ALL SMALL BUSINESSES ARE CRIMINALS ACCORDING TO THE GOVERNMENT!

Get this, our nasty Senators and Congressmen have now activated a LAW that considers all businesses with less than $5 million in revenue and 20 employees or less to be FIRST considered as financial criminals.

LUCKILY PRESIDENT TRUMP STOPPED THIS FARCE!

On March 21, 2025, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) announced that, consistent with the Department of the Treasury’s March 2, 2025, announcement it was issuing an interim final rule that removes the requirement for U.S. companies and U.S. persons to report beneficial ownership information (BOI) to FinCEN under the Corporate Transparency Act. FinCEN published this interim final rule on March 26, 2025.

In the interim final rule, FinCEN revises the regulatory definition of “reporting company” to mean only those entities that are formed under the law of a foreign country and that have registered to do business in any U.S. State or Tribal jurisdiction by the filing of a document with a secretary of state or similar office (formerly known as “foreign reporting companies”). FinCEN also exempts entities previously known as “domestic reporting companies” from BOI reporting requirements. Thus, through this interim final rule, all entities created in the United States — including those previously known as “domestic reporting companies” — and their beneficial owners will be exempt from the requirement to report BOI to FinCEN.

The law now mandates reporting of the BENEFICIAL OWNERS of ALL companies and businesses operating in the USA FINANCIAL CRIMES ENFORCEMENT NETWORK (FInCEN) or face fines and JAIL!

AS SMALL BUSINESS YOU ARE ALL SUSPECTED CRIMINALS1

Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) issued a final rule implementing the bipartisan Corporate Transparency Act’s (CTA) beneficial ownership information (BOI) reporting provisions. The rule will enhance the ability of FinCEN and other agencies to protect U.S. national security and the U.S. financial system from illicit use and provide essential information to national security, intelligence, and law enforcement agencies; state, local, and Tribal officials; and financial institutions to help prevent drug traffickers, fraudsters, corrupt actors such as oligarchs, and proliferators from laundering or hiding money and other assets in the United States.

Illicit actors frequently use corporate structures such as shell and front companies to obfuscate their identities and launder their ill-gotten gains through the United States. Not only do such acts undermine U.S. national security, they also threaten U.S. economic prosperity: shell and front companies can shield beneficial owners’ identities and allow criminals to illegally access and transact in the U.S. economy, while disadvantaging small U.S. businesses who are playing by the rules. This rule will strengthen the integrity of the U.S. financial system by making it harder for illicit actors to use shell companies to launder their money or hide assets.

Recent geopolitical events have reinforced the point that abuse of corporate entities, including shell or front companies, by illicit actors and corrupt officials presents a direct threat to the U.S. national security and the U.S. and international financial systems. For example, Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 further underscored that Russian elites, state-owned enterprises, and organized crime, as well as Russian government proxies have attempted to use U.S. and non-U.S. shell companies to evade sanctions imposed on Russia. This rule will enhance U.S national security by making it more difficult for criminals to exploit opaque legal structures to launder money, traffic humans and drugs, and commit serious tax fraud and other crimes that harm the American taxpayer.

At the same time, the rule aims to minimize burdens on small businesses and other reporting companies. Millions of businesses are formed in the United States each year. These businesses play an essential and important economic role. In particular, small businesses are a backbone of the U.S. economy, accounting for a large share of U.S. economic activity and driving U.S. innovation and competitiveness. U.S. small businesses also generate millions of jobs, and in 2021, created jobs at the highest rate on record. It is anticipated that it will cost reporting companies with simple management and ownership structures—which FinCEN expects to be the majority of reporting companies—approximately $85 apiece to prepare and submit an initial BOI report. In comparison, the state formation fee for creating a limited liability company (LLC) can cost between $40 and $500, depending on the state.

Beyond the direct benefits to law enforcement and other authorized users, the collection of BOI will help to shed light on criminals who evade taxes, hide their illicit wealth, and defraud employees and customers and hurt honest U.S. businesses through their misuse of shell companies.

The rule describes who must file a BOI report, what information must be reported, and when a report is due. Specifically, the rule requires reporting companies to file reports with FinCEN that identify two categories of individuals: (1) the beneficial owners of the entity; and (2) the company applicants of the entity.

The final rule reflects FinCEN’s careful consideration of detailed public comments received in response to its December 8, 2021 Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on the same topic, and extensive interagency consultations. FinCEN received comments from a broad array of individuals and organizations, including Members of Congress, government officials, groups representing small business interests, corporate transparency advocacy groups, the financial industry and trade associations representing its members, law enforcement representatives, and other interested groups and individuals.

Balancing both benefits and burden, the following are the key elements of the BOI reporting rule:

Reporting Companies

The rule identifies two types of reporting companies: domestic and foreign. A domestic reporting company is a corporation, limited liability company (LLC), or any entity created by the filing of a document with a secretary of state or any similar office under the law of a state or Indian tribe. A foreign reporting company is a corporation, LLC, or other entity formed under the law of a foreign country that is registered to do business in any state or tribal jurisdiction by the filing of a document with a secretary of state or any similar office. Under the rule, and in keeping with the CTA, twenty-three types of entities are exempt from the definition of “reporting company.”
FinCEN expects that these definitions mean that reporting companies will include (subject to the applicability of specific exemptions) limited liability partnerships, limited liability limited partnerships, business trusts, and most limited partnerships, in addition to corporations and LLCs, because such entities are generally created by a filing with a secretary of state or similar office.
Other types of legal entities, including certain trusts, are excluded from the definitions to the extent that they are not created by the filing of a document with a secretary of state or similar office. FinCEN recognizes that in many states the creation of most trusts typically does not involve the filing of such a formation document.

Beneficial Owners

Under the rule, a beneficial owner includes any individual who, directly or indirectly, either (1) exercises substantial control over a reporting company, or (2) owns or controls at least 25 percent of the ownership interests of a reporting company. The rule defines the terms “substantial control” and “ownership interest.” In keeping with the CTA, the rule exempts five types of individuals from the definition of “beneficial owner.”
In defining the contours of who has substantial control, the rule sets forth a range of activities that could constitute substantial control of a reporting company. This list captures anyone who is able to make important decisions on behalf of the entity. FinCEN’s approach is designed to close loopholes that allow corporate structuring that obscures owners or decision-makers. This is crucial to unmasking anonymous shell companies.
The rule provides standards and mechanisms for determining whether an individual owns or controls 25 percent of the ownership interests of a reporting company. Among other things, these standards and mechanisms address how a reporting company should handle a situation in which ownership interests are held in trust.
These definitions have been drafted to account for the various ownership or control structures reporting companies may adopt. However, for reporting companies that have simple organizational structures it should be a straightforward process to identify and report their beneficial owners. FinCEN expects the majority of reporting companies will have simple ownership structures.

