Zero Hedge

Will Gen Z Realize Its Future Runs On Fossil Fuels?

Will Gen Z Realize Its Future Runs On Fossil Fuels?

Authored by Alex Rosado via the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER),

American innovation requires our energy sector to use all available resources, but Generation Z apparently wants to limit its potential.

Pew Research Center discovered that 43 percent of Gen Z respondents support phasing out oil, natural gas, and coal. Climate change is their top concern, and any energy source that doesn’t (purport to) resolve it is scorned.

Yet, by distancing the country from fossil fuels, Gen Z is weakening America’s ability to compete. Fossil fuels are vital for domestic economic stability, as they boost state revenue and public offerings. Internationally, energy dominance is crucial for safeguarding national security and shaping foreign policy objectives. Only a holistic approach to energy can unleash American brilliance and save Gen Z from the setbacks of canning fossil fuels.

Resources for the Future found that, between 2015 and 2019, fossil fuels generated an average of $138 billion per year for U.S. local, state, tribal, and federal governments. Thriving mining industries in Texas, Alaska, and North Dakota account for at least 10 percent of their respective state gross domestic product; in Wyoming, fossil fuels represented up to 65 percent of the state budget. With their profits, fossil fuel companies donated $700 million to twenty-seven colleges and universities over the past decade. Along with investing in infrastructure and high energy density, these resources are the crux of enterprise and keep our institutions running.

From engineering to refinery management, the fossil fuel sector creates jobs for the next wave of industrial workers: 32 million positions and $909 billion in labor income. As older workers retire and new technologies emerge, there is a demand for younger, tech-savvy talent that will minimize these jobs’ unfavorable reliance on physical labor. In a national environment where many in Gen Z struggle to find work yet expect higher salaries, the nonrenewable energy sector offers competitive wages, transferable skills, and occupational choice.

Filling and enhancing those roles is essential for lower energy prices. The Department of Energy (DOE) revealed last year that natural gas is the most cost-effective residential energy source available. Electricity was almost four times more expensive, meaning homes that used electricity for heat during wintertime paid roughly 75 percent more than those that used gas. As 38 percent of Gen Z witnessed their household cut back on a utility due to energy costs, and one-fourth of Gen Z apartment renters desire energy-efficient appliances, the DOE news is sobering for climate activists. Fossil fuels are affordable, appealing, and not a significant threat to the environment.

The United States has achieved remarkable energy independence through domestic fossil fuel production, positioning us to compete effectively overseas. Under the first Trump administration, America produced more energy than it consumed for the first time since 1957, reducing reliance on geopolitical rivals. The feat slices the approximately $700 million sent daily to potentially unstable or hostile nations and redirects it towards investing in our military. This matters to Gen Z, as 65 percent cited terrorism as a critical threat to the United States over the next decade.

Nearly half of Gen Z also believe America should take an “active” part in world affairs, and the United States needs a full arsenal for conflict mitigation. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve is a crucial security buffer as the world’s largest publicly known emergency oil supply. With strategic releases and sales during the 1991 Gulf War, Hurricane Katrina, and the 2022 Russia-Ukraine War, the U.S. has historically lessened the severity of these events by offsetting supply shortages and maintaining open transportation and defense sectors. Indeed, the capacity to project power globally, which aligns with Gen Z’s policy preferences, depends heavily on secure access to fossil fuels.

Embracing oil and gas is essential in the wake of armed escalation and a newly enacted ceasefire between Israel, Iran, and the United States. Commerce and energy cooperation shifts America’s role as a broker of shared infrastructure and trade interests. Major American energy companies, including Chevron and Exxon, are already involved in East Mediterranean projects. The Atlantic Council has proposed constructing a “Gas Peace Corridor” that could link Iran’s vast South Pars gas field with neighboring countries, including Israel, via new pipelines for mutual benefit. The Gaza War is a hot-button issue for Gen Z and cooperation to meet energy needs with production could reduce further conflict while lessening humanitarian tragedies and economic shocks.

Imperfect as they are, the benefits of nonrenewable fuels are undeniable, and Gen Z is coming around. Two-thirds of Gen Z want to have fossil fuels in our national energy portfolio, and around 80 percent support the development of new-generation nuclear energy to complement other sources. A balanced, pragmatic approach to energy will preserve America’s domestic and global standing today, and directly fuel Gen Z’s future success.

Tyler Durden Sun, 07/20/2025 - 17:30

Gabbard To Release More Obama Russiagate Files, 'Cannot Fathom' How Durham, Mueller Missed Evidence Of 'Years-Long Coup'

Gabbard To Release More Obama Russiagate Files, 'Cannot Fathom' How Durham, Mueller Missed Evidence Of 'Years-Long Coup'

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard says she'll release more information next week to follow up on her bombshell declassification of documents that show "overwhelming evidence" of the Obama administration laid the groundwork for the years-long Trump-Russia collusion investigation after President Trump won the 2016 election. 

"We will be releasing more detailed information about how exactly this took place, and the extent to which this information was sought to be hidden from the American people, hidden from officials who would be in a position to do something about it," Gabbard told Fox News' Maria Bartiromo. "Accountability is essential for the future of our country, for the American people to have any sense of trust in the integrity of our democratic republic."

"Accountability, action, prosecution, indictments for those who are responsible for trying to steal our democracy is essential for us to make sure that this never happens to our country again," Gabbard continued. 

Gabbard told host Maria Bartiromo; "I really cannot fathom" how special counsels Robert Mueller and John Durham missed evidence of this "years-long coup against President Trump."

"There is no rational or logical explanation for why they failed," she said, adding "The only logical conclusion that I can draw in this … is that there was direct intent to cover up the truth about what occurred and who was responsible and the broad network of how this seditious conspiracy was concocted and who exactly was responsible for carrying it out."

Among other things, Gabbard's team unearthed a Sept. 12, 2016 intelligence community assessment that "foreign adversaries do not have and will probably not obtain the capabilities to successfully execute widespread and undetected cyber attacks" on election systems. 

At the time, Russia was being accused of setting up troll farms and hacking the DNC email servers (Seth who?). 

And of course, once legitimized by the Obama administration, a steady stream of leaks suggesting that Russia was behind Trump's 2016 victory started appearing in the Washington Post and other outlets in "sweeping and systemic fashion."

Mueller, of course, found 'insufficient evidence' that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia, while Durham - appointed by Bill Barr (son of the guy who hired Jeffrey Epstein for a teaching job & then oversaw Epstein's death as AG) - accomplished nothing more than a strongly worded letter about the FBI's handling of the Trump-Russia probe. 

"I don’t know what excuse there is for those who supposedly investigated this previously, whether it was Durham or others, that they were not able to put together the dots and ultimately show the truth to the American people," said Gabbard, who then stressed that AG Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel will need to now gather up evidence and decide whether to press charges. (lol. lmao even)

"There must be indictments of those responsible, no matter how powerful they are and were at that time, no matter who was involved in creating this treasonous conspiracy against the American people. They all must be held accountable," Gabbard continued. "For the American people to have any sense of trust in the integrity of our democratic republic, accountability, action, prosecution, [and] indictments for those who are responsible for trying to steal our democracy is essential for us to make sure that this never happens to our country again." 

Jeffrey Who? 

Tyler Durden Sun, 07/20/2025 - 16:20

Democrats Continue To Flounder As Approval Ratings Sink To All Time Lows

Democrats Continue To Flounder As Approval Ratings Sink To All Time Lows

How low can they go?  Democrat Party politicians are proving that the gutter is truly the limit and even their own voting base has little regard for their leadership.

According to recent polling by Quinnipiac University, just 19% of voters questioned give Democrats in Congress a thumbs up on how they're handling their duties, with 72% disapproving.  The poll also revealed that 39% of registered Democrats approve of the way their party representatives in Congress are handling their jobs, with 52% disapproving and 9% not offering an opinion. 

Donald Trump was hit in the same poll with 63% of voters disapproving of his handling of the Epstein files and Republicans in Congress did not do well either.  However, Trump and Republicans still received 77% approval from their voter base; nearly double that of Democrats.

The data follows a similar trend in a Harvard CAPS/Harris poll released on Monday that found that only 4 in 10 respondents approved of the job that the Democratic Party is doing, a slight drop from June.

Polling in March by CNN and SSRS found that the Democratic Party’s favorability rating among Americans stands at a record low.  Democratic-aligned adults, 52% to 48%, say that the leadership of the Democratic Party is currently taking the party in the wrong direction.  

Among the American public overall, the Democratic Party’s favorability rating stands at just 29% – a record low in CNN’s polling dating back to 1992 and a drop of 20 points since January 2021.  

The progressive media argues that the Democrat base wants party leaders to "confront Trump's agenda more aggressively" and "fight harder".  More moderate Dems note, though, that the party was in steep decline well before Trump won the 2024 election and returned to office. 

A October 2023 Gallup poll showed the Democratic Party's overall approval at 37%, a record low at that time, and this was at the height of Democrat power and influence in government.  The bottom line?  Democrat policies are wildly unpopular and their embrace of the radical woke movement did irreparable damage to their optics. 

The adoption of far-left ideological goals, the promotion of transgender ideology among young children, the application of racist DEI policies in government institutions, not to mention the party running Kamala Harris, perhaps the worst candidate ever fielded in a presidential campaign - All of these decisions and more have left moderates and independents in confusion and disgust.  These are the very voters the Dems need to make gains in 2026.  

Democrats are looking to the 2026 mid-term elections with the desperate hope that the controversy over the Epstein files and Trump's "Big Beautiful Bill" will stick long enough for them to make significant gains in the House and Senate and erase the narrow margin Republicans currently hold.    

The problem is that, even with a contingent of MAGA in revolt against Trump's recent decisions, conservatives and moderates are still enraged by the Democrat Party's handling of the country during the Biden Administration.  So enraged that they would be willing to forgive almost anything in 2026 just to keep the leftists from returning to power.  The Dems are greatly underestimating how much hate they have garnered in the last four years.     

Tyler Durden Sun, 07/20/2025 - 15:45

Grappling With Existential Panic Over AI

Grappling With Existential Panic Over AI

Authored by Mark Jeftovic via EasyDNS.com,

If There’s an SOP, You’re SOL

Some time over the Christmas holidays, I experienced what I called a moment of “existential clarity” about AI and it’s ramifications – when I realized that in the not-so-distant future, it was entirely possible that most of easyDNS’ customers would be autonomous AI-driven agents rather than people.

