Avert your eyes! My Sunday morning look at incompetency, corruption and policy failures:

• As Netflix Swallows Warner Bros., Hollywood Is in Full-Blown Panic Mode: “Everyone’s just like, ‘How is David Zaslav going to make so much money when he ran the company into the ground?’” says a studio executive. “The unjustness of that, when all these people are going to be out of work—it should be illegal.” (Vanity Fair)

• How Epstein Infiltrated the Silicon Valley Network: Behind Trump’s New Tech Order Documents show Jeffrey Epstein was not cast out after his child sex-crime conviction but remained embedded in a confidential inner circle of Silicon Valley founders with strategic influence on the modern world, including Musk, Bezos, Brin, Page, Gates and Zuckerberg. (Byline Times) see also Epstein’s Investments: Hedge funds. Brokerages. Billionaires. Jeffrey Epstein’s financial ties on and off Wall Street were broader than previously known: On Wall Street, finding success takes a mix of ambition, skill and luck. But turning a good run into a fortune—and then power—requires connections. A cache of more than 18,000 emails sent to and from Epstein’s private Yahoo account, obtained by Bloomberg News earlier this year, shows the abundance of access he enjoyed across Wall Street and how relentless he was at transforming it into wealth. (Bloomberg)

• Meet the Trump administration’s 12 billionaires: At a net worth of $390 billion, it’s the wealthiest White House in modern history. (Washington Post)

• Price of a bot army revealed across hundreds of online platforms: Introducing the Cambridge Online Trust and Safety Index: The first global index tracking real-time prices for buying fake account verifications on 500+ online platforms in every country. (Cambridge)

• Bet on celebrity deaths, natural disasters, and political decisions — live on CNN! What started as niche betting platforms for political junkies has turned into something much bigger — and much worse. Many major media companies and financial apps are now integrating real-time betting odds into their platforms. (Your Brain On Money)

• Running on Empty: Copper How peak copper arrived and went completely unnoticed. (The Honest Sorceror)

• Why millennials feel hopeless about the economy: Millennials are richer than their boomer parents. They love to complain about the economy anyway. (Business Insider) see also Why are Americans Unhappy? A broken cultural archetype: It is easy to forget how astonishing modern life is … at the earthly level. A three-thousand-square-foot home, with central heat and AC, a two-car garage, and a two-acre estate complete with a swimming pool, with weekly festivals, is the life of a past baron or lord, now available, in some form, to most Americans. (Chris Arnade Walks the World)

• Tax prosecutions plunge as Trump shifts crime-fighting efforts: Federal tax prosecutions fell to their lowest level in decades this year, declining more than 27% from the year before as the Trump administration cut the ranks of attorneys and agents who pursue those cases.  (Yahoo)

• America has identified its greatest enemy: Western Europe: Western Europe. Trump’s new National Security Strategy: what if groypers cosplayed George Kennan? (Programmable Mutter)

• Kennedy’s Methodical 2-Decade Quest to Dismantle Vaccine Policy: The health secretary has walled himself off from government scientists and empowered fellow activists to pursue his vaccine agenda. (New York Times) see also How Chiropractors Became the Backbone of MAHA: Why they love Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — and he loves them. (Politico)

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Stephen Cohen, BlackRock Chief Product Officer and Head of Global Product Solutions. He is a member of BlackRock’s Global Executive Committee. Previously, he was Global Head of Fixed Income Indexing (iShares); and Chief Investment Strategist for International Fixed Income and iShares. Blackrock manages $13.5 trillion in AUM; its iShares division is over $5 trillion.

 

Share of middle-class families that can afford basic necessities in 160 US metro areas.

Source: Brookings

 

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~~~

To learn how these reads are assembled each day, please see this.

 

The post 10 Sunday Reads appeared first on The Big Picture.

It's Official: Ditching The SATs Was A Big Mistake

Authored by Jonathan Miltimore via The Washington Examiner,

In early 2020, the University of California set the tone for the rest of the country when its regents voted to drop SAT and ACT admissions requirements through 2024. That decision, initially framed as a pandemic necessity, quickly reshaped admissions nationwide. By late 2022, roughly 1,750 schools, or about 80 percent of U.S. universities, had adopted test-optional policies, according to Forbes.

“It’s a sea change in terms of how admissions decisions are being made,” Robert Schaeffer, of the National Center for Fair and Open Testing, told NBC News.

“The pandemic created a natural experiment.”

Five years later, the results of this “natural experiment” are in. A report released by UC San Diego in November tells the story.

“Over the past five years, UC San Diego has experienced a steep decline in the academic preparation of its entering first-year students—particularly in mathematics, but also in writing and language skills,” a new university report reads.

“This trend poses serious challenges both to student success and to the university’s instructional mission.”

Those words might sound ominous, but they don’t do justice to just how bad the slide has been.

Roughly 1 in 8 UCSD freshmen are working with math skills that don’t clear the high school bar - a 30-fold jump since 2020.

It gets worse, however.

The report concluded that 70 percent of those students fall below middle school levels.

To give you an idea of what we’re talking about, a full quarter of students failed to solve the following equation: 7 + 2 = [ ] + 6.

This means that my 9-year-old son, who tests high in math, is likely more equipped mathematically than many of these college students. I say this not as a point of pride, but to emphasize the disservice done to students thrust into (very pricey) college courses.

It’s not just math, however.

The report found that 40 percent of students deficient in arithmetic also couldn’t write (or, in the euphemistic language of the report, “required remedial writing instruction”).

The report was unflinching in its assessment.

“Admitting large numbers of students who are profoundly underprepared [for college] risks harming the very students we hope to support, by setting them up for failure,” it declares.

UC San Diego should be commended for coming forward to report a phenomenon that is undoubtedly true at universities across the country.

Many at the time warned that ditching standardized tests was a bad idea. Research shows that high school GPAs don’t tell you much about how students perform once they get to campus. Standardized test results, however, do.

So, why did universities engage in this “natural experiment”?

There is no single answer, but politics, ideology, and crass incentives all played a role.

Let’s start with politics.

As David Leonhardt pointed out in the New York Times, universities are run by progressives, and “standardized tests have become especially unpopular among political progressives.”

Some progressives say standardized tests cause too much stress.

Others say they’re biased to explain why men score higher, on average, than women and why some racial groups perform better than others.

Ideology, a kissing cousin of politics, also plays a role. The fact that universities ditched standardized testing during the peak of the DEI craze is not a coincidence. As Leonhardt noted in the New York Times, the hostility to standardized tests is based largely “on the theory that they hurt diversity.”

This is a kooky claim for various reasons, not least because it is rooted in bigotry. But there was also a method to the madness. Abandoning standardized tests, which are rooted in objectivity, gave universities the ability to admit students on their terms. By making admission more subjective, universities were giving themselves cover for their own unlawful admissions policies.

Finally, there’s the financial incentive.

It’s no secret that demand for higher education is plummeting. (This trend is partly driven by pure demographics, but high tuition and the diminishing value of college degrees also play a role.)

As a result, universities are confronting an “enrollment cliff.” While declining numbers of new students would have posed a challenge regardless, the problem was worsened by pandemic-era learning losses caused by widespread high school closures. Removing standardized tests was a (kind of) solution to this problem. If not enough students are qualified to attend university, remove the qualifications.

In the end, ditching standardized tests will be remembered as a chapter in the broader story of the decline of U.S. universities. The decision didn’t cause the fall, but it accelerated a trend toward lower academic standards—one that harmed not just the reputation of universities, but also students who were admitted for all the wrong reasons.

Sadly, they will be left paying the price.

Tyler Durden Sat, 12/13/2025 - 22:10

Belarus Frees 123 Political Prisoners In Exchange For US Lifting More Sanctions

Despite the frustrating lack of real progress in the stalled Ukraine peace deal talks, the United States continues to achieve smaller separate deals with Russia, and their appears to be a slow improvement of bilateral ties.

On Saturday, Belarus, which forms a 'Union State' with Russia, announced that it has released 123 detainees, in return for the United States easing long-existing sanctions on Minsk.

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, right, and US envoy John Coale on Friday. Image Belarusian Presidential Press Service via AP

Among those freed from Belarusian prisons included prominent protest figure Maria Kalesnikava, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and human rights advocate Ales Bialiatski, and former presidential hopeful Viktar Babaryka, according to the AFP.

President Alexander Lukashenko's said the large-scale amnesty which included mostly foreigners - including 114 Ukrainians - was due to Washington lifting of "unlawful" sanctions on the country's vital potash sector, and the rolling back of some other punitive restrictions.

Some of the freed had been serving sentences related to a government crackdown on protests related to the last election which extended strongman Lukashenko's rule:

Relatives of the prisoners gathered outside the US embassy in Vilnius, Lithuania, where it is expected some of them will be taken from Belarus. Ukrainian authorities said that 114 civilians, including Ukrainian and Belarusian citizens, were transferred to Ukraine.

Trump’s Belarus envoy, John Coale, told reporters in Minsk that the US would be lifting sanctions on potash, “as per the instructions of president Trump”.

The US and EU placed sanctions on Belarus after the government cracked down on popular protests following a contested election in 2020...

