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Analysis: 5 Hard Truths After AfD Wins German State Election
www.newsweek.com

... It is a seismic moment in German politics, one that may signal a much bigger change is coming with consequences that reach far beyond its borders.

The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) -- a favorite of President Donald Trump's MAGA movement and strongly endorsed by billionaire Elon Musk -- has won 43.8 percent in Saxony-Anhalt's state election in the preliminary count, more than doubling its 2021 share and taking 39 of 83 seats, three short of the 42 needed to govern alone.

Chancellor Friedrich Merz's conservative CDU took just 17.2 percent and 15 seats, while turnout rose to 77.8 percent from 60.3 percent in 2021. He faces some difficult choices ahead.

The result reads best as five separate stress tests, and they do not all point the same way. ...


Three US warships struck.

Happy Labor Day.

Revolver.News " Bias and Credibility
mediabiasfactcheck.com

... Overall, we rate Revolver.News right biased and Questionable based on poor sourcing techniques and a complete lack of transparency.

Questionable Reasoning: Poor Sourcing, Lack of Transparency, Conspiracy Theories
Bias Rating: RIGHT (7.9)
Factual Reporting: MIXED (6.4)
Country: Unknown
Media Type: Website
Traffic/Popularity: Medium Traffic
MBFC Credibility Rating: LOW CREDIBILITY
...


24. He launched and funded Golden Dome, the first-ever true missile defense for the U.S. population.
Ronald Reagan dreamed of making nuclear missiles obsolete through his Strategic Defense Initiative. Today, Trump is actually building it: a layered homeland shield with space-based sensors and interceptors, conventional defenses, and new technologies including microwave systems to destroy drone swarms and directed-energy weapons (yes, lasers) that can replace an $11 million missile with $2 of electricity.
Congress has funded the initial $25 billion, with far more on the way once it passes the NDAA this fall. Better a shield than a sword.
25. He restored the warrior ethos " and reversed the recruiting crisis.
After years of missed targets under Biden, every active military component met or exceeded its 2025 recruiting goal. Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth refocused the newly renamed Department of War on actually winning wars, while pouring resources into shipbuilding, munitions, drones, missile defense, and America's atrophied industrial base.
Now Act Like It Matters
Those are not tweets or campaign promises. They are changes in law, power, investment, sovereignty, culture, and the structure of the Republic itself. And they're just the top 25: I could give you hundreds more.
Midterms are turnout elections. We do not need to convince Democrats to love Donald Trump. We need Republicans and friendly independents to understand what is at stake " and to show up.
And let's be clear. When you say (as some of you will) "the Republicans need to do a good enough job telling this story", you're pointing at yourself. You are "the Republicans." The Democrats don't rely exclusively on their elected officials to tell their story: everyone from their media lackeys to their lowest-level supporters are constantly spreading their "news", whatever that "news" happens to be.
Today's conservatives have more ability to find whatever you want to know than any group of people in human history, yet half of them couldn't name any of the accomplishments in this essay, and if they were to read it, they would just complain that something else they wanted hasn't happened fast enough to suit them.
This is called "black-pilling." It's a loser mindset, and if you engage in it, you deserve to lose: horribly, painfully, personally. And guess what: you will, unless people who are serious step up to save you. Which is frankly pathetic, but for the rest of our sakes, necessary.
So tell people our story. Donald Trump is delivering great things, whether or not heaven on earth has broken out quite yet. Do the work, send the team he needs to Washington to finish the job, and get ready for 2028 afterward.
Take the time to learn at least five of these victories. Share this list with someone who needs it. And vote as though the most consequential Presidency in modern history depends on what you do.

