[LawEnforcementToday] On Wednesday, March 26th, it was announced that the United States Supreme Court has voted to uphold a Biden administration effort to regulate "ghost gun" kits that allow people to easily obtain parts needed to assemble firearms from online sellers.
Will Trump will rescind the Biden Regime's clear violation of the US Constitution Bill Of Rights?
Do the SCOTUS Justices understand the words "Shall Not Infringe"?
#2
Washington gun law does a great breakdown of this. They didn't really "uphold" it, but more kicked it down to the lower courts again as a lot of the definitions and rules were a mess.
Polymer arms got the worst of it as their "80%" didn't need drilling to put together and the SC slapped that one down. The rest where you do have to do minor tooling should withstand the added court scrutiny .
FROM THE REPORT
The 2025 Annual Threat Assessment (ATA) is the Intelligence Community’s (IC) official, coordinated evaluation of an array of threats to U.S. citizens, the Homeland, and U.S. interests in the world. A diverse set of foreign actors are targeting U.S. health and safety, critical infrastructure, industries, wealth, and government. State adversaries and their proxies are also trying to weaken and displace U.S. economic and military power in their regions and across the globe.
Both state and nonstate actors pose multiple immediate threats to the Homeland and U.S. national interests. Terrorist and transnational criminal organizations are directly threatening our citizens. Cartels are largely responsible for the more than 52,000 U.S. deaths from synthetic opioids in the 12 months ending in October 2024 and helped facilitate the nearly three million illegal migrant arrivals in 2024, straining resources and putting U.S. communities at risk. A range of cyber and intelligence actors are targeting our wealth, critical infrastructure, telecom, and media. Nonstate groups are often enabled, both directly and indirectly, by state actors, such as China and India as sources of precursors and equipment for drug traffickers. State adversaries have weapons that can strike U.S. territory, or disable vital U.S. systems in space, for coercive aims or actual war. These threats reinforce each other, creating a vastly more complex and dangerous security environment.
Russia, China, Iran and North Korea—individually and collectively—are challenging U.S. interests in the world by attacking or threatening others in their regions, with both asymmetric and conventional hard power tactics, and promoting alternative systems to compete with the United States, primarily in trade, finance, and security. They seek to challenge the United States and other countries through deliberate campaigns to gain an advantage, while also trying to avoid direct war. Growing cooperation between and among these adversaries is increasing their fortitude against the United States, the potential for hostilities with any one of them to draw in another, and pressure on other global actors to choose sides.
This 2025 ATA report supports the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s commitment to keeping the U.S. Congress and American people informed of threats to the nation’s security, representing the IC’s dedication to monitoring, evaluating, and warning of threats of all types. In preparing this assessment, the National Intelligence Council worked closely with all IC components, the wider U.S. Government, and foreign and external partners and experts to provide the most timely, objective, and useful insights for strategic warning and U.S. decision advantage.
This 2025 Annual Threat Assessment details these myriad threats by actor or perpetrator, starting with nonstate actors and then presenting threats posed by major state actors. The National Intelligence Council stands ready to support policymakers with additional information in a classified setting.
Posted by: Rex Mundi ||
03/27/2025 17:46 Comments ||
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#5
Does the annual threat assessment of the intelligence community include threats to our nation from the intelligence community?
Who shaves the barber?
This is Egypt, where Mr. Wife almost was arrested for taking a photo of the soldiers standing guard near the Mena House hotel, their sandals and rifles both held together with duct tape, where he had to clean out all the mummified desert rat skeletons from his factory equipment during the start-up debug because no one bothered to look before, and it took the local staff months to notice that the reason his chemicals had not yet arrived is that no one had actually placed his order — and they were the best of Egypt’s best: Mr. Wife got the workers at a local chemical supplier to wear steel-toed shoes by telling them the spilt chemicals on the floor would cause impotence when absorbed through bare feet, but he never did get them to cover the huge hole in the mezzanine floor with anything sturdier than a piece of cardboard so it couldn’t be seen. Inshallah maintenance is the best case there — I wouldn’t trust my life to their equipment on a bet. The culture has changed a great deal since they built the pyramids.