Our internal project to completely rebuild our UX (still ongoing) was close to a quarter in, and it occurred to me that we could be building a bridge-to-nowhere. Why are we creating more elegant ways to render forms that input hostnames and their respective rdata when:

  • you could probably just tell the backend what you want for your domain functionality to be and it can generate the requisite zonefile to facilitate it, and then

  • not long after that every API is going to sit behind an MCP server and it’ll all be done agentically via automated endpoints anyway.

What was the point? This question still bothers me, but we continue to toil away at the UX rebuild, because even though this is where everything is headed, there will still be a temporally long-tail of copy-pasting IP addresses into forms (in the meantime I spend my spare time vibe coding alternative ways to convey DNS and metadata to a zonefile rendering engine. I can see why this isn’t totally a thing yet, but it will be.)

Recently, I started reading John W. Munsell’s “Ingrain AI” – it hits the ground running, with the introduction titled “Every CEO’s Nightmare”, wherein it lays out the “productivity” induced death-spiral many companies may be blundering into, should they be pursuing AI merely as a cheat-code toward hyper-efficiency.

Munsell poses The Big Question:

For a lot of companies, they’re using these tools to cut headcount – a recent post on Reddit from a laid off Rogers employee alleges that company cut 1,000 call center employees, after having them train up AIs on their jobs. Brutal.

In our case, it’s a definite “no” on 1, “yes” on 2 for the question posed, but even if that’s the case, any companies following the same path as easyDNS may not necessarily reduce headcounts but they will most likely slow down hiring.

I’ve said it in the past, and I’ll reiterate it here: I don’t believe for minute that AI is conscious, self aware or sentient and I don’t think AGI ever happens – but it is a revolutionary breakthrough in natural language processing. I think it was YCombinator’s Andrej Karpathy, in his famous “Software In the Age of AI” keynote who quipped “the most popular programming language of the future will be… English”.

With this, every single person on your team acquires strange new super-powers. In a recent Bombthrower post I called it a “cognitive exo-skeleton” (see: “Is ChatGPT Intentionally Driving You Into Psychosis?“) . It’s like Iron Man’s suit for your brain, except they’re available for a few dollars per month, per employee – turning every single person on staff into a productivity super-soldier – what CEO in their right mind would eschew that?

Forced Acceleration

This all comes with an imperative, and we didn’t really get a choice whether or not to put our hand up for it. If anybody has followed my other writings on Bitcoin and the decentralized revolution, you’ll know that a major theme of my thinking has been that the root cause of mass psychosis and generalized anxiety in the world today – including conspiracy theories and ever increasing polarization – is the accelerating rate of change.

It’s “Future Shock” writ large, to use the Alvin and Heidi Toffler phrase from their books in the 70’s, 80’s. It’s actually, “Future Shock squared” – accelerating acceleration, I and created a neologism “tachyosis” (using chatGPT, as it were) to describe the dynamic:

Tachyosis (n.)
A state of recursively compounding acceleration — where systems evolve faster than they can stabilize, perception fragments, and causality begins to blur. Considered the experiential threshold of the kinematic continuum.

“Civilizations in tachyosis cease to distinguish between signal and noise — they become pure velocity.”

Some think that it’s ironically office jobs, clerks and white collar functions on the chopping block first, with physical work enjoying some wiggle room until the robots come, but even that is moving faster than most realize:

What it means is that, yes, everybody gets a massive brain boost. Having the sum total of all historic and current human knowledge, available at zero marginal cost, changes the game, but it also means that all of that productivity boost has to a happen at a higher level of mental abstraction.

We’re now entering a period where anything that can be formalized will be automated: any roles and functions that can be encoded into Standard Operating Procedures are all going to be rendered as markdown, fed into LLMs and executed agentically.

All of that work gets taken off our plates – so we all have to move up the scale to the next level of cognitive processing.

This has happened before. The Canadian W R Clement, in his ground-breaking book Quantum Jump: A Survival Guide To the New Renaissance  attributed the entire Enlightenment and subsequent scientific revolution to the cognitive shift that took hold in humanity with the discovery of perspective in art:

But that took place over centuries.

The next big shift, in terms of mental abstraction, occurred with telecommunications – when “cyberspace” became “the place you were when you were the phone”. I think it was Jon Parry Barlow who made that analogy around the same time US senators were trying to wrap their heads around the internet as “a series of tubes”.  You see the juxtaposition there quite clearly as that shift played out over decades. 

The same type of shift is happening now, except it’s occurring at the tachyotic pace: Acceleration is itself accelerating across multiple dimensions – AI is coding more AI, which is the development that led me to surmise that The Singularity Has Already Happened.

Forkbombing Reality

AI is now coding AI, and sooner or later we will no longer know where human-generated code stops and AI-generated code begins. Given the natural advantage that GPUs have over our clunky brains, we can safely surmise that, over time, the proportion of AI-generated code will asymptotically reach for everything, while the ratio of human-generated code slides into exponential decay.  This has probably already started.

In computer systems there’s a quick-and-dirty way to bring the host to its knees and that’s to run a “fork bomb” that does nothing other than split off two copies of itself… each of which does the same, ad infinitum…

What we’ve done with AI is we’ve created a kind of hyper-intelligent fork-bomb of self-iterating software.

And there’s really no telling where all this is going or how it’s going to stop.

“@grok, how does anybody even position themselves for this?”

I might literally type that into my app after this post is done to see what it says.

Munsell’s advice to CEO’s:

“You need to:

  • Quickly upskill your entire team in AI integration

  • Unify AI adoption across all departments

  • Accelerate past competitors in operations and innovation

  • Avoid pitfalls like job displacement by aligning AI with human creativity

  • Build a workforce that’s empowered, not threatened, by AI

This isn’t a suggestion — it’s an urgent necessity. Every day you delay building an AI-first culture, your competition pulls further ahead. AI won’t wait for you to catch up. If you want to thrive in the future economy — and avoid the nightmare scenario — you must make AI central to your business now.”

My advice to everybody else is to take radical, personal action to come to grips with these changes. Get up to speed on these tools, use them to improve your search, work and filtering regimens, and think about ways to improve your personal productivity and expanding your own optionality by leveraging AI.

The world we’re headed into, is one where you should worry less about being replaced by AI and think about career risk you’re taking on from being unable or unwilling to use AI.

Doing that moves your mindset away from AI being some external force that you’re subjected to and shifts it toward being that cognitive exoskeleton you can harness for yourself regardless of what happens to your external circumstances.

We’re all going to have to “Learn To Vibe”.

Coda

As advertised, after this post was published I uploaded it to @Grok and typed that literal prompt.

The answer it gave me was too lengthy to quote here, but I have shared it here.

The bullet points where:

  1. Get Hands-On with AI Tools Immediately

  2. Upskill Strategically: Focus on Human-AI Synergy

  3. Shift Your Mindset to “AI-First” Living

  4. Prepare for Broader Impacts: Diversify and Adapt

If you aren’t already on the AxisOfEasy mailing list subscribe here for the latest and greatest in “Data-Breachin’ Over-reachin'” tech news.

Tyler Durden Sun, 07/20/2025 - 15:10

Illegal Migrant Accused Of Decapitating Illinois Woman Captured By ICE

Illegal Migrant Accused Of Decapitating Illinois Woman Captured By ICE

The problem of leftist activist judges is growing more worrisome by the day, and one has to wonder how may crimes these officials have facilitated in their efforts set criminal illegals free and "stick it to Republicans".  

Immigration authorities in Chicago have arrested a Mexican illegal immigrant this week accused of decapitating a missing Illinois woman. 

Jose Luis Mendoza-Gonzalez, 52, of Waukegan, Illinois, was arrested in April and charged with concealing a corpse, abusing a corpse and obstruction of justice, according to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).  Gonzalez reportedly claims that the victim, 37-year-old Megan Bros, had "died of an overdose" at his home. 

However, instead of reporting the death to authorities, Gonzalez allegedly broke her cell phone and is accused of abusing the corpse, decapitating her and storing her body in a storage container of bleach on his property (The kind of precaution a murderer might take to hide evidence, though the suspect has not yet been charged with murder). 

Megan Bros was reported missing by her family in February and she was found dead on the suspect's property in April, two months later.  Immediately after his first court appearance, Lake County Judge Randie (Rhonda) Bruno released Mendoza-Gonzalez from custody.  ICE was apparently not informed of the release despite the man's illegal status.

Bruno ran in the Democratic field in Illinois in 2019 for a judicial position. In her "Beyond the Bench" bio, Bruno notes great admiration for communist activist Nelson Mandela and she believes in:

"Treating everyone with kindness, respect, dignity, and sensitivity. To remember that everyone is going through some personal struggles which may not be outwardly apparent and to give people grace and space..."

Antioch Mayor Scott Gartner criticized laws that allowed Gonzalez to be released, stating:

"I was shocked to find out literally the next day that the person that they had arrested for this had been released from prison under the SAFE-T Act less than, detained less, I think, than 48 hours...There's other extenuating circumstances in this case. Not only the type of crime, how long the crime was concealed, the fact that the person that was arrested for this is not a U.S. citizen, and, you know, can maybe [flee] the country."

Luckily, the suspect was recently apprehended by ICE in a Chicago market and remains in custody.  The incident highlights an ongoing trend of hundreds of "catch and release" cases among leftist judges in sanctuary cities across the US. 

Numerous illegal migrants charged with heinous crimes have been set free before going to trial or they have enjoyed greatly reduced sentences and are allowed to return to the general population.  Immigration authorities are kept out of the loop, which allows migrants to freely commit offenses with impunity knowing the consequences will be limited.  

Tyler Durden Sun, 07/20/2025 - 14:35

Insurers Request Huge Obamacare Rate Hikes, Many Over 20%

Insurers Request Huge Obamacare Rate Hikes, Many Over 20%

Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

Medical care costs are surging already. A big leap is coming.

Health Care Shock Coming

The Wall Street Journal reports Obamacare Insurers Seek Double-Digit Premium Hikes Next Year

If you buy your own health insurance, you are probably going to pay more next year—a lot more.

Insurers are seeking hefty 2026 rate increases for Affordable Care Act marketplace plans, the coverage known as Obamacare. Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Illinois wants a 27% hike, while its sister Blue Cross plan in Texas is asking for 21%. The largest ACA plans in Washington state, Georgia and Rhode Island are all looking for premiums to surge more than 20%.

The companies say the big increases are needed because of higher healthcare costs and changing federal policy, including cuts to subsidies that help consumers pay for plans. The higher premiums would come after years of enrollment growth and mostly single-digit rate increases in the Obamacare market, where individuals and families buy insurance for themselves. About 24 million people have ACA plans.

