Zerohedge

As is the case anytime government is involved in a project funded with taxpayer cash, things are moving slowly and corruptly with Philadelphia’s renovation of its 30th St. Station. It’s a restoration that has been underway for the better part of a decade and is showing little to no signs of progress from the station’s exterior. 

In 2018, Amtrak proudly showcased progress on the $109 million restoration of Philadelphia’s historic station. “This is an iconic building in Philadelphia, and making it beautiful is going to increase the citizens’ pride,” project manager Ajith Bhaskaran told reporters. He called the work “a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

What Bhaskaran didn’t say was that he had turned that opportunity into a personal payday — a bribery scheme involving luxury trips, gifts, and hundreds of thousands in illicit payments, according to a new article by the Philadelphia Inquirer.

The project, originally budgeted at $58 million, ballooned after Bhaskaran signed off on expensive contract changes — including a $9 million amendment — while soliciting bribes from contractors. Just one day before the 2018 media tour, he emailed Mark 1 Restoration executives: “CEO approved.” That same day, a Mark 1 executive co-signed a New York apartment lease for Bhaskaran’s daughter. A month later, he bought Bhaskaran $2,000 Bruno Mars tickets.

Federal investigators say this was part of a three-year conspiracy in which Bhaskaran pocketed $323,686 in gifts from Mark 1, including meals at Del Frisco’s, trips to Atlantic City, a German shepherd puppy, vacations to India and Ecuador, and even a Tourneau watch — all paid for by inflated Amtrak invoices.

Where’s DOGE when you need them…

Meanwhile, Vega Solutions, a second contractor, paid Bhaskaran $150,000 in bribes, gave him credit cards for personal spending, hired his girlfriend and a relative, and provided two Ford Explorers. Vega, prosecutors say, defrauded Amtrak of over $786,000.

The Inquirer writes that Bhaskaran cultivated close ties with contractors early on. In one 2016 email, a Mark 1 executive wrote: “AJ shared this with me last night. Keep it tight… Steak dinner, cigars and whiskey…” Another Mark 1 VP reported Bhaskaran wanted “as much as possible” in a contract change order — and soon, Bhaskaran secured Amtrak’s approval for $13 million more.

Bhaskaran also helped Vega Solutions secure a $1.3 million oversight contract by slashing insurance requirements and then charging flights to the contractor’s credit card. The firm was led by siblings Sandeep Hardikar and Madhura Atitkar, with Atitkar listed as president so Vega could qualify as a woman-owned business.

In 2017, after receiving a luxury watch from Mark 1 executives, Bhaskaran approved millions more in project funds. That year, he vacationed in the Galápagos Islands — flights, lodging, and a cruise all covered by Mark 1. Later, they also bought him a $4,775 purebred German shepherd and covered its training.

All the while, he pressured contractors for more. “Deposited May payroll and extra 8000,” Atitkar texted her brother, who replied Bhaskaran had deposited the funds the next day.

In March 2018, an anonymous tipster alerted Amtrak’s inspector general: Bhaskaran was flouting ethics rules and had hired Vega — then started driving a new Ford Explorer. Investigators launched a sweeping inquiry, collecting emails, records, and even surveillance photos of Bhaskaran out with his dog or in a Hummer limo headed to Atlantic City, the Inquirer said. 

Emails revealed how openly the executives discussed the scheme. “He said we all know Mark 1 is significantly over billed,” one wrote. Yet publicly, they praised Bhaskaran. “I can completely trust them,” Bhaskaran said in a since-removed Amtrak video.

Of the 47 invoices Mark 1 submitted during Bhaskaran’s tenure, he approved every one. He rejected all extra funding requests from another architecture firm — the only one not accused of bribing him.

Bhaskaran was arrested in November 2019 for unrelated wire fraud but admitted to accepting bribes. He died of heart failure in 2020, leaving behind four luxury cars, fake IDs, and thousands in cash.

Prosecutors later added Social Security fraud charges, alleging Bhaskaran had illegally collected $252,000 in benefits meant for deceased in-laws.

Since then, five contractors — including three Mark 1 executives and both Vega siblings — have pleaded guilty. The sixth, Mark 1 owner Mark Snedden, is expected to do the same. Vega repaid the full $786,000.

