2 months ago
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PULSE POINTS:
❓What Happened: The globalist magazine The Economist has defended Marine Le Pen’s right to run for office, recently stripped away by a court ruling.
👥 Who’s Involved: The Economist, Marine Le Pen, French courts.
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📍 Where & When: The article appeared in The Economist on April 1.
💬 Key Quote: “The aim should be to punish the offender without also punishing French democracy,” the magazine argues.
⚠️ Impact: One of the major media outlets for globalists, the stance could reflect a shift against the lawfare deployed against populists in recent years.
IN FULL:
The globalist magazine The Economist has come out to defend populist French politician Marine Le Pen, who has been barred from running for office in France for five years and placed under house arrest for two years. The sentences came after Le Pen and several other members of her party, the National Rally, were found guilty of supposedly misusing European Union (EU) funds while serving as Members of the European Parliament (MEPs).
The magazine questions whether Le Pen should be barred from running for office in the upcoming 2027 presidential election, noting that she is the current leader in the polls.
“The danger of courts aggressively sentencing politicians is that both the law and the courts become seen as partisan. Judiciaries rely on citizens accepting verdicts with which they disagree,” the magazine warns. Barely half, just 56 percent, of the French public believe Le Pen was treated in an unbiased manner.
While the magazine argues that Le Pen should serve two years of house arrest, it states that she should be allowed to run for president in 2027. “The aim should be to punish the offender without also punishing French democracy,” the magazine states.
The court ruling to ban Le Pen from running for office comes after she and other National Rally members were found guilty of embezzling European Union funds by using EU-funded parliamentary assistants to perform domestic party work. Le Pen argued that the charges were bogus lawfare, as parliamentary assistants are “political assistants to elected officials, political by definition.”
Many observers, including liberal journalists, have noted that parliamentary assistants performing political work is commonplace in the European Parliament, meaning Le Pen was almost certainly singled out for her political views.
A 50-year-old man has been arrested after apparently attempting a suicide car bombing in the Netherlands on Thursday morning. The unnamed suspect’s car burst into flames in Amsterdam’s Dam Square, where a Ukrainian from the partially Russian-controlled Donetsk region carried out a mass stabbing last Thursday.
Video footage from the scene shows the suspect emerging from his blazing vehicle, on fire, and rolling on the ground in an attempt to put out the flames. Later video footage shows him shuffling around the square, still partly on fire, until law enforcement steps in and douses him with fire extinguishers.
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Police say they “suspect that the driver caused the fire himself,” but a motive for the possible attack is unknown or undisclosed as of the time of publication. He is described as a Dutch national, although his ethnic and religious background is unclear.
The authorities report no injuries to bystanders are known, although some eyewitnesses describe glass flying “into our necks” when the car’s windows blew out.
Last week, a Ukrainian named Roman D. carried out a mass stabbing in the same square, wounding five people, including a 67-year-old American woman and a 69-year-old American man, before he was detained by bystanders, including a British tourist who pinned him down until police arrived.
The Ukrainian reportedly had bogus papers for multiple false identities, and an investigation into his possibly terroristic motives is ongoing.
BREAKING:
Video of the moment the failed car bomb exploded at the main square in Amsterdam, Netherlands.
A car is on fire after a small explosion. The police believe it’s a deliberate attack.
It’s the same location where 5 people were stabbed a few days ago. pic.twitter.com/6xmudcjXE4
— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) April 3, 2025
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A 50-year-old man has been arrested after apparently attempting a suicide car bombing in the Netherlands on Thursday morning. The unnamed suspect's car burst into flames in Amsterdam's Dam Square, where a Ukrainian from the partially Russian-controlled Donetsk region carried out a mass stabbing last Thursday. show more
PULSE POINTS:
❓What Happened: Christine Grady, a bioethicist at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the wife of Anthony Fauci, was notified of a layoff amidst a restructuring at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
👥 Who’s Involved: Christine Grady, Anthony Fauci, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., NIH officials including Clifford Lane and Emily Erbelding.
