New MAGA Weapon: 'Fight Tanks' For Rural America

Authored by Philip Wegmann via RealClearPolitics,

Another conservative satellite has joined the Trump constellation.

Jenn Pellegrino, formerly chief spokesperson for the America First Policy Institute, has launched twin think tanks in time for a brewing fight on Capitol Hill over health care and ahead of the coming midterms. The GOP is scrambling to build legislation from scratch to lower health care costs when Biden-era Obamacare subsidies expire on Dec. 31. Those same Republicans are hoping to keep their seats in the election next year.

Enter Defend Forgotten America (DFA). Enter also Defend Forgotten America Action (DFAA).

The names are pulled directly from President Trump’s first victory speech when he vowed in 2016 that “the forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer.” The goal is to bridge the divide between flyover country and the D.C. beltway, between what Pellegrino describes as rural and small urban communities and “unelected Washington bureaucrats.”

Though still in its infancy, the groups already have a window into the White House. Chris LaCivita, Trump’s 2024 campaign manager, serves as an advisor to the mission, RealClearPolitics is first to report.

DFA will focus specifically on health care policy. The DFAA policy portfolio will include everything from agriculture to housing policy. Internally, they call themselves “fight tanks.” The shared mission statement: “Championing forgotten communities and restoring power to the people who built America.”

The right-wing universe is already vast – and increasingly decentralized. Mammoth organizations, like the Heritage Foundation and the America First Policy Institute, anchor the landscape, but numerous small upstarts now dot the horizon. All of them orbit one man, President Trump, who has redefined conservativism for the last decade, much in the same way as he remade the GOP in his own image.

The Pellegrino operation will be distinct in its emphasis on the local. A key issue, one that some Republicans feel has become a blind spot, is affordability.

“President Trump has done a great job on inflation. Look at gas prices – they’re down. The cost of eggs is certainly way down from what it was several months ago. But there’s still work to be done,” she told RCP in a brief interview.

“Just like Secretary Scott Bessent was saying recently, we’re not going to speak like the Biden administration did and say that everything is great,” she added, referencing the head of the Treasury Department. “We understand and see that Americans are still feeling pain on so many issues from health care to housing. Especially in rural communities, like the blue-collar one I grew up in upstate New York, a lot of them are living paycheck to paycheck. We are focusing on their issues.”

And two recent humanitarian disasters provide a rubric for just exactly what the organizations plan to do: the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, and Hurricane Helene that ravaged North Carolina. A breakdown in communication, in both cases, slowed the response from the federal government.

In the face of future disasters, Pellegrino said the twin think tanks would get on the ground, not to write white papers, but to develop immediate policy proposals to guide the response. And then absent catastrophe, the organizations will seek to bring the concerns of rural Americans directly to D.C.

The Democratic brand has become radioactive in rural America. A former Newsmax host, Pellegrino is unabashedly conservative. The organization immediately makes clear its dissatisfaction with the left and liberal policy prescriptions. “They don’t understand us,” she says of Democratic politicians in a promo video, “because they have never lived like us.” Unsurprisingly, prominent Republicans have already welcomed the new group with open arms.

“We proved in 2024 that when you speak directly to working Americans in the communities the establishment ignores, you build an unstoppable coalition,” LaCivita said in a statement. “These organizations are built in that same spirit.”

New York Rep. Claudia Tenney heralded the new endeavor as “a strong advocate for the hardworking Americans who have been left behind for far too long.” Florida Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, meanwhile, described it as a bulwark against “corporations who have taken over via special interest efforts in Washington.”

Tyler Durden Fri, 11/21/2025 - 22:35

Actor Anthony Mackie: "We've Been Living Through Death Of American Male For Twenty Years" 

The left's war on men has spectacularly backfired as young men, once a reliably Democratic voting bloc, have led an exodus from the left to the right. 

Democrats are scrambling to figure out why, but the answer isn't complicated: the party is increasingly driven by Marxist ideology, embraces assassination culture, promotes anti-male values, pushes extremist pro-trans rhetoric, and promotes an anti-American agenda. 

Young men are gravitating toward the America First movement because its leaders project strength and advocate for common sense: two genders, the family unit, law and order, faith, and the core principles that have made the West exceptional.

In a recent interview, Anthony Mackie - star of the 2025 film Captain America: Brave New World - told the hosts of The Pivot Podcast that "for the past 20 years, we've been living through the death of the American male; they've killed masculinity in our communities."

"But I raise my boys to be young men and however you feel about that you feel about that. My boys will always be respectful. They will always say yes sir yes ma'am no sir no ma'am. They will always say thank you. They will always open a door for a lady. They will always make sure that their mother is taken care of and provided for. They will always be men, and that's always been the case since they were young," Mackie said.

Actor Anthony Mackie: "For the past 20 years, we’ve been living through the death of the American male, they’ve killed masculinity in our communities…"pic.twitter.com/5GlC9xR6JK

— Joe Rogan Podcast News (@joeroganhq) November 21, 2025

Perhaps now that the Overton Window has shifted away from "woke and weak," it's time to confront the mess created by the Democratic Party's globalist agenda, which has waged a war on men and, with their Marxist nonprofits, such as Black Lives Matter, that declared war on the nuclear family (read here). 

• Brandon Smith: Men Of The West, We Are At War

"There's absolutely nothing wrong with a man who is manly and boys shouldn't be taught that there is. We're screwing up an entire generation here. We're politically correcting ourselves into extinction," Daisy Luther of the Organic Prepper blog noted many years ago. 

There has been a war on masculine men for decades.
Weak men are easy to govern.
Weak men are easy to manipulate.
Weak men are easy to control.
Weak men are easy to attack.
Weak men are easy to steal from.
Weak men are easy to kill.
Dad’s need to be strong, but they also need to… pic.twitter.com/BRgKaQFnOZ

— Tim Kennedy (@TimKennedyMMA) June 9, 2025

There is nothing wrong with masculinity; in fact, it built the nation - that's what men do. 

And with that understanding, it's fair to raise serious questions about the Democratic Party's war on men - and why it exists in the first place. If the goal is to undermine the nation by weakening men, confusing them about their identity, and eroding the foundations that hold the country together, then it becomes alarmingly clear that this agenda is aimed at destabilizing America from within. 

Seriously, what happened to men? pic.twitter.com/cUSifBKY2F

— Woke Archive (@WokeArchive) July 24, 2024

Why do globalists fear healthy men who eat beef and eggs? Clearly, they don't fear soy boys.

Tyler Durden Fri, 11/21/2025 - 22:10

How The Avalanche Of Academic Papers Threatens Scientific Research

Authored by Vince Bielski via RealClearInvestigations,

This is the third part of a series on academic publishing. Read part one here and part two here.

For many years, the prestigious journal Philosophy & Public Affairs published about 14 peer-reviewed articles annually. So its small volunteer staff of renowned scholars was shocked to learn that its publisher, Wiley, was demanding a significant increase in production, at one point requiring 35 new articles within 60 days. 

Instead of compromising its peer-review process and rushing low-quality papers into print, then-Editor-in-Chief Anna Stilz at the University of California, Berkeley, led a revolt that culminated in the mass resignation of the journal’s entire editorial staff and board.

“Wiley told me if I didn’t publish more, I wouldn’t have a journal for long. These conversations were very hostile,” said Stilz, explaining the mass resignations. “I wanted to give our readers high-quality pieces. We were selective.”

The rebellion is one of the latest examples of the crisis engulfing the influential world of scholarly journals, which have been a foundation of research and learning for centuries. In recent years, Wiley and four other major publishers of academic literature, called the Big Five, have generated robust profit margins by ushering in large and unprecedented increases in the number of published papers. The globalization of research, with China emerging as the world’s leader a few years ago, and the ongoing ethos of “publish or perish” that’s the lifeblood of academic success, have generated an avalanche of scholarship. The Big Five has accommodated and encouraged it by launching new journals and special issues and fattening others.

Even scientists admit that much of academic publishing has run amok, overwhelming the quality-control methods of many of the 12,000 journals owned by Elsevier, Springer Nature, Taylor & Francis, Wiley, and Sage. As RealClearInvestigations has reported, unscrupulous paper mills are exploiting the publishing breakdown, producing a growing number of fraudulent articles with fake data and AI-generated text that’s tainting the world of science. 

