U.S. President Donald Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney at G7 Summit in Evian-les-Baines, France, June 18, 2026. Photo credit Christopher Katsarov, Canadian Press

Unleash Prosperity, a nonprofit economics policy group led by notable free marketeers Steve Forbes, Art Laffer, and Steve Moore, posted an excellent piece on their website on August 27^th, “Why Canada?”, calling for an end to President Trump’s escalating trade war with Canada.

As the article points out, the free trade agreements of NAFTA in 1994 and USMCA in 2020 significantly expanded trade between the U.S. and Canada, contributing to the economic growth of both countries. For those concerned with trade deficits, U.S. imports and exports with Canada over the past 30 yeas have largely offset each other (see graph in the Unleash Prosperity article).

The new trade war with Canada originated in June 2025 with Trump’s announced doubling of steel and aluminum imports from 25-percent to 50-percent with foreign counties. This led to trade talks with Canada that eventually collapsed earlier this month (August 2026) when Trump announced that the U.S. would increase tariffs on Canadian cars, trucks, and auto parts to 50-percent on top of retaining the 50-percent tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum. Canada retaliated almost immediately by announcing higher tariffs, to be effective on September 8, 2026, on roughly 700 U.S. products with an estimated product value of approximately US$20 billion. The higher Canadian tariffs will be set at 15-percent, 25-percent, and 50-percent depending on the product, including a counter-tariff on U.S. steel and aluminum of 50-percent..

Unleash Prosperity, which is mostly supportive of Trump’s policies, deserves plaudits for advocating an end to a counter-productive trade war with Canada that will hurt both American businesses and consumers. In fact, the group even calls for a new zero-to-zero tariff policy, which should be the ultimate objective with all cooperative trading partners.

The full content of Unleash Prosperity’s article is provided below:

Why Canada?

August 27, 2026

A trade war with Canada doesn’t make a lot of sense to us. We’ve had two major trade deals with Canada in recent times. The first was NAFTA and the second was Trump’s USMCA.

We were fans of both these free trade agreements and the chart below shows why.

Our trade volume – imports and exports – to and from Canada and Mexico have roughly tripled over the past 30 years. Also look at the upward trend in bilateral U.S.-Canada trade since the passage of USMCA in Trump’s first term. When two nations voluntarily trade with each other, they are both better off. Hard stop!

Our trade deficit – a statistic we don’t care too much about – has been fairly stable with Canada and certainly hasn’t hit any worrisome level.

Trump has often advocated trade reciprocity and a level playing field. We’re all for it, and we’ve always supported ratcheting down North America tariffs to ZERO.

Even for those who are concerned about trade deficits, the deficit with China is still about six times higher than that of Canada.

Our view is that Trump should kiss and make up with our best trade partner and offer up a new zero-for-zero tariff policy, which would level the playing field and greatly benefit both nations.

Steve Dewey is a member of the Bretton Woods Committee, a fellow at the Ben Franklin Fellowship, founder of GeoFinancial Trends, LLC (www.geofinancialtrends.org) and writes on Substack (stevedewey.substack.com).  He can be reached at steve@geofinancialtrends.org

NCLA Chairman of the Board, The Honorable Janice Rogers Brown (left), and Steve Dewey (right) at the awarding of NCLA’s King George III prize at the James Madison Memorial Building, Washington, DC, June 10, 2026.

The New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA), a nonpartisan, nonprofit civil rights legal group founded in 2018, was created to legally challenge unconstitutional and unlawful power of state and federal agencies, collectively known as the “Administrative State.” In honor of the 250^th anniversary of our nation’s birth, NCLA initiated an online survey with its followers to choose the worst violator of our civil liberties throughout the entire history of the United States. From a list of 32 notorious violators of our constitutional rights, survey participants selected James Landis as the worst in our nation’s history.

Most Americans have probably never heard of James Landis, so why did NCLA’s legally astute followers choose him as the worst violator of our civil liberties in American history? In short, Landis is considered by NCLA and its followers as the architect of the modern American administrative state. He was a leading force behind FDR’s New Deal that created 69 new federal agencies and a leading legal proponent of administrative government. He drafted laws establishing new powers for regulatory agencies and even led two federal agencies. He served as Commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission (1933-34) and as Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (1935-1937) during the initial five years of FDR’s presidency.

More importantly, Landis may be considered as the most consequential force behind the concept of the “Fourth Branch” of government, i.e. the “Administrative State.” He argued that the growing complexity of modern society required expert agencies capable of exercising all of the powers of the three branches of government – the legislative, the executive, and the judicial powers – effectively creating what he described as a Fourth Branch of government. NCLA suggests that our Founding Fathers omitted such a branch of government, because they wanted a government free from the authoritarian administrative rule of King George III!

NCLA started its King George III prize in 2021 on an annual basis for the worst violator of civil liberties for a specific year. Past winners of NCLA’s King George III prize:

2021 – New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and Center for Disease Control Director Nina Witkofsky (jointly) for their involvement in COVID-era lockdowns and gross infringement on constitutional rights.

2022 – National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci (landslide winner) for his advocacy of unlawful and unconstitutional COVID policies.

2023 – U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland for his political weaponization of the U.S. Department of Justice.

2024 – Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler for his extreme regulatory overreach and infringement on data privacy.

Since its founding in 2018, NCLA has won seven cases in the U.S. Supreme Court – two through its own litigation and five with amicus curiae briefs. Most notably, NCLA’s litigation in Relentless, Inc. v. Department of Commerce persuaded the Supreme Court to overturn the 40-year-old Chevron doctrine in June 2024. This decision restores the separation of powers by curtailing the power of federal agencies to interpret the laws they administer and that courts should exercise their independent interpretation of ambiguous laws as required by the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) of 1946. The decision will likely have far-reaching effects across the country, from environmental regulation to healthcare costs. NCLA has also achieved dozens of victories in federal appeals courts through both original litigation and amicus briefs.

Steve Dewey is a fellow at the Ben Franklin Fellowship, founder of GeoFinancial Trends, LLC (www.geofinancialtrends.org) and writes on Substack (stevedewey.substack.com).  He can be reached at steve@geofinancialtrends.org

Steve Dewey (left) with Iranian driver and British co-worker, Shah Square, Isfahan, Iran, August 1978. (Photo credit Steve Dewey).

I was in Iran from July to December 1978 as a project accountant at a joint Iranian-American military-industrial project outside of Isfahan, Iran. It was during that time that I witnessed the final months of the totalitarian regime of the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. At the time, the project had an estimated completion value of about $350 million, which equates to about $1.73 billion in current 2026 US Dollars. I was one of about 120 expatriates working on the project – mostly American with some Brits – and an Iranian labor force of over 1,000.

Not long after I arrived at the project site, about 20 miles north of Isfahan, I started hearing about civil unrest in Tehran and other parts of the country. Initially, these reports were dismissed by our American management team as nothing to worry about, but as the weeks went by, the reports became more frequent and appeared to indicate more widespread protests around the country with increasing violence and the use of the Iranian military.

The civil unrest became so bad that it eventually caused the end of the project. At some point in the latter months of 1978, the Iranian government ceased making contract payments to the contractors on the project. Thus, all of the American companies engaged on the project decided to terminate their contracts with the Iranian government, evacuate the project, and fly everyone home. I departed in early December 1978. The Shah was overthrown just two months later on February 11, 1979 – a date that has since been honored as an official national holiday celebrating the Islamic Revolution.

Before leaving the project, I asked some of the English-speaking Iranians that I had become friendly with about the civil unrest that had erupted around the country. Without exception, they blamed it on the Shah and expressed their hatred of the Shah. They described the Shah as enormously corrupt and a megalomaniac who kept most of the country’s oil revenue – about $20-$25 billion per year at the time – under his complete control to use only as he saw fit, which meant he kept most of the nation’s wealth for himself, his family and friends, and his pet projects to enhance his own image both at home and abroad. One of my Iranian co-workers I spoke with, who was educated in the United States and spoke fluent English, told me the hatred of the Shah was so deep that he believed up to 90 percent of the country opposed him.

The Iranian people also despised the Shah because of his secret security force, Savak, which was known within Iran for its brutality, including the torture and killing of the Shah’s political opponents over many years. It was reported that the Shah personally ordered Savak to imprison and execute nine prominent political opponents in 1975. During the Shah’s last year in power, it was estimated that Savak and the Iranian Army under the Shah killed over 50,000 Iranian protesters during various anti-Shah street protests. In fact, during my last night in Iran, while staying in a company-selected hotel in Tehran, I heard machine gun fire throughout the night from a distance that sounded to be a few miles away. On my taxi ride to the airport the next morning to fly home, the tax driver told me that the machine gun fire I heard was a gun battle between anti-Shah revolutionaries and the Shah’s military forces.

American Misinformation/Misunderstanding about Iran’s Regime History

Anyone who listens to American politicians in Washington, foreign policy/national security think tank gurus, or any number of talking heads in the American news media on a regular basis will be convinced that the Islamic Republic of Iran is pure evil and should be destroyed. However, a look at some objective, non-politicized facts involving Iran’s regime history and its current domestic support reveals a dramatically different picture.

As discussed above, it is evident from the Islamic Revolution that the vast majority of the Iranian people opposed the Shah’s regime. The Shah was overthrown because his own people rose up against him organically, without any foreign involvement, and forced him to flee the country. This fact is ignored by the American media and twisted to portray the Shah as great leader of Iran and friend of the United States who should have been saved with American intervention.

Yet another reason for the Iranian people’s disdain for the Shah was their long-held view of him as a puppet of the United States. This dates back to 1953 when America’s CIA and Britain’s MI6 intelligence services executed a regime change in Iran (CIA code name “Operation Ajax”) by ousting a popular prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, who had achieved overwhelming domestic support for his nationalist agenda. This was a concern for the United States, Britain, and the West, because Mossadegh was the first prime minister elected by the Iranian parliament without an endorsement by the pro-Western Shah who had acted as the de facto head of the government since 1941 (contrary to the constitutional monarchy established in 1906 that established the prime minister as the head of government). The Shah disliked Mossadegh, because he was a populist threat to the Shah’s authoritarian rule over the previous decade.

In addition to the West’s apprehension over losing a reliable pro-Western head of state in Iran, there was also major alarm over Mossadegh’s nationalization of Iran’s oil industry. The Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC), a British-controlled entity (later renamed British Petroleum or BP), had held the exclusive concession for oil exploration and production in Iran since 1901 and controlled almost all of its revenue. When the Iranian government officially nationalized AIOC in May 1951, it was operating the largest oil refinery in the world, the Abadan refinery, producing about 7 percent of the world’s total crude oil.

Mossadegh’s historic nationalization agenda and the prospect of losing a pro-Western Iranian government under the Shah motivated the United States and Britain to plan and execute its joint covert operation to oust Mossadegh as prime minister and restore the Shah as the supreme leader of the country. The restoration of the Shah’s position as the authoritarian head of government was further enhanced with financial and military support from the West, particularly the United States. This was accompanied by the Shah’s ending of Mossadegh’s nationalization of Iran’s oil industry and opening it to Western companies.

Mohammad Mossadegh, Prime Minister of Iran, 1951-1953, Time magazine Man of the Year, 1951(image credit: content.time.com)

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Shah (king/monarch) of Iran, 1941-1979 (image credit: wikipedia/pahlavi.org)

The regime change executed by the CIA and MI6 in 1953 had profound negative consequences on U.S.-Iran relations. CIA documents declassified in 2013 confirm details of the regime change operation (Operation Ajax) and supports the case that it caused long-term resentment by the Iranian people towards that United States and was a contributing factor in the 1979 Islamic Revolution that ousted the Shah.

Iranian resentment towards American support for the Shah took a dramatic turn for the worse when President Jimmy Carter allowed the Shah to enter the United States on October 22, 1979 to receive medical treatment for cancer. This triggered Iranian students to seize the U.S. embassy in Tehran on November 4, 1979 and proceed to hold over 50 American embassy staff hostage for 444 days until that January 20, 1981, the date of Ronald Reagan’s first presidential inauguration. The seizing of the U.S. embassy and its American staff resulted in the United States terminating diplomatic relations with Iran on April 7, 1980. Relations between the two countries have been cold and distrustful since then with only limited, special purpose diplomatic interaction.

CIA/MI6 “Operation Ajax” a Monumental Mistake

When the CIA and MI6 conceived Operation Ajax to overthrow Prime Minister Mossadegh and restore the Shah to power in 1953, they believed it was in the best national interests of the United States and Britain. But as many of the 80-plus CIA regime change operations have proven since the CIA was created in 1947, most do not work out as planned and only result in worse outcomes. This was certainly the case with Operation Ajax. Not only did it remove a very popular prime minister with overwhelming support in the Iranian parliament and replace him with an unpopular dictator, it also destroyed the long-term potential for a fruitful, mutually beneficial relationship with the United States and other Western countries.

Because of the U.S. embassy hostage crisis in Tehran from November 1979 to January 1981 and the termination of diplomatic relations in April 1980, American politicians and the Western media have generally stayed away from any mention of Operation Ajax and have followed the institutionalized narrative of Iran as an evil regime and an enemy of the West. However, former German chancellor Olaf Scholz made unusually candid comments about Iran in an interview on February 9^th this year. He stated that the root of the international dilemma with Iran today stems from the American and British overthrow of a democratically elected government in 1953 and replaced with a brutal dictator, the Shah. He said that without this coup, Iran would be a very great Western country today.

Chancellor Scholz’ comments that Iran could have become a great Western country are not unreasonable, because Prime Minister Mossadegh was not anti-American or anti-West despite his nationalization agenda. To the contrary, Mossadegh simply favored an “Iran First” policy agenda, an independent, non-aligned foreign policy, and a willingness for good relations with all nations. Thus, the CIA/MI6 overthrow of Mossadegh in 1953 was ill-conceived and has proven to be a monumental mistake with adverse consequences lasting to this day.

Trump Must Revert to His Peace Instincts on Iran, Reject Neocon Push for War

The deployment of a massive array of U.S. naval and air power to the Middle East for a potential attack on Iran makes no sense from an American national interest perspective. An attack would carry with it enormous risks, including military, economic, humanitarian, and geopolitical. In a worst-case scenario, it could risk escalating into a much broader and deadlier war involving multiple surrounding countries and even China and Russia.

It was reported in multiple media outlets on February 23^rd that General Dan Caine, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has expressed concerns about the potential risks of a military campaign against Iran. According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, the risks identified by General Caine include an over-extended and exhausted U.S. military (especially U.S. Navy personnel who have been at sea for excessively long periods of time), potentially high American and allied casualties, depleted air defenses and depleted munitions, and high financial costs with an extended campaign (adding to an ever-growing U.S. national debt).

There are additional risks not discussed in the articles that are important to note. First, Iran has a very powerful ballistic missile force and a plentiful drone inventory to launch against U.S. targets. Iran’s ballistic missile force is estimated at approximately 2,000 missiles, including perhaps 100 to 200 hypersonic missiles that cannot be intercepted with anti-missile defense systems. Iran is also estimated to have a current inventory of around 80,000 drones. Second, Iran has the benefit of Chinese and Russian intelligence support, including the integration of China’s most advanced satellite and surveillance systems. Third, Iran could easily disrupt the flow of oil out of the Persian Gulf, which would be increasingly devastating to the global economy the longer a shut down would last (25 to 30-percent of the world’s oil production flows out of the Persian Gulf). For these reasons, Iran could prove to be a very challenging and costly opponent in a U.S. military attack.

As for the current negotiations with Iran, President Trump and his team should understand that the Iranians are not going to capitulate under the threat of a U.S. attack. A reasonable negotiated agreement with Iran is already at hand as the Iranians have consistently agreed not to develop nuclear weapons and have consistently agreed to allow international weapons inspectors into its country to investigate any potential nuclear weapons program. From the Iranian point of view, to concede anything more is an unacceptable surrender of its national sovereignty.

Iran is also an officially recognized participant in the Non-Proliferation Treaty. This is in sharp contrast to Israel who is one of only four countries in the world — and the only country in the Middle East — not a participant in the Non-Proliferation Treaty despite allegedly possessing up to 90 nuclear warheads. Thus, President Trump should accept the very reasonable deal that is already achievable with Iran and avoid a completely unnecessary and potentially very costly war.

