And it did with the headline index rising from 48.9 flash and 44.8 prior to 49.5 (but that was below the 50.0 expectation)...
Both Current Conditions and the Expectations Index also rebounded with the former outperforming...
Consumer sentiment confirmed its early-month reading, rising about 10% above May as gas prices moderated.
"Increases were seen across income, wealth, and political affiliation," Joanne Hsu, director of the survey, said in a statement.
Expected business conditions over the next five years surged 16% as consumers’ worries over long-term consequences of the Iran conflict appear to be easing.
"Still, sentiment remains in unfavorable territory at 13% below the February 2026 reading prior to the start of the Iran conflict, and nearly 20% less than a year ago."
Year-ahead inflation expectations inched down from 4.8% in May to a still-elevated 4.6% this month.
The current reading substantially exceeds the 3.4% reading seen in February before the Iran conflict began, along with all 2024 readings.
Long-run inflation expectations fell back from 3.9% last month to 3.3% in June, remaining a bit higher than the 2.8% to 3.2% range seen in 2024.
A gauge of consumers’ perceptions of their personal finances also improved from May, though remained close to the lowest since 2009.
Even so, US household demand has proved resilient.
However, “the cost of living remains at the forefront of consumers’ minds,” Hsu concludes.
“Over half of consumers spontaneously mentioned that high prices are weighing down their personal finances.”
German business news outlet Manager Magazinreports that Volkswagen CEO Oliver Blume is eyeing a major restructuring that could eliminate as many as 100,000 jobs. The latest VW earnings show just why: Europe's largest automaker remains bloated in a world of weak demand, a softening Chinese market, rising Chinese competition in Europe, and low margins.
"Volkswagen CEO Oliver Blume is getting serious. He plans to drastically intensify job cuts, actually phase out production at four German plants, and spin off the VW brand into a new company. Volkswagen is to become a new company," Manager Magazin wrote in the report.
If fully implemented, the 100,000-job reduction would eliminate about 15% of Volkswagen's current global workforce of 650,000. Bloomberg data shows VW went on a hiring spree between 2008 and 2020.
The U.S. has become increasingly irrelevant to Polestar's growth story.
The Geely-backed EV maker said Thursday that it is "increasing its strategic focus on Europe," where much of its growth is now centered. The shift follows a decision by the U.S. Department of Commerce's Bureau of Industry and Security not to authorize Polestar to sell future model-year vehicles in the U.S. under connected-vehicle rules aimed at limiting Chinese-linked technologies on American highways.
"This follows a decision from the U.S. Department of Commerce's Bureau of Industry and Security to not grant Polestar an authorization under the current Connected Vehicle Rule to sell vehicles in the U.S. from model year 2027 onwards," Polestar wrote in a statement.
Polestar said that 94% of its retail sales volume in the first quarter of 2026 came from ex-US markets, and that, following the US Commerce Department's connected vehicle rule, it is now "increasing its strategic focus on Europe."
Update (11:55am ET): While today's announcement by Dubai that the UAE was under missile attack proved to be a false alarm, the US ceasefire it nonetheless becoming increasingly unstable. Following yesterday's attack by Iran drones on a cargo ship next to Oman, we were wondering how long until Trump responds (and how), and he did just that moments ago when he posted on Truth Social that Iran shoting "at least four One Way Attack Drones at Ships transversing the Strait of Hormuz" is "a foolish violation of our Ceasefire Agreement."
However, Trump's post follows earlier reports that the US and Iran had set up a deconfliction hotline involving precisely such events in the Gulf, so we doubt that there will be much if any follow through from this latest round of jawboning, especially now that Trump is set on maintaining the flow of oil through Hormuz as much as possible, which has allowed oil to tumble to pre-war levels.
* * *
With each week and month that passes since the start of Trump's Operation Epic Fury, more and more reports have come out revealing the massive extent of damage to US military facilities in the Mideast region based on Iran's retaliation across the region.