Human rights monitors have estimated that Belarus was holding some 1,200 political prisoners as of November of this year.

This follows an initial successful prisoner release deal from back in September. That prior deal saw 50 political prisoners released, which was reportedly at Trump's request. It included many Ukrainians and foreigners, who were transferred bordering Lithuania. In return, the US lifted sanctions on the country's national airline, Belavia - sactions which had been in place since 2023.

President Trump statement at the time suggested there were more deals on the horizon. "52 is a lot. A great many. Yet more than 1,000 political prisoners still remain in Belarusian prisons and we cannot stop until they see freedom!" - he had said.

Tyler Durden Sat, 12/13/2025 - 21:35

Regenerative Farming Just Went Mainstream; Here's Why It Matters

Authored by Mollie Englehart via The Epoch Times,

My phone started dinging almost all at once.

Text messages, links, alerts—people were telling me that Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins was about to make a major announcement on Dec. 10 related to regenerative agriculture. A YouTube link was circulating. The livestream was about to begin. There was a sense of anticipation in the air.

When the video came on, Rollins stood alongside Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and others. What stood out immediately was not the funding amount, but the language: soil health, human health, nutrient density, the microbiome, and microbiology. The living systems beneath our feet and within our bodies were finally being discussed as part of one connected reality.

That language matters.

Then the announcement itself came: $700 million allocated toward regenerative agriculture.

On paper, that sounds significant. In reality, when spread across acreage that is already regenerative, it comes out to roughly $16 per acre. My phone began lighting up again—this time with frustration and disappointment. Farmers were doing the math. Many compared it to the $12 billion recently allocated to soybean farmers to ease losses from China no longer buying at previous levels. The imbalance felt familiar.

I felt that disappointment myself. But I stopped.

Because the truth is, the government is not going to save us. It never was.

What matters is what was said on stage—out loud, at the highest levels of agricultural leadership. Years of pushing, educating, farming, and speaking have forced the mainstream to acknowledge that regenerative agriculture exists and that what many of us have been saying for years is not fringe, not experimental, and not untested. It is rooted in biological reality.

Unused soil remain on the side of squash plants at Reeves Family Farm in Princeton, Texas, on June 9, 2023. This farm is one of the farms in Collin County following regenerative agriculture farming. Shafkat Anowar/The Dallas Morning News/TNS

Not long ago, when regenerative agriculture was barely even a term, a simple Google search would return little more than my brother Ryland Engelhart’s small website and the work of Allan Savory. That was essentially it. Today, regenerative agriculture is discussed in policy rooms, media, and public health conversations. That shift did not happen by accident.

As someone who has spent years pounding the pavement on small stages, podcasts, newspaper articles, Instagram posts, and anywhere else someone might listen, hearing words that could have come straight from my own mouth—or from the mouths of so many friends—spoken by the Secretary of Agriculture was a real turning point.

It was not only agricultural language that shifted.

In the same period, advisers for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention held hearings on the hepatitis B vaccine and made recommendations to reconsider whether it should be universally mandatory in infancy. Hepatitis B is primarily transmitted through blood and bodily fluids, including sexual contact and needle exposure. These modes of transmission do not logically apply to newborn infants.

For decades, the trend has moved in only one direction, with more interventions introduced earlier and with less public debate. Seeing even one policy questioned openly represents a meaningful shift. It does not mean the system is fixed, but it does suggest that logic and discussion are beginning to reenter conversations where they have long been absent.

For years, soft language has been used to control public discourse. Conversations about vaccine efficacy, soil degradation, chemical agriculture, and the microbiome were not debated openly. They were often shut down through social pressure and professional risk.

That grip appears to be loosening.

Government leaders are now speaking openly about the microbiome, soil microbiology, and nutrient density. There is growing acknowledgment that chronic disease, metabolic dysfunction, and declining fertility do not exist in isolation from how our food is grown. Regenerative agriculture, once dismissed as niche, is now part of national policy discussions.

Regenerative farmer and business owner Mollie Engelhart in Fillmore, Calif., on Oct. 30, 2023. Engelhart says that unlike organic farming, which avoids synthetic inputs, regenerative agriculture focuses on restoring soil health, water resources, and biodiversity. Tal Atzmon/The Epoch Times

Is this the sweeping reform some of us want? No.

Is it enough? No.

But it is movement. And movement matters.

I also want to acknowledge someone who has been pushing this work forward long before it was widely accepted. My brother, Ryland Engelhart, started Kiss the Ground as a small nonprofit in his garage at a time when regenerative agriculture was rarely discussed outside of farming circles. Through years of commitment, education, and personal sacrifice, he helped bring this conversation into the mainstream.

He has since stepped away from Kiss the Ground and is now focused on a new advocacy effort called American Regeneration, continuing his work to advance soil health, regenerative farming, and national policy conversations around land stewardship.

Today, Kiss the Ground has produced two documentaries—“Kiss the Ground” and “Common Ground”—available on Amazon Prime, introducing millions of people to the realities of soil regeneration and land stewardship. That progress did not happen because institutions embraced the message early. It happened because people refused to stop pushing.

The government still has a long way to go. I do not trust it to lead this transformation on its own, and neither should farmers, parents, or patients. Pressure matters. Accountability matters. Demanding more matters.

But so does recognizing when something has shifted.

Once certain truths are spoken publicly, they cannot be taken back. The connection between soil health and human health has been named. The role of microbiology in food and medicine has been acknowledged. Regenerative agriculture cannot be pushed back into obscurity once it has entered the national conversation.

We are not winning through sweeping victories. We are winning incrementally. And for those of us who have been pushing uphill for years, that matters.

Incremental wins are still wins. And the direction of the wind has finally changed.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

Tyler Durden Sat, 12/13/2025 - 21:00

Georgia Woman Attacked With 'Corrosive' Chemical After Christmas Event, Suffers Third-Degree Burns

A Georgia woman is recovering in the hospital after being attacked with an unknown chemical substance (probably acid) that left her with third-degree burns. 

Ashley Wasielewski, 46, was walking in Forsyth Park in Savannah after attending a Christmas program at a nearby church when she was approached from behind by a stranger who poured a 'corrosive liquid' over her head, according to friends and family. Wasielewski reportedly let out a 'blood-curdling scream' as the chemical burned her skin, ate through her clothing, and melted her car's key fob that was in her pocket, the NY Post reports.

No arrests have been made in the case, however local police are working with the FBI to locate the individual below, wearing blue jeans and a dark hooded Bugs Bunny hoodie:

"She was instantly like, ‘Why are you pouring water on me?’" before her skin started burning, close friend Connor Milam told the Post, adding that Wasielewski often volunteered in her community and provided essential items to the homeless. "She looked down and her pants were starting to burn off her body. She started screaming. They didn’t rob her. They didn’t take anything from her. This was a random person in the park who went out of their way to disfigure another human being." 

Wasielewski was rushed to the Augusta Burn Center, where she’s being treated for second- and third-degree burns over half her body, including her face, scalp, hands and legs, according to her son Westley.

The concerned son said he learned of the attack from a good Samaritan who came to his mother’s aid, adding that he could hear her wailing in agony over the phone.

“We don’t know who did it,” Westley said.

“She doesn’t have any enemies. She is a friend to everyone.” -NY Post

"Our Police Department is treating this case with the highest urgency," said Savannah Mayor Van Johnson in a Thursday Facebook post. 

Tyler Durden Sat, 12/13/2025 - 20:25

Cover-Up Or Frame-Up? How Democrat's Epstein Releases Are A Classic Example Of False Light

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

Many years ago, as a law student, I had the honor of working with the great prosecutor William J. Kunkle Jr., who put away John Wayne Gacy. I was a young intern at the litigation firm of Phelan, Pope & John and loved listening to Bill’s stories about his famous cases. I even had to take a couple of calls from Gacy from prison when Bill was out.

(I was asked to write down everything that he would say in the routine calls. On one call, Gacy told me, “Tell Bill he was wrong. I was not guilty of homicide. I was guilty of running an indoor funeral parlor without a license.”).

One story of Bill’s came to mind last night when Democrats released their latest tranche of “bombshell” photos from the Epstein files to suggest that Trump is implicated in the scandal.

Bill told me how he would stage the trial room to maximize impact on the jury.

In the Gacy trial, he was allowed to create an exhibit showing the pictures of the victims. He knew that defense counsel would not want the faces staring at the jury throughout the trial. So he made the exhibit so large that it would be difficult to move and waited for the defense to insist that the pictures themselves be removed.

When they did so, they found that each picture was attached to the board by Bill with large red tape. Throughout the trial, the jurors stared at each name with a large red X beneath it.

It was better than the pictures themselves.

Bill’s story came to mind yesterday when the Democrats released the photos from the Epstein files.

The White House accused Democrats on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform of spreading a “false narrative” with photos. It is more of an effort to create “false light,” a term from tort law where true photos are presented in a misleading and harmful way.

The photos of Trump show women with their faces obscured as “possible” victims of human trafficking with underaged girls.

