☕️ THE GOLD PLAN ☙ Tuesday, January 27, 2026 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

Gold and silver hit records and Trump repricing plan rolls; MN cools as Homan takes over; polls back mass deportations; GOP locks historic midterm convention; UK experiments with 15-minute cities.

Good morning, C&C, it’s Tuesday! It’s an intemperate Tuesday; maybe not as cold as “Snowmaggedon” levels, but believe it or not, even Sunshine Staters expect frigid temperatures down in the mid-50s today. Brr! In today’s roundup: gold and silver set records while media frantically tries to explain it away—but what’s really going on?; the magic, disappearing Fort Knox audit; Trump team’s repricing plan comes to life; Minnesota’s political temperature finally falls; Tom Homan sent to direct command in Minneapolis; Trump enjoys quadruple wins; polls show majority favors deporting all illegals; court wins; Signal-gate investigation; military base lent to ICE; off-ramps; Republicans confirm historic midterm convention — but was it reactive or part of a careful strategy?; and Great Britain (of course) tries out 15-minute cities to see how the oppressed citizens like it.

🌍 ESSENTIAL NEWS AND COMMENTARY 🌍

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Yesterday, Barron’s breathlessly reported that, “Gold Surges Past $5,000 for First Time, Silver Soars Again. Why They Can Keep Rallying.” This historic milestone was terrific news, but you wouldn’t know it from the story. If your only source is useless corporate media, you are drowning in a bathtub of lukewarm misinformation.

Surging! Soaring! And other dynamic verbs! Gold and silver have smashed historic records, floating like Chinese weather balloons right past the psychological price points of $5,000 and $100 an ounce, respectively. With no sign of any upper limit, I might add, and defying all inflationary metrics.

According to hotly disputed official U.S. inflation figures, $1 in 2016 is now only worth around $0.73. Thanks, Joe Biden! That figure is almost certainly understated. Most economists agree that the real rate of inflation over the last 10 years is at least 40%. As eye-watering as that number is, it’s not even close to explaining the recent explosion in gold and silver.

It was welcome news for the precious metals crowd, who are celebrating like drunken longshoremen whose ship finally came in, and gloating about how all their predictions for the last 25 years are finally coming true. Meanwhile, corporate media is dishing up a cafeteria of silly, speculative explanations, with about as much nutritional value as a strip-mall Asian buffet. Their stories offer loony and unpersuasive reasons like the Venezuela raid, FOMO, market panic, interest rate cuts, AI, Greenland, body positivity, the nation’s appalled response to Star Trek Academy, and cat scratch fever.

The real reason may be much more straightforward and fantastically better than all media’s nonsense. The price charts provide the best evidence. It seems likely that the prices of gold and silver were artificially suppressed for a very long time, probably by carefully calibrated pricing by mole-like bureaucrats in the Fed’s basement. I mean, just look at it.

Here’s gold:

Here’s silver:

Does that look natural to you?

So that’s one dot on the board. Next, remember all the buzz right after Trump returned to office last year, when DOGE was still big news, about how he and Elon Musk wanted to “audit” Fort Knox? ABC, March 5th, 2025:

Congress even began rumbling about funding a gold audit. But shortly after that initial Fort Knox chatter, all discussion of auditing Fort Knox abruptly ended —poof! Headline from Tavex Bullion, summer 2025:

— and then the prices of gold and silver launched like SpaceX rockets.

💰 To be clear, there is no direct evidence that an actual DOGE‑run audit uncovered any missing gold stores. In public, Treasury and the Mint insist that “the gold is present and accounted for.” We’re just connecting dots from up in the cheap seats, but the simplest explanation is that Trump gained some leverage, and whatever covert government agency was suppressing prices on precious metals stopped doing it— allowing these commodities to finally seek their natural prices.

It’s not a chemtrail-level theory. We know they can do it. The government has admitted to manipulating gold and silver prices before. But why would Trump lift the price controls? The answer is obvious.

One huge problem when Trump arrived was that China and the BRICS were buying up and hoarding underpriced gold and silver faster than Tolkien’s greedy dwarves. That needed to stop. But even more importantly, Team Trump had plans for the gold. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent publicly teased that he wanted to revalue and monetize our Fort Knox gold stockpile. Trump and Howard Lutnick suggested the extra money could seed a sovereign wealth fund.

Not to scale.

In other words, gold has always been a core part of Trump’s economic plan. And if re-pricing gold is in the plan —which would be easy and logical— it also seems logical they would first want to allow the price of gold to float back to market before undertaking any revaluation, to get the best possible price. It’s the Art of the Deal. Buy low, sell high.

