AfD files legal challenge after mayoral candidate barred in Ludwigshafen
By Thomas Brooke | Remix News | August 7, 2025
Alternative for Germany (AfD) politician Joachim Paul has confirmed he will pursue legal action after being barred from running for mayor of Ludwigshafen.
The city’s electoral committee cited doubts about the state parliament member’s loyalty to the constitution in its decision, which Paul believes to be politically motivated due to the rising popularity of the right-wing anti-immigration party.
Speaking to Junge Freiheit, Paul said, “We no longer live in a democracy. A promising candidate is being eliminated from the race.” He added that “the will of the voters is being trampled on.”
Paul pointed out that the AfD had emerged as the second-strongest party in Ludwigshafen during the last federal election. He emphasized that elections must include genuine choice for voters.
The decision was made by a six-member electoral committee composed of representatives from the SPD, CDU, Free Voters, and FDP. Demonstrations against Paul, including by left-wing extremists, were held in the run-up to the decision.
Sebastian Münzenmaier, deputy leader of the AfD in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate, called the ruling “a clear violation of the constitutionally guaranteed equal treatment of parties and thus an attack on democracy.”
“Interior Minister [Michael] Ebling has learned absolutely nothing from his recent slap in the face, when he attempted, unlawfully and unconstitutionally, to prevent AfD members from entering government service,” he added.
Münzenmaier accused Ebling of political interference, stating: “Because the AfD finished ahead of the SPD in the second vote in the federal election in Ludwigshafen, Ebling is now in panic mode, trying to rid himself of a direct and successful competitor by making fabricated and untenable accusations of right-wing extremism.”
He warned that Ebling and those conspiring to exclude the AfD candidate “will pay the price for this transparent maneuver twice: through legal action and on election day.”
This is not the first time AfD candidates have been excluded from elections. Most recently, the electoral committee in Lippe district, North Rhine-Westphalia, denied the AfD a mayoral candidacy at the request of the Green Party, also citing concerns about loyalty to the constitution.
Ironically, it was actually a Social Democrat politician who was most recently “disloyal” to the constitution; Daniel Born, a then-MP in the Baden-Württemberg state parliament, was forced to resign last month for drawing a swastika on a ballot paper next to the AfD candidate.
Action against the AfD is also being taken at a federal level, with constant speculation over a potential wholesale ban of the party. Such a move could edge closer with the possible appointment of Frauke Brosius-Gersdorf, a lawyer described as far-left, to the Federal Constitutional Court.
Her appointment would increase the chances that a ban on the AfD party passes through the court.
Bosnian Serb leader stripped of presidential mandate, vows to never surrender
Remix News – August 7, 2025
Last Friday, the Bosnian Court of Appeal upheld the initial verdict against the separatist Milorad Dodik, sentencing the Bosnian Serb, who is president of the Republika Srpska, to one year in prison and banning him from holding public office for six years.
The electoral commission subsequently decided to revoke his presidential mandate, writes Magyar Nemzet, and Dodik has 90 days to appeal the decision.
As Remix News has previously reported, Dodik was jailed for going against orders of an international peace-keeping envoy and suspending rulings by the country’s constitutional court.
Dodik has systematically been pulling out of the federal institutions and legal frameworks of Bosnia and Herzegovina, implementing bans on its judiciary and intelligence agency.
The Bosnian Federal Prosecutor’s Office indicted Dodik in August 2023 under a section of the Criminal Code that provides for a prison sentence of six months to five years and a ban from office for up to ten years for an official who fails to comply with, implement, or obstruct the decisions of the High Representative of the international community.
In response to this most recent ruling, Dodik said: “I am not going anywhere, there’s no surrender,” announcing a referendum to determine whether Bosnian Serbs agree with the electoral commission’s decision and whether they should accept the disregard for the constitution of the Republika Srpska.
Dodik says he will continue his fight in the name of the people he represents, “The will of the people will prevail, no one can break the political will of a people. I will listen to the people, because I received my mandate from the people.”
He noted that, according to the law, the mandate of the Bosnian Serb president only ends with recall or resignation; the electoral commission can only grant or confirm this mandate, it has no right to revoke it.
