Secretary of State Marco Rubio ordered the termination of lawful permanent resident status for Hamideh Soleimani Afshar, identified as Qasem Soleimani’s niece, and her daughter. Both were subsequently detained and are now in the custody of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Marco Rubio – “Last night, the niece and grand niece of deceased Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Major General Qasem Soleimani were arrested by federal agents following Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s termination of their lawful permanent resident (LPR) status.

Hamideh Soleimani Afshar and her daughter are now in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. As identified by both press reporting and her own social media commentary, Soleimani Afshar is an outspoken supporter of the totalitarian, terrorist regime in Iran.

While living in the United States, she promoted Iranian regime propaganda, celebrated attacks against American soldiers and military facilities in the Middle East, praised the new Iranian Supreme Leader, denounced America as the “Great Satan,” and voiced her unflinching support for the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, a designated terror organization.

Afshar Soleimani pushed this propaganda for Iran’s terrorist regime while enjoying a lavish lifestyle in Los Angeles, as attested to by her frequent posting on her recently deleted Instagram account.

In addition to the termination of Hamideh Soleimani Afshar and her daughter’s LPR status, Afshar’s husband has also been barred from entering the United States.

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President Trump delivers a message from the White House celebrating the holiest of weeks, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

“As we rejoice in this Easter season, we are reminded that the life of Jesus Christ and the truths of the Gospel have inspired our way of life and our national identity for 250 years.  From the Christian patriots who won and secured our liberty on the battlefield and every generation since, the love of Christ has unfailingly guided our Nation through calm waters and dark storms.

We pray that this celebration of the Resurrection strengthens our faith, enriches our lives, and reawakens our souls.  We offer prayers of adoration and thanksgiving for the countless blessings God has bestowed upon our Nation.  We acknowledge that, through Christ’s redeeming sacrifice, in the words of Holy Scripture, “Death is swallowed up in victory.”  Above all, we echo with tremendous joy those sacred words that have given life, hope, and purpose to Christians for thousands of years:  He is risen.” (White House)

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National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett appears on Bloomberg News to discuss the US March jobs report and oil market supply disruptions related to the military action in Iran against the impact of oil prices on the US economy.

Director Hassett notes the continued goal of the Trump MAGAnomic plan is to build momentum, keep driving domestic investment and the short-term impact from Iran should mitigate quickly.  WATCH:

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The Bureau of Labor and Statistics (BLS) has released the March employment report [DATA HERE] reflecting gains of 186,000 private sector jobs, with another 8,000 federal government jobs eliminated.  Net gain 178,000 jobs.

Forecasters had anticipated around 63,000 net jobs gained: the actual result triples expectations.

[BLS Report – Table B]

This is a challenging time to use data to estimate overall employment strength, mainly due to the repatriation efforts underway that are removing illegal alien workers from the labor force.

As deportation efforts continue against the black-market workforce, in combination with targeting efforts toward fraudulent ‘mismatched’ social security records used to gain unlawful -albeit visible- market employment, it becomes challenging to quantify net realized job gains.

The overall goal is to remove the illegal alien workers, reestablish organic job market pressures to increase wages and pull American workers from the sidelines back into the labor market.  Removing illegal workers drives up real wages, that should (re)incentivize the labor market.   As these efforts continue, we are seeing wide variances, upward and downward swings, depending on the collection timing.

One of the positive aspects during this employment cycle is the reduction in the overall federal labor force.  Overall, in the past year, President Trump has removed 271,000 federal jobs more than reversing all of the govt jobs added during Joe Biden’s term in office.  This trend should continue.

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In a two-week period right after the 2024 election, the most energy expended by the transition team putting a cabinet together was toward Main Justice or the Dept of Justice.  As a consequence, those around Lutnick and Wiles spent an incredible amount of time thinking about the Attorney General pick.

Following an insider discussion, I spoke with several people about positions and appointments, focused on pointing out that the transition’s priorities were misplaced. The AG needed to be someone with exceptional moral character, capable of gathering information and presenting it for public consumption, with the option of supporting criminal referrals if necessary.

The Attorney General wasn’t going to be the tip of the spear in any operation to confront the Deep State, because if Main Justice wanted to confront Lawfare they needed to confront the Intelligence Community first.  The IC controls all of the activity within the Dept of Justice.

Read that again for emphasis.  For the issues of greatest importance, the Intelligence Community controls all of the activity within Main Justice.  The IC is in control of the source material.  The IC is above the DOJ.  If you don’t strategize a confrontation with the IC first, it doesn’t matter what you do with the Dept of Justice.

The best example I could reference at the time was the Mar-a-Lago documents case and Judge Aileen Cannon.  In that example the Executive branch was targeting Trump through the DOJ/FBI, and representing the Judicial branch Judge Cannon was the firewall ensuring the appropriate administration of justice.

Trump’s defense, through Cannon, pushed back against the DOJ (Jack Smith) while Smith leveraged all his Lawfare tools back against Cannon.  You might remember the “classified document” issue went to the 11th CCA.

The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with the government position that any documents defined as “classified” by the executive branch that claimed, “national security,” should not be disclosed to the defendant, Trump.  The 11th CCA said when it comes to matters of national security, the judicial branch must defer to the determinations of the executive.