[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] At least six people have died after a submarine carrying dozens of tourists sank off the coast of Egypt.
A further nine have been injured, four critically, in the disaster which happened around a kilometre off the holiday resort of Hurghada this morning.
The tourist submarine, named Sindbad, had been carrying around 44 international passengers, including children, at the time of the sinking, which took place off the marina of the Sindbad Club Hotel.
Rescue services have so far managed to save 29 people, according to a statement released by the Red Sea governorate.
Egyptian officials have said at least six are dead while Moscow's embassy in Cairo says all passengers were Russian with four of its citizens among the deceased.
According to Russian media, the death toll may be as high as nine with unconfirmed reports claiming that the vessel may have collided with a reef and 'depressurised' at 65ft.
Russian media, citing the Russian consul in Hurghada, has claimed that two children are among the dead, as well as an anesthetist husband and his wife.
The medics were named as Ravil Valiullin, 40, and Kristina, 39, a children’s doctor.
Their daughters, aged ten and 15, who were also reportedly on board the doomed vessel have survived the ordeal. They are now in hospital being treated for their injuries, after being left orphaned by the tragedy.
What do the experts expect us to do — send the Marines against Chinese companies in Africa? How is that different than going to war against China altogether? Perhaps a better approach is to jumpstart mining here at home, which would make China’s African mines much less profitable, despite slave-labour labor costs.
[Breitbart] A panel of experts testified to the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Tuesday that Chinese companies mining for “green” energy minerals throughout Africa – particularly in resource-rich countries such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), are creating a “catastrophic and unacceptable” situation for locals.
The experts urged American officials to act to contain the malignant Chinese influence destroying an entire generation of African children and the environment in which they live, stressing that the minerals in question – cobalt, lithium, tantalum, and copper, among others – are pivotal to any high-tech economy.
The hearing, hosted by the Subcommittee on Africa and chaired by Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), occurred as the nation of Zambia struggles to address the virtual death of the Kafue River, drowned in toxic residue when a dam holding the residue, created through Chinese copper mining activities, collapsed. Among the specific environmental threats mentioned at the hearing were the threat to the endangered okapi and the destruction of entire communities, displaced by companies looking to mine the land and polluted to the point that no one can safely return.
In addition to environmental disasters, the growing presence of exploitative Chinese companies in the DRC, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and elsewhere has brought with it growing rates of child slavery as children as young as eight are forced into mines with no protective equipment, greatly endangering their lives. Furthermore, the mineral wealth and corruption is also fueling chaotic guerrilla warfare, particularly in the DRC, where rival militias regularly commit atrocities for control of the mines and violence has been exacerbated by Rwandan intervention. As of February, the death toll of the ongoing DRC conflict is estimated to be in the high thousands and the United Nations has documented a large number of instances of the use of rape as a weapon of war.
The issue of child slavery in the mines featured prominently during the hearing. Sasha Lezhnev, a senior policy adviser with the Sentry, stated that, in the DRC alone, “there are an estimated 25,000 to 35,000 child miners … working at mines that send cobalt and copper to Chinese crude refiners.”
“I have witnessed the horrors of child soldiers and child miners as young as eight years old at mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo,” Lezhnev shared, “as well as the warlords and corrupt companies and officials making money from this system of exploitation—all in the name of getting us cheaper smart phones, jewelry, and electric vehicles (EVs). This has got to stop.”
“We see cases of child and forced labor—averaging 40,000 children–digging cobalt for Chinese buyers without adequate protective equipment and payment,” Joseph Mulala Nguramo of the Atlantic Council Scowcroft and Freedom and Prosperity Center told the subcommittee. “Some of these children are under 10 years old—leaving them exposed to toxic substances—causing serious health and environmental problems, per Amnesty International investigations.”
.
