April 30, 2026 Insider Report

“Minneapolis Effect” on Immigration Enforcement?

Has the unrest in Minneapolis earlier this year caused the Trump administration to pull back on immigration enforcement? Although it’s still early, two analyses suggest that this may be the case.

According to an analysis by The Associated Press, arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) “dropped on average by nearly 12%” in the five weeks after February 4, though arrests in certain locations actually increased slightly.

A separate analysis by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) found that ICE interior arrests — distinct from arrests of illegal aliens crossing the border — “have dipped sharply of late, falling to just over 29,600 in March from nearly 38,000 in December, a 21.7-plus percent decline over that three-month period.” The report noted that despite this drop, “ICE has already made 128 percent more interior arrests [about 207,000] in just the first half-plus of FY 2026 than it did in all of FY 2024 (90,615), the last full fiscal year of the Biden-Harris administration.”

The CIS analysis stated that “ICE detention management statistics suggest there has been a similar decline in ‘proactive’ immigration enforcement following the deaths of [Renee] Good and [Alex] Pretti [in Minneapolis].” Although it is early, this is a concerning development to monitor in the coming weeks and months. — Peter Rykowski

WAR ON MEAT: Has Tick-borne “Thought Experiment” Become Full-blown Biowarfare?

You may recall an article by a couple of bioethics professors that appeared a few months back in a science journal and caused more than a minor kerfuffle for proposing that it might be beneficial to the planet to spread lone star ticks around. Why? Because these ticks spread what is called the alpha-gal syndrome (AGS). It takes its name from galactose-alpha-1,3-galactose, a sugar present in the meat of most mammals. The immune systems of tick-bite victims can develop allergic antibodies to the meat-sugar and can then have a severe allergic reaction when they eat red meat (beef, pork, lamb).

The two “ethicists,” Western Michigan University professors Parker Crutchfield and Blake Hereth, published their proposal, entitled “Beneficial Bloodsucking,” in the October 2025 issue of the journal Bioethics. “Herein, we argue that if eating meat is morally impermissible, then efforts to prevent the spread of tickborne AGS are also morally impermissible,” say the dangerous duo. They continue: “It is presently feasible to genetically edit the disease-carrying capacity of ticks. If this practice can be applied to ticks carrying AGS, then promoting the proliferation of tickborne AGS is morally obligatory.” They’ve drunk the climate cult Kool-Aid. Preventing the spread of this plague is “morally impermissible” and promoting its proliferation is “morally obligatory” because reducing meat consumption will supposedly reduce our carbon footprint, which will supposedly reduce global warming. When their article caused a public backlash, the authors hid behind the excuse that it was merely a philosophical “thought experiment.”

However, the lone star ticks (Amblyomma americanum) and the AGS meat allergy they cause are not mere thought experiments; they are very real. They have rapidly spread to 27 states, from Texas to Maine. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), as many as 450,000 Americans may be affected. But some experts say the CDC number is “almost certainly an undercount” because most health providers are not familiar with the disease, its symptoms, and the testing protocols for it. In recent days and weeks, health authorities in Massachusetts, Virginia, New York, Delaware, Missouri, and Ohio have alerted the public to the emerging threat. “A once-rare allergy that can cause severe reactions hours after eating red meat is dramatically rising across the United States,” according to researchers at VCU Health and Virginia Commonwealth University. “The condition, known as alpha-gal syndrome (AGS), is typically linked to bites from the lone star tick and is increasingly recognized as a growing health concern in many regions of the country,” reports VCU Health, while Vinay Jahagirdar, M.D., a gastroenterology fellow at VCU, says “Alpha-gal syndrome is unlike any other food allergy we treat.”