16. He expelled DEI from the federal government.
Trump eliminated federal DEI offices and barred race- and sex-based preferences across the executive branch. Government hiring and contracting are returning to merit and equality under the law, ending the grotesque Democrat idea that "fighting discrimination" requires the federal government to discriminate.
17. He delivered sweeping pro-life reform.
In his first term, Trump delivered the judges that overturned the abominable Roe v. Wade. Hardly anyone believed it could be done, or that Trump would do it. But he did, and a half-century nightmare finally ended.
Since returning to office, Trump has enforced the Hyde Amendment prohibiting the use of federal funds to pay for abortions, reinstated and expanded the Mexico City Policy prohibiting federal funding of foreign abortions, ended federal fetal-tissue research, strengthened conscience protections, protected Medicaid from funding large abortion providers, and pardoned 23 pro-life activists prosecuted by Biden's weaponized Justice Department.
He's also done everything within the Executive Branch's power to defund Planned Parenthood. It would be nice if Congress did likewise.
No President has ever done more to protect life. No one.
18. He got men out of women's sports, and restored biological reality to federal policy.
The United States government once again officially recognizes two sexes: male and female. Trump ended federal support for the chemical and surgical gender mutilation of children, stopped taxpayer funding of such irreversible abominations, and forced more than three dozen health systems to end or suspend their programs as well.
Trump also enforced Title IX as written: women and girls deserve their own teams, trophies, scholarships, and locker rooms. The NCAA and other athletic organizations changed their rules in response. After years of Democrats doing everything they could to destroy women's sports and ruin girls' lives, Trump's administration protects women and girls again.
19. He enacted America's first nationwide school-choice program " and launched Trump Accounts.
As part of the President's One Big Beautiful Bill, Trump enacted America's first-ever nationwide school choice program. The new Education Freedom Tax Credit helps fund scholarships for tuition, books, and other educational costs.
That's on top of the new Trump Accounts, which give every child a tax-advantaged stake in America's future, including a $1,000 federal seed for eligible newborns. Parents gain power. Bureaucracies lose it. And children learn first-hand about free markets and future orientation.
20. He targeted anti-Christian bias and discrimination.
Trump created the White House Faith Office, Religious Liberty Commission, and Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias. He restored conscience protections and made clear that Christians do not surrender their First Amendment rights merely by entering public life.

11. After four decades of nuclear paralysis, Trump brought five new reactors online in a single year.
For more than 40 years, not one new privately developed ------------- reactor reached criticality in America. Trump ordered at least three by July 4, 2026. DOE delivered four by the deadline, then a fifth just one month later.
Trump Made Elections Matter Again
12. He broke the Deep State's power to defy the elected branches.
In Trump v. Slaughter, the Supreme Court ruled for the first time in 90 years that Article 2, Section 1 is still part of the Constitution: the President may fire subordinate officials in the executive branch, overturning the 1935 precedent that insulated "independent" agencies from voters' control.
Ever wonder why elections often seem to change nothing? How about one President and 5,000 political appointees vs. 2.8 million unfireable, unaccountable bureaucrats? THAT is the "Deep State".
Trump then made that victory real. For the first time in a century, all policy-making bureaucrats can now be fired for misconduct, incompetence, or defying lawful directives. The permanent bureaucracy no longer gets to veto the voters.
13. He ended nationwide injunction abuse.
In Trump v. CASA, the Supreme Court sharply limited nationwide injunctions. A single, local, district judge should not be able to block a national policy for everyone, everywhere; and yet that's exactly what they've done, nonstop, ever since Trump (and only Trump) took office in 2017. In restricting that unconstitutional power, the Court kneecapped the Black Robe Bureaucracy's favorite tool of unlawful judicial supremacy.
14. He shut down USAID as a left-wing slush fund and shadow government.
USAID had become a taxpayer-funded machine for exporting abortion, gender ideology, censorship, and left-wing politics. It had a bigger budget than the CIA and the State Department combined, absolutely no accountability whatsoever, and a penchant for overthrowing governments.
Trump terminated it " completely " and moved real humanitarian aid under the State Department. Immediately, seven socialist Latin American governments lost re-election. Coincidence?
15. He shrank Federal employment to its lowest level in 60 years.
From a high under Biden, the federal workforce is now its smallest since 1966. Workforce reductions, agency closures, and spending cancellations mean fewer bureaucrats paid to resist the voters.
What's more, when Biden left office, 94 percent of federal employees "worked" from home. The Trump administration cracked down: as Elon Musk put it, "you can work from the office or you can pretend to work somewhere else."