Prosecutors say the scandal highlights how infrastructure projects can become “lucrative targets for fraud.” An Amtrak spokesperson said the company took “swift and definitive action” and has since overhauled its contract oversight.

Just when you thought you’ve seen it all…

A new musical comedy centered on accused killer Luigi Mangione is set to premiere in San Francisco next month, drawing backlash for what critics see as a tasteless glamorization of violence, according to the New York Post.

“Luigi the Musical” opens June 13 at the Taylor Street Theater, promising a “bold, campy and unafraid” portrayal of the 26-year-old alleged gunman charged in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson—a crime that left two young children without a father. Tickets for opening night are already sold out.

Promotional materials describe the show as “a wildly irreverent, razor-sharp comedy that imagines the true story of Luigi Mangione, the alleged corporate assassin turned accidental folk hero.” The tagline: “A story of love, murder and hash browns,” references Mangione’s arrest while eating at McDonald’s.

The Post writes that in the musical, Mangione shares a fictional jail cell with convicted crypto fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried and embattled hip-hop mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs, who together become part of his bizarre journey through infamy. “With real-life cellmates Sam Bankman-Fried and Diddy by his side, Luigi navigates friendship, justice, and the absurdity of viral fame,” the synopsis reads.

“If you like your comedy smart and your showtunes with a criminal record, Luigi is your new favorite felony,” the producers boast.

The production is the work of songwriter Arielle Johnson and director Nova Bradford, who cite the musical Chicago as inspiration. Behind-the-scenes clips feature lyrics such as, “…flash those pearly whites, there were cameras there that night, and that’s what let the po-lice take me in,” referencing Mangione’s alleged mistake of removing his mask at a New York hostel, allowing authorities to identify him.

Despite the show’s flippant tone, Bradford defended its creative direction in an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle: “We’re not valorizing any of these characters, and we’re also not trivializing any of their actions or alleged actions.”

Mangione is currently on trial in Manhattan for the murder of Thompson. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty, which could mark the first federal execution sentence handed down in Manhattan in 70 years.

Authored by J.Peder Zane via RealClearPolitics.com,

The Department of Government Efficiency noticed a snag: the sign-in button on the IRS homepage wasn’t where it ought to be. Instead of the upper right-hand corner where we, the people, have been trained to look for logins, it was stacked with other buttons in the middle of the page. It was not too hard to find, but its unusual placement disrupted the interface between taxpayers and tax collectors.

It was a simple fix.

Yet an IRS engineer reportedly estimated that it would take at least 103 days to move the button. 

Thankfully, Elon Musk’s team posted last month on X:

“This engineer worked with the DOGE team to delete the red tape and accomplished the task in 71 minutes.”

If DOGE has revealed anything in its first 100 days, it is the depth of government dysfunction. While Musk’s detractors are reveling in his most obvious shortcoming – to date, it has cut an estimated $160 billion in government spending instead of the promised $2 trillion – the urgent need for reform is clear. The difficulty smart and dedicated cost-cutters are encountering in paring the mounds of federal waste is the canary crying in the coal mine.

To take a favorite word of progressives, the issues we face with government inefficiency are systemic. Fraud and abuse are real problems, but, as the IRS button example shows, the deeper issues involve what passes for standard operating procedure. We have built a leviathan that is strangling us with process.

Fred Kaplan provides a telling example in his New York Review of Books piece on Raj M. Shah and Christopher Kirchhoff’s new book, “Unit X: How the Pentagon and Silicon Valley Are Transforming the Future of War.”

As a U.S. Air Force captain, Shah was flying missions over Iraq in 2006, Kaplan writes, when he noticed that his F16’s display screen did not “indicate his location in relation to coordinates on the ground.” Back in his barracks, Shah loaded a pocket PC he had for playing video games “with digital maps and strapped it to his knee while he flew. The software in that $300 gadget let him see where he was – basic information that the gadgetry on his $30 million plane could not provide.”

A decade later, Shah was tapped to lead a small Pentagon start-up, the Defense Innovation Unit Experimental (DIUx), that sought to apply Silicon Valley innovations like the pocket PC to the military. An early challenge was coordinating the refueling of planes in midair.

