Anti-Fraud Investigations Reach Boiling Point

All right, welcome to Crossroads. Investigation into the massive and growing fraud network in the United States. It's actually now reached a boiling point. Some really big stuff going on. JD Vance also points the new fraud czar. Let me show you this. Speaking of fraud, the U.S. government is not just targeting fraud networks here in the United States, they're also targeting people in other countries who run centers defrauding Americans. And on another topic, the Strait of Hormuz is still dealing with Iran's blockade. They had a brief deal, and then Trump bombed them again, and things are back to square one. But it's actually possible that oil could keep flowing through other channels. And among those, the new oil pipeline is already half done. We'll be talking about these topics a lot more today, so make sure to hit the like button, leave a comment, and also please share this episode. All right, let's get started. So first of all, Vice President JD Vance, the brand new fraud czar, he's tasked with helping lead investigations of massive fraud rings all across the United States, and the world, actually. And he has now issued a promise that if, quote, you're committing fraud, we will find you, and we won't rest until justice is served. And in a recent video, he announced that they've confirmed some of the key findings from independent journalist Nick Shirley. You might remember Nick Shirley went to Minnesota and covered the Somali community mostly, committing massive fraud, somewhere in the areas of $7 billion, some say possibly more than that. Not everything prosecuted just yet, but very big. A lot of this had to do with daycare fraud, the Learing Center, because they spelled learning wrong, things like that. He also notes that in some cases, fraud is even forcing the government to shut down entire programs that were meant to help American citizens. Let me show you this. Here's what JD Vance had to say on that. With this action, we're bringing justice to some of America's most vulnerable citizens and justice to the American taxpayer. In 2018, Minnesota tried to provide housing services for the homeless. They estimated that the cost of the program would be $2.5 million a year. By 2024, the program had exploded to $104 million annually, and almost all of that, almost all of it was because of fraud. As a result, the state had to shut down the program and can no longer provide those services to Americans in need. So we've got homeless veterans sleeping on the streets because fraudsters got rich. Look, these fraud cases are actually getting really big. JD Vance notes they recently arrested 15 people in Minnesota who were conning Americans out of $90 million. And another key findings he mentions at the center of the anti-fraud investigations was Aimee Brock, founder and former director of Feeding Our Future. Feeding the children, feeding the people. She was involved in a Minnesota scam that stole more than $250 million. And we can say this definitively because she's guilty and she got 41 years in prison. 41 years in prison for wire fraud and bribery. That's like massive. Also on that point, guess what's happening? Representative Ilhan Omar is also now under investigation. And let me show you this and I'll go a bit into what's going on with it. Now, New York Post said the Justice Department's investigating Representative Ilhan Omar. And it says that Vice President JD Vance announced this and notes Omar has faced questions about immigration fraud, family finances, and her potential ties to a COVID-era fraud scheme in Minnesota. Let me briefly explain this, what's going on with her. There are allegations that, again, purely allegations, innocent until proven guilty. The evidence is kind of crazy, but we'll see what they come out in the end, all right? But she's being accused of several different possible issues, let's say, coming into the country illegally. There's the allegation that she married her own brother to, again, be able to bring him into the country committing what would be, of course, immigration fraud. There's actually an allegation that she might have lied about her age in order to get chain migration through her dad. Again, innocent until proven guilty. We'll see what comes out on the official line with this, but the evidence ain't looking so hot. Also on the front too, there were allegations that at the very least, she might have known about some of the fraud taking place within the Somalian community in her own district. And I've said before, this is going to be one of the big topics and one of the big reasons why, frankly, this is not just about individual fraudsters. This is going to be something that goes after probably elected officials. You have, of course, Mike Walls, who was the former running mate of Kamala Harris. He would have been vice president had he won. He's also getting swept up into this. And from the federal level, one of the investigations is this. Did the local officials know about this? Did the local officials prevent investigations? Did they block criminal justice? Were they profiting from it or benefiting from it? For example, maybe they knew there was fraud and they were taking campaign finance donations or whatever. All of these could be looked at. As things stood right now, it's not clear what the federal government is going to be looking into Mike Walls, for example, but they are going after Ilhan Omar. And we'll see what happens with that. The other big thing with Ilhan Omar, of course, is going to be the question of, geez, can you remove a member of Congress based on a criminal investigation? Maybe you can. One of the key issues the federal government is using when taking away people's citizenship, which they are doing, they're actually denaturalizing people. If you committed fraud, and again, this is another type of fraud. If you committed fraud in the process of getting citizenship, and it could be any step of the way, even coming here or burying your brother, for example, the allegation stands. If you committed fraud at any level of that, then that could mean fruit of the poisonous tree, that effectively the entire citizenship process is fraudulent, and therefore they can strip it. The Trump administration is currently looking to actually strip a lot of people of citizenship. They're really going after people right now. And it doesn't matter if you're a sitting member of Congress, you can be investigated. Also in this article, JD Vance said, quote, I don't want to prejudge an investigation. And he said, it certainly seems something fishy is there. We'll see what comes out from that. Now, also speaking of fraud, the US government is not just targeting fraud networks here in the United States, they're also targeting people in other countries. These massive fraud centers, you might've gotten these fake phone calls and everything like that. There are massive multi-billion dollar fraud rings operating in other countries. They're also now being targeted. We'll be talking more about this after we come back from a quick break. I tend to look at events a little differently than most people, not just what's happening on the surface, but the deeper patterns shaping the world around us. And in today's world, economics is not just about markets. We've seen how authoritarian systems use economic pressure, control over resources to create vulnerabilities that can be exploited. That's why I believe in owning something tangible, physical gold and silver from American Hartford Gold, the company I trust. 