Company Applicants

The rule defines a company applicant to be only two persons:
1. the individual who directly files the document that creates the entity, or in the case of a foreign reporting company, the document that first registers the entity to do business in the United States.
2. the individual who is primarily responsible for directing or controlling the filing of the relevant document by another.
The rule, however, does not require reporting companies existing or registered at the time of the effective date of the rule to identify and report on their company applicants. In addition, reporting companies formed or registered after the effective date of the rule also do not need to update company applicant information.

Beneficial Ownership Information Reports

When filing BOI reports with FinCEN, the rule requires a reporting company to identify itself and report four pieces of information about each of its beneficial owners: name, birthdate, address, and a unique identifying number and issuing jurisdiction from an acceptable identification document (and the image of such document). Additionally, the rule requires that reporting companies created after January 1, 2024, provide the four pieces of information and document image for company applicants.
If an individual provides their four pieces of information to FinCEN directly, the individual may obtain a “FinCEN identifier,” which can then be provided to FinCEN on a BOI report in lieu of the required information about the individual.

Timing

The effective date for the rule is January 1, 2024.
Reporting companies created or registered before January 1, 2024 will have one year (until January 1, 2025) to file their initial reports, while reporting companies created or registered after January 1, 2024, will have 30 days after receiving notice of their creation or registration to file their initial reports.
Reporting companies have 30 days to report changes to the information in their previously filed reports and must correct inaccurate information in previously filed reports within 30 days of when the reporting company becomes aware or has reason to know of the inaccuracy of information in earlier reports.

Next Steps

The BOI reporting rule is one of three rulemakings planned to implement the CTA. FinCEN will engage in additional rulemakings to (1) establish rules for who may access BOI, for what purposes, and what safeguards will be required to ensure that the information is secured and protected; and (2) revise FinCEN’s customer due diligence rule following the promulgation of the BOI reporting final rule.
In addition, FinCEN continues to develop the infrastructure to administer these requirements in accordance with the strict security and confidentiality requirements of the CTA, including the information technology system that will be used to store beneficial ownership information: the Beneficial Ownership Secure System (BOSS).
Consistent with its obligations under the Paperwork Reduction Act, FinCEN will publish in the Federal Register for public comment the reporting forms that persons will use to comply with their obligations under the BOI reporting rule. FinCEN will publish these forms well in advance of the effective date of the BOI reporting rule.
FinCEN will develop compliance and guidance documents to assist reporting companies in complying with this rule. Some of these materials will be aimed directly at, and made available to, reporting companies themselves. FinCEN will issue a Small Entity Compliance Guide, pursuant to section 212 of the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act of 1996, in order to inform small entities about their responsibilities under the rule. Other materials will be aimed at a wide range of stakeholders that are likely to receive questions about the rule, such as secretaries of state and similar offices. FinCEN also intends to conduct extensive outreach to all stakeholders, including industry associations as well as secretaries of state and similar offices to ensure the effective implementation of the rule.
THIS RULE HAS BEEN STAYED FOR NOW:

jansen@sterlingcooper.us sent you this article.

Comment:

Benficial owmersip rul

Monday, January 13, 2025

The law aims to curtail the use of anonymous shells and track illicit money.

Ownership-Reporting Law’s Return Sought

Supreme Court is asked to stay an injunction pausing its implementation

The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule soon on the national injunction issued by a lower court that paused the implementation of the Corporate Transparency Act, a law requiring companies to disclose their true ownership.

The Justice Department, on behalf of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, in an application filed on New Year’s Eve asked the Supreme Court to stay the injunction issued by a Texas district judge in early December.

The attorneys representing FinCEN said the government is likely to succeed in defending the constitutionality of the law and that the district court’s injunction was “vastly overbroad,” according to the filing.

The lawyers said the Supreme Court, at a minimum, should narrow the injunction to the plaintiffs in the case.

ANOTHER GOVERNMENT PROJECT WASTING MILLIONS AND NOBODY IS IN JAIL!

Unfinished mortars seen lined up before being painted© Aimee Dilger/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

A Pentagon watchdog report found that in the roughly two years since it was built, an ammunition plant in Mesquite, Texas, has not produced any parts for 155mm artillery rounds, hindering the Army’s goal to help backfill stocks of ammunition provided to Ukraine after Russia invaded in 2022.

In a report released Monday, the Defense Department inspector general found that as of March 2026, the plant had not produced any metal projectile parts that met the specifications laid out in the contract and the “the Army’s expenditure of $469 million to establish the Mesquite facility could have been used to address other Army or [Department of Defense] priorities.”

CBS News

Ukraine’s Zelenskyy continues aid requests as Russia launches new strikes

Ukraine’s Navy spokesperson says Russian forces struck a civilian ship

Over the past four years, the Pentagon depleted its inventory of 155mm artillery by 3.6 million rounds, according to the report. The report does not note how many rounds are in the stockpile.

More than 3 million rounds were given to Ukraine through weapons packages committed by the Biden administration. Roughly 112,000 rounds were used for training and testing, and another 218,000 were sold to other countries.

Based on the consumption in Ukraine and anticipated foreign military sales, the Army in 2024 set a goal to ramp up production of 155mm artillery from 14,000 rounds per month to 100,000 by Oct. 2025 and invested in the Mesquite plant in Texas to help produce specific parts.

That plant, which is operated by General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems, opened in May 2024.

As of March 2026, the Army was producing about 36,000 rounds per month, still far short of the 100,000 goal, in part because the facility in Mesquite failed to produce any of the 30,000 projectile metal parts it was expected to make each month, according to the report.

An Army spokesperson confirmed to CBS News this is still accurate as of this month.

In a statement, a spokesperson for General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems said “GDOTS and our U.S. Army customers have reached an agreement on a path forward for the Mesquite facility, which includes additional GDOTS investment to complete the project.”

According to the report, officials involved with the Army’s ammunition program said that with only three facilities producing the required projectile metal parts, the Pentagon will “reach only 71,000 rounds per month, or 71 percent of its monthly production capacity goal” by September 2026.

The gap, the report concluded, occurred because Army officials “accepted the risk” with the contractor’s plan to procure equipment which had not been tested. According to a timeline in the report, the Army contracting office requested the plant stop work in Aug. 2025 while the government evaluated if it could meet its obligations and work to resolve the production issues.

The demand for artillery has diminished somewhat, since the war in Ukraine has altered its approach and is now more reliant on drone warfare, rather than the trench fighting of a few years ago. Still, the initial expenditure rate highlighted issues with the defense industrial base’s ability to produce weapons quickly.