The publishing mess has consequences outside the hallowed halls of academia. The $12 billion in annual revenue that the Big Five and smaller publishers collect from research papers is also an issue for taxpayers. A sizeable chunk of this revenue comes from public universities and federal grants that pay fees to publishers for making scholars’ articles available to readers through either journal subscriptions or freely on the internet. The fees, coupled with the low production costs – journal editors typically work for free – have given the Big Five profit margins in the 30%-40% range, matching Microsoft and Alphabet and surpassing Apple last year.  

“The biggest problem is that taxpayer money that was supposed to be spent on research instead goes to these publishing companies,” said University of Ottawa Professor Stefanie Haustein, a leading researcher of the publishing market. “I’m not saying publishing should be free, but these companies are making an insanely high profit. They are price gouging taxpayers.” 

NIH Moves To Rein In Fees

The Trump administration is moving to rein in the fees. Jay Bhattacharya, the director of the National Institutes of Health, said in July that the publishers’ article processing charges (APC) are “unreasonably high.” These charges are an increasingly popular alternative to subscriptions because papers become “open access,” or freely available to the public. To protect taxpayers, Bhattacharya said price caps or other restrictions will be placed on the publishing charges for NIH-funded papers starting in January. 

The Big Five oppose the caps, saying their fees fairly reflect the many costs involved in publishing. “An APC funding cap is a blunt instrument that would create more problems than it solves, restricting author choice, exacerbating inequities, and destabilizing the publishing ecosystem,” a Taylor & Francis spokesperson told RCI.

Some critics are looking beyond price caps for a “radical change in academic publishing,” according to a report by Cambridge University Press. It surveyed the views of 3,000 researchers, librarians, and funders and came to a conclusion that it admits is “surprising” for a publisher: The industry should churn out fewer articles, and focus on quality over quantity, while the academic community builds out lower-cost alternatives to commercial publishing. 

“[T]he sheer volume of publications threatens to overwhelm the ecosystem. Important work risks being lost or drowned out by a surge of low-quality or AI-generated content,” Mandy Hill, managing director of the press, wrote in the October report. 

Academic Publishing’s Secret Sauce

It’s hard to imagine a better business model than commercial academic publishing. The Big Five’s dominance, accounting for more than 50% of indexed published papers, has given them the market power to raise fees often above inflation, research shows. Universities are caught in a costly vicious circle: Although they often protest the fees that have increased to about $11 million a year on average, or about a third of a library’s total budget, they also pressure their scholars to publish at a brisk pace. That, in turn, ensures robust demand for space in journals, particularly the prestigious ones such as the Big Five’s Nature and Cell with the highest fees.

In addition to a captive market, academic publishers also enjoy a sizable cost savings particular to their industry. Publishers have various operational costs, but they don’t pay researchers who write the papers, editors who revise them (with the exception of a small honorarium for the editor-in-chief), and academic peer-reviewers who provide basic quality control. 

All told, the publication cost on average for a paper is about $400, while the average article processing charge collected by journals is $1800, according to a 2021 study by Alexander Grossmann of Leipzig University in Germany. 

“[T]he scholarly community must eventually make a number of decisions if it is to tackle the affordability problem,” writes Grossmann, a professor of publishing. “Are profit margins of 30-40% on taxpayer funds tolerable?”

The Big Five deny they are gouging taxpayers. A Taylor & Francis spokesperson told RCI that the charges are needed to cover “the full spectrum of publishing services, including submission and peer review management, editorial development, ethics checks and investigations, metadata tagging, indexing, metrics, content preservation, technology development and much more.” 

A Springer Nature spokesperson told RCI its article processing charges are in line with the expenses associated with publishing an article. “The outreach and editorial support we provide, the promotion of scientific work we conduct, and the infrastructure we maintain and invest in are all undertaken with one goal in mind: enhancing the reach and impact of research,” the spokesperson said.

Growth of the Big Five

The crisis in academic publishing has been decades in the making. In the 1970s, the Big Five controlled less than 10% of the market – sharing it with scientific societies and university publishers – mostly through journal subscriptions to libraries. The subscription model was controversial from the get-go, with the Library of Congress calling out the “sharp and alarming increases” in subscription prices – hovering between 5% and 12% in most years, well above inflation – that were “damaging to the development of the library’s” collections.

With stagnant university library budgets crushed under with weight of increasing subscription prices, a rebellion of academics and librarians gave rise to the open access movement in the early 2000s. It sought to both lower publishing costs and freely share papers with an expanding global research community in the developing world whose universities couldn’t afford multi-million-dollar subscriptions. Under open-access deals, universities or researchers would pay a one-time article-processing charge for each published paper, which would be freely available to the public forever, made possible by the internet.

The Big Five, having expanded their market share almost fivefold after two waves of consolidation in the 1990s, resisted the new open-access model first rolled out by a few smaller publishers, such as BioMed Central. But as open access gained steam, Springer gobbled up BioMed in 2008, a first step in the Big Five’s embrace of the model, giving it a second revenue stream. Today, researchers applaud the growth of open access, which accounts for almost half of all published papers globally, as a triumph for the dissemination of knowledge. But rather than reducing the costs of publishing, they keep going up. 

In an extensive study of fees from six major publishers for the period 2019-2023, Haustein, who codirects the Scholarly Communications Lab at Ottawa, found that researchers paid $2.5 billion in article processing charges to these publishers in 2023, triple the amount in 2019. Almost 90% of the journals had increased the charges, often above inflation. The average charge was about $2,900 per paper, with a high of $11,700 for high-profile journals.

“Our analysis demonstrates that there is a massive amount of money spent on APCs and that this amount is growing at a rate that is almost certainly unsustainable,” co-author Haustein wrote.

When publishers are paid by the article, it provides an incentive to maximize production and helps explain the boom in papers. The total number of indexed articles soared 47% between 2016 and 2022 to 2.8 billion, according to a study by University of Exeter’s Mark Hanson. 

The publishing spike was led by MDPI, a big publisher devoted to open-access papers. It made most of its revenue from article processing charges for special issues built around a research theme. They epitomize the crisis of quantity over quality. For special issues, guest editors drive demand by soliciting articles from researchers, breaking with the standard practice of allowing researchers to submit papers when they are ready. The turnaround time from submission to acceptance is also sped up, according to Hanson’s study, allowing less time for editors to scrutinize articles for weaknesses and even fraud. And MDPI stood out among the publishers for having lower rejection rates of papers.

“If a publisher lowers its article rejection rates, all else being equal, this will lead to more articles being published,” Hanson wrote. “Such changes to rejection rate might also mean more lower-quality articles are being published.”

The blowup at Hindawi, another publisher focusing on special issues, alerted the publishing world to the magnitude of its fraud problem. Wiley bought Hindawi for $298 million in 2020, calling it an “innovator in open access publishing,” to expand into that fast-growing market and reap the article processing charges. Three years later, Wiley discovered that Hindawi had been heavily infiltrated by paper mills, forcing the retraction of 8,000 suspect articles and ending the Hindawi brand. It lives on as Exhibit A for an out-of-control publishing industry.

Detecting Fraudulent Paper Mills

The Big Five now say they are serious about curbing the publication of fraudulent papers, which are growing at an even faster rate than legitimate publications, according to a 2025 study. Springer Nature, which received 2.3 million submissions last year, has invested many millions in technology and a team of 75 experts to identify suspicious articles, such as AI-generated text and images, before publication and ensure the credibility of its research, the spokesperson said. Taylor & Francis says its integrity team prevents “thousands of fraudulent articles from being published every year.”

But plenty of flawed and fake papers continue to be published, which raises the question of whether the Big Five could be investing more in the battle against paper mills. For example, it can take years for journals to retract junk science articles after they have been flagged as suspicious, and by then it’s often too late, said Nancy Chescheir, chair of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), which recently issued new guidelines to speed up the retraction process. “Editors need to act more quickly in retracting papers before they get included in systematic literature reviews and clinical care, which is happening,” Chescheir told RCI. 

Cleaning up the scientific literature, however, is at loggerheads with the exponential growth of papers each year. Busy editors, particularly at less prestigious journals that are most vulnerable to paper mill infiltration, don’t have the time and resources to promptly handle the complexities of figuring out if a paper should be retracted, said Chescheir, who has served as the editor in chief of two biomedical journals. 

