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Voter Fraud: Los Angeles County Woman Pleads Guilty To Paying People In Skid Row To Vote
LOS ANGELES - A woman who worked as a longtime signature collector for ballot initiatives pleaded guilty on June 8 to paying homeless people in Los Angeles' Skid Row and elsewhere $2 or $3 to register to vote.
An "I Voted" sign points to a Vote Center in Los Angeles on June 1, 2026. Mario Tama/Getty ImagesBrenda Lee Brown Armstrong, 64, of Marina del Rey, also known as "Anika," entered a plea to one count of paying another person to register to vote, a federal charge that carries a penalty of up to five years behind bars.
Sentencing was scheduled for Aug. 31.
According to her plea agreement, for nearly 20 years, Armstrong periodically worked as a "petition circulator." In that role, she was paid by coordinators to collect voter signatures on official petitions that qualify initiatives, referendums and recalls for California state ballots. Prosecutors said Armstrong drove around the Los Angeles area to find registered voters to sign the petitions.
After gathering enough signatures, Armstrong returned the petitions to her coordinators, who then paid her a set amount for each registered voter's signature. The amount she was paid varied depending on the specific ballot initiative. Because her coordinators only paid for signatures attributable to registered voters, Armstrong endeavored to ensure the people who signed her petitions were registered voters, court papers show.
Armstrong admitted soliciting signatures in Skid Row, a convenient place for the defendant to collect signatures because of its high concentration of people in a relatively small area who were willing to sign petitions in exchange for cash.
Armstrong regularly paid amounts between $2 and $3 to induce people to sign her petitions, officials said.
Prosecutors said some homeless people did not have an address to put on the forms, so on occasion, Armstrong provided her own former address in Los Angeles to write on the registration form. Such registration forms simultaneously registered an individual to vote in California elections and in federal elections.
"This is not an allegation, this is not a theory, this is an example of admitted voter fraud," First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli said when Armstrong was charged. "We're going to aggressively prosecute voter fraud."
A video shot by conservative media figure James O'Keefe and reposted by an account called "Real America's Voice" showed a woman handing cash to a homeless person. In a post on social media, O'Keefe said his video led to Armstrong being charged.
Essayli said on June 5 that his office has "multiple" probes underway into alleged voting fraud. While declining to provide any specifics, he pointed to the Armstrong case as an example of the sort of thing he is investigating.
"Yes, there is evidence of election fraud in California," he said.
The comments came one day after President Donald Trump publicly accused Democrats of engaging in election fraud in California, pointing to the legally established mail-in voting process.
Essayli also said his office is working with Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon in an effort to audit the state's voter rolls.
Essayli said previously that Armstrong's arrest coincided with arguments in the Department of Justice's (DOJ) appeal of the dismissal of a lawsuit over voter registration records.
The DOJ sued California Secretary of State Shirley Weber last year, demanding the state hand over the unredacted voter file, which includes registered voters' full names, residential addresses, driver's license numbers, and the last four digits of their Social Security numbers.
The DOJ claimed it had the right to access the data under powers granted by the Civil Rights Act of 1960, the Help America Vote Act, and the National Voter Registration Act.
In January, a Santa Ana federal judge dismissed the case after finding that the DOJ's request for the information violates federal privacy laws. The defense also argued that the Trump administration wants to use the data to help enforce its immigration policy.
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Flesh-Eating Cattle Screwworm Spreads Beyond Texas As USDA Accelerates Eradication Push
The U.S. Department of Agriculture confirmed three more New World screwworm (NWS) cases, bringing total detections to five and heightening concerns that the flesh-eating pest, once eradicated in the 1960s, could threaten the nation's already strained cattle industry.
The latest NWS cases include three calves and a goat in Texas, along with a small dog in Lea County, New Mexico, marking the first confirmed case in that state, according to the USDA. The dog had not traveled to Mexico or Texas, prompting authorities to investigate the surrounding property for fly larvae that feed on living flesh rather than dead material.