Recently, there have been concerns about the more expensive and technologically advanced weapons, like interceptors for Patriot air defense systems and Tomahawk missiles, that have been used in the war with Iran. The Pentagon this year asked for more than $70 billion in its budget to help procure missiles and related equipment, a nearly three-fold increase compared to last year.

SOCIALISM ALWAYS BECOMES COMMUNISM, AND IT NEVER WORKED; INVENTED BY AN UNEMPLOYED GERMAN LOSER NAMED KARL MARX

Socialism is Always a Move Towards Communism — with the Same Results

Communism and socialism have terrible records.

Tragically, we face today burgeoning support for socialism, largely because the U.S. socialist-inspired public schools have intentionally avoided teaching the system’s evil ways and disastrous results everywhere on earth it’s ever been attempted. As red flags go, they don’t come much bigger. Or redder.

I have a long-time family friend, who should know better. He’s a lifelong business journalist who even for a while wrote for the conservative Wall Street Journal. Nevertheless, my buddy insists “socialism” is quite different from communism, and that in fact many socialist countries, such as in Scandinavia, are quite happy with the “benefits” of socialism.

He may be right that many people are happy in Sweden, whose major political party is the Swedish Social Democratic Party. But the happy faces in Sweden and its Scandinavian neighbors can be explained by the fact that many people find pleasure in receiving benefits paid for by other people. As U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher so coyly noted in 1976 before she became prime minister, “The problem with socialism is that eventually they run out of other people’s money.”

The difference between those happy-faced socialists and actual communists is just a matter of degree. As those benefiting from seizing other people’s wealth and income taste the fruits of their government-enabled theft, their appetite only grows for more. When was the last time you heard a socialist demanding less of other people’s money?

As Karl Marx, the unemployed German who came up with the idea of communism, spelled out in detail in his Das Kapital, Communist Manifesto, and other writings, socialism is not a goal. It is an essential step toward the goal.

That means even those enjoying short-term benefits by living off the sweat of others, in fact are nudging their nations closer and closer to the communist goal, whether they realize it or not. Today’s socialist is tomorrow’s communist; that’s the plan. Don’t think otherwise.

Vladimir I. Lenin, who in 1917 established the planet’s first socialist state in Russia, said the international movement to bring communism to all nations is aided and abetted by what even his followers apocryphally called “useful idiots.” That describes people who don’t see beyond their immediate conditions and don’t realize the path they trod is intended to take them to communist Utopia.

Advocates for socialism excuse the failure of Russia’s 70-year experiment with socialism by claiming it failed only because it wasn’t done right. Or done enough.

The lesson they claim to have learned is that if we just do it right, the more of it we do, the better will be the outcome.

Again, this excuse plays well among people who enjoy living off wages earned by other people. The late American economist Walter E. Williams wrote that legalizing theft doesn’t make it right. It just makes it legal.

Thatcher no doubt agreed with Williams when he wrote, “I keep what I earn and you keep what you earn. Do you disagree? Well then tell me how much of what I earn belongs to you — and why?”

Whatever their motive, today’s advocates for socialism, wittingly or unwittingly, lead directly to what Lenin and Marx said is necessary to achieve communist utopia.

Find me a socialist who wants less socialism. Find an advocate for socializing anything for the government to pay for and you will find an advocate for more. It’s habit-forming. Maybe someone else can find an exception, but in the history of governments that have adopted socialist tactics, I’ve found that they always grow. Never shrink. At least until they go broke.

Only when governments teeter on the brink of bankruptcy do they entertain suggestions that perhaps they should scale back their socialism. Many are reluctant to trim the socialist sails even when it’s apparent that they have become fiscally untenable. Examples include communist China, Great Britain, and any number of impoverished third world states.

If economic reality isn’t enough to dissuade our current gaggle of socialist wannabes, perhaps they should turn their attention to the brute force, often brutal force, that socialist governments inevitably resort to.

It’s not likely that most of today’s useful idiots even consider Nazi Germany to have been socialist. They seem to have missed the Second World War. How they did that is probably no mystery, even though it was in all the newspapers. But honest portrayals are increasingly rare in America’s socialist-endorsing public school system.

The National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nazis) was as socialistic as Joseph Stalin’s Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Same economic scheme of taking money that belongs to someone else to give to people it doesn’t belong to – after the state takes its entirely arbitrary cut. Same authoritarian thuggery. Germany’s flavor of socialism was national. Russia’s had worldwide ambitions.

It should be obvious from the outside that socialist nations must resort to force or the threat of force to raise the money they want, which may include giving the masses some degree of economic improvement. But tragically, many in socialist nations don’t realize what that force looks like until the government begins to apply it in earnest to take their wealth and ensure their compliance with the glut of myriad rules and regulations inherent in controlling large populations’ every economic move.

But even Stalin couldn’t steal enough from the Russian breadbasket of Ukraine to feed Moscow’s favored residents and other preferred populations. As he stole ever more, he killed or sent to Siberia anyone who resisted. The Holodomor, a catastrophic famine, resulted in from 3 million to 11 million deaths from 1932-1933. Most knowledgeable claims estimate about 4 million Ukrainians starved to death, including families cannibalizing their dead kin. The USSR’s secret police, the NKVD, recorded cases of cannibalization, which was a crime. But Western researchers found that the government had covered up the actual numbers. Again, that’s standard operating procedure for authoritarian governments who don’t share the ugliest sides of their socialist enforcements.

If socialism has one unifying trait it is that governments practicing it must resort to such authoritarian diktats to enforce what most people recognize as the unjust redistribution of private wealth.

It’s also instructive that in every socialist society, the people in charge always live much higher on the hog than do the masses. As British author George Orwell, who was a disillusioned wanna-be socialist, noted in his book Animal Farm, “All animals are equal,” in the eyes of the government, “but some animals are more equal than others.”

Our nation’s current most popular socialist, Bernie Sanders, the senator from Vermont, garnered headlines by calling for outlawing millionaires and billionaires. Since becoming a millionaire, however, Sanders has modified his demand and now insists that only billionaires be eliminated. On his $174,000 annual Senate salary, Sanders’ net worth is $3 million, according to Celebrity Net Worth. He owns two houses with a combined value of about $1 million, according to Yahoo! Finance, and a third home he sold in 2021 for $422,000, $40,000 less than he paid for it 14 years earlier.

If all this doesn’t discourage chasing socialist utopia (which happens to be communism), consider this: In the 20th century, communist countries which claimed to practice communism-lite, a.k.a., socialism, killed more than 100 million of their own people.

