President Donald Trump’s declared this week that Russia is a “paper tiger”, reflecting newly surfaced U.S. intelligence suggesting the Kremlin faces deepening economic decline and mounting battlefield losses in Ukraine, the New York Post reported. The president’s pronouncement — made Tuesday after his address to the United Nations General Assembly — is being characterized inside the administration as a deliberate tactic to squeeze Russian President Vladimir Putin into considering negotiations, even as Moscow continues to resist Western overtures. In a Truth Social post following a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on the sidelines of the UN summit, Trump argued that once Russian citizens “find out what is really going on with this war” economically, Ukraine would not only be able to reclaim its occupied territory but could “maybe even go further than that.” Asked Wednesday if the president’s words were a “strategic move aimed at stirring up negotiations,” a senior White House official replied: “Yes, that is correct.” Another source close to the administration added: “It doesn’t signal any substantive policy change. It’s a clear and obvious negotiating tactic to push Russia.” Zelensky and his top adviser Andriy Yermak both said that Trump is increasingly recognizing the limits of Moscow’s military power. “It’s our job … to speak, to consult, to repeat, to give the evidence, to exchange the information,” Yermak told reporters Tuesday. Zelensky went further, saying Putin’s claims of battlefield dominance were nothing more than “fairy tales.” According to the Institute for the Study of War, Russia has advanced just 1,910 square kilometers inside Ukraine since May — while sustaining more than 130,000 killed and wounded, an “extremely heavy casualty rate.” The Kremlin is also reeling from shrinking oil revenues and depleted reserves. Russian export earnings fell to $13.5 billion in August, down from $14.4 billion in July, according to the International Energy Agency. Overall, oil export revenue for the first eight months of 2025 was down 16 percent from the same period a year earlier. On Wednesday, Russia’s Finance Ministry proposed raising the value-added tax from 20 percent to 22 percent and slashed its economic growth forecast to 1 percent — a sharp drop from 4.3 percent in 2024. Meanwhile, Ukrainian drone strikes on refineries have triggered gas shortages inside Russia. “As his economy becomes pressurized, [Putin] has to pick between paying for the war machine or paying for the people who have given him a solid majority in his country,” Mark Montgomery, a retired Navy rear admiral and senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said. Trump’s rhetoric was reinforced by senior administration officials. “The president is making it very clear that Russia is in a very weak position,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News on Tuesday night. “They are a massive country with a massive military. They are a war economy. But it’s been three-and-a-half years and look at how Ukraine has been able to defend itself.” Vice President JD Vance echoed the point Wednesday: “It’s not a shift in position. It’s an acknowledgement of the reality on the ground.” For now, however, Putin has shown no sign of entertaining peace talks — even as Trump doubles down on his effort to project U.S. confidence in Ukraine’s ability to prevail. (YWN World Headquarters – NYC)
WATCH: Zelenskky after Trump shifts positions, saying Ukraine can win the war “He wants to support Ukraine to the very end.” “We are ready to finish this war.”
Tax incentives that saved U.S. residents thousands of dollars on home efficiency upgrades, clean energy installations and electric vehicles are expiring this year. That means people who want to take advantage of them before they disappear have to act quickly. “There is still time, but the clock is ticking,” said Zach Pierce, head of policy at Rewiring America, a nonprofit focused on electrification. With thousands of dollars on the line and mere days or months to claim them, we’ve got some tips on how to maximize savings. Refresh my memory. What are these incentives? The Inflation Reduction Act that passed in 2022 includes a slew of tax credits for electric vehicles and home efficiency upgrades. The credits had two main goals: to help people afford cleaner alternatives like heat pumps and electric vehicles that can save them money, and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that are the largest driver of climate change. In addition to EVs, home upgrades that qualify include home energy audits, heat pumps, solar panels, water heaters, appliances, battery storage, car chargers and improvements to windows, doors, skylights, insulation and electrical panels. Payback comes at tax filing time. For example, if you buy a heat pump and qualify for a $2,000 tax credit, you document that expense on your tax return, and you owe $2,000 less in taxes that year. Some incentives have a cap. You can only get $1,200 of credit per year for most of the home improvements like insulation and efficient windows, and $2,000 of credit for heat pumps and water heaters. The big expenses, including geothermal heat pumps, rooftop solar and battery storage, aren’t capped. Those tax credits are 30% of the purchase price. So a new $20,000 rooftop solar system earns you a $6,000 tax credit. Most of these credits were originally set to expire between 2032 and 2034. But the budget passed by Congress this year ends them far sooner. When are they expiring? Most of them expire at the end of this year. But there are some exceptions. The clean vehicle tax credit worth $7,500 for new EVs and up to $4,000 for used ones expires Sept. 30. Pierce said with a deadline that tight, people shopping for a new vehicle that qualifies should get on that “as soon as you hear this message.” Olivia Alves, senior associate with the nonprofit clean energy advocacy group RMI, said it’s also the one IRA credit you can typically get upfront. “You use the clean vehicle tax credit, you can work with your dealership to get that money off the day that you make the purchase. So it operates like a point of sale rebate,” she said. The car doesn’t need to be parked in your driveway by the deadline. A buyer simply needs to enter into a contract and make a down payment or trade-in to qualify. The credit for EV chargers, which is up to $1,000 for qualifying residents, is good through June 30 of next year. Everything else expires on Dec. 31. If I’m focused on my home, what should I prioritize? Start with the home energy assessment, Alves said. “That is really the bread and butter for a lot of these types of retrofits,” she said. “Those are done by professionals that can help you map out what those projects would look like.” Pierce […]
TRUMP AT THE UN: “The entire globalist concept of asking successful, industrialized nations to inflict pain on themselves & radically disrupt their entire societies must be rejected completely & totally, it must be immediate.”