The Folly of Promoting the Shah’s Son as Iran’s New Leader

Finally, one of the most absurd and misguided narratives I’ve seen in the American media over the past year has been the shameful promotion of the Shah’s son, Reza Pahlavi, to be Iran’s new leader. Mr. Pahlavi has not even been in Iran since he left in July 1978 at the age of 18. He’s been living in the Washington, DC metro area since the mid-1980s . The TV networks who have been featuring Pahlavi in fawning interviews, improperly referring to him as “His Highness,” are shockingly ignorant about the massively corrupt and despotic nature of his father’s regime and the hatred the Iranian people have had of him over a period of many decades.

Former CIA official John Kiriakou, an expert on the Middle East, made the following sharp comment about the prospect of Mr. Pahlavi returning to Iran on his YouTube podcast on January 12^th this year: “He (Mr. Pahlavi) wouldn’t survive the walk from the plane to the terminal if he were to fly back to Iran.”

To President Trump’s credit, he has expressed strong reservations about the viability of Mr. Pahlavi as a prospective new leader of Iran and has avoided any meetings with him thus far.

Book cover of “The Heir” by Matt Palumbo

This article published in AIER’s The Daily Economy, January 20, 2026.

In his latest book, The Heir, author Matthew Palumbo provides a well-researched exposé of the leftwing globalist network developed by billionaire George Soros and the recent hand-off to his son, Alex. Palumbo chronicles Alex Soros’ assumption of his father’s political activism empire and covers how Alex has not only continued his father’s activist path, but has taken it to an even more radical and brazenly public one.

Born in 1985, Alex grew up as a “trust fund kid” in a 14-room estate in the upscale New York City suburb of Katonah, NY. He attended an elite private school in Stamford, CT, the “King School,” where tuition for the 2024-25 school year ranged from $41,000 for kindergarten to $55,000 for grades 9-12.

According to Palumbo’s research, George Soros did not want any of his five children to succeed him as the head of his philanthropic empire as he wanted the most competent person available to take over. However, over a period of years, Alex was able to earn George’s trust to be his successor and was named as the chairman of George’s primary philanthropic organization, the Open Society Foundations (OSF), in December 2022. George, who became one of the most successful hedge fund managers in history with his Soros Fund Management – earning him billions of dollars since it started in 1970 – founded OSF in 1993 to support his philanthropic and political causes.

Alex started his own foundation in 2012, the Alex Soros Foundation (ASF), that would be a strong indicator of how he would run OSF. From 2012 to 2021, ASF gave most of its $8.8 million in donations to environmental groups and almost half to hardcore leftist groups.

After assuming control of OSF, Alex began making changes in its direction. In 2023, Alex reallocated much of OSF resources away from Europe to other parts of the world, such as the “global south” (generally comprising Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and less developed Asia-Pacific countries). However, within Europe, Alex continued George’s long involvement in Ukraine and Albania in an effort to change those countries’ judicial systems to benefit leftwing political positions. On issues, Alex aggressively pushed much greater support for environmental (climate change) activist groups. For example, in July 2024 OSF announced a $400 million commitment to support “economic and climate prosperity” in the global south. An additional $25 million to support global climate projects was announced later.

The amount of money that Alex has donated to radical climate change activist groups is staggering. Palumbo references a study by the Media Research Group that OSF donated the enormous amount of $193.9 million to 347 such groups from 2016 to 2023 under both George and Alex. But with the additional $425 million in donations referenced above, that amount increased to a whopping $618.9 million.

Aside from his massive monetary support for radical climate change activism, Alex has also become a major donor of leftwing political groups and Democrat Party candidates at the highest levels. Alex donated tens of millions of dollars to Democrat candidates in 2020, including $720,000 to the Joe Biden presidential campaign. Alex’s donations enabled him to gain dozens of visits to the White House throughout the Biden presidency.

Palumbo writes that after the 2020 election, the incoming Biden administration engaged 17 members of OSF and other Soros-funded organizations to serve on the new administration’s transition teams. This enabled OSF to propagate its leftwing ideology across a wide range of transition teams, including the State Department, the US Mission to the United Nations, the Defense Department, the National Security Council, the Treasury Department, the Labor Department, the Interior Department, the Federal Reserve, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the banking and securities regulators, and others. Some of these transition team members stayed on for positions in the Biden administration.

President Biden’s first chief of staff, Ron Klain, served on the board of the prominent leftist lobbying group, the American Progress Action Fund, whose largest donor has been the OSF-linked Open Society Action Fund.

Turning to foreign affairs, Palumbo’s book explores the long history of George’s involvement in the small eastern European county of Albania and its implications for Alex. Palumbo writes that George’s claimed post-communist mission to plant the seeds of an “open society” in a depressed Albania in the 1990s has morphed into state capture by the Soros empire. With the wholesale remaking of Albania’s judiciary under his influence, George revealed his vision for a society – one that is not indifferent to its communist past with its current Socialist Party, corrupt institutions, and silenced opposition. Albania today stands as a paradox: a pro-American nation where US aid and Soros millions have created a society that contradicts the very values it claims to uphold. For Alex Soros, Albania is a proven template where his father’s vision has been realized—not as a beacon of freedom, but as one of successful outside influence.

Both George and Alex have also been involved in Ukraine, especially since Russia’s invasion of the country in February 2022. While the US government has expended hundreds of billions of dollars in support of Ukraine (both before and after the start of the war), the Soros influence in the country has gone largely unnoticed. However, as Palumbo explains, George Soros has been engaged in Ukraine for more than 30 years as he saw it as an opportunity to spread his vision of a so-called “open society” and a platform to attack his political adversaries in the United States.

With George’s initial meddling in Ukraine being in the post-Soviet upheaval in the 1990s, Alex sees a war-torn country as an opportunity to gain influence over it by funneling billions of dollars into the prospective reconstruction of the country. Alex has made frequent visits to Kyiv to meet with Zelenskyy. Palumbo states that this indicates more than charitable philanthropy; that it shows an attempt by Alex to proactively establish OSF influence over the country whenever a post-war reconstruction may occur. The most recent OSF data shows a 2023 funding budget for Ukraine of roughly $19 million. Since 1991, George and Alex have spent a whopping $230 million on Ukraine.

The one federal agency that probably best exemplifies the Soros influence in the United State government is the US Agency for International Development (USAID). Palumbo states that George has had a working relationship with USAID since at least 1993. Notable early cases of Soros’ involvement with USAID include his International Renaissance Foundation, partnering with it to support Ukraine’s “Orange Revolution” (November 2004 to January 2005). Another was the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), which was one of the groups cited in the (first) Trump impeachment letter.

Also, the East-West Management Institute – the Soros’ family’s most influential group in Albania – had taken $270 million from USAID. In addition to using USAID for projects advancing his interests, George himself has rewritten the rules to allow USAID political funding that more legitimately meets the definition of “humanitarian aid.”

During the Obama years, USAID partnered with George to promote policies abroad that served no clear American interests. It was at this time that USAID started tying development funding to countries that aligned with leftist causes, such as gay/transgender rights, legalizing prostitution, and decriminalizing drugs. Much of the money ended up directly in Soros’ hands.

Palumbo writes that George Soros, OSF, and many affiliated entities received funding from USAID during the eight years of the Obama presidency (2009-2017) and that USAID made OSF the main implementer of its foreign aid. Joe Biden had requested nearly $30 billion for USAID funding in 2025, more than the OSF’s lifetime spending. Max Primorac, the former acting chief operating officer at USAID, revealed in an interview with the Daily Signal on February 4, 2025 that “Biden’s USAID and George Soros’s Open Society Institute frequently partnered by co-funding joint programs that promoted radical social agendas throughout the developing world.”

After the revelations in early 2025 about USAID’s reckless funding of radical leftist causes, Alex tried to deny USAID was funding OSF. In February 2025, OSF issued a public statement refuting claims that OSF was funded by USAID or was directing its funding. However, only a few months earlier, OSF issued a press release boasting about one of its major education development projects, the Central European University, being funded by USAID with commitments through 2032 and beyond.

With the advent of the second Trump administration in 2025, USAID has been effectively shut down with over 5,000 programs terminated and $30 billion in funding ended. Palumbo describes this as not just a setback for Alex and OSF, but a gut punch with its money machine unplugged.

Near the end of his book, Palumbo examines Alex’s first year as OSF chairman (in 2023) by reviewing OSF’s largest grants. Because of the high volume of grants made in 2023, a total of 2,166, Palumbo divides the grants into five main categories: (1) Fund of funds (meaning OSF funds groups who fund other groups); (2) Think tanks; (3) Voter mobilization groups; (4) News media; and (5) Civic engagement groups. The table below shows OSF’s largest grants in 2023 for each of the five recipient categories:

The grants show that Alex is funding the same kind of radical leftist groups that his father always had.

Palumbo outlines the incredible influence and control that the Soros empire has over the major media. From 2004 to 2011, George spent nearly $50 million funding about 180 American media organizations, and “news infrastructure,” such as journalism schools and media industry organizations. The Media Research Center has found Soros links at over thirty mainstream news outlets.

Palumbo concludes his book with the following comment about Alex Soros:

“The new Soros is just like the old Soros, and the only ways they differ are the ways in which Alex is even more radical, and that, unlike his father, he’s openly boasting about his influence. The Soros agenda is still globalism.

Palumbo’s The Heir serves as a warning that well-connected actors with enormous financial resources can buy political influence and steer government funding towards their own ideological objectives and personal enrichment. It highlights the need for greater transparency and accountability in our public institutions.

Steve Dewey is a fellow at the Ben Franklin Fellowship and founder of GeoFinancial Trends, LLC (www.geofinancialtrends.org). He can be reached at steve@geofinancialtrends.org.

Image credit to The White House website, section on Executive Actions, Presidential Memoranda, dated January 7, 2026. (https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2026/01/withdrawing-the-united-states-from-international-organizations-conventions-and-treaties-that-are-contrary-to-the-interests-of-the-united-states/)

This article published in The American Spectator, January 10, 2026.

President Trump’s first year in office has seen an almost unprecedented whirlwind of presidential executive actions. Not since the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt have so many executive actions been issued in a single year. In the first year of his second term thus far (January 20, 2025 through January 7, 2026), President Trump has issued 398 executive actions, including 226 executive orders, 56 presidential memoranda, and 116 proclamations.

Many of Trump’s executive actions have, indeed, been extraordinary and long overdue in addressing destructive government policies and attempting to reform how the federal government operates. But Trump’s latest executive action, issued on January 7, 2026 in the form of a presidential memorandum, will have a far-reaching and profound impact on U.S. foreign policy and how the United States relates with the rest of the world. In addition to cutting unnecessary costs from the federal budget, it helps restore the concept of national sovereignty.

Trump’s memorandum directs all executive departments and agencies to take immediate steps to withdraw the United States’ participation in 66 international and multilateral organizations. These organizations, 31 of which are within the organizational umbrella of the United Nations, are deemed to be contrary to the national interest of the United States after a thorough review conducted in 2025 by the State Department.

Many of these organizations are costly to the American taxpayer and unproductive – even counter-productive – not only to the United States but to other nations as well. A prime example is the commitment by a wide range of international organizations for enacting exorbitantly expensive and oppressive climate change policies around the world.

According to a report issued by the U.S. State Department on December 3, 2024, the U.S. government was a participant in at least 160 international and multilateral organizations at a cost of $16.6 billion in fiscal year 2023.

A complete list of all 66 organizations affected by Trump’s memorandum for withdrawal is provided below:

Non-United Nations Organizations:

1. 24/7 Carbon-Free Energy Compact;

2. Colombo Plan Council;

3. Commission for Environmental Cooperation;

4. Education Cannot Wait;

5. European Centre of Excellence for Countering

6. Hybrid Threats;

7. Forum of European National Highway Research Laboratories;

8. Freedom Online Coalition;

9. Global Community Engagement and Resilience Fund;

10. Global Counterterrorism Forum;

11. Global Forum on Cyber Expertise;

12. Global Forum on Migration and Development;

13. Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research;

14. Intergovernmental Forum on Mining, Minerals, Metals, and Sustainable Development;

15. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change;

16. Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services;

17. International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property;

18. International Cotton Advisory Committee;

19. International Development Law Organization;

20. International Energy Forum;

21. International Federation of Arts Councils and Culture Agencies;

22. International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance;

23. International Institute for Justice and the Rule of Law;

24. International Lead and Zinc Study Group;

25. International Renewable Energy Agency;

26. International Solar Alliance;

27. International Tropical Timber Organization;

28. International Union for Conservation of Nature;

29. Pan American Institute of Geography and History;

30. Partnership for Atlantic Cooperation;

31. Regional Cooperation Agreement on Combatting Piracy and Armed Robbery against Ships in Asia;

32. Regional Cooperation Council;

33. Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st Century;

34. Science and Technology Center in Ukraine;

35. Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme; and

36. Venice Commission of the Council of Europe

United Nations (UN) Organizations:

1. Department of Economic and Social Affairs;

2. UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) — Economic Commission for Africa;

3. ECOSOC — Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean;

4. ECOSOC — Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific;

5. ECOSOC — Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia;

6. International Law Commission;

7. International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals;

8. International Trade Centre;

9. Office of the Special Adviser on Africa;

10. Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary General for Children in Armed Conflict;

11. Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict;

12. Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Violence Against Children;

13. Peacebuilding Commission;

14. Peacebuilding Fund;

15. Permanent Forum on People of African Descent;

16. UN Alliance of Civilizations;

17. UN Collaborative Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries;

18. UN Conference on Trade and Development;

19. UN Democracy Fund;

20. UN Energy;

21. UN Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women;

22. UN Framework Convention on Climate Change;

23. UN Human Settlements Programme;

24. UN Institute for Training and Research;

25. UN Oceans;

26. UN Population Fund;

27. UN Register of Conventional Arms;

28. UN System Chief Executives Board for Coordination;

29. UN System Staff College;

30. UN Water; and

31. UN University

Trump’s memorandum directs the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, to provide additional guidance as needed to implement the memorandum.

David Stockman speaking at the Committee for the Republic event on the national debt, Washington, DC, November 13, 2025. Image credit to the Committee for the Republic YouTube channel.

This is a repost of a previous article due to pending publication in The American Spectator. A shorter version of this article published in The American Spectator, December28, 2025.

President Reagan’s Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) David Stockman was the featured speaker at a special event on the federal debt on November 13, 2025 hosted by the Committee for the Republic in Washington, DC. During his speech, Mr. Stockman put America’s federal government debt into historical context:

… prior to the 1913 creation of a central bank [the Federal Reserve] with a printing press capable of monetizing the public debt, America’s fiscal record was nothing short of remarkable by present day standards.

… after decades of budget surpluses during the second half of the 19th century---along with no income tax, no Welfare State and no peacetime military that amounted to anything much---the public debt had been reduced to just $1.2 billion by 1914.

Today’s dollar is worth just 3.1% of its 1914 value---so the 1914 public debt amounted to $36 billion in 2025 dollars of purchasing power. On an apples-to-apples constant dollar basis, that’s $365 per capita of public debt back then versus $113,000 per capita today.

Stated differently, in constant dollars the public debt has soared from $36 billion with a “B” in 1914 to $38 trillion with a “T” today. In real terms per capita, it’s up by 310X!

The above words are only a small excerpt from the in-depth, sobering speech given by Stockman on America’s ever-growing federal government debt. Stockman, who is now a writer and commentator on economic issues, has extensive practical knowledge on economic policy beyond his years as Reagan’s OMB director from 1981 to 1985. After his government service, Stockman held top positions at two prominent Wall Street firms, Salomon Brothers (1985-1988) and Blackstone Group (1988-1999). He ran his own private equity group from 1999 to 2005.

The primary thrust of Stockman’s speech was that U.S. government economic policy is effectively held hostage by two deeply embedded federal government spending streams sanctioned by the Washington, DC “swamp” – the Warfare State and the Welfare State.

The Warfare State

Stockman made a compelling case that the U.S. defense budget is enormously bloated and could easily be cut by more than half without sacrificing national security. For example, he stated that current federal spending on defense, about $1 trillion, is double the amount in 1960 of $475 billion in constant 2025 dollars.

