member’s Club With an Entrance Fee in Petroyuan

Meanwhile, oil and gas prices are mired in a kaleidoscope of volatility, affecting currencies, equities, commodities, supply chains, inflation scares. This is already an out-of-control global economic shock with devastating consequences in progress.

Before the war, Iran was producing a little less of 1.1 million barrels of oil a day, sold at $65 a barrel with a $18 discount: thus, in practice only $47. Now, Iran has increased production to 1.5 million barrels a day, selling at $110 (and counting), mostly to China, with a maximum $4 discount.

And that does not even include petrochemical sales: on the up and up, and for an array of extra customers. To round it all up, all payments are conducted via alternative mechanisms. Which brings us to a startling fact: for all practical purposes, this is sanctions relief in effect.

Now for the Holy Grail in the war: the Strait of Hormuz. It is de facto open, but with a toll booth controlled by the IRGC.

A toll booth with a twist: veto power over the guest list. Like entering an exclusive private club.

To get the IRGC clearance, a tanker needs to pay the toll: $2 million per vessel.

This is how it works.

You contact an IRGC-linked broker. The broker relays to the IRGC the essential info: vessel ownership, national flag, cargo manifest, destination, crew list, and AIS transponder data.

The IRGC runs background checks. If you are not US-linked, not shipping any Israel-linked cargo, and your flag is not part of “aggressor states”, you’re in. Japan and South Korea, for instance, still have not been cleared.

Then you pay the toll. In cash – whatever currency you have – but preferably in yuan. Or in crypto.

It’s a complex mechanism. The IRGC uses multiple addresses; cross-chain bridges to other networks; over-the-counter desks in jurisdictions way beyond American reach; and integration with all sorts of yuan settlement channels.

After the toll is paid, the IRGC issues a VHF radio clearance – complete with a specific time window linked to a narrow 5-mile nautical corridor through Iranian territorial waters, between Qeshm and little Larak island, where the IRGC Navy can visually identify your vessel. You’re free to go. No need for an escort ship.

All of the above applies, for now, to tankers from China, India, Pakistan, Turkiye, Malaysia, Iraq, Bangladesh, Russia. Some don’t need to pay the full toll. Some get exemptions – on government-to-government basis (as in Sri Lanka and Thailand, both described as “friendly nations”). And some don’t pay anything.

So welcome to a member’s club with an entrance fee mostly in petroyuan. It took a single move from Iran to achieve what endless global summits could not: establishing an alternative settlement system – under fire, tested under supreme stress, and on top of it applied in the most consequential chokepoint on the planet.

Each toll paid in petroyuan bypasses the petrodollar, SWIFT and US sanctions – all in one go. The Iranian parliament will approve legislation institutionalizing the toll booth as “security compensation.” No one saw this coming – and so fast: legalized chokepoint monetization. Without firing a shot. This is what de-dollarization trade is really all about.

The problem is what is not transiting Hormuz: fertilizers. Over 49% of urea for export comes from the Persian Gulf. Ammonia needs natural gas; but Qatar declared Force Majeure after the Epstein Syndicate attack on South Pars and the Iranian counter-strikes. The IRGC is focused on oil because oil finances the tool booth and long term, is at the heart of the post-dollar energy settlement system, fully supported by the Russia-China strategic partnership.

So it’s no wonder the Empire of Chaos and Plunder has gone bonkers. In a flash, in three weeks, we have the petroyuan ruling over the – de facto privatized – most important naval connectivity corridor on the planet. So CENTCOM will go all out Terminator to demolish the tool booth, attempting everything from bombing IRGC installations along the coast and setting up naval escorts for allied tankers to a tsunami of sanctions on toll booth brokers.

What CENTCOM cannot bomb is the precedent of the petroyuan in effect. The whole Global South is watching and doing the math. The whole demented war is actually helping a new payment infrastructure to come to light. The war’s financial dimension is even more crucial than missile breakthroughs.