This is often based on fresh satellite imaging and analysis, despite US government pressure for these research entities to refrain from publishing such data, and to censor open source photographs. After a series of deep investigative reports, it has been proven time and again that the Pentagon and Washington officials have been downplaying and covering up the real extent of devastation caused by Iranian missiles and drones.
More fresh reporting in the Wall Street Journal once again adds confirmation to this, referencing satellite imagery which shows far more serious damage at a key naval base in Bahrain than the US has publicly acknowledged.
The damage is said to be bad enough that the Pentagon is mulling shrinking its troop presence there and elsewhere in the Gulf, including a potential reduced troop footprint in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Iran is hailing this reported pullback as a significant strategic victory produced by its retaliation.
Unnamed officials were cited in the report as saying American forces could retreat as far westward as Israel, after some bases essentially became unusable or uninhabitable altogether.
The U.S. Navy base in Bahrain was repeatedly targeted between late February and June. Strikes that got through caused extensive damage, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of satellite imagery, social-media footage and interviews with current and former servicemembers—damage that the Pentagon hasn’t publicly acknowledged. Hit hard were the command headquarters and at least a dozen other buildings, along with two satellite communications terminals.
The military said no one was killed at the base, known as Naval Support Activity Bahrain, and that the strikes didn’t significantly impact operations. The U.S. evacuated most personnel but has kept a small staff on the ground.
Notably in Bahrain the headquarters building for the US Navy in the Middle East was struck and seriously damaged, along with sensitive communications centers being destroyed.
But here is a key, somewhat unexpected line in the Journal report: "The extensive damage done to America’s sole naval base in the Middle East - along with hits to at least 20 U.S. sites across the region, including military installations and diplomatic facilities - has the U.S. re-evaluating its entire footprint in the region, according to U.S. officials familiar with the deliberations.
This means that damaged structures and bases may not be rebuilt at all, and the sites may just be abandoned as future key US military hubs, WSJ says.
The draw-down of expensive Pentagon comms centers could include from Bahrain: "The military is now considering revamping the base in Bahrain, reducing the U.S. presence in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia and moving some bases or base functions west, farther from the reach of Iranian missiles and drones, according to the officials familiar with the deliberations," WSJ writes.
Reconstruction costs would be staggering, per the same report:
The Center for Strategic and International Studies estimated in a report published Tuesday that the total cost of the war was about $40 billion. That estimate included their calculus of $2.2 billion to $5.1 billion in damage to U.S. bases, based on structures that CSIS identified as damaged.
The Journal used satellite images and social-media footage to identify which buildings on the Bahrain base were damaged. To estimate what it would cost to construct buildings of the same types today, the Journal reviewed a publicly available Defense Department cost model as well as procurement reports. The estimates only cover construction, and don’t include other costs that could factor into the total if the buildings were to be rebuilt, such as debris removal and reinforcement.
"The estimated construction costs at NSA Bahrain totaled about $400 million," it continues. But ultimately a draw-back from these locations would be based on the proven reality that Iran can easily hit them at any time.
Some further implications to all this are that in any future flare-up or even return to all-out war between the US and Iran, American forces would find themselves executing a conflict much further away from the theatre itself. For example, dozens of major Air Force refueling tankers have already had to be relocated far away from the Gulf, to places like Tel Aviv. Many were destroyed in the opening weeks of the war while parked at Gulf airfields, clearly over-exposed as it seems Iran knew exactly where to target.
Back in late March, US officials admitted to the NY Times that Iran's significantly retaliation damaging US bases was "a war that is much harder to prosecute."
Principal ripped after apologizing to students for lesson on recognizing antisemitism
A middle school principal in Massachusetts reportedly sent an email to seventh-grade students apologizing for an educational session on antisemitism after he said families told the school that the lesson made some students feel “unseen.”