At the request of The Wall Street Journal, the health-research nonprofit KFF analyzed the rate requests for the largest ACA plans by enrollment in 17 states where the insurers’ filings have already become public, as well as the District of Columbia. They showed that some of the biggest national ACA players, including Centene and Elevance Health, are seeking double-digit increases in several states. The Blue Cross & Blue Shield plans of Texas and Illinois are both owned by Health Care Service, a giant nonprofit.

Most Obamacare enrollees’ monthly insurance bills will go up substantially next year because of reductions in federal subsidies that help pay for their coverage. Enhanced payments passed by Congress in 2021 will lapse at the end of December. The drop-off in subsidies is both helping to drive higher premiums and making it harder for many consumers to pay them.

Some people “are going to be hit with this double whammy” of bigger monthly insurance bills and losing the subsidy that blunts their cost, said Cynthia Cox, a vice president at KFF.

In rate filings, some insurers said tariffs could add to the cost of drugs and medical supplies.

Health Insurers Are Becoming Chronically Uninvestable

Also consider Health Insurers Are Becoming Chronically Uninvestable

After a rough 2024, insurers are warning that 2025 won’t be better. The trouble started when industry giant UnitedHealth Group UNH ousted its chief executive and withdrew its outlook in May, blaming higher costs in Medicare Advantage. Then, earlier this month, Centene CNC pulled its guidance, citing a sicker-than-expected population on plans under the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare. And this week, Molina Healthcare cut its profit forecast, citing cost pressure across all its government plans, including Medicaid.

The trouble has sent shares of insurance companies plunging. This also comes as the recently passed tax-and-spending package is set to cut more than $1 trillion in healthcare spending over a decade.

Some might see an opportunity to buy the dip. But value can only be measured if you can trust company numbers—and increasingly, investors can’t. “Against a backdrop in which executives are being increasingly challenged by sharp changes in the industry, it becomes harder for investors to make educated decisions,” said Jared Holz, healthcare strategist at Mizuho Securities.

The core problem is that the assumptions insurers rely on to price plans—how many people will enroll, how sick they will be and how much care they will use—are no longer holding up. Medical usage has surged and become more volatile in the postpandemic landscape. Changes to how insurers and providers are allowed to bill and code care have eroded margins for payers. And the mix of healthy and sick enrollees in government-sponsored plans is shifting, as millions fall off insurance rolls.

The reasons each government program is struggling might differ, but the bigger picture is the same: Surging medical costs are outpacing what the government is willing to pay. 

Over the past four years, most large managed-care companies have lost investors money. UnitedHealth, Centene, CVS, Elevance and Humana HUM are all down over that stretch. Of the major competitors, only Cigna CI has delivered a positive return. The reason? It steered clear of the government-heavy business lines now under pressure. Cigna left Medicare Advantage and has focused instead on commercial plans sold to employers.

Will This Show Up in the CPI?

Only partially. The CPI only covers prices directly paid by consumers.

To the extent Medicare, Medicaid, and corporate plans pick up the costs of these premium hikes, the CPI will not pick up the jumps.

AI Overview

In the United States, around 65.4% of the population has private health insurance, which includes both employer-sponsored plans and direct-purchase plans. A significant portion of these individuals pay a portion of their premiums, with employers typically covering a large percentage. For instance, employers pay on average between 82-85% of individual coverage costs and 67-75% of family coverage costs, according to Wellhub.

Other sources of coverage include Medicaid (18.9%), Medicare (18.9%), TRICARE (2.6%), and VA and CHAMPVA (1.0%).

The CPI will only reflect the percentages directly paid by consumers.

Your costs may jump 24 percent but the CPI will only reflect a tiny bit of that.

CPI Weights

  • Medical Care Services: 6.736 percent of total CPI

  • Medical Care Commodities: 1.516 percent of total CPI

Tell anyone who pays their own insurance that medical care services is only 6.7 percent of their budget and they will think you are on mars.

But that’s what the BLS says after factoring in the percentages paid by Medicare, Medicaid, and employer coverage.

What About the PCE?

The Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) price index is the Fed’s preferred measure of inflation.

The PCE overweighs health care and underweights shelter relative to the CPI. And shelter was one of the CPI bright spots.

PCE does include prices paid on behalf of consumers. Since Medicare and Medicaid are underpriced, the PCE is understated as well. But the PCE will pick up employer costs.

In June, medical care services jumped 0.56 percent in the CPI. That will have a bigger impact in the next PCE report.

A year ago June, the PCE rose 0.12 percent month-over-month. Anything higher will cause the year-over-year PCE price index to rise.

Year-over-year the CPI rose by 0.3 percent in June. Expect something similar for the PCE price index. I am not as optimistic as the Cleveland Fed Inflation Nowcast.

My Conclusion

Healthcare costs will rise more than will be reflected in either the CPI or PCE, but especially the former.

Tyler Durden Sun, 07/20/2025 - 14:00

Army Special Operations Command Issues Terror Threat For Retired DoD Officials In Florida

Army Special Operations Command Issues Terror Threat For Retired DoD Officials In Florida

On Thursday, the United States Army Special Operations Command (USASOC) issued a "Duty to Warn" notification concerning a credible terrorist threat targeting retired senior Department of Defense officials with prior involvement in operations within the Syria/Iraq theater. The geographic focus of the threat is Florida.

USASOC's Duty to Warn notification, published on X by Florida Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna, explained:

While this threat does not directly target active duty USASOC personnel, we are issuing this notice to reinforce the importance of vigilance and situational awareness. We encourage all personnel to remain alert to their surroundings, both on and off post, and to report any suspicious activity to appropriate authorities.

We respectfully request that you share this information with any retired military personnel you know who are currently residing in Florida. Encourage them to remain vigilant and to report any suspicious activity to local law enforcement.

This notification serves as a reminder to adhere to established personal security measures, including maintaining a heightened awareness of your surroundings, securing your residences, and reporting any unusual or concerning behavior to appropriate authorities.

The warning mirrors prior intelligence reports, including the 2024 revelation that Iranian intelligence operatives were directed to assassinate President Donald Trump ahead of the U.S. presidential election.

Both warnings suggest a renewed intent by state or proxy actors to conduct targeted operations on U.S. soil against officials, particularly those with ties to Middle Eastern theaters. 

Related:

Decemeber 2024 warning: 

"Florida is dealing with a massive Islamic takeover. More needs to be done to address the issue in Florida and Texas," X journalist Breanna Morello warned. 

Tyler Durden Sun, 07/20/2025 - 13:25

Full Assault On The Media Machine: Trump Slashes USAID

Full Assault On The Media Machine: Trump Slashes USAID

Submitted by Thomas Kolbe

After fierce internal disputes and the resignation of Elon Musk as a government advisor, the United States has now entered a new phase of fiscal consolidation. On Friday, the House of Representatives cleared the way for the first major round of budget cuts. And it’s a heavy hitter.

If you believe the steady drumbeat of European media coverage, the U.S. is on the verge of sovereign default. At first glance, the numbers do indeed resemble a fiscal horror show: After the devastating Biden years, federal debt has ballooned to 120 percent of GDP. The current deficit stands at a glaring 6.5 percent. In the coming months, $9 billion in outstanding debt must be refinanced—Washington has little room to maneuver.

What’s routinely omitted in media coverage, however, is the fact that the U.S. remains the issuer of the world’s reserve currency, and can, if necessary, print its way out of the mess. Europe’s hope for a premature American collapse—as both a justification for its own policy failures and a welcome distraction—will likely end in bitter disappointment.

Targeting the Media Machine

At first glance, it might seem odd that President Trump prioritized sweeping tax cuts over budget discipline. But look more closely, and the move reveals itself as part of a deliberate offensive strategy. In Trump’s America, the motto is: green light for the private sector first, then clean house in the bureaucratic stables.

Anyone seriously doubting that Americans are capable of implementing fiscal cuts has not yet grasped the political force of the Trump administration.

Even Elon Musk—the founder of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), created to deepen budget reform efforts—lost patience with the slow grind of bureaucracy and quit in frustration. But in the bigger picture, that’s a mere footnote.

Because now, it gets serious. Building on DOGE’s groundwork, the first multi-billion-dollar rescission package is now being deployed: NPR reports that $9.4 billion in spending will be slashed with the stroke of a pen.

Trump’s first real punch in the fight over federal expenditures goes straight to the heart of the left’s media apparatus—USAID. Though nominally a humanitarian agency funding foreign aid projects, USAID has functioned in practice as a massive subsidy engine for the progressive media ecosystem operating worldwide. That era now appears to be over.

This propaganda leviathan stretched its tentacles across the globe, reinforcing and exporting the globalist green-left agenda that Europeans know as the Green Deal, the “green transformation,” or the politics of open borders.

The End of Ease

Like in Europe, paternalistic structures have gradually taken hold in America—but better camouflaged, given the poor reputation of state control in the land of liberty. Media outlets bankrolled by USAID opened the floodgates to government messaging, constructing a vast machine to manipulate public opinion. How else could the American public be kept in the dark for four years about Joe Biden’s mental decline?

Such a sustained deception requires close coordination between political and media actors, with the latter willingly co-opted into state control.

That Trump is starting his fiscal consolidation by targeting the beating heart of this media leviathan is no coincidence. Trump 2.0 is not a mere replay of 2016. Inside the White House, they’ve got the enemy and its structures clearly in their sights. The intensity of the trade battles with Brussels shows Trump has identified the core of green-socialist globalism exactly where many suspected: Brussels, London, and Davos.

And Trump appeals to those yearning for freedom, for open markets—including in the media—with steadfast resolve. With the stroke of his pen, The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB)—America’s equivalent of ARD and ZDF—has been stripped of its $1.1 billion in federal funding. The blow to PBS and NPR is severe. A historic day for freedom of speech—and a precedent Germany can only dream of.

In Germany, a self-absorbed, taxpayer-funded media aristocracy holds the reins—merged with political power into a unified cartel of opinion. In contrast, in the U.S., a single signature is enough to start dismantling media manipulation, climate-hysteria weather maps, and perverse woke pedagogy—as if the madness had never happened.

Future generations will ask how it was possible that taxpayers funded such a cynical, parasitic opposition with their own money—day after day—broadcast into their homes, where they were lectured with hypermoralistic fervor.

A Long-Overdue Clear-Cut

But those same generations will also hold in their hands a manual of libertarian reform—a playbook for liberation from neo-feudal control. In the offices of the statists and central planners—in Brussels, Paris, and Berlin—this development is being watched with alarm.

Once the message of Milei’s success in Argentina or Trump’s reforms in the U.S. spreads, it will trigger a wave of uncomfortable questions.