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It says, the FBI on Wednesday said it shut down an India-based call center accused of defrauding elderly Americans of millions of dollars, also confirming that two senior executives of the call center just admitted to charges that they allowed the fraud to occur. And that's in a post on X. The FBI's Boston office said that, quote, hundreds of elderly victims here in the US and abroad were defrauded, quote, out of millions of dollars through tech support scams. And notes this as well. They say, quote, our senior citizens deserve honor, respect, and protection. And if you target them, we will do everything we can to bring you to justice. The office said in a social media post against the FBI. Now, why is this a big deal? We don't really have the full numbers of how much fraud is being committed in the United States. I will say this, though. A couple of years back, Government Accountability Office, you know, kind of, I think they're public-private, pseudo-government, they're not quite government. They ran an investigation. And what they found was that there's probably upwards of like the high end, somewhere between $250 billion and over $500 billion in fraud committed against Americans every single year. And that didn't even include like Medicaid fraud. That did not include, you know, again, just like Social Security fraud was not included on that. That does not include the scams. And just think about that. You have upwards of, you know, bigger than the defense budget, or close to the defense budget. It's $900 billion, I think. This is like a huge chunk of your taxes effectively being stolen every single year by fraudsters. And remember also that like 98% of taxpayers only make up a small percentage of federal income tax. This effectively means that most taxpayers are just doing nothing other than paying for fraud and paying for interest on debt. Like that's how big of a deal this is. That's also, it's pretty serious though, too, that if they do end this fraud, if they stop Social Security fraud, remember Elon Musk when he was running the Doge Department, he was saying that when they were looking into Social Security, he said there's just rampant fraud. Some of the fraud was people making fraudulent phone calls, ripping them off, stealing American tax money. And a lot of it was outside the United States. It was actually foreign, you know, foreign nationals based in other countries just defrauding America, defrauding the United States, which, you know, you can't really go after them normally. If we were to get rid of the fraud, think about it, that if we could say there's like $500 billion in fraud targeting Social Security, hospice, everything else, even if it's $250 billion, they actually go after all of it, which they're now saying they're going to. $250 billion is a low end, by the way. That would mean that effectively, you know, what half of Medicaid, the budget would be freed up. Like let that sink in. Like a massive, you're talking 50% or more chunk potentially of the budget is being eaten by fraudsters. Imagine what that means for Americans. If the money gets freed up, they could either maybe lower taxes. I don't think they'll do that. Uh, or they could actually increase benefits and programs for Americans. They might do that. Uh, one thing the government tends to not do is contract. You know, typically, typically they'll be like, I'm going to give myself new war powers. And you're like, Hey buddy, you're going to throw that ring into the fire. When this is all done. They're like, no, no, I'm not. Um, you know, they tend to keep the powers once they create them. Like we're still, we're still on like COVID budget. Okay. Like in terms of government spending, we're still in COVID budget. Uh, so they tend to not repeal things once created, but you know, the good end of that is if they do find mass fraud ended again, illegals can't get it anymore. Things like this. It means the pool available for average Americans will be significantly higher, just much, much better. Um, and also that's good for like some of the younger folks too, because like my generation, we're being told that when we're old enough, uh, there'll be no more money left in social security. So the idea that there'll be a lot left is actually a great thing in the chat. Uh, Lucy park, 1899 is saying the Indian fraud centers are often labor trafficking businesses. Okay. So I actually looked into this, the ones in India, some of them, not as much, it's most of the ones in Burma and it's the ones in, you know, operating out of like East Asia or Southeast Asia. Um, a lot of that has to do with Chinese like mafia running their centers in other countries. The ones in India are like pseudo legal, the Indian government actually, it is illegal in India and the Indian government supposed to go after it. They just kind of don't agree, not at least not aggressively. The ones running out of East Asia or Southeast Asia, again, Burma and other places, you know, those are the ones where there's oftentimes slave operations. And what often happens, it seems they kidnap people and they force them to run these scams. If they don't make enough money, they like, I mean, it's horrible stories, uh, beating them. Uh, there is even stories of organ harvesting, killing them for their organs. You know, it's, it's even gangs doing it these days, not just the CCP, uh, really horrifying stuff. Uh, so it is in the interest of the U S government to bring an end to that, but also not just end the practice, but after actually go after the organizations running these types of things, um, they ha they actually are solid, you know, the federal government, they are soliciting information like the Burmese fraud networks right now. Uh, a lot of this also runs out of Mexico, uh, again, in, in Mexico too, they have a lot of these fraud centers also