Believe it or not, gold is currently valued on the nation’s books at only $42.22 an ounce ($11 billion total). Marking our 262 million-ounce stockpile to market would instantly create around $1.3 trillion in value. It would also stymie the BRICS, give Trump a vast financial playground, and be more accurate and realistic. Shazam.

Still, in all its overheated gold reporting, useless corporate media never mentions any of this significant background. Instead, media prefers to vomit up wild fantasies about anxious investors fretting over Trump’s Greenland deal and buying up gold to prepare for some whimsical apocalypse.

But —before they caught on that it was helping Trump’s plan— they were able to speculate about my proposed scenario. The Economic Times, February 24, 2025— before the gold surge:

See? It’s right there in the headline. Fort Knox was the key to the next gold explosion. But now that Trump’s plan is unfolding, reporters, mimicking Mr. Magoo, can’t see it at all. Thanks, media.

The most likely scenario is that Trump is doing exactly what he said he would and putting America first. Every additional dollar in the price of gold (and trailing along with it, silver) makes America stronger, regardless of whether any of us have personally buried bullion in our backyards.

But if you do have buried bullion, it’s even better.

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The developing Minnesota story took some interesting turns yesterday, surprising everyone who hasn’t been paying attention for the last twelve months. Politico ran the story, headlined, “Trump sends border czar Homan to Minneapolis, talks with Walz amid shooting scrutiny.” Suddenly, the political temperature is falling faster than the weather.

Tom Homan, Trump’s “border czar,” has now been placed in direct command of the ICE operations on the ground in Minneapolis. President Obama once gave Homan a presidential medal for his service. President Trump dragged him out of retirement and put him in charge of the border and the national deportation strategy. Homan is the country’s top immigration enforcement official.

Keeping the real issue front and center, White House spox Karoline Leavitt said yesterday that Homan would also assume command of the fraud investigations. Homan relieved Border Patrol Commander Greg Bovino, who will resume operations elsewhere.

In short succession, Trump then posted announcements on Truth Social yesterday that he’d had “good talks” with Minnesota Governor Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey. Anecdotal reports on X suggest that Minnesota police have begun cooperating with federal officials. In other words, they are de-escalating. This has led to wild speculation and hot takes about who backed down first —Trump or Walz.

One thing is clear: nobody saw this coming, especially not corporate media, which is classic Trump 2.0.

🔥 Fueling speculation that it was Governor Walz who backed down, the Administration enjoyed a dramatically good day yesterday, despite the media feeding frenzy around the Pretti-Good shootings. Here’s the mini-roundup of yesterday’s Trump wins:

• CNN ran four polls showing a majority of Americans agreed with the statement, “deport all illegals who are here immediately.” In short, Democrats lost the narrative, even their “compromise” narrative of pretending to agree on deporting criminal illegals.

• The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals stayed a lower court’s order barring federal agents from pepper-spraying or even interrogating unruly protesters.

• FBI Director Kash Patel confirmed on Sean Hannity’s show that a formal investigation is underway over local official involvement in a retarded Signal group coordinating Minneapolis protests. Some people should be sweating; potential charges include felony murder, which is involvement in any crime resulting in someone’s death.

• War Secretary Hegseth approved ICE’s use of Fort Snelling (near Minneapolis) as a forward operating base for ICE agents. This means protesters can no longer torture ICE agents at their hotels— and that Trump isn’t backing down. The Chronicle called it, “a sign of President Donald Trump’s Minnesota immigration siege digging in.”

That’s a lot of unconnected events, but if you add them together, it amounts to momentum. Or, in Art of the Deal semantics: leverage. So yesterday was an opportune moment for Trump and Walz to confer. I’m not saying he backed down, but within the last 17 hours, Walz tweeted twice about his “productive” call with President Trump, and ran a feisty op-ed in the Wall Street Journal— in which he insisted, for the first time, that Minnesota’s “Corrections Department honors all immigration detainers.”

We don’t know who blinked. And the politics of de-escalation require that no one know. But —just like with the Greenland deal— the off-ramp just magically appeared.

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Yesterday, ABC reported that, “RNC moves ahead with efforts to have midterms convention.” Political parties hold big political conventions during presidential election years to fire up the base, coordinate a national strategy, capture a news cycle, publish a party platform, and frolic like over-caffeinated beavers. Yesterday, the GOP confirmed a convention for the midterm elections. It’s never been done before. “An RNC midterms convention,” ABC said, “would mark the first time the party has hosted such an event in modern history.”

One reason it has never been done before is because conventions are fabulously expensive, so they usually only happen in peak fundraising years. That should tell you something about how serious Republicans are treating the upcoming midterms.