Stockman stated his belief that the United States faces no military threat anywhere in the world today that is even remotely close to the threat posed by the Soviet Union in the 1960s. He explained that no nation in the world has a nuclear first-strike force capable of overwhelming America’s triad nuclear deterrent (ground-based missiles, strategic bombers, and nuclear submarines) that would avoid the retaliatory annihilation of its own country. The United States has 3,700 active nuclear warheads with about 1,800 operational at any point in time. This includes about 1,080 deep-sea nuclear warheads contained in 12 of 14 actively deployed Ohio-class nuclear submarines. Thus, it is inconceivable that any potential enemy state would risk total annihilation with an attempted first-strike nuclear attack.

According to Stockman, America’s nuclear triad only costs about $75 billion per year to maintain, which is only about 8% of the current $1 trillion annual defense budget. (Congress approved the FY2026 defense budget of $901 billion in the National Defense Appropriation Act (NDAA) bill on December 17, 2025, which is in addition to the $150 billion in supplemental funding for defense in the One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB) enacted on July 4, 2025).

Stockman believes much of the defense budget beyond the nuclear triad is unnecessary (such as many of the 750-800 military bases in 80 foreign countries around the world) and could be reduced dramatically to only around $400 billion per year. (China’s official 2025 defense budget is equivalent to $249 billion U.S. dollars).

Reducing the current defense budget of around $1 trillion to $400 billion would be a major step in the direction of restoring fiscal prudence in the U.S. Government. However, even minor cuts in the defense budget are highly unlikely any time soon considering that both the Trump administration and large majorities in Congress desire increased defense spending. But to the Trump administration’s credit, it is projecting to at least limit defense spending increases over the next five fiscal years (FY2026 to FY2030) to only the rate of inflation, estimated to be 2% per year, and a freeze in defense spending over the following five years (FY2031 to FY2035).

The Welfare State

Stockman also highlighted the explosive growth in America’s welfare state, primarily driven by its two largest components – Social Security and Medicare. He said that federal spending on America’s welfare state has quintupled in constant 2025 dollars from just under $500 billion in 1980 to almost $2.5 trillion in 2024. The growth in spending on the welfare state will continue into the foreseeable due to the incessant increase in the number of benefit recipients. Stockman said that number will increase to about 100 million by the year 2050. (Currently, about 70 million Americans receive both Social Security and Medicare benefits).

Stockman did not even mention other costly welfare state programs, such as Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), Obamacare (Affordable Care Act) subsidies, Veterans’ disability and retirement benefits, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), subsidized housing, and other welfare state programs and subsidies. In 2025 alone, Medicaid and CHIP are estimated to cost about $660 billion, Obamacare subsidies about $213 billion, Veterans’ benefits about $270 billion, and the SNAP program about $110 billion.

Corroborating Stockman’s Dire Outlook

Stockman’s main point was that the United States is headed towards an economic crisis of historic proportions by the middle of the current century unless the political establishment in Washington executes a radical U-turn in fiscal policy with dramatic reductions in spending across the board.

A report issued by the House Budget Committee on March 5, 2025 corroborates Stockman’s concerns. Excerpts from the report:

Perhaps the greatest threat we face from our debt is the one we don’t see: a fiscal crisis. According to CBO, a fiscal crisis is “a situation in which investors lose confidence in the value of the U.S. government’s debt… such a crisis would cause interest rates to rise abruptly and other disruptions to occur.” (…)

Given the interdependent nature of the world’s financial markets and the U.S. dollar’s role as the global reserve currency, such a crisis would almost certainly have irrevocable international repercussions. For instance, if international investors and foreign governments lose confidence in the U.S. government’s ability to pay its debts, this assumption could jeopardize the dollar’s reserve status, making it yet more difficult for the federal government to borrow and perform its vital duties on behalf of the American public.

Economists estimate the government’s ability to continue borrowing via an assumption known as “fiscal space,” which is the amount of money a government has available to spend without putting its financial health at risk. Paul Winfree of the Economic Policy Innovation Center estimates that the U.S. government’s fiscal space will be exhausted by the 2050s. The Penn Wharton Budget Model estimates there is only about 20 years for the government to right its fiscal ship, after which no level of tax hikes or austerity could prevent a government default.

The Peter G. Peterson Foundation, a non-partisan think tank dedicated to increasing public awareness about the U.S. government’s fiscal challenges that threaten America’s future, provides the graph below that illustrates the historical trends in federal government debt held by the public as a percentage of GDP from 1795 to 2025 and projected forward to 2055. The forecast to the year 2055 indicates that federal government debt held by the public will rise to an all-time high of 156% of GDP:

One Point of Disagreement with Stockman – Tax Cuts are Not the Problem

During his speech, Stockman was critical of Reagan’s tax cuts during the 1980s as a cause of the budget deficits during that decade and beyond. The data does not support Stockman’s criticism. The data shows that federal tax revenue actually increased every year from 1983 through 1990 by at least 4.1% (1989 to 1990) and by as much as 11.1% (1986 to 1987).

U.S. Fiscal Problem Entirely on the Spending Side

Federal government revenue in FY2025 (Oct 2024 to Sep 2025) was $5.23 trillion, which is 17.1% of 2025 U.S. GDP of approximately $30.5 trillion. This percentage is generally consistent with the historic trend since the end of World War II. Federal spending in FY2025 was $7.0 trillion, which is 23.0% of 2025 U.S. GDP. Thus, the federal government has a spending problem, not a revenue problem.

Impact of Trump Policies on U.S. Fiscal Outlook

The Trump administration’s director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), Russ Vought, has done outstanding work at pushing budget cuts across the bloated federal government. Director Vought has been so committed to cutting the federal budget that some commentators have even referred to him as President Trump’s own David Stockman.

Despite Vought’s admirable efforts at cutting federal spending, and expected increases in federal revenue from President Trump’s tariff policy, Vought’s 10-year OMB budget projection released on September 5, 2025 still shows cumulative budget deficits from FY2026 to FY2035 of $15.7 trillion or average annual budget deficits of $1.57 trillion. This is a 50% reduction in projected deficit spending from the Biden administration’s last 10-year budget projection, but it still calculates to an increase in federal debt from the current amount of $38.3 trillion to $54 trillion by FY2035.

Negative Effect of High National Debt to GDP

A $54 trillion federal debt load in FY 2035 would likely mean a debt-to-GDP ratio that is at least as high, probably even much higher than, the current debt-to-GDP ratio of about 126% ($38.3 trillion debt/$30.5 trillion GDP). Not a good fiscal outlook. Several empirical studies show that national debt-to-GDP ratios above 90% generally have a negative effect on a nation’s economy, and that the negativity grows stronger the higher the ratio rises above 100%, especially over an extended period of time.

Going forward, the political establishment in Washington must reject calls for increasing federal tax revenue as this would only harm American economic growth and prosperity. As Stockman discussed, the Washington political establishment needs to find the courage to take on both the entrenched warfare and welfare states to stop the federal government’s unsustainable deficit spending.

X profile of retired U.S. Army General, former Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, and former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn.

Former Trump National Security Advisor Mike Flynn is calling out the warmongers in NATO, the European Union, the U.S. Congress, and within the U.S. intelligence community (USIC) for continuing to push perpetual hostility towards Russia and war support for Ukraine. General Flynn has advocated for U.S. withdrawal from NATO as he no longer considers NATO membership to be in the U.S. national interest. He is also critical of the Ukrainian regime as corrupt and refers to Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky, who is ruling Ukraine under martial law, as a “tin pot dictator.”

General Flynn expressed his views in his post on X yesterday (12/20/2025) and tagged President Trump, Vice President Vance, Special Envoy Witkoff, Chief-of-Staff Wiles, Secretary Rubio, and Secretary Hegseth:

National Security Strategy of the United States title page, November 2025, released December 4, 2025

President Trump released his administration’s official 2025 National Security Strategy report to Congress on December 4, 2025. The President is required by statute to submit a comprehensive National Security Strategy (NSS) report to Congress annually, although, in practice, NSS reports have been issued only once during each four-year presidential administration since 2002. The most recent previous NSS report was issued by the Biden administration on October 12, 2022.

The new Trump NSS report takes a significant change in direction over past NSS reports. The 33-page report is organized in four sections: (1) An introduction on how American NSS went astray after the Cold War and the need for corrective actions; (2) the desired goals and core national interests of the NSS; (3) America’s assets and geopolitical advantages available to achieve the goals of the NSS; and (4) the overall principles and priorities of the NSS with associated descriptions of the NSS for each of five geographic regions – the Western Hemisphere, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

The introduction of the report provides a critique of American NSS since the end of the Cold War as the basis for the new Trump NSS. An excerpt from the introduction on page 1:

American strategies since the end of the Cold War have fallen short—they have been laundry lists of wishes or desired end states; have not clearly defined what we want but instead stated vague platitudes; and have often misjudged what we should want.

After the end of the Cold War, American foreign policy elites convinced themselves that permanent American domination of the entire world was in the best interests of our country. Yet the affairs of other countries are our concern only if their activities directly threaten our interests.

Our elites badly miscalculated America’s willingness to shoulder forever global burdens to which the American people saw no connection to the national interest. They overestimated America’s ability to fund, simultaneously, a massive welfare regulatory-administrative state alongside a massive military, diplomatic, intelligence, and foreign aid complex.

The report proposes a wide-ranging course correction in America’s NSS. It describes the following desired goals with the new Trump NSS on page 1:

• The survival and safety of the United States as an independent, sovereign republic whose government secures the God-given natural rights of its citizens and prioritizes their well-being and interests.

• Protect the United States, its people, its territory, its economy, and its way of life from military attack and hostile foreign influence, whether espionage, predatory trade practices, drug and human trafficking, destructive propaganda and influence operations, or cultural subversion.

• Full control over our borders, our immigration system, and our transportation networks through which people come into our country—legally and illegally.

• A resilient national infrastructure that can withstand natural disasters, resist and thwart foreign threats, and prevent or mitigate any events that might harm the American people or disrupt the American economy.

• Recruit, train, equip, and field the world’s most powerful, lethal, and technologically advanced military to protect our interests, deter wars, and—if necessary—win them quickly and decisively.

• The world’s most robust, credible, and modern nuclear deterrent, plus next-generation missile defenses—including a Golden Dome for the American homeland—to protect the American people, American assets overseas, and American allies.

• The world’s strongest, most dynamic, most innovative, and most advanced economy, which delivers widespread and broad-based prosperity and creates upward mobility.

• The world’s most robust industrial base.

• The world’s most robust, productive, and innovative energy sector.

• Protect our intellectual property from foreign theft.

• Maintain America’s unrivaled “soft power” through which we exercise positive influence throughout the world that furthers our interests.

• The restoration and reinvigoration of American spiritual and cultural health.

The report lists the characteristics and strengths specific to the United States that will help achieve the goals of the new Trump NSS. These include the American economy as the largest and most innovative in the world, the United States as the center of the world’s financial system and capital markets, the US Dollar as the world’s reserve currency, the American military as the largest and most powerful in the world, a large network of treaty alliances and partners in all strategically important regions of the world., desirable geography with abundant natural resources, and unmatched “soft power” and cultural influence.

The main strategy principles of Trump’s NSS are outlined pages 6-8 as follows:

Focused Definition of the National Interest: Since at least the end of the Cold War, administrations have often published National Security Strategies that seek to expand the definition of America’s “national interest” such that almost no issue or endeavor is considered outside its scope. But to focus on everything is to focus on nothing. America’s core national security interests shall be our focus.

Peace Through Strength: Strength is the best deterrent [to war]. Therefore, the United States must maintain the strongest economy, develop the most advanced technologies, bolster our society’s cultural health, and field the world’s most capable military.

Predisposition to Non-Interventionism: In the Declaration of Independence, America’s founders laid down a clear preference for non-interventionism in the affairs of other nations and made clear the basis: just as all human beings possess God-given equal natural rights, all nations are entitled by “the laws of nature and nature’s God” to a “separate and equal station” with respect to one another. For a country whose interests are as numerous and diverse as ours, rigid adherence to non-interventionism is not possible, but this predisposition should set a high bar for what constitutes a justified intervention.

Flexible Realism: U.S. policy will be realistic about what is possible and desirable to seek in its dealings with other nations. We seek good relations and peaceful commercial relations with the nations of the world without imposing on them democratic or other social change that differs widely from their traditions and histories. We recognize and affirm that there is nothing inconsistent or hypocritical in acting according to such a realistic assessment or in maintaining good relations with countries whose governing systems and societies differ from ours even as we push like-minded friends to uphold our shared norms.

Primacy of Nations: The world’s fundamental political unit is and will remain the nation-state. It is natural and just that all nations put their interests first and guard their sovereignty. The world works best when nations prioritize their interests. The United States will put our own interests first and, in our relations with other nations, encourage them to prioritize their own interests as well. We stand for the sovereign rights of nations.

Sovereignty and Respect: The United States will unapologetically protect our own sovereignty. This includes preventing its erosion by transnational and international organizations, attempts by foreign powers or entities to censor our discourse or curtail our citizens’ free speech rights, lobbying and influence operations that seek to steer our policies or involve us in foreign conflicts, and the manipulation of our immigration system to build up foreign interests within our country.

Balance of Power: The United States cannot allow any nation to become so dominant that it could threaten our interests. We will work with allies and partners to maintain global and regional balances of power to prevent the emergence of dominant adversaries. As the United States rejects the ill-fated concept of global domination for itself, we must prevent the global, and in some cases even regional, domination of others. This reality sometimes entails working with partners to thwart ambitions that threaten our joint interests.

The Trump NSS report makes the case that it is an unrealistic expectation for the United States to be involved in every regional problem around the world. Thus, it is necessary for the United States to prioritize and focus on regional issues that are of most importance to its core national interests. In “The Regions” section of the report, a specific strategy is described for each of five regions. Selected key points for each regional strategy on pages 15-29 are outlined below:

The Western Hemisphere: The Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine: After years of neglect, the United States will reassert and enforce the Monroe Doctrine to restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere, and to protect our homeland and our access to key geographies throughout the region. We will deny non-Hemispheric competitors the ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities, or to own or control strategically vital assets, in our Hemisphere. This “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine is a common-sense and potent restoration of American power and priorities, consistent with American security interests.

Our goals for the Western Hemisphere can be summarized as “Enlist and Expand.” We will enlist established friends in the Hemisphere to control migration, stop drug flows, and strengthen stability and security on land and sea. We will expand by cultivating and strengthening new partners while bolstering our own nation’s appeal as the Hemisphere’s economic and security partner of choice.

Asia: Win the Economic Future, Prevent Military Confrontation: Going forward, we will rebalance America’s economic relationship with China, prioritizing reciprocity and fairness to restore American economic independence.

Importantly, this must be accompanied by a robust and ongoing focus on deterrence to prevent war in the Indo-Pacific.

In addition to maintaining economic preeminence and consolidating our alliance system into an economic group, the United States must execute robust diplomatic and private sector-led economic engagement in those countries where the majority of global economic growth is likely to occur over the coming decades.

In the long term, maintaining American economic and technological preeminence is the surest way to deter and prevent a large-scale military conflict.

Given that one-third of global shipping passes annually through the South China Sea, this has major implications for the American economy. Hence, deterring a conflict over Taiwan, ideally by preserving military overmatch, is a priority. We will also maintain our longstanding declaratory policy on Taiwan that the United States does not support any unilateral change to the status quo in the Taiwan Strait.

Promoting European Greatness: Our goal should be to help Europe correct its current [negative] trajectory.

Over the long term, … certain NATO members will become majority non-European. As such, it is an open question whether they will view their place in the world, or their alliance with the United States, in the same way as those who signed the NATO charter. Our broad policy for Europe should prioritize:

• Reestablishing conditions of stability within Europe and strategic stability with Russia;

• Enabling Europe to stand on its own feet and operate as a group of aligned sovereign nations, including by taking primary responsibility for its own defense … ;

• Cultivating resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations;

• Opening European markets to U.S. goods and services … ;

• Ending the perception, and preventing the reality, of NATO as a perpetually expanding alliance….

The Middle East: Shift Burdens, Build Peace: We [the United States] have a clear interest in expanding the Abraham Accords to more nations in the region and to other countries in the Muslim world.