In a letter circulating on social media attributed to Johnny Cole, principal of William Diamond Middle School, a public school in Lexington, Mass., he wrote, “A few weeks ago, your class participated in a session about antisemitism, connecting the learning you had done in social studies class about the Holocaust to the modern world.”
“The goal was an important one: to help you recognize hate, understand where it comes from and encourage you to speak up against it,” he wrote.
“We have learned from speaking to some of your families that the experience did not feel that way to you,” Cole stated. “Some of you felt unseen. Some of you felt like your own history, your identity or your community was left out or erased.”
“We are sorry,” he wrote. “We are sorry because every one of you deserves to walk into this school and feel that who you are matters—Arab students; Jewish students; Lebanese students; Muslim students; Palestinian students—every student. And in this case, we missed the mark and did not achieve what we hoped to.” (JNS sought comment from Cole.)
Deborah Lipstadt, former US antisemitism envoy, stated that the principal’s email is emblematic of “the toxification of Jewish history, life and community, making it untouchable.”
Trisha Posner, founder of AntisemitismWatch, agreed, stating, “This is how they will try to erase Jewish history.”
“First, they denied it,” she wrote. “Now, they try to avoid teaching it because Arab and Muslim students are offended. In this way, they can push the false narrative of genocide in Gaza and ignore the real Nazi genocide of European Jewry.”
The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis condemned the principal’s apology and urged Lexington Public Schools to “take concrete action, including establishing a clear and unified process for reporting and responding to hate and bias incidents, strengthening instruction on Jewish history, culture and identity and providing staff with substantive professional development on recognizing and confronting contemporary antisemitism.”
“It should be common sense that Holocaust education is not an affront to any student’s identity, and it is not something for which a school should apologize,” said Kurt Schwartz, CEO of CAMERA.
Schwartz pointed to past incidents at the school, including swastikas drawn in a boys’ bathroom, as well as the principal confronting a Jewish student who was wearing a sweatshirt with an “anti-Nazi message.”
“Leadership should be responding with moral clarity, not suggesting that the act of teaching about the Holocaust has somehow ‘missed the mark,’” Schwartz said.
The Lexington Observer published a letter to the editor from the student, Teagan Murtagh, an eighth-grader at the school, on June 17.
Murtagh claimed that Cole stopped her in the school hallway to ask her not to wear a sweatshirt to school that read, “Save the bees. Plant more trees. Clean the seas. Punch Nazis.”
She said that she wore the sweatshirt to “silently fight back against antisemitism in my school,” and that the principal told her that students had complained about feeling threatened by the words on her sweatshirt.
Murtaugh, who is the great-granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor, wrote that “this is a school where students drew neo-Nazi symbols on the bathroom walls in December and the only schoolwide response was a statement on the announcements telling us to be kind.”
An illegal alien has been sentenced to eight years in federal prison for his involvement in an $89 million fraudulent payroll scheme that saw illegal alien construction workers and their employers evade taxes.
“Today, we held an illegal alien from Honduras accountable for a brazen scheme that stole more than $38 million from American taxpayers to facilitate the employment of illegal aliens,” Assistant Attorney General Colin McDonald said.
“This case exposes how unchecked illegal immigration fuels widespread payroll tax fraud and underground economies that harm American workers and taxpayers,” McDonald said. “This sentence sends a strong message: Those who exploit our open borders, cheat the U.S. Treasury, and violate federal laws will face justice.”
Department of Justice (DOJ) officials detailed how the illegal alien helped operate the payroll scheme through several maneuvers to ensure that illegal construction workers were kept off the books:
According to court documents and statements made in court, from 2015 to 2022, Mario Flores, of Honduras, an illegal alien, conspired with others to create a series of shell companies to run an unlicensed check cashing and cash courier service business. These shell companies cashed approximately $89 million in checks from subcontractors in the construction industry, charging them a percentage of the dollar amount of the checks they cashed as a fee for this service. Through this scheme, construction contractors and subcontractors paid their workers in cash without withholding and paying required payroll taxes, allowing them to operate without regard to the workers’ legal authority to work in the United States. Flores also caused the filing of false tax documents with the IRS to conceal the scheme.