Kaplan wrote that this is a “very complicated task … Yet to plan these operations, they were moving magnetic pucks around on a whiteboard, just as their forebears had done during World War II.”

He continued: “Northrop Grumman had won a contract to overhaul this system; by the time Shah saw the whiteboard, the company had spent $745 million – twice the original estimate – over ten years with nothing to show for it, and the Air Force was now asking Congress for more. ”

Kaplan reports that Shah connected with “a small Silicon Valley firm” that developed “a working product … in four months, at a cost of $1.5 million.” Needless to say, “they faced intense resistance from the Air Force officer managing the Northrop Grumman program and from staffers on the House subcommittee overseeing the defense budget.” Happily, an advocate in the Pentagon brass helped them “break through the blockage.”

No one knows how many $745 million problems can be solved with a $1.5 million solution, but it seems safe to assume that the answer is plenty. As much as DOGE has drawn attention for firing federal workers and closing a few government programs, its most significant contribution has been exposing the jaw-dropping patterns of waste and inefficiency that bloat the size and cost of government.

One more example: On March 21, DOGE reported that “the IRS has the transaction volume of a mid-sized bank, running similar infrastructure. Those banks typically have an Operations and Maintenance (O&M) budget of ~$20M/yr. The IRS has a ~$3.5B O&M budget (which doesn’t include an additional $3.7B modernization budget).” Keep that in mind when you read the next scaremongering headline about job cuts at the IRS.

Error is inevitable in human action. DOGE has certainly made mistakes. But a bigger blunder is pretending that every government worker and government contract is essential. That is the implicit argument of Musk’s detractors. Even if that risible claim were correct, our current spending trajectory is unsustainable. Something has to give.

Still, there is reason for hope. Instead of just celebrating those who found a way to move a homepage button in 71 minutes, let’s identify and eliminate the layers of bureaucracy that would have turned it into a 103-day ordeal. If software engineers can solve Pentagon problems on the cheap, let’s compile and void a list of stupidly expensive contracts – before increasing its annual budget north of $1 trillion. It can be done.

This effort might even be bipartisan. As the Trump administration has proposed funding cuts to scientific research, his opponents have argued this will kneecap one of America’s greatest strengths: our unrivalled ingenuity and know-how. Why don’t we all agree to use that dynamism to create a government as smart and effective as our nation?

Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) launched into a conspiracy-laden diatribe over the 2024 presidential election results, suggesting subpoena power would be necessary to discern whether foreign adversaries—with an assist from Department of Government Efficiency leader Elon Musk—stole the race for President Donald Trump.

“Elon Musk has done nothing in the last five months to make me think that we shouldn’t ask questions about what the hell he was doing in 2024,” Swalwell said on a recent podcast, uncovered by Breitbart News, when asked about an alleged U.S. data leaked through Elon Musk’s Starlink services.  

Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) stokes 2024 election denial on a far-left podcast (check the host’s shirt) and vows to use “subpoena power” on @elonmusk about whether Starlink gave election data to the Russians if Democrats win the midterms

“Elon Musk has done nothing in the last 5… pic.twitter.com/mt35ud4OKA

— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) May 1, 2025

“Maybe we gave him too much of the benefit of the doubt after the election, but the way that he’s conducted himself with DOGE, and the way that he’s exposed us to so many hackers outside, and the way that he’s taken data, you know, from Americans, from our records — whether it’s Social Security or health care records, the only way that we can understand, you know, what the hell Elon Musk has been doing is to be in the majority,” the the lawmaker added, emphasizing that Democrats regaining a House majority to secure subpoena power would be a critical step in determining whether interference occurred in the 2024 election.

Swalwell’s rhetoric isn’t new. Back in 2016, he was a vocal proponent of the now-debunked narrative that Russia colluded with Trump to steal the election from Hillary Clinton. As a member of the House Intelligence Committee, Swalwell pushed investigations into Trump’s campaign ties to Russia, citing contacts with Russian operatives and the DNC email hacks. “The Russians wanted Donald Trump to win, and they took steps to make that happen,” he told CNN in 2019, referencing the Mueller Report. Critics, however, note the report found no evidence of direct collusion.