So, in light of the extreme “morally obligatory” mindset of many climate cultists, the rapid and curious spread of the lone star tick threat, and the decade-long propaganda campaign against meat, can we spare people from the “conspiracy theorist” label for suspecting that this new pestilence might have been engineered? That it might have come from the same type of gain-of-function research that erupted from the Wuhan Lab to infect the world? The jet-setting billionaire globalists of Davos and their Beijing comrades dine on (and invest in) luxury wagyu and Kobe beef ($200-$500 per pound, and even as high as $1,000) while lecturing us about the need to drastically cut our meat intake. We’re thinking, for example, of World Economic Forum heavyweights such as Mark Zuckerberg, Andrew Forrest, Oliver Bäte, and Bill Gates, to name but a few.

The World Economic Forum (WEF) and the United Nations have been among the most aggressive promoters of an anti-meat diet. Here is just a smattering of the many anti-meat, pro-bug, pro-vegan articles, reports, and videos from the WEF:

“Will you be eating insects soon?”

“We must eat less meat. Could these three alternatives help save our planet?”

“5 reasons why eating insects could reduce climate change”

“Good grub: why we might be eating insects soon”

“Burgers, bugs and the shift to a new way of eating”

“Worms for dinner? Europe backs insect-based food in a bid to promote alternative protein”

“This London insect farm is changing the way we eat”

“Fancy a bug burger? A Swiss supermarket is selling food made from insects.”

Then, of course, there’s the infamous WEF video “8 Predictions for the World in 2030.” Besides forecasting that in 2030 “You’ll own nothing, And you’ll be happy,” it also said that “You’ll eat much less meat … an occasional treat, not a staple. For the good of the environment and our health.”

Accompanying this elitist propaganda drumbeat is a rollout of “dietary guidelines” by government wokists throughout the world and their foundation-funded think tanks calling for massive cuts in animal protein (eggs and dairy as well as meat) and transitioning to bugs, plants, and fake, lab-grown “meat.” (See here, here, here, and here.)

China is supposed to be the leader that we follow. Communist dictator Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party have been getting kudos from the green globalists and the loony Left since 2016 when the CCP’s scientists issued guidelines calling on the Chinese people to reduce meat consumption by 50 percent by 2030. But even with Hollywood biggies Arnold Schwarzenegger and James Cameron pushing the message, the Chinese people don’t seem to be heeding the CCP guidelines; meat consumption continues to rise.

Nevertheless, the greenies are always happy to sing the Beijing regime’s praises. It is a replay of the same hypocrisy regarding China’s ridiculous pledges to reduce CO₂ and other greenhouse gases under the UN’s 2015 Paris Agreement hoax, even while China continues breaking those pledges and continuing its breakneck pace of adding coal-fired plants that are demonized and verboten elsewhere. Beijing has been on a coal binge for a decade and a half, and in recent years has accounted for 90-93 percent of new coal-fired plants constructed worldwide and over half of the coal-fired power generated globally.

None of this bothers Allianz CEO Oliver Bäte, a rabid greenie and member of the ultra-elite Trilateral Commission. In an expletive-laden rant at the WEF’s 2026 Davos gathering, Bäte blasted business and political leaders who are backing off ESG and extreme NetZero policies due to public backlash. And, echoing other globalists, he said “the role model here is China.” Is it perhaps that Bäte’s business judgment in these matters is being blinded (and tainted) by the fact that the German-based financial services giant, with over $2.5 trillion in assets under management, is deeply in bed with Beijing? Allianz was the first wholly foreign-owned life insurer in China in 2021, after partnering with CITIC Group, “a primary collaborator of the PRC government’s intelligence apparatus and the PLA [People’s Liberation Army].” Like other globalist corporations, Allianz intends to expand its footprint and profits in the Chinese market, while helping the CCP (as George Soros put it) “own” the New World Order.

