Today at 2:30pm ET Assistant Attorney General Colin McDonald, head of the Justice Department’s fraud enforcement division, Attorney General Todd Blanche and other justice officials are scheduled to hold a press conference to announce significant charges as part of a national tax fraud enforcement surge. Livestream Links Below:
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The Office of the Comptroller of Currency has released the final report after investigating the banking practices of nine major institutions based on over 100,000 examples of banks refusing business based on politics and worldviews.
WASHINGTON—The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) today released a report of its findings from its supervisory review of debanking activities at the nine largest national banks it supervises: JPMorgan Chase Bank, Bank of America, Citibank, Wells Fargo Bank, U.S. Bank, Capital One, PNC Bank, TD Bank, and BMO Bank.
The OCC conducted its supervisory review in accordance with the President’s Executive Order, “Guaranteeing Fair Access to Banking for All Americans,” to determine whether these banks’ policies or practices may have required, encouraged, or otherwise influenced banks to deny or limit access to financial services to Americans because of their political or religious beliefs or lawful business activities. The OCC’s findings show that, between 2020 and September 2025, all nine banks had such policies.
“Today’s report provides irrefutable evidence that the nation’s largest banks have denied, debanked and discriminated against customers and lawful businesses,” said Comptroller of the Currency Jonathan V. Gould. “Americans should have access to financial services regardless of their beliefs, affiliations, or political views. Fair access to financial services is not a mantra—it is a mandate. The Trump Administration is committed to ending the weaponization of finance against hardworking Americans, once and for all.”
During a press conference with the Prime Minister of Estonia, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte was asked about Russian threats to NATO and the reports of SpaceX’s slowing Starlink capabilities being used for military purposes.
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Well, well well… Interesting development. The conspiracy theorists were correct all along.
Four years after the attacks on the Nord Stream pipelines in the Baltic Sea, one of the alleged perpetrators has to answer in court for the first time. The trial of Serhiy Kuznetsov began today in Hamburg, Germany.
During opening arguments, lawyers representing Kuznetsov informed the judge that he was acting on instructions given to him by the government of Ukraine when he led a team to detonate explosives on the Nord Stream pipeline.
GERMANY – According to the indictment, Serhiy K., together with other military personnel and on behalf of Ukrainian state agencies, is said to have developed the plan to destroy the natural gas pipelines running from Russia through the Baltic Sea to Lubmin in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. The aim was to prevent Russia from using revenues from the gas trade to finance the war of aggression.
Under the leadership of the accused, a commando consisting of several professional divers, a skipper and an explosives expert is said to have brought large quantities of high-performance military explosives into the waters off the Danish island of Bornholm on a sailing yacht chartered in Rostock. There, explosive devices equipped with time fuses were then attached to the gas pipelines running along the seabed.
When they were ignited on September 26, 2022, the two gas pipelines Nord Stream 1 and 2 were severely damaged. There were a total of four leaks on three of the four lines.
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Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy Name. Thy kingdom come. THY WILL BE DONE, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but DELIVER US FROM EVIL.
For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever and ever. Amen †
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Barbara Boyd opens with diesel: as Ukraine’s strikes on Russian refineries tighten the world’s supply, President Trump threatened to halt U.S. diesel exports unless Europe released its emergency stocks, and the G7 agreed to release 100 million barrels. She presents it as the opening move of a 35-day economic offensive running into the midterms. The week of action includes Trump’s visit to the Peterbilt truck plant in Denton, Texas, where employee Sarah Renshaw credited tariffs for 1,000 new jobs; his Oklahoma rally; a White House luncheon with tech leaders on superintelligence; what the White House calls the largest steel plant ever built in the United States, coming to Iowa; Vice President Vance at the groundbreaking of Saronic’s Port Alpha shipyard in Brownsville, Texas; and South Korea’s plans for an Alaska LNG pipeline, a 6-gigawatt power plant in Texas and eight nuclear reactors.
On affordability, the episode walks through price increases under Biden (energy up 33% from January 2021 to January 2025), Vice President Vance on the inflation crisis he says the administration inherited, refining capacity, housing regulation and immigration, Secretary Kennedy at the MAHA Summit on AI giving every patient a better-informed second opinion, and the White House fraud task force’s crackdown on Obamacare enrollments. It closes with Michael Shellenberger’s account of the student riots in France, French intelligence tying the movement to Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s France Unbowed (LFI), and NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman on a new golden age of space exploration. WATCH:
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Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent appears for an interview with Axios co-founder Mike Allen. The wide-ranging conversation covered the U.S. economy, the war in Iran and the Trump administration’s approach to AI.
Secretary Bessent responds to Americans’ frustration with the cost of living; explains why he doesn’t think the AI boom is a repeat of the dot-com bubble and argues that AI leaders warning about losing control should slow down. Bessent also discusses possible U.S-China cooperation on AI risks, Treasury’s economic pressure campaign against Iran, the bond market, Trump Accounts and his clashes inside the administration. WATCH:
Chapters:
0:00 – Cold open
0:24 – Inside Treasury’s Cash Room
1:38 – Unpacking why Americans still feel squeezed
5:21 – Bessent’s economic campaign against Iran
7:35 – Is AI in a bubble?
There’s generally a strategy to the madness; you just have to wait until it starts to become visible. The anniversary of October 7, 2023, massacre is right around the corner.
Hamas-led attacks on Israel on 7 October 2023, which killed about 1,200 people and involved mass shootings, hostage‑taking, rapes and horrific assaults on civilian communities.
As noted in the end of this article about the French protests, “student organizations are nevertheless calling for protests to continue, with the movement now looking towards Tuesday’s National Day of Action.”
EUROPE – Around 400 of France’s 3,700 secondary schools were closed on Friday on the orders of police prefects, with many schools switching to online lessons.
Education Minister Edouard Geffray urged parents to intervene, warning that young people were putting themselves at risk.
“Children are in danger on the streets,” he told BFMTV. “Parents must, quite clearly, take action and tell their children not to go [to the blockades].” The protests began over staffing, funding and school conditions and have spread rapidly across the country.
The Interior Ministry said 1,027 secondary schools were affected on Thursday, including 222 that were blockaded. Around 30 university campuses were also blocked.
It said 1,949 people were arrested on Thursday alone, mainly in connection with violence, unlawful gatherings and attacks on people in positions of authority. (read more)
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