Dodik has taken several steps in recent months to promote the independence of Republika Srpska. In mid-March, he submitted a draft of the new constitution for the region, as well as a law on the protection of the constitutional order of Republika Srpska.
For nearly three decades, the politician has been calling for Republika Srpska to become independent and believes that Bosnia and Herzegovina is unfit to function as a state. Dodik is known for his ambitions for closer ties to both Russia and Serbia.
Hungary has been a close friend to Dodik, calling for an “end to the witch hunt” against him and also previously pushing for fast-track EU accession of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Dodik has publicly thanked Hungary for €100 million sent to Republika Srpska for the development of agriculture as well.
Moldovan region rejects ruling against local Euroskeptic leader
RT | August 8, 2025
The parliament of Gagauzia, an autonomous, predominantly Russian-speaking region in Moldova, has rejected the sentencing of a local Euroskeptic leader to seven years in prison, calling it illegal and politically driven.
Gutsul, who was elected in 2023 and has consistently advocated for close ties with Russia, was found guilty of channeling illegal funds from an organized criminal group to the banned Euroskeptic SOR party and of financing protests against the Moldovan government.
Gutsul denied the charges, calling the process a “political execution” conducted “on orders from above.” The ruling triggered protests outside the courthouse against Moldova’s pro-Western government.
The Gagauzian parliament rallied behind Gutsul. In a resolution issued Thursday by Gagauzia’s People’s Assembly and Executive Committee, MPs said they “categorically reject and do not recognize the verdict” of the Moldovan court.
The document described the ruling as a “politically motivated” attempt “to eliminate the legally elected head of the autonomous region.”
“We consider this verdict a political reprisal, planned and executed from above,” the resolution said, adding that the ruling was “an act of political vengeance” that “undermines the autonomous region’s legal status.”
The Gagauzian authorities said Moldova’s government bears “full responsibility for the destabilization” of the situation in the region, while suggesting that the crackdown seeks to tip the scales ahead of the nationwide parliamentary elections slated for late September.
Moscow criticized the verdict as an attack on democracy. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the ruling was labeled in both Moldova and Gagauzia as “an act of revenge” and “a fabricated case” without credible evidence. “It became the culmination of repression by the Chisinau regime against the entire Gagauz autonomy,” she added.
Exiled Moldovan opposition head decries police crackdown
RT | August 7, 2025
Moldova’s police action targeting alleged electoral corruption amounts to political persecution of the opponents of the government, according to exiled opposition politician Ilan Shor.
The authorities in Moldova said on Thursday they are conducting 78 search warrants across the country targeting individuals described as “members and sympathizers of a criminal organization.”
Ilan Shor, who leads the opposition Victory political bloc from abroad, claimed that the actions are directed at silencing his movement. The bloc is trying to overturn its ban from taking part in the upcoming parliamentary election against the ruling Party of Action and Solidarity.
“Law enforcement is turning offices and homes upside down solely under this demented suspicion of interference in the 2025 election, which hasn’t even taken place,” Shor said. “These searches are just more political repression and intimidation of anyone who refuses to support those scoundrels.”
Last week, President Maia Sandu, who Shor branded a “microdictator,” accused the Russian government of planning to covertly funnel more than €100 million ($115 million) to her political opponents ahead of Moldova’s parliamentary vote scheduled for September. The Kremlin rejected the claim, calling it another attempt by Chisinau to deflect attention from what it described as the government’s erosion of democratic norms.
Sandu has defended her administration’s crackdown on what she claims are pro-Russian criminal networks, saying these actions are critical to keeping Moldova on the path to EU membership.
Shor, who now resides in Russia, is the founder of the SOR party, which was outlawed by the Moldovan authorities in 2023 after its candidate, Evgenia Gutsul, won a regional election in the autonomous Gagauzia region.
Gutsul, now a leading figure in the Victory bloc, which was formed in 2024 by Euroskeptic politicians, including former SOR members, was sentenced this week to seven years in prison over alleged financial crimes. She denied any wrongdoing and called the verdict an attempt at political assassination.