Even a photo with a single woman on what appears to be a plane is blacked out. There is no context offered, but the blacked-out faces suggest that these women have to be protected as possible victims.

It has the same effect as Kunkle’s Xs.

However, the real question of false light is the inclusion with the other photos selected for release.

The Democrats included pictures of sex toys, novelty condom boxes with Trump’s face (saying “I’m Huuuge”) and even Epstein in a bathtub.

The combination is meant to make the other photos seem more sinister, even though we have no information on where they were taken or who the women are in the images. Just Xs.

Trump is not alone in the framing of such photos. The release included a previously public photo of Harvard Professor Alan Dershowitz simply meeting with Epstein, who is wearing a Harvard sweatshirt. There is no information on when or where it was taken. (Epstein was a major donor to Harvard, and Dershowitz was a Harvard professor as well as someone who served as counsel to Epstein).

The Democrats have long despised Dershowitz, a liberal who broke ranks with the party and represented Trump in his impeachment. Now, he is included with the photos of condoms and Epstein in a bath.

In torts, litigants can bring cases for “false light” when photos may be true images but are presented in a misleading way.

While some states have rejected false light claims in favor of using defamation actions exclusively, other states recognize both claims.

Under a false light claim, a person can sue when a publication or image implies something that is both highly offensive and untrue. Where defamation deals with false statements, false light deals with false implications.

California produced an important case that is particularly illustrative in this circumstance. In Gill v. Curtis Publ’g Co., 239 P.2d 630 (Cal. 1952), the court considered a “Ladies Home Journal” article that was highly critical of couples who claimed to be cases of “love at first sight.” The article suggested that such impulses were more sexual than serious. The magazine included a photo of a couple, with the caption, “[p]ublicized as glamorous, desirable, ‘love at first sight’ is a bad risk.” The couple was unaware that the photo was used and never consented to its inclusion in the magazine. They prevailed in an action for false light given the suggestion that they were one of these sexualized, “wrong” attractions.

The standard California jury instruction asks the jury if “the false light created by the disclosure would be highly offensive to a reasonable person in [name of plaintiff]’s position” and whether “there is clear and convincing evidence that [the defendant] knew the disclosure would create a false impression … or acted with reckless disregard for the truth.”

Likewise, in Solano v. Playgirl, Inc., 292 F.3d 1078 (9th Cir. 2002), the court found false light in the use of an actor’s photo on the cover of Playgirl magazine. In combination with the headlines, the plaintiffs argued that the magazine created the false impression that nude photos of the actor were featured inside the magazine.

Congress is protected from such lawsuits, and even without those protections, it is unlikely that this case would be viable as a tort action. However, the underlying concept is still relevant. The Democrats were suggesting that there was a cover-up of Trump’s (and others’) involvement in these crimes. They have not produced such evidence. They can, however, release images in a way that suggests such untoward or even illegal conduct.

If Dershowitz’s picture were just re-released on its own, it would hardly be notable. However, in the company of condom boxes and bathtub shots, it can feed a news cycle of eagerly awaiting and enabling media.

In the end, the photo dump is unlikely to change any minds or move the needle in polls. Some will see a cover-up and others will see a frame-up.

The difference with the Gacy trial is that most of the jury has already left the room, leaving only the Xs behind.

Tyler Durden Sat, 12/13/2025 - 19:50

Orbital Data Centers Will "Bypass Earth-Based" Constraints

Last week, readers were briefed on the emerging theme of data centers in low Earth orbit, a concept now openly discussed by Elon Musk, Jensen Huang, Jeff Bezos, and Sam Altman, as energy availability and infrastructure constraints on land increasingly emerge as major bottlenecks to data center buildouts through the end of this decade and well into the 2030s.

Nvidia-backed startup Starcloud has released a white paper outlining a case for operating a constellation of artificial intelligence data centers in space as a practical solution to Earth's looming power crunch, cooling woes, and permitting land constraints.

Terrestrial data center projects will reach capacity limits as AI workloads scale to multi-gigawatt levels, while electricity demand and grid bottlenecks worsen over the next several years. Orbital data centers aim to bypass these constraints by using near-continuous, high-intensity solar power, passive radiative cooling to deep space, and modular designs that scale quickly, launched into orbit via SpaceX rockets.

"Orbital data centers can leverage lower cooling costs using passive radiative cooling in space to directly achieve low coolant temperatures. Perhaps most importantly, they can be scaled almost indefinitely without the physical or permitting constraints faced on Earth, using modularity to deploy them rapidly," Starcloud wrote in the report.

Starcloud continued, "With new, reusable, cost-effective heavy-lift launch vehicles set to enter service, combined with the proliferation of in-orbit networking, the timing for this opportunity is ideal."

Already, the startup has launched its Starcloud-1 satellite carrying an Nvidia H100 GPU, the most powerful compute chip ever sent into space. Using the H100, Starcloud successfully trained NanoGPT, a lightweight language model, on the complete works of Shakespeare, making it the first AI model trained in space.

Starcloud (@Starcloud_Inc1) recently made history by launching a satellite with an NVIDIA H100 into orbit — the first time a GPU that powerful has ever operated in space. It's the first step toward building AI data centers in orbit, powered by continuous sunlight and cooled by… pic.twitter.com/xf7C1D583N

— Y Combinator (@ycombinator) November 13, 2025

Starcloud is also running Google's open-source LLM Gemma in orbit, representing the first time a high-powered Nvidia GPU has been used to operate a large language model in space.

One solution (before nuclear power generation gets ramped up) to keep up with the rapid advances in AI and the ever-increasing demand for power and resources to prevent bottlenecks is to shift some of these data centers to low Earth orbit. This in itself will spark a space race-themed investment theme, hence why SpaceX is planning to go public next year at a valuation of $800 billion. Starlink will likely be powering these space-based data centers.

*  *  *

Read the full report: 

Tyler Durden Sat, 12/13/2025 - 19:15

Republicans Offer Their Obamacare Alternative

For years, Democrats have wielded the tired accusation that Republicans lack a healthcare alternative to the Affordable Care Act, commonly referred to as Obamacare. 

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA), U.S. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) (L) and House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-MN) / Heather Diehl/Getty Images

On Friday, House Republicans called that bluff, unveiling the Lower Health Care Premiums for All Americans Act, a legislative package aimed at dismantling the cost drivers embedded in the Affordable Care Act while expanding choice and transparency. The bill heads to the House floor next week, and predictably, Democrats are already scrambling to kill it.

“Nearly 15 years ago, the Democrats’ Unaffordable Care Act broke the American health care system. Since its inception, premium costs have skyrocketed, networks have shrunk, and the system has become bloated, inefficient, and riddled with waste, fraud, and abuse. While Democrats demand that taxpayers write bigger checks to insurance companies to hide the cost of their failed law, House Republicans are tackling the real drivers of health care costs to provide affordable care, increase access and choice, and restore integrity to our nation’s health care system for all Americans,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said in a statement. 

“Earlier this year, Democrats had a chance to help make life more affordable by supporting the Working Families Tax Cuts legislation,” Johnson continued. “Instead, they voted to raise taxes, protect waste and fraud, and continue providing free health care to illegal immigrants. Democrats’ ‘affordability’ charade has gone on long enough.”

Johnson said the new Republican proposal offers a responsible path forward on health care, cutting premium costs while expanding access to quality health care options for Americans nationwide. “The Lower Health Care Premiums for All Americans Act will actually deliver affordable health care – and we look forward to advancing it through the House.”

A key aspect of the legislation is a push for transparency for pharmacy benefit managers. PBMs, the middlemen who negotiate drug prices and rebates, have long operated without any transparency at all at the expense of employers and patients. The proposed legislation would force PBMs to disclose detailed data on prescription drug spending, rebates, spread pricing, and formulary decisions. Employers and workers would finally see what they're paying for - and what they're not getting in return.

According to Johnson, the bill also appropriates funding for cost-sharing reduction payments beginning in 2027. These payments, meant to lower premiums and stabilize the individual market, would be directed toward low-income enrollees. The measure aims to ensure taxpayer dollars are spent responsibly rather than being dumped into a system that rewards insurers for inflated costs, as the current system does.

Beyond transparency, the legislation expands health coverage options for American workers through Association Health Plans. These plans allow employers, including the self-employed, to pool resources across industries to purchase high-quality, more affordable coverage. 

Republicans have long advocated for the idea that by banding together, small businesses and independent workers gain the negotiating power currently monopolized by large corporations and government-run exchanges.

The bill also clarifies that stop-loss insurance - coverage that protects employers from catastrophic claims—is not "health insurance coverage" under federal law. This distinction allows small and mid-sized businesses to tailor their employee benefits without triggering the burdensome regulations of Obamacare. 

Another provision codifies and strengthens the 2019 rules that allow employers to offer defined contributions for employees to purchase their own coverage. These arrangements, rebranded as CHOICE arrangements, let employees pay premiums on a pre-tax basis while selecting plans that fit their needs rather than accepting whatever their employer chooses. 

The concept is simple: give workers control over their healthcare dollars and let them shop for the coverage that works best for them.