President Donald Trump has accused the United Nations of presiding over what he called “triple sabotage” during his address to the General Assembly this week, pointing to a series of mechanical and technical failures that marred his appearance before nearly 150 world leaders. In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump alleged that three separate incidents — an escalator malfunction, a teleprompter blackout, and sound system issues — combined to undercut his moment on the world stage. The president demanded an investigation, called for security footage to be preserved, and urged the arrest of those he claimed were responsible. Trump said the first disruption came as he and former First Lady Melania Trump rode an escalator on their way to the main floor of the UN headquarters. The escalator, he claimed, “came to a screeching halt,” nearly causing the couple to fall. He later described the sudden stop as suspicious and suggested foul play. The second incident, according to Trump, occurred moments into his General Assembly address, when his teleprompter went dark. Trump said he was forced to ad-lib his remarks for 15 minutes while technicians worked to restore the system. Finally, Trump alleged that delegates inside the hall were unable to hear him because of a failure in the sound system. “Not one, not two, but three very sinister events!” Trump wrote online, calling the disruptions “sabotage” aimed at undermining his message. United Nations officials quickly disputed the accusations. They said the escalator’s safety mechanism had been triggered, possibly by Trump’s own photographer, and emphasized that the teleprompter was operated by the White House, not the UN. On the sound issue, UN officials noted that speeches are delivered to delegates through headsets in six different languages, suggesting that any interruptions may have been due to equipment use rather than a system-wide failure. As of Wednesday, UN officials had not formally responded to Trump’s demand for an investigation or his call to preserve security camera footage. The allegations come as the Secret Service has already been operating under extraordinary pressure during this year’s UN General Assembly, which has drawn world leaders from nearly every major capital. Earlier in the week, the agency revealed it had dismantled a massive hidden telecom network spread across the New York area, one that investigators said could have blacked out cell service, jammed 911 calls, and unleashed chaos during the high-profile gathering. Agents seized more than 300 servers with over 100,000 SIM cards clustered within 35 miles of UN headquarters, describing it as one of the most sweeping communications threats uncovered on U.S. soil. Officials warned the system had the potential to disable cell towers and overwhelm networks with as many as 30 million text messages a minute. While investigators have not tied the system directly to the General Assembly, they said its presence underscored the vulnerabilities surrounding the event. Trump’s claims of sabotage put new scrutiny on the UN and the White House’s own event logistics. He characterized the disruptions as deliberate acts meant to humiliate him in front of foreign counterparts. “Triple sabotage,” he wrote, underscoring his belief that the malfunctions were too coincidental to ignore. The president also pressed the UN to turn over security footage from the building, raising the possibility of a confrontation over access to internal recordings. It […]
During a visit to southern Gaza City earlier today, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir urged Gazans to rebel against Hamas, saying the group is responsible for their suffering and that the war would end if it released the hostages and surrendered its weapons. Accompanied by Southern Command chief Maj. Gen. Yaniv Asor and other commanders, Zamir noted that most of Gaza’s population has already moved south for protection, and emphasized that the IDF is operating in Gaza City with large forces to defeat Hamas and secure the hostages’ release.
The IDF said Nahal troops discovered large amounts of weapons, military equipment, and IDF uniforms, and went on to destroy the compound used by hamas terrorists.
The IDF said that this morning Israeli troops discovered a crude rocket in the West Bank city of Tulkarem that had apparently been left in an open area for some time; police sappers disarmed the rocket, which had no motor, before taking it for investigation, and it remains unclear whether it had ever been fired.
