☕️ TOLD YOU SO ☙ Tuesday, June 24, 2025 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠
World War III dodged as Iran strike fizzles; SCOTUS hands Trump big win; Shellenberger exposes regime-change plot; MAHA dominates; Kennedy, Oz push health reform; Disney bathroom uproar erupts; more.
Good morning, C&C, it’s Tuesday! Your roundup includes: World War III averted as Iranian strike situation plays out exactly as we expected; media shocked; SCOTUS dishes up another major win for the President and leftist judges throw black-robed tantrums; Michael Shellenberger connects the dots and the deep state’s treasonous regime-change operation is caught in the crossfire; MAHA rocks the week’s news cycle; more good news for East Palestine as Kennedy shows full engagement; Kennedy and Dr. Oz announce major and long-overdue voluntary health insurance reform; big food agrees to voluntarily drop chemical dye additives from American snacks and cereals; and the culture wars collide in the ladies’ room at the Magical Kingdom.
🌍 WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 🌍
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If you only came here to see me take another victory lap for being right again, well, settle in. Yesterday, the New York Times ran a shocked —shocked!— story headlined, “Trump’s Cease-Fire Announcement Catches His Own Top Officials by Surprise.” Somehow it caught everyone else by surprise, too, but somehow we were able to connect the dots. Weird.
On Saturday, the U.S. military flawlessly executed a perfect, around-the-world-in-one-night mission, making a stealth bombing run from an American airbase to drop precision bunker-busting bombs on three nuclear sites in Iran. Hot takes ensued, and infuriated conservative influencers ruined relationships (see, e.g. Tucker Carlson v. Ted Cruz; neither man showed up well).
But here at C&C, we slightly expanded our historical lens and wondered whether we might be watching another Trump deal aimed at resolving an ‘impossible’ political peace problem by trading stage punches. After all, Trump did it before, during Trump 1.0, and it worked well.
For our efforts, we were sneered at, but we did not take it personally. Much.
As it turns out, yesterday —after considerately waiting 24 hours to give the US a full day’s advance notice— Iran launched missiles at several evacuated Gulf-area military bases. There were zero casualties and the new strikes had little or no effect. That is, no effect beyond the real objective— allowing the mullahs to advertise a massive counterstrike to “punish” the Americans for their silly vanity strikes on Tehran’s “undamaged” nuclear facilities.
Then, as a walk-off eagle, President Trump dropped a cease-fire (soon broken, but still) that he’d already brokered between the two furious enemies— even before the charred husks of shot-down Iranian missiles had completely cooled off:
In other words, the ‘warmonger’ defied expectations and once again brokered peace, for about the tenth time in five months since taking office. It’s a messy peace, and it may take a few tries to stick the landing, but the off-ramp from war has been constructed.
The only problem is, Trump made it look easy.
🚀 Media, bless their black little hearts, pivoted immediately from the miracle —that Trump almost effortlessly avoided World War III when most had lost hope— and is now carping about the terms of the instant cease-fire. Rather than marvel over the miraculous appearance of an end-stage, which sprang into existence so quickly it caught “his own top officials by surprise,” corporate media complained about being left out of the loop.
They would probably complain if they were hung with a new rope.
Even many conservatives seem confused: if peace were possible, why did we even bomb Iran in the first place? That’s like wondering why we need to incarcerate so many criminals when the crime rate is so low. The strikes created the off-ramp, paving a way to something that seemed politically impossible. Trump isn’t a strongman, but he can speak the dialect.
Yesterday’s best conservative reaction, unfortunately rare, was posted by terrific covid doc Mary Talley Bowden, the lanky and graceful Houston Methodist refugee:
Mary, a true pandemic hero, was right to (sort of) apologize. I hope that next time, before turning on each other like starving hyenas, influencers will remember they don’t know all the details, and leave each other a little space. Have opinions! Just stay humble and don’t call people who disagree names and cast them into outer social media darkness.
