America’s July 4th Nightmare: Technical Default, $5 Trillion Debt Bomb, and ICE’s ‘Gestapo’ Budget Surge
Red, White, and Ruin: U.S. Technically Defaults, ICE’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ Goes Full Gestapo, $5 Trillion Debt Tsunami
4th of July Op-Ed by Jon Little intern Mr. Carmine Lombardi
America is standing on the edge of a financial abyss, and the illusion of stability is shattering.
The Federal Reserve never solved the root causes of the 2008 crisis—it simply papered over the cracks with cheap money and bailouts. Now, the bill has come due: $37 trillion in national debt, with $11 trillion set to roll over at much higher interest rates this year alone.
The result? Exploding interest payments, record bank losses, and a commercial real estate market in historic default, with over 11% of securities failing—worse than the darkest days of the last crash.
Jobs are vanishing by the hundreds of thousands, ( Layoffs in 2025 have hit 744,308 workers) e.g. tech giants like Microsoft, as AI replaces human labor. Unemployment and layoffs are surging, while banks are drowning in unrealized losses. The U.S. is fighting on three geopolitical fronts—China, Iran, Russia—while the stock market teeters, propped up by a handful of overvalued tech behemoths.
Investors are dumping U.S. Treasuries, and the only buyer left is the Fed itself—a technical default in all but name.
Imagine a school raffle where the only tickets sold are to students and teachers: that’s the U.S. bond market today. - Jon Forrest Little
The world is waking up to the “great taking”—the silent confiscation of wealth through inflation, devaluation, and financial repression. The reckoning is here, and denial is no longer an option.
Project 2025: The Blueprint for American Autocracy
America finds itself at a pivotal moment. Project 2025, crafted by the Heritage Foundation as a comprehensive plan for a potential second Trump administration, is far more than a typical policy proposal. It represents a sweeping vision to reshape the federal government, centralize authority, and fundamentally transform the nation’s democratic institutions.
What Is Project 2025?
Officially titled “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise 2025,” Project 2025 is an extensive, nearly 900-page manual and personnel strategy authored by former Trump officials and conservative activists. The plan is built on four main pillars. First, it offers a detailed policy guide for the next administration, outlining agency-by-agency overhauls. Second, it includes a “Conservative LinkedIn”—a database of loyalists prepared to fill federal positions. Third, it proposes a Presidential Administration Academy to train these appointees in the exercise of government power. Finally, it provides a 180-day playbook designed for immediate and sweeping executive actions.
The overarching aim is to replace career civil servants with ideologically vetted loyalists, dismantle existing checks and balances, and ensure that every aspect of government serves a hard-right agenda.
The Leaked Database: Ideological Purity Over Merit
A recent leak of more than 13,000 Project 2025 applications has revealed the true nature of the initiative: it prioritizes ideological purity over competence. Applicants were required to disclose their political beliefs, influences, and positions on issues such as immigration. The database, published by DDoSecrets, exposes a movement more concerned with loyalty tests and purges than with public service. As one whistleblower observed, Project 2025’s inquiries into applicants’ beliefs replace the ideal of meritocracy with a far more dangerous demand for ideological conformity.
The “Big Beautiful Bill”: ICE’s Budget Explosion
If Project 2025 is the brain, the so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” is its muscle. This proposed legislation would increase the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) budget from $2 billion to an astonishing $45 billion—a more than twentyfold jump. To put this in perspective, ICE’s new budget would surpass that of the Marine Corps, rival the infamous Gestapo in scale, and make previous detention efforts seem minor by comparison.
The plan would allow ICE’s detention budget alone to reach $45 billion by 2029, enabling the agency to detain more people than the entire federal prison system. Funding for deportation and removal operations would also surge, with billions allocated for new agents, aircraft, and mass deportations. The total immigration enforcement package is estimated at $150 billion over four years, a sum that exceeds the military budgets of all but fifteen countries worldwide. This is not simply about border security; it is the creation of an infrastructure for mass surveillance, detention, and deportation on a scale never before seen in American history.
Comparing WWII German Concentration Camps and Trump’s "Alligator Alcatraz"
The Nazi concentration camps of WWII were sites of unimaginable horror—designed for mass imprisonment, forced labor, and systematic extermination of millions. These camps symbolized state-sponsored terror, dehumanization, and genocide. Trump’s "Alligator Alcatraz," a remote migrant detention center in the Florida Everglades, evokes chilling echoes of this dark history.
Surrounded by deadly wildlife (alligators and poisonous snakes) and harsh conditions, it is a stark symbol of cruelty and exclusion, designed to detain and deport vulnerable migrants en masse. While not extermination camps, the facility’s isolation, harsh environment, and purpose of mass detention reflect a disturbing authoritarian impulse to control and punish, raising urgent moral and human rights concerns
Economic Carnage: Jobs Lost, Hopes Shattered
While the architects of Project 2025 pursue their agenda, the American economy is suffering. In June, the private sector lost 33,000 jobs, defying expectations of a 100,000-job gain and marking the first monthly job loss in over two years—a troubling sign of deeper economic issues.
The damage extends further. Layoffs in 2025 have already affected 744,308 workers, the highest midyear total since the darkest days of the pandemic. Job cuts are hitting federal agencies, retail, tech, and nonprofits alike, driven by cost-cutting, automation, and the chilling effects of new immigration and trade policies.
The Commercial Real Estate Collapse: The Next Domino
Beneath the surface, a silent crisis is unfolding in the U.S. commercial real estate market. Office mortgage delinquencies have reached a record high of 11.1%, surpassing even the levels seen during the Great Financial Crisis. Nearly $1 trillion in commercial mortgages will mature this year, with many owners unable to refinance due to higher interest rates and declining property values. Defaults are accelerating, posing risks to banks, pension funds, and the broader economy.
This is not a temporary setback but a systemic unraveling, fueled by remote work, e-commerce, and a government hamstrung by dysfunction and debt. The Federal Reserve faces a dilemma: cutting rates could spark inflation, while raising them could trigger a wave of defaults. There is no easy solution.
The Real Agenda: Power, Not Prosperity
Project 2025 is not about restoring American greatness. Its true purpose is to consolidate power, silence dissent, and construct an apparatus of control. The leaked database, the dramatic increase in ICE’s budget, the economic turmoil, and the real estate collapse all point to a deeper problem: the abandonment of democracy in favor of an illusion of order.
Americans now face a critical choice. Do we want a government that is of, by, and for the people, or a regime that rules through fear, exclusion, and force? The answer to this question will shape the nation’s future, and the time to act is now.
Fight Back Against Financial Tyranny: Buy Silver
In a world where fiat currency schemes and fractional reserve banking crush workers between the relentless pressures of inflation and taxation, silver stands as a powerful act of resistance. Unlike paper money manipulated by central banks, silver is a tangible, finite asset with intrinsic value. After 45 years of consolidation, silver is breaking out, poised to deliver life-changing wealth to those who hold it. Buying silver is not just an investment—it’s a stand against the financial shenanigans that erode your purchasing power. In uncertain times, silver offers security, sovereignty, and a real hedge against the collapsing monetary system.
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