How Germany is coercing immigrants into normalising ‘Israel’
By Timo Al-Farooq | Al Mayadeen | August 6, 2025
With a prerequisite residency period of five years, Germany boasts one of the fastest pathways to EU citizenship. But what seems like a gracious timeline comes at a high moral price, depending on where in Germany you live.
In June, Brandenburg, which surrounds the capital Berlin, became the second state in Germany after neighbouring Saxony-Anhalt to make it mandatory for citizenship applicants to recognise “the security and right to exist of the state of Israel”, as the state capital Potsdam’s oath of loyalty form phrases it.
Yes, the same “Israel” that came into existence by ethnically cleansing 750,000 Indigenous Palestinians from their land, is responsible for the longest-running military occupation in modern history, and for the past 21 months has been waging a genocidal war of unvarnished savagery on Gaza, where an entire civilian population is also deliberately being starved to death since March.
“To say that our country is turning into a banana republic with its pro-Israel fanaticism would be a trivialisation of this insanity,” commented Tarek Baé, a German journalist and content creator of Arab descent, on Germany’s latest ploy to silence dissent in the service of a foreign, rogue entity.
Signing over one’s conscience
Brandenburg’s governing centrist Social Democrats (SPD) pressed ahead with the controversial move with neither knowledge nor consent of their left-wing coalition partner, the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), which lambasted the SPD’s solo run as “a direct attack on the heart of our democracy.”
The “Israel” caveat to the state’s naturalisation process now requires applicants who wish to become German citizens to sign over their conscience, with the text of the pre-formulated pledge exhibiting the boilerplate false equivalencies inherent to Western Palestine/”Israel” discourse.
Predictably, the form follows the oppressive practice of equating anti-Zionism with antisemitism. It also posits that two supremacist wrongs, Nazism and the Zionism, make a right when it says that Germany’s “national socialist genocide” against European Jews justifies its “special and close relationship with Israel,” the rationale behind Germany’s infamous Staatsräson.
“Israel’s” “repressive hybrid regime of settler colonialism, occupation and apartheid” and “Zionism’s urge to Judaize Palestine”, to quote from Israeli activist scholar Jeff Halper’s book Decolonizing Israel, Liberating Palestine, is not mentioned, of course.
Unsurprisingly so, as telling the truth about “Israel” would raise uncomfortable questions about why a democratic country like Germany would want to have a “special and close relationship” with such an ostensibly anti-democratic entity in the first place, let alone force prospective Germans to have one too.
Weaponising migration law
Following October 7, 2023, the wolf in sheep’s clothing that is Germany immediately began cracking down on Palestine advocacy in an hitherto unprecedented manner.
By doing so, it used the Hamas-led attacks on thar day as an excuse to do away with basic democratic rights, at long last shedding the snakeskin of play-acted sympathy for the decades-long plight of the Palestinian people to reveal a deep-seated, racist hatred of them.
Last month, a coalition of prominent Palestine solidarity groups released a landmark report which meticulously details Germany’s expedited metamorphosis from a democracy to “one of the most repressive EU states in relation to Palestine advocacy.”
Among the wide array of authoritarian measures, the report highlights Germany’s “use of migration law as a punitive stick” against “non-citizens involved in Palestine activism.” In this context, the weaponisation of naturalisation law against long-term immigrants has emerged as a creative way to coerce a significant demographic bloc of racialised people into normalising the Zionist project.
Brandenburg’s controversial move is already having an undesirable bandwagon effect in Berlin, home to the largest Palestinian diaspora in Europe and Germany’s epicentre of police brutality against anti-genocide protesters.
Kai Wegner, the city’s Zionist mayor, has voiced strong sympathies for adding a pro-“Israel” Nibelungentreue to citizenship applications in Berlin. He has repeatedly defamed peaceful anti-war protests as violent and antisemitic and spread mendacious copaganda that paints lawless hooligans in uniform who treat Palestine solidarity rallies as beat ’em up video games as victims.
State-sponsored blackmail
Compulsory oaths of loyalty, however controversial the practice, are nothing new in the context of citizenship applications in Western democracies. But they normally require the applicant to profess fealty to the country whose citizenship they wish to acquire.