So, could it possibly be that the globalist-communist elites are losing patience with their lecturing, hectoring, indoctrinating approach with the uncooperative masses of unwoke, unwashed booboisie who stubbornly cling to their steaks, burgers, ribs, and barbecue grills? Would they possibly have resorted to “enhancing” certain “beneficial bloodsucking” vectors to speed the reduction in meat consumption, as suggested by Crutchfield and Hereth? Sound far-fetched? Then, maybe you should watch the video interview by Veronika Kyrylenko and read the transcript of her interview of researcher Kris Newby, author of Bitten: The Secret History of Lyme Disease and Biological Weapons, which presents credible, disturbing evidence that Lyme disease may have been bioengineered in government laboratories. This is one of many pressing issues that our elected officials must investigate. If you’re not ready to be forced to give up your red meat, you’ll get on them about it — soon, because the lone star ticks keep spreading. — William F. Jasper

Southern Poverty Law Center Pushes Back Against Felony Indictments

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is seeking court intervention to obtain grand jury materials in its criminal case, arguing that statements from Trump administration officials following last week’s indictment were “misleading” and that court filings contain “obvious legal infirmities.” In a motion filed with the court, the organization asked for the release of grand jury transcripts, normally kept secret under federal rules, and retraction of statements about the case made publicly by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.

Last week, a federal grand jury in Montgomery, Alabama, returned an 11-count indictment against the SPLC, marking one of the most consequential legal challenges in the organization’s history. The charges, announced by the U.S. Department of Justice, include multiple counts of wire fraud, bank fraud, and conspiracy to commit money laundering, all tied to the group’s past use of paid informants within extremist organizations.

According to federal prosecutors, the case centers on a program that operated between roughly 2014 and 2023, during which the SPLC allegedly funneled more than $3 million to individuals embedded in groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazi organizations, and other far-right networks. Authorities claim these payments were concealed through shell entities and misleading financial practices, including false statements to banks.

The Justice Department argues that the organization misrepresented how donor funds were being used. Prosecutors contend that donors were led to believe their contributions supported efforts to dismantle extremist groups, while some of that money was actually directed to individuals associated with those same groups. Blanche characterized the alleged conduct as a scheme that “manufactured the extremism it purports to oppose,” suggesting the payments may have incentivized or sustained radical activity rather than curbing it.

The indictment also includes allegations of concealment through fictitious business accounts and intermediaries, which prosecutors say were used to obscure the flow of funds. In addition to criminal charges, the government has initiated forfeiture actions aimed at recovering proceeds connected to the alleged fraud scheme.

SPLC leadership has forcefully denied the charges, framing the case as a politically motivated attack. Interim CEO Bryan Fair stated that the use of confidential informants was a longstanding and necessary tactic to monitor violent threats and protect staff, emphasizing that the organization has historically faced serious risks, including bombings and death threats. He also maintained that intelligence gathered through such methods was often shared with law enforcement and helped prevent violence.

If the Southern Poverty Law Center was, in fact, subsidizing the very “hate” it was pretending to attack (see here, here, here and here), it wouldn’t be the first time that an organization engaged in such duplicity. None other than the FBI has been accused time and again of justifying bloated budgets by creating the very crimes they were making a feint of investigating.

The case of Hal Turner illustrates how blurred the lines can become. Turner, a white supremacist radio host, was later revealed to have been a paid FBI informant, raising questions about how much of his rhetoric was organic versus fabricated, or even indirectly promoted, by handlers. Similarly, FBI agent provocateur Gary Thomas Rowe, Jr. operated inside the Ku Klux Klan during the Civil Rights era and was present during acts of violence, leading to long-standing criticism that federal authorities sometimes not only allowed crimes to proceed, but in fact instigated them to arrest people. In the case of Matthew Hale, prosecutors relied heavily on recordings made by an informant, while the defense argued that the plot in question was encouraged or shaped by that informant, an argument that surfaces frequently in these types of prosecutions.

Critics argue this can create a form of perverse incentive, where the existence or even escalation of extremist behavior strengthens the justification for ongoing surveillance, or, in the case of the Southern Poverty Law Center, generates funding from donors. — Rebecca Terrell

Federal Appeals Court Allows Texas to Enforce Anti-illegal-migration Law; Judge Notes Weaponization of Migration by Foreign Countries

On April 24, the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals voted 10-7 to overturn a temporary injunction imposed by a lower court on Texas Senate Bill 4, a 2023 law criminalizing illegal migration. The ruling, although not final, allows Texas to enforce the law pending a final decision.