Anyway, we’ll see how things play out from here. It is completely typical for hard-won ceasefires to take a few tries before they grip. Indeed, Trump’s first reaction on hearing the mutual accusations by the two countries against each other of broken agreements was like a frustrated parent (adult language warning: the President drops an F-bomb):
CLIP: President Trump appears frustrated with both children, I mean sides (0:59).
While I was penning today’s post, the President announced the deal is back on.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
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SCOTUS strikes again, and now it’s apparently time for leftist judges to begin defying their own High Court. Yesterday, ABC ran a story headlined, “Supreme Court allows Trump to resume speedier 3rd-country removals but Boston judge says detainees in Djibouti still protected.”
In the latest victory for the Trump Administration, yesterday SCOTUS lifted a nationwide stay on summarily deporting criminally convicted illegal aliens to unpleasant foreign destinations that the government chooses. A Boston district judge, Brian Murphy, had enjoined the removals because, he said, each illegal must be given notice and a chance to get free NGO lawyers and tie their cases up for years in legal red tape.
The Supreme Court’s short decision did not explain its reasoning. But the three liberal justices scrawled scathing dissents, all but accusing the majority of crowning Trump as King of America. For his part, Judge Murphy threw a tantrum and promptly entered another order, again blocking the eight men from removal to Sudan, this time under a different theory and citing a previous order on his docket.
Hilariously, in his terse, one-sentence order, he also cited Sotomayor’s dissent— a judicial non-starter.
In response, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller accused Judge Murphy of rank insubordination. “Expect fireworks tomorrow when we hold this judge accountable for refusing to obey the Supreme Court,” Miller promised Fox News.
The dissents were goofily priceless. "This Court now intervenes to grant the Government emergency relief from an order it has repeatedly defied," Justice Sotomayor snarled. "I cannot join so gross an abuse of the Court's equitable discretion."
Trina Realmuto, executive director of a pro-illegal NGO, was horrified. She sobbed, “The ramifications of Supreme Court's order will be horrifying; it strips away critical due process protections that have been protecting our class members from torture and death.” Maybe they should have considered that before they came here and victimized Americans.
My best guess is that, with Murphy technically defying the Supreme Court’s order, the Administration will likewise defy Murphy, and resume nationwide deportations per SCOTUS. This case touches a key part of the Administration’s mass deportation strategy: the deal.
The deal is: self-deport and we’ll fly you anywhere you want. But if you stay, and we catch you, you’ll go someplace you won’t like very much. In leg irons. Not a joke, as the good old Cabbage would say.
In that sense, criminal illegal aliens already have notice. They can relocate themselves outside the U.S. and then enjoy whatever due process they want. Sue to get back in if they want. Just stop complaining about it.
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More major puzzle pieces fell into place this week, as investigative journalist Michael Shellenberger dropped a blockbuster story on Public, under the headline, “Both USAID And The CIA Were Behind The Impeachment Of Trump in 2019.” Regime change at home. This also explains why President Trump targeted USAID starting on Day One, and savaged the rogue agency like a pit bull getting after a toy poodle.
Impeachment 2.0 rested on a single ‘whistleblower’ complaint delivered to Congressional Democrats about Trump’s alleged “quid pro quo” with one Vladimir Zelensky, Ukraine’s intolerably smug Martial Law Administrator. The so-called ‘whistleblower’ was a leftover Obama-era CIA analyst still embedded in the White House. That’s your first CIA connection.
The whistleblower’s report was itself completely founded on reporting by an “independent investigative journalism” outfit with a bureaucratic mouthful of a name, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, handily acronymized as OCCRP.
OCCRP was a “soft power” (regime change) arm of USAID, receiving most of its funding from the U.S. State Department, which we have learned is bursting at the seams with CIA agents. We know OCCRP was a soft-power USAID tool because, in a 2024 German documentary, a USAID official confirmed it, saying USAID “approves OCCRP’s annual work plan” and “approves new hires of key personnel.”
The German documentary was subsequently memory-holed under pressure from the State Department. But copies remain.