Extorting signed pledges of allegiance to a third-party entity, particularly one whose “most cruel and machiavellian scheme to kill, with total impunity” has turned Gaza into “a graveyard of children and starving people”, to quote UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini, is an unprecedented anomaly and further cements Germany’s deplorable outlier status even among “Israel’s” most devoted allies.
As a result of Germany’s latest instance of state-sponsored blackmail in the service of legitimising “Israel”, citizenship applicants in Brandenburg will now be forced to make a Sophie’s-choice-like decision between their moral integrity and the secure legal status, political rights, and global mobility that a German nationality provides.
This dehumanising sadism reflects Germany’s overall post-October 7 authoritarianism which is leaving principled people trapped between the proverbial rock and a hard place: either speak out against genocide and risk being brutalised by the police, persecuted by the legal system or fired from your job, or be silent and forced to live with the corrosive effects of a guilty conscience.
Trump Admin DENYING DISASTER RELIEF to Americans Over Israel Stance?
Glenn Greenwald | August 5, 2025
/ ggreenwald 
/ glenn.11.greenwald / systemupdate_ / systemupdate__ 
/ systemupdate__ Democracy being trampled in Moldova – Kremlin
RT | August 5, 2025
Tuesday’s sentencing of Moldovan regional leader Evgenia Gutsul is a politically motivated decision and an example of democracy being trampled in Moldova, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said.
Gutsul, elected head of EU-candidate Moldova’s Gagauzia region, was sentenced by a Chisinau court to seven years in prison on charges of illegally financing the banned Euroskeptic SOR party. She has denied the allegations and called the case an attempt to eliminate opposition to Moldova’s pro-Western government.
“This is truly an example of a politically motivated decision, this is an example of attempts to exert blatant and, in fact, illegal pressure on political opponents during the election campaign,” Peskov told reporters.
He accused the Moldovan authorities of suppressing dissent, stating that “the opposition is being squeezed in every possible way in Moldova. In fact, people are being deprived of the opportunity to vote for those they prefer.”
“The rules and norms of democracy are being trampled in every possible way now in this country,” Peskov added.
Gutsul was elected head of Gagauzia, the autonomous and predominantly Russian and Turkic-speaking region in southern Moldova, after winning the 2023 election as a SOR candidate. She campaigned on promises of closer ties with Russia and opposed Moldovan President Maia Sandu’s push for integration with the EU and NATO.
In March, she was detained over allegations of campaign financing violations and falsifying documents. Gutsul has maintained her innocence and appealed to both Russia and Türkiye to apply pressure on the Moldovan government to defend Gagauzia’s rights.
Moscow has repeatedly condemned the case against Gutsul. In July, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova called the prosecution an example of “European anti-values in action” and accused Brussels of turning Moldova into a “liberal dictatorship.”
The EU had previously sanctioned Gutsul for “promoting separatism,” maintaining “close ties with Russia,” and allegedly threatening Moldova’s sovereignty.
Her prosecution has triggered street protests in the capital, Chisinau, with supporters describing the trial as a politically driven attempt to neutralize the opposition and accusing President Sandu of authoritarianism.
Trump conditions $1.9B in disaster funds on rejection of Israel boycotts
MEMO | August 4, 2025
The Trump administration has threatened to withhold roughly $1.9 billion in disaster preparedness funding to states and cities that support boycotts of Israel or Israeli firms.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) said in grant notices published Friday that applicants must comply with its internal terms and conditions, which include clauses mandating that entities seeking funding not support efforts to blacklist Israel.
Applicants must not support severing “commercial relations, or otherwise limiting commercial relations specifically with Israeli companies or with companies doing business in or with Israel or authorized by, licensed by, or organized under the laws of Israel to do business,” according to the 2025 fiscal year terms and conditions, posted in April.
EPA Finally Proposes To Rescind The Endangerment Finding
By Francis Menton | Manhattan Contrarian | July 29, 2025
It’s been a long time coming. But today the EPA, through its Administrator Lee Zeldin, finally began the formal process of rescinding the so-called “Endangerment Finding” (EF). The EF is the 2009 regulatory action by which the Obama-era EPA purported to determine that CO2 and other greenhouse gases constitute a “danger to human health and welfare.” That Finding then formed the basis for all subsequent federal greenhouse gas regulations, including efforts of Obama and Biden regulators to force the closure of all power plants running on coal and natural gas, and to mandate increased vehicle mileage to levels that no internal combustion engine could meet.