… the days [of] Middle East dominated American foreign policy … are thankfully over – not because the Middle East no longer matters, but because it is no longer the constant irritant, and potential source of imminent catastrophe, that it once was. It is rather emerging as a place of partnership, friendship, and investment – a trend that should be welcomed and encouraged.

Africa:The United States should transition from an aid-focused relationship with Africa to a trade and investment-focused relationship, favoring partnerships with capable, reliable states committed to opening their markets to U.S. goods and services. An immediate area for U.S. investment in Africa, with prospects for a good return on investment, include the energy sector and critical mineral development. United States has an interest in expanding the Abraham Accords to more nations in the region and to other countries in the Muslim world. However, the days of the Middle East dominating American foreign policy are thankfully over, not because the Middle East no longer matters, but because it is no longer the constant irritant, and potential source of imminent catastrophe, that it once was. It is rather emerging as a place of partnership, friendship, and investment – a trend that should be welcomed and encouraged.

Africa: The United States should transition from an aid-focused relationship with Africa to a trade and investment-focused relationship, favoring partnerships with capable, reliable states committed to opening their markets to U.S. goods and services. An immediate area for U.S. investment in Africa, with prospects for a good return on investment, include the energy sector and critical mineral development.

In summary, the new Trump NSS presents a dramatic shift in direction in U.S. foreign policy. It presents a strategy of less involvement in Europe and the Middle East, and greater focus on the Western Hemisphere with a reinvigoration of the Monroe Doctrine. The NSS offers surprisingly little discussion on Russia and Iran. The absence of language that either country is a threat may indicate a preference for better relations for both. The report also seems to signal an eventual disengagement from NATO.

As for China, the NSS considers China a global competitor, but hopes to counter China primarily on economic terms with stronger American economic fundamentals and long-term economic growth, a better American trade position with China, and a continuation of American military strength in coordination with its Asian allies to avoid any potential military confrontation with China.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, May 20, 2025. Photo credit Senate Foreign Relations Committee website (foreign.senate.gov/hearings/review-of-the-fy26-state-department-budget-request)

The Marshall Plan to rebuild post-World War II Europe has been acclaimed as the most successful foreign assistance program in U.S. history. The plan, officially known as the European Recovery Program (ERP), was created under the Economic Cooperation Act of 1948 (also known at the Foreign Assistance Act of 1948) signed into law by President Harry Truman on April 3, 1948.

The plan was named after George Marshall, its leading advocate and Truman’s Secretary of State at the time. It provided an aggregate total of $13.3 billion (equivalent to about $200 billion in 2025) in financial assistance to 16 European countries over a period of approximately four years from April 1948 to June 1952. Both the Truman administration and large majorities in Congress viewed the Marshall Plan as essential in not only helping reconstruct a war-torn Europe and regenerate its economies, but also to prevent the westward expansion of communism across the European continent by the Soviet Union.

The impact of the plan on recipient countries show that it achieved its primary objectives. From 1947 to the end of 1951, trade volume within Europe almost doubled, industrial production increased 55%, and average GNP rose by roughly 33%. In addition, the Marshall Plan had geopolitical value for the United States that is not easily quantifiable beyond the economic benefits. Many observers believe that the plan was critical in preventing the spread of communism in the assisted countries.

The Marshall Plan was considered so successful that some members of Congress called for similar financial assistance plans for other regions of the world in subsequent years. This eventually led to enactment of a comprehensive foreign assistance bill under the urging of President John F. Kennedy on September 4, 1961, the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961. The purpose of the Foreign Assistance Act was aspirational. It stated:

“The Congress declares that the individual liberties, economic prosperity, and security of the people of the United States are best sustained and enhanced in a community of nations which respect individual civil and economic rights and freedoms and which work together to use wisely the world’s limited resources in an open and equitable international economic system…”

“…a principal objective of the foreign policy of the United States is the encouragement and sustained support of the people of developing countries in their efforts to acquire the knowledge and resources essential to development and to build the economic, political, and social institutions which will improve the quality of their lives” and “that development concerns be fully reflected in United States foreign policy and that United States development resources be effectively and efficiently utilized.”

In order to effectively execute the objectives of the Foreign Assistance Act, President Kennedy created the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) with Executive Order 10973 on November 3, 1961. USAID was set up as a single foreign assistance agency within the U.S. State Department to consolidate several existing foreign assistance organizations and programs. Foreign assistance has continued to play a significant role in America’s foreign policy since then.

According to the U.S. State Department’s foreign assistance data site, ForeignAssistance.gov, the U.S. Government’s committed payments on non-military foreign assistance since World War II, from 1946 through 2024, amounted to about $2.6 trillion (in equivalent 2025 U.S. Dollars). This amount averages to about $33 billion per year over that 79-year period. However, the annual average has increased dramatically over the past 22 years, from 2003 through 2024, to about $46 billion.[i]

This reveals that the U.S. Government spent almost as much on an annual basis over the previous 22 years (2003-2024) on non-military foreign assistance as it did during the approximate four years of the Marshall Plan (1948-1952). Simply in terms of dollar amounts, the U.S. Government committed to funding the equivalent of five Marshall Plans (about $1.02 trillion) in non-military foreign assistance around the world from 2003 to 2024.[ii]

During the four years of the Biden administration, non-military foreign assistance spiked even higher. From 2021 to 2024, committed payments amounted to a whopping $242 billion for an annual average of about $61 billion – about 20% higher than the four years of the Marshall Plan.[iii]

The above dollar amounts do not include any kind of military assistance, whether it be combat or non-combat related, or the cost of operating military bases in foreign countries. Taking non-combat military foreign assistance alone, the U.S. Government has provided a total of about $1.3 trillion since World War II (1946-2024) or about $16 billion per year. These amounts include items such as military education and training, peace and stability programs, and various technical assistance programs. In 2024, non-combat military foreign assistance amounted to about $26 billion and non-military foreign assistance about $54 billion for total foreign assistance of about $80 billion, which was provided to about 175 foreign countries.[iv] Regarding foreign U.S. military bases, the Overseas Base Realignment and Closure Coalition estimated in August 2025 that the U.S. military operates 750 to 800 bases in 80 foreign countries at an annual cost of about $65 billion.

U.S. Foreign Assistance Effectiveness Turns Wasteful and Unaccountable

The Marshall Plan and U.S. foreign assistance in the decades following World War II generally had a positive impact on America’s national interest around the world, particularly during the Cold War years. It was an effective use of soft power, i.e. American influence through economic, humanitarian, and other non-military assistance. Every presidential administration since President Kennedy’s have valued and utilized foreign assistance as a means of soft power in the conduct of foreign policy.

Dean Rusk, Secretary of State under presidents Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson (1961-1969), wrote the following in a memo to President Johnson on January 31, 1966:

“… a properly directed foreign assistance program is a vital instrument of United States foreign policy. Economic and military aid remain far and away the most powerful means at our command to influence the massive forces at work in the less developed nations. They are our primary source of influence on the economic and military evolution of most of the countries of the non-Communist world.”

George Shultz, President Reagan’s Secretary of State (1982-1989), was a strong proponent of foreign assistance as part of a broader soft power that complemented Reagan’s emphasis on hard power, such as military buildups, in advancing American interests globally. Shultz believed foreign assistance should be strategic and integrated with diplomacy and military strength. He consistently advocated for increased budget appropriations for foreign assistance programs. In his testimony before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Foreign Operations on March 10, 1988, Shultz stated, “Foreign assistance is an essential tool of American foreign policy... It helps build a world safer for democracy and more open to American trade.”

Despite the achievements of U.S. foreign assistance since the Marshall Plan, however, the integrity and the mission of U.S. foreign assistance gradually deteriorated over time as it grew into another lucrative government contracting gravy train with diminishing transparency and accountability. President Dwight Eisenhower warned of a military-industrial complex in his farewell address to the nation on January 17, 1961. A similar warning could have been issued about a growing foreign assistance-industrial complex after the collapse of the Soviet eastern-bloc empire in 1991, especially in the two decades after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, when American foreign assistance expenditures rose sharply.

Just as the American military-industrial complex has its dedicated “go-to” contractors (Lockheed Martin, Northrup Grumman, General Dynamics, Raytheon, etc.), so does the foreign assistance sector (albeit on a much smaller financial scale). Private firms such as Chemonics, DAI, and Abt Global – practically unknown outside of the foreign assistance world – have been dedicated U.S. Government foreign assistance contractors for decades and have prospered along with the growth in U.S. foreign assistance activities. There are dozens of small private firms that make their living exclusively from U.S. foreign assistance contracts and sub-contracts.

In the 1990s, a growing movement in Congress sought to scale back foreign assistance spending and even abolish USAID due to concerns over wasteful spending, mismanagement, and the questionable effectiveness of foreign assistance programs. Moreover, with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, some members of Congress argued that a focus on foreign assistance was outdated and that resources should be redirected to domestic issues. This movement led to Congress passing the Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act of 1998 that provided for the reorganization of all U.S. foreign policy agencies and the consolidation of their functions within the U.S. State Department.

President Bill Clinton vetoed the bill on October 21, 1998, but agreed to some of its reforms by issuing Executive Order 13118 on March 31, 1999 as a response. The executive order basically made amendments to the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 to implement some of the reforms in the 1998 bill passed by Congress. One of the provisions in Clinton’s executive order was to establish USAID as an independent agency separate from the U.S. State Department. This proved to be contrary to Congress’s intent for implementing reforms in U.S. foreign assistance.

After USAID became its own stand-alone agency with reduced oversight, it led to a lack of coordination with the U.S. State Department and conflicting foreign policy views. It also created opportunities for waste, fraud, and abuse.

When President Donald Trump began his second term on January 20, 2025, his new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) led by Elon Musk immediately took aim at USAID. Musk and his DOGE team quickly found a shocking level of waste, fraud, and abuse at the agency. During a live X Spaces discussion on February 3, 2025, Musk made the following comments about the DOGE team’s review of USAID:

“As we dug into USAID, it became apparent that what we have here is not an apple with a worm in it, but we have actually just a ball of worms. If you have an apple with a worm in it, you can take the worm out. If you have a whole ball of worms, it’s hopeless. USAID is a ball of worms. There is no apple. And when there is no apple, you just need to get rid of the whole thing.“

Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA) authored a scathing opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal on February 9, 2025, describing USAID as a “rogue agency” that has a history of stonewalling congressional requests for information about its activities. Excerpts from Senator Ernst’s piece:

“After keeping its spending records hidden from Congress and taxpayers, USAID employees are now protesting the review of the agency’s records by President Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency. It’s no surprise that Washington insiders are more upset at DOGE for trying to stop wasteful spending than at USAID for misusing tax dollars. The question we should be asking isn’t why USAID’s grants are being scrutinized, but why it took so long.”

Criticisms of USAID by Musk and Senator Ernst are backed up with detailed lists of waste, fraud, and abuse uncovered by the DOGE team and congressional committees. On February 4, 2025, the House Foreign Affairs Committee issued a press release listing numerous egregious examples of wasteful USAID spending, such as millions of dollars spent promoting DEI and LGBT activism in multiple countries around the world.

But revelations about USAID’s wasteful and fraudulent spending on foreign aid activities is only part of the story. Even more disturbing are its activities beyond foreign aid into radical leftwing cultural and political activism. According to Mike Benz, a former U.S. State Department official and the founder and executive director of the Foundation for Freedom Online, this has been exacerbated in recent years with USAID’s embrace of disinformation campaigns and censorship efforts in collaboration with the State Department and the CIA.

Benz provided a shocking report from USAID’s own internal documents on March 14, 2024 of a USAID censorship operation used domestically against Americans. Excerpts from the report:

“USAID, the foreign-facing wing of the federal government that purports to use taxpayer dollars for ‘strengthening resilient democratic societies’ and exporting American democratic ideals abroad — has been quietly pushing private sector technology companies, media organizations, education ministries, national governments and funding bodies to adopt social media censorship practices…

USAID’s ‘“Disinformation Primer’” outlining its censorship promotion strategies is dated February 2021, the first month after the Biden administration took office after the 2020 election. It proposes censorship action items for virtually every governmental, non-governmental and private sector commercial actor across society …”

Independent journalist Michael Shellenberger corroborates Benz’s claims in his February 3, 2025 Substack article, “USAID’s History Of Regime Change, Destabilization, And Censorship Justifies Its Closure By Trump” and expands further on USAID’s funding of global censorship with its Countering Disinformation program.

Reforming U.S. Foreign Assistance and a New Path Forward

After DOGE exposed USAID’s extensive waste, fraud, and abuse over many years, the Trump administration closed USAID’s head office in Washington, DC on February 7, 2025 and subsequently terminated most of its approximate 10,000 employees. Since then, the entire agency has been effectively shut down. Any USAID functions considered to be worth retaining by the Trump administration have been absorbed by the U.S. State Department.

Marco Rubio, confirmed as Secretary of State by the U.S. Senate with a 99-0 vote on January 20, 2025, has articulated his vision for an “America First” U.S. foreign assistance agenda on multiple occasions. On May 20, 2025, Secretary Rubio testified before both the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the Senate Appropriations Committee. During these hearings, Secretary Rubio made the following points:

• · The mission of U.S. foreign assistance should be based upon making the United States stronger, safer, and more prosperous.

• · The U.S. foreign assistance function at the State Department should be rebuilt and should serve as an integral part of U.S. foreign policy.

• · The best foreign assistance program is one that ultimately comes to an end, because it will mean that it has achieved its purpose.

Robert Gates, who served in senior national security positions under four presidents (Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama), including as Secretary of Defense (2006-2011) and CIA Director (2002-2006), authored an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal on June 13, 2025, ”The U.S. Can Rise to the Chinese Challenge” calling for a revival of U.S. non-military soft power. In his article, Gates writes:

“We usually fail when we publicly nag other governments about their internal policies. Yet for most of our history, and especially during the Cold War, America’s national interest and reputation have been enhanced by consistent advocacy for liberty, human rights and individual dignity. America’s ideology matters in the contest with China. America First must not mean abandoning American values … To neglect our values as part of our foreign policy would make us just another transactional great power without the unique appeal we have enjoyed for nearly 250 years.

The Trump administration’s disruption of outdated institutions provides a great opportunity to strengthen America’s nonmilitary arsenal. Failing to do so would mean abandoning the field to the Chinese, who already are running rings around us. Above all, there must be an overarching national strategy developed by the president and secretary of state—in collaboration with Congress—for applying nonmilitary instruments of power to the contest with China.”

Gates’ call for a restructured and refocused U.S. foreign assistance program is fundamentally in line with Secretary of State Rubio’s views. The Trump administration’s clean-up of the waste, fraud, and abuse in U.S. foreign assistance – along with a fresh focus on foreign assistance as a means of soft power and less reliance on military hard power – should lead to a far more efficient and effective U.S. foreign policy.

Steve Dewey is a fellow at the Ben Franklin Fellowship, founder of GeoFinancial Trends, LLC (www.geofinancialtrends.org) and writes on Substack (stevedewey.substack.com).  He can be reached at steve@geofinancialtrends.org

[i] All dollar amounts referenced are inflation-adjusted to 2025 U.S. Dollars.

[ii] Ibid.

[iii] Ibid.

[iv] Ibid.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard speaking at the annual National Conservatism conference, September 3, 2025. Image credit to the National Conservatism YouTube channel.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard did not pull any punches in her remarks on America’s intelligence agencies at the annual National Conservatism conference last Wednesday, September 3, 2025. She blasted the disgraceful “politicization” and “weaponization” of U.S. intelligence agencies dating back to (at least) the George W. Bush administration with its manufactured intelligence to support the invasion of Iraq and continuing through to the Biden administration’s baseless raid on Donald Trump’s personal residence at Mar-a-Lago.

Director Gabbard discussed recently declassified documents that reveal President Obama and senior officials in his administration knowingly manufactured false intelligence documents to instigate and perpetuate the false Trump-Russia collusion narrative. She referenced James Clapper as an example of an intelligence community leader who has been involved in nefarious intelligence activities over many years. Not only was Clapper involved in the Trump-Russia collusion hoax as Obama’s Director of National Intelligence, he was also involved in the false Iraqi weapons-of-mass-destruction (WMDs) claims as the Director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) under President George W. Bush.