As we reported in July 2025, a three-judge panel on the Fifth Circuit had upheld the temporary injunction, but the court voted to rehear the case en banc, leading to the April 24 decision.

Although the court ruled on technical grounds, some individual judges explained their positions in concurring opinions. For example, Judge James Ho defended Texas’ law by explaining that “nations have long weaponized migration to harm other nations,” and that “the United States has become one of the most popular targets of these threats,” including from Russia, Nicaragua, and Mexico. Quoting from The Invisible Coup: How American Elites and Foreign Powers Use Immigration as a Weapon by Peter Schweizer, he continued:

Similarly, “Mexico’s interest in mass migration results from its hopes of reclaiming or reconquering … the territories it lost to us in the nineteenth century.”… The former President of the Mexican Senate, for example, recently declared that “Los Angeles is migrant land,” and parts of America are “occupied territories,” so Mexico should “once again demand the recovery of these territories.”… And Russia is actively encouraging Mexico in this regard….

If our adversaries are going to weaponize mass migration to harm America as well as other countries, our elected officials are entitled to respond accordingly.

Schweizer’s research demonstrates how mass migration poses an existential threat to the United States. More broadly, globalist forces are using mass migration to erode American independence and promote open borders and world government.

Regardless of how the Fifth Circuit ultimately rules, Senate Bill 4 is a legitimate exercise of Texas’ sovereign authority. Nowhere does the U.S. Constitution grant the federal government authority over immigration — only naturalization. Authority over immigration resides with the states. Instead of allowing the federal government to usurp their sovereign authority, states should nullify unconstitutional federal acts, including court opinions. — Peter Rykowski

AI Behind Historic Decline in Smartphone Market

At first glance, the numbers look like a routine industry downturn. According to the International Data Corporation (IDC), global smartphone shipments are projected to fall roughly 12.9 percent year-over-year in 2026, a drop of about 160 million units, bringing total shipments down to around 1.1 billion devices.

The official explanation is straightforward: a severe shortage of memory chips. But that explanation, while accurate, only scratches the surface. What’s unfolding in 2026 is not just a supply hiccup; it is one of the first visible signs that artificial intelligence infrastructure is fundamentally reshaping the global electronics supply chain.

The immediate cause of the decline is well documented. Memory components such as DRAM [Dynamic Random Access Memory] and NAND [non-volatile memory] have surged in price due to constrained supply, forcing smartphone manufacturers to either raise prices or cut production. As costs rise, demand weakens, especially for lower-end devices, resulting in sharply reduced shipment volumes. IDC describes the situation as an “unprecedented” disruption, with the market falling to its lowest level in more than a decade.

But the deeper cause lies upstream, far from consumer devices. Over the past two years, hyperscale data center operators (companies building the backbone of artificial intelligence) have begun consuming enormous quantities of advanced memory. AI workloads require dramatically more memory per system than traditional computing, particularly high-bandwidth memory (HBM) used in advanced graphics processing units (GPUs). As a result, chipmakers have redirected manufacturing capacity toward these higher-margin, enterprise-grade components.

This shift is not marginal; it is structural. Memory production operates within tight physical and capital constraints. Fabrication plants take years to build, and there is a fixed, finite limit on the production of memory chips. Every production line dedicated to AI-grade memory is not producing the commodity memory used in smartphones, PCs, and other consumer electronics. The consequences are now cascading across the device ecosystem. AI infrastructure demand is “hoarding” memory supply, according to IDC-linked reporting, leaving consumer manufacturers scrambling for components. Prices rise, production falls, and entire product categories, especially low-cost smartphones, become economically unviable.

In that sense, the smartphone slump is less a standalone disruption than a downstream effect of a larger industrial reallocation. The same memory shortage is simultaneously depressing shipments of PCs and tablets while increasing their prices. For decades, consumer electronics have been the primary driver of semiconductor scale. That era is ending. The center of gravity is shifting toward AI systems, data centers, and enterprise computing. Meanwhile, industry analysts warn that the imbalance could persist for years, as new fabrication capacity lags far behind AI-driven demand. In today’s world, the invisible architecture of artificial intelligence is quietly dictating what gets built, how much it costs, and who gets access to it. — Rebecca Terrell

Ambassador Waltz Defends UN Membership in Senate Hearing

In a recent hearing in the U.S. Senate, Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz defended U.S. membership in the global body even as he highlighted the Trump administration’s efforts to “reform” it.