…
In addition, Flores and his conspirators defrauded workers’ compensation insurance companies by leasing their certificates of insurance to contractors and by providing false and fraudulent information to the insurers about, among other things, the number of workers covered by the insurance and the amount workers were paid.
“Homeland Security Investigations is committed to protecting the integrity of our financial system and enforcing our nation’s laws,” HSI’s John Condon said. “Those who orchestrate large-scale payroll tax fraud and facilitate the illegal employment of unauthorized workers will be held accountable.”
Flores pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government and one count of conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business.
Flores’s co-conspirators, Iris Villafranca, Osman Zapata, and Francisco Alvarez, were previously sentenced. Those sentences range from four to 17 years in federal prison.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com.
“Weak and pathetic Congressman Dan Goldman just lost, BIG!” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “I guess people didn’t like him illegally targeting President TRUMP.”
A few days ago, I wrote an article for our VIPs, updating you on some of the various efforts the Donald Trump administration and our South and Central American allies are taking to pursue the cartels and narco-terrorists who flood our region with drugs and violence. You can check it out here: Boats Down, Tons Seized: Let's Check In On the Region's Anti-Narco Activity.
A lot of these stories don't make MSM headlines, but they're happening nearly weekly (I already have more to share in the days ahead). We are literally blowing up or intercepting narco-boats filled with drugs, taking down major drug trafficking players on land, and stopping the flow of substances, like fentanyl, into our country.
We already know that Joe Biden tried to turn our border into a free-for-all and treated narcos with kid gloves, but now, we're learning it's even worse than we imagined.
According to a new report out by the Associated Press, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) "permitted hundreds of thousands of fentanyl pills to hit the streets of New Mexico between 2023 and 2025." Essentially, the agency knowingly allowed the drug to hit U.S. communities, so it could focus on going after bigger fish.
This was confirmed by current and former DEA agents and government records. Here's more:
DEA agents repeatedly monitored shipments of fentanyl pills — but did not seize them — as federal prosecutors sought to bring bigger criminal cases against traffickers of a synthetic opioid that the White House last year designated a 'weapon of mass destruction.'
Agents and experts, however, said the tactic amounted to a gamble with public safety that potentially imperiled communities in and around Albuquerque and may have violated U.S. Justice Department rules intended to safeguard the public.
'We poisoned our community to make cases,' DEA Special Agent David Howell told AP in a series of interviews in New Mexico. 'Through our own willful blindness, we get to say, ‘We don’t really know what happened to the drugs.’ But we 100% got people killed.'
The DEA has long contended it would not be plausible to seize every shipment of every drug. But the strategy of allowing staggering amounts of counterfeit painkillers to hit the streets shocked several veteran agents who spoke with AP.
Ridding the streets of illicit fentanyl, manufactured mostly in Mexican labs, became the DEA’s top priority over the past decade as overdose deaths surged. At the same time, its lethality — a few milligrams can kill the average adult — upended time-tested tactics that had been used to combat drugs like cocaine and heroin. Those methods have included allowing drug transactions to be completed so agents might follow the narcotics through the supply chain. Fentanyl, however, is so dangerous that the Justice Department developed guidelines for agents in such circumstances, encouraging them to seize the opioid whenever 'practicable.'
As we all know by now, the United States suffered one of its worse drug overdose epidemics in history during the Biden years, and fentanyl, primarily produced by Mexican cartels using Chinese precursors, was the main cause of death. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), approximately 105,000 people died from drug overdoses in 2023 and nearly 80,000 of those deaths involved opioids. Between 70 and 75% of those opioid deaths involved fentanyl. In January 2024, the DEA declared it the "leading cause of death for Americans between the ages of 18 and 45."