Chescheir says publishers do need to devote more resources to protecting integrity, particularly for underfunded journals in the developing world. Wiley, for example, owns journals in China through its acquisition of Hindawi.

“The globalization of research is a wonderful thing, but as for providing resources that are adequate to deal with integrity problems across the globe, we are far away from that,” Chescheir said.

Breaking Away From the Big Five

A small number of journals have decided that the best way to protect their integrity is to break away from commercial publishing. Since the 1980s, the editorial boards of about 38 journals have declared their independence, mostly from the Big Five, and gone on to operate, typically under a new name, says Saskia van Walsum, a Ph.D. student researching this trend at the University of Ottawa. In the recent wave of breakaways, including Stilz’s philosophy journal, the push by publishers for more papers was a major complaint. 

Stilz’s successor journal, Free & Equal, embraces an alternative approach to academic publishing called “diamond open access” that harkens back centuries to a time when scholars were in charge. It’s a growing movement of thousands of small journals based on the principles that scholars shouldn’t pay to publish papers and the public shouldn’t pay to read them. 

The Open Library of Humanities (OLH), a nonprofit that publishes Free & Equal, started in 2013 to address the rising fees of the Big Five. Some 350 libraries, including the Ivies and major public universities in the U.S. and U.K., are backing OLH because they only pay a relatively small fee to the nonprofit, compared to what the Big Five charge, to enable the publication of its 34 titles.

While the economics of nonprofit publishing can work, breakaway journals like Free & Equal, founded in 2024, face a significant reputational challenge. Younger scholars need to publish in prestigious journals to build careers, and it can take several years for new titles like Free & Equal to receive an Impact Factor rating that signals their influence among researchers. Stilz says her new political philosophy journal has started strong, getting almost as many submissions as her former Wiley title.

“You have to trust that your community will come with you when you do a mass resignation,” she said. “You don’t have a brand.” 

Tyler Durden Fri, 11/21/2025 - 21:45

US Will Likely Reach New Nuclear Deal With Iran, Trump Says

In a Friday interview with Fox, President Trump said Iran's nuclear program has been significantly set back and claimed that Tehran is now seeking an agreement with Washington.

He indicated in a somewhat surprising remark that a deal is likely, emphasizing that the situation has changed drastically in recent months, since the June US bombings of three key Iranian nuclear facilities. "They want to make a deal, and we will probably reach one," he said.

Via Reuters

Trump went on to describe what he views as broader regional shifts in the Middle East, commenting that the list of those interested in signing onto the historic Abraham Accords normalization program with Israel "keeps growing".

He hailed the unprecedented opportunity for peace, also nothing that the crisis with Hezbollah in Lebanon is now abating as well.

Trump actually said something similar during a Wednesday US-Saudi business forum in Washington DC, during Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's visit this week.

Speaking of strikes on Tehran, Trump told the audience, "We took the Dark Cloud away from your country, it was called Iran and its nuclear capability, and we obliterated that very quickly and strongly and powerfully. But that was a real cloud over the whole Middle East," he said.

"Now they want to make a deal. They want to make a deal. They want to see if they can work out a deal with us, and we'll be doing that probably. But that was a terrible cloud that you had to live with for a long time," he added.

But the reality remains that Iranian leaders see little incentive in making another deal (after the collapsed JCPOA) which the US could just pull out of at any time. 

This is also as prior to the June war with the Israel, Tehran had been actively engaged in good faith nuclear negotiations with Washington. But that was just a ruse, and the Islamic Republic suffered a major surprise assault from Israel and the US. There will be a perpetual 'trust' problem, to say the least.

This clip is EXTREMELY important!

Saudi Arabia are one of the central players in this global game of thrones.

Trump teases that Saudi Arabia are going to join the Abraham Accords, and highlights how striking Iran’s nuclear facilities paved the way for the peace deal.

Trump is… pic.twitter.com/QKhnF6gFP2

— Clandestine (@WarClandestine) November 3, 2025

Despite constantly proclaiming that it only has a peaceful nuclear energy program, the Iranians now have every incentive to possibly develop nuclear weapons in secret. This could eventually prove the major 'blowback' to the US decisions to mount unprovoked attacks on the country's nuclear centers.

Tyler Durden Fri, 11/21/2025 - 21:20

2 Chinese Nationals, 2 Americans Charged With Smuggling Nvidia Chips To China

Authored by Frank Fang via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Two Chinese nationals and two U.S. citizens have been charged with a scheme to illegally export advanced Nvidia chips to China in violation of U.S. export controls, the Department of Justice said on Nov. 20.

In a file photograph, the logo of Nvidia Corporation during the annual Computex computer exhibition in Taipei, Taiwan, on May 30, 2017. Tyrone Siu/Reuters

Li Cham, 38, a California resident, and Chen Jing, 45, who resides in Florida on an F-1 nonimmigrant student visa, are the two Chinese nationals accused of the illegal exporting scheme. The two U.S. citizens are Ho Hong Ning, 34, a Florida resident born in Hong Kong, and Brian Curtis Raymond, 46, who resides in Huntsville, Alabama.

The four men are charged with multiple counts, including conspiracy to violate the Export Control Reform Act, smuggling, and conspiracy to commit money laundering, according to an indictment unsealed on Nov. 19.

Prosecutors allege the four defendants conspired from September 2023 through November of this year to illegally export advanced graphics processing units (GPUs), which have artificial intelligence (AI) applications, through the third countries of Malaysia and Thailand.

The indictment notes that the United States has put export restrictions on cutting-edge GPUs because China is developing supercomputing capabilities for its militarization efforts, including weapon designs and testing, as well as advancing its advanced surveillance tools.

“The indictment unsealed yesterday alleges a deliberate and deceptive effort to transship controlled Nvidia GPUs to China by falsifying paperwork, creating fake contracts, and misleading U.S. authorities,” Assistant Attorney General John A. Eisenberg, from the Justice Department’s National Security Division, said in a statement.

“The National Security Division is committed to disrupting these kinds of black markets of sensitive U.S. technologies and holding accountable those who participate in this illicit trade.”

Prosecutors said the scheme relied on Tampa-based company Janford Realtor, owned by Ho and Li and not involved in real estate, which acted as a front to purchase and export the restricted GPUs to China.

Raymond’s Alabama-based electronics company was also allegedly involved in the scheme, supplying the restricted GPUs to Ho and others for illegal export.

Some 400 Nvidia A100 GPUs were exported in two shipments to China between October 2024 and January this year, prosecutors said.

Two subsequent shipments, involving 10 Hewlett Packard Enterprise supercomputers containing Nvidia H100 GPUs and 50 separate H200 GPUs, were “disrupted by law enforcement and therefore not completed,” prosecutors added.

The defendants were aware that a license was required for the exports, yet none sought or obtained one, according to prosecutors.

The indictment also alleges that the defendants received more than $3.89 million in wire transfers from China to fund their scheme.

According to the indictment, one of these transfers, in March this year, involved $1.15 million, sent from a Hong Kong-based Chinese company to a Bank of America account belonging to Raymond’s Alabama-based electronics company.

Another wire transfer, in November last year, involved $237,248 sent from another Hong Kong-based Chinese company to a Bank of America account belonging to Janford Realtor, according to the indictment.

According to the Justice Department, Ho and Chen appeared in court in the Middle District of Florida and Raymond in the Northern District of Alabama, all on Nov. 19. Li was scheduled to make his court appearance in the Northern District of California on Nov. 20.

Chen’s lawyer declined to comment when contacted by The Epoch Times.

The Epoch Times contacted Ho’s lawyer, but did not receive a response by publication time. The Epoch Times was unable to reach Raymond’s and Li’s lawyers for comment by publication time.

An Nvidia spokesperson told The Epoch Times that the export system is “rigorous and comprehensive.”

“Even small sales of older generation products on the secondary market are subject to strict scrutiny and review,” the spokesperson said. “Trying to cobble together datacenters from smuggled products is a nonstarter, both technically and economically. Datacenters are massive and complex systems, making any smuggling extremely difficult and risky, and we do not provide any support or repairs for restricted products.”

Chairman of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.) speaks during an interview with The Epoch Times in Washington on Oct. 21, 2025. Madalina Kilroy/The Epoch Times

On Nov. 20, Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.), the chairman of the U.S. House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, called for urgent passage of a chip-tracking bill.