just defrauding Americans. Um, and you know, the other thing too, is you also have countries that don't have extradition treaties with the United States. So like Russia, for example, you, you can be a professional cyber criminal. And as long as you don't fly outside your country, you're probably not going to be arrested. So there are also countries like that. So it is difficult for the U S to end all of this. Now that being said, some of the big stuff happening right now, the federal government is actually targeting visa overstays, and this is actually a really big deal. Now U S citizenship and immigration services, they announced a new policy. It says a new policy memo, reiterating the fact that consistent with longstanding immigration law and immigration court decisions, aliens seeking adjustment of status must do throw do so through consular proceedings by the state department outside of the country. And so I'll explain how big of a deal this is in a sec, but let me just go through this first. It says officers are directed to consider all the relevant factors and information on a case by case basis when determining whether an alien warrants this extraordinary form of relief. And it notes that U S U S CIS spokesman Zach color said, quote, non-immigrants like students, temporary workers, or people on tourist visas come to the U S for a short time. And for a specific purpose, our system is designed for them to leave when the visit is over. One of the big things happening, for example, right now, people come here on student visas and they just stay forever. Um, because there's actually some loopholes, for example, in the student visa program that kind of lets you do that. And it's just been tolerated, but he notes this quote, their visit should not function as the first step in the green card process. And you know, if you get a green card, you know, that's effectively U S permanent permanent residents. You know, you're one foot into being a citizen, basically. It's, it's a big deal if you get it. And so you can come here on a student visa, just stay for life, bring your family in, have kids, they become citizens. And then you kind of, that's kind of the process of citizenship for a lot of people, right? That's what's been going on. They're now telling people that they need to go back to their own countries to renew things. And I know for a fact, because I know people dealing with this, um, they're actually really aggressive on enforcing this right now that the kind of difficult point with this is it basically tar legal migrants. Like it's not, this is not the criminal migrants or the illegal aliens. This is like legal migrants, people who are here going to school and actually working and doing like high paying jobs. Um, these individuals are the ones being targeted for it. Meanwhile, you have Maryland dad, also known as MS-13 member, uh, being allowed to stay here indefinitely. Now even though he's an illegal alien, because he basically got off on his case. So you have those kinds of people accused MS-13 agents and someone like that staying here. Uh, but of course people on student visas and stuff are the ones that are really kind of going after. Now that being said, they're going after kind of everybody also not to minimize that, but let me continue this and I'll explain a bit more. It says this quote, following the law allows the majority of these cases to be handled by the state department at us consular offices abroad and frees up limited USCIS resources to focus on processing other cases that fall under its purview, including visas for victims of violent crime and human trafficking, naturalization applications and other priorities. You know, it's the law was written this way for a reason. And despite the fact that it has been ignored for years following it will help make our system fairer and more efficient. Now briefly on this, there are different arguments over the original intent and the way it was framed and the way it was written as there always is. Um, I saw some people criticizing the interpretation and enforcement of this by basically saying, no, like the original writing does not necessarily say this. This is a reform. You might remember the Trump administration has, uh, has a policy where if you want to apply for asylum, whatever else like that, you need to wait in a different country. Um, in other words, you can't stay here while you're on the clock. Effectively, you need to go back home or wait in a safe third country. Uh, this is very problematic for people from countries where, you know, human rights abuses China, for example, being a big one, but a lot of others, the way the federal government is talking about some of those countries, including countries that will not take people back is they're looking at safe third countries. Uh, this is of course related more to like amnesty and such. You know, if you're seeking shelter from, you know, being persecuted by your own government, um, the federal government is still letting those people into a large extent. The problem is you had so many people defrauding it because you know, it's effectively an open door program. If you say, I'm afraid of my government, I'm afraid of persecution. And everybody started saying that legitimate and illegitimate, uh, it becomes very difficult to kind of vet people. Um, on this point, what this also means is people here on H one B's, they're going to get hit really hard on this. Uh, it means now that effectively the H one B is not a guaranteed path to citizenship and, you know, staying here for the rest of your life. Like it used to be a same thing with student visas. This is already having a huge impact. Uh, for example, just after some of these reforms came out, it turns out H one B visa applications have already gone down by over 38%. That's massive. Now I should note, just because applications have gone down does not mean the number of people that are letting in has gone down. Uh, one thing we've found with H one B visas is, you know, effectively there are like foreign chop shops, including in India, for example, where they just file multiple cases for each person. So they have tons of cases for each person. So it's a kind of get your name in the lottery and you, you stuff a few extra ballots in there. So to speak, uh, they've been finding, for example, that people are like selling these things sometimes when they have, you know, cards to get into the U S and there's like rings in these countries where you can effectively buy your way into the country. I mean, you could argue Trump is doing that with the gold card now, like Trump is literally selling it now. So you could argue that maybe that's been normalized, um, to that point, just because