During her speech, Gabbard mentioned that Clapper wrote in one of his books that Vice President Dick Cheney had pushed the intelligence agencies to produce information that would support the invasion of Iraq under the guise that Iraq possessed WMDs and had ties to the Al Qaeda terrorist network. Neither of those allegations ever proved to be true.

In response to the pressure from Cheney, Clapper ordered his agency, the NGA, to create images that would support the Bush administration’s claim that Iraq possessed WMDs. Gabbard quoted the following admission by Clapper in his book, “We were so eager to help that we found what wasn’t really there.”

Gabbard said there are many other examples of known political corruption within the intelligence community and probably many more that are unknown. One of the most egregious recent examples of political corruption was the use of false information by the intelligence community to gain FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) court warrants to illegally spy on American citizens (most notably, former Trump campaign aide, Carter Page, in 2016).

In referring to the politicization and weaponization of the intelligence community, Gabbard noted that this corruption is not restricted to the intelligence agencies; it is rampant across the federal government. In Gabbard’s words, “the rot runs deep.”

Gabbard stated that federal officials engaged in the politicization and weaponization of their agencies consider themselves above the law and above the U.S. Constitution that they swore an oath to uphold. She gave as an example a politically-driven complaint made in July 2019 by a National Security Council member, Alexander Vindman, about a phone call between President Trump and Ukrainian President Zelensky that eventually triggered impeachment proceedings against Trump in a Democrat-controlled Congress. Gabbard opined that many senior federal bureaucrats, like Vindman was at the time, have an attitude that they know what’s best for the country and should be the determinants of executive branch policy, not the U.S. president.

Gabbard also remarked that the intelligence community has been able to escape proper accountability for so many years due to a political system that has been built to shield nefarious activities of its officials, such as a largely unaccountable federal bureaucracy (the “deep state”) with a complicit Congress and a politically corrupt American mainstream media. She was particularly critical of the mainstream media, referring to it as the “propaganda media.”

In concluding her speech, Director Gabbard emphasized that the American people can facilitate an end to the political corruption in the intelligence community and across the federal government by avoiding complacency, seeking the truth, and demanding transparency and accountability. She also stressed a restoration of strict adherence to the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights by all federal government employees, regardless of position.

The video recording of Director Gabbard’s speech at the National Conservatism conference is provided in the following link:

Steve Dewey is a retired federal financial regulator and founder of GeoFinancial Trends, LLC (www.geofinancialtrends.org) and writes on Substack (stevedewey.substack.com).  He can be reached at steve@geofinancialtrends.org

Tulsi Gabbard, DIrector of National Intelligence (www.odni.gov)

Fantastic news from our Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard! She announced on X this afternoon (8/19/2025) that the security clearances of 37 current and former intelligence officials have been revoked due to their involvement in the Trump-Russia collusion hoax. Long overdue, but better late than never.

Last year, a DC area attorney involved in investigations on the weaponization of the federal government told me that there are probably at least 300 federal government officials (both current and former) who should be prosecuted for various federal crimes violating the rights of Donald Trump and individuals associated with President Trump, including General Michael Flynn, Carter Page, George Papadopoulos, Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, Jeff Clark, Peter Navarro, and many others. So, it is welcome news that Director Gabbard is finally announcing actions against 37 members of the “deep state” intelligence community linked to the fabricated Trump-Russia collusion hoax.

I suspect that Director Gabbard’s latest announcement still represents only the early stages of investigations into the deep political corruption within the intelligence agencies that has transpired over the course of the past decade — basically starting with Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign against candidate Donald Trump in 2016, but continuing with the attempted political destruction of the first Trump presidency and Trump’s subsequent second presidential campaign. The ODNI has been making criminal referrals to the DOJ. It will be interesting to see the extent of criminal charges that Attorney General Pam Bondi may issue against a long list of alleged conspirators.

Here's the full text of Director Gabbard's X announcement, which attaches her official ODNI memo on the subject. The memo provides the names of the 37 officials who have had their clearances revoked:

"Being entrusted with a security clearance is a privilege, not a right. Those in the Intelligence Community who betray their oath to the Constitution and put their own interests ahead of the interests of the American people have broken the sacred trust they promised to uphold. In doing so, they undermine our national security, the safety and security of the American people and the foundational principles of our democratic republic.

This is why, at @POTUS' direction, @ODNIgov directed the revocation of the security clearances of 37 current and former intelligence professionals who have abused the public trust by politicizing and manipulating intelligence, leaking classified intelligence without authorization, and/or committing intentional egregious violations of tradecraft standards.

Our Intelligence Community must be committed to upholding the values and principles enshrined in the US Constitution and maintain a laser-like focus on our mission of ensuring the safety, security and freedom of the American people."

The link to Director Gabbard’s official ODNI memo regarding the revocation of security clearances: https://x.com/DNIGabbard/status/1957893651327332529

Stone Cold Truth with Roger Stone

Nightmare On Elm Street: JFK and the Assassination That Still Haunts America

Powerful interests remain determined to keep the full truth about Kennedy's assassination from the American public.

Roger Stone

Mar 24, 2025

Alcohol was an unpredictable elixir for Richard Nixon.

After several very dry martinis (which he proudly claimed Winston Churchill taught him to make), the former President could become talkative, quiet, or contemplative. During these moments, Nixon often drifted into memories of the past. As one of his closest confidants in his later years, I grew accustomed to these nightly sojourns.

One evening at his New Jersey home stands out clearly in my memory.

Nixon's 4-acre property in Saddle River sat hidden on a private wooded leafy lot—a perfect retreat where he wrote his books, hosted foreign dignitaries, and walked his dog, Brownie.

That night, he slouched in his leather armchair, right arm propped up, fingers wrapped around the stem of his martini glass. After a moment of silence, perhaps emboldened by the hour and the trust that had developed between us, I screwed up my confidence and asked the question that had haunted a generation: “Mr. President, who really killed Kennedy?”

He stared intently into his glass.

“Let me say this “he snorted “The Warren Commission was the biggest Goddamn hoax in American history.”

I was startled “I’m sorry, Sir- what do you mean,” I replied hoping for more.

"That was the difference between Lyndon and me,” Nixon said suddenly. "I wasn't willing to kill for it…”

He fell silent. I waited. Then he continued, speaking about Jack Ruby, the man who killed President Kennedy's assassin.

“I actually knew Ruby. Murray Chotiner introduced him back in '47. He went by Rubenstein then. An informant. Murray said he was one of Lyndon's people... We put him on the payroll at Lyndon’s request.”

Chotiner, the political mastermind behind Nixon's meteoric rise from being leaving the Navy in 1946 to Vice President of the United States in just six years had been a mob lawyer representing LA Mob Boss Mickey Cohen before venturing into politics.

The Kennedy assassination haunted Nixon. He believed that elements within intelligence agencies, organized crime, and the highest reaches of our government had conspired in Kennedy's death. Above all, he believed that Lee Harvey Oswald was an unwitting simpleton who was swept away in an exorable tide of nefarious activity, in short a “patsy.”

White House Domestic Policy Chief John Ehrlichman wrote that when he served as the White House Legal Counsel, Nixon ordered him to request that the CIA hand over all documents pertaining to John Kennedy’s murder. Nixon was furious when Richard Helms, the CIA Director, refused his presidential order to hand them over.

Nixon knew the plot to kill JFK went well beyond Lyndon Johnson A stunning, long-overlooked Nixon Watergate-era tape shows Richard Nixon warning CIA Director Richard Helms that he knows of CIA involvement in the murder of John F. Kennedy- “I know who shot John.”he blurted out to the CIA Director. This stunning new Watergate-era tape captures an increasingly besieged Nixon desperately seeking to mobilize the CIA in his defense by threatening to expose their greatest secrets.

Nixon Threatened to Reveal the CIA's Involvement in the Kennedy Assassination

Roger Stone

January 11, 2023

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Read full story

After Nixon’s revelations, I began investigating the assassination, publishing my findings in The Man Who Killed Kennedy: The Case Against LBJ to national acclaim in 2013. Despite numerous document releases over six decades, the most recent this past week, the complete truth about Kennedy's death remains obscured, with critical questions still unanswered.

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The Questionable Case Against Lee Harvey Oswald

Lee Harvey Oswald, the alleged lone gunman at the center of the Kennedy assassination narrative, famously proclaimed to the media he was a “patsy.” According to the Warren Commission report, Oswald fired three shots from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository, with the second and third striking Kennedy. Even this basic yet essential finding is problematic.

One of the most striking omissions in the official record concerns a critical piece of forensic evidence: the paraffin test conducted on Oswald after his arrest. The Dallas Police Department examination revealed that Oswald had no powder burns on his chest, arms, or hands, and a paraffin test revealed that no nitrates (contained in the powders in gases when a weapon is fired) were found on Oswald’s cheek. These findings directly contradict the official narrative that Oswald fired a rifle multiple times that day. The absence of powder residue strongly suggests that Oswald may not have fired a weapon at all on November 22, 1963.

This crucial piece of exculpatory evidence was quickly dismissed by the Warren Commission, which relied instead on circumstantial evidence and questionable witness testimony to build its case against Oswald. The Commission's willingness to overlook such fundamental inconsistencies raises serious questions about the integrity of the entire investigation.

Further compounding these issues is the weapon itself. The Warren Commission alleged that Oswald used a $26 WWII-vintage Italian Mannlicher-Carcano carbine to carry out the assassination. Deputy Constable Seymour Weitzman and Deputy Sheriff Eugene Boone, both with vast knowledge of firearms, found the weapon on the sixth floor and claimed it was a Mauser, a German rifle, with Weitzman reiterating this in an official affidavit. Deputy Dallas Sheriff Roger Craig, also present on the scene, reaffirmed the discovery of a Mauser and noted a ‘7.65’ Mauser’ stamp on the barrel of the weapon. The problem with this discovery was that Oswald did not own a Mauser.

Even if Oswald had used an inferior Italian rifle, experts question whether Oswald could have fired the Mannlicher-Carcano effectively, given its reputation for inaccuracy and the tight timeframe of 5.6 seconds for three shots. When the Warren Commission had three Master marksmen recreate the shooting, only one managed the timing, and none hit the head or neck of a stationary target.

Yet we're asked to accept Oswald as the lone gunman—a man who once discharged a loaded pistol in Marine barracks, scored poorly on his final rifle test, couldn't drive, and lost his previous job for incompetence before working at the Texas School Book Depository.

The latest document dump this week contains one illuminating nugget of truth. The Russian security service KGB also determined Oswald was a “poor shot” during his time in the Soviet Union.

Oswald's Demeanor

Oswald left the alleged sniper’s nest seemingly unhurried and unbothered.

Only a minute after the shooting, Oswald was encountered by Dallas police officer Marrion L. Baker and Texas School Book Depository Superintendent Roy Truly in the second-floor lunchroom—four floors below. Both men testified that Oswald appeared calm, collected, and neither out of breath nor agitated.

As Truly testified to the Warren Commission: “He didn't seem to be excited or overly afraid or anything. He might have been startled, like I might have been if somebody confronted me. But I cannot recall any change in expression of any kind on his face…”

Officer Baker similarly reported that Oswald "appeared normal" and was "calm and collected." This behavior seems wholly inconsistent with someone who had just assassinated the President of the United States and fled down four flights of stairs in a matter of seconds.

Clerical supervisor Mrs. Robert Reid, who saw Oswald walking through her second-floor office moments later, described him as "just calm" and "moving at a very slow pace." Mrs. Reid emphasized that this was consistent with Oswald’s everyday demeanor.

These firsthand witness accounts directly contradict what one would expect from an assassin making his escape. The recently released documents fail to address these fundamental inconsistencies, leaving researchers to question why the official investigation so readily dismissed them.

Oswald as an Intelligence Asset

Perhaps the most compelling evidence undermining the lone gunman theory lies in Oswald's connections to U.S. intelligence agencies, particularly the CIA. Far from being a disaffected loner, Oswald appears to have been a carefully cultivated intelligence asset with connections to high-level operatives.

Jane Roman, a retired CIA officer who signed many of the agency's documents concerning Oswald prior to the assassination, admitted in an interview with researcher Jefferson Morley and former U.S. Army Intelligence officer John Newman that the CIA had a "keen interest in Oswald held very closely on the need-to-know basis."

When confronted with evidence that she had signed off on documents that misrepresented the CIA's knowledge of Oswald, Roman acknowledged, “I'm signing off on something that I know isn't true.” She further stated that this suggested “they [meaning the people with final authority over CIA communications] thought that somehow...they could make some use of Oswald.”

This frank admission from a CIA insider strongly indicates that Oswald was being monitored and potentially manipulated by intelligence agencies in the months leading up to the assassination. Yet the full extent of these connections remains unknown.

One connection we have discovered is George de Mohrenschildt, an enigmatic "oil geologist" with extensive ties to both the CIA and the Texas oil industry. From October 1962 until April 1963, de Mohrenschildt became a close friend to Lee and Marina Oswald, watching over them during a critical period.

De Mohrenschildt later admitted that his contact with Oswald was initiated at the suggestion of Dallas CIA man J. Walton Moore. This revelation directly contradicts the CIA's official position that Oswald was of no interest to the agency.

In the months before his mysterious death in 1977, de Mohrenschildt's story changed dramatically. In conversations with Dutch journalist Willem Oltmans, he made the shocking claim: "I feel responsible for the behavior of Lee Harvey Oswald....Because I guided him. I instructed him to set it up."

During his final trip to Europe with Oltmans, de Mohrenschildt reportedly "began providing fragments of a scenario in which Texas oilmen in league with intelligence operatives plotted to kill the president." Shortly after returning to the United States, de Mohrenschildt was found dead of a gunshot wound, just hours after intimating to investigators that the CIA had approved his contact with Oswald.

Despite the obvious significance of de Mohrenschildt's role, the full details of his relationship with Oswald and his connections to the CIA remain heavily obscured in government documents.

Poppy

Adding another layer to this web of connections is George de Mohrenschildt's relationship with George H.W. Bush, who would later become CIA Director and ultimately President of the United States. In 1950, de Mohrenschildt had started an oil investment firm with Eddie Hooker, Bush's roommate at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts—establishing an indirect but significant link between Bush's circle and the man who would later become Oswald's handler.

More directly, in September 1976, as investigations into Kennedy's death were being reopened, a desperate de Mohrenschildt wrote to Bush, then Director of the CIA:

“You will excuse this hand-written letter. Maybe you will be able to bring a solution to the hopeless situation I find myself in. My wife and I find ourselves surrounded by some vigilantes; our phone bugged; and we are being followed everywhere. Either the FBI is involved in this or they do not want to accept my complaints. We are driven to insanity by the situation.”

The letter continued: "I have been behaving like a damn fool ever since my daughter died from [cystic fibrosis] over three years ago. I tried to write, stupidly and unsuccessfully, about Lee H. Oswald and must have angered a lot of people—I do not know."

Bush responded with a letter dismissing de Mohrenschildt's concerns, suggesting he was simply attracting media attention due to “renewed interest in the Kennedy assassination.”

The fact that the CIA Director took time to personally respond to de Mohrenschildt is noteworthy, suggesting a relationship beyond casual acquaintance.

De Mohrenschildt died of a gunshot wound to the head mere hours after telling investigators that the CIA had approved his contact with Oswald. His death was ruled a suicide despite suspicious circumstances, including evidence on an audio recording that someone had entered his house shortly before the gunshot was heard.

Following De Mohrenschildt’s death, Gaeton Fonzi, an investigator for the House Select Committee on Assassinations, obtained an address book from de Mohrenschildt’s briefcase. In the book, Bush was registered as “Poppy,” a nickname only intimates used for the elder Bush.

The Imposter Oswalds

Perhaps one of the most disturbing aspects of the Kennedy assassination case involves multiple instances of Oswald being impersonated in the months leading up to November 22, 1963. These impersonations suggest a sophisticated intelligence operation designed to create a trail of evidence implicating Oswald.