“China recognizes the superiority of American AI innovation and will do whatever it must to catch up,” he said. “That’s why the bipartisan Chip Security Act is urgently needed.”

The Chip Security Act would require location verification for advanced AI chips, enforce mandatory reporting from chipmakers on the potential diversion of their products, and task the Department of Commerce with studying additional necessary steps.

In August, two Chinese nationals in California were charged with allegedly shipping tens of millions of dollars’ worth of microchips to China. According to the case’s indictment, the microchips included Nvidia H100 GPUs.

Reuters contributed to this report.

Tyler Durden Fri, 11/21/2025 - 20:55

FAA Reports 400% Surge Of In-Flight Outbursts, DoT Launches Civility Campaign

Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy has launched “The Golden Age of Travel Starts with You” campaign ahead of the upcoming holiday travel season, aimed at triggering conversation nationwide over the return of civility in air travel, the Department of Transportation (DOT) said in a Nov. 19 statement.

Air travel has become more unruly over the years, DOT said. Since 2019, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has seen a 400 percent surge in in-flight outbursts from travelers, ranging from disruptive behaviors to violent actions.

Since 2021, there have been 13,800 unruly passenger incidents, with the 2024 numbers double that of 2019, according to the DOT.

Between 2020 and 2021, unruly passenger reports jumped six times. In 2021, one out of every five flight attendants reported experiencing physical incidents, DOT said.

In “The Golden Age of Travel Starts with You” campaign video, the DOT showed clips of various incidents involving unruly passengers, including physical fights onboard airplanes.

Duffy appears in the video, asking people to bring manners back in air travel.

Naveen Athrappully reports for The Epoch Times that the DOT said the campaign addresses the “record surge” in unruly passengers with potential improvements expected to make the travel experience better for people while ensuring the safety of passengers, pilots, flight attendants, and gate workers.

Duffy also asked potential flyers to think about the way they dress, whether they help pregnant women or the elderly, retain control of their children, and communicate with general courtesy.

“There’s no question we’ve lost sight of what makes travel fun—the excitement, the relaxation, the cordial conversations. Americans already feel divided and stressed. We can all do our part to bring back civility, manners, and common sense. When we can unite around shared values, we can feel more connected as a country,” DOT said.

“Along with building an all-new air traffic control system, surging air traffic control hiring, and making travel more family friendly, the Department of Transportation is committed to ushering [in] a Golden Age of Travel for the American people.”

The DOT campaign comes ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday period, which is expected to see 81.8 million individuals travel at least 50 miles from their homes between Nov. 25 and Dec. 1, according to a Nov. 17 statement from the American Automobile Association (AAA).

Out of this, 6 million are expected to travel via domestic flights, up by 2 percent from last year, said the association.

The number of air travelers over the past several years has remained between 5 million and 6 million, except during the 2020 COVID-19 period.

“A roundtrip domestic flight is averaging $700 which is similar to last year,” AAA said.

“It’s cheaper to fly on Thanksgiving Day itself, but the flight home is what drives up the ticket price since Sunday and Monday are the busiest return days. Some travelers shorten or extend their Thanksgiving trips to avoid flying on peak days.”

During the Thanksgiving season, unruly passengers can become more problematic, given the high traffic during this period.

According to FAA data, there have been 1,431 unruly passenger reports this year, as of Nov. 16, which have resulted in 142 investigations, 125 enforcement actions, and $2.1 million in fines.

The highest number of unruly passenger reports in this decade was registered in 2021 amid the pandemic, when the number hit 5,973.

“The rate of unruly passenger incidents steadily dropped by over 80 percent since record highs in early 2021, but recent increases show there remains more work to do,” the FAA said.

In November 2021, the FAA and the FBI issued a joint statement informing people that the FAA would refer unruly passenger cases to the FBI to conduct criminal case reviews.

Meanwhile, the recent end of the federal government shutdown has resulted in the FAA lifting all restrictions on commercial flights at major American airports, said a Nov. 20 statement from travel insurance comparison company Squaremouth.

The lifting of restrictions has “helped ease the worries of those who considered canceling or delaying their travel plans,” it said, adding that “operations are normalizing just in time for the busy holiday travel season.”

Tyler Durden Fri, 11/21/2025 - 20:30

Studies Back Government On Childhood Gender Dysphoria

Authored by Darlene McCormick Sanchez via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Newly released peer reviews of a federal report rejecting medical interventions for children with gender dysphoria called the government analysis “scientifically sound” and “compelling.”

Protesters in front of the Supreme Court as the high court hears a case over banning gender procedures for minors, in Washington on Dec. 4, 2024. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

The reviews were released on Nov. 19 for a government report titled “Treatment for Pediatric Gender Dysphoria: Review of Evidence and Best Practices,” which was commissioned by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and originally released on May 1.

The HHS report was prompted by a January executive order from President Donald Trump on protecting children from chemical and surgical mutilation. In part, the order states that the federal government will not “fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support the so-called ’transition' of a child from one sex to another.”

HHS stated in the report that the issue needed to be examined because of an “emphasis on medicalization” in pediatric gender medicine in the United States. The 409-page report emphasized therapy’s benefits instead.

“Psychotherapy is a noninvasive alternative to endocrine and surgical interventions for the treatment of pediatric gender dysphoria,“ it reads. ”Systematic reviews of evidence have found no evidence of adverse effects of psychotherapy in this context.”

In a Nov. 19 statement regarding the updated report, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. called medical interventions such as hormones and surgery “malpractice.”

“The American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics peddled the lie that chemical and surgical sex-rejecting procedures could be good for children,” Kennedy said. “They betrayed their oath to first do no harm, and their so-called ‘gender-affirming care’ has inflicted lasting physical and psychological damage on vulnerable young people.”

National Debate

Leor Sapir, an HHS report author and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, agreed that the report represents an important milestone in how childhood gender dysphoria should be treated.

“At the highest level, this is the closest the United States has ever got, and probably will ever get, to a scientific debate about this topic,” Sapir told The Epoch Times.

National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya said in the Nov. 19 statement that the report’s evidence documents the “risks the profession has imposed on vulnerable children.”

“This report marks a turning point for American medicine,” he said.

Peer reviews from professors, doctors, and researchers were positive overall. The only review from a professional psychiatric group came from the American Psychiatric Association (APA). Two unsolicited negative articles were included, and HHS responded to them as well.

The APA, as the sole professional association to provide a formal peer review, said the report’s underlying methodology lacked “sufficient transparency and clarity for its findings to be taken at face value.”

It also criticized the report for failing to identify potential harm from withholding medical interventions, citing higher rates of depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts. Likewise, it condemned the report for not immediately disclosing report authors and any potential conflicts of interest.

In its reply to the APA, HHS responded that it was an established practice in scientific reviews to withhold authors’ names until after peer review so that the focus would be on the research.

The agency pointed out that two Belgian methodologists reviewed the report. Trudy Bekkering and Dr. Patrik Vankrunkelsven both work with the Belgian Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine. Bekkering and Vankrunkelsven found the report’s methodology “robust” without major issues in its methodology or conclusion.

Sapir called the validation of methodology extremely important because major flaws would damage the report’s credibility.

“That’s the beating heart of this review,” he said.

HHS noted that evidence underpinning the alleged benefits of medical interventions is “very uncertain.”

The agency also invited the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Endocrine Society to participate in the review. They criticized the report but did not offer a peer review.

HHS also addressed accusations that the report was biased, used misleading evidence, violated scientific norms, and relied too heavily on the Cass report.

The Cass report, a 2024 report to the UK’s National Health Service, resulted in a shift away from the gender affirmation model for children to a more conservative approach. The National Health Service significantly curtailed the prescribing of puberty blockers because there was insufficient evidence that puberty blockers benefited patients.

Leaders in pediatric gender medicine have criticized the HHS report in two journal commentaries.

The first commentary, “A Critical Scientific Appraisal of the Health and Human Services Report on Pediatric Gender Dysphoria,” appeared in the Journal of Adolescent Health in September. The second, “Scientific Integrity and Pediatric Gender Healthcare: Disputing the HHS Review,” was published in Sexuality Research and Social Policy in October.

The commentaries state, among other complaints, that the report does not name its authors, has factual errors, and misrepresents scientific evidence.