In the now-deleted documentary, Drew Sullivan, co-founder and head of OCCRP, bragged that the “independent” organization had “probably been responsible for five or six countries changing over from one government to another government… and getting prime ministers indicted or thrown out.” That’s regime change; the classic definition.
We can now see a straight line drawn between CIA/USAID and Trump’s impeachment, running right through OCCRP. If you suspect that turning America’s regime change operation inwards at a sitting U.S. president constitutes treason, many people would agree.
This story isn’t going away. The chips are being set on the board. Players, place your bets.
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MAHA is having a pretty big week. First, there was more good news for East Palestine, Ohio. “This is our first effort to fix that and get justice and get relief for the people of that region,” Kennedy told News Nation’s Chris Cuomo this week. Justice.
Last week, the NIH announced the terrific news that it would start a series of studies on the impact of 2023’s ecologically catastrophic train crash in East Palestine, Ohio. I speculated that this would provide residents with badly needed evidence for their claims. RFK agrees. He told Cuomo, “We’re gonna document them at NIH using gold-standard science, and that’s going to be something that the people of East Palestine have not had before.”
“Doing these observational and longitudinal studies will document their health impact,” Kennedy explained. “Once you get that documentation, a number of other remedies become available. Those include making the companies pay for their treatment and doing medical monitoring programs that force the company from now on to take responsibility for those health impacts.”
One of the most puzzling parts of the East Palestine disaster has been the near-total silence of so-called “pro-environment” groups. Where are they? This crisis was tailor-made for them. Goodness, it’s almost like they aren’t really about the environment at all.
These studies should have been conducted years ago. Anyway, I’m reminded of Samwise Gangee, who asked Gandalf in stunned amazement, “Is everything sad going to come untrue? What’s happened to the world?” Indeed.
🩺 Yesterday, Reuters ran another very encouraging story headlined, “US health chief Kennedy gets pledge from insurers on prior authorization reform.”
CLIP: Kennedy explains drastic reform of insurance pre-authorization (0:39).
“Pre-authorization” is the bureaucratic equivalent of asking your jailer for permission to unlock your own handcuffs, after you’ve already been thrown into the back of the van. It’s a maddening insurance ritual where, before you get that MRI, surgery, or life-improving treatment, you or your doctor must first send a polite little message to the insurer begging, “Pretty please, may I use the policy I pay you for?”
It’s like a medieval drawbridge guarded by a somnolent scribe who only checks his scrolls on Thursdays. If your request doesn’t use the exact right incantations —procedure code 27447, subparagraph (c)— the bridge stays up and your treatment stays locked down. Never mind the urgency, the medical need, or the fact that your kneecap is currently moonlighting as a paperweight.
In short, pre-authorization is not insurance. It’s Kafkaesque permission-based medicine, wrapped in red tape and faxed to a disconnected number nobody checks anyway.
When RFK began speaking yesterday, he explained that during the presidential transition, he learned the single most important thing he could do to improve the patient experience in America was to “end the scourge of pre-authorization.”
Yesterday, Kennedy and Dr. Oz met with the nation’s biggest health insurers, who all pledged to “take additional measures to simplify their requirements for prior approval on medicines and medical services.” The pledges included six key reforms aimed at “cutting red tape, accelerating care decisions, and enhancing transparency for patients and providers.”
Dr. Oz explained, “There shouldn't be paper, there shouldn't be faxes, there shouldn't be letters being sent. They should all be done digitally and automatically, and 90-day continuity should exist for authorizations when patients switch insurers, so you never fall through the cracks again.”
Rather than every insurance company having its own pre-auth process, which drives nurses bonkers (Kennedy said it can consume half their workdays), the six top insurance providers agreed to develop a standardized electronic process, and to drastically cut the number of types of claims needing pre-authorization in the first place, perhaps by up to two-thirds.
Carrots and sticks. Dr. Oz concluded the event saying these voluntary pledges were just the beginning, and if insurers fail to deliver, HHS will step in. “If the insurance industry cannot address the needs of preauthorization by themselves, there are government opportunities to get involved,” he warned.
Progress!
