Found an abandoned car hanging on a cliff… @ooohhhjayyy

Earlier this morning the Supreme Court handed President Trump the biggest win — by far — of his entire career. Details here if you missed it: BREAKING: Supreme Court Hands Trump Biggest Win Yet, “Rogue Judges” and “Nationwide Injunctions” Clearly ILLEGAL! Shortly after the news broke, President Trump held a press conference and it was really incredible to see. So wonderful to see our POTUS happy and relaxed and taking a victory lap. Plus we learned a lot of new information too. So if you haven't seen it yet, watch here: If you'd rather just watch a quick summary, this one is pretty good. Watch here: FULL TRANSCRIPT: Well, we just heard a lot from the Trump press briefing on what just happened with Supreme Court injunctions, updates on Iran, updates on the Trump mobile phone. We'll talk about that as well. Uh, we’ve got updates on comments from or on Jerome Powell and trade. Pretty much hit all of the good stuff that you want to hear about. But first, uh, everybody's talking about what's going on with the Supreme Court ruling or the broad ruling today, along with some of the minor rulings and decisions that came out. Let's just give you a quick primer on this so you can understand why Donald Trump held this press conference and understand what's going on. So here's the scoop: You have district court judges in the United States that could want to favor the governors or the politicians in the states of which they operate. Uh, and so there have been rumors—and likely true—about what's called judicial shopping, where basically if you want to get some kind of ruling against people in the entire United States, just go shop for that decision and go to places like California, Massachusetts, Maryland, or Washington DC and get some kind of injunction that could apply to everyone. Today the Supreme Court said we are not doing that anymore. And this decision came amongst the discussion of ending birthright citizenship, Trump’s executive order on that, and the lawsuit related to that. Today’s decision did not end birthright citizenship. This is very important. What today’s decision did is have the Supreme Court say: “We will no longer allow universal injunctions to be imposed by district court judges that could be shopped throughout the United States to be applied to non-party members of a lawsuit.” So if you’re not a party to a lawsuit, the injunction can’t apply to you. So basically, you can’t have these blanket injunctions. It’s worth noting some history around this. Uh, President Obama did have about 12 blanket injunctions issued against him. George W. Bush had about six blanket injunctions issued against him by district court judges. And Joe Biden had 28 issued against him. If you add that together, you’ve got about 46 of these blanket injunctions that have come up against those three presidents together since 2000. Donald Trump has had 64 blanket injunctions against him. Now people argue: a) that’s because Donald Trump is being targeted by these radical left judges. People on the other side say Donald Trump issues way more executive orders than anybody else does, and he may be exceeding his executive power by doing so. The Supreme Court, however, has argued that it’s actually the district court judges that have exceeded their authority. Here’s some components—and I put these in the Meet Kevin app. So you can see these in the Meet Kevin app. Remember, the Meet Kevin app is totally free. You can get that. You see it under the news tab of the Meet Kevin app. It’s also what we use for course members to talk about the Alpha Report that we do every morning. Such as this morning—I suggested that Nike could rally up to $82 after these earnings here. Uh, and so far we’re already up 16% of the way there. So pretty impressive move here on Nike, and I think it could keep going up to the 82–84 range. Talked about that in the Alpha Report this morning. Check it out at meetkevin.com if you haven’t yet. That said, look at the components here of this case. Universal injunctions—and this is what was held—universal injunctions likely exceed (this was the holding of the Supreme Court) likely exceed the authority that Congress has given federal courts. So basically these district court judges have been determined by the Supreme Court to exceed the authority that they have—even though they’re claiming Trump is exceeding his authority. These district court judges are just going too far with blanket injunctions. So today we basically killed these universal injunctions that would apply to people who are not a party to the lawsuit. Now there’s some comments here that are interesting so you could see some of the decision-making that went into this. See here: Barrett, who wrote the majority opinion for the court, said that traditionally courts issue injunctions prohibiting executive officials from enforcing laws or policy only against plaintiffs to the lawsuit. However, recently district court judges have applied them to anyone in the entire United States. And they acknowledge that a lot of this came from this lawsuit that they’re still deciding and is likely to be decided by October, though Justice Roberts indicates that there will be more rulings coming out this Monday and Tuesday. Amy Coney Barrett suggests that the executive