Nguramo described the situation of those children, as well as the lives of locals in areas affected by Chinese mines generally, as “catastrophic and unacceptable.”
“In the DRC, ongoing civil unrest and an unmitigated humanitarian crisis are largely due to China’s ruthless and irresponsible grip on the country’s natural resources,” Nguramo testified. “Controlling almost 90% of the Congo Mining Sector, China has failed to use its economic and financial power to defend and promote the Rule of Law, Freedom, and Quality Governance. But China has, instead, mastered strategies to take advantage of a country in chaos—often bribing government officials to acquire Mining concessions.”
The experts testified that China had spent over $10 billion buying up mines in Africa, benefitting the most so far in Zambia, the DRC, and Zimbabwe, though the Communist Party has significantly expanded its influence elsewhere in the continent, as well. The founder of the due diligence firm Accountable Africa, Thierry Dongala, noted that widespread corruption in local governments enables this colonialism and pointed to the example of Niger to show that African governments can rapidly expel offending Chinese companies if they choose to. Niger, currently under military coup regime that calls itself the “National Council for the Safeguard of the Homeland,” reportedly expelled Chinese oil executives from the country in mid-March and shut down a Chinese-owned hotel for allegedly engaging in “discriminatory practices.”
“The recent case of Niger expelling Chinese management shows that when African countries get serious about their moral sovereignty in their extractive industries, Chinese actors are often the first to lose,” Dongala observed.
Dongala noted that local populations are well aware of the evil that illicit, slave-driven mining brings to their land, recalling that the pastor who married him to his wife conducted a “sudden sanctification prayer” to cleanse their wedding bands of evil energy, a product of their provenance, when he noticed they appeared to be made of real gold. He recommended close cooperation with locals in affected countries to track and shut down theft, slavery, and other abuses.
“We’ve been monitoring the school attendance levels, that data is very valuable because we know that if we start to see the school attendance levels drops, we have to find where these kids are going,” he said of his firm.
“The local school principal , the local fishers union, the mothers of the children,” he suggested, could be critical allies.
Rep. Smith, chairing the hearing, noted that China’s dominance of the mining industry there, in addition to facilitating unspeakable human rights and environmental atrocities, put America at a disadvantage given the importance of the minerals in question in technology.
“The reliance on China for these critical minerals is a clear vulnerability,” he emphasized in his opening remarks.
“The greatest beneficiaries of this system—China’s state-owned mining companies—remain silent, refusing to confront an undeniable reality: from dirt to battery, from cobalt to cars, the entire supply chain is built on violence, exploitation, and corruption,” he continued. “This must change—and the time for change is now.”
Rep. Smith recently reintroduced the COBALT Supply Chain Act, a bill that would, in its own words, “ensure that goods made using or containing cobalt refined in the People’s Republic of China do not enter the United States market under the presumption that the cobalt is extracted or processed with the use of child and forced labor in the Democratic Republic of Congo.” Rep. Smith first introduced a version of the bill in 2023.
#1
It’s almost as if the CCP does not value people as individuals. American universities are doing a poor job of instilling Western values in all these Chinese students.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
03/27/2025 7:21 Comments ||
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— Inconvenient Truths by Jennifer Zeng (@jenniferzeng97) March 26, 2025
Commander of the Eastern Theater Command Navy, Wang Zhongcai (王仲才)
Commander of the 73rd Group Army, Ding Laifu (丁来富)
The above senior military officials have been removed from their posts and taken away.
In addition, two important political figures have also been taken away. They are:
Xiao Pei (肖培) , Deputy Secretary of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and Deputy Director of the National Supervisory Commission
Wang Huimin (王会民), Head of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection’s Discipline Inspection Team stationed at the China Securities Regulatory Commission
These individuals are the latest targets of investigation, and their purge is directly related to the escalation of political struggles.
The above information comes from Zhao Lanjian
@uyunistar
, a former Chinese journalist who was the first to report the arrest of He Weidong, Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission.