Driven by the spirit of liberty, future citizens will demand the return of what defines sovereign individuals: the right to property, to free expression, to personal autonomy. They will demand a lean state—a mere administrator of essentials—that neither educates nor intrudes upon individual lives.

That’s the dream. But on the road to the Isles of the Blessed, hard work lies ahead. Budget reform will require a lumberjack’s resolve. And the axe is already swinging in the White House.

The cuts don’t stop at domestic public media. Trump’s government is also dismantling its overseas media empire. That includes defunding over 1,000 journalism-related NGOs worldwide that previously received USAID support. In the U.S. alone, up to 19,500 USAID employees and contractors could lose their jobs. These are the days of reckoning.

New Game, Open Space

Germany’s media landscape is crying out for a Trump moment. Not cosmetic reforms like trimming the number of directors or merging Phoenix with Arte—but radical privatization: sell ARD and ZDF, dissolve Deutschlandradio, abolish the public broadcasting fee. What is good will survive. The bloated media nobility must be released into the wild, forced to prove itself on the open market by delivering quality. Anything else is rent-seeking—living off the backs of actual contributors.

This isn’t neoliberal cruelty—it’s the spirit of true democracy. A state that monopolizes public discourse is a parasitic oppressor, an anachronism in civilized society. Its narrative dominance kills open debate.

The New Media World

And yet, resistance is growing in Germany. According to a 2023 poll by INSA, 38 percent of Germans supported scrapping the current public broadcasting system altogether. Rejection was especially high among young adults, who now get their news from X, YouTube, podcasts, and independent formats.

By late 2024, a follow-up survey by Focus found that only one-third of Germans under 30 viewed public broadcasters as credible and trustworthy—while 37 percent had completely lost trust in them.

The writing is on the wall: The state media’s air supremacy is melting faster than the feverish “climate Armageddon” they so love to hype.

The emerging media landscape will redefine the public sphere. The desperate counterattacks by legacy broadcasters—and the aggressive regulatory efforts from Brussels targeting platforms like X and Facebook—are nothing more than rearguard actions.

Public opinion is formed in the free interplay of ideas—in a space that centralized institutions can neither control nor belong in.

By attacking the public media machine, NGOs, and the entire progressive media-industrial complex, Trump is showing he understands how the narrative game of our time really works. And as a master of new media himself, he won’t struggle to turn the dismantling of statist storytelling into political victory.

* * * 

About the author: Thomas Kolbe is a German graduate economist. For over 25 years, he has worked as a journalist and media producer for clients from various industries and business associations. As a publicist, he focuses on economic processes and observes geopolitical events from the perspective of the capital markets. His publications follow a philosophy that focuses on the individual and their right to self-determination.

Tyler Durden Sun, 07/20/2025 - 12:50

Watch: Delta 767 Engine Erupts Into Flames After LAX Takeoff

Watch: Delta 767 Engine Erupts Into Flames After LAX Takeoff

Last month's deadly Air India Boeing 787 Dreamliner crash remains very vivid in the public's memory, especially after dramatic footage went viral on X. Those fears were reignited Saturday when a Delta Air Lines Boeing 767's engine caught fire during takeoff from Los Angeles International Airport.

"The Boeing 767 engine caught fire shortly after takeoff around 2 p.m. Video from the ground captured the flames coming out from one of the engines. The flight landed safely after returning to the LAX runway," aviation watcher account Breaking Aviation News & Videos wrote on X. 

Data from the aviation tracking website Flightradar24 shows the aircraft was a 24-year-old Boeing 767-432 (ER). 

Flightradar24 shows DAL446 initiated an emergency return to LAX and landed safely minutes later. 

Delta told local media outlet ABC 7 that Flight DAL446 had 226 passengers and nine crew members on board and was en route to Atlanta. The airline said a mid-air incident occurred involving the left engine.

No details have been released on whether the incident was caused by a bird strike or a mechanical issue. 

Catch up on the latest Air India crash information:

. . .

Tyler Durden Sun, 07/20/2025 - 11:05

Europe's Online Censorship Laws Could Restrict Americans Too, Analysts Say

Europe's Online Censorship Laws Could Restrict Americans Too, Analysts Say

Authored by Kevin Stocklin via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

For many Americans, talk of a crackdown in Europe on “hate speech” and “misinformation” may seem a faraway issue, but legal experts say that Europe’s online censorship laws could affect Americans, too.

This photo shows reflexions on a smartphone screen of logos of online platforms google, facebook, linkedin, Amazon, Apple store and Tiktok in Brussels on Feb. 12, 2023. Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP via Getty Images

Starting July 1, social media companies and internet service providers operating within the EU that do not comply with laws that ban content deemed illegal there could be fined up to 6 percent of their global revenue, according to the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA).

The European Commission states that the DSA, originally passed in 2022, “protects consumers and their fundamental rights online by setting clear and proportionate rules.” On July 1, the DSA integrated its Code of Conduct into the act, requiring online platforms and search engines to comply with the censorship laws of all member states or face punitive fines.

Proponents of the DSA state that the law was passed in response to escalating cases of anti-Semitism and anti-Muslim statements in Europe.

Meanwhile, critics, like Virginie Joron, a French member of the European Parliament, have called it a “Trojan horse for surveillance and control.”

“What was sold as the Digital Services Act is increasingly functioning as a Digital Surveillance Act,” Joron told attendees at a May conference hosted by the Alliance Defending Freedom.

Joron accused the European Commission and some parliamentarians of having “seized upon the DSA as a political tool to control speech, particularly targeting platforms like X, Facebook, and Telegram.”

The concern among policy experts is that Europe’s speech laws could compel online platforms to institute restrictive policies worldwide, in order to comply.

“The DSA generally cannot directly compel technology companies to censor American speech, but it creates an incentive to do so,” David Inserra, a fellow for free expression and technology at the Cato Institute, told The Epoch Times.

“At some point, companies may find it easier just to change their policies to align with more restrictive laws, thus having American speech effectively regulated by Brussels—thus the name the ‘Brussels effect.’”

Vague Laws Give Regulators Broad Discretion

Legal analysts say that the Digital Services Act is open to political manipulation because of its imprecise language regarding what is illegal for people to say, as well as a complex and ever-changing array of online speech prohibitions.

“Through very vague and loose definitions of illegal content and ‘hate speech’ and ‘misinformation,’ this becomes a blueprint for restricting speech online,” Adina Portaru, senior counsel for ADF International, told The Epoch Times.

“If you take the narrow definition of ‘hate speech—incitement to hatred—then you realize that, once again, whoever has the power to define ‘hatred’ is the one who defines if you are breaching the law or not.”

According to a September 2024 analysis by Therese Enarsson, a European attorney, “the DSA provides a very broad legal definition for illegal content,” which it defines as speech that does not comply with the laws of the EU or any member state.  

“Similarly to illegal content, the DSA does not attempt to define what constitutes hate speech,” Enarsson states. “This is unfortunate, seeing that platforms must adapt their systems to combat such speech.”

This means that content posted by someone in Romania would have to be taken down if it conflicts with speech laws in France, creating a lowest-common-denominator threshold for suppressing content.

The DSA also states that it “specifically recognises the role of trusted flaggers to identify and flag hate speech online and to allow action against it"—a role that’s analogous to the collaboration between “fact-checkers” and social media companies in the United States to police online speech.

“We’re speaking about Europe, but of course we can also speak of situations whereby you have an American citizen posting something here in the U.S. and with the internet being an online environment globally, somebody can flag that in Europe, and according to the DSA, that speech will be removed from the entire platform,” Portaru said.

In addition, this process of flagging and fact-checking often includes a left-leaning bias, studies show. A 2023 survey of 150 “experts on misinformation” published in the Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review found that nearly 85 percent of the respondents were on the political left.

Germany Leads, Other EU Nations Follow

Within Europe, analysts say, Germany has led the charge against online “hate-speech” crimes.

In June, German police officers carried out early morning raids on 140 residents throughout the country who were investigated for such activities. The action was part of Germany’s 12th annual “day of action against hate-posts.”

The number of hate-speech prosecutions in Germany increased from 2,411 in 2021 to 10,732 in 2024, according to Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), which coordinated the “day of action.”

The Brownstone Institute, a conservative think-tank, reported in October 2024 that “Germany submitted by far the most reports on content entailing ‘negative effects on civic discourse or elections,’ yet another category of speech that is clearly not illegal per se but that is deemed ‘harmful’ enough under the DSA regime to require suppression.” The assessment was based on an analysis of periodic content suppression reports that are required to be submitted under the law. 

Inserra stated in a July 3 Cato report that such an environment has resulted in Germans feeling increasingly “unable to express their opinions, with multiple polls finding around 44 percent of Germans expressing such concerns, up from 16 percent in 1990.”

Other countries in Europe have followed Germany’s lead. Periodic police sweeps similar to Germany’s “day of action” have taken place in at least a dozen other European countries, according to Europol, the EU’s law enforcement agency.

And in a high-profile case in Finland, Päivi Räsänen, a member of parliament, was charged with hate crimes for posting Bible verses online regarding human sexuality. Räsänen was first charged in 2021; the case is now before Finland’s Supreme Court.

Speaking to European leaders in February, Vice President JD Vance stated: “The threat I worry the most about vis-à-vis Europe is not Russia, it’s not China, it’s not any other external actor. What I worry about is the threat from within, the retreat of Europe from some its most fundamental values, values shared with the United States of America.”

Censoring Americans

Some experts say Europe’s speech laws could end up regulating Americans and beyond.

“The European Union has wielded its Digital Services Act (DSA) to restrict the speech not just of Europeans but especially of Americans and other English-speakers,” John Rosenthal, an analyst of European politics, wrote in an op-ed earlier this year.

In August 2024, European Commissioner Thierry Breton threatened Elon Musk, owner of X, with reprisal over Musk’s intention to broadcast an interview with then-presidential candidate Donald Trump, which Breton stated posed “a risk of amplification of potentially harmful content,” in violation of the Digital Services Act.

This followed the initiation of “formal proceedings” by the EU against X in December 2023, in which European officials charged that the American company had failed to sufficiently combat “illegal content” and “information manipulation.” 

In January, Belgium’s French-speaking broadcaster RTBF chose to delay the live airing of President Trump’s inaugural speech by several minutes to give reviewers time to block any statements that they deemed “racist, xenophobic, or hateful.”

“Online speech is global, and if online platforms are restricting Americans’ speech to satisfy the demands of a foreign government, which is precisely what is happening under the DSA, then the First Amendment is a dead letter,” Rosenthal told The Epoch Times. “The U.S. government needs to take specific action against the DSA—to get it repealed or to ensure that U.S. companies do not comply with it; otherwise, free speech is dead.”