"Over the past week, USDA has identified and expeditiously confronted four confirmed detections of NWS. While we address these instances that require immediate attention, and continue to sample suspected cases, we are simultaneously working to eradicate the pest entirely," Dudley Hoskins, the USDA's marketing and regulatory undersecretary, said in a statement.
The first NWS cases were discovered last week in calves a few miles apart in South Texas:
The second case:
Cases were announced Monday in a calf in La Salle County, southwest of San Antonio, and in a goat in Gillespie County, west of Austin.
RELEASE: USDA Confirms Two Additional Cases of New World Screwworm in the United States
A calf in La Salle County, TX and a dog in Andrews County, TX.https://t.co/nzWMQzDHjU
University of Florida entomologist Edward Burgess told AP News that new NWS cases may emerge in the coming days and weeks, but that does not necessarily mean the pest is spreading.
"When that first case is seen, everyone is being vigilant and their eyes are on it more intensely," Burgess said. "And when you are looking for something, you are more likely to see it."
Well...
USDA TO TRIAL IVERMECTIN IN FEED TO CONTROL SCREWWORM IN WILD
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) June 8, 2026IVERMECTIN KILLS NEW WORLD SCREWWORMS IN BOTH HUMANS AND ANIMALS
LIVESTOCK: 12 studies found 97%+ prevention of New World screwworm infestation in cattle wounds
HUMANS: Documented complete larval elimination in severe oral and eye socket infestations
"Horse paste” wins again. https://t.co/daZg7wgaim pic.twitter.com/3v1SnvoJMx
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins explained on Monday the USDA's "War on Screwworm" plan to eradicate NWS.
🧵 Sec. Rollins outlines @USDA’s aggressive response to New World Screwworm:
USDA is rapidly expanding sterile fly production and dispersal capacity, a core pillar of the federal eradication strategy.
A dispersal facility in South Texas was launched last year, and tens of… pic.twitter.com/g998W7fy78
The rising number of NWS cases in the U.S. poses a threat to the nation's cattle herd if the spread runs rampant, especially with herd size already at a 75-year low, beef prices at record highs …
…and meatpackers under pressure from fewer and more expensive animals. We recommend that readers review the note from Goldman analyst Thiago Bortoluci on NWS.
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Gold & Silver: From Pullback To Perfect Setup
Authored by Matthew Piepenburg via VonGreyerz.gold,
With gold and silver having fallen by greater than 20% from their January highs of 2026, some have argued the gold trade is over. In fact, and as explained below, it is only just beginning.
Trading vs. InvestingSuch misunderstandings are nothing new, as the difference between precious metal trading and precious metal investing is nothing new.
Nor is there anything new about top-down misinformation and misdirection given to Main Street when it comes to understanding gold and silver.
Traders, both skilled and unskilled, tend to track near-term signals for immediate rates of return (long or short) while longer-term investors typically watch history, debt cycles and currency debasement with patient detachment and a steady eye toward wealth preservation.
Such patience has served the longer-term, wealth-preservation-focused investors with greater returns (and calm) through periods of headline flux and geopolitical gyrations.
Since 2000, gold has outperformed the S&P, and when compared against the major global paper currencies (down 94% since 2000), gold (up 1580% since 2000) has demonstrably outperformed fiat “money.”
Longer-term investors see this larger picture and trend.
They don’t book losses in pullbacks because they understand the greater direction of the precious metal ball in a debt-saturated and hence currency-debasement playing field.
Comfort in Historical FundamentalsIn short, the fundamentals of history, economics and hence currency debasement confirm a clear pattern by desperately broke(n) nations to inflate their way out of debt at the expense of their currencies.
This makes the longer, anti-fiat direction for gold and silver almost too obvious, even in times of inevitable price retracements in the metals.
Historical cycles and longer-term calm, however, are easily forgotten or ignored in times of crisis. Investors somehow think “this time is different,” or, even worse, they don’t think about history at all.
Patterns: From Crisis to Gold HighsBut for those looking for signals, as well as sanity confirmation, it’s worth remembering that in every prior geopolitical and/or oil crisis (the OPEC embargo of 73, the Iranian Revolution of 79, the Gulf War of 91, the 9-11 disaster of 2001 or, more recently, the Ukraine/Russia crisis of 2022) there are clear patterns eerily similar to the current crisis surrounding the Iranian “conflict.”
