🚨 Watermelon Crawl – July 31 2025

*Stock data as of market close, cryptocurrency data as of 5:00 AM ET.

Lead: Israel to Take More Gaza Land—With Full Backing of the U.S. Senate

Photo Credit: AP Photo

Israel says that it will “annex” the buffer zone in Gaza if Hamas does not accept its latest proposal.

What is the buffer zone? It is the perimeter that Israeli soldiers admit to deliberately bulldozing at the beginning of the war. It was once an industrial zone with agriculture and factories but now it is rubble.

Israeli officials say that it will belong to Israel if Hamas rejects its ceasefire offer, which Israeli officials expect that they will. Haaretz reports that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had proposed the idea of annexing Gaza to appease Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who is threatening to quit the government over the small amount of aid Israel has allowed into Gaza.

US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff is reportedly heading to the Middle East to try to broker a ceasefire, although, as Antiwar reports, “there’s no sign the US was putting any pressure on Israel to make concessions to reach a deal.”

Meanwhile, the Senate voted against a bill to halt all weapons sales to Israel. The majority of Democrats voted for this bill though, including Senators Bernie Sanders who introduced the bill and Senator Raphael Warnock, suggesting that support for Israel is waning in Congress amongst Democrats. Not so with Republicans: every GOP Senator voted to keep the weapons flowing.

While some House Republicans did vote to halt the sales, it wasn’t enough to carry the measure.

Trump’s Economy Defies Expectations

The Trump economy grew at a stunning annual rate of 3.0 percent in the second quarter of 2025, surpassing expectations and delivering what the White House has called “an absolute blockbuster.”

What’s stunning is that the growth is NOT driven by new government jobs or spending. During the Biden years, the government bragged about economic growth but most of it was due to government expansion and spending.

On the contrary, in Q2, there were 104,000 new private sector jobs and government spending declined slightly.

Unemployment sits at 3.4%, near a historic low, while wage growth has begun to outpace inflation for the first time in nearly three years. Small business optimism is also up, according to the NFIB’s July survey.

Some analysts caution that the full effects of Trump’s tariffs haven’t yet hit, and a slowdown in imports could drag on future growth.

That may be—but for now, the Trump administration can take a victory lap on these encouraging numbers.

War Hits Wallets—Shield Yours with Gold

Cities crumble in conflict—and so can currencies. With Washington spending at wartime speed, the U.S. debt has rocketed past $34 trillion and the interest tab alone tops $1 trillion a year. The “fix”? Print more dollars—fueling inflation and eroding your savings.

That’s why central banks and billionaires are piling into gold and silver. Goldman Sachs now pegs gold at $4,500/oz by 2026—because real assets thrive when paper money falters.

My family moved a chunk of our nest egg into precious metals years ago; even our kids hold coins. It’s not a fad—it’s financial self-defense.

Want the playbook? Call Lear Capital, 800-613-3557, or grab their free kit at LearRedacted.com. No pressure, just facts—before the next shockwave rattles the markets.

Digital Health Records

Photo Credit: AI-generated image (ChatGPT/OpenAI) 

President Trump announced a national digital health records system, together with Amazon, Anthropic, Apple, Google, and OpenAI. He says that the goal is to “kill the clipboard.”

They present this to you as a way to keep your records easier. Scan yourself in, any provider can access your records. Many countries in Europe already have this.

But… convenience comes at a cost.

What they’re not saying is that putting all your sensitive health information into a centralized, digitized system—especially one linked with AI firms and tech giants—creates a goldmine of data vulnerable to hacking, misuse, and surveillance. Who controls it? Who gets to see it? What happens when your health profile determines your insurance, your job, or even your freedom of movement?

How do we know this data won’t be used to restrict access to the world?

Want to board a plane? Sorry—you’re missing your second chickenpox vaccine.

Need to renew your driver’s license? Looks like you skipped your annual wellness check.

Patients at private insurance may be allowed to opt out of this but Medicare and Medicaid patients surely won’t given that the initiative is being spearheaded by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid.

The pharmacratic state will have its pound of flesh.

News By The Numbers

Photo Credit: USNews

$50 million. That is how much Brown University will reportedly pay to settle discrimination complaints with the Trump administration.

50%. That is the tariff rate that President Trump has imposed on trade with Brazil because, the White House says, “members of the Government of Brazil have taken unprecedented actions that harm and are a threat to the economy of the United States, conflict with and threaten the policy of the United States to promote free speech and free and fair elections at home and abroad, and violate fundamental human rights.”

22%. That is how much revenue was up for Meta in the second quarter of this year.

What’s Trending?

Photo Credit: Harley-Davidson

Harley-Davidson is trending because the motorcycle company confirmed that it is planning to launch an entry-level motorcycle called the Sprint in 2026.

High Noon is trending because the FDA recalled cans of the energy drink because some of them mistakenly had vodka in them.

Jason Momoa is trending because…he shaved.

Loophole Baby: Convicted Sex Offender Gains Parental Rights Through Surrogacy

Photo Credit:  Reduxx

Two gay men in Pennsylvania posted a video celebrating the birth of their surrogate baby—and it went viral when viewers discovered that one of the men is a registered child sex offender. In 2016, he was arrested for trying to solicit sex from a 16-year-old boy—one of his own students at the high school where he taught chemistry.

Pennsylvania Senator Doug Mastriano responded, saying the couple acquired the child “through what appears to be a loophole in our legal system.” He added that lawmakers are “working to ensure that every authority is doing its part to protect this child and uncover exactly how this could happen.”

But one thing he didn’t say: whether the child is still in the custody of the convicted offender. His post conspicuously avoids answering that.

The couple crowdfunded their surrogacy journey through GoFundMe—without disclosing to donors that one of them was legally prohibited from unsupervised contact with minors.

This case exposes a massive gap in surrogacy oversight. Unlike adoption, which involves rigorous state screening, private surrogacy arrangements often face little to no regulation. Pennsylvania’s adoption law prohibits sex offenders from adopting or fostering children but gestational surrogacy circumvents those laws.

A surrogacy advocate group told Reduxx that “this is not the first case of a sex offender procuring a child from a surrogate mother that we have come across; we fear this is the tip of the iceberg. Vetting of commissioning parents in surrogacy is virtually nonexistent and is not comparable with checks we see in adoption.”

It isn’t clear which of the fathers donated sperm to father the child but in Pennsylvania, both parents can register as the parents of the baby while the baby is still in utero giving them both equal parental rights to the baby.

Mastriano says he’s now “drafting legislation to close this loophole so that sick, perverted individuals can never again exploit flaws in our legal system to gain access to innocent children.” But how do you close a loophole that allows people to biologically reproduce?

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