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Thursday, May 29, 2025

Bullish on Bitcoin: Vice President Vance Speaks at Bitcoin Conference

A significant and high-profile embrace of crypto—Vance at their conference in Las Vegas: People ask me why I tend to be bullish on the future of innovation in this country. I spent enough time in Silicon Valley to recognize the difference between good tech technology that boosts our productivity, makes our lives richer, that grounds us in the real world and compliments our day-to-day lives. That’s the good technology, but there’s also some bad technology out there. And when it comes to crypto, I think the last several years have made it clear that we’re talking about genuine ground-up innovation. One that’s already improving the wellbeing of tens of millions of our fellow citizens. I believe it’s 50 million Americans owned Bitcoin, and I believe that’s going to be a hundred million before too long…. I also feel like there’s an incredibly value-conservative element to crypto technology. And that’s as a hedge. Crypto is a hedge against bad policymaking from Washington. No matter what party’s in control, it’s a hedge against skyrocketing inflation, which has eroded full savings rate of Americans over the last four years…. And let me say that part of the reason that I’m standing here, part of the reason that Bernie Marino defeated Sherrod Brown in the Senate campaign last year is because you guys got organized and got involved in American politics. And I’m grateful to you for that…. But while Bitcoin is digital, none of you are, none of us are. What happens in the world of politics, what happens in the world of bureaucracy, it will affect even the most transformational and valuable technologies if we don’t make the right decisions. So: the first piece of advice, the first thing that I’d ask you is to take the momentum of your political involvement in 2024 and carry it forward to 2026 and beyond. Don’t ignore politics because I guarantee you my friends politics is not going to ignore this community, not now and not in the future (White House). Axios: Last year then-candidate Donald Trump cemented the Bitcoin community’s support for his re-election by becoming the first presidential candidate to appear at the world’s largest Bitcoin-focused event…. Last year Trump made big news, using the conference’s stage to float the idea of a U.S. bitcoin reserve (Axios).

Secretary of State Rubio at International Holocaust Remembrance Minister’s Conference: “There can be no compromise with antisemitism”

Speaking in Jerusalem: Earlier this year I stood beside Foreign Minister Sa’ar at the Yad Vashem memorial. I remembered the millions of Jews who were slaughtered, and reflected on the meaning of the words, “Never again.” The importance of those words (was) brought home to every American last week when Yaron Lischinski and Sarah Milgrim were murdered in cold blood outside of the Capital Jewish museum here in Washington D.C. Yaron was a Christian, born in Germany, who came to love the Jewish state. Sarah was from Kansas and loved Yaron. They dreamed of marrying in Jerusalem; instead they were cut down in cold blood by a monster who did not care about Yaron’s faith or Sarah‘s background. We should never forget that as he was being arrested after killing two innocents, who he believed were Jews, the murderer proudly screamed, “Free, free Palestine,” words that serve as a battle cry for the death of Jews, the destruction of Israel and the horrors we must never again allow. There can be no compromise with antisemitism. There can be no nuanced separation of hatred of Israel and hatred of the Jewish people. Those who called to boycott Israel are calling for the boycott of their Jewish neighbors and classmates. Those who call for violence against Israelis are calling for violence against Jews. Those who call for the destruction of Israel are calling for the destruction of the Jewish people. That is why as we extend our prayers to Yaron and Sarah‘s loved ones we must stand in solidarity with Israel. There can be no coexistence with evil. There can be no nuance to hatred. Under President Trump the United States will stand with the Jewish people. We have implemented a vigorous new visa policy that will prevent foreign nationals from coming to the United States to foment hatred against our Jewish community. We are holding international organizations and nations accountable for rhetoric against Israel that resurfaces in the manifesto of monsters like Yaron and Sarah’s killer. Video: (Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism). Times of Israel: The conference began Tuesday night with a dinner attended by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Sa’ar and returned hostage Tal Shoham. “What Israel is fighting now is not merely a seven-front war. It’s a war of civilization against barbarism,” Netanyahu said (Times of Israel).

Consumer Confidence Soars

As worries about Trump’s tariff policies wane and confidence that he will get good trade deals jumps, consumer confidence unexpectedly jumped. CNBC: The Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Index leaped to 98.0, a 12.3-point increase from April and much better than the Dow Jones consensus estimate for 86.0. Much of the positive sentiment, according to board officials, came from developments in the U.S.-China trade impasse, most notably President Donald Trump’s halting of the most severe tariffs on May 12. “The rebound was already visible before the May 12 US-China trade deal but gained momentum afterwards,” said Stephanie Guichard, the Conference Board’s senior economist for global indicators. May’s rebound followed five straight months of declines. Consumers and investors had grown sour on economic prospects amid the intensifying trade war that Trump has launched against U.S. global trading partners, with China a particular target. (CNBC) Beege Welborn of Hot Air: Analysts had cautiously predicted May’s consumer confidence number to come in at 86, and progressives had their hands on dress hangers in their closets, trembling at the thought of the mad celebration that would ensue should the number have tanked even further.Delighted to disappoint them and in a big, BIG way (Hot Air). Polymarket: Betting odds predicting recession have dropped 27% since April 30th (Polymarket).