Naturally, Democrats hate it.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries wasted no time trashing the proposal, dismissing it as "likely to be a disaster" before he even knew what was in it. Speaking to MS NOW on Friday, Jeffries claimed the package would diminish rather than enhance American healthcare, though he offered no specifics to support his assertion. His vague prophecy of doom reflects the Democrats' broader strategy: attack anything that threatens Obamacare's legacy, regardless of the facts.

Jeffries suggests that a vote on the GOP health care bill + amendment vote on Fitzpatrick bill won’t be suitable for Democrats.

“Their health care package, as I understand it, is likely to be a disaster and actually not enhance the health care of the American people. It will… pic.twitter.com/Sr6JbZE9zT

— Mychael Schnell (@mychaelschnell) December 12, 2025

But that doesn’t change the fact that the Affordable Care Act has been a disaster. A recent Forbes analysis found that since it was passed in 2010, premiums have nearly tripled and deductibles have more than doubled. The cost of coverage for a family of four has surged by more than $10,000. Worse, the coverage itself has deteriorated. Americans are paying more for less, a reality that Democrats refuse to acknowledge.

The Forbes analysis also shows that Obamacare deductibles run far higher than those in employer-sponsored plans. The law was marketed to the public as a way to create affordable, accessible care. Instead, it became a case study in government overreach that enriched insurers and bureaucrats while sticking middle-class families with soaring costs. That was entirely by design.

Republicans are betting that Americans have had enough. The Lower Health Care Premiums for All Americans Act offers a clear alternative: transparency over opacity, choice over mandates, and market competition over government control. Whether it passes remains to be seen, but the message is unmistakable. Democrats built Obamacare. Republicans are offering a way out. 
 

Tyler Durden Sat, 12/13/2025 - 18:05

Who Are The Bad Guys?

Via Financial Preparedness,

"Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech." 

~ Benjamin Franklin

I think virtually everyone would agree that there are “bad guys” in this world. Of course, there are varying degrees of “bad,” but we should concern ourselves with the most dangerous—the ones who have both the desire and the ability to take one simple action that would probably end up destroying Western civilization.

Due to the unprecedented amount of fake news, gaslighting, lies, propaganda, mis- and disinformation and psychological warfare operations that are employed today, this can be quite challenging for the average person to ascertain. But due to the existential stakes involved, having this ability is crucial for survival.

Recently, Elon Musk devised a litmus test that one can use to determine who the bad guys are:

“As a general rule, you can tell which side is the good side and which side is the bad side by which side wishes to restrict freedom of speech. The side that is restricting freedom of speech . . . you know, that would have been the Hitler, Stalin, Mussolinis of the world, they had very strong censorship, very strong restrictions on speech. That’s one of the signs that they are the bad guys.”

Recently the European Commission (the elite, unelected body of the EU that actually runs it) levied a €140 million fine on X and Elon Musk personally for allegedly breaking its “laws” requiring social media transparency. As Michael Shellenberger pointed out, “the goal of the European Commission, like that of the governments of Britain, Brazil, and Australia, is to censor the American people.” As I wrote about in March, the EU is maniacally determined to wage a campaign of cultural suicide. But for them it’s not enough for just Europe to be overrun by barbarians. No, they want all of Western civilization to fall.

As an aside, Shellenberger noted that “The EU is now in direct violation of the NATO Treaty, under which the US is militarily obligated to defend Europe. The NATO Treaty requires member states to have free speech and free and fair elections. France and Germany are actively and illegally preventing political candidates from running for office for ideological reasons, namely their opposition to mass migration. And the Romanian high court, with the support of the European Commission, nullified election results under the thin and unproven pretext of Russian interference, after a nationalist and populist presidential candidate won.”

J.D. Vance recently said, “Germany’s entire defense is subsidized by the American taxpayer. There are thousands upon thousands of American troops in Germany today. Do you think that the American taxpayer is going to stand for that if you get thrown in jail in Germany for posting a mean tweet? Of course they’re not….[the friendship between the U.S. and Europe] is based on shared values. You do not have shared values if you’re jailing people for saying we should close down our border. You don’t have shared values if you cancel elections because you don’t like the result—and that happened in Romania. You do not have shared values if you’re so afraid of your own people that you silence them and shut them up.”

Well, the European Commission (and NATO) is about to FAFO, as they say. My German friend points out that Europe has more people than Russia (implying that Russia couldn’t conquer Europe), but as I replied, that’s not what we in the US Army called the “order of battle.” It doesn’t matter how many people you have if they don’t value liberty enough to be willing to risk their lives to defend it.

I’ll soon finish reading a great book called While Europe Slept, in which the author writes, “…Americans, for all their idiocies and vulgarities, really do believe in fighting for liberty, even the liberty of strangers in faraway places with names they can’t spell and languages they can’t speak a word of and cultures they find ridiculous. In their view, to defend other people’s freedom is to defend their own….maybe that’s what being an American does come down to—a sentimentalism, about liberty among other things, that many Western Europeans just can’t fathom….Sitting there with [his Dutch friends], I realized that they were genuinely unable to comprehend a land whose people take liberty seriously enough to die for it.”

I recently heard about how “vandals” (a euphemism for immigrants) attacked the Christmas market and living nativity scene in Erbach, Germany, beating and torturing two donkeys and defecating in the church. This was relatively mild; at least no one was injured or killed, as is often the case.

Erbach is very close to where I lived at my first duty station in the early 1990s, and I’m sure I drove through it while exploring the area. At the time, Germany was a clean, orderly and picturesque place; even the forests seemed like they were diligently maintained. Living there was a wonderful experience, and I have many good memories of it. Unfortunately—and I say this as someone who spent 3.5 of the best years of my life enduring many hardships and risking my life to defend it—Germany (along with France, the UK, Ireland, Sweden and probably most of the rest of western Europe) is finished. It’s kaput, it’s over, finito Benito, dead Fred.

Ideally, we would be able to rescue hundreds of millions of innocent Europeans from a tyrannical fate. However, given the current dire situation, I think Europe has passed the event horizon of a very dark black hole. When you have some quiet time, watch this sobering interview with a professor of military history living in the UK. He says there is no political solution to the problem, and cannot foresee an outcome that does not result in massive deaths (he estimates it will be between 23,000 and 500,000 in the UK alone). He predicts violence will begin suddenly and spread quickly to neighboring countries.

It’s now time to dispel illusions and come to grips with reality. The U.S. should cut its losses and allow most of Europe to collapse into a supernova of disarmament, severe censorship, never-ending war, mass taxpayer-funded immigration, medieval religious fanaticism, rampant crime and terrorism, cuckoldry and organized rape of underage girls on an industrial scale, humiliation and intimidation, environmental alarmism, welfare socialism, stifling bureaucracy, corruption, deindustrialization and de-agriculturalization, central bank digital currency, loss of privacy, massive government spending/deficits/debt, currency/financial/ economic/sovereign debt crises and cultural and societal extinction.

Congressman Thomas Massie just introduced a bill to withdraw the U.S. from NATO. To help soften the blow, perhaps the U.S. could offer a generous asylum policy (with no welfare benefits) for Europeans who wanted to escape this raging dumpster fire and live in a normal, civilized country, as it did with the Boer farmers in South Africa, who were being systematically slaughtered. Perhaps the number of refugees allowed each month would decline over time to help ensure that only the most ideologically compatible people were admitted instead of hordes of disillusioned Leftists who eventually realized that statism doesn’t work. This would also shore up America’s own flagging demographics, allowing it to stave off the barbarians for a while longer.

Although Trump won a decisive Electoral College victory in 2024 and Republicans control Congress (though by a thin margin), Democrats are emboldened by recent election victories, and The Great Reset is rapidly being implemented in most of the rest of the world. Few people realize that Western civilization actually hangs in the balance by the thinnest of threads, one that currently runs straight through X and Elon Musk. If the European Commission succeeds in censoring X and other American websites, Western civilization is over.

Without free speech and the right to share ideas and find out what’s really going on, it becomes impossible to stop tyranny. In modern warfare, opponents first seek to decapitate each other by eliminating the leadership (assassination in the political world) and their ability to see and communicate (censorship). Once you’ve done that, it’s much easier to disarm (gun control) and destroy (or subjugate) an enemy. The European Commission doesn’t want to restrict speech because they care about democracy or the truth, they want to censor people because they intend to enslave them.

The current battle between the European Commission and X reminds me of the Battle of Britain after the start of World War II: One small country (or website) standing alone against an onslaught by a regional empire that appeared unstoppable. Perhaps it’s just a coincidence that Germany is/was one of the primary aggressors in each case.

Like the Battle of Britain, the fate of Western civilization depends on the outcome of this battle; mark my words.

Tyler Durden Sat, 12/13/2025 - 17:30

Mamdani Suggests NYPD May Arrest ICE Agents Enforcing Federal Law

During an interview with MSNOW Senior Political and National Reporter Jacob Soboroff, New York City Mayor-Elect Zohran Mamdani faced pointed questions about whether his rhetoric on accountability extends to federal immigration enforcement, and Mamdani suggested his police force might arrest federal officers enforcing federal immigration laws.