HHS noted that none of the government report’s contributors was employed by the agency and that its conclusions were reproducible and in line with scholarly norms.

The agency also stated that the Cass report has been accepted by both major political parties in the UK but noted that criticism was expected.

“It is not surprising that gender clinicians and the professional associations that represent them would disparage a review that upended their favored treatment model in the [UK],” HHS stated.

The Trevor Project, a nonprofit that describes itself as a suicide prevention group for the LGBT community, said in a Facebook post that the report “dismisses the validity of transgender health care.”

Positive Peer Reviews

However, most peer reviewers found that the government analysis met professional standards and had no major flaws.

“This is an important and timely work. It is well written, methodologically rigorous, and makes a significant contribution to the discussion on this topic,” Johan C. Bester, professor of family and community medicine and health care ethics at Saint Louis University School of Medicine, wrote in his peer review.

“What the Cass review did in the UK, the [HHS] review does in the United States.”

Several European nations, including the UK, have restricted or banned pharmaceutical and medical interventions for gender dysphoric children, citing concerns over effectiveness and long-term effects. Similarly, 27 U.S. states have enacted laws limiting so-called gender-affirming care for minors, according to KFF, a health policy research and news outlet.

Bester went on to write that the current practice of offering medical intervention to help youths with gender dysphoria “ought not continue.” He stated that much research is still needed on the causes of gender dysphoria, its natural course, and treatments.

Others, such as Dr. Richard Santen, professor emeritus of endocrinology at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, said the overall assessment of the studies in the report “was scientifically sound.”

Karleen Gribble, professor at the School of Nursing and Midwifery at Western Sydney University, applauded the report’s commitment to using scientifically accurate, neutral terminology. She said that rejecting terminology such as “sex assigned at birth” was “well-argued.”

HHS said the goal of the report was to provide accurate and current information on the treatment of children distressed over their biological sex.

“Our duty is to protect our nation’s children—not expose them to unproven and irreversible medical interventions,” Bhattacharya said when the report was published in May.

“We must follow the gold standard of science, not activist agendas.”

Zachary Stieber contributed to this report.

Tyler Durden Fri, 11/21/2025 - 20:05

DOJ Sues California To End In-State College Tuition For Illegal Immigrants

U.S. Attorney Pamela Bondi has filed a federal court complaint challenging laws in the Golden State that provide in-state tuition rates, scholarships, and subsidized loans to illegal immigrants, she said on Thursday.

Those laws are unconstitutional and discriminate against American citizens who are not afforded the same benefits to attend colleges and universities, she said in a Nov. 20 statement.

“This marks our third lawsuit against California in one week,” she said.

“We will continue bringing litigation against California until the state ceases its flagrant disregard for federal law.”

As Aaron Gifford reports for The Epoch Times, the lawsuit, filed in the Eastern District of California federal court, names California Gov. Gavin Newsom and other agencies that oversee the state’s public university system.

The lawsuit said the “California Dream Act,” which exclusively provides scholarships and subsidized loans, is illegal and unconstitutional.

It cites two executive orders signed by President Donald Trump earlier in 2025 that prohibit illegal immigrants from obtaining taxpayer benefits or preferential treatment.

The Epoch Times has reached out to Newsom’s press office.

Under a 1996 law passed under President Bill Clinton, the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, public universities cannot charge U.S. citizens out-of-state tuition rates if they are providing in-state discounts to illegal immigrants.

The DOJ previously filed similar lawsuits against five states. Texas, Oklahoma, and Kentucky complied with the federal agency’s request and no longer offer discounted tuition to illegal immigrants, while cases are pending against Illinois and Minnesota.

In-state tuition at most of California’s public colleges and universities is less than $10,000 annually, but out-of-state tuition exceeds $30,000, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

About 62 percent of the nation’s foreign-born population lives in states with “tuition-equity” laws, according to an Aug. 6 report from the National Immigration Law Center.

More than 500,000 illegal immigrants are enrolled at U.S. colleges and universities, both public and private.

California leads with 103,000, followed by Texas with 73,000, and Florida with 49,000, according to the Higher Ed Immigration Portal.

The California State University system website notes that its Dream Center offers benefits exclusively for students who are the children of illegal immigrants or are illegal immigrants themselves.

This includes grants, loans, scholarships, legal assistance, and various campus support services.

“We seek support for our Dreamers and DACA recipients—and those across the country—to honor their humanity, to remove inequitable and unfair barriers that stand between them and the fulfillment of their personal and professional dreams,” Mildred García, the state university system chancellor, says in a statement on the website.

“That’s what the CSU stands for—that’s what we do—and at a scale greater than any other university system in the world.”

Tyler Durden Fri, 11/21/2025 - 19:40

CDC Says Vaccines May Cause Autism

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now says that it’s possible vaccines cause autism, in a reversal of its previous stance.

A sign at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) headquarters in Atlanta, Ga., on Aug. 25, 2023. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

“The claim ‘vaccines do not cause autism’ is not an evidence-based claim because studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism,” the CDC said in a Nov. 19 update to its website. “Studies supporting a link have been ignored by health authorities.”

The CDC cited a 2006 paper that analyzed surveys of parents with children who have autism and found many parents believed vaccines caused the disorder, which has symptoms including difficulty communicating.

It also said that the rise in the prevalence of autism in the United States correlates with an increase in the number of vaccines given to young children.

“Though the cause of autism is likely to be multi-factorial, the scientific foundation to rule out one potential contributor entirely has not been established,” the CDC said. “For example, one study found that aluminum adjuvants in vaccines had the highest statistical correlation with the rise in autism prevalence among numerous suspected environmental causes. Correlation does not prove causation, but it does merit further study.”

A small number of studies have found an association between certain vaccines and autism. Others have identified no increased risk in autism following receipt of the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine, including two papers that cited the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the CDC’s parent agency, in a 2021 report, which said there is no evidence that the vaccine causes autism.

An earlier report from the agency said evidence was insufficient to rule on an association between vaccines against diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, and hepatitis B and autism.

“In fact, there are still no studies that support the claim that any of the 20 doses of the seven infant vaccines recommended for American children before the first year of life do not cause autism,” the CDC said in the update to its site.

It said that there are issues with the studies on autism and the measles vaccine, including that they are retrospective rather than prospective.

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said at a Nov. 17 event, responding to a college student who said that vaccines do not cause autism, that “the people who told you that have been lying to you.” He said the studies on the matter should, but do not, compare health outcomes in a vaccinated group and an unvaccinated group, and that HHS is conducting those studies.

HHS is currently engaged in an investigation into the causes of autism, which includes evaluating “plausible biologic mechanisms between early childhood vaccinations and autism,” the CDC said on Nov. 19. The evaluation will include aluminum salts, which are used as adjuvants in many childhood vaccines.

The CDC had previously said on the site that “studies have shown that there is no link between receiving vaccines and developing autism spectrum disorder” and that no links have been found between any vaccine ingredients and the disorder.

The updated page maintains the sentence “vaccines do not cause autism” under an agreement between health officials and Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), chairman of the Senate Health Committee. A spokesperson for Cassidy, who said during Kennedy’s confirmation hearing that vaccines do not cause autism, did not return a request for comment.

A separate CDC page, last updated in 2024, says that studies show vaccines are not associated with autism.

Children’s Health Defense, a nonprofit that says it wants to end childhood health epidemics by eliminating exposure to toxins and which was previously chaired by Kennedy, welcomed the CDC update.

“Finally, the CDC is beginning to acknowledge the truth about this condition that affects millions, disavowing the bold, long-running lie that ‘vaccines do not cause autism,'” Mary Holland, CEO and president of the group, told The Epoch Times in an email. “No studies have ever proved this irresponsible claim; on the contrary, many studies point to vaccines as the plausible primary cause of autism.”

Katelyn Jetelina, an epidemiologist, wrote on BlueSky that “for the first time in my career, I can’t tell people to trust what the CDC website says.”

Dr. Jake Scott, an infectious disease physician at Stanford University, said on her blog that the updated page “contradicts what we’ve learned from tracking millions of children over decades” and expressed concern that the new language would lead to parents delaying or skipping recommended vaccines for children.