the number of applications have gone down doesn't mean the number of people have gone down necessarily. Uh, and that's basically where it's at right now. Fraud being targeted. You're not guaranteed to stay here. If you come here on a visa. And, um, I do know a lot of good people are being impacted by this too. Uh, just to be clear. Um, you know, of course I know plenty of people who are good, hard workers and they've had to go back to their countries. I do. I know some are still kind of in limbo, including some like directors I've worked with on my own programs. Um, but I also know others who, you know, are getting it back in pretty easily. So it's, it's, it's hit or miss, um, on that point. Also that the Trump administration just hired 80 new federal immigration judges for deportation cases. The important thing here though, it doesn't technically bolster the numbers too much. And so you're going to see media framing this in different ways. On one side of the aisle, you're going to hear, Oh, Trump is increasing the number of immigration is, Oh, the humanity. And on the other side, you're, you hear like the narrative, you know, Trump got him this time, more immigration judges. What's the reality? Basically he's replacing people who left and the number is not changing that much. Actually, the number is slightly the below the threshold when he, of when he first took office. I mean, just to this point, look, uh, when Trump first took office, second term, right? Uh, the justice department had more than 700 immigration judges that actually dropped to under 600. So in other words, you know, they lost more than 100 of these immigration judges. The new ones that bring in the 80 are just replacing some and not even all some of the ones that were lost. So they're not like supercharging it or anything like that. They're just replacing people who left effectively. Um, on that point, I will say, cause I know some Trump supporters are like, well, when are the mass deportations come? Um, the Trump administration so far, one of the biggest bottlenecks, first off is legal challenges. The Supreme court to kind of stop that. The other one is capacity at detention facilities. They're like, they're actually working on a program now to start using warehouses, uh, as detention facilities. So they are, they are actually moving forward on this stuff, a lot of other things going on. Uh, but you know, effectively that's where things are at right now. That's basically where things are at. Um, in the chat, Judy, you came, you're saying to be honest, I'd set KPIs for enforcement based on how many criminal aliens they find and deport and disincentivize catching peaceful people until crime is tackled. You can choose to do the right thing or get the numbers. Yeah. And that's actually what I think Trump is doing right now. And it's actually easier on that front because you know, if you've been booked, you have a criminal record. Typically they know where to find you. Um, it does seem to be the case that that is how the Trump administration is doing it. Uh, the challenge they have, let's briefly go over what, you know, illegal immigration and migration in the U S currently looks like under the Biden administration alone, you have around 10 million people who came in. I personally think it's a lot more than that. Um, because even like upstate New York, New Jersey, like you go anywhere, frankly, you don't see that many Americans in my, at least in my opinion. Um, you, you, you don't really see Americans like you used to. I actually would not, would guess the numbers significantly higher than what they're saying, but let's go by the surface numbers. Okay. 10 million people brought in under Biden. A lot of those people were given temporary protection status. And so, you know, effectively they came in and that was like the program, right? The, the all United nations, global combat for safe order and regular migration. That's the program, right? Uh, you had many people possibly again, around 10 million come in just with that in related programs. That's a lot of people. Uh, Trump has argued the number probably more closer to like 40 million. And that's on top of existing. And we don't even know the numbers, 10 million, 40 million, maybe even more than that. That were already here. Um, the fact is with immigration, we don't actually know how many people there are. We don't actually know, uh, because that's the problem with the illegal immigration. You're off the books. Typically the way Trump is going about this, um, current deportation numbers, they're, they're basically on track to deport 10 million people based on current numbers, including self deportation by the time Trump leaves office. So effectively, other than closing the border with the border wall, which has been effective, it's actually been very effective aside from going after different forms of fraud on legal immigration. Um, people using visas and overstays and H1Bs and whatever else, right? Um, effectively Trump is looking to only deport maybe 10 million people, which is, which is a lot, but that undoes what Biden did. Uh, they're not going to go after people beyond that. And so a lot of that's being done through, uh, deportation orders, the ending of temporary protection status. Democrats are fighting it tooth and nail in the courts and they're actually blocking it. It goes, it's been going back and forth and you can say Republicans too, actually, cause you know, they can't do it all themselves. Uh, Republicans working with Democrats to block that from happening. Um, you have a lot of self deportation because they are offering a good old exit package. Um, I think it's between 1000 and $2,000. Um, plus a free ticket, free ticket. Anyway, don't have to stay here. You don't have to stay here, but, uh, you don't have to go home, but you can't stay here. Basically what they're saying. Um, and on that track, they do have to well, who do they dedicate the resources to? Again, one of the biggest like bottlenecks is the detention facilities. The other one is just, you know, basic capacity. The other ones, of course, protesters and lawsuits blocking these actions. They couldn't even deport the MS-13 Maryland dad. Okay. Like they still can't even deport that guy. If they're going to dedicate their resources to something. Well, might as well go after the people who are actual criminals. I could get behind that. I agree with that. All right. That being said also a lot of, a lot of other things going on. Trump, he's talking about Greenland again. He still wants good old Greenland and it's not theft. It's, it's a deal. It's a business deal and president Trump wants it. Uh, it's still not happening yet, but America did just claim a tiny