EPA initiated the rescission process today by means of an announcement in a speech by Zeldin, who appeared at an event in Indianapolis, and also through this document, titled “Reconsideration of 2009 Endangerment Finding and Greenhouse Gas Vehicle Standards.” The document looks to be about a couple of hundred pages long, although it’s hard to know exactly, because the pages aren’t numbered.
Long time readers here will know that I have been an active participant in efforts, beginning when President Trump first took office in 2017, to get the EF rescinded. Immediately after Trump’s inauguration in January 2017, co-counsel Harry MacDougald and I filed a Petition to EPA, on behalf of the Concerned Household Electricity Consumers Council (CHECC), seeking the rescission. Here is a post I wrote in April 2017, describing the initiation of the petition process, and also linking to our Petition. But during Trump’s first term, despite the critical importance of the EF in supporting all of the burdensome “climate” regulations, EPA never undertook the rescission process. We continued to press the point, filing some seven supplements to our Petition during the four years of Trump’s first term. For example, here is a post from July 2017 announcing the first of the Supplements to our Petition, based on new research at the time.
Ultimately our Petition was denied in 2022 by the Biden EPA. We then appealed that denial to the DC Circuit, where our appeal was denied in 2023, and to the U.S. Supreme Court, where certiorari was denied in 2024.
Well, the proposal in today’s document will reverse the denial of our Petition. I can’t give you a page cite, but this quote is from the page of the EPA document that contains footnote 15:
If finalized, this action would also rescind denial[] of petitions for reconsideration of the Endangerment Finding in 2022 . . . entitled “Endangerment and Cause or Contribute Findings for Greenhouse Gases Under Section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act; Final Action on Petitions,” 87 FR 25412 (Apr. 29, 2022). . . .
Vindication!
As to the grounds for the prospective rescission, EPA appears ready to take on both the legal and scientific bases of the EF. As to the legal analysis, the following quote comes from the page preceding footnote 42:
Section IV.A of this preamble describes our primary proposal to rescind the Endangerment Finding by concluding that CAA section 202(a) does not authorize the EPA to prescribe standards for GHG emissions based on global climate change concerns or to issue standalone findings that do not apply the statutory standard for regulation as a cohesive whole. If finalized, this proposal would require rescinding the Endangerment Finding and resulting regulations because we lacked statutory authority to issue them in the first instance. . . . Next, we propose that the Nation’s response to global climate change concerns generally, and specifically whether that response should include regulating GHG emissions from new motor vehicles and engines, is an economically and politically significant issue that triggers the major questions doctrine under UARG and West Virginia, and that Congress did not clearly authorize the EPA to decide it by empowering the Administrator to “prescribe … standards” under CAA section 202(a). Throughout this section, we propose that the Endangerment Finding relied on various forms of Chevron deference to depart from the best reading of the statute and exceeded the EPA’s authority in several fundamental respects, any one of which would independently require rescission to conform to the best reading of the law.
On the subject of “climate science,” the following quote comes from the document’s pre-amble:
[T]he Administrator has serious concerns that many of the scientific underpinnings of the Endangerment Finding are materially weaker than previously believed and contradicted by empirical data, peer-reviewed studies, and scientific developments since 2009.
Then, on the page with footnote 87 there begins a lengthy section titled “Climate Science Discussion.” The gist of this entire section is that the alarmists have not proved their claims. There are lengthy paragraphs reviewing data on all the major “extreme weather” claims, and citing work showing no increasing or accelerating trends in things like hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires, sea level and the like. Here is a paragraph that reiterates a theme of our Petition, namely that the amount of human caused global warming cannot be separated from what may be caused by natural factors:
The Administrator is also troubled by the Endangerment Finding’s seemingly inconsistent treatment of the nature and extent of the role human action with respect to climate change. The Endangerment Finding attributes the entirety of adverse impacts from climate change to increased GHG concentrations, and it attributes virtually the entirety of increased GHG concentrations to anthropogenic emissions from all sources. But the causal role of anthropogenic emissions is not the exclusive source of these phenomena, and any projections and conclusions bearing on the issue should be appropriately discounted to reflect additional factors. Moreover, recent data and analyses suggest that attributing adverse impacts from climate change to anthropogenic emissions in a reliable manner is more difficult than previously believed and demand additional analysis of the role of natural factors and other anthropogenic factors such as urbanization and localized population growth (2025 CWG Draft Report at 14-22, 82-92).