Inserra concurs.

“At the very least, American policymakers should condemn such censorship for what it is,” he said. “They should support American companies who find themselves facing increasing regulatory and censorial pressures.”

Rosenthal argues that controlling political speech was among the core motivations for passing the Digital Services Act.

“The initial impulse came from two shocks in 2016: first, the Brexit vote in the UK and then, four months later, the election of Donald Trump in the USA,” Rosenthal said. “The EU elites could not accept that either result was the product of rational choices on the part of voters; rather, in their view, they had to be the product of voters being ‘misinformed.’”

“It was at this point that they began to frame online ‘misinformation’ as a problem that online platforms would have to address,” he said.

Upon taking office in January, President Donald Trump issued an executive order prohibiting the U.S. government from restricting online speech, stating that the Biden administration had “trampled free speech rights” by pressuring tech companies to suppress online speech that the federal government did not approve.

“Under the guise of combatting ‘misinformation,’ ‘disinformation,’ and ‘malinformation,’ the Federal Government infringed on the constitutionally protected speech rights of American citizens across the United States in a manner that advanced the Government’s preferred narrative about significant matters of public debate,” Trump stated.

In May, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the United States would impose visa bans on foreign nationals whom it deemed to be censoring Americans.

‘Hateful’ versus ‘Harmful’ Speech

The Code of Conduct in the Digital Services Act bans both “hateful” and “harmful” speech.

For the latter category, which includes speech that government officials deem to be “misinformation” or “disinformation,” the DSA allows online service providers to restrict the visibility of posts versus taking them down or suspending users. 

“This is what Elon Musk is referring to when he says ‘freedom of speech is not freedom of reach’—i.e. you’re allowed to say it but the algorithm will prevent the broader public from hearing what you say,” Rosenthal said.

Musk posted in November 2022 on Twitter, which became X in 2023, that the “new Twitter policy is freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach.”

“Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted & demonetized, so no ads or other revenue to Twitter.” 

In most cases where EU authorities have flagged posts on X as objectionable, X has responded by restricting visibility, rather than taking the posts down, Rosenthal said, based on his analysis of the “transparency reports” that EU officials publish periodically. 

The prohibition of “harmful” speech has curtailed the information the public could see online regarding issues like the COVID-19 pandemic. According to performance reports required to be provided to EU regulators, X suspended 11,230 accounts under the company’s COVID-19 Misleading Information Policy between 2020 and 2022, the Brownstone Institute reported. This policy was discontinued in November 2022, shortly after Musk purchased the company.

One issue with this approach is that whereas users are generally aware that their content has been removed, they may not necessarily be aware that tech companies’ algorithms are simply blocking others from seeing it. 

In line with Europe, Canada, another close ally of the United States, has also recently taken steps to curtail perceived hate speech.

Tyler Durden Sun, 07/20/2025 - 10:30

Trump Pledges To Prevent US Central Bank Digital Currency

Trump Pledges To Prevent US Central Bank Digital Currency

Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A central bank digital currency (CBDC) will not be allowed in the United States, President Donald Trump said at a White House event on July 18, promising to take legislative action to prevent such a situation.

President Donald Trump, surrounded by lawmakers, signs the “GENIUS Act” into law during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House on July 18, 2025. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

“I also remain fully committed to my pledge, never to allow the creation of a central bank digital currency in America,” Trump said. “My first week in office, I signed an executive order to ban the creation of a CBDC in the United States. And very soon, I look forward to signing legislation that will codify and make it a permanent law.”

Trump’s comments came amid the signing of the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act into law.

During a campaign event in January last year, Trump had said that once he became president, “I will never allow the creation of a central bank digital currency. Such a currency would give the federal government absolute control of your money,” which would be “a dangerous threat to freedom.”

On Jan. 23 this year, the first week after becoming president, Trump signed the executive order banning CBDCs.

“Agencies are hereby prohibited from undertaking any action to establish, issue, or promote CBDCs within the jurisdiction of the United States or abroad,” the order said.

Globally, various nations are at different stages when it comes to their approach towards CBDCs and introducing such currencies into their economy.

According to a July update from the Central Bank Digital Currency Tracker from the Atlantic Council, of the 137 countries or currency unions tracked by the group, three have already launched a CBDC—Nigeria, Jamaica, and the Bahamas.

Moreover, 49 nations or currency unions are piloting CBDCs, 36 are researching such a currency, and 20 are engaged in the development of such a currency.

In addition, 21 are in an inactive status, while two have canceled launching a central bank digital currency, according to the analysis.

GENIUS Act

Stablecoins are a type of crypto asset that tracks a reference asset, such as currency or commodities, on a 1:1 basis. For instance, if a stablecoin references the U.S. dollar, the issuer of stablecoins will offer one stablecoin for every dollar.

The GENIUS Act establishes a regulatory framework for stablecoins.

The Act requires stablecoins to have “100 percent reserve backing with liquid assets like U.S. dollars or short-term Treasuries,” according to a July 18 White House Fact Sheet. It also requires issuers of stablecoins to “make monthly, public disclosures of the composition of reserves.”

“Stablecoin issuers must comply with strict marketing rules to protect consumers from deceptive practices. Crucially, they are forbidden from making misleading claims that their stablecoins are backed by the U.S. government, federally insured, or legal tender.”

In case a stablecoin issuer becomes insolvent, the GENIUS Act will prioritize the claims of stablecoin holders over all other creditors, ensuring very strong consumer protection, the Fact Sheet said.

Since stablecoin issuers have to back their assets with U.S. Treasuries and dollars, the GENIUS Act is expected to generate higher demand for U.S. debt and “cement the dollar’s status as the global reserve currency,” according to the White House.

During the White House event, Trump said the Act unleashes the “immense power” of U.S. dollar-backed stablecoins.

“This could be perhaps the greatest revolution in financial technology since the birth of the internet,” the president said.

In addition to boosting demand for U.S. Treasuries, stablecoins can also bring down interest rates, according to Trump. “This revolution has the potential to supercharge American economic growth and empower billions of people to save and transfer U.S. dollars.”

Crypto czar David Sacks called the passage of the GENIUS Act a “historical legislative achievement,” with stablecoins estimated to create trillions of dollars in demand for U.S. Treasury securities.

Trump’s promotion of stablecoins while opposing CBDCs, despite both being crypto assets, comes from concerns over threats to freedom.

Tyler Durden Sun, 07/20/2025 - 09:20

Green Agenda Fallout: Democrat-Led Northeast Now Has Highest Electricity Prices In Nation 

Green Agenda Fallout: Democrat-Led Northeast Now Has Highest Electricity Prices In Nation 

Reeling from their 2024 election loss, Democrats are scrambling to reconnect with the working class—yet their brilliant strategy of embracing socialist and communist candidates, doubling down on un-American woke ideology, shielding criminal illegal aliens, and supporting dark-money NGOs that fuel insurrectionist behavior like the Los Angeles riots—isn't a comeback plan but just political suicide. 

The party of leftist social justice warriors is cracking under the weight of its own failures. Woke culture is imploding, "green" fantasies are backfiring, and nowhere is this more evident than in the Democrat stronghold states of the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast, where the retirement of stable, affordable fossil fuel power in favor of unreliable solar and wind is driving up energy costs to the highest in the nation this summer and breaking the pocketbooks of working-class families they claim to champion. 

Energy policies should balance three key objectives: affordability, reliability, and environmental sustainability — often referred to as the "energy trilemma." Yet Democrats rammed through climate policies that torched two objectives, affordability and reliability for the environment.

According to the latest EIA Short-Term Energy Outlook for July, the average summer wholesale power prices across the PJM, NYISO, and ISO-NE grids are the highest in the nation. These prices now far exceed those in Texas' ERCOT, the U.S. average, and even the traditionally high-cost West Coast markets. The blame is squarely focused on the Democrats' initiative to decarbonize power grids. 

Whatever happened to the Biden-Harris regime's Inflation Reduction Act (green new deal scam)?? 

The PJM grid, the operator of the largest U.S. power grid serving 65 million people across 13 states and D.C., has been transformed into an unstable mess:

In Maryland:

We've warned over the last year about the power crisis unfolding across the Mid-Atlantic:

Last month, Pennsylvania boasted about saving Maryland's power grid from near collapse:

The result of failed green policies and surging power demand is a crisis that's hitting working-poor households the hardest. Democrats are now scrambling—especially in Maryland—to regain narrative control of mounting dissent among voters (read here) over skyrocketing electricity bills. The green agenda is backfiring, and the optics are brutal for crazed progressives. One alarming estimate suggests that nearly 20% of households in central Maryland are behind on their utility payments. 

Voters should demand accountability for failed green energy policies that undermine grid reliability. It's as if the whole climate agenda appears to be sabotaging the nation's energy stability through unrealistic targets and premature fossil fuel phaseouts. Meanwhile, in the global superpower race, China is rapidly expanding coal-fired power generation to ensure base-load reliability. There needs to be accountability.

Tyler Durden Sun, 07/20/2025 - 08:45

Banning Alternative Für Deutschland: A Nightmare Scenario

Banning Alternative Für Deutschland: A Nightmare Scenario

Authored by 'eugyppius' via 'A Plague Chronicle',

What will happen if Germany's largest opposition party is prohibited and why it is in everybody's interest for the centre-right CDU to bring down the firewall and normalise the populist right...

As all of my readers know, the Social Democrats (SPD) are fighting hard to force two hard-left justices onto the Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe. Although the vote failed last week because Friedrich Merz messed it up, the SPD remain determined to give Frauke Brosius-Gersdorf and Ann-Katrin Kaufhold the red robes. They might still succeed.

This matters because Brosius-Gersdorf and Kaufhold have both argued in favour of ban proceedings against Alternative für Deutschland. What is more, both candidates would be appointed to the second senate of the Constitutional Court, which is the division responsible for banning political parties. And as if that were not enough, the SPD nominated both candidates in the wake of their party congress, where SPD chairman Lars Klingbeil said that banning the AfD was his party’s “historical duty.” Many have therefore concluded that the SPD are trying to stack the court in advance of an application to prohibit Germany's second-strongest political party, banish all of its elected politicians and seize all of its assets.

I’m far from a sensationalist, and I’ve repeatedly discounted the likelihood of an AfD ban – not least because the German establishment and the left in particular have good reasons to keep the AfD around. Lately, however, I’ve begun to appreciate that there are deeper, systemic forces working against the AfD in this case. These forces are beyond anybody’s control and if nobody does anything, they may well end in political catastrophe that is much bigger than any single party.