order that Trump issued on banning birthright citizenship takes issue with the “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” line of the 14th Amendment. That issue still needs to be decided. But really, the Supreme Court here is saying that what we look at when we look at precedent and history is: as a general rule, you can’t take an injunction that’s meant for parties of a lawsuit and apply it to people who are not a party of the lawsuit. And they come up with this example where they basically say: imagine you have a neighbor who sues another neighbor for blasting loud music at all hours of the night. If a judge orders the defendant to turn their music down or off, the order not only benefits the person who sued, but it benefits everybody around that person. However, that doesn’t mean that other neighbors can all of a sudden blast their music. Instead, you would have to have a new lawsuit against that other person who then blasts their lawsuit. And this is the example that they give to say: you can’t just blanket apply these injunctions to everyone. If somebody wants to be a part of these lawsuits, then they should—they should join these lawsuits. Now Sotomayor, in her dissent, says “Hey whoa whoa whoa whoa—you shouldn’t have to put people who are just trying not to be involved in illegal overreach by the president into a position where they have to sue to be a part of the protection of an injunction like this threat to birthright citizenship.” She says if one person says, “Hey the president’s going too far on birthright citizenship executive orders,” then everybody should benefit from somebody fighting the quote-unquote “good fight,” if you will. And then of course she goes on to say, “Hey a future administration might try to seize your firearms.” This is basically saying—maybe if there’s a Democratic president in the future, they might try to overreach their executive authority by taking away your rights, and people not essentially being able to challenge it unless everybody sues. Of course, ultimately I think what this does is it just consolidates more power into the Supreme Court’s hands. And I think that’s what Donald Trump sees as a big win here. He says, “Hey—we’re not saying birthright citizenship is decided. It’s going to be decided in October. We’re just saying that district court judges are going way too far in their power to limit the power of the presidency.” “If you’re going to limit the power of the presidency, it should be done at the Supreme Court level. That’s sort of my bottom line on this.” And again, we’re expecting more orders on Monday or Tuesday to come out, per Roberts. And we’re also expecting that birthright citizenship decision to come out between now and October. So it’s still TBD what’s going to happen with birthright citizenship. Donald Trump argues that birthright citizenship is just a way for people to basically pop out anchor babies. This is a very crude way to put it — to stay in the United States. I mean even Obama was trying to push for deferred deportations for parents of children who were born here. So basically, you come here, you have a baby, baby’s a citizen, and then Obama was pushing for the parents not to get deported because, well, they have a child there — try to prevent the separation of families. There was actually a blanket or universal injunction against Obama, and they were not able to implement that policy because one of these blanket injunctions. So both Democrats and Republicans have been affected by these blanket injunctions, and it really just pushes everything up to the Supreme Court, who's got a pretty busy docket already. But obviously Trump declares this a win even though it’s not a decision on birthright citizenship — that to come. It does indicate that you are taking power away that has sort of been usurped, if you will, from some of these lower district court judges. Okay. Kavanaugh also goes in here to say that you can ask courts to — once courts decide to — rather than issuing an injunction — to issue a classwide relief to an entire state, region, or even nation. But to not just have an injunctive ruling — to actually complete the legislative proc— or the — the um, uh — the court process, so to speak, and complete a case and then apply a ruling to an entire nation. You could still do that. But you can’t just issue an injunction, which injunctions are often filed within the first few weeks of a lawsuit without actually fully litigating a case. Donald Trump then came out and talked about trade a little bit. He says within the next two weeks we’ll send a letter on tariffs. He says that tariffs will not cause a recession. Anybody who thinks so should go back to business school. In that factories, autos, and AI are pouring into the United States. Uh, he also said that he almost canceled a trade deal with India and Pakistan because they were threatening each other — especially with nuclear weapons. Keep in mind we haven’t had a deal yet with the deficit nation on tariffs. We did just have the framework of a deal signed with China — which is basically, hey, we’ll lower some tariffs, we’ll allow the import of some rare earth materials. One of the reasons why MP Materials is going down today. Potentially The Metals Company might be affected by this as well to the negative side. But