The consumer price index is a broad measure of the prices of everyday goods.

"The inflation data this year has been terrific — a welcomed change from the prior four disastrous years," EJ Antoni, chief economist for the Heritage Foundation, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. "This bodes very well for the overall economy and indicates that we're headed to the 2.0% inflation target of the Federal Reserve. The Trump administration deserves tremendous credit here because their efforts to reduce government spending while increasing future energy production have reduced input prices throughout the economy, putting downward pressure on consumer prices. What a difference a president can make!"

The CPI report comes after the U.S. economy added 139,000 nonfarm payroll jobs in May, slightly above economists' expectations — while the unemployment rate remained unchanged at 4.2%, the BLS reported on June 6.

James claimed Trump committed fraud in his business dealings with lenders. Those lenders testified in court they were happy doing business with Trump, didn't lose any money, and wanted to do additional business, but Arthur Engoron, the judge, handed down the massive penalty anyway.

Ironically, James herself now is facing the possibility of criminal trial, conviction and sentencing for committing fraud on mortgage documents.

Trump has not been silent about the lawfare:

Trump continued, "….I am the only Political Opponent in American History not allowed to defend myself – A despicable First Amendment Violation! Merchan took the Manhattan D.A.'s Witch Hunt, that, according to all Legal Scholars, including Jonathan Turley, Elie Honig, Andy McCarthy, Alan Dershowitz, Gregg Jarrett, David Rivkin, Elizabeth Price Foley, Katie and Andy Cherkasky, Paul Ingrassia, and many others, is a nonexistent case, barred by the Statute of Limitations, and should have never been brought and, through his fraud and misconduct, gave it a semblance of 'life.' While Deranged Jack Smith was sent packing back to The Hague after losing all of his politically manufactured cases against me, Merchan, who is far worse and even more corrupt than Smith in his fight for my hopeless political opponents, just cannot let go of this charade. Is it because of his conflicts and relations that he keeps breaking the Law? This has to stop! It is time to end the Lawfare once and for all, so we can come together as one Nation and, Make America Great Again."

Experts have noted the trial itself was "replete with layers of reversible error."

A report at Fox News said Dershowitz, a Harvard Law professor emeritus, "called out" Merchan for "outrageous" rulings against Trump.

He told "The Brian Kilmeade Show" host Brian Kilmeade that Merchan is a "tyrant" for threatening to strike the testimony of defense witness Bob Costello, who expressed disbelief at some of Merchan's anti-Trump rulings.

Dershowitz charged, "I've been in courthouses in every part of the world and in China, in Russia, in Ukraine, in Israel. I've been all over. I've never seen a spectacle like this. And that's why it should have been on television, so the American public could see how outrageous this judge is. And CNN just does his bidding. CNN lies, lies through their teeth about what happened in court yesterday between Judge Merchan and Bob Costello. Bob Costello testifies, Merchan rules against him at every point, keeps out his testimony, makes outrageous rulings that any first-year student taking evidence would know was wrong."

He continued, "And Bob Costello does what I did: He rolled his eyes. And I rolled my eyes, I said, I couldn't believe the judge was making these rulings. And the judge, thinking he's a tyrant, clears the courtroom, throws out everybody from the media. For some reason, they allowed me to stay, and I watched as the judge berated him. And the judge said something I have never seen in a courtroom in my history, 60 years. He threatened to strike the testimony of the main witness for the defendant because of punishment of the witness for staring at the judge. Can you imagine the violation of the Sixth Amendment? The Sixth Amendment allows any defendant to confront witnesses and to present evidence in his defense. Can you imagine if this judge had actually struck the testimony of Bob Costello? It would result in an automatic mistrial, new trial, and a verdict against the prosecution. The judge was bluffing. He ought to be disciplined for making that threat because the threat was an idle threat. He obviously didn't act on it. …":

Collectively, these initiatives make one thing clear: India does not perceive itself as a collaborative peer, but as a future global power rewriting rules in economics, security and technological governance. Integrating such a nation into core U.S. defense systems, without binding oversight, clear reciprocity or national security safeguards amounts to strategic overreach. While framed as mutual advancement, the current structure of INDUS‑X reflects strategic vulnerability for the U.S.