On April 15, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee held a hearing titled “Reforming the UN: Assessing U.S. Efforts and Priorities.” Waltz and Jeff Bartos, the U.S. representative to the United Nations for UN management and reform, presented before the committee as witnesses.

In his opening statement and throughout the hearing, Waltz criticized various UN policies, including “[pushing] costly ideological agendas from its 2030 agenda to the … failing Sustainable Development Goals.” However, he voiced support for the UN itself, claiming that “the UN has tremendous potential, but it needs to do its job. It needs to realize that potential.” He also claimed that “we need one place in the world where everybody can come and talk, and I want that to be right here in the United States.”

Of the senators who questioned Waltz and Bartos, Mike Lee (R-Utah) came the closest to questioning U.S. membership in the UN, noting that “reform efforts” resemble “putting lipstick on a pig” while the globalist body “demands that we relinquish sovereignty.” In response to Lee’s questioning, Waltz again defended UN membership, including by pointing to international regulatory regimes imposed by UN agencies that he claimed benefit the United States.

During the hearing, Waltz declared his desire to “get the UN back to basics.” However, he would do well to recognize that the UN was originally founded as a nascent one-world government. Although President Donald Trump and his administration have advanced certain pro-American policies, including withdrawing the United States from dozens of international organizations and agreements, they have not questioned U.S. membership in the UN itself. Rather than continuing to support an international organization that fundamentally threatens American independence and the Founding Fathers’ recommended foreign policy of noninterventionism, Congress and the executive branch should support the DEFUND Act to Get US Out! of the UN once and for all. — Peter Rykowski

Trickle-“up” of Global Disruptions in Oil Refineries

The past two years have witnessed a remarkable, globe-spanning wave of refinery damage. Across a recent two-week period alone, a series of fires, explosions, and suspected attacks disrupted oil refineries and power plants in Russia, the United States, Australia, India, and Romania. In 2025, the U.S. refining industry recorded approximately nine publicly reported fires and explosions, with notable events at Chevron’s El Segundo facility in California and HF Sinclair’s Navajo refinery in New Mexico. In Australia, a fire at the Viva Energy Geelong refinery on April 16 forced the shutdown of one of the country’s key fuel supply facilities.

Russia has been hit hardest. Ukraine has conducted a sustained campaign targeting Russian energy infrastructure, striking multiple refineries within weeks of each other — including the NORSI refinery, Lukoil’s Volgograd facility, the Syzran refinery, and a Gazprom gas processing plant in Astrakhan. On paper, the capacity of the 16 Russian refineries attacked represents 38 percent of the country’s total refining output — though the real picture is more complex, as most facilities kept operating at least partially after strikes and restored full output within weeks. Still, the cumulative pressure is real: The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has created parallel pressure on refineries outside Russia.

An analysis of the situation appears in the book Chokepoints by Edward Fishman. He describes how modern geopolitical power is exercised not just through territory or armies, but through control over critical nodes in global systems — places where flows of goods, energy, or finance can be constricted. In the energy world, chokepoints include not only geographic passages such as the Strait of Hormuz, but also infrastructure such as refineries, pipelines, and export terminals. Disrupting these nodes, whether through sanctions, cyber operations, or physical strikes, can have outsized effects, because modern supply chains are optimized for efficiency rather than redundancy. Recent refinery outages and targeted attacks illustrate how disabling processing capacity can be as strategically potent as controlling oil fields themselves, tightening supply and amplifying price volatility without needing to seize territory.

In A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order, political economist F. William Engdahl argues that geopolitical strategies rooted in economic interests and the quest for resources, particularly oil, have been the driving forces behind many of the major wars and conflicts of the past century. What Engdahl did not fully anticipate was the degree to which that control would be enforced not just through military power, but through the labyrinthine architecture of modern financial derivatives. The destruction of oil refineries around the world today cannot be understood without grasping both realities at once.