part of Greenland with a brand new consulate. Politico says this, it says the U S will open a new consulate in Nuke on Thursday, deepening its presence on the island as the white house sharpens its focus on the Arctic. Uh, because the CCP is moving into the Arctic and they actually are, uh, base building military operations. Um, why does Trump want Greenland so bad? This is Cuban missile crisis part two. Uh, if China or Russia gets into Greenland and we're already pushing real hard into the Arctic, even, even there's even some territorial battles, for example, over Canadian territory and like the far North, that's really far North. They're dealing with that. If China or Russia gets a base or the ability to stage, you know, even weapons, for example, in Greenland, uh, it's, it'll be very difficult for the United States to intercept those Trump's vision of the golden dome, the American missile defense system modeled after the iron dome in Israel be very expensive and very big. If he's going to do it, he has to have Greenland. Um, otherwise the Eastern seaboard will always be vulnerable to attacks. And so just in terms of like missile trajectory, you can't have missile defense in the United States without Greenland. Uh, Trump is working on that. He's ramping up the language again. We'll see if he actually does it, but he's not dropping it from Greenland. So we'll see, we'll see if he does it. Um, so far he's, he's going, he's going pretty good in terms of getting what he wants. It's, it is hit or miss on some things. So we'll have to see if it happens. Uh, he's kind of, he's kind of hit some tar, so to speak. Things are slowing down with Iran. So we'll see how I can deal with that. And on that topic, also look, the straight of Hormuz is still dealing right now with Iran's blockade. Um, Trump was trying to bring him to the table, said basically sign on with the Abraham accords. Iran is saying, Trump is saying that Iran is looking like they're going to do it. Iran is saying, no, we ain't. And it looked like they were going to have a deal even as of last night. As of this morning, news is out. Seems it fell through yet again. Trump is bombing Iran. He's actually moving forward with it. He's, he's been telling them over and over, I'm going to do it. He's actually doing it again. And Iran is promising retaliation. And you might say, well, what can they from retaliate on at this point for Iran? The shooting war is over, but we're in Iran is technically an economic war. And it's actually a very effective tool. Uh, we have actually seen that their ability to lock down the straight of Hormuz is strangling off the global economy. It's making everybody mad, including China. So Iran's not going to leave this with a lot of, a lot of friends in the end, I'd say. Uh, but they have found that they have a good negotiating card with that. We'll see to what extent they can hold it. Uh, but that's again, where things are at right now. It kind of went right back to it on that front. Also though, soon, none of this may matter because guess what's happening. The oil could flow yet again, using other channels. And among those is a brand new oil pipeline. It's already halfway done. Just the news of this. It said the United Arab Emirates has completed nearly 50% of a pipeline that will bypass the straight of Hormuz, says Sultan Ahmed Al-Jabbar, CEO of Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. An interview with Atlantic Council, an American think tank focused on international affairs. And that's it. It notes that Al-Jabbar also said the world's energy moves through too many choke points, which it does, by the way. Notes as well, earlier this month, Abu Dhabi Crown Prince, Sheikh Khalid bin Mohammed bin Zayed, directed the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company to fast track the product it said, which is now expected to be operating by 2027. And that may sound foreign in the future, but it's really not. Um, basically they're going to have an alternative channel next year. Maybe we'll see how far into 2027. Uh, they note that it's expected to double the Middle Eastern countries export capacity. Meaning if you double it, it could replace what they send to the straight of Hormuz. That's a big deal. Uh, it also notes the UAE has utilized an existing pipeline, uh, to Farjara for some of its oil exports during the blockade. So they are finding alternative channels with this. Um, again, this is a pretty big deal on this front, just to give my two cents. It is true. Oil has too many choke points. And actually what we're seeing right now happening with straight of Hormuz is kind of a shot over the bow for the United States. Right now we're watching a single trade choke point get cut off. Imagine if it was multiple choke points. Imagine if it was Panama and other parts, you know, the Horn of Africa, for example, the South China sea, for example, uh, the straight of Malacca, you know, all these things, right? Uh, all these major trade choke points, what's been happening. China has been building bases at all of these. They call it the string of pearls. They have military bases protecting their assets and there is the potential and also business operations. There's a potential they could actually use this to weaponize trade in the same way Iran is, but on a global scale. And the message this is sending now to the United States is twofold. I think one, well, there's too many trade choke points. Hear me out. What is probably the only major country on the face of the planet that has two coasts and ability to effectively supply the world's oil? What is the only country on earth that could do that? Well, good old us of a, the United States could actually probably solve this problem because, you know, geographically we're, we're a very unique country. Um, we're a very large country. We don't have divisions among States. Not so I know you think in California, it's not that bad. Okay. We don't really have divisions between States in the same way you have like Europe, for example, or France and Germany might not get along with each other. And Italy might not get along with Greece or whatever. We also have the ability where effectively we just have wide oceans on either, on either side. And you don't have to wait in line. If America were to build an oil industry, we would dominate. And Trump is trying to build that right now. We'll see how it goes. The other problem is, well, America's kind of has the global monopoly on wealth, this rate, uh, whether it's manufacturing, whether it's a trade deals, whether it's even mining, whether it's natural, natural resources, basically America is going to dominate if we also basically run the oil industry. So we'll see if they