this is China’s agreement to allow six months of rare earth minerals into the United States in exchange for some relaxation of restrictions. Of course we don’t actually have a complete trade deal with China, though this is the deal we talked about two weeks ago in London that has now been formalized within the last couple days. And Donald Trump talks about another trade deal coming out with India soon. Though so far this is just talk. We haven’t seen an actual deal yet. Knock on wood we get a deal. As far as the July 9th deadline, Donald Trump suggests that we could extend that deadline. We could speed it up. But it’s not like a hard and fast deadline that this Liberation Day 2.0 is going to come July 9th. So in other words, don’t panic is what he’s saying. But he would like to just send a letter to a bunch of countries and say, “This is what your tariffs are going to be.” Now CNBC actually had a piece this morning where they talked a little bit about how parts of the economy are slowing down a little bit because of tariffs. In fact, we’re seeing warehouse levels down. We’re seeing inventory starting to slow down. And there’s some suggestion in the economy that some of the increase that we saw in spending and inventory buildup before and right after tariffs might just be temporary — which does indicate that there could be some slowdown in the economy. Now keep in mind, personal incomes did decline this morning for the first time since 2021. However, a lot of that was due to changes in government benefits — not actually in incomes from salaries or compensation. So I think that’s more of like a one-time anomaly and not necessarily a bad sign in the economy. Donald Trump does also then hit on Jerome Powell saying that Jerome Powell probably has Trump Derangement Syndrome because, uh, after all, you know Trump thinks that rates should be lowered. The problem here obviously is — are we going to see some form of pass-through of tariffs? Donald Trump thinks no. I personally think no, because I think it’ll get absorbed by corporate margins, which reduces corporate profits and potentially leads to layoffs. So my opinion is that the damage of tariffs won’t actually show up in higher prices — it’ll show up in higher layoffs, which means the Fed should kind of get with it and cut rates. Donald Trump says, “We’ve got no inflation and the jobs market is fine. Let’s just cut rates because there’s no inflation.” J-Pow says, “Hey, but the inflation is coming.” Obviously TBD what happens here. You know, some people like ZeroHedge — they had a piece where they argue that J-Pow is just sort of shell-shocked at the last time they didn’t respond to inflation appropriately with their transitory mistake, and that’s why they’re moving very slowly now. Though markets really seem to be propping up the idea of a September cut, including Kashkari coming out this morning suggesting, yeah, two cuts is probably where we’re going for the year — with our first cut in September. And so this is leading the bond market to see yields fall at least a little bit. Today the bond yields went negative again. They were actually green a little bit this morning when we first got data. But we see the 10-year is now under 4 and a quarter. And if you look at the 10–2 spread, we’re still in shock territory at about 52. Usually what happens here is if you start seeing unemployment pain, the 2-year is going to skyrocket — or sorry, plummetrather — which will make this spread between the 2 and the 10 skyrocket, and that’s when you typically hit recessionary environments. At the same time, there is some news here and reporting from the Financial Times that Trump Mobile has dropped its “Made in America” smartphone promise — that these phones will be made in America — that has been dropped. I actually made a video on what is it — just found maker of Trump phone and its stock — and it appears to be WingTech, which you could buy on the Hong Kong stock market, I believe. So you’d have to use like an Interactive Broker or Weebull — Weebull, Moomoo, or Webull — and it would be ticker 600745. WingTech as potentially a maker of the Trump phone. Then on Iran — Donald Trump says Iran wants to meet. Donald Trump has now proven that we have obliterated those sites. He says that no material was moved and that the trucks we’ve seen in satellite imagery were just pouring concrete and we obliterated that concrete. The concrete didn’t even have a chance to dry, says Donald Trump. And he says that we will insist on some form of inspections on uranium enrichment — whether it’s by the IAEA, the United States, or somebody else — but there will be inspectors. Now this is actually really good because Iran is claiming that they don’t want to allow the IAEA back in and that they want to continue enriching uranium. The United States is now being rumored to potentially offer up to $30 billion to Iran and to support Iran’s peaceful nuclear energy infrastructure program — by either paying them or helping them build it or subsidizing them or allowing more sanctions relief. Some people are calling this Obama’s JCPOA 2.0. I kind of think we need a JCPOA 2.0 — Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. It’s — I guess it’s JCPOA. There we go. Um, because it’s “of Action.” But anyway — I kind of think we need some kind of written