Since the end of the Merkel era, the German left has become thematically scattered, and so they have retreated to the only coordinating issue the German left has ever had, which is hating the right. As climatism started to fade, the social welfare state exceeded its limits and mass migration went sour, AfD bashing became the sole unifying principle for much of the SPD, Die Linke and the Greens. Hating the right is particularly important because it keeps leftist politicians and their activist class on the same page. Without a crusade against the right, a great chasm opens between the antifa thugs who want to smash the state and destroy capitalism on the one hand and the schoolmarm leftoid establishment functionaries in the Bundestag who want to mandate gender-neutral language for the civil service on the other hand. What is more, the firewall against the AfD splits the right and keeps the shrinking left in government. It is a win-win for leftoids everywhere.

Recent events, however, show why things cannot continue as they are now indefinitely. Over time, our Constitutional Court will begin to fill with leftist justices supported by the left parties, who like the rest of the left will also want to ban the AfD. Brosius-Gersdorf and Kaufhold are omens here. Right now the system is held in perfect balance; the left talks a big game about wanting to stamp out the AfD, but they can always justify their hesitation by saying the outcome of ban proceedings is too uncertain. When the necessary judicial majority for an AfD ban is finally secured in Karlsruhe, everything changes. At that point, there will be no excuse for not proceeding with a ban. The activists and the NGOs will take to the streets if their political masters in Berlin don’t begin the process. The CDU will be brought around by media smear campaigns and antifa intimidation.

Keep in mind that this is not about the AfD, but about imperatives within the left itself.

No amount of moderation, polite messaging or triangulation on the part of the AfD can get the left to stop or pursue other goals. Unless some exogenous force introduces a new unifying obsession for the left parties and their activists, they will never stop gnawing on this particular chew toy.

Practically, this probably means that the AfD has an expiration date. If they can’t get into government at the federal level and if nothing else changes, they will find themselves facing ban proceedings before a court stacked with leftists who hate them in the next 10 or 15 years.

The federal elections in 2029 seem like the last opportunity to normalise the AfD before this final escalation.

People in the CDU need to realise how serious this is, because their fate hangs in the balance as much as the fate of the populist opposition to the right of them. It is absolutely necessary that they break the firewall and enter some kind of arrangement with the AfD before it is too late. It doesn’t matter how much the press freaks out. It doesn’t matter how many violent antifa thugs take to the streets. It doesn’t matter how many party headquarters the leftists invade and vandalise.

The firewall will fail in one direction or the other, and if it fails with an AfD ban, we are all in very deep shit.

Once the AfD is gone – once all their assets are confiscated, all their representatives are driven out of the federal and state parliaments and the authorities have hunted down all plausible successor organisations – the left would turn on the CDU and the CSU. They have to, because as I said above the left in its present form is an anti-right machine.1 Everything that is happening to the AfD right now would begin to happen to the centre-right Union parties. Left parties would suddenly have a majority almost everywhere; all the tools of defensive democracy would be at their exclusive disposal. Leftist forces in the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution would begin infiltrating CDU party ranks, what remains of the right flank of the CDU would be hunted down and criminalised, CDU civil service members would be subject to official harassment and intimidation and a great part of the CDU party programme would be declared beyond the pale. There is very little the CDU could do to stop any of this.

The DDR was not a single-party state; rather, the governing Socialist Unity Party (SED) tolerated the existence of several “bloc parties” alongside itself. Only the SED was really in charge, but the bloc parties allowed the SED to claim a broader basis of social support and to integrate different groups who could not identify directly with the reigning communists. The forces unleashed by an AfD ban would very likely reduce the CDU to a bloc party of the German left, while also encouraging the closer integration of the left parties themselves. A clear leader might emerge, and if history is to repeat a second time as farce, that might even be Die Linke – none other than the rebranded SED. Whatever happens, the left would have an iron monopoly on all major political issues. A lot of these would be decided internally, at party congresses and in back rooms, without the public ever having to hear much about it.

This is an extreme nightmare scenario, but I think it’s more likely than not what happens in the event of an AfD ban. The problem is that the Federal Republic is in many ways a provisional country, which was set up to counteract the distant political threats of yesteryear, like lingering National Socialist elements and eastern Communism. Built into the constitutional fabric of the Federal Republic are a series of tools that permit parliamentary majorities to appropriate the entire political system for themselves, and when they use these tools there’s not much anybody can do about it. If the CDU want to have any kind of future, they need to normalise relations with the AfD and come to some kind of compromise that gets the left out of the federal government. Otherwise we may all face a totally legal coup followed by a leftist political revolution that will land us in a kritocratic equivalent of the DDR.

 

 

Tyler Durden Sun, 07/20/2025 - 08:10

America's Armchair Revolutionaries: How The Left Is Rediscovering Marxism As The Ultimate Virtue Signal

America's Armchair Revolutionaries: How The Left Is Rediscovering Marxism As The Ultimate Virtue Signal

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

During the Cold War, Soviet communists reportedly referred to American liberals as “useful idiots.”

Although the origin of the quote has been challenged (and attributed to both Lenin and Stalin), it captured many of the adherents of communism after World War II. From higher education to Hollywood, dilettantes on the left embraced Marxism with little real understanding of the philosophy or its implications.

We are now seeing the rise of a new generation of armchair revolutionaries who are calling for everything from the overthrow of the U.S. government to the seizure of factories and homes.

Democratic New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani personifies this new movement of young people lacking any memory of the failure of socialist and communist systems in the 20th Century.

Mamdani is perfect for this rising movement of Latte Leninists and trust-fund baby Trotskyites. The privileged son of a radical Columbia professor and a Hollywood producer, Mamdani went to the elite Bowdoin College, which charges over $70,000 annually in tuition. He is part of the “radical chic” of American higher education, where extreme views are fully mainstream.

Mamdani shows the appeal of mouthing Marxist manifestos as manifest truths. It is Marxism-lite — promises of everything from rent control to making “Halal eight bucks again.”

In one speech before the Young Democratic Socialists of America conference, Mamdani even stated matter-of-factly how one of the goals is to “seize the means of production” in America.

“Right now, if we’re talking about the cancellation of student debt, if we’re talking about Medicare for all, you know, these are issues which have the groundswell of popular support across this country,” he said.

“But then there are also other issues that we firmly believe in, whether it’s [boycott-divestment-sanctions against Israel] or whether it is the end goal of seizing the means of production, where we do not have the same level of support at this very moment.”

Mamdani offers few details of what it would mean to seize all industry in this country or how such a system would work in the United States after failing in literally every nation where it has been attempted.

He has also called for the seizure of unoccupied luxury condos in New York to turn over to the homeless.

With pledges of state-run grocery stores and other proposals, many are thrilled by the prospect of Marxism coming to America.

Polls show increasing support among young people for socialism and even communism. That is reflected in the New York primary, where Mamdani received significant support from wealthy and young college-educated voters.

Like Mamdani, these young voters have no inkling of what life was like under socialist and communist governments. They were not alive when radical shifts to socialism in Great Britain and France destroyed their economies and had to be reversed. They did not see the collapse of the Soviet Union or the move toward capitalism by China to avoid economic meltdowns.

Yet, as Mamdani stated, the radical left has to wait to seize such powers until it has “the same level of support at this very moment.” Unfortunately, socialist programs can produce the very dire conditions that lead to even greater consolidation of state controls and power.

Notably, most of Mamdani’s proposals would violate the Constitution or bankrupt the city. For example, efforts to seize multimillion-dollar luxury condos would constitute unconstitutional takings unless he was prepared to buy the units at their market value — a virtually impossible proposition.

Such considerations are rarely raised, let alone resolved, in radical conferences.

Earlier this month, University of Minnesota liberal arts professor Melanie Yazzie joined others for a “teach-in” in which she delighted the audience with calls for the overthrow of the country by “people who come from nations who are under occupation by the United States government.”

She added, “it’s our responsibility as people who are within the United States to go as hard as possible to decolonize this place because that will reverberate all across the world. Because the U.S. is the greatest predator empire that has ever existed.”

That includes forcing “[the] U.S. out of everywhere,” including “Turtle Island” (the Native American name used to describe North America). Yazzie insisted that “the goal is to dismantle the settler project that is the United States for the freedom and the future of all life on this planet. It very much depends on that.”

Yazzie is an example of how most faculties in this country now run from the left to the far left. Applicants who espouse center-right viewpoints are often rejected as lacking “intellectual rigor” or depth. However, you cannot be too far left to secure a position in many departments that do not have a single Republican or conservative.

Take University of Chicago Assistant Professor Eman Abdelhadi, who used her recent appearance at the Socialism 2025 conference to denounce the University of Chicago as an “evil” and “colonialist” institution. Nevertheless, she insisted that she wanted to remain at the evil institution — not for its intellectual community, but to “organize” and “leverage” to build a political coalition.

Keep in mind that the faculty not only decided that Abdelhadi was worthy of a faculty position in the university’s Department of Comparative Human Development, but then also made her the Director of Graduate Studies.

For some, the calls of professors like Yazzie to “dismantle” the U.S. constitute the ultimate virtue signal. Like demands to seize factories and homes, the willingness to burn down the system is a cheap and easy way to establish your bona fides as one of the enlightened — something to brag about with your other 20-something fellow travelers as you order your $7 latte on the way to your Hyrox workout.

Lenin once mocked many in the West as idiots who would “transform themselves into men who are deaf, dumb and blind [and] toil to prepare their own suicide.”  What he never imagined was how some would still be transforming themselves decades after the revolution failed.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University and the best-selling author of “The Indispensable Right.”

Tyler Durden Sat, 07/19/2025 - 23:20

US Revokes Visas For Brazilian Judge, His Allies Over Bolsonaro Prosecution

US Revokes Visas For Brazilian Judge, His Allies Over Bolsonaro Prosecution

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced late Friday that he has revoked the visas of Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, his “allies on the court,” and their close relatives, citing an ongoing “political witch hunt” targeting former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and “censorship of protected expression in the United States.”

The decision came hours after Brazil’s Supreme Court ordered police to search Bolsonaro’s home and attach an electronic monitor to the former leader’s ankle. Bolsonaro, who has already had his passport confiscated, is now also subject to a nightly and weekend curfew.

Under the same order signed by de Moraes, Bolsonaro is barred from using social media, communicating with foreign diplomats, or getting close to foreign embassies. Earlier this year, he was denied a request to temporarily get his passport back so he could attend President Donald Trump’s second inauguration ceremony.