J. Edgar Hoover himself acknowledged this phenomenon in a recorded phone conversation with President Lyndon Johnson the day after the assassination:

“We have up here the tape and the photograph of the man who was at the Soviet Embassy, using Oswald's name,” Hoover told Johnson. “That picture and the tape do not correspond to this man's voice, nor to his appearance. In other words, it appears that there is a second person who was at the Soviet embassy down there.”

Even more remarkably, Hoover had written to the State Department's Office of Security concerning the possibility of an Oswald identity theft as early as June 1960: “Since there is a possibility that an imposter is using Oswald's birth certificate, any current information the Department of State has concerning subject [Oswald] will be appreciated.”

The phenomenon of Oswald impostors appeared repeatedly in the fall of 1963. In September, while the real Oswald was in Mexico City, another "Oswald" appeared at the Dallas-area apartment of Cuban exile Sylvia Odio, ranting about assassinating Kennedy. On November 9, 1963, while Oswald was with his wife at Ruth Paine's house, Oswald impostors were seen applying for a job at the Dallas Southland Hotel, test-driving a car at a Dallas Lincoln Mercury dealership, and displaying excellent marksmanship at the Sports Drome Rifle Range in Dallas.

These incidents strongly suggest a coordinated effort to create a public profile of Oswald as unstable, violent, and capable of assassination.

The Dallas Police Connection

The role of local law enforcement in potentially facilitating the assassination and framing of Oswald deserves greater scrutiny. One particularly suspicious incident occurred while Oswald was at his rooming house shortly after the assassination. The housekeeper, Earlene Roberts, testified that while Oswald was in his room, a police car stopped in front of the house and honked its horn. Roberts, who knew several policemen, did not recognize the officer.

Shortly thereafter, Oswald left the house and allegedly proceeded to kill Officer J.D. Tippit before being diverted to the Texas Theatre, where he was arrested. The unidentified police car suggests possible police involvement in directing Oswald's movements after the assassination.

Former Dallas Police Chief Jesse Curry, who did not leave Lyndon Johnson’s side in the days following the assassination, later expressed doubt about Oswald's movements, stating: “I can't in my mind firmly make myself believe that he might not have been trying to get to Jack Ruby's apartment. You know he was in close proximity to it, and I know he didn't leave his house with the idea of going to the Texas Theatre.”

Curry even acknowledged the possibility of conspiracy: “There's been coincidental things that have happened here to lead one to believe that there could have been a conspiracy after all... There might have been a connection between the two [Oswald and Ruby] that we never established. And if there was, it was more than a local thing, I believe.”

Police Chief Curry's later admissions may have stemmed from guilt. He had overseen motorcade planning and local security, only to discover too late that the Secret Service had removed protective details from Dealey Plaza before the assassination occurred.

The Truth Remains Hidden

Despite numerous releases of JFK assassination documents, including the most recent dump, crucial evidence remains missing or heavily redacted. The inconsistencies in the case against Oswald, his connections to intelligence agencies, the role of figures like George de Mohrenschildt, and the pattern of “patsy” development seen with both Oswald and Vallee all point to a sophisticated conspiracy that has yet to be fully exposed.

The absence of powder burns on Oswald's chest, arms, hands, and cheek following examination represents just one of many pieces of exculpatory evidence that have been systematically downplayed or ignored in official accounts. The continued withholding of key documents suggests that even six decades later, powerful interests remain determined to keep the full truth about Kennedy's assassination from the American public.

According to his last Chief of Staff, General Alexander Haig, Nixon also knew that Congressman Gerald Ford, as a member of the Warren Commission, had, at the explicit direction of J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI Director, altered the official autopsy diagram for President John F. Kennedy; moving the marking from a bullet in his upper back to his neck in order to accommodate the single-bullet theory and to conceal the fact that Kennedy had been hit with more than the reported three shots. The New York Times recorded this act by Ford.

Until all documents are released in their entirety and a truly independent investigation reexamines the evidence without political constraints, the truth about who killed John F. Kennedy and why will remain one of America's most closely guarded secrets.

Image credit grrrgraphics.com, February 12, 2025.

The rapid pace and impact of President Trump’s activity during the first few weeks of his second term has not been seen since the early weeks of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidency in 1933. In the first 100 days of FDR’s administration, a record number of 99 executive orders were issued along with enactment of 15 major bills from Congress. Trump’s actions thus far are comparable to FDR’s, not in terms of legislation, but certainly for everything else.

The initial five weeks of Trump’s second term (thru February 24^th) has seen a whopping 75 executive orders issued along with 15 presidential proclamations and 36 presidential memoranda. Also impressive are the 18 Trump nominees for cabinet positions that have already been confirmed by the Senate with four more expected to be confirmed by early March and many second-tier positions already filled or awaiting Senate confirmation.

FDR’s administration from 1933 to 1945 greatly expanded the American administrative state with the creation of 69 federal agencies and programs. If FDR’s presidency is viewed as a revolutionary embark on big-government socialism with a powerful administrative state, Trump’s second term should also be considered as revolutionary in the opposite manner, i.e. as an attempt to dismantle the administrative state that has grown ever more bloated, intrusive, and unaccountable in the 80 years since FDR’s presidency.

Trump’s new administration is remarkably better organized and effective than his previous one. It has an aggressive agenda being administered by a highly competent and loyal Trump inner circle. This is in sharp contrast to Trump’s first administration that was marred with poor personnel decisions, infighting, and political appointees who were not supportive of Trump’s policy agenda.

The critical difference between Trump’s first and second terms is Trump’s own understanding of how the Washington, DC political establishment operates, aka the “DC Swamp.” When Trump entered the White House in 2017, he was a true outsider with no experience in the political world; he was the first person elected president in U.S. history with no prior government experience of any kind. Thus, he had little sense of who to surround himself with to carry out his agenda in the complex web of political interests in the DC Swamp.

But Trump soon learned first-hand about the breadth and depth of corruption and political weaponization within the DC Swamp. First came the Russia collusion hoax that perpetrated the bogus Mueller investigation in May 2017; then two politically-driven impeachment proceedings in December 2019 and January 2021, respectively; and, finally, several malicious lawfare cases against Trump during the Biden administration. All of this has benefited Trump for the conduct of his second term as it has made him far wiser, bolder, more committed, more strategic, and more effective in implementing his America First political agenda in the DC Swamp.

The whirlwind of Trump’s presidential actions thus far, including his continual stream of public statements and media appearances, seems to have congressional Democrats, the legacy media, and the federal bureaucracy stunned, almost in a state of shock and awe. Trump’s executive actions have been impressive not only in terms of quantity in a short period of time, but in their far-reaching scope and aggressiveness in directly confronting the federal bureaucracy and well-established federal government policies and norms.

Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)

By far, Trump’s most impactful executive action has been the creation of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) on Inauguration Day with (Executive Order 14158). Led by Elon Musk, DOGE is a dream come true for conservatives and libertarian-minded Americans who have been longing for a down-sizing of the federal government for decades.

DOGE hit the ground running as soon as it was established. It immediately began reviewing and terminating hundreds of wasteful contracts, leases, and grants across multiple government agencies. It set up a website for itself, doge.gov, which provides up-to-date information on cost savings achieved, agency spending budgets, workforce data by agency, and regulation data by agency. It has even set up a “DOGE Clock” to provide live tracking of the cost savings it is achieving in aggregate. As of February 27^th, the DOGE Clock was reporting $54.6 billion in aggregate cost savings:

DOGE Uncovers Potential Fraud of Massive Proportions

A recent DOGE finding at the Treasury Department may prove to be an indication of financial fraud of massive, historic proportions. On February 17^th, DOGE posted on X that it discovered that accounting codes used to identify payments made by the Treasury Department was optional and often left black for approximately $4.7 trillion in payments. This makes the traceability and audit of these payments almost impossible:

This is a shocking revelation based on the sheer magnitude of the dollar amount. A thorough investigation is needed to understand why accounting codes were left blank on such a large amount of payments, who has been receiving these payments, and to what extent were these payments improper or outright criminal fraud. Even if only 1% of these payments were fraudulent, that’s still $47 billion. Maybe this helps explain tens of billions of dollars in improper entitlement program payments and a reason the Defense Department has been unable to pass an audit for the past seven years.

The impressive early performance of DOGE is promising in its mission to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse within the federal government and drain the DC Swamp. If it can continue at its current pace, DOGE may come close to achieving $1 trillion in cost savings by the time its work is mandated to end on July 4, 2026. The DOGE completion date was chosen by President Trump to coincide with the celebration of America’s 250^th birthday as a symbol of America’s restoration to its founding principles under the U.S. Constitution.

More Executive Actions to Drain the Swamp:

In addition to establishing DOGE, President Trump has issued other executive orders that should have a significant impact in draining the DC Swamp. These include:

· Ending the weaponization of the federal government. (Executive Order 14147)

· Ending radical and wasteful DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) programs and preferences. (Executive Order 14151

· Reforming the federal hiring process and restoring merit to government service. (Executive Order 14170)

· Restoring accountability to policy-influencing positions within the federal workforce, which includes the reinstatement of Executive Order 13957 from President Trump’s first term creating the new “Schedule F” federal government employment category and revoking President Biden’s Executive Order 14003 protecting the federal workforce. (Executive Order 14171)

· Implementing the President's Workforce Optimization Initiative, which mandates the Director of the Office of Management and Budget reduce the size of the federal government workforce through efficiency improvements and attrition and require each agency to hire no more than one employee for every four departing employees with certain exemptions. (Executive Order 14210)

· Ensuring accountability for all federal agencies, which mandates that so-called “independent agencies” are subject to the same presidential supervision and control as the rest of the executive branch. (Executive Order 14216)

· Ensuring lawful governance and implementing the President’s “Department of Government Efficiency” deregulatory initiative, which mandates the rescission of regulations that are unconstitutional, unlawful, impose significant costs on private parties, or harm the national interest. (Executive Order 14217)

· Commencing the reduction of the federal bureaucracy, which includes the elimination of non-statutory components and functions of government entities and councils to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law. (Executive Order 14218)

· Unleashing prosperity through deregulation, which mandates that every new regulation be offset by at least 10 existing regulations. (Executive Order 14192

Executive Actions on Foreign Policy and International Organizations:

· Directing the Secretary of State to bring the Department of State's policies, programs, personnel, and operations in line with an America First foreign policy putting American interests first. (Executive Order 14150)

· Withdrawing the United States from the World Health Organization. (Executive Order 14155)

· Putting American interests first in any international environmental agreements and notice to withdraw from the Paris Agreement under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. (Executive Order 14162)

· Reevaluating and realigning United States foreign aid. (Executive Order 14169)

· Withdrawing the United States from and ending funding to certain United Nations organizations and reviewing United States support to all international organizations. (Executive Order 14199)

Executive Actions on Education, Society, and Culture:

· Defending women from gender ideology extremism and restoring biological gender truth to the federal government. (Executive Order 14168)

· Restoring names that honor American greatness. (Executive Order 14172)

· Ending radical indoctrination in K-12 schooling. (Executive Order 14190)

· Expanding educational freedom and opportunity. (Executive Order 14191)

· Keeping men out of women's sports. (Executive Order 14201)

· Eradicating anti-Christian bias. (Executive Order 14202)

Executive Action on Past Assassinations:

· Declassification of records concerning the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (Executive Order 14176)

Latest Polling Favorable to Trump and His “Drain the Swamp” Agenda:

In spite of the expected outcry from Democrats and the legacy media over Trump’s aggressive agenda to drain the DC Swamp, a new Harvard/Harris poll released February 24^th shows President Trump with a 52% approval rating and even stronger support for his policies.

One particular question in the poll asked respondents whether they favor or oppose “Undertaking a full-scale effort to find and eliminate fraud and waste in government expenditures.” The poll shows that a strong majority of 76% are in favor of this policy.

Another indicator in the poll that is encouraging for the new Trump administration is the “Right Track/Wrong Track” question. The percentage of respondents indicating that the country is on the right track jumped 14% in just one month from 28% in January to 42% in February. This is a hopeful sign that the new Trump administration’s aggressive agenda in draining the DC Swamp and addressing other important issues will be embraced by a strong majority of Americans in the coming months.

Worker removes building lettering from United States Agency for International Development main building, Washington, DC, February 7, 2025. Image credit to Business Insider/Alice Tecotzky.

This article published in AIER’s The Daily Economy, February 20, 2025.

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) was established by President John F. Kennedy on November 3, 1961 with Executive Order 10973. Kennedy created USAID to implement the noble objectives of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 and consolidate several existing foreign assistance organizations and programs into a single agency under the U.S. State Department.

The purpose of the Foreign Assistance Act was clear. It stated:

“a principal objective of the foreign policy of the United States is the encouragement and sustained support of the people of developing countries in their efforts to acquire the knowledge and resources essential to development and to build the economic, political, and social institutions which will improve the quality of their lives” and “that development concerns be fully reflected in United States foreign policy and that United States development resources be effectively and efficiently utilized.”

In 1998, USAID split off from the State Department, becoming its own stand-alone agency. This eventually led to USAID being used as a tool of the State Department and the CIA for domestic political agendas and foreign covert operations intended to escape transparency and accountability. Thus, USAID’s original mission became corrupted.

On Inauguration Day, President Trump issued Executive Order 14158 to establish and implement the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Led by Elon Musk, DOGE hit the ground running. It immediately began reviewing and terminating hundreds of wasteful contracts, leases, and grants across several government agencies.

While DOGE has not yet established a system to report running cost savings by agency, it has set up a “DOGE Clock” to provide live tracking of the cost savings it is achieving in aggregate. As of February 17, the DOGE Clock was reporting $49 billion in aggregate cost savings. Not bad for only 28 days of cost-cutting work.

The one agency that quickly caught the attention of the DOGE team for its shocking level of waste, fraud, and abuse was USAID. During a live X Spaces discussion on February 3, Musk made the following comments about the DOGE team’s review of USAID:

"As we dug into USAID, it became apparent that what we have here is not an apple with a worm in it, but we have actually just a ball of worms. If you have an apple with a worm in it, you can take the worm out. If you have a whole ball of worms, it's hopeless. USAID is a ball of worms. There is no apple. And when there is no apple you just need to get rid of the whole thing."

On the previous day, February 2, Musk posted several critical comments about USAID on X:

“USAID was a viper’s nest of radical-left Marxists who hate America” and “USAID is/was a radical-left political psy op.”

Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA) authored an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal on February 9 describing USAID as a “rogue agency” that has a history of stonewalling congressional requests for information about its activities. Excerpts from Senator Ernst’s piece:

“After keeping its spending records hidden from Congress and taxpayers, USAID employees are now protesting the review of the agency’s records by President Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency. It’s no surprise that Washington insiders are more upset at DOGE for trying to stop wasteful spending than at USAID for misusing tax dollars. The question we should be asking isn’t why USAID’s grants are being scrutinized, but why it took so long.”

Criticisms of USAID by Musk and Senator Ernst are backed up with detailed lists of waste, fraud, and abuse uncovered by the DOGE team and congressional committees.

On January 31, DOGE reported on X that it had terminated seven DEI-related USAID contracts with a total contract value of $375.1 million. The Trump White House issued a fact sheet on February 3 entitled “At USAID, Waste and Abuse Runs Deep” and the House Foreign Affairs Committee followed with a press release on February 4 that listed numerous egregious examples of wasteful USAID spending, such as millions of dollars spent promoting DEI and LGBT activism in multiple countries around the world, and hundreds of millions of dollars paid to support poppy cultivation and heroin production in Afghanistan that benefitted the Taliban regime.

USAID development programs are no longer wanted by recipient countries in some cases. On February 2, the president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, posted to following on X:

“Most governments don’t want USAID funds flowing into their countries because they understand where much of that money actually ends up.

While marketed as support for development, democracy, and human rights, the majority of these funds are funneled into opposition groups, NGOs with political agendas, and destabilizing movements.

At best, maybe 10% of the money reaches real projects that help people in need (there are such cases), but the rest is used to fuel dissent, finance protests, and undermine administrations that refuse to align with the globalist agenda.

Cutting this so-called aid isn’t just beneficial for the United States; it’s also a big win for the rest of the world.”