deal because we do want to verify that Iran is either in a very limited capacity enriching uranium or no longer enriching uranium. We need to have some form of framework for inspecting that. Because as Donald Trump warned — if Iran enriches uranium again outside of some form of agreement with the United States — he was asked would you consider bombing Iran again, and he says, “Sure. Absolutely.” So this is the big concern if we don’t have a written framework. Is it possible that we could see more attacks in Iran at the same time as not having trade deals or tariff deals? Of course lots of things could go wrong. We knock on wood and hope that they won’t go wrong. Donald Trump says he’s not worried about secret sites. I think this is because a lot of people — including myself — have been talking about Pyramid Mountain, which is just two minutes away from Natanz, and has really been built up as a tool for potentially being an untouched nuclear enrichment facility for Iran. Donald Trump says he’s not worried — that Iran was bombed to hell and they’re not even thinking about their nuclear problems right now. They’re thinking about how they were bombed to hell. He also says that the Ayatollah thinks he won the war, but says, “Hey Ayatollah, you’re a man of faith. You should tell the truth. You got beat to hell.” Okay, so this gives us a little bit of a summary of what’s going on with Donald Trump and what he just said. Just taking a look at what some of y’all are saying in the comments here — somebody says, “All those first generation citizens look out.” One thing to think of too is — there was a question from Pam to Pam Bondi like, “Hey, are you going to start enforcing immigration cases against babies that are born here then?” And she reiterates that no, we just want to enforce against, uh, you know, criminals. But then again, we also know that ICE has been essentially rounding up a lot of people who aren’t criminals. And I — you know, I understand the point of view that this is very disruptive to families and to people who aren’t criminals and they’ve been taught to go through this sort of asylum process and court process here and now all of a sudden they’re getting kicked out. There’s a lot. Okay, so somebody says every president wants to lower rates during their term. Of course. It’s an easy way to sort of brag about an easy win — like, “I lowered car rates,” or “home rates,” or “credit card rates,” right? So totally reasonable. So bro, if he said it ain’t going to happen — the recession is bad for midterms. Politics overrule recessions. Look at Biden. Change the definition. No — Biden didn’t change the definition because the technical definition of a recession is two quarters of negative GDP. Biden just reiterated that the National Bureau of Economic Research determines whether we were actually in a recession or not. And so yes, we were in a technical recession, but they just reiterated that the NBER makes the official declaration of a recession because employment was still so strong in ’22. Which frankly, it was. We can’t really dispute the data. Now part of that may have been because of the stimulus that — you know — and the money printing that the Biden administration promoted and the government hiring that they promoted. But either way — hiring was strong and unemployment was falling. It makes sense that they didn’t end up actually declaring a recession. I get the jadedness of it all, but now we’re in a weaker position where, you know, the jobs market is slowing down. Vacancies are very high. If you don’t have a job, it’s very hard to get a job. And so the economy is definitely in a slower growth position right now, which is why I reiterate that, you know, we should be cutting rates. I understand why J-Pow doesn’t want to suffer the mistakes of the ’70s, but I do think he somewhat gambles with a recession — with that as a risk — by delaying his rate cuts. So let’s see here. What else. Biggest criminal was Trevor Milton and Trump gave him a pardon. This is true. Trevor Milton donated a few million dollars to Trump’s campaign and got pardoned by Donald Trump. It does show that innocence is for sale. That’s probably happened under other presidential administrations as well. But yeah, that was a pisser. It was really lame to see a fraud like Trevor Milton get pardoned for donating millions of dollars to Donald Trump’s campaign. I totally agree with that. Okay, what else do we have here. She didn’t answer the question. I think you’re talking about Pam Bondi not answering the question about “Are you not going to basically deport children then?” Uh, yeah. Right? She didn’t answer the question. So you’re 100% right about that. Which then is also kind of like questionable because it’s like, alright, so are you or are you not going to deport children, right? So yeah. I mean, good point. But then again we still don’t have a ruling on birthright citizenship. So we’ll see. But that kind of gives you a full recap.

The rumors have been circling for months — encrypted messages, sightings, leaked intel. Whispers that Jeffrey Epstein never died. That he’s still pulling strings from the shadows. Now, the wait is over. The truth is [...] The post Iran Releases New Epstein Tape Proving Israel is Threatening to Assassinate Trump appeared first on The People's Voice.