Separately, de Moraes is leading an aggressive investigation into so-called “digital militias” accused of spreading disinformation and hate speech during the Bolsonaro administration.

Last year, he temporarily banned X across the country after the Elon Musk-owned social media platform refused to remove certain accounts—many linked to Bolsonaro supporters—that de Moraes said had violated Brazilian law.

As Bill Pan reports for The Epoch Times, Rubio condemned the court’s actions as politically motivated repression.

“President Trump made clear that his administration will hold accountable foreign nationals who are responsible for censorship of protected expression in the United States,” Rubio said in a statement.

“Brazilian Supreme Federal Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes’s political witch hunt against Jair Bolsonaro created a persecution and censorship complex so sweeping that it not only violates basic rights of Brazilians, but also extends beyond Brazil’s shores to target Americans,” he continued.

“I have therefore ordered visa revocations for Moraes and his allies on the court, as well as their immediate family members, effective immediately.”

De Moraes is presiding over Bolsonaro’s trial, in which the former president faces charges of an attempted coup related to the Jan. 8, 2023, protests at Brazil’s federal government buildings.

Authorities allege the protests were part of a broader conspiracy to overturn the 2022 election results that brought Bolsonaro’s left-wing rival Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to power.

Bolsonaro has consistently denied wrongdoing or any involvement in the alleged coup plot. He has not been convicted, but is nonetheless barred from running for public office until 2030.

His treatment has become a flashpoint in the escalating standoff between the Trump and Lula administrations. Last week, the U.S. president threatened to impose a 50 percent tariff on Brazilian goods unless Bolsonaro’s prosecution was dropped.

Trump also cited Brazil’s non-tariff trade barriers in his decision to impose the new tariff rate. Meanwhile, Brazil is one of the roughly two dozen countries that run a trade deficit with the United States, while almost all other countries targeted by Trump’s tariff measures post large surpluses.

“There will be no Tariff if Brazil, or companies within your Country, decide to build or manufacture product within the United States and, in fact, we will do everything possible to get approvals quickly, professionally, and routinely—in other words, in a matter of weeks,” Trump wrote.

Following Friday’s police raid, Bolsonaro’s son, Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, took to social media to urge Trump to “suspend the 50 percent tariff on Brazilian imports and impose individual sanctions instead.”

The post was later deleted.

Lula has dismissed Trump’s accusations of unfair trade practices as false and denounced Rubio’s visa revocations as improper interference in Brazil’s judiciary.

“The interference of one country in another’s justice system is unacceptable and violates the basic principles of respect and sovereignty among nations,” Lula wrote on X.

“I am certain that no form of intimidation or threat, from anyone, will compromise the most important mission of national powers and institutions, which is to act permanently in defense and preservation of the Democratic Rule of Law.”

Tyler Durden Sat, 07/19/2025 - 22:45

What Is Your Marginal Tax Rate?

What Is Your Marginal Tax Rate?

Authored by Anne Johnson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The highest tax rate you'll pay on your income is called the marginal tax rate. The United States has a progressive tax system, which means that different tiers of income are taxed at varying rates.

Rrraum/Shutterstock

You should know how the marginal rate works when planning your tax filings. This can be especially important if you receive bonuses from work or have other streams of income.

Marginal Tax Rate Depends on Last Dollar of Income

When people discuss what tax bracket they are in, they usually give a flat number. They may say they’re in the 22 percent tax bracket. But that isn’t entirely true. You may fall into the 22 percent tax bracket, but your total income isn’t taxed at 22 percent.

When people state this, they are usually talking about their marginal tax rate. Your marginal tax rate is the percentage of tax you pay on your last dollar of income. This means it’s the last tax bracket into which your income falls.

Keep in mind that with a progressive tax, you’re taxed at different rates according to how your income is tiered.

Using a single filer as an example, the IRS tax brackets for tax year 2025 are:

  • 10 percent: for income $11,925 or less
  • 12 percent: for income over $11,925
  • 22 percent: for income over $48,475
  • 24 percent: for income over $103,350
  • 32 percent: for income over $197,300
  • 35 percent: for income over $250,525
  • 37 percent: for income over $626,350

An example of the marginal tax would be using single filer Frank with a taxable income of $50,000 (deductions have already been applied in this example).

Frank would be taxed:

  • 10 percent on the first $11,925, which equals $1,192.50
  • 12 percent on the next $36,550, which equals $4,386
  • 22 percent on the remaining $1,525, which equals $335.50

Frank’s marginal tax rate is 22 percent because it’s the rate applied to his last dollar of income. That 22 percent doesn’t apply to all his income.

It’s important to know your marginal tax rate. It can help you make decisions concerning bonuses, investments, or other earnings. The marginal rate will inform you of the top tier of your tax rate.

What Is the Effective Tax Rate?

The effective tax rate is the average rate you’ll pay on all your income. It gives you a more accurate picture of your tax burden.

To find your effective rate, divide your total tax liability by your total taxable income and multiply by 100.

So, Frank, with $50,000 in income and a $5,914 tax liability, would have an effective tax rate of 11.83 percent. In other words, 11.83 percent of Frank’s income would go toward paying federal taxes.

Can Tax Credits Lower Your Marginal Tax Rate?

Tax credits like the Child Tax Credit will not lower your marginal tax rate. The Child Tax Credit under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act for 2025 is $2,200—with adjustments for inflation—according to the U.S. House Committee on Ways and Means.This tax credit isn’t used to lower your income; it reduces your tax liability. So, using Frank’s tax liability amount of $5,914, he could apply the tax credit and now owe $3,714.

How to Lower Your Marginal Tax Rate

There are several ways to lower your marginal tax rate. Start with maximizing your retirement contributions. You can lower your taxable income dollar-for-dollar with yearly contributions to a 401(k), a traditional IRA, or other retirement accounts.

For example, the maximum 401(k) limit in 2025, according to the IRS, is $23,500, and the traditional IRA limit is $7,000.

Health savings accounts (HSAs) can also help lower your taxable income. According to the IRS, an individual with self-only coverage under a high deductible health plan can contribute a maximum of $4,300 to an HSA.

If you expect a large bonus at the end of the year, you may want to consider deferring it to next year. This especially works if you anticipate an income reduction in the future. You may want to ask to defer a severance if you are laid off. In fact, any payments that you could defer may help reduce your marginal tax rate.

If you must take a required minimum distribution (RMD), which could affect your marginal tax rate, consider donating to charity. Eligible IRA owners can make a qualified charitable distribution (QCD) up to $108,000 per individual for tax year 2025, according to the IRS. Payments must be made directly from the IRA to the qualified charity in order to avoid the amount being applied to your income.

Marginal Tax Rate Determines Additional Amount Paid

The marginal tax rate helps you think about future earnings. For example, if you are considering taking a new job with a large pay raise, it may push you into a higher marginal tax rate. You should know what that will be so you can understand the tax implications.

Likewise, if you are anticipating selling something for a profit, knowing your marginal tax rate can help you determine when to sell.

The Epoch Times copyright © 2025. The views and opinions expressed are those of the authors. They are meant for general informational purposes only and should not be construed or interpreted as a recommendation or solicitation. The Epoch Times does not provide investment, tax, legal, financial planning, estate planning, or any other personal finance advice. The Epoch Times holds no liability for the accuracy or timeliness of the information provided.

Tyler Durden Sat, 07/19/2025 - 22:10

Trump Strikes Back: Libel Lawsuit Filed Over Bogus Epstein Smear

Trump Strikes Back: Libel Lawsuit Filed Over Bogus Epstein Smear

Authored by Matt Margolis via PJMedia.com,

This week, the legacy media’s obsession with dragging President Donald Trump into the orbit of Jeffrey Epstein stooped to a shameful new low.

The Wall Street Journal embarrassed itself with a hyped-up Trump-Epstein “bombshell” that amounted to nothing more than a birthday card that Trump supposedly sent to Epstein in 2003.

Curiously, the evidence in this bombshell is under wraps, but Trump denies writing and threatened to sue over the bogus report.

Attorneys have now filed that lawsuit.

This latest smear attempt is just another chapter in the media’s ongoing effort to tie Trump to Epstein, despite the lack of evidence and Trump’s documented decision to ban Epstein from Mar-a-Lago. Meanwhile, Epstein’s deep ties to Democrats, especially Bill Clinton, who flew on Epstein’s jet multiple times and visited his island, consistently get downplayed or ignored. The double standard is as blatant as it is dishonest.

One might think, after years of “Russian collusion” hoaxes, the “very fine people” lie, and endless misquotations — debunked every time — these outlets would be wary of another wild goose chase.

But no.

When it comes to Trump, the normal rules of evidence or integrity are suspended.

Opponents and their media mouthpieces were so eager to make hay over any Epstein association — even an obviously fake note — that they abandoned the last shred of credibility their institutions had left.

Now, Trump has filed a $10 billion libel lawsuit in federal court in Florida against the Wall Street Journal’s publisher, Dow Jones, the reporters who wrote the story, News Corp, and Rupert Murdoch himself. 

One of the co-authors of the WSJ report, Joe Palazzolo, previously wrote for a publication called Main Justice, which was founded by Mary Jacoby, who happens to be the wife of Glenn Simpson, the Fusion GPS founder behind the debunked Steele Dossier and the Russia hoax.

Both Simpson and Jacoby previously worked at the Wall Street Journal themselves, which tells you everything you need to know about the political rot festering in that newsroom.

Trump summed it up best on Truth Social:

“It has truly turned out to be a ‘Disgusting and Filthy Rag’ and, writing defamatory lies like this, shows their desperation to remain relevant.

If there were any truth at all on the Epstein Hoax, as it pertains to President Trump, this information would have been revealed by Comey, Brennan, Crooked Hillary, and other Radical Left Lunatics years ago.

It certainly would not have sat in a file waiting for ‘TRUMP’ to have won three Elections. This is yet another example of FAKE NEWS!”

The Journal’s irresponsible coverage comes just as public interest surges over the Epstein saga.

Recent government conclusions, confirming Epstein’s death as suicide and, conveniently, denying that any “client list” exists, only stoke further doubts about media motives.

The American people see right through these coordinated smear attempts. Trump has made clear he will not back down, nor give the mainstream media an inch when it comes to outright lies.

Tyler Durden Sat, 07/19/2025 - 19:50

Nearly 1,000 Killed In Clashes In Syria's South, With 80,000 Displaced

Nearly 1,000 Killed In Clashes In Syria's South, With 80,000 Displaced

The death toll from a past week of spiraling violence in Syria’s Sweida province, a stronghold of the Druze minority - which also has a presence of Christians - has climbed to 940 since last weekend, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, despite a recent declared ceasefire.