Soboroff didn't dance around the issue, asking directly whether there's a scenario where the NYPD under Mamdani's leadership could arrest ICE agents on city streets for their treatment of illegal immigrants. 

“I've also heard you say that no one is above the law and anyone can be held accountable, and that goes for the president of the United States, and it also goes for ICE agents,” Soboroff began.

“I don't want to put words in your mouth, but is there a scenario in which the NYPD, under you, could arrest ICE agents on the streets of New York for their behavior towards immigrants?”

Mamdani initially tried to avoid answering the question.

“My focus is for the NYPD to not be assisting ICE in their immigration enforcement and to actually be following the policies of sanctuary city law,” he said. 

But he didn't stop there. 

"I do believe, however, that, for the law to have meaning, there has to be accountability for all of us," Mamdani continued, framing the issue as one of equal justice rather than what it actually is—a direct challenge to federal authority. 

He insisted this accountability must apply "no matter who we're referring to," suggesting ICE agents enjoy no special status in his vision of law enforcement.

Soboroff, however, seemed to want a more concrete answer and pressed about whether ICE agents could actually be arrested by NYPD officers.

“So, in other words, there is a circumstance in which if an ICE agent violates someone's rights here in New York City, they could be arrested by the police department?” he asked.

Mamdani did not deny it.

"I think if an ICE agent is breaking the law, then that is a law that they should be held accountable to," he declared. 

Zohran Mamdani says he will not allow NYPD to assist ICE in NYC.

When asked about ICE entering the subways, Mamdani says it’s his job to “make sure that doesn’t take place.”

He says, “what New Yorkers need from a federal administration is the kind of partnership that will… pic.twitter.com/Ej36h2iig9

— Wall Street Mav (@WallStreetMav) December 10, 2025

Though he didn’t explicitly say so, the implication was clear: federal immigration officers could be arrested by New York City police officers if Mamdani decides they've crossed whatever line he chooses to draw. Mamdani is clearly signaling that preventing the New York Police Department from assisting ICE agents isn’t enough. Mamdani is talking about active interference by using the NYPD as a barrier to block federal immigration enforcement and even arrest ICE agents carrying out lawful deportation orders. 

Mamdani’s plan puts him in direct conflict with the Constitution. The Supremacy Clause establishes that federal law takes precedence over conflicting state or local laws, and immigration enforcement is clearly a federal responsibility. If the NYPD starts blocking ICE or arresting federal agents carrying out lawful deportations, it isn’t “standing up for immigrants”—it’s defying the law. Local policy can’t override federal authority, and any attempt would spark a legal battle the city would almost certainly lose. Beyond the constitutional issues, the practical consequences would be chaotic. Mamdani is essentially declaring himself the final judge of whether federal officers can operate in New York City, ignoring that ICE agents answer to Washington, not City Hall.

This is not the first time Mamdani has anointed himself the final arbiter over the law in New York City. He previously warned he intends to enforce the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he ever sets foot in the city. He staked out that position even before taking office, and he hasn’t backed away from it.

"I’ve said time and again that I believe this is a city of international law, and being a city of international law means looking to uphold international law," he said. "And that means upholding the warrants from the International Criminal Court, whether they’re for Benjamin Netanyahu or Vladimir Putin,” he said last month, even though he doesn’t have the legal authority to do so. 

“New York City mayor does not have the power to do that,” New York Governor Kathy Hochul admitted earlier this month.

Netanyahu has also laughed off Mamdani’s threats. Appearing via video at the New York Times DealBook, Netanyahu said that the threat wouldn’t keep him away from New York City. “Why don’t you wait and see?” he said. “Yes, I’ll come to New York.”

Mamdani’s approach is a direct challenge to the country’s constitutional order. By positioning the NYPD to block or even arrest federal agents, potentially, he risks a showdown with the federal government that the city is almost certain to lose. New Yorkers should be wary of a mayor who treats his own judgment as superior to the law, because when local officials ignore federal authority, the result is chaos, not justice.

Tyler Durden Sat, 12/13/2025 - 16:55

2025: The Year Energy Sanity Returned

Authored by James Hickman via Schiff Sovereign,

When Robert Oppenheimer watched the first atomic bomb detonate in the New Mexico desert on July 16, 1945, the blast confirmed that America had won the race to build a nuclear weapon.

The destructive power of these weapons was extraordinary; the explosion from Oppenheimer’s “Trinity” test unleashed an astonishing 83.7 Terajoules (TJ) of energy from just SIX kilograms of Plutonium-239.

By comparison, a typical power plant in 1945 would have required 9.5 MILLION kilograms of coal to produce a similar amount of energy.

This makes splitting the atom one of the most important discoveries in all of human history; the sheer volume of energy that can be released from a nuclear reaction is literally over 1 million times greater than from chemical/thermal reactions (like coal, natural gas, or TNT).

Initially this discovery was weaponized. And just three weeks after Oppenheimer’s successful test, US President Harry Truman dropped two atomic bombs on Japan to finally end World War II.

But many of the same scientists who built the weapon also realized that this same power could also be used to generate electricity so cheaply and abundantly that it would be practically free.

Yet in one of the most bizarre twists of fate, after literally EIGHT decades since Oppenheimer’s test, humanity has done almost nothing with this revolutionary technology.

That’s because the first institution to harness the power of nuclear energy as a fuel source (and not a weapon) was actually the United States Navy.

Admiral Hyman Rickover understood that nuclear energy could power America’s submarine fleet, giving the US Navy a major strategic advantage. With nuclear power, US subs could stay underwater and sustain themselves for longer missions and greater distances.

But that required certain critical decisions that would impact the nuclear power industry for decades.

Most importantly, in designing its nuclear submarines, the Navy had to first decide on what material to use as a coolant.

Many scientists at the time championed using molten salt for its safety and stability. But Admiral Rickover overruled them and decided to use pressurized water instead; after all, he reasoned, submarines were literally surrounded by water, so it would be the most efficient coolant.

That proved to be an incredibly fateful decision.

The civilian nuclear power industry essentially copied the Navy’s design choices— especially the decision to go with pressurized water as a coolant. And then came the accidents.

Pretty much every nuclear accident you’ve ever heard of— Three Mile Island in 1979, Chernobyl in 1986, and much later Fukushima in 2011— were essentially BECAUSE of the pressurized water cooling systems.

In other words, had the commercial nuclear power industry been designed around molten salt (which has a MUCH higher boiling temperature than pressurized water), those infamous accidents would have never happened.

And yet, they did. The consequent negative media coverage and political fallout slammed the door shut on nuclear power for a generation—effectively sending a technology with staggering potential into the waste bin.

Despite all the panic, policy paralysis, and lost decades, however, nuclear is finally making a comeback. And it remains, by far, the cheapest form of electricity in existence.

And that matters. Energy is a key driver of inflation, and when energy prices rise, so does the price of nearly every good and service in the economy.

Abundant, cheap energy is one of the few forces that can reliably keep inflation in check.

Nuclear, of course, is not the only option. There’s still “conventional” sources like oil, gas, coal, etc.

Yet starting in 2021, the Biden administration went out of its way to mothball nuclear development and kneecap those other conventional industries, driving prices higher across the board.

Instead they mandated and subsidized extremely inefficient “green energy” (which is not all that green when you factor in the environmental costs of mining cobalt, lithium, etc. for battery backups).

That’s not just idiotic from an economic standpoint, it has actually caused serious harm to national security.

America’s main adversaries have spent the past decade building the largest power grid in human history— including coal, hydro, and of course, nuclear.

Between 2010 and 2024, China’s electricity production grew more than the rest of the world combined, and last year they generated more than twice as much power as the United States.

Chinese AI data centers can already purchase electricity for as little as 3 cents per kilowatt-hour, less than half what American operators pay. Plus it has another 34 nuclear reactors currently under construction which will drive the cost of electricity even lower.

Whether America’s competition with China stays economic or, in the worst case, turns into an outright war, the side paying double or triple for electricity is at a strategic disadvantage.

Any serious nation should prioritize cheap and plentiful energy to supercharges economic productivity.

Cheap energy fuels stronger growth, lowers prices, and it makes life better for everyone. What’s not to like about that?

That’s why one of the most important—and least appreciated—developments of this year in the United States is the renewed federal push for nuclear energy.

In May, the Trump administration issued four executive orders aimed squarely at jump-starting the industry: reforming the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), speeding up licensing, and creating an expedited pathway for advanced reactors already tested by the Department of Energy (DOE) or the Pentagon.

More importantly, this year the Department of Energy selected two recipients for major SMR (Small Modular Reactors) development awards.

Unlike traditional gigawatt-scale giant reactors that can take a 10+ years and billions of dollars to build, SMRs are designed to be modular, scalable, and dramatically easier/faster to deploy.

The newly reformed NRC also, finally, signed off on one company’s SMR design— a 77-megawatt reactor that can be manufactured in a factory and shipped to a site ready to install.

This design certification is a huge leap forward; once the NRC approves a reactor blueprint, developers can use it without undergoing years of safety reviews.

This removes one of the biggest regulatory chokepoints in the entire nuclear industry and speeds along new reactor construction.