ABC failed to mention some critical context. This wasn’t some late-breaking idea to shore up sagging poll numbers. It is part of a plan. Trump teased the midterm convention last summer. The New York Times, September 16, 2025:

In early September, 2025, Trump tweeted, “The Republicans are going to do a Midterm Convention in order to show the great things we have done since the Presidential Election of 2024.” The only ‘news’ yesterday was that the RNC formally voted to authorize the fiesta grande. Not that you’d know from the media reports, which all tried to frame it as a desperate scheme.

The truth is that this historic, tradition-shattering midterm convention was conceived a long time ago— long before the Democrats chose affordability as the form of their Ghostbuster-like destructor. That’s one big marshmallow.

📈 Speaking of affordability, yesterday —on the opening day of tax season— the White House published a press release titled, “President Trump Delivers Largest Tax Refund Season in U.S. History.” You’re welcome.

It’s not just the White House. If you search for it, you can find the refund story buried deeply throughout corporate media. USA Today admitted, “This year, refunds could be as much as 30% more due to new provisions from President Donald Trump’s mega bill.” The WSJ reported, “Refunds on average are expected to come in $1,000 higher than usual this year.” CNBC said, “we’re expecting these changes to increase refunds by 15% to 20% on average.”

The outsized refunds come from two places. First, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act created historic tax exemptions for lower- and middle-income Americans, including new exemptions for tips, overtime, and Social Security. Second, although OBBBA’s tax exemptions were retroactive to the beginning of last year, payroll withholding rates weren’t lowered after the Act passed, “saving up” more money for refunds this season.

Those of us who last got a refund in the early 1980s won’t enjoy the windfall quite as much as millions of Americans who will be pleasantly surprised to see a significant extra dividend when they file their taxes this year. Most refunds are issued within 21 days of an accurate e‑filed return (using direct deposit). Expect a social media tsunami of people happy about the bigger direct deposits.

The midterm campaign has officially started. The war on affordability begins.

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Some bad ideas are very hard to kill. The World Economic Forum may be in full retreat, but its globalist cockroaches have scurried to more hospitable climates. Like not so Great Britain. On Sunday, the UK Telegraph ran a story headlined, “Labour opens door to ‘Stalinist’ 15-minute cities across Britain.” The sub-headline unnecessarily added, “Traffic restrictions for motorists will promote walking and cycling in city centres.” Welcome back to the Stone Age, morons.

Britain’s ruling Labour Party reversed a prior ban, unleashing local governments to impose so-called “15-minute city” ordinances. The first enthusiastic participant was the city of Oxford, where the city council promptly proposed to divide the city into six “15-minute neighbourhoods.” Residents will get little local passports, which ration a certain number of trips outside their designated living zones. After that, they’ll be subject to escalating fines. For now.

The idea, if you can call it that, falls apart under the most trivial examination. They’re not even doing it right. Fifteen-minute cities were originally a design template, for building new types of cities that would be divided into regions, with each region containing everything people needed —stores, government agencies, parks, stadiums, schools, churches. They would all exist within walking distance, in each little zone. Doesn’t that sound lovely? Lovely and collective? But what about when it rains?

Even in the scheme’s original formulation, it was never meant to be superimposed on existing cities, which, after all, weren’t carefully pre-planned by technocratic elites during construction to ensure that each area was the effective equivalent of every other one. But existing cities aren’t built that way. Which zone gets the shopping mall? The soccer stadium? The purse shop? The adult toy store? The reefer dispensary??

To make this work, to really equalize access and make sure every zone has a decent coffeeshop, local governments will need significant public intervention in land use, services, and labor and retail markets. They’ll have to shut down some redundant shops, and pay for other ones to move around. They’ll need to issue official monopolies to attract needed businesses, along with all the rent-seeking problems that brings.

And complaining —OUR park sucks compared to theirs!— will have to be diligently suppressed or at least carefully controlled, lest dangerous disharmony arise. Not to mention mal-information.

In other words, fifteen-minute cities necessarily require precisely the kind of dirigiste, Stalinesque collectivist overhead that critics claim will be required. And just wait till people realize that rich folks and politicians always wind up in the best zones.

The good news —for us, if not for our British cousins— is that somebody else is trying it first, so when it catastropically implodes, as it surely will, the cost of proving how profoundly dumb this idea is will be borne by Europeans and not Americans. Sorry, mates. Stiff upper lip, and all that.

The UK is practically sprinting toward Orwell’s dystopian future. The Abolition of Britain continues. Welcome to Oceania!

Have a terrific Tuesday! Clamber back here tomorrow morning, for a warming refill of essential news and commentary.

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