Those weren’t people killed fighting foreign wars. Those were citizens of their own countries who opposed the socialism imposed on them. You could look it up in the Black Book on Communism, which documents the horrific history of socialist and communist China, Germany, Russia and all the rest.

PRESIDENT TRUMP RELEASES HIS 2025 INCOME!!!

Trump’s annual financial disclosure shows more than $580M in crypto-related income

Key Points

President Donald Trump’s annual financial disclosure report was released by the U.S. Office of Government Ethics.
Trump’s crypto-related income included about $515 million from the sale of tokens released by World Liberty Financial, and $65 million from sales of equity in WLF’s holding company.
Trump disclosed he received $635 million in royalties from “Celebration Coins.”
The president reported more than $290 million in income from golf and club properties.
The ethics office also released Vice President JD Vance’s annual disclosure, which totaled 17 pages, compared to 927 pages for Trump.

President Trump raked in at least $2 billion in 2025

President Donald Trump’s annual financial disclosure report was released on Tuesday by the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, revealing income of hundreds of millions of dollars from proceeds of crypto tokens and holdings of hundreds of individual company stocks.

Trump’s disclosure report for 2025, which was the first year of his second non-consecutive term in the White House, totals 927 pages.

The report reveals that Trump’s crypto-related income included about $515 million from the sale of tokens released by the firm World Liberty Financial, and $65 million from sales of equity in WLF’s holding company.

WLF is the Trump-linked crypto company co-founded by members of his family that issues the WLFI governance token and USD1 stablecoin.

Trump, who first made his name in business with real estate developments in New York, also disclosed that he received $635 million in royalties from what were described as “Celebration Coins.” It was not immediately clear what those coins are. The Bloomberg news service reported that the royalties were related to CIC Digital LLC, Trump’s memecoin business.

Trump’s golf and club properties continued to generate major revenue, according to the disclosure.

The president reported more than $290 million in income related to revenue from his Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida, his Trump National Doral golf property, his club in Bedminster, New Jersey, his Jupiter Golf Club and Trump National Washington, D.C.

One of the largest bursts of stock buying by Trump detailed in the disclosure occurred on Aug. 18, 2025.

The document shows three successive purchases of some of the biggest names in technology — Apple, Microsoft, and Nvidia — with each trade valued at between $5 million and $25 million. The values of Trump’s holdings are given in dollar ranges, not in absolute amounts, as is normal for U.S. government ethics filings.

The trades were among the largest individual stock transactions in the disclosure.

The Nvidia purchase came exactly one week after Trump announced that Nvidia and AMD had agreed to give the U.S. government 15% of their H20 chip sales to China in exchange for export approval. That deal reopened a key China revenue stream for Nvidia.

Apple also announced an additional $100 billion in U.S. investment on Aug. 6, bringing its total planned U.S. commitment to $600 billion.

The filing also shows that Trump purchased Amazon stock worth between $500,000 and $1 million on Sept. 23. That was the same day a trial began in Seattle federal court for a lawsuit by the Federal Trade Commission, which alleged Amazon duped customers into paying for Prime memberships.

The trial ended two days later after Amazon agreed to settle the suit by paying a $1 billion civil penalty to the FTC and refunds totaling $1.5 billion to an estimated 35 million customers.

Trump also reported receiving a total of more than $86 million in settlements of legal disputes from media companies including ABC, CBS, Meta, YouTube and X.

The massive filing is peppered with eye-opening assets, some of which are highly valued.

One line, on page 157, discloses an investment in gold bars valued at between $500,000 and $1 million.

Trump also disclosed receiving gifts totaling more than $370,000, primarily tickets to sports events.

They included 10 tickets to the FIFA men’s World Cup worth $15,000 from FIFA President Gianni Infantino, 10 Super Bowl LIX tickets from New Orleans Saints owner Gayle Benson, 15 tickets each to two UFC events from UFC CEO Dana White as well as tickets to other NFL, MLB, NCAA and golf events.

He disclosed that a statue from Sticker Mule CEO Anthony Constantino depicting Trump with his fist raised after an assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, was worth $250,000.

The disclosure also reveals a bevy of royalty deals that paint a picture of just how exhaustively Trump has been able to capitalize on his name and political brand since entering political life.

The royalty income includes: $4.7 million received through a licensing agreement for “Trump Watches” with The Best Watches on Earth LLC; a deal related to the publication of “The Greenwood Bible,” a collaboration with “God Bless the USA” singer Lee Greenwood, netting $208,486; a licensing deal for “Trump Sneakers & Fragrances” for $67,634; an endorsement of a ”’45′ Guitar” for $35,920; and publishing agreements for “Letters to Trump,” “Save America” and “A MAGA Journey,” for $590,730, $1,893,965 and $552,685, respectively.

Another line item shows Trump received a $200,000 speaking fee for a fundraising event in Naples, Florida, in December 2022.

The disclosure says the income from the watches and the sneakers-and-fragrances deal was “inadvertently omitted from” Trump’s prior financial disclosure, as was the balance he was owed from the 2022 speaking event.

The president’s disclosed liabilities included civil trial verdict judgments in favor of the writer E. Jean Carroll, who had accused Trump of sexually assaulting her in a New York City department store in the mid-1990s, and of defaming her after she went public with those allegations in 2019. The Supreme Court on Monday refused to hear Trump’s appeal of a jury verdict awarding Carroll $5 million for sexually abusing and defaming her.

Trump is still appealing another jury’s verdict, which awarded Carroll $83.3 million in that case for defamation. Trump denies sexually assaulting Carroll.

The disclosure also includes asset and income information for first lady Melania Trump — including $10.7 million in net proceeds through a license agreement related to her self-titled documentary film, “Melania.”

A separate license agreement with the film’s publisher, Skyhorse, netted her an additional $521,161 in income.

Melania Trump also reported $6,011,259 in income from a separate license agreement “for the sale of NFTs and other collectibles,” the form shows.

Trump’s annual disclosure was filed after he received a 45-day extension and does not appear to have triggered a late fee for the annual report itself.

But the filing says he paid late filing fees for transactions that had not previously been reported on required periodic transaction reports. The disclosure does not specify the total amount paid. The Office of Government Ethics’ standard late filing fee is $200.

The ethics office also released the annual financial disclosure report of Vice President JD Vance on Tuesday.

Vance’s report is a mere 17 pages.

The vice president’s report details earnings from his book, the firm Narya Capital, which he founded, the Rise of the Rest Seed Fund, where he had served as managing partner, and bitcoin holdings valued at between $250,000 and $500,000.

HUMANOID ROBOTS PERFORM FIRST EVER SURGERY!

