Tim Donohue

[Alexander Stahel 🌻 @BurggrabenH]

I doubt the barefoot hike. I'm no fan of the Christopher Columbus complex, and I happen to admire elites who develop a country rather than exploit one. So let me explain what is actually going on here.

I did, among others, property across Eastern Europe during my years at Babcock & Brown, and I spent the better part of a decade fighting a court case in Romania against people who tried to defraud my land title. I won. And here is the lesson I paid for: the one thing that separates an investable Eastern Europe from an uninvestable one is European Union membership. It is the guardian of the rule of law in an otherwise wild East, the easiest place in the world to lose your money.

That is the lens through which I read what is happening on Sazan Island.

You see, there was a time when Western elites saw themselves as custodians of institutions, rules and the places they touched. That instinct is fading. What remains too often is the Columbus reflex: arrive by yacht, "discover" land that people already know perfectly well, and treat the rules as obstacles reserved for everyone else. And then have the wisdom to go on camera and brag about it. Jesus. No wonder Albanians are now on the streets in their thousands.

"We were on a friend's boat and stopped for a swim. That's how we found it. We swam to the island. We went on a hike, barefoot all the way up to the top, and we were just captivated."

What she "found" has been there for millions of years, in the Adriatic, not "the Mediterranean." It has a name. Sazan Island sits where the Adriatic meets the Ionian: a former military base, Italian and then Cold War, including a Soviet submarine base, inside a protected national marine park that has been open to the public since 2017 via boat tour from Vlorë. An island crawling with snakes, including the nose-horned viper, Europe's most venomous. So much for the barefoot hike.

Nothing was discovered, and nothing justifies any entitlement. Quite the contrary.

What actually happened is that Jared Kushner set out to cash in on his father-in-law's temporary power as President of the United States. That status means precisely nothing in Switzerland, with its seven centuries of direct democracy and institutions no outsider can buy. But it means everything to a weak man like Albania's prime minister, Edi Rama, cornered at home, courting Washington, and now under criminal investigation for how his government handed this deal away. Kushner understands that asymmetry perfectly. And he wants to exploit it. Period.

In Albania, he can. Albania is chronically bureaucratic, the long tail of its communist heritage, a home-grown Stalinism so absolute it broke even with Moscow and sealed the country off from the world. That legacy is the same one that ran, and still runs at times, from Sarajevo to Tirana, from Bucharest to Belgrade: decades of one-party rule that hollowed out the courts, the press and property itself, and left a vacuum filled by the personalised, strongman power of a connected few. It is the soil in which corruption flourishes, and Albania's greatest vulnerability.

And on that soil, in one of Europe's poorest countries, the island's protected status was suddenly changed in December 2024, in the weeks between Trump's election victory and his inauguration. Just like that. The public-tender rule was bypassed. "Strategic Investor" status went to a Kushner-linked SPV before the inauguration: no business plan, no feasibility study. Wonderful. Because Ivanka "discovered it". Right? Wrong.

A country vulnerability like that can be met in two ways. A responsible investor sticks to the rules and ties his fortunes to the country's long-term development, because that is what makes returns durable in the first place. And that will take a lot of time and upfront investment, with a highly uncertain reward. That's called risk-taking.

A powerful one, on the other hand, willing to bend the rules, as this deal suggests the Trump family is content to do, sees only something to exploit.

The subsequent damage runs far deeper and longer than a few harmless bungalows built without a proper concession. What is happening here is that Kushner is becoming part of the problem that corrodes Albania's path into the European Union. That is the real issue here. Just like the issue when JD Vance travelled to Europe and openly campaigned for illiberal politicians while lecturing Europeans about democracy. Who do these people think they are? Guardians of democracy?

Consider what the Albanian path actually looks like right now. The Balkans, like much of post-communist Europe, are chronically corrupt. But they are also full of people fighting to turn their countries toward something better, and EU accession is the single most powerful tool they have. It forces the one thing that actually develops a country: predictable rules, secure property, contracts that hold, and the credible belief that the same rules apply to everyone.

That belief is what brought the great wave of investment into Poland. Its absence is why Romania and Bulgaria remained under special monitoring for years after accession. The rule of law that eventually held in that Bucharest courtroom, and saved me, exists because membership forced it into being. Brussels learned the lesson. Today enlargement runs on a "fundamentals first" basis.

Which is exactly where Albania stands.

Last month it became only the second candidate after Montenegro to clear those rule-of-law benchmarks, with the EU's own enlargement commissioner describing SPAK, the very prosecutor now investigating this deal, as the country's "most trusted institution." The concession lands squarely on the chapters that decide membership: the judiciary, justice and public procurement. So this is not a side issue to Albania's European future. It is a direct test of it.

And that is why this does not help. It does the opposite. A single family connected to the presidency of the United States showing that the rules bend on demand corrodes the one asset a poor country cannot afford to lose: the belief, hard-won and easily lost, that the rules are real.

Then those same people have the chutzpah to complain about corruption in Eastern Europe and lecture the world about American exceptionalism. It is all so deeply wrong. And make no mistake, it erodes our democracies too, ever so slightly.

The thousands in the streets of Tirana understand all of this instinctively. They are not protesting a resort. They are defending the only thing that gives their country a future and hope: the rule of law applied equally to all.

And make no mistake about who the brave ones are. They are not on a yacht. They are on the street of Tirana and inside SPAK, because in Albania, stepping on the toes of the powerful is done in the knowledge that the danger is real. Confronting entrenched corruption in the Balkans has cost prosecutors, judges and journalists their their lives. That is the issue here, ladies and gentlemen!