Border Patrol and the DEA grabbed record amounts — over 27,000 pounds in 2023 — but experts say they only caught 10 to 20% of what was coming across the border. DEA testing in 2023 also revealed that seven out of 10 pills tested contained a potentially deadly dose of fentanyl.
New Mexico is one of the states that's been hit the hardest by the drug crisis, with communities in Albuquerque and rural areas taking the brunt of it. The AP report suggests that shipments, including one with 74,000 pills, delivered to a mobile home park in Albuquerque, were monitored and not seized. It also suggests that up to 1.8 million pills were allowed into the streets, while Biden's DEA focused on other cases.
New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham issued a response on Wednesday, saying she's appalled by the decision. She said, in part:
Shockingly, the federal government stood by while monitoring shipments, tallying exact pill counts, and watching as these deadly drugs hit the streets.
There are no words to describe how reckless and dangerous these decisions were. Make no mistake: the DEA knew people would die if these pills made it into New Mexico communities, and the agency let it happen anyway. The result: hundreds of New Mexican parents burying their kids. Hundreds of New Mexican kids growing up without stable parents. All while the federal government stood by.
If the justification for letting these pills flood our communities was that it would somehow make New Mexico safer down the road through bigger eventual busts, the results say otherwise. New Mexico now leads the nation in the increase in overdose deaths for the second straight year, despite deaths dropping nationwide.
Today, I wrote to Attorney General Raúl Torrez and asked him to investigate whether any federal agents broke state law when they allowed lethal drugs to remain on our streets, and to prosecute anyone responsible — regardless of whether they are a federal agent or not.
I have spent years working across two administrations — writing letters, traveling to Washington, meeting directly with President Joe Biden and his cabinet, pushing for accountability, asking for more federal agents to be deployed to New Mexico to help fight this crisis.
She added a list of actions she's taken to fight the crisis.
On June 21, 2022, I wrote to FBI Director Christopher Wray, imploring the FBI to assign no less than 50 additional agents to New Mexico to stem escalating drug trafficking and violent crime.
On September 15, 2022, I wrote to Attorney General Merrick Garland, requesting that the Department of Justice provide additional federal agents, resources and support to New Mexico law enforcement. We asked the department to match the level of investigative, analytical, and technical resources the FBI had deployed in its Buffalo, NY surge.
On August 8, 2023, I wrote again to Attorney General Garland, renewing my request that the DOJ expeditiously assign more federal agents to New Mexico.
On September 7, 2023, I wrote to Attorney General Garland for a third time, reiterating my request once more federal law enforcement support to curb violent crime, drug and human trafficking.
On September 4, 2025, I wrote to Attorney General Pam Bondi, once again requesting additional agents and resources.
I have declared the surge of drugs like fentanyl to be a public health emergency. I have deployed the National Guard to both Albuquerque and Española. While my administration was doing everything we could to stem the tide of fentanyl coming into our state, the federal government deliberately allowed it to flood in.
New Mexican lives are not the federal government’s cost of doing business.
I plan to hold the federal government accountable for this disaster and will explore every possible avenue of action against the federal government to right these wrongs.
Across the aisle, Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) has vowed that he will find out just how many lives were lost due to this "scandal of the highest order." Good luck, Senator. It would be nice to know just how much the Biden administration's negligence in many areas cost the people of the United States, but I have a feeling it will take years to figure it all out, if we ever do.
Keep these in mind as you contemplate the direction of the American government over the past 50 years and especially since the Obama election.
The Goals of Communism
(as read into the congressional record January 10, 1963, from "The Naked Communist" by Cleon Skousen)
1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.
2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.
3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament of the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.
4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.
5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.
6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.
7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.
8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.
9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.
10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.
11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)
12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.
13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.
14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.
15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
18. Gain control of all student newspapers.
19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.
21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."
24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy."
27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch."
28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."
29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."
31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.
34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand.
39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use united force to solve economic, political or social problems.
43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.
44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.
45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.
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