Swalwell previously faced intense scrutiny due to his past ties to Christine Fang, a suspected Chinese spy who targeted up-and-coming U.S. politicians. According to a 2020 Axios investigation, Fang, also known as Fang Fang, operated in the Bay Area from 2011 to 2015, cultivating relationships with local leaders who had potential to rise on the national stage. She reportedly engaged in sexual relationships with at least two Midwestern mayors to gain influence. Fang acted as a “bundler” for Swalwell’s 2014 congressional campaign, raising significant funds while he was a Dublin, California, city councilmember. She also attended events with Swalwell, including a 2013 Lunar New Year banquet and a 2012 student event at CSU East Bay, as documented in photos uncovered by Axios.

Fang’s activities raised red flags with the FBI, which had been monitoring her as part of a broader counterintelligence operation targeting Chinese espionage. She abruptly fled the U.S. in 2015 amid the FBI’s investigation, leaving unanswered questions about her influence. While Swalwell’s office claimed he cooperated with authorities and cut ties with Fang upon learning of the probe, critics argue his association with her casts doubt on his judgment—especially as he now accuses others of foreign collusion.

Projection much, Swalwell? 

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller could land the position as President Donald Trump’s next National Security Adviser, according to Axios. 

Miller, one of Trump’s longest and most trusted aides, emerged as a leading contender for national security adviser following Mike Waltz’s removal from the role. Waltz, who has taken considerable heat from the mainstream media for his role in so-called SignalGate, was nominated for U.S. ambassador to the United Nations just hours after reports of his removal. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is currently serving as the interim national security adviser.

Axios reports:

One White House source told Axios via text that Miller has made the Homeland Security Council run “like clockwork,” and that it’s “infinitely more effective than the NSC [National Security Council] with a tiny fraction” of the staff.

“Marco and Stephen have worked really closely on immigration and it might be a perfect match,” said another White House source.

It remains uncertain whether Stephen Miller would pursue the national security adviser role, as it could divert him from immigration policy.

Politico also reports that Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy currently spearheading critical negotiations with Russia, Iran, and Hamas, is a contender for the national security adviser position.

Additionally, NSC senior director for counterterrorism Sebastian Gorka and Trump’s special envoy for special missions Richard Grenell are generating buzz as potential candidates for the role.

When Politico asked about the impending announcement, White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said, “We will not comment on reports based on anonymous sources.”

Authored by Robert Spencer via PJMedia.com,

On Thursday, President Trump gave Americans another Liberation Day: He signed an executive order ending federal funding for two of the left’s principal propaganda organs, National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). 

Unfortunately, this doesn’t mean that these two vicious taxpayer leeches and leftist disinformation entities will disappear, but at least patriots won’t be forced to shell out for programming that is designed to destroy everything they hold dear.

The left, predictably enough, is howling, led by NPR and PBS themselves. NPR issued a statement warning of imminent apocalypse:

“Eliminating funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting [CPB] would have a devastating impact on American communities across the nation that rely on public radio for trusted local and national news, culture, lifesaving emergency alerts and public safety information.” 

The statement was yet another example of what a cruel joke NPR and PBS are on the American people. No one actually trusts NPR and PBS except the indoctrinated cadres of the left and those who are uninformed enough to continue to believe in these propaganda organs’ claims to be free from bias. The grim reality is that NPR and PBS are the left at its most cynical, opportunistic, and parasitical. American taxpayers, including those who are patriots, are forced to subsidize two of the left’s shrillest and most nakedly biased mouthpieces, all the while being gaslit about how it’s their patriotic duty to support a free press.

And so Trump wrote in his executive order that the joke was over: 

“Government funding of news media in this environment is not only outdated and unnecessary but corrosive to the appearance of journalistic independence. The CPB Board shall cease direct funding to NPR and PBS, consistent with my Administration’s policy to ensure that Federal funding does not support biased and partisan news coverage. The CPB Board shall cancel existing direct funding to the maximum extent allowed by law and shall decline to provide future funding.”