Teleoperated humanoid robots complete first-ever live surgery

Surgeons controlled the movements of the robots remotely to perform the procedures

UC San Diego

Surgeons at UC San Diego just handed the scalpel to two humanoid robots, who went on to complete live surgical procedures for the first time in history. This milestone moves beyond the fixed robotic arms found in operating rooms today and hints at an operating room of the future where humans and humanoids work side by side.

Humanoid robots are already showing up in factories, warehouses, and even on battlefields, precisely because their human-like shape lets them operate in spaces built for people without any redesign. A Morgan Stanley report from late June projects that China, the current leader in the field, will produce 446,000 humanoid units annually by 2030, with full-size humanoids growing from 30% market share in 2026 to 70% by 2028.

UC San Diego’s team wants to bring that same flexibility into the operating room. In one procedure, a humanoid robot and a human surgeon acting as an assistant completed a cholecystectomy (gallbladder removal). In a second, two humanoid robots worked together and finished the operation solo.

In one surgery, a humanoid robot and a human surgeon acting as an assistant successfully performed a gallbladder removal

The trials, described in a paper published in Nature, were carried out on large non-primate mammals, but the achievement matters because it moves the technology from concept to something that has demonstrably handled real surgical tasks.

The researchers say their real target is the growing shortage of surgeons and the surgical backlogs it creates, especially in rural areas or regions far from major hospitals. Traditional surgical robots address none of that: they’re bulky, expensive, and typically require rebuilding the operating room around them.

A conventional robotic system weighs around 800 kg (1,764 lb) and needs significant space. The humanoid system used here, nicknamed Surgie, looks to have started life as a Unitree G1, and stands just 1.5 m (about 5 ft) tall and weighs only 27 kg (60 lb) – compact enough to wheel into a small clinic or a field hospital.

“It’s a fraction of the cost, and it takes a fraction of the space in an operating room,” says Dr. Shanglei Liu, assistant professor of surgery at UC San Diego School of Medicine and one of the study’s lead authors, who personally operated one of the robots during the trials. “So it’s easy to deploy, anywhere from rural areas to the battlefield and even to space.”

Dr. Ryan Broderick controls a robot during a gallbladder removal procedure

The surgeons control the robots remotely, using standard surgical tools fitted with adapters so the robotic hands can grip and maneuver them properly. Testing moved through stages: lab simulations, animal trials, and finally live surgery. The results are promising but not flawless – the robots needed recalibration mid-procedure, operations took longer than usual, and latency (the lag between a surgeon’s hand movement and the robot’s response) remains a challenge for any remote-controlled surgery.

That said, today’s routine surgical robots also started out slow and clumsy. “This achievement reflects the power of bringing engineers and surgeon innovators together to solve meaningful clinical problems at our world-class training and research lab,” says Dr. Ryan Broderick, interim director of UC San Diego’s Center for the Future of Surgery.

The team envisions humanoids eventually doing more than assisting in surgery: fetching instruments, tidying the room, or working alongside human staff as full team members.

“Many communities struggle with adequate staffing on the surgical team, which means patients are not being treated,” says Dr. Michael Yip, a UC San Diego engineering professor and co-author. “Our goal is an operating theater of the future, where humanoid robots and humans work side by side as an integrated team to deliver procedures to those in need, both in traditional hospital settings as well as in non-traditional, field medicine scenarios.”

SENATOR LINDSEY GRAHAM, TRUMP’S BIGGEST SUPPORTER, DIES OF A HEART ATTACK AT AGE 71

Lindsey Graham answer media questions near a damaged Russian vehicles exhibition in central Kyiv© AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky

The haunting final photos of Lindsey Graham appeared to show no sign of the “brief and sudden illness” which claimed his life.

The South Carolina Senator passed away on the evening of Saturday, July 11, his office confirmed in a statement, without sharing further details about his cause of death. There have been unconfirmed reports that Graham suffered chest pain at his home in Washington, D.C. after returning from Ukraine.

It has been reported he suffered chest pains and a cardiac arrest before his death at the age of 71. The last public photos of Graham were taken during his diplomatic visit to Kyiv, Ukraine, where he met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday, July 10.

• Lindsey Graham the latest politician to fall ill without explanation

Zelensky shared a series of photographs documenting their meeting on his official social media account on X. During the visit, the pair discussed foreign policy, with Graham visiting the president’s office and looking at damaged Russian vehicles in central Kyiv.

Graham spoke to the press in the Ukrainian capital, announcing a new agreement with the Trump administration regarding a Russia sanctions package, which he noted was designed to give “tools to President Trump to end this war.” Graham, who was also photographed holding the P1SUN Ukrainian interceptor drone developed by SkyFall, engineered specifically to track down and destroy Russian drones, said during his final press conference in Kyiv, “I’m pleased to announce, as of about 30 minutes ago, we’ve reached agreement with the White House on a version of the Russian sanctions bill that they will support.”

Lindsey Graham answer media questions near a damaged Russian vehicles exhibition in central Kyiv© AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky

He added, “It means it’s gonna become law. So when I get back to Washington, I’m gonna go with Senator [Richard] Blumenthal to the Republican and Democratic leader to see if we can find time to move this Russian sanctions package that would give tools to President Trump to help end this war.”

On Friday, an announcement was also shared on his official website, with a joint statement from Senator Graham, Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), and Roger Wicker (R-MS). “We are proud to announce that we have reached an agreement with the Trump Administration to move our updated Russia sanctions legislation forward,” the statement read.

“We are very pleased with this significant progress and expect to roll out the legislation very soon. As Russia intensifies its slaughter of civilians, it is imperative that the legislative and executive branches work together to create tools to exact a heavy price on those who buy Russian oil and natural gas, fueling the Putin war machine.”

On Friday, Graham also continued banging the drum about modern infrastructure investment in his state, sharing the news that the US Coast Guard has awarded a $230 million contract for new operational support facilities at its base in Charleston, South Carolina.

Graham met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on July 10© Ukrainian Presidential Press Off

The senator’s last tweet, before his death was announced on Saturday, read, “Great news to see the continued investment in Coast Guard Base Charleston! As Chairman of the Senate @BudgetGOP Committee, I was glad to secure this historic funding for the Coast Guard as a part of the One Big Beautiful Bill.”

Last week, Graham also shared his last Instagram post – a video marking the 250th anniversary of American independence. “One nation, under God,” he captioned the post. “Here’s to the next 250 years of freedom.”

The senator visited SkyFall’s drone production facility© SkyFall

Announcing his death, Graham’s office said in a statement, “On the evening of Saturday, July 11, U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham passed away from a brief and sudden illness. Senator Graham’s family appreciates prayers at this time and asks for privacy during this incredibly difficult period.” The Washington Post has since reported the senator suffered chest pains before experiencing cardiac arrest.