Trump Approval Surging on Trade Optimism

Worries about tariffs have weighed heavily on Trump’s approval numbers and consumer confidence. According to Morning Consult a dramatic shift is underway: Trump’s approval improvement holds: Nearly half (48%) of voters approve of Trump’s job performance, unchanged from last week but up from a 45% low in late April and the highest since mid-March. Trump’s favorability ratings are also as good as they’ve been since late March, with 48% viewing him positively and 50% negatively. Trade sentiment improves: For the first time since March, more voters approve than disapprove of Trump’s handling of trade policy (47% to 45%). Voters remain closely divided over whether they approve of Trump’s handling of the economy or trust Republicans over Democrats to deal with the matter (Morning Consult.) David Strom of Hot Air: His poll numbers took a real hit. In the RealClearPolitics poll, the average approval for Trump dropped from about a 50-50 split to 7 points underwater. Democrats became ecstatic. Even if their own numbers didn’t look good. At least Trump’s were dropping quickly. That trend has reversed, and quickly, with the shift driven by an increase in confidence that Trump’s tariff policies will pay off (Hot Air).

Buttigieg’s About Face on COVID

Pete Buttigieg sat down for a wide-ranging interview with The xxxxxx’s Tim Miller, and as you would expect, Donald Trump was in the crosshairs for much of the discussion. But the bite that stood out was Buttigieg’s about face on school closures during the pandemic. The xxxxxx Podcast: Miller: What do you think you should have done differently in 2020? Buttigieg: Figure out a way to get the schools open sooner (X; xxxxxx Podcast). David Strom of Hot Air: It’s a neat trick, if you can get away with it. Punish, censor, debank, demonetize, slander, impose damaging and arbitrary rules that ruin lives and cause immeasurable harm. Use your policies to gain political advantage and monetary gain, and when the grift gets exposed…shrug, say it was a minor error, and garner applause for political bravery. You get all the benefits you can grab from imposing horrible policies, and you get all the benefits from doing a U-turn and showing political “growth.” Rinse, repeat (Hot Air).

Europe’s Travel Ban on Journalists

Freedom of speech and travel keep losing ground in Europe. Saying the wrong thing can land you in jail, get you debanked and the EU is now restricting travel of EU citizens for wrongthink. Michael Shellenberger: two EU citizens have effectively been stripped of their basic civil liberties — exiled from virtually the entire European continent, subjected to financial strangulation and deprived of their livelihoods — through a simple act of bureaucratic fiat, without trial or court ruling. This is punishment without process, imposed by an unaccountable, out-of-control elite, in defiance of the most basic principles of the rule of law. Making the ruling even more chilling is the fact that the decision is legally binding on all member states. That means that anyone who provides funds or resources to the accused journalists would also be in violation of the sanctions and could themselves be sanctioned as a result. With the snap of a finger, EU officials have swept aside centuries of legal development. Core principles such as the separation of powers (whereby punishment should be the exclusive domain of independent courts), proportionality and the foundational concept of nulla poena sine lege — no punishment without law — have effectively been discarded. In effect, EU elites have discovered a way to bypass all legal and constitutional safeguards against the repression of dissent, by weaponizing a mechanism originally designed to target foreign entities, not domestic citizens (Public.news).

Europe Is Waging “an aggressive campaign against Western civilization itself”

From a State Department Substack that has been under the radar, but is superb: In the aftermath of two devastating world wars, European nations sought to prevent future catastrophes by creating supranational structures that would bind nations closer together and allow for more substantial diplomatic and economic engagements. Proponents of this new order, including well-meaning Christian and pro-democracy parties, sought a grand transformation—a world that would transcend the divisiveness of nationality and creed to usher in an era of unprecedented peace. By overcoming the anchors of nationhood, culture, and tradition, global liberalism promised what Francis Fukuyama famously called the “end of history,” the ultimate innovation of political life. Today, this promise lies in tatters. What endures instead is an aggressive campaign against Western civilization itself. Across Europe, governments have weaponized political institutions against their own citizens and against our shared heritage. Far from strengthening democratic principles, Europe has devolved into a hotbed of digital censorship, mass migration, restrictions on religious freedom, and numerous other assaults on democratic self-governance. These concerning trends have only increased in recent years. In the United Kingdom, police are arresting Christians—such as Adam Smith-Connor and Livia Tossici-Bolt—for silently praying outside of abortion clinics. In 2023, over 12,000 British citizens were arrested for online posts, including comments critical of Europe’s migration crisis, that authorities deemed to be “grossly offensive” (State Department).