Basically, if the intelligence community decides certain information is tied to national security and labels it as classified for the DOJ, that decision can’t be challenged. The U.S. Supreme Court has backed this view. As a result, when it comes to national security issues, the judicial branch has to defer to the executive, giving the IC significant control over the DOJ.

If you drag former CIA Director John Brennan into court and Brennan’s lawyers argue ‘national security’ as a defense against indictment, inquiry or questioning, it’s not the DOJ (Attorney General) who matters – it’s the ‘national security’ determination of the Intelligence Community (Tulsi Gabbard) who controls the outcome.

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The Daily Mail has written a rather explosive story saying Attorney General Pam Bondi was fired because she leaked or gave a heads up to Eric Swalwell about the FBI re-reviewing the investigative files about him [STORY HERE].

Without discussing the motive or background, the story itself just doesn’t make sense.

What most people probably don’t know is that former FBI Special Agent in Charge of the Counterintelligence Division, Joseph Pientka III, currently works for Congressman Swalwell [CITATION].

FBI Agent Peter Strzok’s former partner, Joe Pientka, works for Eric Swalwell.  Now, remember Joe Pientka’s very high security job inside the FBI Counterintelligence office? [REMINDER]

Because of his former role, Joe Pientka has deep ties to senior agents inside the current FBI, the type of agents who would know the inside details of any Swalwell investigative activity.

[SIDENOTE: Following the ridiculous Russiagate, and after the hand-off to Robert Mueller, Joe Pientka was transferred to the FBI San Francisco field office; hence, the regional alignment with Swalwell [CITATION].  Sometime in mid 2019, Joseph Pientka was promoted by FBI Director Christopher Wray and transferred to the San Francisco FBI Field Office where he showed up on their web page. END SIDENOTE]

Bondi wouldn’t need to tip off Swalwell. Pientka, currently working for Swalwell, would already know the ins/outs of every detail therein. [It’s a red herring]

FBI Director Kash Patel couldn’t start to review (or re-review) Swalwell activity without triggering one of those inside contacts aligned with Pientka.

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Attorney General Pam Bondi has been relieved of her duties as United States Attorney General.

[SOURCE]

Readers of CTH will likely not see this as a surprise. {Go Deep}

Pam Bondi was the second sequential cabinet level removal prediction we made after she was announced.  {GO DEEP} The first person we predicted to be removed was National Security Advisor Mike Waltz.

Susie Wiles should be embarrassed {GO DEEP}.

I will share more later….

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Tonight at 9:00pm Eastern, President Donald J Trump is scheduled to deliver a national address on the subject of the current military operations against Iran.  The Livestream Links are below:

UPDATE: VIDEO ADDED

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They stopped their oil and gas exploration.  They chose to chase ‘net zero’ academic pontifications.  They closed their refining operations. They took apart their coal-fired electricity plants.  They disassembled their nuclear power capabilities. Then, the absolute cherry on the proverbial cake, they voted to stop purchasing oil and gas from Russia.

The EU is now in the Find Out stage of their FAFO positioning.

Gasoline prices have skyrocketed. The last shipments of jet fuel have arrived. Major airline carriers are cancelling flights due to lack of fuel.  Faster than the EU can organize meetings to discuss their position, EU destined LNG shipments have diverted to southeast Asia and India as the ASEAN nations bid higher purchase prices for the vessels literally on the water.

Folks, it’s quite an article written by EU Politico as they outline how each of the leaders from the nation states are now discussing how vulnerable they are to the changed oil/gas environment with the mid east conflict ongoing.  The entire energy sector in Europe is now in crisis mode with leaders predicting it will get much worse within days, not weeks.

EU Politico – “Germany’s Friedrich Merz warns the economic fallout from the war in Iran is on track to rival that of the Covid pandemic or the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

[…] With the war in Iran threatening to choke off energy flows for the foreseeable future, Europe is facing a supply shock that promises to cripple manufacturing, ground airlines, hike up the price of food, spike borrowing costs and send inflation spiraling back to crisis levels.

As the last tankers carrying fossil fuels from the Persian Gulf pull into European ports, the scale of what is about to hit seems to be dawning on the continent’s leaders.

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Today NASA is once again sending astronauts around the Moon for the first time in 50 years. NASA’s Artemis II mission is scheduled to lift off from Kennedy Space Center today. The two-hour launch window starts at 6:24 p.m. EDT (2224 UTC).

Livestream Links are Below:

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Four astronauts — three from NASA and one from the CSA (Canadian Space Agency) — make up the Artemis II crew:
– NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman, Artemis II commander
– NASA astronaut Victor Glover, Artemis II pilot
– NASA astronaut Christina Koch, Artemis II mission specialist
– Canadian Space Agency (CSA) astronaut Jeremy Hansen, Artemis II mission specialist

After launching into space atop NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, the crew will journey around the Moon and back in their Orion spacecraft, named Integrity, on an approximately 10-day mission. Artemis II will be the first crewed flight test of SLS and Orion, testing the technologies we’ll need for long-term lunar exploration and human missions to Mars.

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