🩺 Last week, USA Today ran another great MAHA story headlined, “Kraft Heinz, General Mills to remove all artificial dyes from food products.”
A reckoning has come upon the candy-colored kingdoms of Kool-Aid and Jell-O. In a MAHA move that was part detox and part PR jiu-jitsu, Kraft Heinz and General Mills just declared artificial food dyes — the petroleum-based pigments that make kids’ lunches look like radioactive crime scenes— to be persona non grata.
By 2027, the familiar fluorescents —Red 40, Yellow 5, and their whole chemical crew— will be banished from Kraft Heinz’s entire portfolio. That includes all the nostalgic suspects: the unnaturally orange mac & cheese, neon green Jell-O cubes, and magenta Kool-Aid smiles. General Mills is on the same timeline, draining the technicolor from Trix, Gushers, and any other hue-hyped offerings still hanging on in school cafeterias.
PepsiCo, Tyson, and Mars have also joined the chromatic retreat. Skittles may still encourage you to taste the rainbow, but by year’s end, it may be more earth tones than electric lime. Goodbye titanium dioxide.
Who knew all they had to do was ask firmly? They’re making it look easy.
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The culture wars march on, this time right through the ladies’ room at Walt Disney World. The Hindustan Times ran the story under the headline, “Lilly Tino's viral Disney bathroom selfie sparks investigation: How much prison time TikToker could face.”
The controversy sprouted from a series of viral TikTok selfies posted by self-designated “trans activist” Lilly Tino, 31, born Nicholas Contino, as he 'rated' women's bathrooms in Florida’s not-so-Magic Kingdom.
Despite Disney having “gender-neutral restrooms” (called “companion restrooms”), Tino invaded the women’s restrooms anyway. In a public post documenting his perverted experience, he explained that he’d “peed standing up,” an obvious sign to anyone but mental patients that he was probably in the wrong place.
Disney has taken no action against Tino, like banning him from the park. Oh, the Mouse is playing dumb, but it knows about the situation; it refused a request for comment from The Federalist, for example.
Yesterday, Florida’s Attorney General James Uthmeier announced a state investigation into “Lilly” Tino's photo tour of women’s restrooms at Walt Disney World, which is almost certainly a crime under the state’s privacy laws. The AG’s announcement didn’t specify which crime they’re considering, but Video Voyeurism (Fla. Stat. § 810.145) springs to mind.
Florida’s video voyeurism statute criminalizes intentionally using any device to secretly observe or record people in situations where they have a reasonable expectation of privacy, specifically including restrooms. And Mr. Tino is no princess.
Even if Tino were filming himself, the presence of unconsenting women and girls clearly visible in the background —particularly in a location as sensitive as a bathroom— triggers this statute. A third-degree felony, it carries up to 5 years in prison and up to a $5,000 fine.
Mr. Tino might plead down to Disorderly Conduct (Fla. Stat. § 877.03), a second-degree misdemeanor, and still face 60 days in jail. Barring a rare and uphill exception, it would be men’s jail.
It was also more bad news for the remaining scraps of Disney’s anemic public relations. Regardless of the park’s legal liability, Tino’s TikToks shatter the illusion. Parents expect Disney bathrooms to be safe, private spaces, especially for their children. Seeing an adult biological male snapping selfies in bathrooms near their daughters, bragging about peeing from a standing position, and then posting the film online is a bad look.
I’m not his lawyer, but I would still suggest Mr. Tino not make any jail TikToks. Possession of a Cell Phone in a Correctional Facility (Fla. Stat. § 944.47(1)(a)) would be another non-magical felony.
Have a terrific Tuesday! The tour of essential news sprinkled with sarcastic commentary resumes right back here tomorrow.
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Congrats to Donald Trump for solving world peace through strength.
Worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize!
Next up: please get of the virus^^^ I mean vaccine industry.
"They can relocate themselves outside the U.S. and then enjoy whatever due process they want. Sue to get back in if they want."
Damn right. If you are caught robbing a bank, you don't get to keep/spend the money until your trials and appeals are exhausted.