India's strategic end-run: From backdoor acquisition to open access

India's pursuit of U.S. defense and dual-use technology has never been accidental; it has been methodical, persistent and, above all, strategic. As far back as the 1980s, Indian military doctrine openly prioritized the acquisition of civilian technologies with latent military applications. This was not a secret. India's own policymakers declared space and commercial payloads should always be dual-capable, explicitly framing innovation as a means to military advancement.

Former Indian president and missile program architect Abdul Kalam repeatedly stressed the importance of artificial intelligence, robotics and nanotechnology, not merely for development, but as vital instruments of future warfare.

This backdoor acquisition strategy was not limited to rhetoric. On Sept. 9, 2008, the U.S. Justice Department announced a five-count indictment against Indian national Siddabasappa Suresh and Rajaram Engineering Corporation for illegally supplying India's government with high-performance testing equipment critical to ballistic missile systems and spacecraft development, technology tightly regulated under U.S. export control law. The items were covertly routed through shell companies and third parties, circumventing licensing requirements meant to safeguard national security.

Despite this clear pattern of circumvention, India has remained outside the bounds of international nonproliferation agreements. It is one of just three nations, including Israel and Pakistan, that has never signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Yet in 2008, the United States granted India an unprecedented exception. Under intense lobbying pressure and in pursuit of "strategic alignment," the Bush administration overturned decades of U.S. and global policy by approving the U.S.-India nuclear cooperation agreement, giving New Delhi access to American nuclear technology without requiring the full safeguards or disarmament commitments imposed on treaty-bound states.

The outcome was immediate and consequential. India continued developing nuclear weapons outside international inspection. It maintains an arsenal of an estimated 164 plutonium-based warheads and refuses to permit full-scope International Atomic Energy Agency inspections of its facilities. India has never signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and continues to reject legally binding commitments to halt fissile material production.

The cost of these decisions continues to mount. In May 2025, the U.S. Department of Energy approved Holtec International to transfer sensitive nuclear reactor technology to three Indian entities: Holtec Asia, Tata Consulting Engineers and Larsen & Toubro. The authorization was granted under 10 CFR Part 810, a regulation governing the transfer of nuclear know-how to foreign nations. That this approval came despite India's unresolved proliferation risks and lack of disarmament transparency is, as one former Pentagon official put it, a case of "policy dressed up as progress."

The Biden administration's 2025 guidance easing Missile Technology Control Regime restrictions now allows for expanded exports of long-range missile and space-launch technologies to "trusted partners," including India. According to Breaking Defense, this shift was justified under the banner of deterring adversaries and boosting U.S. defense exports. But it also opens the door to foreign actors with well-documented histories of diversion and repurposing.

Political capture, willful blindness: A history of theft, threat and subversion

This historical pattern of exploitation has not only gone unaddressed, it has been codified into policy.

What began as selective leniency in the name of diplomacy has now matured into institutional complicity. By extending high-trust privileges to a state that refuses to adhere to basic international nonproliferation norms, the United States has paved a pathway for systemic abuse. The U.S.-India technology partnership, once envisioned as a strategic hedge, has become a liability, one where national security, industrial advantage and the integrity of American innovation are quietly traded for geopolitical optics and corporate appeasement.

What began as a so-called innovation partnership has rapidly become a dangerous channel for uncontrolled technology transfer. Under the INDUS-X framework, Indian firms have been granted access to some of America's most sensitive defense research and infrastructure ranging from DARPA-aligned R&D to U.S. university test ranges and federally funded laboratories without the legal guardrails normally required to protect national security.

Through the INDUSWERX consortium, American academic institutions like Penn State, Texas A&M and the University of Maryland opened their doors to Indian startups, giving them exposure to dual-use technologies in artificial intelligence, autonomous systems and next-gen sensing. These are not symbolic gestures, they are accelerants. Yet, this access was not governed by traditional safeguards like International Traffic in Arms Regulations, end-use monitoring agreements or export-control compliance. The lack of enforcement mechanisms means that once U.S.-origin innovations are handed over, they can be replicated, commercialized or militarized by Indian entities with no legal consequences.