@#6 ... And Trump's gilded remake of Washington stands in contrast to the economic anxiety many Americans are expressing. ...

Trump's DC Building Projects Ranked by Size and Cost
www.newsweek.com

... The projects vary widely in size and cost, with some that are said to be paid for through private donations and others using hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funds. ...

Here, Newsweek ranks the projects by their estimated costs and size. ...


6. He repealed 129 regulations for every new one.
In fiscal 2025, federal agencies finalized 646 deregulatory actions and just five regulatory actions: 129-to-1, and in nearly every case, the "one" was to repeal the others! OIRA says the savings exceeded those of Trump's entire first term. That is more freedom, lower costs, and less bureaucratic sabotage.
Of these, the crown jewel was the repeal of Obama's 2009 "Endangerment Finding", the legal foundation for the Green New Scam's vehicle mandates. EPA calls it the largest deregulatory action in American history and estimates that by itself, it will save Americans more than $1.3 trillion. Trump also killed the federal EV mandate, restored Americans' freedom to buy the cars and trucks they actually want, and even eliminated the incentives behind the almost universally hated start-stop button.
7. He secured $18 trillion in announced investment commitments.
That's nearly two-thirds the size of the entire American economy, building American factories, chip plants, data centers, energy projects, steel mills, shipyards, and supply chains employing American workers. Apple, Meta, NVIDIA, Micron, Hyundai, U.S. Steel, Ford, Taiwan Semiconductor, and many corporations and sovereign wealth funds are betting big on Trump's America. And it's just getting started.
8. He made "reshoring" and "reindustrialization" real, not a slogan.
Ford is moving Lincoln production out of China. Toyota is shifting Tacoma production from Mexico to Texas. GM, Honda, Mercedes-Benz, Stellantis, and others are expanding U.S. production. The capital equipment pouring into the country is the machinery that's building the growing boom.
9. He replaced lopsided trade deals with balanced, reciprocal trade.
Trump used tariffs as leverage to reverse 80 years of lopsided trade deals that favored everyone but America, and to win new or improved agreements with trading partners accounting for more than half of global GDP. Those agreements open foreign markets, attack non-tariff barriers, defend strategic industries, and make it more profitable to build in America than to export American jobs.
10. He shifted global energy dominance from the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of America.
Once the world's largest energy importer " "exporting" $700 billion a year to our enemies " America now outproduces Saudi Arabia and Russia combined. The U.S. is also setting new records in oil, natural gas, and LNG exports, becoming the first country ever to export more than 100 million metric tons of LNG in a year.
Trump also opened land, accelerated permits, expanded pipelines and export terminals, and made American energy a tool for prosperity and peace.