Tyler Durden Fri, 11/21/2025 - 19:15

Nigerian Gunmen Abduct Over 200 Christian Children, 12 Teachers In Boarding School Attack

Armed men attacked a Catholic boarding school in northcentral Nigeria's Niger state in the early hours on Friday, abducting 215 students and 12 teachers, according to Daniel Atori, a spokesperson to the Niger state chapter of the Christian Association of Nigeria.

The attack on the church in south-western Nigeria is one in a series targeting Christians

"I have just got back to the village this night after I visited the school where I also met with parents of the children to assure them that we are working with the government and Security agencies to see that our children are rescued and brought back safely," Atori said in a statement. 

The attack and abductions took place at St. Mary’s School, a Catholic institution in the Agwara local government’s Papiri community, said Abubakar Usman, the secretary to the Niger state government. He neither disclosed the number of students and staff abducted, nor who might be responsible for the attack. -AP

"We don’t know what is happening now, because we have not heard anything since this morning," said Dauda Chekula, 62, whose four grandchildren were among the abductees. "The children who were able to escape have scattered, some of them ran back to their houses and the only information we are getting is that the attackers are still moving with the remaining children into the bush."

The abduction is the latest in a spate of attacks on Christians in Africa's most populous country, and happened just days after 25 schoolgirls were abducted in a neighboring state. 

While no description has been given for the attackers, the schoolgirls are suspected to have been taken by 'gangs of bandits.'

As Susan Crabtree of RealClearPolitics writes:  

The timing and nature of the attack placed the fate of Nigerian Christians in stark relief. On Monday, in the early hours of the morning, a group of gunmen attacked a girl’s boarding school in northwestern Nigeria, kidnapping 25 girls, many of them Christian. The attack killed the school’s vice principal, Malam Hassan Makaku, who tried to block the door to the girl’s dormitory with his body.

The gunmen’s assault on the school took more than 20 minutes and failed to prompt any intervention from government security forces located at a checkpoint not far from the school.

The attack also took place amid new scrutiny and calls to action by President Trump. The president in late October vowed to stop the slaughter of Nigerian Christians, whom Muslim terrorist groups, including Boko Haram and Faluni militants, the Islamic State of West Africa Province, as well as armed bandits, have targeted and slaughtered by the thousands in recent years.

The abduction of the girls served as a reminder of former first lady Michelle Obama’s failed hashtag campaign to rescue 276 mostly Christian girls kidnapped by Boko Haram from a school in Chibok, Nigeria, in 2014. A decade later, 82 of the girls remain missing, and a United Nations investigation found that only 37% of schools across Nigeria have any warning system to detect threats of violence and armed attacks.

The deadly attack on the school also came the same week U.S. officials planned to highlight the plight of persecuted Christians in Nigeria at the United Nations and in Congress.

Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz, singer Nicki Minaj, and religious freedom advocates gathered in New York Tuesday and joined a panel hosted by Fox News anchor Harris Faulkner. Rev. Gabriel Makan, a pastor from northern Nigeria, and Sarah Makin, former senior advisor on religious freedom in President Trump’s first administration, joined the panel to call for renewed diplomatic engagement and stepped-up actions from the Nigerian government.

Waltz, Minaj, and the other witnesses chronicled the loss of girls into what they fear is a life of sex slavery, the burning of churches, and beheadings of pastors. Entire villages, Waltz said, wake to gunfire because “they dare to commit the crime of calling Jesus their Lord, [and] people go to jail under blasphemy laws for simply wearing a cross.”

For years, religious freedom advocates have called on the U.S. government to address the slaughter of Christians in Nigeria. Trump, in his first term, designated Nigeria a “Country of Particular Concern,” but President Biden reversed that decision. In late October, Trump once again redesignated Nigeria as a CPC and vowed to do everything in his power, including have the U.S. military come in “guns blazin’,” to stop the violence.

“Protecting Christians is not about politics – it is a moral duty,” Waltz said Tuesday. “We need voices that pierce the silence we have heard from the international community, that humanize the statistics we keep hearing, and demand accountability.”

“Religious freedom means we can all can sing our faith regardless of who we are, where we live, and what we believe,” Minaj told the panel. “But today, faith is under attack in way too many places. In Nigeria, Christians are being targeted, driven from their homes and killed. Churches have been burned, families have been torn apart, and entire communities live in fear constantly, simply because of how they pray.”

New Jersey GOP Rep. Chris Smith in previous Congresses introduced bipartisan legislation calling for more action to stop what he considers a Christian genocide in Nigeria. On Thursday, Smith will lead a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on Trump’s renewed call for action.

Christians make up nearly half of Nigeria’s population of 200 million, but they are the victims of the vast majority of the attacks. Today, Nigeria is the most dangerous place in the world to be a Christian, according to leading religious freedom advocates.

The World Index of Christian Persecution states that Nigeria is where 89% of Christian killings throughout the world took place over the last several years. According to a report by Open Doors, a watchdog that tracks Christian persecution, attacks against Christians in Nigeria are on the rise, with 7,000 Christians dying in the first eight months of this year, up roughly 2,000 from recent years.

The Biden administration attributed the slaughter of Christians in Nigeria, which make up nearly half the population, not to religious persecution but to a conflict over resources exacerbated by climate change. Open Doors and other advocates ardently disagree about the main motivation, although most groups involved believe the conflict isn’t just religious in nature but also involves conflicts over power and control over land and resources because Christians own most of the farming areas.

Kidnapping, which helps fund Islamist terrorist groups, is big business for abductors in the lawless areas of northern Nigeria. More than 20,000 people have been abducted in Nigeria from 2019 to 2023, according to Open Doors. Roaming bandits target people wo will pay ransoms, and they’ve learned that Christians and religious leaders will respond with higher payments than others.

For these reasons, some groups, including the Vatican, have pushed back on the narrative that the slaughter of Christians is primarily religious persecution. According to Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s secretary of state, the root causes are “social” in nature rather than fully religious. The Trump administration rejects that assessment, arguing it’s a war on Christians by mainly Muslim extremist groups.

Regardless of the cause, the impact is alarming. Nigeria remains the world leader when it comes to the killing of Christians. The question now: What can the Trump administration do about it?

Trump, in his late October Truth Social post, vowed U.S. military action if the Nigerian government fails to take immediate action. Such a development, if it involved sending U.S. troops into Nigeria, would likely not only anger Trump’s isolationist MAGA base but could prove ineffective against roving bands of militants and terrorists in such lawless regions.

Nigerian President Bola Tinubu, who is Muslim, pushed back against Trump’s threat of military action, instead calling for non-military assistance from the U.S. and interested parties “to deepen cooperation and protection of communities of all faiths.”

Tinubu, who was elected in 2023 and faces reelection in 2027, is viewed as a far more honest broker than his predecessor, Muhammadu Buhari, a Muslim who shared his heritage with the Faluni ethnic group responsible for most of the attacks on Nigerian Christians. Tinubu’s wife is a Christian, which likely has tempered his approach.

A senior State Department official told RealClearPolitics that Trump is keeping all options on the table but noted that there is a “whole suite of options” the administration is considering, including serious economic sanctions. The official also noted the geographic complexity of the problem because in the northeastern area of the country the bad actors are Boko Haram and ISIS, while in the Middle Belt it’s Fulani militants.

The key to Tinubu’s reelection is managing “this delicate religious balance,” the official added.

“This is an opportunity for the Nigerians to show that they share this principle [of religious freedom], and they’re willing to take action on this for the benefit of our people,” the official said, noting that it requires the Nigerian government to increase its “prioritization of this issue” and “allocate resources appropriately.” 

While Tinubu appears open to Western assistance to crack down on the attacks, the real problem lies with the flow of firearms to different lawless regions and corrupt funds to the local governors of the different states, several of whom are in league with the extremist groups responsible for the violence, according to a source on the ground in Nigeria. Many of those firearms, the source said, are flowing into Nigeria from Arab states, including Saudi Arabia.

Trump this week gave Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman a lavish welcome at the White House and even defended him over the 2018 killing of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi agents, which U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded the crown prince approved. The White House’s renewed U.S. -Saudi partnership brings new hope to ending regional tensions with Iran and cementing the Israeli-Hamas peace deal.

But any talks of U.S. weapons sales to Saudi Arabia should also include pledges to lead an effort to stop the sales of firearms to Nigerian terrorists and militants, critics argue.

U.S. officials are planning to host a senior Nigerian delegation in Washington at the end of this week to get a better idea of short- and long-term goals and any sticking points.