That bit about “biased and partisan news coverage,” which is putting the reality of NPR and PBS extremely mildly, is eliciting reactions from the left on the order of the kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar insisting that he doesn’t even like cookies. 

CNN laments that “America’s two biggest public broadcasters” have “faced a series of attacks from the White House and Republican lawmakers accusing them of biased reporting.” 

The New York Times also pretended that Orange Man Bad and his henchmen were making up this whole bias thing, saying that they were “accusing the outlets of producing biased coverage and ‘left-wing propaganda.’” Note the scare quotes around “left-wing propaganda,” as if no reasonable person could believe that such a thing even exists, much less that NPR and PBS ladle it out to patriots as if they were cigarette-puffing meatballs doling out lunchtime glop to a sweaty chain gang.

Unfortunately, even if leftist judges don’t manage once again to arrogate to themselves the power of the executive branch and overrule Trump’s order, NPR and PBS will survive. The New York Post reports that “both have diverse revenue streams, including major foundation grants, advertising and voluntary viewer and listener donations, meaning that neither is likely to cease operations if they lose federal support.”

Still, if Trump succeeds, taxpayers will save a bit of money: “the CPB is set to receive $535 million in congressionally appropriated funds annually to distribute to public broadcasters in 2025 and 2026.”

Trump summed up what’s at stake in his executive order:

“At the very least, Americans have the right to expect that if their tax dollars fund public broadcasting at all, they fund only fair, accurate, unbiased, and nonpartisan news coverage.  No media outlet has a constitutional right to taxpayer subsidies, and the Government is entitled to determine which categories of activities to subsidize. The CPB’s governing statute reflects principles of impartiality: the CPB may not ‘contribute to or otherwise support any political party.’”

This is simple common sense, and so Trump’s executive order is long overdue. Both NPR and PBS should have been cut off from federal funding the moment that their news coverage became 100% leftist propaganda, but too many leftist presidents benefited from that coverage to take a step of this kind until now. You can bet that if NPR and PBS reflected 100% patriotic perspectives, Barack Obama or Old Joe Biden or maybe even Bill Clinton would have cut them off long ago.

Better late than never. 

A series of disappointing earnings (with peak earnings season this week) from fast-food chains, beverage giants, and consumer companies underscores persistent financial strain on low- and middle-income consumers—pressured by lingering Biden-era inflation and increasing fears over tariffs and mounting economic uncertainty under the current administration. 

On Thursday, McDonald’s reported same-store sales that tumbled 3.6% in the US, the largest year-over-year decline since the second quarter of 2020. The decline was mainly because of sagging visits at stores nationwide. 

McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski wrote in a statement that consumers “are grappling with uncertainty.” He noted that McDonald’s will be able to “navigate even the toughest of market conditions and gain market share.” 

Citi analyst Jon Tower told clients that McDonald’s soft sales should “come as little surprise” to investors, with the fast-food chain “speaking to a muted outlook/challenged global consumer back in mid-February and category high-frequency data/other company 1Q updates all suggesting lower-income guests were pulling back.” 

On Friday morning, Wendy’s slashed its sales outlook for the year, signaling consumers are dialing back their store visits and ticket spending. 

Wendy’s CEO Kirk Tanner stated that the US market faced a “challenging consumer environment.” The fast-food chain warned that the pullback in spending was more acute with customers making below $75,000. 

Last week, Chipotle missed first-quarter revenue estimates and reported that same-store sales had fallen for the first time since 2020. 

Chipotle CEO Scott Boatwright warned investors that a “slowdown in consumer spending” materialized, forcing it to lower the top end of its full-year same-store sales growth outlook. 

At the beginning of the week, Starbucks reported disappointing global comparable sales and profit, with sliding US demand. 

Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol’s turnaround strategy for the coffee chain appears to have stumbled after the company reported four straight quarters of declining sales.

“Our financial results don’t yet reflect our progress, but we have real momentum with our ‘Back to Starbucks’ plan,” Niccol told investors.

Yum Brands, the parent of KFC, Pizza Hut, and Taco Bell, also reported this week. Yum posted a mixed first quarter, with a sales slowdown that began to soften in January but improved through February and March. 