The Fishman/Engdahl thesis plays out today in the occupation of Iraqi oilfields, wars in the Balkans, civil wars in Africa, and financial crises across Asia. All assume coherence in a world where geopolitics, power, and control dictate relations. If you cannot control who produces oil, you can at least control how much of it reaches the market, and at what price.

That brings us to the financial dimension. Wall Street’s largest investment banks have positioned themselves as indispensable middlemen in the global energy market. They broker long-term oil supply contracts between producers and end-users: electricity generators, airlines, chemical companies, and manufacturers who need price predictability for accounting purposes. (Oil prices fluctuate on a daily basis, and companies such as electricity providers like the convenience of having one set price to make bookkeeping easier. So they will often go to an investment bank to hash out an agreement with, say, an OPEC nation to provide the oil that they need at a prearranged set price.) The bank doesn’t just broker the deal; it steps in between the electricity company and the OPEC nation, absorbing the price risk and locking in a set cost for the corporate buyer. The instrument used is a form of insurance called an oil derivative — a contract with a value tied to future oil prices.

The problem is the exposure these contracts create. If the negotiated price for a barrel of oil is $100 (and crude prices fall down to $80) the bank is still contractually obligated to pay the OPEC nation $100, taking a $20 loss on each barrel.

This may be the hidden engine beneath the headlines about burning refineries. To repeat: When a bank has guaranteed a corporation a fixed oil price over a multi-year contract and oil falls below that floor, the bank is obligated to cover the difference across an enormous book of such contracts. A sustained drop in oil prices does not merely reduce energy company profits; it threatens the solvency of the institutions that wrote the contracts. Refinery destruction, whatever its ostensible political rationale, has the convenient side effect of constricting supply, keeping crude prices elevated, and protecting the banks that cannot afford for prices to fall.

The International Energy Agency has noted that global refining capacity has been in structural decline for years, with investment in new capacity falling as the energy industry anticipates a long-term shift away from fossil fuels, leaving less redundancy in the system when disruptions occur. Less redundancy means each disruption has a larger price effect. That suits the derivatives holders perfectly.

Financial instruments have become a structural motive for maintaining oil scarcity. War is no longer purely about seizing oil. It is also, increasingly, about ensuring that what remains in circulation stays expensive enough to keep the derivatives books solvent. The refineries burning from Texas to Tuapse are not just casualties of conflict. They are collateral that has already been pledged. — Rebecca Terrell

Bilderberg in D.C. to Plot Global Shift

The powerful and secretive Bilderberg just brought top political, military, Big Tech, and corporate leaders to Washington, D.C., for an unusually early meeting to plot the future of humanity, explain two special guests on a recent episode of “Behind the Deep State” with The New American’s Alex Newman.

According to Daniel Estulin, author of the key book that brought global awareness to Bilderberg, the meeting was focused on finalizing a shift in the world order. From Artificial Intelligence to geopolitics, the key figures who attended are working to bring about monumental changes in the way the world is governed.

Next, Dan Dicks with Press for Truth explains what he saw while in D.C. to cover the meeting. Dicks, who has attended the meetings for years, called on Americans and people everywhere to expose and oppose this shadowy group of self-appointed global rulers before it is too late.

Listen to this important podcast at TheNewAmerican.com.

EU Proposes Cracking Down on Recalcitrant Countries

The European Commission, the European Union’s executive branch, is proposing a rule to crack down more effectively on countries that don’t comply with its “single market” rules.

Politico reports:

The European Commission is set to impose tougher penalties on countries obstructing trade across the EU, according to a draft document seen by POLITICO….

“The Commission will track progress by means of key performance indicators, and will make use of all available instruments, including infringement procedures [legal action], to address implementation gaps,” the Commission writes in the draft….

The document also opens the door to smaller groups of countries joining forces to push forward reforms if there is no unanimous agreement among the bloc’s 27 states….