I doubt Ivanka loses any sleep over any of this. Her concern is closing the deal while her father remains in office. And on a timeline that tight, a public tender, one they may well have won fairly, becomes an inconvenience rather than a safeguard.

That is the difference between a custodian of capitalism and democracy like Warren Buffett and the late Charlie Munger and a primitive land-grabber without any moral compass and integrity.

[Collin Corbett @CollinCorbett]

Springfield is sneaking through a last minute change to rig the election system in Illinois even further and help CTU-backed candidates in Chicago.

And the fact that it's being applied retroactively is extremely fishy.

#twill

[Thomas Massie @RepThomasMassie]

Good Morning, KY-04 voters!

Today, Saturday 5/16, is the last day to vote early before Election Day, Tuesday, 5/19.

Find your polling place and times at this link: https://t.co/helwUkdEI3

[Lady Liberty @Lesbotarian]

@MurraySuggests Oddly enough, I just used part of that quote to start my latest clip

[Peterson Foundation @pgpfoundation]

Right now, we’re adding $1 trillion in debt every five months.
https://t.co/uAq1qvi5iq

[NAVI @NAVIvalues]

🚨 If your child attends Chicago Public Schools, you need to know: CPS is using taxpayer-funded buses and lunches to take students to a political protest on May 1st—and framing it as ‘civic action.’ We’re hosting an emergency briefing this Monday, April 27 for CPS parents and teachers. Get the facts and learn what you can do to push back.

Register here: https://t.co/TpQrQxIWAv

[Tim Donohue @TimDonohue99]

@aakashgupta Saw this. He was on it

[Tim Donohue @TimDonohue99]

@WClemente Education will always be important. C, D and E are accurate.

[State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke @saeileenburke]

Mayor Johnson’s statement is not true. The CCSAO did not receive the Executive Order until it was released to the public. We do not provide legal approval of any matter until we’ve reviewed it. On such a critical issue, it’s important we get it right.

[Daniel Lacalle @dlacalle_IA]

Yes, dear trolls, Bidenomics triggered the persistent inflation crisis that Americans suffer by massively boosting government spending and unnecessary deficit-driven "public rescue" packages, driving a combined soaring money supply and velocity to fuel the affordability crisis, with the help of the Fed.

If you want lower prices, demand smaller government.

Federal spending was responsible for the 2022 spike in inflation (MIT)

https://t.co/gsw6YpiIQf

[All_Purpose_Hak📈 @HakHinton]

Somebody ask him what happened to this Obama.
He doesnt think mass immigration effects wages and rent prices anymore?

[Bears Blog Boy @TommyK_NFLDraft]

Since returning in week 16, Tremaine Edmunds has been

- Targeted 16 times
- Allowed 16 receptions (2nd most)
- 161 yards and 2 TDs
- A passer rating of 148.2 (4th worst)
- run stop% 4.5 (64th)
- Average depth of tackle of 5.6 (74th)

[Javier Milei @JMilei]

PRINCIPIO DE REVELACIÓN

En días históricos como el de hoy podemos ver realmente de qué están hechos algunos dirigentes y formadores de opinión.

De un lado está la democracia, la defensa de la vida, la libertad y la propiedad. Esos valores que muchos dicen defender pero sólo defienden cuando les queda cómodo.

Del otro lado están aquellos cómplices de una dictadura narcoterrorista y sangrienta que ha sido un cáncer para nuestra región sembrando la enfermedad del Socialismo del Siglo XXI, con su consecuente miseria y muerte.

Aquí no hay medias tintas ni grises. Se está del lado del BIEN, o se está del lado del MAL. Y todos aquellos que hoy no defiendan con uñas y dientes la causa de la libertad son parte del problema y no de la solución.

Celebramos la caída del dictador narcoterrorista Maduro. La Argentina está lista para ayudar en la transición a una Venezuela libre, democrática y próspera.

VIVA LA LIBERTAD CARAJO...!!!

[Chicago Flips Red @FlipChicagoRed]

Everyone in Chicago needs to watch Local 1: The Rise of America’s Most Powerful Teachers Union.

CTU didn’t become powerful by accident.
They became powerful by capturing school boards, elections, and budgets.

This documentary explains exactly why CPS is broken.

@CTULocal1 is a Criminal organization

https://t.co/60xWjLzgUa

#ChicagoFlipsRed

[Tim Donohue @TimDonohue99]

@crbevins11 Damn right!

[Josh Kimber 🏗 @joshkimber]

For sure. Being in MN, I watched the state give $350M to the Vikings, and they have already repaid it all. But that's different—they were rebuilding on a site that already supported a stadium.

The Bears are explicitly saying they will fund the stadium privately. They are asking for state participation only on infrastructure: roads, utilities, and site work. That is standard for projects of this scale and separate from stadium construction. Framing this as public money for a billionaire's stadium is inaccurate.

[Chicago Bears @ChicagoBears]

🗣️ Keep the votes coming!

RT to #ProBowlVote @KevinByard @JosephThuney Drew Dalman @nahwrig @jonahjackson73 @sdaly61 @josh_blackwell @Dev_Duv5 @darnellwright @_sweat9 @CALEBcsw @colstonlovelan1 @DAndreSwift @JaquanBrisker Tory Taylor

[Tim Donohue @TimDonohue99]

How did that go for Duke, ACC conference champs?

[Tim Donohue @TimDonohue99]

@gomergolfs 🤣🤣

[Tim Donohue @TimDonohue99]

🤣🤣🤣

[Stu Smith @thestustustudio]

🚨BREAKING: Activists stormed the stage at the National Alliance Against Racist & Political Repression conference — an anti-police organizing hub — furious that Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson was invited, blasting him as an extension of the police they’re fighting to abolish.