“The flow of illicit weapons is just magnifying the problem there, so it’s one of the key factors that we’re going to look at, especially in the Middle Belt piece of this when we’re talking about ISIS and Boko Haram,” the State Department official said. “How these Fulani ethnic militias, which the Nigerians claim are just farmers – how they end up with heavy artillery to conduct these raids is a fundamental question.”

The State Department is in the process of conducting a review of all U.S. aid to Nigeria, including security cooperation and humanitarian and economic assistance.

“Our preferred option for them is to recognize the seriousness of the situation and act accordingly, in good faith with us, so we can all see results, and we don’t need to discuss any of these punitive aspects,” the official said. 

Tyler Durden Fri, 11/21/2025 - 18:50

Biden's Weaponization Of The DOJ Against GOP Lawmakers Was Worse Than We Thought

Authored by Matt Margolis via PJMedia.com,

New, disturbing revelations show just how far Joe Biden was willing to go to target his political enemies. In 2022, his Justice Department secretly seized more than two years of House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan’s personal phone records. Fox News Digital obtained a subpoena that exposes the depth of Biden’s weaponization of the government against his enemies.

The subpoena shows a federal prosecutor — who later joined Jack Smith’s January 6 team — ordered Verizon to cough up Jordan’s records dating back to Jan. 1, 2020.

“The request appears to be the most expansive yet of the publicly known subpoenas targeting senators and current and former House members during Arctic Frost, the investigation that led to Smith bringing election-related charges against President Donald Trump,” Fox News Digital reports.

Smith did not begin working as special counsel until seven months after the subpoena was issued, meaning the request pre-dated his time at the DOJ.

The subpoena for Jordan's records appears to be one of the first known ones in the Arctic Frost probe and was issued during a time when Jordan was serving as the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, which conducts oversight of the DOJ. His role at the time is illustrative of Republicans' sharp criticisms of the Arctic Frost subpoenas, as they claim the requests for Congress members' phone records breached the separation of powers, including under the speech or debate clause.

The toll records did not include the contents of Jordan's phone calls or messages but did include details about when calls and messages were sent and received and with whom Jordan was communicating. The subpoena sought records for three other phone numbers, which were redacted. It included a one-year gag order signed by a D.C. magistrate judge.

A source said Verizon handed over Jordan’s records when the DOJ demanded them, adding another layer to the growing concerns about the department’s reach.

Verizon issued a statement saying it is working closely with both the House and Senate Judiciary Committees to gather all relevant information regarding the shady subpoenas.

"As part of our investigation, we uncovered new information regarding Chairman Jordan and shared it with him as soon as possible," Verizon spokesman Rich Young told Fox News Digital in a statement. "We are committed to restoring trust through transparency and will continue to work with Congress and the administration as they examine these issues and consider reforms to expand notification protections."

Jordan is the latest in a growing list of Republicans revealed as having been targeted by the Biden Justice Department as part of Arctic Frost.

The sweep started earlier with Rep. Kevin McCarthy in 2023. At least ten GOP senators also landed on the list, including Sens. Lindsey Graham, Marsha Blackburn, Ted Cruz, and Ron Johnson. The pattern shows a previously unknown and disturbing level of weaponization.

Naturally, Smith insists that his January 6 and 2020 election investigations followed DOJ policies, but no one really buys that. He also insists the subpoenas were “entirely proper” and narrowly crafted.

Right.

Biden’s weaponization of the DOJ against Trump was already a dark stain on American democracy. But this latest revelation proves he couldn’t stop himself from using the full weight of government to crush all political opposition. This blatant abuse of power demands swift congressional action before it is normalized.

Tyler Durden Fri, 11/21/2025 - 18:25

Peter Schiff: Printing Money Is Not the Cure for Cononavirus



In his most recent podcast, Peter Schiff talked about coronavirus and the impact that it is having on the markets. Earlier this month, Peter said he thought the virus was just an excuse for stock market woes. At the time he believed the market was poised to fall anyway. But as it turns out, coronavirus has actually helped the US stock market because it has led central banks to pump even more liquidity into the world financial system. All this means more liquidity — central banks easing. In fact, that is exactly what has already happened, except the new easing is taking place, for now, outside the United States, particularly in China.” Although the new money is primarily being created in China, it is flowing into dollars — the dollar index is up — and into US stocks. Last week, US stock markets once again made all-time record highs. In fact, I think but for the coronavirus, the US stock market would still be selling off. But because of the central bank stimulus that has been the result of fears over the coronavirus, that actually benefitted not only the US dollar, but the US stock market.” In the midst of all this, Peter raises a really good question. The primary economic concern is that coronavirus will slow down output and ultimately stunt economic growth. Practically speaking, the world would produce less stuff. If the virus continues to spread, there would be fewer goods and services produced in a market that is hunkered down. Why would the Federal Reserve respond, or why would any central bank respond to that by printing money? How does printing more money solve that problem? It doesn’t. In fact, it actually exacerbates it. But you know, everybody looks at central bankers as if they’ve got the solution to every problem. They don’t. They don’t have the magic wand. They just have a printing press. And all that creates is inflation.” Sometimes the illusion inflation creates can look like a magic wand. Printing money can paper over problems. But none of this is going to fundamentally fix the economy. In fact, if central bankers were really going to do the right thing, the appropriate response would be to drain liquidity from the markets, not supply even more.” Peter explained how the Fed was originally intended to create an “elastic” money supply that would expand or contract along with economic output. Today, the money supply only goes in one direction — that’s up. The economy is strong, print money. The economy is weak, print even more money.” Of course, the asset that’s doing the best right now is gold. The yellow metal pushed above $1,600 yesterday. Gold is up 5.5% on the year in dollar terms and has set record highs in other currencies. Because gold is rising even in an environment where the dollar is strengthening against other fiat currencies, that shows you that there is an underlying weakness in the dollar that is right now not being reflected in the Forex markets, but is being reflected in the gold markets. Because after all, why are people buying gold more aggressively than they’re buying dollars or more aggressively than they’re buying US Treasuries? Because they know that things are not as good for the dollar or the US economy as everybody likes to believe. So, more people are seeking out refuge in a better safe-haven and that is gold.” Peter also talked about the debate between Trump and Obama over who gets credit for the booming economy – which of course, is not booming.