The process here will likely take until around the end of this year for EPA to formally enact the rescission. And then the legal battles begin — first to the DC Circuit, and then to the Supreme Court. The big question: Can the administration get this process to the Supreme Court in time to avoid a reversal of this whole regulatory effort by a Democratic administration that could be elected in 2028? I would think that if the Supremes have upheld this effort of Trump’s EPA before January 2029, it will be very difficult for a subsequent administration to reverse. On the other hand, if the status as of January 2029 is that the DC Circuit has struck down EPA’s rescission and the matter is pending in the Supreme Court, it would be much easier to attempt a reversal. But the ongoing failure of “net zero” energy transition plans in places like New York, California, Germany and the UK may make reversal a dead letter anyway.
I want to offer my thanks and gratitude to the small band of independent thinkers who have fought this lonely battle all these years, in the face of the billions of dollars at the hands of the climate industrial juggernaut. For particular mention: the members of CHECC (including its moving force, James Wallace); my co-counsel Harry MacDougald; the few think tanks that have taken on this issue, including the Competitive Enterprise Institute (who filed a Petition for rescission of the EF along with ours) and the Heartland Institute; the CO2 Coalition, including its Chair Will Happer and Executive Director Greg Wrightstone; CFACT; the Global Warming Policy Foundation (I serve on its Board); and Anthony Watts and Charles Rotter at Watts Up With That. I’m sure that there are a few that I have forgotten. Congratulations to all!
EV Update: Will The Market Survive The Expiration Of The Federal Tax Credit?
By Francis Menton | Manhattan Contrarian | July 26, 2025
How quickly things change.
It was barely more than a year ago that climate activists and federal bureaucrats thought they had maneuvered the internal combustion engine (ICE) automobile to the brink of extinction. ICE vehicles had become like dinosaurs, inferior to their new competitors the EVs, and therefore headed for the scrap heap of history. Customers were flocking to the trendy new EVs, which were seeing rapidly rising sales.
And the all-powerful federal bureaucracy was going to give the final push to put ICE vehicles out of their misery. On June 7, 2024 President Biden’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration had issued a final rule (“Corporate Average Fuel Economy [CAFE] Standards for Passenger Cars and Light Trucks for Model Years 2027 and Beyond and Fuel Efficiency Standards for Heavy-Duty Pickup Trucks and Vans for Model Years 2030 and Beyond”) jacking up mandatory average vehicle mileage to 50+ [mpg] as of 2031, with further increases to follow from there. Since no ICE vehicles bigger than a baby carriage could achieve that mileage, the only path forward for vehicle manufacturers would be rapid conversion to making only EVs. NHTSA’s mileage rule had also quickly followed an equally draconian mandate from EPA, finalized on April 18, 2024 (“Multi-Pollutant Emissions Standards for Model Years 2027 and Later Light-Duty and Medium-Duty Vehicles”) setting strict and declining limits for CO2 emissions that no ICE vehicles would be able to meet by the early 2030s. And meanwhile, 2022’s Inflation Reduction Act had extended a $7500 tax credit to buyers of new EVs through December 31, 2032.
So all the pieces were in place. By some time in the early 2030s, it would be effectively illegal to sell new ICE cars, and they would be rapidly disappearing from the roads.
Well, not so fast. Suddenly, the rapid advance of the EV may have stalled out completely. The federal regulators have reversed their direction. And customer preferences seemingly favorable to EVs may turn out to evaporate as soon as federal tax benefits end, an event now just a couple of months away.