What Awaits the GCC

Qatar warned Trump 2.0, over and over again, that attacking Iran’s energy infrastructure would destroy Doha’s own energy infrastructure. That’s exactly what happened. Qatar’s energy minister al-Kaabi revealed that he warned the US Secretary of Energy, Chris Wright, as well as executives at ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips day after day.

To no avail. Qatar ended up losing 17% of its LNG capacity: $20 billion in lost revenue, and as many as 5 years to fix it. Al-Kaabi: oil could hit $150 a barrel, and this war could “bring down the economies of the world.”

We reach absurdist territory when it’s clear that striking Iran’s South Pars generated less than zero strategic advantage. On the contrary: the counterpunch hit the Persian Gulf energy sector. Yet perversity actually rules. Who ultimately benefitted? American gas companies.

Iran is betting – and that is immensely ambitious – that the Gulf monarchies will eventually do the math. It’s as if Tehran is making it quite clear: if you learn to do business with us, we will let you continue to do your own business.

The new rules include everything from the GCC bypassing the petrodollar to getting rid of US data centers. And if the GCC wants a new security arrangement, better talk to China. All that while the GCC also has to learn how to deal with this oil shock permanently repricing the risk premium on their energy supply. Structural reset does not even begin to describe it.

As it stands, there’s only one certainty: the GCC will be instrumental in the international financial system implosion as it gets ready to pull at least $5 trillion out of the US market so they may be able to fund their survival.

The Long and Winding Petro-Gold Road

To sum it all up: after the attack on the South Pars gas field – the largest on the planet – and the toll booth in the Strait of Hormuz, it’s yuan-gold settlements, all across the spectrum, that are giving the Russia-China strategic partnership an upper hand unthinkable only a few weeks ago.

The strategic partnership is locking in no less than a new, rising global settlement mechanism, where petroyuan trades flow straight into physical gold.

As Russia sells massive volumes of oil and gas not touched by the war on its ally Iran, China as the top refiner buys Russian energy while at the same time trying to support its Southeast Asian partners outside of the US dollar.

Russia is converting yuan payments into physical gold at the Shanghai Stock Exchange. Iran is accumulating yuan payments in Hormuz – boosting yuan oil contracts that are convertible to gold. And China is building overseas gold vaults and corridors. The new Primakov triangle, RIC (Russia-Iran-China) is in control via real physical energy and gold.

So this is the major take away of the Epstein Syndicate war on Iran. Russia-China reach the Holy Grail: energy dominance and a gold-backed yuan settlement that bypasses the petrodollar to Kingdom Come.

For all practical purposes, the architecture set up by the “indispensable nation” since the 1990s is showing structural cracks for everyone to see, with global markets updating every possible model variation in real time.

It’s as if the Persians had reinterpreted Sun Tzu, Clausewitz and Kutuzov (the conqueror of Napoleon) into a whole new hybrid. And as a bonus, accomplishing in only three weeks what years’ worth of summits could not.

The petrodollar is on the way out. Alternative payment systems are up and running. And the Global South is watching in real time how the Empire of Endless Bombing can be brought to a standstill by a decentralized war of attrition engineered by a sovereign nation with one-fiftieth of the imperial defense budget.

Multipolarity won’t be born by suits reading papers in executive rooms. Multipolarity will be born in the battlefield, under fire, against all odds.

You will see why it matters so much:

“Pointed threats, they bluff with scorn

Suicide remarks are torn

From the fool’s gold mouthpiece the hollow horn

Plays wasted words, proves to warn

That he not busy being born is busy dying”

Bob Dylan

It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)

*  *  *

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ZeroHedge.