This arrangement is not happening in a vacuum. India remains on the U.S. Trade Representative's "Priority Watch List" for chronic intellectual property violations, technology theft and forced localization policies. India has a long and well-documented record of diverting sensitive foreign technologies for military use ranging from missile guidance systems to satellite surveillance components. And yet, despite past sanctions and espionage cases involving Indian defense agencies and shell companies, the U.S. government is now proactively facilitating access.

At its core, INDUS-X is not collaboration, it is capitulation. America is extending defense-grade access and taxpayer-funded innovation to a foreign government that refuses binding transparency, evades nonproliferation norms and has openly weaponized its diaspora and corporate networks to manipulate U.S. policy. This is not a strategic hedge against China; it is the quiet erosion of America's technological edge and security autonomy enabled by leaders too compromised or complacent to draw the line.

If the United States fails to reverse course, the outcome will not be shared prosperity or mutual deterrence; it will be the outsourcing of America's future, one critical system at a time. Congress must act now, not with more memoranda, but with investigation, suspension and enforcement before this bilateral subversion is fully inside the gates.

Blindness or sanctioned sabotage?

This is not a story of collaboration gone awry, but is the final chapter in a long play of exploitation disguised as alliance. What began decades ago as selective engagement has metastasized into a full-scale erosion of American sovereignty, carried out not by an enemy at the gates, but by a partner inside the wire. The INDUS-X initiative has handed India the keys to America's most sensitive defense technologies, research labs, dual-use innovations and taxpayer-funded programs, while asking for nothing in return. There are no export controls. No reciprocal access. No legal enforcement. And no strategic rationale that justifies this level of vulnerability, other than political cowardice or captured leadership.

India has never concealed its ambitions. Its officials say it openly: All innovation must serve national defense. All collaboration must support industrial supremacy. All foreign partnerships must feed domestic dominance. From satellite surveillance to missile guidance to AI warfare, India has converted foreign technology into military advantage and now, under INDUS-X, it has found its clearest, most direct channel yet, funded, facilitated and fast-tracked by the United States government.

This is not accidental; it is orchestrated. It is not innovation sharing; it is industrial surrender. And while Indian firms scale globally with American tools, American startups are locked out of Indian markets, buried under bureaucracy and blocked from basic procurement access.

Americans are subsidizing their competitor and mentoring their replacement. And in so doing, America is inadvertently undermining the very foundation of its own defense-industrial base.

Let it be said clearly: India is not a passive recipient of American generosity, but an aggressive and calculated competitor with a proven record of technology diversion, nuclear opacity, IP theft and economic coercion. It has refused to sign every major nonproliferation treaty, violated export laws and used shell entities to evade restrictions. It sits on the U.S. Trade Representative's Priority Watch List for intellectual property theft – and yet is being granted unfettered access to next-generation U.S. defense innovation through universities, incubators and federal labs with no strings attached.

And now, through U.S. government initiatives, all of this has been normalized, legitimized and institutionalized. Whether willful blindness or sanctioned sabotage, no serious government and no president committed to protecting American security would allow such a lopsided framework to exist, unless their hand was forced or their knowledge or will were absent. This is the Biden administration's most dangerous export: not a product, but permission for a foreign rival to hollow out America's military advantage under the banner of partnership.

Americans must care. Because what's at stake is not just technology or trade; it's their national defense, their economic future and their global leadership. Every satellite launched with stolen specs, every drone built on borrowed code, every AI model trained on American innovation but wielded by foreign interests is a threat that the U.S. helped fund. Americans are not deterring their adversaries, but are supplying them. Instead of building resilience, they are outsourcing it.

If Congress fails to act, and if the American people stay silent, then what comes next will not only be betrayal; it will be defeat by design. The U.S. must immediately investigate, defund and unwind INDUS-X. And it must impose binding oversight, restore compliance standards and reassert control over its own innovation systems.

Because if that does not happen, then the next great leap in military power will not be made in America. It will be made with American tools under a foreign flag.