Chino Moreno and co will play the Other Stage this year, their first Glasto performance since 1998 – here’s how you can watch their set no matter where you are

Governor Gavin Newsom is suing Fox News for nearly $800 million. He claims that Jesse Watters defamed him over “lying” about a phone call. Specifically, Newsom is suing for $787 million, the exact amount of money Fox News settled in their lawsuit with Dominion. That’s deliberate. The lawsuit centers around the claim made by President […] The post A New Dem Stunt! Gov. Newsom Sues Fox for $787M appeared first on www.independentsentinel.com.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – In what she calls the “wild west” of obesity medicines, Missouri-based Amy Spencer is a pioneer. Each week, the mother of two injects herself with weight-loss drugs, two of which are in clinical trials and not yet approved for sale by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. One comes mixed with tirzepatide, the active ingredient in Eli Lilly’s Zepbound. Spencer, 50, is not part of any drug trial but mixes the cocktails herself, using tiny doses that she believes are safe. The total cost is about $50 monthly, as little as one-tenth of what she would expect to pay their makers for full treatment. The drugs – glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) weight-loss medicines – are manufactured and shipped from China, according to the packaging. She orders them through online vendors. Spencer belongs to a fast-growing group of Americans turning to what many call the “gray market” for obesity medicines, bringing cheap active ingredients from China, often labeled as for research purposes, according to import data and social media postings. It’s a trend that drugmakers Lilly and Novo Nordisk, which makes Wegovy, say is dangerous as well as illicit. JULY 4 SALE: Get Six Months Of DW+ Free Reuters tracked online forums and interviewed seven people who said they bought obesity medicines through this market, including an attorney in Arizona who works for a state insurance agency, a retired nurse in Illinois, and a Type 1 diabetic in Louisiana, who said the medicine helped cut her insulin intake by more than half. For more than a year there has been demand for cheap Chinese-made powders, exacerbated by limited health insurance coverage in the U.S. Buyers told Reuters the gray market received a boost from an FDA ruling last year that U.S. compounding pharmacies – outsourcing facilities that create drugs in shortage – must stop selling obesity medicines more cheaply than the companies that developed them. Shipments of such active ingredients from Chinese entities not registered with the FDA jumped by 44% in January from the previous month, according to research by the Partnership for Safe Medicines, a public health group focused on the safety of prescription drugs. It said its findings are likely an undercount, because unregistered vendors may not disclose that their parcels contain medicines. Packages valued at less than $800 that enter the U.S. under the de minimis rule are not included in the data. Nearly three-quarters of U.S. adults are overweight or obese, according to government estimates, but a survey by nonprofit health policy research organization KFF found only about 8% say they have taken medicine for weight loss. Most of the gray market buyers Reuters interviewed had told their medical providers they were taking GLP-1 medicines, but not where or how they bought them. Insurance coverage for weight-loss drugs has recently increased, but typically only covers branded versions, according to consulting firm Mercer. Many Americans have paid out of pocket for cheaper compounded drugs. Interest in taking small doses of the drugs has also spurred the online marketplace, buyers said. Taking to platforms including Reddit and Telegram for guidance, buyers import small quantities, often described as research materials, to sidestep regulatory scrutiny. They swap advice for navigating the market, exchanging information on vendors, shipping, and dosage, and sometimes clubbing together to cover the cost of testing the powders. One forum is called StairwayToGray. It has more than 21,000 members on Telegram and recently was gaining nearly 1,000 members weekly. It did not respond to Reuters’ inquiries, and blocked access to the forum after receiving them. It has a website where it says it does not facilitate group purchases. “This community is filling the gaps and being our own regulators, ensuring testing and access for everyone who needs it. Because you shouldn’t have to choose between your health or your wallet,” it says. Spencer stores her stocks in her fridge and makes them up in the kitchen – carefully measuring sterile water, rolling the vial between her fingers until the powder dissolves, and drawing the liquid into a syringe before injecting it into her thigh or belly. She has lost 24 pounds. “This is working so well for me. It’s so easy. It’s cheap,” said Spencer, who assumes her health plan wouldn’t cover the drugs. “I don’t know what I would do without this medicine.” “VERY DANGEROUS” In February, 38 U.S. state and territory attorney generals wrote the FDA seeking action against illegally sold