All of these moves mark the first real momentum nuclear power has seen in decades.

Between newly certified small modular reactor designs, federally backed advanced-reactor projects, and the restart of shuttered plants, there are now multiple US nuclear projects that have been approved, funded, or moving through a faster licensing track.

Nuclear is back. And this revival is one of the most encouraging developments of 2025.

Over the next decade, we could see small modular reactors move from prototypes to widespread deployment. And we’ll be able to draw a straight line from the cheap, abundant energy of the future, to the decisions that were made this year.

This is important, because America is going to need every watt.

Some of these next-generation data centers will require a Megawatt of power PER RACK. That’s essentially a dedicated nuclear reactor for a single facility.

The grid we have today can’t support the future that’s arriving. Nuclear can.

And that is especially important because these two developments—nuclear power and AI—are realistically the only way to unleash enough productivity to grow the economy out of the deficit and debt problems the government has weighed it down with.

Tyler Durden Sat, 12/13/2025 - 16:20

Minnesota Gets New Fraud Czar Amid Somali Welfare Scandal

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz on Friday named Tim O’Malley the state’s director of program integrity, tapping the judge and former superintendent of the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension to root out fraud in government.

O’Malley, who also worked as an FBI agent and spearheaded reforms in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, will be involved across agencies to oversee that taxpayer funds are not misappropriated.

Walz also announced a partnership with WayPoint Inc., a Minnesota firm made up of former law enforcement and federal agents focused on forensic accounting and investigations.  They will develop a comprehensive fraud-prevention strategy for the state.

Walz said he was proud O’Malley would be working to protect Minnesota taxpayers from fraud in government programs.

“Today we are building on the work of the last several years and strengthening Minnesota’s defenses against fraud,” Walz said.

“If you commit fraud in Minnesota, you will be caught and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

As Kimberley Hayek reports for The Epoch Times, O’Malley said he has not been appointed to serve the governor or any individual or political party.

“I’m here to serve the people of Minnesota,” O’Malley said.

“No one has any tolerance for fraud. This issue must be addressed aggressively. Minnesotans must have trust in our public institutions.”

WayPoint will spearhead the creation of uniform investigative protocols, a cross-agency fraud prevention strategy, legal data-sharing mechanisms to detect multi-program abusers, and methods for auditing and probing misconduct.

“Fraud is not just a financial loss. It disrupts lives, harms families and undermines confidence in the programs Minnesotans rely on,” Bureau of Criminal Apprehension Superintendent Drew Evans said.

“Our Financial Crimes and Fraud Section is focused on working with local, state and federal partners on criminal investigations that hold offenders accountable and we’re working with the Office of Inspector General Coordinating Counsel to develop stronger barriers and stop fraud before it occurs.”

Shireen Gandhi, Minnesota Department of Human Services Temporary Commissioner, said the Minnesota Department of Human Services has no room for fraud.

“We are intently focused on solutions – strengthening program integrity, tightening oversight of services, and hardening our programs against attacks by criminals,” Gandhi said.

“Our job is to protect Minnesotans who need services. Their lives shouldn’t be a political football and we need to maximize every dollar that goes toward programs to help them.”

O’Malley, who is currently serving as interim chief judge at the Court of Administrative Hearings, led child protection and clergy accountability efforts in the archdiocese beginning in 2014. He will start serving in his new capacity next month.

The appointment comes amid federal scrutiny of organized welfare fraud in the state, with authorities investigating schemes involving networks from Minnesota’s Somali-American community that allegedly stole vast sums of money.

The Treasury Department is investigating allegations that stolen funds were sent to Somali terrorist groups. At the same time, the House Oversight Committee is examining whistleblower allegations of ignored fraud activity and an alleged cover-up.

Meanwhile, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been ramping up activities in the Minneapolis-Saint Paul Twin Cities region.

Tyler Durden Sat, 12/13/2025 - 15:45

US Commandos Raided Cargo Ship Travelling From China To Iran, Seized 'Dual Use' Tech

Via The Cradle

US special forces raided a cargo ship travelling from China to Iran in November that was allegedly transporting "dual-use military technology," according to a report published by the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) on Friday.

Citing unnamed US officials, the WSJ revealed that a special operations team boarded the ship several hundred miles from Sri Lanka and seized the cargo, which was described as “dual-use components that could be used either for civilian applications or to make conventional weapons."

Image source: US Navy photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class William Farmerie

The ship's name, its owner, and the flag under which it was sailing have not been disclosed. Neither Iran nor China immediately responded to the report. A spokesperson for the US Indo-Pacific Command, responsible for regional military activities, declined to comment. 

Nevertheless, an official told the WSJ that Washington seized material "potentially useful for Iran’s conventional weapons," but highlighted that the cargo could have "both military and civilian applications."

The WSJ reported that the high-sea raid was part of a Pentagon effort to "disrupt Iran’s clandestine military procurement" following the 12-Day War in June, during which the US and Israel teamed up to bomb Iranian nuclear sites and kill dozens of military commanders, nuclear scientists, and their families.

The reported seizure took place weeks before US troops seized a Venezuelan oil tanker in the Caribbean Sea and stole its cargo in a move Caracas condemned as "theft and piracy." It also came as the UN reimposed an international ban on Iran’s arms trade in late September.

Overnight on Saturday, Iranian authorities reported seizing a foreign-flagged oil tanker in the Gulf of Oman and detaining its crew for allegedly smuggling six million liters of fuel. The vessel was intercepted in waters off the southern province of Hormozgan.

Mojtaba Ghahremani, the chief justice of Hormozgan province, said the seizure was part of ongoing intelligence efforts to monitor suspected fuel-smuggling activities in the Sea of Oman.

There's a clause in the UN sanctions that returned via snapback that covers interdiction of vessels carrying weaponry or dual-use goods for Iran's missile or nuclear programs.

If China and Iran continue this trade, more seizures are likely to follow. https://t.co/7vJRsu7W8s

— Gregory Brew (@gbrew24) December 13, 2025

On Wednesday, Iran seized an Eswatini-flagged vessel carrying 0.35 million liters of smuggled diesel. In mid-November, IRGC also seized a Marshall Islands-flagged tanker outside Iran’s waters in the Persian Gulf for carrying unauthorized cargo.

Tyler Durden Sat, 12/13/2025 - 15:10

At the Calculated Risk Real Estate Newsletter this week:

Click on graph for larger image.

• 2nd Look at Local Housing Markets in November

• Mortgage Rates: The New Normal

• Lawler: More on the “Neutral” Interest Rate (R*)

• December ICE Mortgage Monitor: Home Prices "Firmed" in November, Up 0.8% Year-over-year

• 1st Look at Local Housing Markets in November

This is usually published 4 to 6 times a week and provides more in-depth analysis of the housing market.

Two US Soldiers & A Civilian Killed, Several More Wounded, In Central Syria Ambush

Washington's Syria intervention is the mess that keeps on giving. And now more tragedy has struck after years of a Pentagon quagmire and endless occupation in the northeast of the country.

Two US Army soldiers and an American civilian who was serving as an interpreter were killed after shots were fired at US and allied Syrian forces during a security meeting near the ancient central Syrian town of Palmyra.

Image source: AFP

An additional three other American servicemembers were wounded in the attack, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a post on X.

The attack occurred as troops were conducting "key leader engagement." This marks the single biggest casualty event among US forces inside Syria in years - given at least six total US personnel were apparently shot.

A CENTCOM statement said it was the result of an an "ambush by a lone ISIS gunman in Syria," and that the "gunman was engaged and killed."

"Their mission was in support of on-going counter-ISIS/counter-terrorism operations in the region," Parnell had described further. He said that identifying information about their units will be withheld until 24 hours after the next of kin notification. "This attack is currently under active investigation."

Reports that gunman was actually part of Jolani/Sharaa regime forces:

Claiming ISIS was behind the attack on U.S. troops in Palmyra is not factual.

The spokesperson for Syria’s Ministry of Interior says in interview that the perpetrator was affiliated with the Internal Security forces.

While the attacker may have had a history with ISIS, at the…

— Jenan Moussa (@jenanmoussa) December 13, 2025

Syrian state SANA indicate that two members of a Syrian security detail were also wounded - but these seem to have been fighters from the largely Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). The shooting took place on the outskirts of Palmyra.

The city of ruins, which also includes a modern town which grew up around tourism, is a UNESCO world heritage site an has long been frequented by visitors. 

Reports of US and Syrian forces imposing blockade on parts of Palmyra, long feared a hotbed of 'ISIS cells':

In Palmyra - eastern Syria, US forces of the coalition against ISIS alongside their allies the Tanf-FSA were ambushed.

Sources on the ground claim that soldiers of the convoy were wounded.

Right now, the US forces enforced a blockade of the main roads via the STG - US air… pic.twitter.com/LEI9ceXALF

— ScharoMaroof (@ScharoMaroof) December 13, 2025

In 2015 the Syrian Army was pushed out by advancing ISIS terrorists, and troops serving under President Assad were executed. Assad forces and the Russian military eventually liberated it:

ISIS began by executing Khaled Al-Ass’ad, the former Director of Antiquities at Palmyra, a devoted and outstanding archeologist who loved Palmyra like no one else. Following this horrific execution, ISIS began to destroy many of the most famous ruins—the Bel and Baalshamin temples, the tower tombs, the monumental arch and standing columns in addition to plundering the Palmyra Museum and destroying a large number of sculptures and artifacts left there.