Key priorities also include a more integrated single market, championing strong trade, reducing energy prices and decarbonizing, and driving the digital and AI transformation.

Although the EU has portrayed its broader “One Europe, One Market” plan — which it has been working on for years already — as necessary to boost its international “competitiveness,” it would further deepen EU integration on the road to becoming a full-fledged federal state, something its founders intended from the start. And as a regional union, the EU serves as a steppingstone toward a one-world government.

With Insiders seeking to create a similar regional union over North America, it is important that we stay aware of these efforts and vigilantly protect American independence here at home. — Peter Rykowski

America’s Top Export Is Gold

In 1971, Richard Nixon closed the gold window — the mechanism by which foreign governments could exchange their accumulated U.S. dollars for American gold — to stop the hemorrhaging of Fort Knox reserves to creditor nations who had grown skeptical of a dollar inflated by Vietnam War spending. It was an act of desperation dressed up as financial innovation. Half a century later, the United States finds itself in a position Nixon could not have imagined. It is now the one doing the selling.

Economist Michael Hudson has stated plainly that gold has been the number-one U.S. export for five months running, topping artificial intelligence, civilian aircraft, and semiconductors. Our gold is flowing to Switzerland, Hong Kong, and China.

Data from official sources confirms the broad thrust of Hudson’s claim. According to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, non-monetary gold exports surged by $49.7 billion in 2025 alone, one of the largest single-commodity increases recorded in any category across the entire U.S. export ledger that year. The United States recorded $29.7 billion in gold exports in 2024, representing 398 tons and a 14-percent increase year over year, with re-exports playing a significant role alongside domestically mined output.

The five largest gold exporters in 2024 were Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Hong Kong, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States. What is striking is not simply that the United States appears on this list, but who the buyers are: Switzerland (the world’s preeminent gold refining hub), Hong Kong (the gateway to mainland Chinese reserves), and various Asian financial centers, all aggressively accumulating physical metal. For the third year, central banks bought nearly 1,000 tons of gold — approximately 30 percent of all newly mined gold worldwide — spreading their bets and moving away from dollars.

Hudson has argued that the United States, having suppressed the gold price for decades after 1971 (worried that a rising gold price would signal dollar weakness) has finally reached the limits of its ability to hold that price down. Gold being flown back to the United States from London, and Germany’s gold repatriation from the New York Federal Reserve proceeding at a deliberately slow pace, are symptoms of a system under stress.

The historical parallel Hudson draws is damning. By the time World War II ended, the United States controlled the great bulk of the world’s monetary gold, a hoard accumulated across two world wars as capital fled Europe into American vaults. That gold reserve was the foundation of Bretton Woods, the dollar’s reserve status, and 50 years of American financial supremacy. That power originally was based on U.S. holdings of the world’s largest monetary gold reserves in 1945, its status as the largest creditor nation and industrial economy, and after 1971, its dollar hegemony.

What America built over a century by accumulating gold, it is now liquidating, not in a single dramatic collapse, but in a steady outflow denominated in hundreds of tons per year. Hudson and his colleagues have observed that the behavior of America’s ruling class in this period resembles what is common in declining empires: Those at the top, positioned to hold onto wealth, grab what they can before it all disappears, while everybody else pays the price.

The U.S. and European confiscation of $300 billion of Russia’s monetary deposits has marred America’s reputation for financial safety, while chronic trade and balance-of-payments deficits threaten to disrupt the international monetary system that made the United States the major beneficiary of the post-World War II world order.

The weaponization of the dollar, in other words, is accelerating the very de-dollarization it was meant to prevent. Nations that once held their reserves in U.S. Treasuries are asking a simple question: If Washington can freeze Russia’s $300 billion, what is to stop it from freezing ours? The answer is gold: physical metal held in domestic vaults, beyond the reach of SWIFT [Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication] bans and OFAC [Office of Foreign Assets Control] sanctions.