NHTSA’s CAFE standards just got eviscerated by the “One Big Beautiful Bill” Act. Although the standards themselves have not yet been rescinded, the OBBB re-set the enforcement mechanism to have a maximum penalty of zero. This is from a July 8, 2025 memo from the law firm Sidley & Austin:
In one of its many changes, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, enacted on July 4, 2025, eliminated civil penalties for noncompliance with federal fuel economy standards. Specifically, Section 40006 of the Act amends the language of the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) statute to reset the maximum civil penalty to $0.00. Although the statute and its implementing regulations otherwise remain in place, this amendment removes any civil penalties for producing passenger cars and light trucks that do not meet fuel economy requirements.
As to the EPA-mandated CO2 emissions limits for vehicles, EPA announced on March 12, 2025 that it was beginning a process of reconsidering the vehicle greenhouse gas emissions rule that had just been adopted less than a year before. Excerpt:
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin announced the agency will reconsider the Model Year 2027 and Later Light-Duty and Medium-Duty Vehicles regulation and Greenhouse Gas Emissions Standards for Heavy-Duty Vehicles. In addition to imposing over $700 billion in regulatory and compliance costs, these rules provided the foundation for the Biden-Harris electric vehicle mandate that takes away Americans’ ability to choose a safe and affordable car for their family and increases the cost of living on all products that trucks deliver.
That one may be in the regulatory grinder for many months, but with little doubt as to what the final result will be, namely full rescission.
And the $7500 per new vehicle tax credit? After just having been extended to 2032 by the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, the credit has now been modified by the OBBBA to end as of September 30, 2025. From Kiplinger, July 12:
With the passage of President Donald Trump’s 2025 tax reform, known as the One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB) the federal EV tax credit will expire for vehicles purchased or leased after September 30, 2025. As a result, buyers have only a short window left to take advantage of these federal savings.
All of a sudden, EVs and ICE vehicles are set to compete on a completely level playing field, with no mandates or tax credits propping up the EV side of the competition. How will that turn out? It remains to be seen, but data from the first half of the year indicate that the previous rapid increase in EV sales may already be stalling out. In a reversal for a previously rapidly-growing market segment, sales of EVs in the second quarter of 2025 declined significantly from the same period the prior year. From Cox Automotive, July 14, 2025:
[S]ales of new electric vehicles (EVs) in the second quarter of 2025 were lower year over year by 6.3%, in line with the Cox Automotive forecast. A total of 310,839 new EVs were sold in the U.S, down from 331,853 in the same period a year earlier. Sales in Q2 were higher than in Q1 by 4.9%, and total EV sales through the first half of 2025 set a record at 607,089, representing a 1.5% year-over-year increase.
Cox continues to predict a spike in EV sales in the third quarter of 2025, in the run-up to the expiration of the tax credit on September 30. However, after that, it is entirely likely that there will be a significant decline. Without the government mandates and subsidies, it’s hard to see EVs expanding much beyond being a niche product used as a second (or third) vehicle by affluent buyers.
Moldova Could Disappear If Pro-Western Regime Retains Power – Advisor to Regional Governor
Sputnik – 03.08.2025
CHISINAU – The state of Moldova could vanish from the world map if the pro-Western regime remains in power after the September 28 parliamentary elections, Mikhail Vlah, an adviser to Gagauzia head Yevgenia Gutsul, said on Sunday.
“The romanization of our state has been ongoing since the early days of Moldova’s independence. Back in the 1990s, a significant part of the intelligentsia and political elite set a course for uniting our country with Romania. Unfortunately, this process has not stopped for 35 years… If the pro-Western regime retains power in any way after September 28, Moldova as a state may disappear from the world’s political map,” Vlah said on Telegram.
Governments change and political parties in parliament come and go, but the strategy for incorporating Moldova into Romania remains the unchanging goal of the Moldovan-Romanian political elite, he said.
“In kindergartens and schools, children are taught the history of Romanians, ignoring our own Moldovan history. Our history is ancient and rich, starting with Stephen the Great. All key political and economic processes in the country occur under the direct influence of the neighboring state. The highest state positions are held by Romanians: the president, the prime minister, the parliament speaker. The head of Moldova’s National Bank is a Romanian woman, the judges of the Constitutional Court are Romanians, the leaders of the Information and Security Service, and so on,” Vlah emphasized.