DOGE’s revelations about USAID’s wasteful and fraudulent spending on foreign aid activities is only part of the story. Even more disturbing are its activities beyond foreign aid into radical leftwing cultural and political activism. According to former State Department official Mike Benz, this has been exacerbated in recent years with USAID’s embrace of disinformation campaigns and censorship efforts in collaboration with the State Department and the CIA.

Mr. Benz, founder and executive director of the Foundation for Freedom Online (FFO), provided a detailed report of USAID’s censorship operation from USAID’s own internal documents on March 14, 2024. The most shocking revelation from Benz’s investigation is that USAID’s censorship program was implemented domestically against Americans. Excerpts from the report:

“USAID — the foreign-facing wing of the federal government that purports to use taxpayer dollars for ‘strengthening resilient democratic societies’ and exporting American democratic ideals abroad — has been quietly pushing private sector technology companies, media organizations, education ministries, national governments and funding bodies to adopt social media censorship practices, according to newly revealed internal documents.

USAID’s 97-page proprietary ‘Disinformation Primer,’ labeled ‘for internal use only’ was obtained by America First Legal (AFL), a public interest law firm conducting a number of major investigations and lawsuits into the censorship industry and its government partner agencies, after a lengthy process in which the US Department of State failed to respond to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request and was compelled to turn over government documents after AFL succeeded in a formal lawsuit. 

The USAID Disinformation Primer reveals a detailed compilation of the agency’s advocacy for some of the most economically damaging censorship strategies — many of which had been deployed in America to throttle populists in the 2020 elections and afterwards — and endorses recommendations from some of the most controversial censorship industry institutions under scrutiny by the US Congress.

USAID’s ‘“Disinformation Primer’” outlining its censorship promotion strategies is dated February 2021, the first month after the Biden administration took office after the 2020 election. It proposes censorship action items for virtually every governmental, non-governmental and private sector commercial actor across society …”

Benz has explained in recent interviews with Tucker Carlson and Joe Rogan that the CIA cannot lawfully engage in covert operations without a presidential finding; there is no such requirement for USAID. Thus, Benz claims that the CIA and the State Department use USAID to carry out covert operations that they want hidden from the president and Congress.

Independent journalist Michael Shellenberger corroborates Benz’s comments in his February 3 Substack piece, “USAID’s History Of Regime Change, Destabilization, And Censorship Justifies Its Closure By Trump” and expands further on USAID’s funding of global censorship. Shellenberger writes:

“As part of US government efforts to overthrow governments abroad, or simply influence what they do, USAID has in recent years been funding censorship advocacy worldwide through its “Countering Disinformation” program, which is part of its Consortium for Elections and Political Process Strengthening (CEPPS).

After DOGE exposed USAID’s extensive waste, fraud, and abuse over many years, the Trump administration shut down USAID’s head office in Washington, DC on February 7 and is reportedly planning to fire over 10,000 USAID staff and retain only 294. Both Trump and Musk favor abolishing USAID as an agency and moving any legitimate foreign aid functions into the State Department. Whether Trump has the legal authority to abolish USAID by executive order is legally questionable, but, at a minimum, Trump and Musk are right to dramatically downsize USAID, restore its transparency and accountability under the State Department, and return it to the basics of its original mission as envisioned by John F. Kennedy in 1961.

Image credit to the Tax Foundation, “The State Flat Tax Revolution: Where Things Stand Today,” January 7, 2025.

The new Trump administration and congressional Republicans are collaborating on a new tax bill that they hope to pass into law by the end of April. The most important conditions in the prospective bill, by far, will be extending the lower income tax rates and other tax cut provisions set forth in the Tax Cut and Jobs Act (TCJA) enacted in December 2017.

The TCJA tax cut provisions are set to expire on December 31^st this year. Failure to extend them will result in massive tax increases in 2026 for both individuals and corporations resulting in potentially devasting economic consequences. A report produced by the National Association of Manufacturers this month estimates that the expiration of the TCJA tax cuts would result in the loss of 5.9 million American jobs and a $1.1 trillion reduction in U.S. GDP.

Fortunately, the entire Republican congressional membership seems united in extending the tax cut provisions of TCJA. However, Republicans need to be careful not to get sidetracked with adding new provisions into the prospective new tax bill to satisfy the selfish interests of individual members. It will only serve to complicate the bill, disrupt political consensus, slow down its enactment, and possibly even derail enactment. President Trump’s ideas for lowering the corporate income tax rate to 15% and eliminating income taxes on tips and social security benefits are dynamic and worthy policy proposals. Those add-ons should be included in the bill, but, otherwise, keep passage of the bill as simple as possible.

Assuming the Trump administration and congressional Republicans enact a tax bill that extends the fundamental provisions of the TCJA, they should not stop with that legislative achievement; they should subsequently embrace a new political agenda that would fundamentally transform the American economy from one hampered with the labyrinth of socialist policies enacted over the past century to one of restoration to limited government and limited taxation as envisioned by America’s Founding Fathers. The cornerstone of such a new agenda would align with the recent grass-roots movement among various states in the American heartland: the flat tax revolution.

In 1996 and 2000, Steve Forbes ran for president on a campaign promoting free market policies, reducing the size and power of government, and, especially, his plan for a simple flat income tax. As Forbes rightly claimed during his campaigns, a simple flat income tax would eliminate the need for a massive tax enforcement agency, i.e. the IRS. Forbes often made the wry comment during his campaigns that, if his flat tax policy was implemented, he would be nice to the 100,000-plus employees of the IRS by providing them with paid job training to seek new careers.

Unfortunately for free market, libertarian-minded Americans, Forbes lost the Republican primary in 1996 to Bob Dole and in 2000 to George W. Bush. With Forbes’ departure from the national political scene after the 2000 election, the idea of a simple flat income tax seemingly vanished into oblivion. However, as American taxpayers continued to experience an ever-complicated and burdensome federal tax system, a grass roots movement for a simpler tax system has grown at the state level.

State governments often move quicker in response to the interests of their constituents than the lumbering centralized federal government. Since 2019, seven states have implemented a flat income tax – Arizona, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, and Mississippi. This has increased the number of states with a flat income tax to fourteen. There are also nine states with no income tax – Alaska, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, and Wyoming. This makes 23 states who have rejected the socialist graduated income tax that has been in place with the federal government since the Revenue Act of 1913.

Since exiting the arena of presidential politics in 2000, Steve Forbes has continued his advocacy for free market economics and a simple, flat income tax from his platform as Chairman and Editor-in-Chief of Forbes Media and as co-founder of the Committee to Unleash Prosperity with economists Arthur Laffer and Steve Moore. The Trump administration and congressional Republicans should capitalize on the flat tax revolution at the state level by pushing for a federal flat income tax once they achieve passage of the currently planned bill to extend the tax cut provisions of TCJA.

In an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal on December 30, 2024, Steve Forbes and Steve Moore made the case for enacting a flat income tax of 15% for both individuals and corporations. Excerpts:

Making the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act permanent would be a good start for Congress in 2025. But it’s time to take an even bigger step: creating a simplified flat tax for all. The TCJA got us close to this goal, and a few additional reforms would get it done.

Collapsing the personal-income and corporate tax rates to 15% would have huge economic benefits. America would suddenly have one of the lowest tax rates in the world, resulting in trillions of dollars of new capital flow and a spike in take-home pay.

The simplicity of a flat tax would reduce the deadweight costs associated with tax compliance—and the headaches. The White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs calculates that Americans spent almost eight billion hours filling out tax forms in 2024. The Tax Foundation estimates that this cost the economy $413 billion in lost productivity, and the Internal Revenue Service estimates that we spent $133 billion on out-of-pocket compliance costs. That adds up to a burden of $546 billion.

Mr. Trump has a rare window of opportunity to transform America’s economy into a fast-growing colossus by enacting a simplified flat tax. And we can’t think of a better way to drain the swamp of special-interest lobbyists, IRS agents and tax lawyers.

The benefits of a simple flat income tax would also eliminate the need for the very costly IRS, which has a budget request for the current 2025 fiscal year of $22.8 billion. As I wrote in my article published in The American Spectator on February 4, 2023, “Abolish the IRS: A Massive System Beyond Repair”:

… a simple flat income tax would provide the necessary political and operational justification for abolishing the IRS. The functions of the current IRS would be reduced enormously, allowing for a simplified tax-collection function to be transferred to a new tax-collection section of the U.S. Treasury Department and requiring a workforce of only a small fraction of the current 80,000-employee IRS.

Hopefully, President Trump and congressional Republicans will consider a longer-term plan for a simple flat income tax as they collaborate on extending the current tax cuts of TCJA.

Book cover of “American Leviathan” by Ned Ryun

Conservative political activist Ned Ryun (son of former Kansas congressman and Olympian runner Jim Ryun) authored a well-researched and insightful book, American Leviathan, published September last year on the origins and growth of America’s unconstitutional and progressive administrative state. This is an excellent read on the historical devolution of the United States from a constitutional republic to a progressive authoritarian state. It provides an historical account not likely to be found in any mainstream high school or college American history books.

Ryun’s book explains that the progressive political movement in the United States began in the 1880s, a movement completely antithetical to the fundamental principles of personal liberty framed in the U.S. Constitution. Ryun labels this movement as “progressive statism,” which, in practical terms, is another name for socialism. The movement had its intellectual origins emanating from Europe, particularly German philosopher Georg Hegel (1770-1831). American progressives studying in Germany in the latter part of the 19^th century embraced Hegel’s ideas and imported them to America.

Ryun writes that Hegel is best known for creating the philosophy of “historicism,” which is the belief that all philosophy is a product of the spirit of the time, that there is no transcendental truth, that truth is relative to a particular time in history, and that the whole of human history is a continual march from irrational to rational thought, leading to continual human progress. But such human progress can only be derived from the state, not from free individuals.

Ryun references a book by Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, 1966, in his discussion on Hegel, in which Popper quotes Hegel’s writing:

“The freedom of thought, and science, can originate only in the state” and, if faced with subversive opinions, “The state must protect objective truth… the state has, in general… to make up its own mind what is to be considered objective truth.” In the same book, Popper refers to Hegel as the “father of modern historicism and totalitarianism.”

Hegel’s philosophical views were in direct conflict with those of America’s Founding Fathers and the original intent of the U.S. Constitution to protect individual liberty.

An important propagator of progressive statism (i.e. socialism) in the late 1800s and early 1900s was John Burgess, a law professor at Columbia Law School from 1876 to 1912. Burgess was a strong advocate of Hegel’s ideas and considered by many as the founder of American political science. Ryun writes that Burgess influenced thousands upon thousands of law and political science students.

Ryun identifies the “Four Horsemen of the Progressive Apocalypse” who heavily influenced American politics at the turn of the 20^th century as proponents of progressive statism: (1) Robert La Follette, a Republican politician from Wisconsin; (2) Herbert Croly, an influential progressive political writer; (3) Teddy Roosevelt, 26^th president of the United States (1901-1909); and (4) Woodrow Wilson, 28^th president of the United States (1913-1921).

Theodore Roosevelt has been lauded by many historians over the years as a great American president, in large part due to his leadership in orchestrating the construction of the Panama Canal (started in 1904, completed in 1914) as well as his reputation as the “trust buster” of breaking up corporate monopolies. However, Roosevelt was an outspoken advocate for a stronger executive branch with new oversight authorities and the redistribution of wealth. In 1903, he signed into law the creation of the Department of Commerce and Labor (later split into the Department of Commerce and the Department of Labor in 1913), which included a new regulatory agency, the Bureau of Corporations (later renamed the Federal Trade Commission in 1915). In 1908, Roosevelt created a new federal law enforcement agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) by executive order.

Ryun writes that after Roosevelt left the presidency in 1909, he elevated his support of progressive statism (i.e. socialism), including his advocacy of a graduated income tax and an estate tax – both of which came to fruition during the Woodrow Wilson presidency.

In August 1910, Roosevelt gave his “New Nationalism” speech in Osawatomie, Kansas, that left no doubt he sought to be the national leader of the progressive statist movement. In his speech, he dismissed the Founding Fathers’ ideas on individual rights, especially property rights. Ryun quotes Roosevelt as saying, “… every man holds his property subject to the general right of the community to regulate its use to whatever degree the public welfare may require it… We should permit it (property) to be gained only so long as the gaining represents benefit to the community.” This quote is in alignment with any of today’s prominent American advocates of socialism.

Ryun explains that progressive statism had arrived as the predominant, mainstream political force in the United States during the presidential election year of 1912. It was this year that every political party and presidential candidate accepted, at least at some level, the administrative state as the governing framework of the nation. The presidential election featured four candidates: Democrat Party candidate Woodrow Wilson, incumbent Republican president William Howard Taft, Progressive Party candidate Theodore Roosevelt, and Socialist Party candidate Eugene Debs. Wilson, Roosevelt, and Debs all fully embraced a progressive statist agenda.

Roosevelt’s departure from the Republican Party and launching of the new Progressive Party in the summer of 1912 badly split a potential Republican vote, a fatal blow to Taft’s reelection campaign, resulting in an easy election victory for Democrat Wilson. The progressive statists were in strong control of the American political agenda for the following eight years during Wilson’s two-term presidency.

Wilson, also influenced by the ideas of Hegel, was a proponent of a powerful administrative state many years before he was elected president. He studied and wrote extensively on the workings of the federal government at Johns Hopkins University where he earned a PhD in history and government. He subsequently served as a professor of political economy at Princeton University and eventually became its president, from 1900 to 1910. Wilson’s writings and speeches revealed his belief in establishing a bureaucracy of educated experts, detached from politics, to run the government. This is contrary to the principles of a representative government.

Two of the most consequential legislative acts in U.S. history were signed into law during Wilson’s first year in office: (1) The Revenue Act of 1913, which established a graduated income tax that Wilson, Roosevelt, and other progressive statists had been advocating for years; and (2) the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, establishing the Federal Reserve System. Both acts have contributed greatly to the growth of the administrative state, the American Leviathan, since then.

Ryun summarizes the growth of the progressive administrative state at the expense of America’s constitutional representative government as follows:

1895-1920: The first wave of progressive statism that developed and established an unelected federal bureaucracy within the executive branch.

1932-1945: The second wave of progressive statism during FDR’s “New Deal” presidency.

1963-1969: The third wave of progressive statism during LBJ’s “Great Society” presidency.

Over the above time periods, governing power was slowly but surely transferred from elected representatives in Congress to unelected and unaccountable federal bureaucrats.

Ryun states that our elected members of Congress have gradually abdicated their roles as the stewards and guardians of the American people’s money and interests to being nothing more than middlemen allocating taxpayer money from the American people to fund the state to advance the state.

Ryun references a book by John Marini, Unmasking the Administrative State, 2019, in which Marini writes that “Congress lost the will to legislate and became facilitators of the administrative state” after LBJ’s Great Society legislation was enacted. Marini derives this conclusion based on Congress passing more regulatory legislation from 1968 to 1978 than it had done in the entire previous history of the nation.

The American Leviathan now comprises approximately 440 federal government bodies with over 2.3 million federal civilian employees, 1.3 million active-duty military personnel, over 500,000 U.S. postal service workers, and over 4 million federal government contractors.

One obvious result of America’s march to an ever larger and more powerful progressive administrative state over the past century is a current national debt of almost $37 trillion and projected to reach $57 trillion by the year 2034. Relative to America’s Gross National Product (GDP), the national debt is now 123% of GDP – a record high. And the national debt does not even include the long-term unfunded payment obligations of the federal government comprising Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and federal pensions – an amount that ranges from $80 trillion to over $150 trillion depending on timeline and other assumptions.

Over the past 40 years, the administrative state was further strengthened by a 1984 Supreme Court, Chevron U.S.A., Inc v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. In this case, the Supreme Court ruled that any ambiguity in laws passed by Congress should be deferred to federal agencies for interpretation. Thus, in any legal challenges to laws, courts deferred to the relevant federal agencies for a determination on how the law should be interpreted and applied. This became known as the Chevron Doctrine and gave federal agencies even more administrative power in applying regulations.

Fortunately, the Supreme Court overturned the Chevron Doctrine last year with two related cases, Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo and Relentless, Inc. v. Department of Commerce. It remains to be seen how the Supreme Court’s ruling on these two cases will affect the regulatory decisions of federal agencies, but they could prove to be watershed rulings in lessening the regulatory power of federal agencies and returning that power to Congress.