The sparse statement from Graham’s office, which did not explain his death, comes during a stretch of concern about a lack of transparency about lawmakers’ health. Rep. Tom Kean Jr, a New Jersey Republican, was absent without explanation for months before returning to Congress and disclosing that he had been diagnosed with depression. Sen. Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, was hospitalized weeks ago for undisclosed health reasons.

The senator visited SkyFall’s drone production facility© SkyFall

Graham was elected to the US Senate in 2002 and was running for a fifth term. He had been a close ally of President Donald Trump and a longtime hawk on Iran. As a member of the US House in the 1990s, he backed policies aimed at isolating the country and limiting its missile and nuclear programs.

He also cheered on Trump’s decision to strike nuclear sites last year and had been been a supporter of the latest conflict that started a few months ago. Graham, who was most known for his hawkish foreign policy positions, mounted a brief bid for the party’s presidential nomination during the 2016 campaign and later was a vocal critic of Trump, the eventual GOP nominee.

PUTIN HAS 800 SECURITY PERSONNEL …

Putin In Airplane Simulator Russian Government Photo

The July 1944 bombing that nearly took the life of Nazi Germany’s dictator, Adolf Hitler, was the last of some 40 attempts to eliminate him.

What kept any of those plots from succeeding was a set of practices that made his movements unpredictable – last-minute changes in schedules and destinations – and an ever-increasing army of protective services that were always around him.

Putin with a Rifle. Image Credit: Russian State Media.© Putin with a Rifle. Image Credit: Russian State Media.

These lessons have not been lost on Russian President Vladimir Putin. Among other adjustments, he has recently increased the innermost circle of his security detail – the “last line of defense” of a hurricane-force architecture of multiple, interlocking layers of bodyguards and palace militia – to more than 800 persons.

One of the characteristics that all dictators have in common is that they all have some “alphabet agency” elite security formation that is supposed to take care of the ruler of the nation first, and everyone and everything come second or third – and to also kill anyone who threatens the “great leader.”

In one of the most repressive and murderous times in Russian history, the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin was protected by the NKVD.

Its current-day successor is the Russian FSB, which Putin served as director in the 1990s. Hitler had his Gestapo, and Eric Honecker – the long-time East German communist party chief – had the Stasi.

Putin on Direct Line Back in 2019. Image Credit: Creative Commons.© Putin on Direct Line Back in 2019. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

States Within a State

Today, some of the most pervasive analogs of these entities are the Supreme Guard Command, which protects North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, and the Central Security Bureau, which guards the People’s Republic of China (PRC) Communist Party leader, Xi Jinping. Every supreme leader has to have one.

As a profile of Putin’s increasingly paranoid demeanor in The Daily Telegraph published this week points out, as these dictators fall under pressure or become convinced of threats to their position, these security services encourage and benefit from their leaders’ paranoia.

They “become a state within a state, putting millions under surveillance, giving credence to the sniping and jealousies of each informant, and listing the originators as anti-state activists.”

The dictator becomes trapped in a vicious cycle of his own making, and “perpetual personal security becomes an obsession,” reads the profile.

The Stasi, which Putin became so close to during the Cold War period when he was posted to the East German city of Dresden is an extreme example.

Including all its part-time informers, “the East German secret police is reckoned to have employed one secret policeman for every 6.5 East Germans. By comparison, Hitler’s Gestapo deployed one per 2,000 people.”

Since Putin is as fearful or not more “than Hitler was of any threat to his regime, he hopes that technology and his many overlapping security organisations will neutralise any opposition,” reads The Telegraph article.

Wary of Plots

In March 2026, the Amsterdam-based Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) flagged what it had identified as a high-level alert in the Kremlin that had assessed “the risk of a plot or coup attempt against the Russian president. In particular, the fear of drones for a possible assassination attempt by members of the Russian political elite”.

The formation created by Putin, at the top of the security pyramid that serves and protects him and his inner circle, is the 50,000-strong Federal Protective Service (FSO).

The innermost unit is a handpicked, politically reliable force that was recently announced to have increased from 785 operatives to 812. The reason for the increase is suspected to have been the addition of a new detachment of 27 first-rate drone pilots.

With the issuance of this high-level alert, there were immediate orders that staff working near Putin be banned from traveling on public transport or using mobile phones.

Mobile network signals are now jammed when he is anywhere in the vicinity, and his key staff are issued with Kevlar umbrellas.

Putin also employs up to a dozen body doubles and has several identically furnished offices in Moscow, St Petersburg, his various dachas, and aboard his train.

These identical and multiple “film sets” are used by him regularly so that no one ever knows his true location.

The parallels are striking. As a consequence of the elaborate deceptions as to his true whereabouts and the endless security measures, “the Führer became a raving, deluded old man who hid in bunkers and, nine months later, died in one.” Putin, concludes the profile, “appears to be heading in the same direction.”

BROWN UNIVERSITY STUDENTS, ARE DUMBER THAT YOU IMAGINE…SO MUCH FOR PRESTIGE LABEL

Brown’s ‘elite’ students scored 96 on a test with AI and 48 without it…

Brown used to represent the pinnacle of American education. Just saying that name, “Brown,” meant serious scholarship, fierce competition, and students who had fought with their smarts to earn their place among the brightest minds in the country.

Families pay a jaw-dropping amount of money for that reputation because a Brown degree is supposed to prove something to the world.

But lately, that prestigious reputation has been taking a brutal beating, especially after this latest cheating scandal… more on that later.

So, why has Brown gone from glistening, well-respected ivy to dusty, second-class weeds? Well, there are probably a lot of reasons, but the main one has to be these three letters: DEI.

Brown has spent years making diversity and inclusion a central part of its academic mission. Excellence has taken a backseat to their new purpose: charity.

Brown’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion describes itself as a “critical leader.” The university says DEI is essential to advancing knowledge and understanding. Of course, they can’t explain how accepting people based on skin color or sexual preference over excellence and IQ is advancing knowledge.

But Brown made a choice. They placed all of their eggs in the DEI basket, and now, they’re paying the price.

As a matter of fact, when President Trump signed an executive order targeting these unfair, dangerous programs, Brown administrators were reportedly prepared to fight any action they believed compromised the school’s very important mission.

Brown has made it very clear what it considers worth defending.

What isn’t clear is whether academics, integrity, and actual learning have been protected with the same level of passion or if any of that is even part of the mission these days.

And that brings us to the cheating scandal now blowing up at Brown. It started in one of the university’s toughest economics classes, where the difference between what students could do at home and what they could do sitting in a classroom (without AI) was quite a shocker.