In March 2016, the Assad forces (backed by the Russian military) recaptured Palmyra and immediately started building a Russian military base within the World Heritage Site. ISIS recaptured Palmyra in early December 2016 and destroyed the tetrapylon and damaged the theater. The Assad regime forces managed to take Palmyra back in March 2017.

Washington at the time didn't seem to mind that ISIS was taking over key Syrian sites and cities at the time, given admissions from top US officials that they could 'manage' ISIS by using terrorism to keep pressure on Assad (see below) in order to overthrow him.

The savage who perpetrated this attack was killed by partner forces.

Let it be known, if you target Americans — anywhere in the world — you will spend the rest of your brief, anxious life knowing the United States will hunt you, find you, and ruthlessly kill you. https://t.co/P7D9NrWpAL

— Secretary of War Pete Hegseth (@SecWar) December 13, 2025

* * *

An important trip down memory lane and recent history...

Remember this?

Leaked audio of then Secretary of State John Kerry admitting that the US backed ISIS in Syria:

'Daesh was threatening to take Damascus. That's why Russia came in. We saw it coming too, but thought we could use it to force Assad to negotiate...' https://t.co/9DdJxWK7NE pic.twitter.com/IOEzJMm5Od

— Afshin Rattansi (@afshinrattansi) November 24, 2025

*  *  * CHRISTMAS CUTOFF IS MONDAY!

Tyler Durden Sat, 12/13/2025 - 13:25

What Kind Of Caesar Will Trump Be?

Authored by Vince Coyner via American Thinker,

It’s not often that life gives nations real second chances when it comes to the big things, but in America’s case, it did.  My only hope is that we don’t squander it...or to be more precise, I hope Donald Trump doesn’t squander it.

Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.

The 2026 midterms are less than a year away.  That makes what Trump does in the next six to eight months monumentally important.  The bottom line is, does he want to be consequential or just well known?

Julius Caesar is easily one of the best known men in history, but was he really that consequential?  The truth is, no.  We know more about Caesar than any other Roman not because he changed the world, but because he was a genius of propaganda and wrote prodigiously — and well — about his exploits.  The reality is, Caesar was just another Roman general, albeit a great one, caught up in a century of internecine wars among men seeking to control the Republic.

Augustus, his adopted son, who is far less well known in history, was far more consequential, having transformed the Republic into an empire that would arguably last another 1,500 years.

Is Donald Trump going to be Caesar or Augustus?  Is he going to be a president who rearranges the deck chairs on the Titanic and simply slows down her eventual collision with the iceberg?  Or is he going to steer her through the treacherous waters and bring her out safely on the other side?

When Trump won re-election last November, I was certain that after enduring eight years of what is easily the most vitriolic abuse any American politician had ever endured, he was going to return to Washington, and metaphorical heads were going to roll.  Indeed, he ran on the idea of destroying the Deep State.

Now, a year after the election, I’m not so sure.  Though I applaud most of his moves on immigration, particularly his recent move to cease all immigration from third-world countries, there are two elements that cause concern.

One is his support for the H1B visa program.  If there are jobs that can’t be filled by Americans, then bringing in foreign workers who have the necessary skills makes sense for keeping American industry productive.  But that’s not what’s happening.  Hundreds of thousands of foreign workers, primarily Indians, are being brought in to supplant American workers whom companies would generally have to pay more to keep or hire.  There is no shortage of American STEM workers; there are merely trillion-dollar tech, consulting, and other companies who simply want to bolster the bottom line by paying foreign workers lower wages.  Sadly, Trump defends the program virtually every chance he gets.  Add to that his allowing half a million students (or spies) from Communist China to remain at American universities, and one begins to wonder whose payrolls Trump’s advisers are on. 

Another area where Trump has not met expectations is taking on the leftist cabal that brought the nation to the brink of disaster over the last decade.  From Barack Obama to Hillary Clinton and the army of anti-American traitors who worked against Trump, his allies, and the American people, Trump should establish a task force with the specific purpose of investigating every single member of the government or NGO and every financier who had anything to do with Russiagate as well as the coup-cover-up of 2020 and the resulting J6 persecutions.

Americans know what happened.  We watched it in real time.  Molly Ball crowed about it in TIME magazine, we read about it in Mollie Hemingway’s Rigged, and later we followed as Emerald Robinson pulled string after string...but what we don’t have, and need, is the entire case of the treachery laid out in black and white, and then to see the guilty tried and punished.

As we all learned in the OJ trial, juries can’t always be trusted, but at a minimum, the information should be laid out for the American people to see so that they can vote accordingly.  The recent arrest of the D.C. pipe bomb suspect and Kash Patel’s announcement that it was based on information the FBI sat on for four years tells us that the information is there; it just takes an administration with sufficient courage to expose it. 

Hand in hand with allowing that treachery to go unpunished is the fact that Trump has not put his shoulder into ensuring the passage of the SAVE Act.  Indeed, New England, which is about 40% Republican, has 21 House seats, and 100% of them are Democrat.  That’s not good.  Democrats win by cheating.  Period.

The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act would require voter ID and proof of U.S. citizenship and outlaw most mail-in voting.  Strong-arming Congress, which the GOP theoretically controls, into passing SAVE would do more for saving the Republic than almost any other thing Trump could do.  If Trump wants to maintain GOP control over Congress and have any chance of fixing the country, he needs to fix the voting system now, because we know that the second the SAVE act is passed, there’s an army of treacherous federal judges who will seek to derail it.

This brings us to the last critical issue: the Judiciary.  Since 2015, federal judges across the country have acted as the rear guard for the Obama plan of “Fundamentally transforming the United States of America” into a leftist nirvana.  From nationwide injunctions to throwing out cases to seeking to exercise executive power, the federal judiciary has become untethered to the Constitution.  The traditional way such overreach is addressed is that cases make their way through the appellate process, and SCOTUS may or may not eventually rectify the problem.  But that system breaks down as a viable solution when fast approaching elections that decide the direction of the government are concerned.  Congress must act to address this judicial overreach. 

As such, Trump should work with Congress to utilize their Article III powers to fix this.  I’d suggest two possible avenues: 

1. Congress abolishes the entire Judiciary below SCOTUS and remakes it as a far more limited and constitutional Judiciary.

2. Congress sets up a separate parallel federal court channel that would deal exclusively with election- and executive power–related issues so they can be argued in a timely fashion and be resolved long before they become moot.

Decades from now, Donald Trump is going to be remembered.   The question is, will he be remembered as a celebrity president — who attracted a great deal of attention and simply slowed the collapse as the nation calcified into a failed dystopia driven by big government and big spending — or is he going to be remembered as an heroic, mythic figure who fought back the leftist tide and put America back on firm, limited-government, constitutional footing, giving her a real opportunity to survive another 250 years?

I guess we’ll see.

Tyler Durden Sat, 12/13/2025 - 12:50

The post Jeff Bezos Uses the Washington Post to Promote Inequality appeared first on CEPR.

Europol Pinpoints When Skynet-Like Human Resistance To AI Could Emerge

If Goldman's estimates of a partial or full displacement of up to 300 million jobs across the Western world due to the proliferation of artificial intelligence and automation are even remotely correct, a new report suggests that by 2035, society could face widespread public resentment, protests, and even acts of sabotage directed at robotic systems.

A new report by Europol, the EU's central intelligence and coordination hub for serious crime and terrorism, identifies around 2035 as a potential inflection point at which a human resistance movement against AI could begin to take shape, in a scenario that echoes the resistance to Skynet in the Terminator film franchise.

Europol warned of "bot-bashing" incidents and acts of sabotage against robotic systems in the middle of the next decade, as the spread of AI and robotics could fuel a populist backlash against technologies that have hollowed out parts of the Western economy and left millions unemployed.

Here's a section of the report:

By 2035, service robots have become a fixture of daily life across Europe, gliding silently through shopping centres, delivering parcels to fifth-floor flats, and cleaning public transit platforms by night. While many citizens have grown used to their presence, nodding politely to automated crossing guards or receiving prescriptions from pharmacist bots, frustration simmers beneath the surface. In economically strained regions, displaced workers protest outside automated warehouses, chanting slogans at tireless machines behind reinforced glass. A spate of "bot-bashing" incidents in city centres, ranging from graffiti to targeted arson, has prompted debates about "robot rights" and the psychological toll of widespread automation. In this uneasy climate, even minor malfunctions, such as a hospital care robot administering the wrong medication, are magnified into national scandals, fuelling populist calls to "put people first."