do that because that would come at the cost of a lot of other countries, economies, you know, Canada, for example, is an oil country too, to a large extent. Uh, so on this point, we are seeing a remaking of the way shipping takes place and the way oil is shipped, uh, because Iran has demonstrated that actually they can weaponize it to pretty good effect, actually, you know, just being blunt. Um, it actually has a very, it actually has worked as a very strong hand for them to play. I don't support it by any means, don't get me wrong. Uh, but it has been shown to be very effective. And even it shows you could lose two full waves of leadership killed in strikes. You can have your entire Navy sitting at the bottom of the ocean. You can have your military effectively wiped out and you can still have cards to play because you're pulling an economic weapon out. It's, it's a big deal. And the real challenge is other countries might try to take note of this. This may be the beginning of something rather than the end of it. Uh, the trade warfare is maybe more effective than conventional warfare. That's what this matters so much. Um, and the U S is going to want to try to close that, that loophole. They're going to really want to close that loophole going forward. Now that being said, just check in the chat. Yeah. Cali CY days in California is going to be able to buy gas from other States that can be made cheaper than California. So the California assembly has a bill to tax any gas or oil from other States, which null, which nullify any savings. You can hate them and you can't hate them enough. Yeah. It is a problem too, in the United States that, okay, this is, this is the other problem we face in America is we can talk about the good old U S of a, it is true that individually you have some crazy policies at the state level, uh, that effectively can even punish other States and make it very difficult for people living in these States to deal with it. Anyways. Meanwhile, I have some good news for you. Something massive is happening. Probably in my opinion, what a single voter issue this could get Trump elected to a third term in office. If he so chooses daylight savings could finally be coming to an end. If Trump ends daylight savings, I would take this over, over a lot of other policies. Okay. This is Trump on social. He says this big today, 41, 48 to one and the energy and commerce committee on a bill, which is actually going to the house. Now a bill, including the sunshine protection act, which we're making daylight saving time permanent, meaning, you know, when you act on daylight saving, that'll be the time set. And we don't have to change the clocks ever again. We just, we just end that. He says, this is so important in that hundreds of millions of dollars spent every year by people sitting in States being forced to change their clocks. The way they calculate that is like lost hours in terms of work and effectiveness, car accidents, that kind of thing. Some would argue that, you know, people driving when they're tired is maybe not as bad as, or maybe equal to people driving when it's still dark out, which is of course why we change our clocks. You can, you can say what you want on it, but it is calculated based on lost hours of work, lowered productivity. People are more tired. People have to adjust to it in terms of cost of daylight savings time. But Trump says this, many of these clocks are located in towers, which he's also talking about changing and the cost of renting or using heavy equipment to do this twice a year is prohibitive. This is an interesting ground on which he's doing this. By the way, he's talking about the physical act of changing the clocks on like government clocks. Which, you know, you could say there's an industry for it, I guess. I'm the professional time changer on the government clock and I work twice a year for daylight savings time. Imagine that, right? They have to have a business for it to do it, right? And so Trump is using that, it seems, as the basis for it. He says, this is where the house will be attaching the Sunshine Protection Act to the highway bill. He said, great work by Troy and all the members who voted as well for railway safety. He says, I'm going to work very hard to see the Sunshine Protection Act signed into law. It's time that people can stop worrying about the clock, not to mention all the other work and money that is spent on this ridiculous twice yearly production. He says, it will also be a very nice win for the Republican party. It's not a good way to get Democrat votes, by the way, to frame it that way. But regardless, he says, take it. We're going with the far more popular alternative, saving daylight, which gives you a longer, brighter day. And who can be against that? This is an easy one. Thank you for everyone who supported this important bill, and especially Chairman Brett Guthrie and Vern Buchanan, President Donald J. Trump. Now on that front too, again, one of the big debates on daylight savings time has been this. Effectively, you know, Democrat, Republican, always been a pretty popular issue. Yeah, daylight savings time is probably bad. It's not good. I don't like it. I don't meet anybody who does like it. Maybe there's somebody out there who likes it. But the key argument in terms of political debate has always been, well, do you keep the sunshine or do you keep kind of the darkness, so to speak? Do you keep the clock forward or do you keep the clock back? The Sunshine Act is saying clock forward and just leave it there. So you'll have more daytime. You'll have more daytime, and that will be kind of the permanent way that they do it. So that's where it's at with the Sunshine Act. We'll see what happens with this. Trump could actually get rid of daylight savings time. I could be a single voter, a single issue voter on this. I do not like daylight savings time. So we'll see what Trump ends up doing, right? He is saying that he's going to change it or he's going to sign that if it comes to his desk, we shall see. TMA in the chat, you're saying my atomic clock doesn't change the daylight savings time. Well, that's the way to do it, too. Just go to the atomic clock method, right? All right. Look, meanwhile, a lot of other stuff going on. There have been a lot of new tax proposals floating around. Some want more taxes. Tax your feet and tax the street. Trump has been suggesting that income tax could actually be totally eliminated. Just no more income tax for most Americans, which if you understand that 98% of Americans basically have a mild impact on tax revenue, maybe that's a good idea, especially given the fact that so much is stolen from foreign fraudsters. And now something else is