We are living in crazy times. I have a hard time believing that most of the general public is not awake, but in reality, they are. We've never seen anything like this; I mean not even under Obama during the worst part of the Great Recession." Now the Fed is desperately trying to keep interest rates from rising. The problem is that it's a much bigger debt bubble this time around , and the Fed is going to have to blow a lot more air into it to keep it inflated. The difference is this time it's not going to work." It looks like the Fed did another $104.15 billion of Not Q.E. in a single day. The Fed claims it's only temporary. But that is precisely what Bernanke claimed when the Fed started QE1. Milton Freedman once said, "Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program." The same applies to Q.E., or whatever the Fed wants to pretend it's doing. Except this is not QE4, according to Powell. Right. Pumping so much money out, and they are accusing China of currency manipulation ? Wow! Seriously! Amazing! Dump the U.S. dollar while you still have a chance. Welcome to The Atlantis Report. And it is even worse than that, In addition to the $104.15 billion of "Not Q.E." this past Thursday; the FED added another $56.65 billion in liquidity to financial markets the next day on Friday. That's $160.8 billion in two days!!!! in just 48 hours. That is more than 2 TIMES the highest amount the FED has ever injected on a monthly basis under a Q.E. program (which was $80 billion per month) Since this isn't QE....it will be really scary on what they are going to call Q.E. Will it twice, three times, four times, five times what this injection per month ! It is going to be explosive since it takes about 60 to 90 days for prices to react to this, January should see significant inflation as prices soak up the excess liquidity. The question is, where will the inflation occur first . The spike in the repo rate might have a technical explanation: a misjudgment was made in the Fed's money market operations. Even so, two conclusions can be drawn: managing the money markets is becoming harder, and from now on, banks will be studying each other's creditworthiness to a greater degree than before. Those people, who struggle with the minutiae of money markets, and that includes most professionals, should focus on the causes and not the symptoms. Financial markets have recovered from each downturn since 1980 because interest rates have been cut to new lows. Post-2008, they were cut to near zero or below zero in all major economies. In response to a new financial crisis, they cannot go any lower. Central banks will look for new ways to replicate or broaden Q.E. (At some point, governments will simply see repression as an easier option). Then there is the problem of 'risk-free' assets becoming risky assets. Financial markets assume that the probability of major governments such as the U.S. or U.K. defaulting is zero. These governments are entering the next downturn with debt roughly twice the levels proportionate to GDP that was seen in 2008. The belief that the policy worked was completely predicated on the fact that it was temporary and that it was reversible, that the Fed was going to be able to normalize interest rates and shrink its balance sheet back down to pre-crisis levels. Well, when the balance sheet is five-trillion, six-trillion, seven-trillion when we're back at zero, when we're back in a recession, nobody is going to believe it is temporary. Nobody is going to believe that the Fed has this under control, that they can reverse this policy. And the dollar is going to crash. And when the dollar crashes, it's going to take the bond market with it, and we're going to have stagflation. We're going to have a deep recession with rising interest rates, and this whole thing is going to come imploding down. everything is temporary with the fed including remaining off the gold standard temporary in the Fed's eyes could mean at least 50 years This liquidity problem is a signal that trading desks are loaded up on inventory and can't get rid of it. Repo is done out of a need for cash. If you own all of your securities (i.e., a long-only, no leverage mutual fund) you have no need to "repo" your securities - you're earning interest every night so why would you want to 'repo' your securities where you are paying interest for that overnight loan (securities lending is another animal). So, it is those that 'lever-up' and need the cash for settlement purposes on securities they've bought with borrowed money that needs to utilize the repo desk. With this in mind, as we continue to see this need to obtain cash (again, needed to settle other securities purchases), it shows these firms don't have the capital to add more inventory to, what appears to be, a bloated inventory. Now comes the fun part: the Treasury is about to auction 3's, 10's, and 30-year bonds. If I am correct (again, I could be wrong), the Fed realizes securities firms don't have the shelf space to take down a good portion of these auctions. If there isn't enough retail/institutional demand, it will lead to not only a crappy sale but major concerns to the street that there is now no backstop, at all, to any sell-off. At which point, everyone will want to be the first one through the door and sell immediately, but to whom? If there isn't enough liquidity in the repo market to finance their positions, the firms would be unable to increase their inventory. We all saw repo shut down on the 2008 crisis. Wall St runs on money. . OVERNIGHT money. They lever up to inventory securities for trading. If they can't get overnight money, they can't purchase securities. And if they can't unload what they have, it means the buy-side isn't taking on more either. Accounts settle overnight. This includes things like payrolls and bill pay settlements. If a bank doesn't have enough cash to payout what its customers need to pay out, it borrows. At least one and probably more than one banks are insolvent. That's what's going on. First, it can't be one or two banks that are short. They'd simply call around until they found someone to lend. But they did that, and even at markedly elevated rates, still, NO ONE would lend them the money. That tells me that it's not a problem of a couple of borrowers, it's a problem of no lenders. And that means that there's no bank in the world left with any real liquidity. They are ALL maxed out. But as bad as that is, and that alone could be catastrophic, what it really signals is even worse. The lending rates are just the flip side of the coin of the value of the assets lent against. If the rates go up, the value goes down. And with rates spiking to 10%, how far does the value fall? Enormously! And if banks had to actually mark down the value of the assets to reflect 10% interest rates, then my god, every bank in the world is insolvent overnight. Everyone's capital ratios are in the toilet, and they'd have to liquidate. We're talking about the simultaneous insolvency of every bank on the planet. Bank runs. No money in ATMs, Branches closed. Safe deposit boxes confiscated. The whole nine yards, It's actually here. The scenario has tended to guide toward for years and years is actually happening RIGHT NOW! And people are still trying to say it's under control. Every bank in the world is currently insolvent. The only thing keeping it going is printing billions of dollars every day. Financial Armageddon isn't some far off future risk. It's here. Prepare accordingly. This fiat system has reached the end of the line, and it's not correct that fiat currencies fail by design. The problem is corruption and manipulation. It is corruption and cheating that erodes trust and faith until the entire system becomes a gigantic fraud. Banks and governments everywhere ARE the problem and simply have to be removed. They have lost all trust and respect, and all they have left is war and mayhem. As long as we continue to have a majority of braindead asleep imbeciles following orders from these psychopaths, nothing will change. Fiat currency is not just thievery. Fiat currency is SLAVERY. Ultimately the most harmful effect of using debt of undefined value as money (i.e., fiat currencies) is the de facto legalization of a caste system based on voluntary slavery. The bankers have a charter, or the legal *right*, to create money out of nothing. You, you don't. Therefore you and the bankers do not have the same standing before the law. The law of the land says that you will go to jail if you do the same thing (creating money out of thin air) that the banker does in full legality. You and the banker are not equal before the law. ALL the countries of the world; Islamic or secular, Jewish or Arab, democracy or dictatorship; all of them place the bankers ABOVE you. And all of you accept that only whining about fiat money going down in exchange value over time (price inflation which is not the same as monetary inflation). Actually, price inflation itself is mainly due to the greed and stupidity of the bankers who could keep fiat money's exchange value reasonably stable, only if they wanted to. Witness the crash of silver and gold prices which the bankers of the world; Russian, American, Chinese, Jewish, Indian, Arab, all of them collaborated to engineer through the suppression and stagnation of precious metals' prices to levels around the metals' production costs, or what it costs to dig gold and silver out of the ground. The bankers of the world could also collaborate to keep nominal prices steady (as they do in the case of the suppression of precious metals prices). After all, the ability to create fiat money and force its usage is a far more excellent source of power and wealth than that which is afforded simply by stealing it through inflation. The bankers' greed and stupidity blind them to this fact. They want it all, and they want it now. In conclusion, The bankers can create money out of nothing and buy your goods and services with this worthless fiat money, effectively for free. You, you can't. You, you have to lead miserable existences for the most of you and WORK in order to obtain that effectively nonexistent, worthless credit money (whose purchasing/exchange value is not even DEFINED thus rendering all contracts based on the null and void!) that the banker effortlessly creates out of thin air with a few strokes of the computer keyboard, and which he doesn't even bother to print on paper anymore, electing to keep it in its pure quantum uncertain form instead, as electrons whizzing about inside computer chips which will become mute and turn silent refusing to tell you how many fiat dollars or euros there are in which account, in the absence of electricity. No electricity, no fiat, nor crypto money. It would appear that trust is deteriorating as it did when Lehman blew up . Something really big happened that set off this chain reaction in the repo markets. Whatever that something is, we aren't be informed. They're trying to cover it up, paper it over with conjured cash injections, play it cool in front of the cameras while sweating profusely under the 5 thousands dollar suits. I'm guessing that the final high-speed plunge into global economic collapse has begun. All we see here is the ripples and whitewater churning the surface, but beneath the surface, there is an enormous beast thrashing desperately in its death throws. Now is probably the time to start tying up loose ends with the long-running prep projects, just saying. In other words, prepare accordingly, and Get your money out of the banks. I don't care if you don't believe me about Bitcoin. Get your money out of the banks. Don't keep any more money in a bank than you need to pay your bills and can afford to lose.











The Financial Armageddon Economic Collapse Blog tracks trends and forecasts , futurists , visionaries , free investigative journalists , researchers , Whistelblowers , truthers and many more













The Financial Armageddon Economic Collapse Blog tracks trends and forecasts , futurists , visionaries , free investigative journalists , researchers , Whistelblowers , truthers and many more

The FBI released a summary of its file from the Hillary Clinton email investigation on Friday, showing details of Clinton's explanation of her use of a private email server to handle classified communications. The release comes nearly two months after FBI Director James Comey announced that although Clinton's handling of classified information was "extremely careless," it did not rise to the level of a prosecutable offense. Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced the next day that she would not pursue charges in the matter. "We are making these materials available to the public in the interest of transparency and in response to numerous Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests," the FBI noted in a statement sent to reporters with links to the documents. The documents include notes from Clinton's July 2 interview with agents, as well as a "factual summary of the FBI's investigation into this matter," according to the FBI release. Throughout her interview with agents, Clinton repeatedly said she relied on the career professionals she worked with to handle classified information correctly. The agents asked about a series of specific emails, and in each case Clinton said she wasn't worried about the particular material being discussed on a nonclassified channel.