weight-loss medicines, including “research purposes only” ingredients from China. “Much like with counterfeit versions, these active ingredients come from unregulated, undisclosed sources … and pose risks of contamination and inclusion of foreign substances,” they said. Shabbir Safdar, executive director of the Partnership for Safe Medicines, said unapproved drugs can have problems with sterility, purity, and consistency. “It can be very dangerous. You’re playing the role of your own doctor, pharmacist, and FDA inspector,” he said. Of those interviewed, only Spencer reported any problems: She once got her math wrong and overdosed, resulting in several days of severe flu-like symptoms. Lilly said it had taken many steps to address patient safety risks posed by the proliferation of unsafe or untested tirzepatide. The company said it is filing lawsuits, educating consumers, and working with social media companies to identify and remove posts that promote unsafe products, including those described as “research use only.” “We will continue to take action to stop those who threaten patient safety and urgently call on regulators and law enforcement to do the same,” a Lilly spokesperson told Reuters. Novo Nordisk also said it continues to take action against entities that violate laws and regulations and put patient safety at risk. America’s Poison Control agency, which maintains the nation’s poison data surveillance system and monitors GLP-1 exposures, said it could not reliably track cases involving unregulated “research chemical powders” because they are sold under various names and formulations. The FDA’s goal is to stop illegal sales of pharmaceutical medicines at the border, said George Karavetsos, former director of the FDA’s Office of Criminal Investigations and co-author of the imports study. But understanding the true nature and intended use of small parcels arriving from China can be difficult, and the FDA rarely seeks charges against consumers for personal use, he said. The FDA said it urges consumers to buy from licensed pharmacies and “avoid products of unknown quality,” adding it was actively protecting consumers by intercepting illegal products at ports, and warning companies that market unapproved weight-loss medicines, including those mislabeled as “for research purposes.” Although the forums show suppliers purportedly in China, Reuters was not able to verify where the drugs originate. None of the vendors responded to requests for comment. A Reddit spokesperson said the site prohibits facilitating transactions involving drugs and regularly shuts down groups found to be doing this. Telegram said it removes “more than a million” instances of harmful content each day, but did not comment directly. MICRODOSE MISTAKE Spencer has polycystic ovary syndrome and, for years, struggled with weight gain and hypertension. She decided to try obesity medicines after seeing claims on social media that microdosing them could give fewer side effects, and bought semaglutide, the active ingredient in Wegovy, from a compounding pharmacy for about $200 per month. She started on one-fifth of the lowest dose. Within days, intermittent joint pain she often suffered had dissipated: “I didn’t realize how badly I hurt until the pain was gone.” The cost would reach about $500 a month if she bought the drug from Novo, which recently introduced one-off discounts. After a week, Spencer said, her blood pressure dropped so low she thought she might pass out, so she stopped taking hypertension medicine. Her pressure stabilized, and she lost three pounds. She wanted to understand more about microdosing, and turned to the gray market last summer. On Reddit, users described how another Novo drug in development, called CagriSema, had helped reduce inflammation and hunger pangs better than semaglutide. CagriSema is Novo’s next-generation obesity drug candidate, still in clinical trials, so not available to the public. It combines semaglutide with another molecule, called cagrilintide, which intensifies the hormone-mimicking effects to regulate blood sugar and reduce hunger. Spencer was intrigued. She found a U.S. reseller saying they tested Chinese-made CagriSema through a third-party lab before selling it to Americans. On microdoses of CagriSema, Spencer could enjoy food in small quantities. “I could say ‘yes’ because I knew I was only going to eat four bites.” In October, Spencer saw on Reddit that tirzepatide might also reduce inflammation. She placed a new order for vials that contained cagrilintide and tirzepatide combined, dubbed “cagri-tirz.” Now, each Monday, Spencer injects herself with tiny amounts of cagri-tirz. On Thursdays, she uses retatrutide, a new obesity medicine by Lilly, also in trials. As she was switching to cagri-tirz, Spencer made a dangerous mistake. She calculated her new dosage without realizing the concentration of cagrilintide in the combined vials was 10 times higher than she had taken previously. “I was an idiot. I didn’t do my math. Or rather, I did the math for the tirzepatide but not for the cagri,” she said. Almost immediately, she began vomiting. The reaction was so severe that she had trouble moving. She forced herself to drink water but couldn’t