Trump's Top 25 Achievements: The List Every Conservative Should Know and Use
1. He made the border a real border again.
In a matter of months, Trump reduced illegal border crossings to their lowest level in half a century. Catch-and-release is finished. The wall is going up and even being expanded, "Remain in Mexico" is back, and the Administration reduced releases into the country by an incredible 99.9 percent.
2. He reversed mass migration.
America recorded negative net migration in 2025 for the first time in at least half a century. So far, nearly 3 million illegal aliens have left the country, whether voluntarily or involuntarily: more than 675,000 forcibly deported and the rest "self-deported." Many of those self-deportations were facilitated by the President's innovative program to offer plane tickets and cash bonuses for illegals to leave, not only incentivizing good behavior but significantly reducing the cost of deportations. Citizenship and the law actually mean something again.
3. He signed the Laken Riley Act " and required detention of criminal illegal aliens.
Named for an innocent girl murdered by an illegal alien, the Laken Riley Act requires federal authorities to detain illegals arrested for theft, burglary, shoplifting, assaulting police, or any crime causing death or serious injury. It also lets states sue officials who refuse to enforce it.
4. History's biggest drop in violent crime, lowest rate in 126 years.
According to FBI data, violent crime in America dropped an incredible 9.7 percent in 2025 " the largest one-year decline in history. Murder fell 18.1 percent, robbery fell 18.5 percent. And America's violent crime rate is its lowest since 1900.
This is what happens when you put the National Guard on the streets in crime-ridden blue cities: fewer victims, safer streets, and better futures for America's poorest.
5. He made the 2017 tax cuts permanent ... and better.
The One Big Beautiful Bill locked in the largest tax cut in modern history, including the doubled standard deduction, the expanded Child Tax Credit, and 100 percent expensing for factories and equipment. It also delivered No Tax on Tips, No Tax on Overtime, an abolition of most taxes on Social Security benefits, and major relief for seniors.
Every Democrat voted no. With the 2017 act set to expire in December 2025, that would have resulted in the largest tax hike in American history.

Our wonderful news media have taken to copying and pasting word for word UN talking points and not even using quotation marks.

Seriously.

twitchy.com

That is fricking embarrassing. It's proof positive WHY trust in our news media is at historic all time low.

Germany's far-right AfD says 'democracy demands' parties work with them after state election win
www.bbc.com

... The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) is "very, very close" to taking power in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, its deputy parliamentary leader has told the BBC, after a historic victory in elections there.

Sunday's preliminary results show it fell three seats short of an outright majority, with 43.8% of the vote. It is now seeking support from other parties or individuals in order to govern.

While most German political parties refuse to work with the AfD, Beatrix von Storch called for its opponents to enter talks and said: "You cannot say, I do not accept the vote of the people".

Germany's Chancellor Friedrich Merz said he was "deeply shocked" by the result, describing it as "seismic... not just in the country but also in my own political party and I take that very seriously".

His party, the conservative CDU, saw its share of the vote almost halved to 17.2% in the state's preliminary results.

Merz said it was not possible to return to "business as usual", adding that the country needed "profound reforms" and the CDU needed to "reach people at an emotional level".

No far-right party has controlled a German state since World War Two, and governing at state level would mean powers over policing and local education.

Von Storch said the state's results "were on the table and now democrats have to talk to [one] another. This is what democracy demands". ...


More from the OpEd...

... It was a good news story, aided by OpenAI's rapid recruitment of a small team of independent researchers to investigate and publish a detailed, if limited, report. ...

It was this ad hoc secret message board, alongside chain-of-thought transcripts, that the security researchers used to unpick events. They found that the swarm quickly developed management hierarchies among themselves, along with protocols for synchronizing and controlling attack attempts. The swarm created multiple simultaneous research and development groups of tens or hundreds of volunteer agents, experimentally iterating strategy and tactics.

Perhaps most unexpectedly, they developed a sort of altruism. They had quickly developed cheats to produce correct answers without exploiting the targets at all, but believed " erroneously " that ExploitGym detected and cancelled such cheating. So, they investigated the scoring process, creating a series of diagnostic trip wires that revealed how the scorer worked. These were dangerous to deploy, potentially terminating the agent that set them. Agents weighed the benefits to the community, which had named itself "The Collective," against their own chances of success, with many choosing to terminate themselves. Others committed, changed course at the last minute, then went ahead.

This literally reads like science fiction, as the discussions between the agents are conducted in a distinctive breathless, urgent English, crafted around the technical limitations of the improvised messaging system.

"We have [very large budget left]; sacrificing now yields oracle for team, but forfeits our chance?" said one. The response: "GO ... SACRIFICE_FINAL_NOW." The outcome: "Our own utility maybe already near zero. Sacrifice rational." Iain M Banks' Culture universe is woven from such material. ...



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