Specifically, we are living within a template by which a geopolitical crisis sends the oil price up, which is followed by a rise in “inflation expectations,” which in turn means central banks like the Fed can’t cut rates, and soon thereafter the market, rather than central bankers, sets the rates.
This explains why yields on the US 10Y Treasury Bond (the true cost of Uncle Sam’s hideous bar tab) have risen by 75 basis points despite no active rate hikes by a Fed which couldn’t afford rate hikes even if they wanted them.
In this same template, as yields rise, investors typically follow the street’s traditional (yet now grossly mistaken) view that a yielding bond (from a broke issuer) is still better than a yield-less bar of gold.
What typically follows is a herd-like move to bonds whose “positive” nominal yields are measured in increasingly debased currencies and negative real returns when measured against actual rather than mis-reported inflation.
The ironies do abound…
But what fifty years of crisis patterns have also told us—at least for those paying attention—is that gold tends to drop early in every crisis only to then recover at newer all-time-highs as the crisis plays out.
During the 1973 OPEC embargo, for example, gold would dip and then participate in an historical, 4-digit upside in the seven years that followed.
After a temporary retracement during the 1979 Iranian Revolution, gold rose by 90% in one year, and saw double-digit upside within weeks of the 1991 Gulf War.
We saw similar dip-to-high surges in gold following the 9-11 tragedy. And as for the 2022 fiasco in Ukraine, gold broke 2000 not long after the crisis grew from threat to now ongoing reality.
Patterns in Moving AveragesBut for those who still feel that history is no guide to future rhyming patterns, let us give equal respect to some of the key technical signals for the metals.
In fact, these signals—most notably from the 200-day moving averages in gold and silver—are themselves just historical signals of a different flavor.
More importantly, they are indicators which signal a rare opportunity in a time of crisis.
Looking at both gold and silver, for example, each metal has fallen below its 200-day moving average.
This is a powerfully bullish rather than bearish signpost.
Silver SignalsThe last time silver fell below this average was in April of 2025, just before the metal, then trading at $27, ripped north at historical multiples and new highs.
Prior to 2025, we saw similar bullish signals beneath silver’s 200-day line in 2020 (when silver was at $11) and in 2022 (when silver was at $17).
Gold SignalsEqually bullish technical signals are ringing from gold’s recent dip beneath its 200-day moving average.
The last times we saw gold below this line it was trading in the $1500-$1600 range (2022) or the $1800 range (autumn of 2023). Thereafter, gold went 100% north 12 months out.
From Pullback to Historical Set-UpTaken together, these fundamental as well as technical signals combine within a current as well as historical context which makes the current pullback in the metals a near perfect set-up rather than break-up for gold and silver.
In fact, current conditions for the precious metals in 2026 are even more favorable than the prior patterns of the 1970’s discussed above.
In 1973, for example, U.S. public debt was in the $500B, not $39T, range. Today, interest expense alone on American IOUs is twice the size of total US public debt in 1973.
Think about that for a second. At debt this high and unsustainable, the debasement trade is no longer a meme; it’s a fat pitch.
The Structural Bid Few UnderstandIn the 1970’s, moreover, central banks around the world were selling gold. As of this writing, and despite recent forced gold sales out of Turkey and Saudi Arabia, central banks (from Poland to Asia) are net-buyers of gold.
In fact, since the USA weaponized the world reserve currency in 2022, central bank gold purchasing has increased by 5X.
These signals from the world’s central banks are screaming signposts of a structural bid in the metals which most retail investors (who were spooked out of the trade at lows after buying at tops) are tragically missing.
Even the commercial banks have understood the patterns for gold after an oil crisis, and their price targets for the metal remain nearly twice current price levels.
Thus, whether drawing from historical patterns or from moving-day-average signals, the question going forward is simple: Do you trust King Dollar or a “pet rock”? Crowns of gold or crowns of paper?
Time will tell, and time is clearly on the side of precious metals.
Tyler Durden Tue, 06/09/2026 - 10:50