Among the dead are 326 Druze fighters and 262 Druze civilians, including 182 reportedly executed on the spot by forces from Syria's Hayat Tahrir al-Sham government fighters.

Via Reuters

The Observatory also reported the deaths of 312 government security forces and 21 Sunni Bedouins—three of whom were civilians allegedly executed by Druze fighters. Additionally, some 15 Syrian government troops were killed in Israeli airstrikes amid the intermittent intervention by Israeli warplanes.

Damascus announced a ceasefire early on Saturday, saying in a statement the truce is badly needed in order "to spare Syrian blood, preserve the unity of Syrian territory, the safety of its people."

In a televised address, the country's self-appointed president Ahmed al-Sharaa stated that he "received international calls to intervene in what is happening in Suwayda and restore security to the country."

He described that Israeli military intervention has "reignited tensions" in the city of Sweida, with fighting there at "a dangerous turning point." Interestingly he also at one point thanked the United States for its support.

Al Jazeera has observed that tens of thousands have been fleeing the fighting:

According to Syria’s Health Ministry, the death toll from fighting in the Druze-majority city is now at least 260. An estimated 80,000 people have fled the area, according to the International Organization for Migration.

“A lot of extrajudicial killings [are] being reported,” said Vall. “People are suffering, even those who have been killed or forced to flee, they don’t have electricity, they don’t have water, because most of those services have been badly affected by the fighting.”

Government forces further say they want to defeat Druze leaders who have allied themselves with a foreign power - Israel.

Israel has of late made no secret that it is backing the Druze cause, but critics see Netanyahu expansionist 'divide and rule' policies at work.

HTS has just taken off the US-designated terrorism list earlier this month, after Trump had posed with its leader Sharaa (Jolani, who had earlier been a member of ISIS) while visiting Riyadh, expressing hope that he'll make for a good post-Assad ruler. HTS fighters have lately been massacring Druze, Christians, and Alawites - waging war against non-Sunni minorities.

Tyler Durden Sat, 07/19/2025 - 19:15

Most Energy Predictions Are Wrong - Not This One

Most Energy Predictions Are Wrong - Not This One

Authored by Gary Abernathy via The Empowerment Alliance,

ABC News, June 18, 2025: “U.S. oil prices hovered near a five-month high on Wednesday as President Donald Trump weighed direct involvement in support of Israeli strikes on Iran, making it all but certain that gasoline prices would rise for Americans within days, industry analysts told ABC News.”

CNN, June 24, 2025: “Oil prices fell sharply Tuesday, returning to levels last seen before the Iran-Israel conflict, as investors cheered news of a ceasefire, albeit fragile, between the two countries.”

Predictions of skyrocketing oil prices if President Trump decided to bomb Iranian nuclear sites permeated the media. The reality over the course of just six days from before and after the actual bombing was much different.

Forecasts about how world events will shape energy prices and the reality once such events unfold are rarely aligned. Most Americans have grown weary of “experts” foreseeing disaster, predictions which intensify when Donald Trump is sitting in the Oval Office. From energy prices to the overall economy to foreign affairs, “expert” predictions and analysis are routinely much more reflective of political bias than actual industry expertise.

The far-left (formerly mainstream) media revels in rolling out alarmist headlines based on the ruminations of analysts, forecasters and, these days, “influencers.” Scroll the websites of any of the leading mainstream publications and you’ll find the content littered with gloom-and-doom prophecies about Trump administration actions and policies that almost never prove accurate.

What they do achieve is providing fodder for a 24-hour, seven-days-a-week cable news cycle, as roundtables of analysts weigh in on the latest predictions. It’s a round-robin tournament of endless negative chatter based on dissecting the negative chatter that kicked off the latest 24-hour cycle.

As the hot summer months progress, warnings of potential blackouts and an overall strain on the electric grid are once again in the news. Some blackouts have already occurred, and a predictable blame game is well underway, with adherents of the climate cult blaming global warming and rising temperatures instead of identifying the true culprit – compromised power grids.

In reality, the climate doomsayers’ prescription of more solar and wind simply exacerbates the disease. The main reason for grid strain and power failures is an overreliance on “alternatives” that are not up to the task of supplying the demands of an energy-devouring nation – demands that are exponentially increasing with the proliferation of data centers needed to power emerging AI technologies.

One sure way to guarantee power shortages is to follow radical edicts to phase out oil and gas in favor of wind and solar. We started down that road during the Obama and Biden administrations, and the final destination is demonstrably disastrous (see Spain, Portugal and France). Fortunately, the Trump administration has mapped a new course and is attempting a rescue mission, just in the nick of time.

The federal level is not the only place where common sense is making a return. Louisiana recently became the first state in the nation to codify affordable, reliable and clean energy security into law. As Gov. Jeff Landry (R) said when signing House Bill 692, the legislation “sets the stage for an energy renaissance—not only here, but in America. … This bill positions Louisiana as an economic powerhouse, where we can not only join the industrial South that we’ve been missing out on, but we can lead in that industrial South.”

While supporting hundreds of thousands of jobs and providing more transparency to ratepayers, the bill most importantly “ensures equal treatment for all energy sources, contributing to grid reliability and resiliency,” as the governor put it.

In other words, Louisiana has codified the inclusion of traditional energy sources as eligible – even preferred – choices when it comes to governmental decisions about energy projects and usage. No longer will Louisianans be pawns in the “green new deal” scam supported by “experts” whose main goals are more political than science-based.

The “alternatives” con is coming to an end. The government subsidies that supported the rip-off are being phased out. Energy freedom is returning for Americans who rely on affordable and trustworthy energy sources.

Hope is on the rise. Other states are considering legislation similar to the Louisiana model. Ideally, Congress will enact legislation that will make affordable, reliable and clean energy the law of the land and a cornerstone of national security.

There is one prediction that is solidly based in fact and reliably backed by previous experience: Energy prices will remain affordable, power failures will be rare, and freedom from being held hostage by foreign suppliers of energy will be assured if natural gas and other traditional energy sources are allowed to flourish. Let’s insist that our state and federal lawmakers make this prediction come true.

Gary Abernathy is a longtime newspaper editor, reporter and columnist. He was a contributing columnist for the Washington Post from 2017-2023 and a frequent guest analyst across numerous media platforms. He is a contributing columnist for The Empowerment Alliance, which advocates for realistic approaches to energy consumption and environmental conservation. Abernathy’s “TEA Takes” column will be published every Wednesday and delivered to your inbox!

Tyler Durden Sat, 07/19/2025 - 18:40

DOJ Proposes Restoration Of 2nd Amendment Rights For Some Convicted Felons

DOJ Proposes Restoration Of 2nd Amendment Rights For Some Convicted Felons

Authored by Michael Clements via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The Department of Justice has proposed a rule to restore the Second Amendment rights of people who have been convicted of certain crimes but who are not “likely to act in a manner dangerous to public safety.”

The Department of Justice building in Washington on July 18, 2025. Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

The Department submitted the proposed rule “regarding the exercise of the Attorney General’s authority under 18 U.S.C. 925(c) to grant relief to individuals who are otherwise precluded from possessing firearms,” to the Federal Register on Friday.

Federal law rescinds the firearms rights of convicted felons regardless of whether or not they were convicted of a violent crime. The law also empowers the attorney general to restore Second Amendment rights to individuals who are not “likely to act in a manner dangerous to public safety.”

No applications have been processed since 1992, when funding for that was blocked by House Democrats.

A July 18 press release from the Justice Department states that President Donald Trump directed the department to “address the ongoing infringements of the Second Amendment rights of our citizens—all of them.”

According to the press release, an official copy of the rule will be published on the Federal Register website the week of July 21.

“For too long, countless Americans with criminal histories have been permanently disenfranchised from exercising the right to keep and bear arms—a right every bit as constitutionally enshrined as the right to vote, the right to free speech, and the right to free exercise of religion—irrespective of whether they actually pose a threat,” said Attorney General Pamela Bondi.

A Second Amendment advocacy group praised the new rule.

“This proposed rule to grant relief to certain individuals convicted of non-violent crimes is long overdue,” Alan Gottlieb, executive vice president of the Second Amendment Foundation, wrote in an email to The Epoch Times. “The Second Amendment Foundation has been fighting for decades in courts to restore rights to people that are no threat to society.”

Erich Pratt, senior vice president of Gun Owners of America, echoed those sentiments. He said his organization will continue to support the expansion and preservation of gun rights in America.

Attorney General Pam Bondi speaks to reporters in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House on June 27, 2025. Madalina Kilroy/The Epoch Times

“GOA has long supported this effort, and we’re encouraged to see the Department of Justice continue to acknowledge that non-violent citizens should not be denied their constitutional rights,” Pratt wrote in an email to The Epoch Times.

Gun control organizations did not respond to a request for comment by publication time. Past moves to change the longstanding policy drew criticism on the groups’ webpages.

Last March, in a step toward overturning the policy, the DOJ took responsibility for processing the applications from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives and gave it to the attorney general.

This changed a policy that had been in place for more than 30 years.

In a March 19 statement on the Everytown for Gun Safety website, the group’s president blasted that change.

“The Trump Administration is throwing out decades of bipartisan precedent and laying the groundwork to put guns back in the hands of domestic abusers and violent criminals,” wrote John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety.

The rule proposed on Friday would provide citizens whose firearm rights have been rescinded a way to restore those rights.

The press release states that the attorney general would decide each application on a case-by-case basis. Violent felons, registered sex offenders, and illegal aliens will remain presumptively ineligible for relief, according to the Justice Department press release.

Part of Trump’s Plan

“General Bondi’s support of the rebooted 925(c) program is consistent with President Donald J. Trump’s promise to the American people to support the beautiful Second Amendment,” said U.S. Pardon Attorney Edward R. Martin Jr.

Once the proposed rule is published, the public comment period will begin. Communities that could be affected by a final rule, including law enforcement, victims’ advocates, elected officials, and individuals who would like to apply to have their gun rights restored, as well as the general public, can place comments here once the proposed rule is published.

Pratt said his organization will encourage its members to comment.

“We look forward to working with the grassroots and our members to submit comments to ensure the proposed rule benefits the Second Amendment community and the marginalized individuals who are working to reclaim their rights under the Constitution,” Pratt said.

The Justice Department recommends that individuals seeking the restoration of their firearm rights review and comment on the proposed process rather than submit applications at this time, according to the press release.

Interested parties may view the proposed rule here. An official copy is expected to be published next week, according to the Justice Department.

Tyler Durden Sat, 07/19/2025 - 17:30

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