happening. Jeff Bezos is actually kind of coming out pro-Trump now. It's interesting to see. And he's suggesting that working class Americans should be exempt from federal income tax just overall. Townhall said this. It says, Amazon founder and executive chair Jeff Bezos, in an interview with CNBC, mocked the idea that the United States needs a more progressive federal tax rate. He's arguing based on New York and Mamdani here, right? A more progressive federal tax rate and argued that because taxes on the working class make up such a small share of total federal revenue, as I was explaining, it says the bottom half of the country's socioeconomic ladder should pay nothing in federal income taxes. Basically, as I was saying, 98% of Americans have a pretty negligent impact on actual tax revenue. And if you were to even just get rid of the fraud and maybe interest on debt, you could get rid of it. It basically means a lot of us are paying taxes just for fraudsters and interest on debt. Yeah, they could probably get rid of income tax for the majority of Americans. And that's what Bezos is talking about right now. And notes the remarks came as part of a broader criticism of New York City Mayor Zoram Mamdani, Democrats have a political strain. They mean socialists, by the way, whom Bezos accused of believing their poorly run government programs are genuinely helping the working class people they claim to serve. Just kind of counterintuitive, by the way. We're going to save the working class by taxing the working class into the grave. And notes this that rather than expanding bureaucracies and administering government programs, the government would do better to simply put money directly into the pockets of the people it wants to help. What a concept, right? My personal take. I actually do believe that they should change the tax brackets. I think that typically what happens with taxes, it squeezes the middle class. I mean, I'm not to say I know wealthy people pay a lot in taxes too, and a lot of them do. But really the average kind of middle class American tends to get hit the hardest. They're the ones who have the hardest time weathering it. They're the ones, even if you're like just slightly above like poverty or slightly within an income bracket, like you're going to be taxed in the grave. Horrible getting taxed, the amount they tax people. Cost of living is such that it's hard to get by. In some cases, if you enter like a certain tax bracket, you're better off taking a pay, like an unraise, taking a cut to your paycheck rather than take a raise because the tax brackets will cause so much harm to you financially. And so this is the issue a lot of Americans are facing right now. The quality of life is going down a lot. Rents are very high. It's very hard to rent a home right now, especially in the cities. There's a lot of competition for housing. It's part of the problem with that. It's very difficult to get jobs. People are even training their H-1B replacements in some industries. It's not looking good. And so the average American groceries, cost of living, life is very hard right now. And the question is, well, what do you do about it? And my personal take, I think it's a great idea. If they eliminate taxes for the majority of Americans, like for example, if they go after this 250 to $500 billion in fraud and they just use that and say, okay, we're going to like eliminate that from the budgets of the existing programs and balance the budgets based on that and give tax relief for, or redo the brackets for entire groups of Americans, that'd be fantastic. I would actually put something else out there that the United States should put a cap. I know they have one, but a stronger cap on interest rates, whether it be the Federal Reserve or whether it be credit card companies. I think the taxes, in interest, inflation's a hidden tax, so is effectively usury, right? We do have, we actually do have anti-usury laws in the United States. They only exist at the more extreme end of it. I think they should actually strengthen anti-usury laws. That would be my personal recommendation. Because effectively you can have the Federal Reserve increased interest rates and just steal 5% of like all revenue from taxes, or not from taxes, but from interest on debt, which is insane. Especially when the amount of debt we're in as a country right now is greater than the entire defense budget. Like the fact that you have a, it's not even federal, the fact that you have a, what is really a private company with some kind of public-private partnership, able to run a for-profit enterprise that can set interest rates and just steal that much money is insane in my opinion. So I would actually recommend that. Lower taxes, cap interest rates, and I think we'd be sailing. Jeremy Barker in the chat, he said, taxes are illegal. Income tax used to not be in the constitution. We only got that right after the Federal Reserve was created, after the Titanic sank, by the way. Interesting history, right? You know, because the people who were blocking it from going and getting past, right, died in Titanic. And then we got the good old Federal Reserve. And then of course we had the history where, let's say, wartime laws during the Civil War stayed in place. And, you know, of course we got rid of the gold standard. We stopped funding the government through tariffs, which the federal government used to collect a lot of its money through tariffs. And the weight instead went to taxes. Now when they first started taxing people, which happened through a constitutional amendment, so they had to change the constitution to legalize federal income tax, still exists at the state level. They were like, it's not going to be for everybody, it's just for the wealthy. This is a tax on a small number of you and only the ultra-wealthy. And then it was like, surprise, it's for everybody. And now everybody has to pay taxes for the most part, unless you, of course, you know, are on like very low income or you're very much on the wealthy side and you can find ways of getting around it, like buying a big plot of land and getting a few cows and you call it a farm, for example, and things of that nature. So on that point, yeah, in my opinion, taxes, federal income tax should mostly be changed or illegal. I don't think it was ever intended to go the way it has. It has. And I think that for the average American, this is, if you want to actually improve quality of life for Americans, just tax us less and take less on interest. And I think you'll find people's quality of life significantly going up. And also remove some of the red tape on things like building new homes and such. I think you'd find quality of life for the average