The Trump administration’s imposition of a 39-percent tariff on imported gold bars over 100 ounces, announced in August 2025, sent gold futures to an all-time high of $3,534.10 per ounce and injected deep uncertainty into the bullion market. Some analysts interpreted the tariff not as protectionism but as preparation for a potential revaluation of U.S. gold reserves, currently carried on the books at the absurd legacy price of $42 per ounce, against a market price near $3,500. The U.S. gold hoard totals approximately 261.5 million troy ounces, split between Fort Knox, West Point, Denver, and a vault beneath the Federal Reserve’s Manhattan building. A revaluation to market price would produce a paper windfall of roughly $900 billion, a bookkeeping miracle that would do nothing to address the underlying structural rot.

Nixon closed the gold window because America was running out of gold to sell. The question Hudson raises, and the export data now forces into the open, is whether America is running out of gold again, and this time has no window left to close. — Rebecca Terrell

Hungary’s Magyar Reveals Socialist-Globalist Colors as EU Court Strikes Down “Anti-LGBT” Law

Hungarian Prime Minister-designate Péter Magyar has announced members of his incoming cabinet and certain policies he plans to implement, confirming expectations that his government will move Hungary toward socialism and globalism.

In Hungary’s national elections on April 12, Magyar and his Tisza party defeated longtime Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, winning a supermajority in the National Assembly, capable of amending or replacing the country’s constitution. Magyar is expected to assume office on or after May 9.

In contrast to Orbán, whose policies leaned conservative and were relatively skeptical of the European Union and globalism, Magyar is expected to adopt a more pro-EU, social-liberal stance — and his cabinet appointments and policy announcements back up this expectation.

On April 20, for example, Magyar appointed Anita Orbán (no relation to Viktor Orbán) as foreign minister. Orbán, an executive with Vodafone, has strong globalist credentials, including serving as a member of the European Council on Foreign Relations — affiliated with the American Council on Foreign Relations — and a former board member of UNICEF Hungary. She will play a key role in integrating Hungary further into the European Union.

Additionally, Magyar appointed András Kármán as finance minister. Kármán played a key role in developing Magyar’s proposal for a socialist “wealth tax,” and will likely help achieve the incoming prime minister’s goal of adopting the Euro as Hungary’s currency — a major surrender of the country’s financial sovereignty. Magyar also appointed Judit Lannert, who has promoted leftist causes such as the LGBT agenda on social media, as education minister.

Magyar’s post-election policy announcements also indicate that he will push Hungary in a left-wing direction. For example, he announced that he will create an environment ministry, signaling a greater focus on promoting a radical, UN-aligned climate agenda. Additionally, Magyar announced that he would reverse his predecessor’s planned withdrawal from the sovereignty-eroding International Criminal Court, and would display the EU flag in Hungary’s parliament building for the first time since January 2012. And Bálint Ruff, an incoming minister in Magyar’s cabinet, implied in a media interview that Hungary’s new government might pass a “hate speech” law.

Meanwhile, the EU is already doing its part to wipe away Hungary’s conservative social policies. On April 21, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) struck down a 2021 Hungarian law banning LGBT propaganda directed at minors. It declared:

The Court of Justice finds that Hungary has acted in breach of EU law on a number of separate levels….

That law is contrary to the very identity of the Union as a common legal order in a society in which pluralism prevails. Hungary cannot validly rely on its national identity as justification for adopting a law which is in breach of [the EU’s founding “values,” listed in the Treaty of European Union]. [Emphasis in original.]

In addition to imposing a radical, cultural-Marxist social agenda on EU member states, the ECJ’s ruling is yet another step toward eliminating national sovereignty on the road to a European superstate.

Despite Magyar’s leftist and globalist policies, some Republican politicians in the United States celebrated his election. For example, U.S. Senator Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) wrote that Hungarians “voted decisively in favor of democracy and the rule of law.” Meanwhile, U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) oddly claimed — ignoring Magyar’s own statements — that “I have yet to hear him propose … sacrificing [Hungary’s] sovereignty on the altar of the European Union.”

Hungary, a country that many conservatives viewed as a bastion for social conservatism, appears set to radically change course. — Peter Rykowski