Before the military restructuring in 2017, the 73rd Group Army was the 31st Army, which had long been stationed in Xiamen City, where Xi Jinping once served as deputy mayor. Therefore, it is considered Xi Jinping’s “direct-line troop.” Due to its proximity to Taiwan, it has also been regarded as the main force for attacking Taiwan.
Recently fallen or rumored-to-have-fallen key military figures, including He Weidong, Director of the Political Work Department of the Central Military Commission Miao Hua, Commander of the Eastern Theater Command Lin Xiangyang, and former Commander of the Southern Theater Command Wang Xiubin, all came from the 31st Army.
Meanwhile, Rocket Force Commander Wang Houbin was transferred from the navy to the Rocket Force as commander by Miao Hua in 2023, following the downfall of the previous commander. Thus, it can be said that all these individuals are Xi Jinping’s close confidants in the military.
I believe that the downfall of these people signifies that Xi Jinping’s power base in the military has been fundamentally shaken, increasing the likelihood of Xi Jinping stepping down at or before the Fourth Plenary Session of the CCP.
Under the Biden administration in 2024, CISA released a "Mobile Communications Best Practice Guidance" for "highly targeted individuals," who were defined as high-ranking government officials or politicians who are "likely to possess information of interest to these threat actors." The document specifically addressed high-targeted politicos and officials, though it noted the guide was "applicable to all audiences."
....
The document, published in December, details that highly-targeted government officials should use "end-to-end encrypted communications" as part of its "best practices" advice.
....
A Department of Defense memo from 2023 under the Biden administration detailed that while Signal was approved for some use by government officials, they could not use the platform to "access, transmit, process non-public DoD information." CISA's guidance related to Signal was released after the Department of Defense guidance.
Are you telling me that the Signal App, known to have compromises, recommendation for use was made after the election?
[IsraelTimes] A vehicle used by four US Army soldiers that went missing yesterday afternoon in Lithuania has been found submerged in water and the search for the missing soldiers is continuing, the US Army says.
“The M88 Hercules armored recovery vehicle the four missing US Soldiers were operating during a training exercise, has been located in Lithuania,” it says in a statement.
While on a visit to Warsaw, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said earlier today that the soldiers had died but that he did not know any details.
Lithuania’s military writes on social media X that it is continuing an “intensive” rescue operation and has no information confirming the deaths.
The soldiers had been training near Pabrade in eastern Lithuania near the border with Belarus, the US Army says.
“We regret any confusion about remarks @SecGenNATO delivered on this today. He was referring to emerging news reports & was not confirming the fate of the missing, which is still unknown.”
[Gateway] A shocking new report reveals that a third of Washington, D.C. district judges were not born in the United States, and to make matters worse, many of them had no prior experience as judges before being appointed.
What are we even doing here?
This was not always the case. There was a time, as recently as the 1980s when all of these judges were American born.
These judges make decisions on incredibly important issues. Is it too much to ask that they be Americans who have experience as judges?
[FoxBusiness] Auto industry groups warn that tariffs could lead to higher prices for car buyers, causing automakers to slow production and cut jobs.
President Donald Trump on Wednesday announced new tariffs on auto imports during a press conference at the White House.
The president said he will impose a 25% tariff on all imported autos, up from 2.5% previously. He indicated the auto tariffs will take effect on April 2, when his reciprocal tariff plans are also expected to be announced.
Trump, who views tariffs as a way to bring in tax revenue to finance his plans for tax cuts while spurring a revitalization of domestic manufacturing, previously suggested that he could impose auto tariffs that run "in the neighborhood of 25%."
In his Oval Office remarks, Trump said the tariffs "will lead to the construction of a lot of plants, in this case auto plants, and you're going to see numbers that you haven't seen both in terms of employment. It take a little while, you'll have great construction numbers initially, and then ultimately you're going to have a lot of people making a lot of cars."
Trump automakers' responses to his tariff plans varied in conversations he had with them.