Law enforcement now finds itself caught at the intersection of technological adaptation and social tension. Police officers investigate crimes by robots—such as drones used as tools in theft or automated vehicles causing pedestrian injuries—and against them, including sabotage, tampering, or hate-driven destruction. As AI and robotics replace routine policing tasks like patrolling or traffic management, some departments face internal pushback from officers who fear obsolescence or diminished purpose. At the same time, the rise in economic dislocation caused by automation has contributed to an uptick in cybercrime, vandalism, and organised theft, often targeted at robotic infrastructure. Agencies are under pressure to both modernise and humanise—balancing the efficiency of unmanned systems with public trust, and equipping officers not just with new tools, but with new roles in a society where “protect and serve" increasingly applies to both humans and machines.

Today, the growing adoption of robotics by various industries and sectors means that more and more members of society will be exposed to, and interact with, this technology. While an increased frequency of encountering different types of robots in everyday life may lead to greater familiarity and acceptance, there is a risk of societal alienation, frustration, and resistance towards robots. These reactions can be the result of robotic malfunctions leading to unintended harm (i.e., crashing autonomous taxis or service robots in hospitals), or simply disapproval of their very existence (i.e., nuisances caused by drone flights or surveillance concerns linked to police patrol robots).

Our view is that Europol's 2035 prediction of "bot-bashing" has already been pulled forward. One could argue that an early incident appeared on X in 2023, when groups in San Francisco attacked driverless cars. And why stop at bashing automated systems? Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt has already warned about the risks of data center sabotage.

For the sake of humanity, let's hope Goldman's 2023 report forecasting 300 million layoffs across the Western world never materializes. Otherwise, human resistance movements against robots will emerge. To mitigate such a populist revolt, we suspect central banks and governments would respond by unleashing universal basic income. It is likely inevitable.

The 2030s do not sound fun.

Tyler Durden Sat, 12/13/2025 - 12:15

Justice Jackson's History Of Shilling For The Deep State

Via The Brownstone Institute,

President Joe Biden’s decision to limit his Supreme Court nominees to black women was widely criticized as a product of DEI-mania, but the ensuing racial controversy was a red herring, a political sleight of hand, designed to distract Americans from Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s true purpose on the bench: to protect, preserve, and defend the deep state from the constraints of the Constitution. 

The fallout from the nomination was familiar; CNN’s opinion pages called Republican Senators, including Tom Cotton (R-AR), Josh Hawley (R-MO), and Ted Cruz (R-TX), “racist and sexist” for opposing Jackson; Georgetown Law Professor Ilya Shapiro was suspended for stating that the most qualified candidate was an Indian man, not a black woman; Al Sharpton threw his support behind President Biden.

But Justice Jackson’s position was never intended to be a statement of racial representation or judicial excellence; it was the Biden administration’s anointment of a praetorian guard for the unelected and unaccountable bureaucracy that seeks to prevent President Trump from gaining control of the nation. 

On Monday, the Supreme Court considered whether the President of the United States has the power to remove members of the Executive Branch.

The Constitution’s Vesting Clause, which states that the “executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America,” offers an unequivocal answer.  

But Jackson, assuming her role as a corporatist advocate on a government salary, acted as the mouthpiece for those opposed to accountability for the bureaucracy that lives off the taxpayers’ wages.

She warned of “the danger of allowing…the President to actually control the transportation board and potentially the Federal Reserve and all these other independent agencies.” 

Jackson, never known for speaking concisely or deliberately (in oral arguments, she speaks 50 percent more than any of her fellow colleagues and more than Justices Amy Coney Barrett, John Roberts, and Clarence Thomas combined) waxed longingly for a nation with no presidential control over the executive branch:

My understanding was that independent agencies exist because Congress has decided that some issues, some matters, some areas should be handled in this way by nonpartisan experts, that Congress is saying that expertise matters with respect to aspects of the economy and transportation and the various independent agencies that we have. So having a President come in and fire all the scientists and the doctors and the economists and the Ph.D.s and replacing them with loyalists and people who don’t know anything is actually not in the best interest of the citizens of the United States. This is what I think Congress’s policy decision is when it says that these certain agencies we’re not going to make directly accountable to the President.

This is not a mere coincidence; when nominated, the Biden administration knew that she was devoted to bureaucratic supremacy. 

In the first Trump administration, Jackson, then a District Court Judge, overturned four executive orders (numbers 13837, 13836, 13839, and 13957) that sought to rein in the power of the nearly three million federal employees who effectively inhabit permanent jobs. Most notably, in 2020, she invalidated President Trump’s order “Creating Schedule F in the Excepted Service.”

In March 2024, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Murthy v. Missouri, which considered the Biden administration’s collusion with Big Tech to censor Americans during the Covid response. There, Justice Jackson stated that her “biggest concern” was that an injunction would result in “the First Amendment hamstringing the Government.”  

Earlier this year, Justice Barrett chastised Justice Jackson as “embracing an imperial Judiciary” after Justice Jackson voted to increase federal courts’ power to issue nationwide injunctions.  

Jackson’s defense of the unelected cabal that dominates American life is not a mere issue of legalese; it animates the chief question of the second Trump administration: does the commander-in-chief control the Executive Branch? The Constitution tells us that he should, but in practice, entrenched interests threaten that governmental structure.

Those who believe that this gives the president too much power might consider an alternate path to shredding the Constitution, e.g. abolishing all these rogue agencies to reduce and contain executive power itself. 

Jackson’s verbose monologues, often disguised as questions, reveal that she understands the importance of this struggle despite her cognitive limitations. She may not be able to define a woman, but she knows that her benefactors depend on her denying the President from obtaining “actual control” over the agencies that the Constitution designates to his realm. 

Tyler Durden Sat, 12/13/2025 - 11:40

The Gulf Of America Is Back

Authored by Erik Milito via RealClearEnergy,

After years of market swings, regulatory uncertainty, and deep staffing cuts, America’s energy workforce is overdue for a stabilizing signal. December 10th provides exactly that: the first federal Gulf of America lease sale in nearly two years, offering long-awaited certainty for the companies and workers that power America’s offshore energy engine.

In 2024, Gulf of America oil and gas activity supported approximately 428,000 jobs across all 50 states, contributed $35.9 billion in spending, and generated $7 billion in federal revenues. Few industries deliver that scale of widespread economic impact.

Mandated by President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, this sale is the first of 30 over the next 15 years, with additional sales offshore Alaska. After an unprecedented 24-month leasing gap, the door to America’s offshore future, anchored by Texan expertise, is reopening.

Regular leasing is not a bureaucratic detail; it’s the foundation of long-term offshore development. Offshore oil and gas projects are multi-billion-dollar endeavors with 20–30-year timelines, and many high-skill engineering, fabrication, marine, and logistics jobs supporting are found across the Gulf coast. More than 200 job types, from subsea engineers to welders to data scientists, pay on average 29% above the national average. When leasing stalls, workers feels it first.

*  *  * CHRISTMAS CUTOFF IS MONDAY!

Production coming online today is the result of lease sales, policy choices, and investment decisions made years ago. Wood Mackenzie projects that long-planned deepwater projects will add 300,000 barrels per day in 2025 and another 250,000 in 2026, essential to replenish offshore production volumes, offset onshore declines, and strengthen long-term U.S. energy security. None of this happens overnight: consistent leasing is the lifeline for the offshore economy.

The 24-month pause forced operators, service companies, and supply-chain firms to delay projects, scale back planning, and freeze capital, contributing directly to staffing reductions across the region. Predictable leasing restores confidence, giving companies a horizon for investment and workers the stability they deserve.

The offshore ecosystem spans subsea engineering, advanced manufacturing, offshore construction, vessel operations, robotics, data analytics, and safety training, among other innovative energy fields. Regular lease sales mean steadier workloads, predictable capital cycles, and real stability for employers and workers alike.

The benefits ripple far beyond individual operating companies. Steady offshore activity supports local suppliers, fabrication yards, and service providers, sustaining thousands of additional jobs across the nation. When companies along the Gulf coast can count on long-term projects, they are better able to invest in technology, training, and infrastructure that strengthens the city’s energy cluster and keeps it globally competitive. This ripple effect ensures that the Gulf of America remains an anchor of America’s offshore energy industry, benefiting communities, families, and the local economy for decades.

Offshore development also delivers massive amounts of public revenue. In 2024, U.S. offshore activity generated $7 billion in direct federal revenue. Through updates to the Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act (GOMESA), a growing share of that revenue flows back to Gulf states funding coastal restoration, hurricane protection, community infrastructure, and other critical investments.

The Gulf of America is one of the world’s most prolific and lowest-carbon intensity offshore basins, with Gulf barrels having 46% lower carbon intensity than the global average. Every barrel produced here displaces higher-emission imports while strengthening energy security for America and its allies.

With global threats rising and energy markets volatile, predictable investment opportunities are essential to our economic future, both locally and nationally. It signals to investors that the U.S. is committed to long-term energy development. It gives companies confidence. It gives workers stability. And it gives the Gulf of America, after years of uncertainty, a clear horizon it can finally plan around.

With the December 10th lease sale, and the 29 that follow, the Gulf of America is once again positioned to anchor America’s energy future, and our workforce has a reason to look forward with confidence.

Erik Milito is President of the National Ocean Industries Association. 

Tyler Durden Sat, 12/13/2025 - 10:30