Tyler Durden
Sat, 03/28/2026 – 23:20

Screencap of Twitter/X video.
No Kings protesters marching in Washington, DC today could be heard yelling ‘abolish the police’ as they were being escorted and protected by police.
You could not make this up. No one would believe it.
The other interesting thing about this is that elected Democrats across the country have admitted that the ‘abolish the police’ movement was a huge political mistake. Apparently, their supporters didn’t get the memo, because they’re still saying it.
The Daily Caller reports:
Several “No Kings” protesters chanted anti-police slogans Saturday while uniformed officers could be seen ushering their march through the streets of Washington, video footage by the Daily Caller News Foundation shows.
Thousands of demonstrators flocked to the nation’s capital as part of the nationwide No Kings Day protests Saturday against President Donald Trump and his administration, particularly Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). During one portion of the Washington demonstrations, protesters chanted multiple times in favor of defunding or even abolishing the police — despite officers at the same time visibly protecting them.
“I said take it to the streets, abolish the police,” a male protester leading a chant yelled as multiple on-duty law enforcement officers walked with them, video by DCNF investigative reporter Hudson Crozier shows.
“Cops spent hours accompanying the protest and holding off traffic for about a mile, giving them the entire Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge along the way,” Crozier wrote in the post, referring to to the arch bridge crossing the Anacostia River in Washington’s southeast quadrant.
Here’s the clip:

“I said take it to the streets, abolish the police”
Cops spent hours accompanying the protest and holding off traffic for about a mile, giving them the entire Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge along the way. pic.twitter.com/P5ZvsUL79G
— Hudson Crozier (@Hudson_Crozier) March 28, 2026

in this clip, you can hear them chanting for cuts to the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD), even though there are MPD cops present, protecting their demonstration. Watch:

“MPD, cut that budget” pic.twitter.com/bWoha23JWD
— Hudson Crozier (@Hudson_Crozier) March 28, 2026

The left has really become a parody of themselves and they don’t even see it.
The post BEYOND PARODY: No Kings Protesters Yell ‘Abolish the Police’ as They’re Being Escorted and Protected by Police (VIDEO) appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Screencap of Twitter/X video.
Comedian and podcaster Adam Carolla tore into liberal hypocrites during a recent conversation with his old friend Dr. Drew.
Carolla called out people like ‘fat ass’ Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker for hyping people like Renee Good for political purposes while ignoring Americans who are murdered by illegal aliens who shouldn’t be in the country in the first place.
He suggests that Democrats downplay or deliberately ignore American victims because it goes against the narrative they are trying to push. He is absolutely right about this.
In this case, he uses the example of the Chicago college student who was just shot by an illegal in Chicago.
Partial transcript via the Western Lensman:
@adamcarolla takes apart Pritzker and sanctuary city defenders for dismissing the m*rder of Sheridan Gorman — but making a spectacle of support for Pretti and Good:
“They either don’t acknowledge it at all or they kind of are dismissive of it, which is what they have to do because it’s their policy that got this person k*lled.”
“Now simultaneously, what you need to do is if the nurse dude who’s kicking Suburbans and fighting with ICE guys, you have to go to his memorial.”
“JB Pritzker. Make sure you take a picture of my fat ass squatting down to put some posies down there.”
“So he has to do a whole thing on that. But this woman, this 18 year old who was executed by the illegal. Well, now that’s an issue.”
Watch the video below:

.@adamcarolla takes apart Pritzker and sanctuary city defenders for dismissing the m*rder of Sheridan Gorman — but making a spectacle of support for Pretti and Good:
“They either don’t acknowledge it at all or they kind of are dismissive of it, which is what they have to do… pic.twitter.com/C58j6T10ny
— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) March 28, 2026

What people like Governor Pritzker don’t realize is that voters see this too. A growing number of Americans are slowly beginning to realize that the Democratic party does not see them as their actual constituents. Democrats are far more interested in protecting the rights of people in the country illegally.
They have shown it time and time again, especially over the last two years. It’s truly stunning.
The post Adam Carolla Slams Liberal Hypocrites Like ‘Fat Ass’ J.B. Pritzker Who Ignore Americans Murdered by Illegals (VIDEO) appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.