"If they have factories here, they are thrilled. If they don't have factories here, they're going to have to get going and build them because otherwise they have to pay tariffs. It's very simple. And most of them have pretty big factories here," he explained.
Canada's government signaled it plans to impose retaliatory tariffs. Ontario Premier Doug Ford said in a post on X that Trump's 25% tariffs "on cars and light trucks will do nothing more than increase costs for hard-working American families."
Tariffs could increase the cost of cars for consumers by thousands of dollars, according to analyses by auto industry groups. Higher costs could cause automakers to curb production and potentially lead to job losses in the industry, the Center for Automotive Research said.
The U.S. imported $474 billion of automotive products last year, including passenger cars worth $220 billion. The biggest suppliers were Mexico, Japan, South Korea, Canada and Germany, all of which are close U.S. allies.
Cox Automotive said Wednesday that if there aren't tariff carve-outs for the auto industry's imports from Canada and Mexico, the cost of a U.S.-made vehicles would increase by about $3,000, while car prices for vehicles made in Canada or Mexico would rise $6,000.
It expects that by mid-April, there will be disruption to "virtually all" North American vehicle production, leading to about 20,000 fewer vehicles produced per day, or about a 30% hit to production.
"Over the longer term, we expect sales to fall, new and used prices to increase, and some models to be eliminated if those tariffs persist, and we've yet to hear details about tariffs on the European Union, Japan and South Korea," Cox Chief Economist Jonathan Smoke said in a report by Reuters. "Bottom line, lower production, tighter supply, and higher prices are around the corner, reminiscent of 2021."
Markets were down Wednesday in anticipation of the tariff announcement, with the S&P 500 down 1.12%. Shares in automakers also declined, with Tesla down 5.6% and General Motors down 3.1%.
#5
I think the big three can shift capacity back to the states. I think the Japanese and Koreans can to a certain extent. I suspect that the Europeans will not be able to shift as much. The company that I work for mirrors the construction industry. We are vertically integrated but we get steel from Canada. It will be a scramble for us, but I can’t even imagine what a mess it will be for logistics folks at Stellantis. They were in the midst of buying out all their experienced folks. Hopefully, the COOps are proficient at proficient at import export details.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
03/27/2025 19:51 Comments ||
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[FoxNews] DOGE claims it has saved Americans $130 billion, or $807.45 per taxpayer
The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) announced it had terminated 113 contracts valued at $4.7 billion Tuesday, including a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) consulting contract for Peru's climate change activities.
"[Tuesday] agencies terminated 113 wasteful contracts with a ceiling value of $4.7B and savings of $3.3B, including a $145K USDA consulting contract for ‘Peru climate change activities,'" the department posted on X.
DOGE also announced the Department of Labor had canceled $577 million in "America Last" grants, totaling $237 million in savings.
The funding that was canceled included $10 million for "gender equity in the Mexican workplace," $12.2 million for "worker empowerment in South America" and $6.25 million for "improving respect for workers' rights in agricultural supply chains" in the countries of Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador.
Also eliminated was $5 million to elevate women’s participation in the workplace in West Africa, $4.3 million to assist foreign migrant workers in Malaysia, $3 million to enhance Social Security access and worker protection for internal migrant workers in Bangladesh and $3 million for safe and inclusive work environments in the southern African country of Lesotho.
The department has canceled numerous diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives at federal agencies, consulting contracts, leases for underused federal buildings and duplicate agencies and programs.
As of March 26, DOGE claims on its site it has saved Americans $130 billion, or $807.45 per taxpayer.
#2
You know I adore you, NN2N1, but please wait until there actually is money to share rather than a slightly smaller gigantic hole before demanding a bigger piece of the pie. In exchange I promise never to collect my own share of Social Security — as Mr. Wife’s someday widow, I mean, because I got sick six months short of being vested in my own right, so all my donations to the fund will not be credited to me.
The Millennial generation is paying twice as much into Social Security as we did per dollar earnt, with the warning that they will never get any of it back because the fund will be bankrupt before they retire.