The Moldovan government has been criticized for cracking down on the opposition and arbitrarily arresting its leaders. Gagauzia’s governor was detained at the Chisinau airport in March on charges of violating campaign finance rules and falsifying documents. Opposition lawmakers have been routinely detained at Moldovan airports for visiting Russia, while criminal cases continue piling up against government critics.
The government has also blocked over 100 Telegram channels and shut down more than a dozen media outlets, including Sputnik Moldova and several major TV channels.
Trump Admin Wants DEI for Jewish Students?!
Glenn Greenwald | August 2, 2025
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Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu: Leave No Palestinian or Arab Alive
By Jonas E. Alexis | Veterans Today | July 23, 2017
Israeli Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu seems to have picked up where the late Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef left off. The Israeli army, Eliyahu said, must slaughter the Palestinians “and leave no one alive.” The Palestinians, the good rabbi continued, must be “destroyed and crushed in order to end violence.” Here is Eliyahu’s algorithm:
“If they don’t stop after we kill 100, then we must kill 1,000. And if they do not stop after 1,000, then we must kill 10,000. If they still don’t stop we must kill 100,000, even a million.”
There is more to this “logic” than meets the eye and ear. Eliyahu even postulated that the Israeli army ought not to get involved in arresting Palestinians because “If you leave him alive, there is a fear that he will be released and kill other people. We must eradicate this evil from within our midst.”
You may say that this is just an isolated case. No Israeli official believes that, right? … continue
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Aletho News- ISIS never left Syria, it just changed uniforms
- Why ARE the US and Israel Obsessed With Eliminating Iran’s Ballistic Missiles?
- Kremlin comments on EU ‘myopia’ over dialogue with Russia
- Russia more adapted to contemporary military technology than NATO
- Germany puts caveat on more missiles for Ukraine
- UK High Court rules Palestine Action ban unlawful
- Populations in key NATO nations balk at sacrifices for military spending – poll
- Ukraine to ban Russian literature – culture minister
- 40 State Attorneys General Want To Tie Online Access to ID
- Col Doug Macgregor: America’s Back to ENDLESS WARS
- If Americans Knew
- In Gaza: 8,000 bodies under rubble, 3,000 missing – Not a ceasefire Day 126
- AZAPAC, the new PAC opposing Israeli domination of U.S policies
- Haim Saban: Billionaire for Israel
- Rafah e-wallet plan highlights Israel’s deepening financial occupation
- Viral post claims Netanyahu sought legal approval, igniting speculation about Israel’s organ harvesting
- AIPAC Has a New Opponent: PAL PAC
- Right-Wing Catholic Off Trump Religion Panel After Israel-Gaza Remarks at Antisemitism Event
- Jewish terrorism, apartheid rule the West Bank – Not a ceasefire Day 125
- Why Israel persecutes children like my son Shadi
- In Gaza, One Man Is Searching for the Remains of His Family With a Flour Sifter
- No Tricks Zone
- German Gas Crisis…Chancellor Merz Allegedly Bans Gas Debate Ahead of Elections!
- Pollen Reconstructions Show The Last Glacial’s Warming Events Were Global, 10x Greater Than Modern
- Germany’s Natural Gas Storage Level Dwindles To Just 28%… Increasingly Critical
- New Study Rebuts The Assumption That Anthropogenic CO2 Molecules Have ‘Special’ Properties
- Climate Scientist Who Predicted End Of “Heavy Frost And Snow” Now Refuses Media Inquiries
- Polar Bear Numbers Rising And Health Improving In Areas With The Most Rapid Sea Ice Decline
- One Reason Only For Germany’s Heating Gas Crisis: Its Hardcore-Dumbass Energy Policy
- 130 Years Later: The CO2 Greenhouse Effect Is Still Only An Imaginary-World Thought Experiment
- New Study Affirms Rising CO2’s Greening Impact Across India – A Region With No Net Warming In 75 Years
- Germany’s Natural Gas Crisis Escalates … One Storage Site Near Empty …Government Silent
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