In the consumer goods space, Procter & Gamble reported mixed quarterly results as demand for its products fell. Executives of the company, which owns Tide and Charmin, slashed their full-year outlook for earnings per share and revenue based on consumer slowdown and tariff uncertainty.

The broader pessimism from QSRs and consumer-facing companies mirrors the sharp downturn in the Conference Board’s confidence index, which just sank to a 14-year low.

Labor market conditions also weakened.

In markets, Goldman analyst Nelson Armbrust said consumer discretionary stocks were “net sold for a fourth straight month, driven by short sales outpacing long buys ~5 to 1.” 

Goldman’s take: “Sentiment remains very soft in Consumer, due to both sourcing and tariff concerns, while investors are also focused on the consumer slowdown theme.” 

More broadly, with peak earnings season now behind us, Goldman Chief Equity Strategist David Kostin told clients Friday that results have held up relatively well:

1Q 2025 year/year earnings growth is tracking at 12%, 6 pp higher relative to the start of the reporting season. Better than expected margins have driven the positive surprise so far with the average earnings surprise tracking at 5% vs. an average sales surprise of 1%.

Kostin also noted: 

One lingering question heading into May is whether the slide in consumer spending and sentiment will worsen—or if it can be reversed by a series of positive trade headlines. 

By Julianne Geiger of OilPrice.com

The OPEC+ members currently participating in voluntary production cuts will meet this Saturday, May 3, instead of Monday, May 5, according to Kpler’s Amena Bakr on X. The call is set for noon Vienna time, with the agenda focused on “consensus building around maintaining the sped-up increment of 411K for June.”

Brent crude had slipped nearly 1% by late Friday morning, trading at $61.56. It’s a price level not seen since early 2021—and one that puts most OPEC+ budgets underwater. 

For producers already grappling with restricted output, prices below $65 are a growing fiscal headache.

The accelerated meeting follows mounting tensions within the group. 

Reports suggest Saudi Arabia is signaling it can live with lower prices—a not-so-subtle message to chronic overproducers like Iraq and Kazakhstan.

The 411,000 bpd production increase originally floated as a wake-up call may now be cemented into policy, signaling a strategic shift in Riyadh’s approach.

OPEC+ has pledged to offset 4.57 million bpd of overproduction by mid-2026. But enforcement remains patchy. 

Saturday’s call will test whether Riyadh and Moscow can still steer the ship—or whether quota politics are about to devolve into a full-blown battle for market share.

Meanwhile, a Bloomberg survey released Thursday showed that OPEC’s actual output fell by 200,000 bpd in April, down to 27.24 million – contradicting the group’s planned increase.

Goldman assigns a 70% subjective probability that the announced change in OPEC8+ supply for June will be 0.41mb/d, a 25% probability to a larger increase, and a 5% probability to a 0.14mb/d increase.

Market pessimism is already pricing in a production hike. 

But April’s figures are a reminder: announced increases don’t always materialize. Whether Saudi Arabia will keep absorbing the blow while others cheat—or start using price as a weapon to enforce discipline—won’t be decided in a Vienna video call. It’ll be decided at the wellhead.

A key Trump demand of the Zelensky government was quietly dropped as a condition of peace talks as well as the Ukraine minerals deal, which was finally signed this week.

Washington is no longer seeking to pressure or force President Volodymyr Zelensky to hold elections that could result in his being ousted office for the sake of peace, according to information in The Telegraph. 

“The demand has been quietly dropped from the latest set of American proposals for a ceasefire,” The Telegraph writes. “The American decision to stop demanding elections is designed to placate the Ukrainian officials who have argued against swathes of a seven-point peace plan tabled by Mr Trump.”

The minerals deal still has to be formally approved by Ukraine’s parliament, according to the nation’s constitution. Below is said to be the current seven-point plan offered by Trump, aspects of which were previously rejected by Ukrainian officials…

As for dropping the demand for Zelensky and parliament to hold elections, the Kremlin itself seems to have somewhat quieted down on this in recent weeks.

Without doubt, Moscow still wants to see Zelensky go, but appears willing to not press the issue if he were willing to give up territory for the sake of ceasefire (which so far isn’t happening – not even regarding Crimea).