#3
AFAIK, there is vesting for Medicare but not for social security. SS payments are based on the average of your highest earning 35 years. Only worked 1 year? That will get averaged in with 34 years of $0 income. You may not get much but you will get something.
Posted by: Difar Dave ||
03/27/2025 18:24 Comments ||
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#4
Me? I started paying into Social Security when I was sixteen, Difar Dave, as an assistant gymnastics coach at the local Jewish Community Center (the newspaper route I had from 9th grade didn’t involve government paperwork that I’m aware of), worked full time ages 19-29, then part time for two years in my mid-thirties after we returned from Europe, once trailing daughter #2 was in school full time. I had planned to do something more than wife-and-mothering once the trailing daughters were in junior high, but in my case Chronic Fatigue Syndrome doesn’t allow such luxuries. Social Security informs me every year that I need to work six months more to be vested to get Social Security payments in my own right, but that should I become the widow of a working man I am entitled to some monthly amount that I can’t remember.
At least they’re supplying their own power instead of draining the entire community.
[BBC] The roar of the Zambezi is deafening as millions of gallons of water crash over rocks and tumble down rapids.
But there's another sound cutting through the trees of the Zambian bush - the unmistakable high-pitched whine of a bitcoin mine.
"It's the sound of money!" says a smiling Philip Walton as he surveys the shipping container with 120 computers busily crunching through complex calculations that verify bitcoin transactions.
In exchange they are automatically rewarded bitcoin by the network.
We're in the far north-western tip of Zambia near the border with the DRC, and of all the bitcoin mines I've visited - this one is the strangest.
Water and electronic equipment don't usually mix well but it's precisely the proximity to the river that's drawn bitcoiners here.
Philip's mine is plugged directly into a hydro-electric power plant that channels some of the Zambezi's torrent through enormous turbines to generate continuous, clean electricity.
More importantly for bitcoin mining - it's cheap.
So cheap it made business sense for Philip's Kenya-based company Gridless to drag its shipping container full of delicate bitcoin mining computers across bumpy narrow roads 14 hours from the nearest major city to set up here.
Each machine makes about $5 (£3.90) a day. More if the price of coins is high, less if it drops.
Occasionally Philip glances down at his smart watch - the home screen showing the ever-changing squiggly line of bitcoin's dollar value.
At the moment it's around $80,000 a coin, but Philip says they can make a profit even when the value of the bitcoin goes low thanks to the cheap electricity on the site and the partnership they have with the energy company.
"We recognised that in order to get better mining economics we needed to partner with the power company here and give them a revenue share. And so the reason we're willing to come out here somewhere so remote is it allows us to effectively get cheaper power," he says.
Zengamina hydro-power plant is huge but technically it's a mini grid - a standalone island of power for the local community.
For our civil engineers and those who love knowing. Considerably more at the link, including the current situation and what is being done about it.
[BBC] Most modern structures are built to last 50 years or so, but ingenious ancient engineering has kept this watery city afloat for more than 1,600 years – using only wood.
As any local knows, Venice is an upside-down forest. The city, which turned 1604 years old on March 25, is built on the foundations of millions of short wooden piles, pounded in the ground with their tip facing downwards. These trees – larch, oak, alder, pine, spruce and elm of a length ranging between 3.5m (11.5ft) to less than 1m (3ft) – have been holding up stone palazzos and tall belltowers for centuries, in a true marvel of engineering leveraging the forces of physics and nature.
In most modern structures, reinforced concrete and steel do the work that this inverted forest has been doing for centuries. But despite their strength, few foundations today could last as long as Venice's. "Concrete or steel piles are designed [with a guarantee to last] 50 years today," says Alexander Puzrin, professor of geomechanics and geosystems engineering at the ETH university in Zurich, Switzerland. "Of course, they might last longer, but when we build houses and industrial structures, the standard is 50 years of life."
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Lithuania’s military writes on social media X that it is continuing an “intensive” rescue operation and has no information confirming the deaths.