eat. After four days, when symptoms lifted, she had lost seven pounds. Despite the blunder, Spencer didn’t consider returning to compounded versions of the drugs or abandoning them altogether. She is not regularly monitored by a healthcare provider, but says her treatment has led to a “life-changing” reduction in weight, joint pain, and blood pressure. “HONOR SYSTEM” Gray-market buyer Marie, 41, shows how do-it-yourself drugmakers are organizing. She describes herself as a “soccer mom” from the Midwest and asked to be identified by her middle name to protect her privacy. Last year, she bought a compounding pharmacy’s version of tirzepatide, paying about $470 monthly, and had lost more than 20 pounds when the FDA announced the ban on compounded weight-loss drugs. She began to worry about her supply. Browsing on Reddit, she discovered links to Telegram and a trove of detailed instructions from experienced users for buying weight-loss drug ingredients from China. Customers said they often paid with Bitcoin or through mobile payment service Venmo. After a month of closely following the forums, Marie made a purchase in January. The package that arrived contained 20 small glass vials of white powder with red caps. There were no instructions. The vendor who advertised the package on Telegram said it came from China. Marie returned to the forums and joined a group of 52 other customers who paid a total of $1,020 to a Tennessee-based company called Peptide Test. Six members mailed in a vial each, and the others chipped in their share of the fee. The lab found the samples were pure. Peptide Test declined to comment. “It’s an honor system,” said Marie. “These groups are very supportive in a way I haven’t seen on the internet before.” Before her first injection, Marie gave her husband details of what she had done. They agreed that if needed, he would disclose everything to the emergency medics. But she was fine. In March, Marie volunteered to organize testing a new order of tirzepatide. The group formed on Telegram after users received vials from the same vendor, which they judged to be from the same batch based on the color of the caps. In all, 38 buyers agreed to chip in for the $1,300 bill, and decided by poll that five vials would be enough. Five people sent drugs to the lab, Janoshik Analytical in the Czech Republic, which found the vials contained tirzepatide, as purported, with purity between 99.78% and 99.85%. Janoshik’s CEO, Peter Magic, is a former amateur weight-lifter. He said his company started out more than a decade ago testing performance-enhancing drugs for online buyers. Last year, it tested 3,050 samples of obesity drugs, up from just over 650 samples in 2023. “We’re testing hundreds of these every week,” said Magic, whose company helps customers navigate customs requirements for shipping chemicals. (Reporting by Robin Respaut in San Francisco and Maggie Fick in London; additional reporting by Patrick Wingrove in New York; edited by Sara Ledwith and Michele Gershberg)

WASHINGTON — The United States is terminating trade discussions with Canada for the time being, President Donald Trump announced on Friday, citing the country’s digital services tax on American tech companies. The president made the announcement in a Truth Social post following a Friday afternoon press briefing at the White House. “We have just been informed that Canada, a very difficult Country to TRADE with, including the fact that they have charged our Farmers as much as 400% Tariffs, for years, on Dairy Products, has just announced that they are putting a Digital Services Tax on our American Technology Companies, which is a direct and blatant attack on our Country,” Trump shared. “They are obviously copying the European Union, which has done the same thing, and is currently under discussion with us, also,” he said. “Based on this egregious Tax, we are hereby terminating ALL discussions on Trade with Canada, effective immediately.” United States President Donald Trump speaks at the White House Press Briefing room in Washington DC., United States on June 27, 2025. (Photo by Celal Gunes/Anadolu via Getty Images) “We will let Canada know the Tariff that they will be paying to do business with the United States of America within the next seven day period,” he added, concluding, as always, “Thank you for your attention to this matter!” JULY 4 SALE: Get Six Months Of DW+ Free The president’s announcement comes after the United States put levies on Canadian goods after he took office this year, a move which prompted Canada to put tariffs on American exports. Canada is the largest importer of American exports, while the United States is Canada’s biggest trading partner. Prime Minister Carney’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Daily Wire. During his press briefing on Friday afternoon, the president celebrated multiple wins throughout the past week, including Supreme Court opinions on birthright citizenship and parental rights. In a 6-3 ruling, the Supreme Court said lower courts do not have the unilateral authority to block Trump’s agenda, allowing Trump to try to end birthright citizenship in some parts of the country while legal challenges against his order proceed in others.