In order to reverse course and dismantle America’s administrative state, i.e. “Slay the Leviathan” and “Drain the Swamp,” Ryun outlines several recommended actions that are now be possible under the new reform-minded Trump administration with the help of its new private sector Department of Government Efficiency, aka DOGE, led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy:

Reductions in Force: A presidential executive order could direct all cabinet secretaries and agency heads to engage in a reorganization of their agencies, identify which positions are essential and which should be abolished, and then legally abolish thousands of positions in each federal agency. Other means to reduce the bloated federal government workforce include voluntary separation incentive payments, voluntary early retirement packages, and job reassignments from Washington, DC to remote locations.

Reimpose “Schedule F” Positions: On October 21, 2020, President Trump signed executive order 13957 to create a new federal government employment category, Schedule F. The purpose was to reclassify all federal civilian employees working in confidential, policy-determining, policy-making, or policy-advocating positions into a new “at will” employment category to give federal agency heads to ability to hire and fire such employees at will. President Biden revoked President Trump’s executive order just two days after taking office on January 22, 2021, but President Trump will likely issue a new executive order after he takes office again to reissue an executive order to reimpose Schedule F.

Reinstate Civil Service Exams: Civil service exams still exist for foreign service officers, postal service workers, and air traffic controllers, but the vast majority of federal government employees are no longer required to pass such an exam as this requirement was eliminated many years ago. The civil service exam should be reinstituted to improve both the quality of the federal workforce and its understanding of the U.S. Constitution. The director of the Office of Personnel Management has broad authority to mandate such tests and their content.

The above suggestions by Ned Ryun in his book are only a small sampling of many other actions that should be taken to reverse the long trend of America’s progressive statist movement, i.e. socialism, and return it to the constitutional republic of liberty as envisioned by the Founding Fathers.

Steve Dewey (Left), Ned Ryun (right) at Northern Virginia Republican Business Forum breakfast, Tower Club, Tysons Corner, VA, December 6, 2024

My Substack post on December 17, 2024, “America’s Bizarre Financial Regulatory System Needs Radical Overhaul,” was published in The American Spectator yesterday, December 29, 2024: Overhaul the Financial Regulatory System

Image credit to cover of Senator Rand Paul’s 2024 Festivus Report

U.S. Senator Rand Paul’s annual Festivus Report for 2024 released this week highlights a whopping $1.008 trillion in wasteful federal government spending, which is about $100 billion more than the approximate $900 billion in wasteful spending that Senator Paul identified in his 2023 Festivus Report.

Senator Paul’s comments in the introduction of his report:

Last Festivus, we bemoaned the national debt nearing $34 trillion. In just a year, Washington’s career politicians and bureaucrats have managed to push it beyond $36 trillion—unsurprisingly, with hardly a second thought.

Who’s to blame for our crushing national debt? Everybody. This year, members of both political parties in Congress voted for massive spending bills, filled with subsidies for underperforming industries, continued military aid to Ukraine, and controversial climate initiatives. As Congress spends to reward its favored pet projects, the American taxpayers are forced to pay through high prices and crippling interest rates.

The same big spenders teamed up, yet again, to continue sending Americans’ hard-earned money to foreign countries, funding endless wars, all while STILL ignoring our wide-open southern border.

And our mountain of debt will continue to pile even higher. The Congressional Budget Office predicts we will add an average of $2.1 trillion in debt annually for the next decade. According to a July House Budget Committee Report, the U.S. government will add over $6.4 billion of debt every single day for the next ten years…

This year, I am highlighting a whopping $1,008,313,329,626.12. That’s over $1 trillion in government waste, including things like ice-skating drag queens, a $12 Million Las Vegas pickleball complex, $4,840,082 on Ukrainian influencers, and more! No matter how much money the government has wasted, politicians keep demanding even more.

As always, taking the path to fiscal responsibility is often a lonely journey, but I’ve been fighting government waste like DOGE before DOGE was cool. And I will continue my fight against government waste this holiday season.

Senator Paul’s Festivus reports for 2024 and 2023, while identifying the wasteful spending on Ukraine, do not mention the reported theft of at least $400 million in U.S. government financial support for Ukraine by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his top aides as of April 2023. This was reported by legendary investigative journalist Seymour Hersh on his Substack page, “Trading with the Enemy,” April 12, 2023. From Mr. Hersh’s article:

“What also is unknown is that Zelensky has been buying the fuel from Russia, the country with which it, and Washington, are at war, and the Ukrainian president and many in his entourage have been skimming untold millions from the American dollars earmarked for diesel fuel payments. One estimate by analysts from the Central Intelligence Agency put the embezzled funds at $400 million last year, at least…

The issue of corruption was directly raised with Zelensky in a meeting last January (2023) in Kiev with CIA Director William Burns. His message to the Ukrainian president, I was told by an intelligence official with direct knowledge of the meeting, was out of a 1950s mob movie. The senior generals and government officials in Kiev were angry at what they saw as Zelensky’s greed, so Burns told the Ukrainian president, because “he was taking a larger share of the skim money than was going to the generals.”

So, if Mr. Hersh’s report is accurate, the Biden administration’s CIA director, William Burns, was well aware of the magnitude of the corruption in Ukraine and even accepted its occurrence with Zelensky. Considering that Hersh’s report was published more than 20 months ago, one can only imagine the enormous level of financial corruption that has likely occurred with U.S. government financial support for Ukraine since then. And, considering that the U.S. Department of Defense has failed seven consecutive audits, the level of financial corruption associated with the U.S. government’s support of Ukraine since its war with Russia started in February 2022 may never be known.

YouTube video credit to the Bastiat Society of Washington, DC, recorded October 10, 2024, at the Leadership Institute, Arlington, VA.

Long-time conservative black leader Robert (Bob) Woodson, born in 1937 in Philadelphia, is still going strong at the age of 87. On October 10th this year, he spoke at an event hosted by AIER’s Bastiat Society of Washington, DC on the destructive DEI policies of the American Left and the need to counter it with a return to traditional American values, the principles of morality, and color-blind civil rights.

During his talk, Mr. Woodson explained how he parted ways with the civil rights movement in the 1970s over the issue of forced busing for the purpose of racial desegregation. He believed that the progressive push to force desegregation was an implicit racist attitude that blacks were inferior to whites and, therefore, incapable of prospering on their own in their own segregated black communities. This did not mean that Mr. Woodson was opposed to blacks and whites living and working together, only that racial integration should be achieved organically through equal opportunity under the law, not through government force.

Mr. Woodson also explained how the highly aspirational goal of Martin Luther King, Jr. to achieve a color-blind society based on moral character was hijacked by self-serving race-grievance merchants after Dr. King’s assassination in 1968. He said that new government anti-poverty programs introduced in the 1960s and 1970s mostly benefited the government agencies and administrators of those programs and not the low-income communities they were intended to help. He described it as a “bait-and-switch” scheme, which is still very much in force today.

Mr. Woodson said he learned that only 20%-30% of the funding for anti-poverty government programs went to intended recipients with 70%-80% going to the government agencies and the administrators of those programs. It was from his realization of the bait-and-switch nature of anti-poverty programs that Mr. Woodson left the Democrat Party during the Carter administration in the late 1970s. He subsequently founded his own non-profit organization in 1981, The Woodson Center, to help low-income communities through self-help initiatives, such as restoring strong family values, economic education, market-based enterprise, and eliminating dependence on government.

He discussed the need for more “Josephs” in our communities, referencing Joseph in the Bible, i.e. those who have first-hand, grass-roots experience persevering through hardship and achieving success in their own disadvantaged communities or having achieved redemption after previous mistakes and failures. He explained that people with such real life experience are the best leaders to help disadvantaged communities and represent the type of leaders that his Woodson Center organization seeks to support. The basic idea behind his Woodson Center is that such grass-roots leaders are far superior in helping to transform disadvantaged individuals and communities than any government program.

He remarked that the principles of market economics should be applied to social economics. In other words, the principles of free market economics, which the progressive Left has always opposed, are essential to the restoration of America’s urban centers.

Mr. Woodson also mentioned the 1776 Unites project that he created in February 2020 to counter the radical 1619 Project developed by The New York Times in 2019. He founded 1776 Unites as an effort to speak for Americans of all races, creeds, and political convictions who oppose the efforts to demoralize and demonize the United States and its foundations from within and to turn its people against one another with false history and grievance politics.

Robert Woodson is the author of several books, including Lessons from the Least of These: The Woodson Principles (2020), Red, White, and Black: Rescuing American History from Revisionists and Race Hustlers (2021), and his latest book A Pathway to American Renewal: Red, White, and Black, published September 2024.

Diagram credit to the U.S. Department of Treasury report, “A Financial System That Creates Economic Opportunities,” June 2017, page 29.

The U.S. financial regulatory system is a labyrinth of overlapping, duplicative, dysfunctional, and costly federal government agencies badly in need of fresh review and overhaul. With the possible exception of the healthcare industry, there is perhaps no business sector more heavily regulated in the United States than the financial sector.

The above diagram of federal financial regulators and their oversight responsibilities succinctly shows the overly complicated nature of the U.S. financial regulatory system. But big changes may be coming to this long-standing regulatory mess after the new Trump administration takes office next month. According to a Wall Street Journal article last Thursday, December 12^th, the Trump transition team is exploring ways to dramatically downsize, consolidate, or even abolish some federal financial regulatory agencies. Excerpts from the WSJ article:

“In recent interviews with potential nominees to lead bank regulatory agencies, Trump advisers and officials from his newfound Department of Government Efficiency have, for example, asked whether the president-elect could abolish the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., people familiar with the matter said.

Advisers have asked the nominees under consideration for the FDIC, as well as the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, if deposit insurance could then be absorbed into the Treasury Department, some of the people said.

Any proposal to eliminate the FDIC or any agency would require congressional action. While past presidents have reorganized and rebranded departments, Washington has never shut down a major cabinet-level agency and rarely closed other agencies like the FDIC that are not.

The discussions underscore the drastic approach Trump could take in his attempt to slash the size of the government and ease oversight, including for the highly regulated financial industry.

Potential bank regulator nominees have interviewed with Treasury Secretary pick Scott Bessent and the new DOGE department, the outside advisory group co-chaired by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, some of the people said.

Musk last month also called for the elimination of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an agency Republicans have long hated. “There are too many duplicative regulatory agencies,” Musk said.

Trump advisers and potential nominees have also discussed plans to either combine or otherwise restructure the main federal bank regulators: the FDIC, OCC and the Federal Reserve….”

As a former federal financial regulatory employee, I wholeheartedly endorse the abolition of both the FDIC and the CFPB. Both agencies are massively overstaffed, badly bloated, and heavily politicized. The regulations and compliance enforcement actions that they impose on the financial sector are burdensome, costly, and mostly counter-productive. (READ: “Turmoil at the FDIC,” The American Spectator, by Steve Dewey, June 4, 2024)

The standard argument for the existence of the FDIC is its responsibility for providing deposit insurance for bank customers. However, there have been numerous studies since the FDIC’s creation in 1933 that government-funded deposit insurance establishes inherent moral hazard that actually leads to more, not less, bank failures and financial crises.

In a study authored by Thomas Hogan and Kristine Johnson, “Alternatives to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation,” published in The Independent Review, Winter 2016, it made the case for the privatization of bank deposit insurance and the abolition of the FDIC. Key excerpts from the study:

“…three potential changes that might be made to the current system of deposit insurance managed by the FDIC. First, international studies find that private or semi-privately managed deposit insurance systems tend to outperform public systems. The FDIC might therefore be partly or fully privatized in a manner similar to most European deposit insurance systems. Second, the evidence shows that lower levels of mandated deposit insurance coverage tend to increase stability in the banking system. The current maximum level of $250,000 in mandated FDIC deposit insurance coverage can be greatly reduced without endangering the vast majority of depositors, a change that is likely to benefit smaller depositors by increasing stability and reducing costs. Finally, we propose that mandated insurance could be eliminated and that the FDIC be privatized or abolished altogether. Historical evidence of deposit insurance prior to the FDIC indicates that private mechanisms, such as clearinghouses, coinsurance programs, and systems of self-regulation are likely to emerge to stem bank risk. The empirical evidence indicates that these proposals are likely to increase efficiency and stability in the U.S. banking system.

As for the CFPB, it was created in Title X of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 (Dodd-Frank Act). The progressive Democrat sponsors of this legislation, former Senator Chris Dodd and former Congressman Barney Frank, were successful in setting up the CFPB to be uniquely independent of congressional budget authority and oversight. The CFPB’s funding, rather than being authorized by Congress, would come from the Federal Reserve and with funding amounts to be at the discretion of the CFPB itself. Thus, the legislation was crafted to keep the CFPB as free from congressional oversight as possible.

Legal scholar Peter Wallison, Senior Fellow Emeritus of the American Enterprise Institute, served as a member of the ten-member Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC) established by Congress in 2009 to investigate and report on the causes of the 2008 financial crisis. Mr. Wallison was a dissenter on the final report issued by the FCIC in January 2011.

Subsequent to serving on the FCIC, Mr. Wallison authored a 546-page book on the Dodd-Frank Act in 2013 entitled “Bad History, Worse Policy.” In his book, Mr. Wallison was highly critical of the creation of the CFPB in the Dodd-Frank Act. He wrote:

“Another provision of the Dodd-Frank Act that is derived from the left’s narrative is the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which was given authority under Title X of the act to police all financial relationships between consumers and firms of any kind – not just financial firms.

…In the U.S. constitutional structure, Congress has the power to appropriate funds for the operations of the executive branch. However, the Dodd-Frank Act provides a unique funding mechanism for the CFPB, granting it a direct statutory allocation of funds from the Federal Reserve. So Congress has no power to control the scope of the agency’s activities through appropriations…although the CFPB’s funds come from the Fed, the Dodd-Frank Act forbids the Fed to exercise any control over the agency. In other words, the CFPB, alone among federal agencies (except the Fed itself), is free of any political or policy controls.

A much more recent and even more devastating indictment of the U.S. financial regulatory system was provided by the Bank Policy Institute just last month, November 19^th, in an article posted on its website, “Bank Supervision is Broken. Here’s How to Fix It.” Excerpts from the article:

Banks are unique among U.S. companies because they are not only subject to intense regulation but also directly overseen by an army of well over 5,000 government examiners. The banking agencies refer to this function as “supervision,” and that term itself illustrates the problem: by statute, the agencies are only authorized to examine banks for legal compliance and unsafe and unsound practices, but over time they have expanded their function to now “supervise” and micromanage banks’ operations and governance, and increasingly dictate their business choices based on how the government thinks they should operate.

Furthermore, this power is subject to no checks and balances: “supervision” operates in secret based on the varying views of individual examiners, and the agencies have created their own enforcement regime, not based on rule or law, to impose significant penalties on banks that do not follow their mandates. These penalties can be severe and greatly affect the ability of banks to run their business; they range from limits on business growth, orders to divest from certain business lines and customers, denials of mergers and acquisitions and increases in deposit insurance fees, among other things.

The banking agencies are able to impose severe mandates on banks for one reason: they have established a secret enforcement regime that allows them to impose massive sanctions without any due process or, in most cases, public disclosure. In the past, and under the law, a banking agency’s only recourse to force a bank to change its practices was a formal enforcement order that came with a right of the bank to receive notice of the charges and contest them in court. Now, there is effectively no way for a bank to contest a supervisory mandate. The agencies take the position that any objection to or public sharing of these mandates is a violation of examination secrecy and a criminal offense. However, the banking regulators have routinely leaked confidential supervisory information (CSI) on banks to various news outlets to create narratives justifying greater regulation without any repercussions themselves.

The above excerpts from the writings of highly credible financial regulatory experts supports the rationale of the Trump transition team in exploring a major overhaul and simplification of the nation’s financial regulatory system. But any overhaul can only be achieved while Republicans have control of both the Senate and the House of Representatives with a reform-minded Trump-Vance administration. Democrats en masse will surely oppose any major reforms that downsize, weaken, or abolish any federal regulatory agencies.

Steve Dewey is a retired federal financial regulator and founder of GeoFinancial Trends, LLC (www.geofinancialtrends.org). He can be reached at steve@geofinancialtrends.org