The take-home midterm average was 96 percent, and forty students got perfect scores.

That’s pretty impressive, right?

Well, when Professor Roberto Serrano decided to move the final back into the classroom, eighteen students suddenly dropped the course, nine students didn’t show up, and the class average crashed from 96 percent to a horrific 48 percent.

As it stands now, Brown is looking like a wildly expensive “credential factory” that just got caught selling the appearance of Ivy League excellence.

Did the universities’ DEI culture and DEI students and staff cause students to cheat? Probably, but honestly, that’s not the argument here.

The story here is less about the students cheating and why and more about these once well-respected institutions revealing their true priorities through the things they fight hardest to protect. Brown has feverishly defended DEI as part of its actual “academic mission.” Meanwhile, the professor at the center of this scandal says the administration’s response to very obvious mass cheating has been pretty weak.

So, how did all of this go down?

It started after a deadly shooting on Brown’s campus. Professor Serrano decided to make the spring midterm and final take-home exams.

Serrano noticed that many of the answers were technically correct but strangely written. When he and his grad students dug deeper, it was clear that ChatGPT was likely the culprit.

Professor Serrano didn’t throw out the midterm right away. He gave the students a chance to prove the scores were legit. He moved the final back into the classroom and told them it would only count if their results were somewhere in the same ballpark.

That’s when the whole thing blew up.

The course… typically attracts few students, but very good ones. [Serrano] has never had more than 30 students enrolled at a time, and on some occasions he had only eight. This semester, probably because of the new evaluation system, 86 students signed up for the class. The results of the midterm exam, which was administered on March 5, were extraordinary, with an average score of 96 out of 100. Forty students scored a perfect 100.

This was indeed extraordinary, because as Serrano told Inside Higher Ed, “Historically the average grade in the midterm of this course has ranged between 65 and 80 [percent], and this exam was harder than the exams I wrote in the past, because… take-home is an opportunity to challenge the class a little bit more, given that you’re giving the students unlimited time.”

Beyond the numbers, many of the answers, even when correct, felt slightly off. They had a “very convoluted style,” Serrano said. When he and his grad students ran the exam questions through ChatGPT, they received similar results.

A suspicious Serrano decided that he would make the final exam in-person; he would see if students did similarly well on it. He emailed his class, telling them, “I am not declaring [the midterm] void for now. I am going to give the class a chance to prove me wrong. That is, if the distribution of the final exam is roughly similar to the distribution of the midterm, I will count the midterm. Otherwise, which is of course what I expect to happen, I will declare the midterm void and reweigh the final accordingly.”

Eighteen students suddenly dropped the course, while nine others didn’t even attend the final exam. Of those 27 students, El País noted, “22 had scored a perfect 100 in the midterm exam.”

Among those who took the test, the average score plunged—from 96 all the way down to 48.

Maybe these students aren’t a bunch of dummies. Some of them might be really clever. But being smart and actually learning something aren’t the same thing. This scandal makes it look like plenty of students figured out how to work the system without ever really learning the material.

Brown didn’t suddenly develop this crisis because ChatGPT popped on the scene. AI exposed how much of the university’s “celebrated excellence” is based on grades, credentials, and appearances rather than academic excellence.

The professor who exposed all of this understands something about genuine academic work that his students don’t.

Serrano went blind from retinal dystrophy when he was seventeen. He could’ve decided that was the end of his academic future, but he didn’t. He learned Braille, kept going, and made it to Harvard… on his smarts and merits, not DEI.

That probably explains why he couldn’t shrug off what happened in his classroom.

TBDH:

After a short-lived crisis, he decided [blindness] would not stop him. He learned Braille, and his excellent academic record opened up the doors of Harvard. “Of course it affects my life, but one shouldn’t over-dramatize. We economists understand reality as a set of people responding to optimization problems with restrictions. I view my disease simply as one more restriction that I have to deal with, and I optimize based on that,” he says.

DEI is a major part of this collapse in excellence. It helped create a university culture that fixates on how students feel inside the institution, but does Brown care nearly as much about what those students can actually do?

Brown’s own research shows that students know AI is weakening them, yet they keep using it anyway.

More than half of the undergraduate students surveyed said they intentionally use generative AI either daily or weekly. Graduate and medical students reported even higher usage.

Great, so medical students are skating by on AI. That’s good to know.

The students know the shortcuts are making them less capable, but the pressure to compete, save time, and protect their grades keeps pulling them back to it.

So we have to ask: Are these exceptionally smart students who are under a lot of pressure, maybe a little lazy, and looking for a shortcut? Or are these DEI students, admitted under lowered standards, who are now in way over their heads and using AI as a life preserver just to stay afloat?

TBDH:

As a university, Brown is grappling with hard questions about AI use at the moment. It recently released a provost-led report (PDF) on “Generative AI in Teaching and Learning,” which found that it’s not just professors who have concerns.

Even though “56 percent of undergraduate respondents [at Brown] and 67 percent of graduate and medical student respondents reported intentionally using GenAI tools daily or weekly,” the report notes that large majorities of students also have “concerns about the impact of GenAI use on their learning” and a “fear of negative consequences for their cognitive capacity.”

Serrano shares those concerns, and he wants universities as a whole to stand up for human thought. That’s why he’s not letting this story go, despite what he contends is a fairly tepid reaction from Brown administrators.

“We cannot afford to have a society in which a significant fraction of our best young minds think that cheating is okay,” he told Inside Higher Ed. “That leads to a declining society, to a failed society.

“We cannot choose to become idiots.”

One could argue the university’s DEI mission is creating a whole bunch of idiots.

Brown has fought hard to make DEI part of the school’s front-and-center identity. It’s spent years talking about making students feel welcomed, valued, represented, and empowered. That all sounds great in a brochure.

But an Ivy League school is supposed to expect something from the students lucky enough to be there. It should care about honesty, effort, excellence, and big consequences when students cheat.

Sure, Brown still has the Ivy League name, the prestige, and the massive price tag.

But excellence and high-achieving greatness have been diluted by DEI, AI, and cheating scandals.

SPACEX HAS FUTURE VALUATIONS OUT OF THIS WORLD!!!!

SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk speaks via video at the Nasdaq MarketSite in Times Square on June 12, 2026.© Spencer Platt/Getty Images

This has been valuation week for SpaceX, with more than a dozen analysts writing initial research following the company’s record-setting June IPO.

Investors have had a lot of estimates, price targets, bull cases, and bear cases to digest. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk also has a thought about SpaceX’s potential: It will be worth more than Earth.

“You don’t seem to understand that SpaceX will be worth more than the rest of Earth if we accomplish our goals,” wrote Musk in a post on X on Thursday afternoon. He was responding to a comment about AI costs.