person go up quite a bit. In the chat, Ashton, you're saying, why are we in so much debt? Why are there people who put us in debt still allowed to be in charge of US funds? It's true. If I was the dad or the friend of an individual who's that much money in debt and they're still spending, I take their credit card from them and I would cut it into tiny pieces and I'd say, you don't know how to spend money. You don't know how to do it. You've lost your privileges. Don't spend money you don't have. I know some people would say, well, that's not realistic. Of course, even banking and the ability to build businesses and buy a home in some cases does require that. Not necessarily so. You can't understand an alternative economic model through the lens of an existing one. Typically, markets will adjust based on what people are capable of paying. And if we have effectively an artificially inflated market that is kept as such through, of course, debt and interest rates and so on like that, the market would adjust in different ways. And I would note, if you want to see an example of this early America, when America was the largest growing economy on the face of the planet, it still is, of course. A lot of the mass innovations in America took place when we were not paying interest on debt. And the founding fathers, like a lot of them, Jefferson was a huge guy, Adams and so on. They were huge against centralized banking, for example. The idea that the children of America would effectively be enslaved to the banks of Europe was not something they ever wanted. In fact, there's some really scorching quotes from the founding fathers about the dangers of centralized banking and predatory debt. Really, there are some terribly predatory interest rates and predatory debt. And in my opinion, this works as effectively an alternative form of slavery. And hear me out, what is the definition of slavery? Now look, we still live pretty decent lives. I'm not saying we're working fields getting whipped. It's not that bad. But I will say this. The definition of slavery is when you're not entitled to the fruits of your labor, when you work and the money you gain through your work is seized from you. If you get yourself into predatory debt, whether it be medical debt, which is only made possible because, again, of interest rates and debt. And of course, systems where they can charge you more than you can pay because you have to. The issue, for example, of predatory debt with student loans, which are really predatory. Kids get themselves into lifelong debt. I know people paying over $1,700 a month just in interest on debt from student loans. And if you fall behind on payments, the way it just expands is insane. If you go out of work for a little bit and miss a few payments, you're going to be paying interest on debt for the rest of your life. These are incredibly predatory methods of debt. And for some people, that means maybe a quarter of their income is being stolen from them through interest rates. I think that's insane. I think that we actually do have a debt crisis. And also at the federal level, understand within about 25 years, we're on the trajectory where about half of the budget, the federal budget, is just going to go to nothing but interest rates. We're already paying more on interest than we do on defense, over $900 billion, to put that in perspective. That's insane. That's nearing a fifth of federal income tax, effectively, just going to nothing but interest rates. It's insane. I don't know how we go on like this. I don't know how we can keep going unless we start paying down the debt or capping interest rates. And so this is where we're at in the country. It's a very big deal. And so, yeah, that's my personal take. Cap interest rates, lower taxes, you make a lot of people happy. Because really, those are the things, in my opinion, causing more harm than anything. Now, that being said, I actually did some great episodes on this. If you want to watch it, The Josh Phillips Show on YouTube. I did a whole episode about predatory debt, interest rates, and the Cloward-Piven strategy related to fraud and what this actually means. Let me show you the trailer for this. The amount of fraud being found in the United States is staggering. And this is not just a problem of crime. It's a problem so severe that it may be achieving, whether intentionally or not, a strategy to actually destabilize the country, to intentionally drain its resources, and to eventually force changes that Americans would otherwise never accept. I'm, of course, talking about the Cloward-Piven strategy. And if you aren't familiar with that, then get ready, because this could actually explain many of the problems we're watching unfold. Now, that's a pretty important episode. In that episode, I go into the Cloward-Piven strategy, which if you don't know what that is, you should watch the episode, okay? The Cloward-Piven strategy is a method to basically destroy the United States or necessitates universal basic income, before they called it that. It was a method to effectively create a socialist, like a Stalinist-type communist state in America by putting too much weight on the welfare system to the point where the system basically is insolvent, just collapses in on itself, and then thereby necessitating everybody has to be on welfare effectively because the economy just imploded. I would actually argue we're at the threshold right now. If you understand the Cloward-Piven strategy and you watch what's happening with federal debt, if you watch what's happening with interest rates, if you watch what's happening with mass fraud, which has, to some degree, maybe increased the welfare bloat by about five times, if you look at the amount, they're saying 500 billion in fraud, okay? That's insane. If you just look at social security, which I believe is just over 600 billion, Medicaid, right? If you understand that more than 500 billion could be taken just through fraud, it's insane. So my analysis and my take, and I showed in this episode, is that effectively what the Cloward-Piven strategy was designed to do is being achieved. And my point in saying this is when you look at the entire picture in a holistic manner, we're heading towards a crisis. If we don't get off this trajectory, we're going to be in trouble. It's a very important episode. Be sure to watch it. I have the link in the live chat and in the description. That episode is currently on The Josh Phillips Show on YouTube. So again, don't miss it. And that said, everyone, a lot going on right now, more updates to come on the episode. And until then, thank you all so much for being here. And as always, please take care of yourselves, stay informed, stay free.