“Can I meet you?” That is the pickup line that billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman says always worked for him. Are young people going to start trying that line? Judging by the comments: no.
Photo Credit: AI-generated image (ChatGPT/OpenAI)
MARKETS
Gold
$4,092.28
+0.65%
Silver
$51.44
+1.44%
Bitcoin
$90,624.22
+0.68%
Dow
46,091.74
-1.07%
S&P
6,617.32
-0.83%
Nasdaq
22,432.85
-1.21%
*Stock data as of market close, cryptocurrency data as of 5:00 a.m.
Lead: Congress Says the Epstein Files Are Coming. The DOJ May Say Otherwise.
Photo Credit: Shutterstock
The House or Representative passed the bill to force the release of the Epstein Files. The Senate has agreed to approve the bill without a roll call vote and then off it goes to President Trump, who has already said that he will sign it.
This is nice but this is a reminder that President Trump doesn’t need a bill to release the Epstein files. He could do it today.
The bill did not get altered even though House Speaker Mike Johnson tried. The bill passed with only one representative voting against it. Louisiana Representative Clay Higgins explained that he voted because he thinks the bill will “absolutely result in innocent people being hurt.” He thinks that the Senate investigation committee will get the job done.
Again, it is worth noting that the bill allows the Justice Department to redact information related to a current investigation and the Justice Department has committed to running a new investigation. Whether that becomes a loophole to withhold names and details remains to be seen.
Why the U.S. Can Never Break Up With Saudi Arabia
Photo credit: The White House
Why did the White House roll out the red carpet for the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud? The Biden administration tried to make Saudi Arabia “a pariah” but that never worked. While the press fawns over the way President Trump acted with the Crown Prince, we want you to understand why the U.S. and Saudi Arabia are blood brothers.
To understand why Washington rolls out the red carpet for a country it frequently criticizes, you have to go back to the 1970s. When Nixon ended the gold standard in 1971, the dollar was vulnerable and the U.S. needed a new anchor, and fast. Treasury Secretary William Simon cut a secret deal with Riyadh: Saudi Arabia could buy U.S. Treasuries outside normal auctions, on privileged terms no other nation received, as long as they priced all their oil in U.S. dollars. That single agreement created the petrodollar system, guaranteed global demand for the U.S. currency, and allowed Washington to borrow endlessly without facing the consequences any other country would.
This is now a decades-old arrangement where the U.S. and Saudi Arabia are locked into each other’s survival.
On Tuesday, Saudi Arabia announced a massive new U.S. investment package this week and President Trump bragged that America will “make money” from Saudi Arabia’s cash, as if foreign capital were a gift to the American people.
It can’t work that way while these investments exist inside a system that lets Washington rack up debt without limit. That debt devalues the dollar, which is a theft from working Americans. That’s the real cost of the petrodollar, and it’s one Washington would rather you never think about.
Water, Done Right—Straight From Your Countertop
We don’t talk about water enough. Clean drinking water is one of the best investments you can make for your family’s health. That’s why we switched to CovePure—the best purifier we’ve tried.
Why it matters: municipal plants aren’t built to filter out many modern contaminants. Leftover pharmaceuticals, PFAS, fluoride, and agricultural runoff can slip through. CovePure is lab-certified to remove up to 99.9% of impurities, including those categories—so what you pour is what you intend to drink.
Why we like it
Tastes like water should: clean, crisp, no aftertaste—you’ll want to drink more
Countertop simple: no plumber, no drilling—just fill and plug in
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You wouldn’t take a stranger’s prescription—so don’t accept their leftovers in your glass. Limited time: get $200 off at covepure.com/redacted
The ICE Pact: Washington Wakes Up to the Arctic Power Struggle
Photo credit: Artist’s Rendering of Coast Guard Polar Security Cutter
The U.S. needs icebreakers, and not the social kind. Literal icebreakers to help control the Arctic. This isn’t a fun sea exploration project. It is a mission to compete with Russia and China.
Kristi Noem, the U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security, announced a defense-and-industrial cooperation pact with Canada and Finland called the Icebreaker Collaboration Effort (ICE) Pact. The three nations will collaborate on building 11 new icebreaker ships over the coming years to bolster Arctic defense and sovereignty. Right now the U.S. only has one.
Meanwhile, Russia and China have been running new commercial and military routes across the Arctic, opening a northern pathway that functions like China’s modern Silk Road. This route bypasses the Suez and Panama Canals entirely and can shorten delivery times by months.
Redacted reported this in April of 2023 and predicted that the U.S. would get in on this game and now they are!
What’s Trending?
Photo Credit: World News
“Quiet, piggy” is trending after President Trump said that to a reporter who asked him a question about Epstein. The reporter’s name was not Piggy or Peggy. Her name is Catherine Lucey of Bloomberg News.
Cloudfare is trending because the cloud service experienced a major outage on Tuesday that disrupted much of the Internet.
Michelin was trending because the restaurant rating system awarded new restaurants its prestigious stars.
Two Sisters Walked Into Assisted Death Together. A Society Let Them.
Photo credit: AP
Two famous twin sisters decided to die together in Germany on Monday and the government let them.
Alice and Ellen Kessler were famous TV stars in Germany in the 1950s and 60s. The women had long expressed a desire to “leave together… on the same day,” and under Germany’s increasingly permissive end-of-life regime, they were able to schedule it like an appointment: two sisters, a doctor, a lawyer, and a legal framework that treats death as an organized service.
Neither of them was known to be ill, although one had reportedly suffered a recent stroke.
There is something undeniably dystopian about it. We’ve entered an era where governments and medical systems not only permit assisted death but facilitate it, normalize it, and in some countries aggressively promote it. Dying is no longer a mysterious threshold; it’s paperwork and protocol. And in a lonely, aging Europe struggling with declining birthrates and ballooning pension burdens, that trend is not happening in a vacuum.
To many, the Kessler Twins’ final act looks like peaceful autonomy. To others, it looks like a warning: a society so detached from the sanctity of life that even a double death can be wrapped in a tidy press release.
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This newsletter is written and researched by Natali Morris. Please feel free to reach Natali at [email protected] for any editorial feedback.
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