That might be his most optimistic projection ever, and he’s had a few. In 2022, he said that Tesla could be worth more than Apple and Saudi Aramco combined. That pair was worth about $4.4 trillion at the time. (Tesla is worth about $1.8 trillion today, based on fully diluted shares outstanding.)

To be sure, SpaceX operates in space, giving it an edge in growing its AI and communications businesses. Musk is fond of talking about the Kardashev Scale, a framework for evaluating civilizations proposed in the 1960s by Soviet astronomer Nikolai Kardashev.

The scale is about energy use. A level I civilization harnesses the energy on its planet. A level II civilization harnesses the power of its sun. And a Level III civilization harnesses the power of its galaxy. Musk’s ambition is to harness the power of the sun, which, of course, is much larger than the Earth.

As for the non-planetary valuations, Raymond James has the highest price target for SpaceX at $800 per share. Citi’s bull case for the stock is $900 per share, valuing SpaceX at about $12 trillion.

Those estimates, obviously, assume everything goes well for SpaceX, including the development of Starship, SpaceX’s huge, fully reusable rocket that will drive down costs to reach orbit. Morgan Stanley has a $300 price target for SpaceX and a $600 bull case. Its bear case is $75 and assumes Starship isn’t operational until 2029.

TIRES AND ALZHEIMER RISK???

Learning What Substance Is Suspected of Causing Alzheimer’s May Throw You Into an Existential Crisis

If you drive, your car’s tires are shredding more than just tread: they may be mincing up our grey matter too.

New research by a team in China discovered an alarming link between a chemical commonly found in tires and the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. The chemical, called 6PPD-Q, is formed when fine tire particles meet ozone. That happens anytime new chunks of tire are exposed to the air, meaning the particle may be nearly ubiquitous in car-heavy environments.

According to the findings, recently published in the journal Open Medicine, when the ozone-treated chemical meets our brain cells, it can cause oxidative stress — wear and tear, basically — and inflammation, while also reducing how effectively individual cells “communicate” with one another. These factors strongly correlate to the development of early-stage Alzheimer’s, suggesting anyone who regularly comes into contact with rubber tires may be inadvertently exposing themselves to brain-altering chemicals.

For those in car-dependent regions of the world like North America, that’s a pretty significant chunk of the population.

The chemical makes its way into our brains through our blood, which it enters primarily when we breathe in dust particles laden with 6PPD-Q. Other avenues of exposure include crops and soil, stadium turf, working near highways or with cars, and contact with recycled tire products.

While scientists already knew that 6PPD-Q interacts with the brain somehow, the chemical’s newfound molecular connection to Alzheimer’s is significant. Using machine learning software, the team mapped how effectively the chemical binds to five “Alzheimer predictor genes,” finding that 6PPD-Q forms strong bonds with three.

Beyond humans, 6PPD-Q run-off from roadways is having a sizable impact on fish populations, notably salmon. One 2022 study on the environmental journey road runoff takes described the substance as a “highly toxic tire-derived chemical,” which has caused “mass mortalities of coho salmon,” specifically.

Going forward, scientists still need to conduct broader lab tests on human cells in order to figure out how severely various quantities of 6PPD-Q contribute to Alzheimer’s disease. Only then can we get a sense of just how risky it is to burn rubber.

POPE LEO SAYS “DO AS I SAY, NOT AS I DO” TO AFRICAN MIGRATION TO EUROPE

Pope Leo Welcomes Aliens Into Europe While Vatican Keeps Fortress-Like Borders

A viral video shows Pope Leo XIV welcoming a large group of African migrants in Sicily, but Vatican City bans illegal immigration with huge fines and jail time.

ANDREAS SOLARO / Contributor / Getty

Images of Pope Leo XIV welcoming African migrants to Europe has sparked outrage, as some accuse the Pontiff of encouraging the weakening of western nations while maintaining Vatican City as an impenetrable fortress that threatens illegal migrants with huge fines and lengthy prison sentences.

In a widely viewed video posted by EWTN, the Pope can be seen greeting a large group of migrants who had just made their way by boat to the Sicilian Island of Lampedusa. He also prayed at a cemetery there for migrants who died making the perilous journey.

The viral video has been seen over 1.1 million times while triggering nearly 2,000 mostly negative comments because of the Vatican’s longstanding hypocrisy on migration and open borders.

“The Church’s silence regarding the threats European Christians face is already deafening. Combining it with telling Europeans that they must do more to ‘integrate and protect migrants’, is adding insult to injury,” declared Eva Vlaardingerbroek, conservative European commentator and founder of the Save Europe Act, responding to the video.

“The Pope’s decision to do this now, right as Europe is witnessing yet another wave of murders of its citizens by migrants (think of Louis, Christian, Henry, and the countless others) cannot be dismissed as a mere public relations blunder,” Vlaardingerbroek wrote.

Louis, Christian, Henry and the “countless others” she refers to are young people who were recently brutally murdered or sexually assaulted by migrants amid western Europe’s suicidal policies favoring migrants over native-born citizens.

“It is a painful slap in the face of the Christian native peoples of Europe and all those who lost their children and loved ones as a result of mass migration,” Vlaardingerbroek said.

“Where is the Church’s charity and compassion toward them?” she asked. “Why do we not hear a word about the attacks on Europe’s Churches and Christian communities? Why do we not hear a word about the millions of Europeans who are unsafe and estranged, fast becoming a minority in their own homelands?”

“As a new Catholic, I have generally tried to refrain from critiquing the Pope, for we do not lightly challenge the father. This, however, is not a matter of dogma or infallible teaching,” she continued. “The Pope has chosen to make a political and pastoral statement on migration, and on such prudential questions the faithful may legitimately form and express their own judgment.

“My opinion on this is clear: Europe does not have a moral obligation to house the entire world, especially not when it comes at the cost of civilizational destruction,” she concluded.

I cannot remain silent on this.

The Pope’s decision to do this now, right as Europe is witnessing yet another wave of murders of its citizens by migrants (think of Louis, Christian, Henry, and the countless others) cannot be dismissed as a mere public relations blunder.A 2024 decree issued by the President of the Pontifical Commission for Vatican City State announced severe penalties regarding unauthorized entry into the territory of Vatican City State.

DEAR POPE LEO-

STICK TO YOUR FLOCK, AND STOP THE ABUSE BY THE 7,000 CATHOLIC PRIESTS OF BOYS…GET OUT OF POLITICS.

“Any person who enters the territory of Vatican City State by means of violence, threat, or deception shall be punished by imprisonment for a term of one to four years and a fine of €10,000.00 to €25,000.00,” the decree states.