Zelensky’s term in office expired in May 2024, and Ukrainian parliament has recently reaffirmed the ‘constitutionality’ of Zelensky’s mandate as leader of the country during wartime. Trump soon after taking the Oval called him a ‘dictator’ who canceled elections, and even long before that called him the “world’s greatest salesman” as he received hundreds of billions from the US and Western allies.

Meanwhile, fresh statements from US Secretary of State Marco Rubio express continued optimism on the potential for peace. He says “they’re closer” to peace – in reference to Moscow and Kiev.

“For a hundred days he has done efforts to bring about peace… Look, we’ve gotten closer. We – for the first time – we haven’t known this for three years – we kind of can see what it would take for Ukraine to stop. We can see what it would take for the Russians to stop,” Rubio said.

He then noted, “They’re closer, but they’re still far apart. And it’s going to take a real breakthrough here very soon to make this possible… or I think the president is going to have to make a decision about how much more time we’re going to dedicate to this,” he added.

It’s been widely reported that during Zelensky’s impromptu 15-meeting with President Trump on the sidelines of the pope’s funeral last weekend he was able to ease the pressure on Kiev coming from Trump.

“Zelensky’s advisers were divided about whether he should even risk the tête-à-tête after the disaster in the Oval Office,” Axios reported days after the meeting. “But after it, Zelensky felt he’d managed to shift Trump’s thinking about Putin for the first time, the sources say.”

Authored by Debra Heine via American Greatness,

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. said Wednesday that HHS is no longer facilitating child trafficking in the United States and is instead “very aggressively” searching for the hundreds of thousands of migrant children lost by the Biden administration.

“We have ended HHS’s role as the principal vector in this country for child trafficking,” Kennedy said during a White House Cabinet meeting with President Trump and other top administration officials to mark the first 100 days of the president’s second term.

“During the Biden administration, HHS became a collaborator in child trafficking for sex and for slavery, and we have ended that,” RFK Jr. declared.

In November 0f 2022, an HHS volunteer came forward to accuse the Biden regime of knowingly participating in the sex-trafficking of minor children after observing how it processed unaccompanied migrant children at an HHS Emergency Intake Site in Pomona, California.

The whistleblower, Tara Lee Rodas, went to Project Veritas with her first hand account of how the Biden regime’s corrupt child sponsorship program exploited and endangered vulnerable unaccompanied minors by placing them with criminal, noncitizen sponsors.

In some cases, dozens of unaccompanied alien children (UAC) were sent to the same residence of an unvetted sponsor.

Thousands of these minors “ended up in punishing jobs across the country—working overnight in slaughterhouses, replacing roofs, operating machinery in factories—all in violation of child labor laws,” the New York Times reported in February of 2023.

In August of 2024, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Inspector General released a blistering report showing that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had lost track of up to 320,000 unaccompanied minors over the previous five years.

Approximately 291,000 of those were released into the U.S. and never given a date to appear in immigration court.

Another 32,000 children were released with hearing dates but failed to show up to their immigration hearings.

“We’re very aggressively going out and trying to find these 300,000 children that were lost by the Biden administration,” RFK Jr. said Wednesday.

Homeland Security agents in California recently rescued two teenage migrant sisters from Honduras who were being held in captivity at a hotel in West Covina, California, the New York Post reported.

Christopher Ramirez was allegedly “pimping” the  sisters, ages 16 and 18, sources told the Post.

The youngest victim was placed in the custody of Biden’s HHS, which placed her with her sponsor.  The older teen was released after declining “services or placement.”

Cops with the West Covina Police Department initially found the girls and arrested Ramirez on local charges.

The feds are still looking for co-conspirators who helped move the migrant girls, who are from Honduras, from Texas to California and forced them into prostitution, sources said.

Ramirez is also facing federal charges.

The Trump administration has reunited approximately 5,000 unaccompanied migrant children with family members or “safe guardians” in its first 70 days, Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Trici McLaughlin said in an X post.

“Unlike the previous administration, President Trump and Secretary [Kristi] Noem take the responsibility to protect children seriously and will continue to work with federal law enforcement to reunite children with their families,” said McLaughlin.