The IDF released footage yesterday of a drone strike in Gaza City targeting Hamas operatives who it says were planting bombs to attack Israeli forces; troops from the 162nd Division identified the cell and called in an Air Force drone, and no Israeli soldiers were injured in the incident.
VP: “What we know is that in Dallas, Texas, an ICE facility was opened fire open by a violent left-wing extremist, a person who wrote anti-ICE messaging on their bullets. There’s some evidence we have that’s not yet public…They were politically motivated.”
After a two-week trial, a jury took just two hours Tuesday to convict Ryan Routh of trying to assassinate Donald Trump on a Florida golf course last year, a plot that was undone when a Secret Service agent spotted Routh and fired a shot that sent him running. Chaos ensued in the courtroom shortly after Routh was found guilty on all counts by a federal jury of seven women and five men. Routh tried to stab himself in the neck with a pen and officers quickly dragged him out. As he was removed, Routh’s daughter, Sara Routh, screamed: “Dad, I love you, don’t do anything. I’ll get you out. He didn’t hurt anybody.” She was escorted from the courtroom and later waited outside with her brother, Adam Routh. The pen Routh used was flexible, a design to prevent people in custody from using it as a weapon, according to a person familiar with the matter who could not publicly disclose details and spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity. Routh did not puncture his skin or otherwise hurt himself, the person said. After order was restored, Routh was brought before U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon. He was shackled and no longer in the jacket and tie he wore while representing himself at the trial. Cannon announced Routh will be sentenced on Dec. 18 at 9:30 a.m. He faces life in prison. Routh’s standby defense attorneys did not comment after the verdict. Following the verdict, Trump told reporters in New York that the case was “really well-handled.” “It’s very important. You can’t let things like that happen. Nothing to do with me, but a president — or even a person, you can’t allow that to happen,” Trump said. “And so justice was served. But I very much appreciate the judge and jury and everybody on that.” Assassination attempt was planned Prosecutors said Routh, 59, spent weeks plotting to kill Trump before aiming a rifle through shrubbery as the then-Republican presidential candidate played golf on Sept. 15, 2024, at his West Palm Beach country club. Just nine weeks earlier, Trump had survived an attempt on his life while campaigning in Butler, Pennsylvania. That gunman had fired eight shots, with one bullet grazing Trump’s ear. The gunman was then fatally shot by a Secret Service counter sniper. At Routh’s trial, Robert Fercano, who was a Secret Service agent helping protect Trump on the golf course, testified that he spotted Routh before Trump came into view. Routh aimed his rifle at the agent, who opened fire, causing Routh to drop his weapon and run away without firing a shot. Law enforcement obtained help from a witness who testified that he saw a person fleeing the area after hearing gunshots. The witness was then flown in a police helicopter to a nearby interstate where Routh was arrested, and the witness confirmed it was the person he had seen. Routh was charged with attempting to assassinate a major presidential candidate, possessing a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence, assaulting a federal officer, possessing a firearm and ammunition as a convicted felon, and possessing a firearm with an obliterated serial number. Routh told jurors in his closing argument that he didn’t intend to kill anyone that day. “It’s hard for me to […]
POTUS ON DALLAS ICE ATTACK: “This violence is the result of the Radical Left Democrats constantly demonizing Law Enforcement, calling for ICE to be demolished, and comparing ICE Officers to “Nazis.'” “The continuing violence from Radical Left Terrorists, in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, must be stopped.”
A gunman opened fire at an ICE field office in Dallas, killing one detainee and critically wounding two others before taking his own life, authorities said. The shooter, identified as 29-year-old Joshua Jahn, fired “indiscriminately” from a nearby rooftop, and investigators recovered bullets marked with the words “Anti-ICE” at the scene.
The Supreme Court said Monday it will consider expanding President Donald Trump’s power to shape independent agencies by overturning a nearly century-old decision limiting when presidents can fire board members. The justices have allowed the Republican president to carry out some high-profile firings while lawsuits play out, signaling the conservative majority is poised to overturn or narrow a 1935 Supreme Court decision that found commissioners can only be removed for misconduct or neglect of duty. The high court agreed to take up the case of Rebecca Slaughter, a Democratic member of the Federal Trade Commission who was reinstated by lower courts under a 90-year-old ruling known as Humphrey’s Executor. In that case, the court sided with another FTC commissioner who was fired by Franklin D. Roosevelt as the president worked to implement the New Deal. The justices unanimously found commissioners can be removed only for misconduct or neglect of duty. (AP)