Trump Broke Woke: “no taking us back to the years of peak woke”

Rich Lowry: This doesn’t mean that Democrats won’t win again — they will, and perhaps as soon as next year’s midterms. Things might not feel so great for the right when it is defending Trump during his third impeachment in 2027, yet there will be no taking us back to the years of peak woke…. Trump has shifted the Overton window in the culture away from woke, and it’s hard to imagine it shifting all the way back. Corporations aren’t going to play ball again the way they did after the death of George Floyd. Trump could well lose his legal battle with Harvard and other schools, but they’ve admitted that they need to change. DEI and other race-conscious policies may go subterranean under different rubrics, although that, in itself, is a sign of weakness. Black Lives Matter has been discredited by scandal, and “anti-racism” now feels more like a relic than the hot new thing. Trump’s executive orders and funding decisions can eventually be reversed, but re-radicalizing every institution in America will be difficult for any future Democratic president. Shrewd, ambitious Democrats realize how the ground is shifting, even if the left of the party isn’t going away…. Trump is to the woke ascendancy what Thermidor was to the French Revolution, and what Richard Nixon was to the anti-war movement. We can’t know whether his presidency will succeed or fail, but he is likely to retain his status as the bookend to an era of heedless cultural lunacy (National Review).

Millennials, Gen Z and the 2024 Election: “their drift towards Donald Trump shaped the outcome”

Trump on Wednesday: “I won the young people by 37 percent.” Charlie Kirk (to whom Trump gave a shout out): What’s happening with young voters is the most dramatic generational political realignment since Woodstock. Honored to play our part (X). The Economist writes on the trend in the young adult vote: For the first time, millennials and Gen Z, people born between 1981 and 2006, comprised a plurality of the electorate, and their drift towards Donald Trump shaped the outcome. Millennials and Gen Z are the most diverse and educated generations in American history, traits long thought to favour the Democratic Party. Yet a new report from Catalist, a left-leaning political-data firm, shows that although Democrats still won a majority of young voters, their long-standing advantage over the Republican Party was cut down by nearly two-thirds. Kamala Harris’s margin of victory among millennials and Gen Zers in 2024 was 12 points smaller than Joe Biden’s in 2020, a bigger swing than for any other cohort. The exodus was caused in large part by non-whites and helped propel Mr Trump back into the White House… Most worrisome for Democrats is their clear loss of purchase on younger black and Latino voters. Though Democrats have long hoped that a more diverse young electorate would help tilt the political map in their favour, the latest data show that it was those voters who revolted most fiercely. Among 18- to 44-year-olds, white voters swung towards Mr Trump by 4.6 points, while their black counterparts shifted by 14.6 points and Latinos by a sobering 22.6 points. The impact was all the greater because just under a third of millennials and Gen Z are non-white, a higher percentage than for older generations (Economist).

10.

An Emerging Consensus: Po**ography Is “inherently harmful to society”

“Digital po**ography is lethal poison in our cultural groundwater and should be treated as such.” This new consensus includes those on the left and the right. It is recognized by governments on both sides of the Atlantic, including governing coalitions made up of up parties on the left. Jonathon Van Maren: There has been a fundamental shift in the public debate on po**ography over the past decade. In 2017, I took the affirmative side in a radio debate with a queer studies professor on the question “Is po**ography inherently harmful to society?” Much of what I highlighted then—the normalization and mainstreaming of sexual violence, pervasive po** addiction beginning in preadolescence, the consequent inability to engage in or even understand healthy intimacy—is now the position of panicky government officials from the U.K. to France. Hardly a week goes by without some news story highlighting the devastating effects of ubiquitous po** use across the West and beyond…. A raft of recent age-verification legislation in the United States indicates that lawmakers are beginning to grapple with the social costs of po**ography. Sen. Mike Lee went further, introducing the “Interstate Obscenity Definition Act” in May, which would include po**ography under the category of “obscenity” and essentially render much of this material illegal. Lee’s proposal has been widely mocked, but those insisting on the necessity of protecting po**ography in the name of free speech must be forced to answer key questions. These reports reveal the society we have chosen to create by prioritizing so-called “sexual liberty” over the safety and innocence of women and children. We now know where this social experiment has taken us, and what it has cost us. It is a growing consensus not just among conservatives, but across all fields, that po**ography has been a tremendously destructive force. It is time to reverse our priorities, and to recognize that digital po**ography is lethal poison in our cultural groundwater and should be treated as such (First Things).

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