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📍 Where & When: The layoffs were announced on Tuesday; related locations include NIH and Indian Health Service field offices in Alaska, Montana, and Minnesota.
💬 Key Quote: An NIH official described Grady as “a good person with a major conflict of interest,” referring to ethical challenges faced during the suppression of the Wuhan lab leak hypothesis.
⚠️ Impact: The restructuring could mean significant changes in administration at NIH.
IN FULL:
Christine Grady, a prominent bioethicist and the wife of controversial former National Institutes of Health (NIH) official Anthony Fauci, is among several health officials who received layoff notifications on Tuesday, according to reports. This move comes as part of a post-pandemic restructuring effort by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), led by Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
These layoffs aim to consolidate administrative roles and modify what has been perceived as an ineffective status quo in the U.S. health administration. Alongside Grady, Clifford Lane, deputy director of clinical research and special projects at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and Emily Erbelding, director of the Division of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, have also been dismissed.
Like her husband, Grady is controversial. In 2002, she co-authored a paper with him arguing for lower care standards for medical trial participants in the Third World. During the COVID-19 pandemic, in which her husband played a prominent role, she published a paper defending the ethics of corporations “pressuring employees to get vaccinated” and “embarrass[ing] vaccine resistors,” and pushed for children to be enrolled in vaccine trials.
An NIH official cited a potential conflict of interest involving Grady, stating her marriage to Fauci impacted the ability of NIH to address ethical issues openly, especially on critical episodes like the Wuhan lab leak—which he denied or minimized for years.
Anonymous comments by an NIH source revealed that Grady was caught in a “conflicted role” due to her personal ties. “One of the problems when the coverup was going on of the Wuhan lab leak, that whole fiasco, was that they were not listening to anyone giving ethics advice,” the source explained. “If they had had someone at the table with knowledge of this, they would have said: ‘Hey do you want to play it this way, or be more transparent?’… That’s something Christine Grady could have, or should have, done. She wasn’t able to do it because she was Fauci’s wife.”
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President Donald J. Trump has announced a series of new tariff rates at his administration’s “Liberation Day” event at the White House Rose Garden, including the imposition of a 10 percent across-the-board tariff on all foreign imports. In addition to the 10 percent blanket tariff, Trump is set to impose a series of targeted trade levies on imports from 60 nations—with the tariff rate often being set at half that which the targeted country places on American exports as an act of generosity.
“My fellow Americans, this is Liberation Day. April 2nd, 2025 will forever be remembered as the day American industry was reborn, the day America’s destiny was reclaimed, and the day that we began to Make America Wealthy Again,” Trump said. “For decades, our country has been looted, pillaged, raped, and plundered by nations near and far, both friend and foe alike. American steelworkers, autoworkers, farmers, and skilled craftsmen—we have a lot of them here today—they really suffered gravely; they watched in anguish as foreign leaders have stolen our jobs; foreign cheaters have ransacked our factories, and foreign scavengers have torn apart our once beautiful American dream.”
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The America First leader went on to note: “We’re also standing up for our great farmers and ranchers who are brutalized by nations all over the world. Canada imposes a 250-300 percent tariff on many of our dairy products.”
Among the countries and regions facing additional tariffs above the 10 percent blanket rate are China, Vietnam, Taiwan, Japan, India, the European Union, South Africa, and South Korea. Notably, Chinese imports will be hit with a tariff rate of 34 percent and Indian goods will be tariffed at 26 percent.
Notably, Brexit has spared the United Kingdom, which faces only the base rate of 10 percent, from the 20 percent tariff imposed on the European Union.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 2, 2025
Jack Montgomery contributed to this report.
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President Donald J. Trump has announced a series of new tariff rates at his administration's "Liberation Day" event at the White House Rose Garden, including the imposition of a 10 percent across-the-board tariff on all foreign imports. In addition to the 10 percent blanket tariff, Trump is set to impose a series of targeted trade levies on imports from 60 nations—with the tariff rate often being set at half that which the targeted country places on American exports as an act of generosity. show more
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