Zero Hedge

Fed's Soft Landing Talk Meets Hard Data

Fed's Soft Landing Talk Meets Hard Data

Authored by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,

The Fed’s soft landing narrative is a key theme in financial media, particularly on Wall Street, which expects a resurgence in economic activity in 2026 to justify increasing forward earnings expectations.

As shown, Wall Street currently expects the bottom 493 stocks to contribute more to earnings in 2026 than they have in the past 3 years. This is notable in that, over the past three years, the average growth rate for the bottom 493 stocks was less than 3%. Yet over the next 2 years, that earnings growth is expected to average above 11%.

Furthermore, the outlook is even more exuberant for the most economically sensitive stocks. Small and mid-cap companies struggled to produce earnings growth during the previous three years of robust economic growth, driven by monetary and fiscal stimulus. However, next year, even if the Fed’s soft landing narrative is valid, they are expected to see a surge in earnings growth rates of nearly 60%.

Notably, all this is occurring at a time when the entire economy’s profit margins have peaked and may potentially be turning lower.

It should come as no surprise that there is a high correlation between economic growth and earnings, given that in a demand-driven economy, consumption is what generates revenues, and revenues ultimately develop earnings.

“A better way to visualize this data is to look at the correlation between the annual change in earnings growth and inflation-adjusted GDP. There are periods when earnings deviate from underlying economic activity. However, those periods are due to pre- or post-recession earnings fluctuations. Currently, economic and earnings growth are very close to the long-term correlation.”

The problem currently facing the Fed’s soft landing narrative is that it hopes the economy can slow without a recession, allowing inflation to return to its target. For now, investors have held the markets higher, hoping the Fed’s soft landing narrative comes to fruition, which would lead to a surge in economic activity. However, the latest employment, retail sales, and inflation trends suggest a potentially worse outcome, characterized by weakening demand and shaky consumer strength.

Those factors weaken the case for the Fed’s hopes of a soft landing and suggest an increase in market fragility.

Falling Inflation Tells a Demand Story

Let’s start with inflation. If economic growth were on the cusp of resurgence, expectations for inflation would be rising. However, as shown, those expectations never rose with “printed inflation,” because it was the “transitory effect” of massive monetary stimulus. The bond market’s view was that inflation would revert to its normalized levels as that monetary excess left the system, which has been the case. This is particularly notable, as inflation expectations have always been more accurate than the “inflation” bears we discussed yesterday.

In the Fed’s narrative of a soft landing, the trend in inflation expectations is crucial. Here is an essential point:

“The Federal Reserve WANTS inflation.”

Here is another critical point: So do you.

Without inflation, there can not be economic growth, increasing wages, and an improving standard of living. In other words, prices must always rise over time, which is why the Fed targets a 2% inflation rate, thereby supporting 2% economic growth. What we don’t want is “disinflation” or “deflation,” which would occur in conjunction with a recession, leading to job losses, falling wages, and reduced prosperity overall. As shown in the chart below, there is a high correlation between inflation, economic growth, and interest rates over time.

When inflation eases because demand weakens, the economy slows, producers lower prices to clear unsold goods, and employers become more restrictive in hiring and wage increases. Services that rely on discretionary spending lose pricing power, and banks become more stringent in their lending practices. These are not signs of a healthy expansion, but rather reflect a decline in spending power among households.

The Fed’s soft landing narrative is predicated on the hope that it can achieve its 2% inflation target without causing a more widespread slowdown. Historically, the Fed has failed in such attempts, as shown by the relationship between Fed rate-cutting cycles and economic and financial consequences.

As an investor, you need to distinguish between inflation caused by temporary supply/demand shocks, as we saw following the Pandemic, and inflation caused by organic economic activity. Supply/demand imbalances, such as higher input costs or a lack of supply caused by a geopolitical shock, can create a spike in inflation, which resolves itself when the shock is over. However, inflation caused by organic demand provides insight into the strength or weakness of the economy. Currently, we are focused on potential demand erosion as consumers cut back, employment weakens, and wages decline.

The retail sector provides early signals of demand weakness. Housing-related spending, auto sales, and discretionary purchases show stress, and many consumers face higher borrowing costs and lower savings. As shown, PCE, which accounts for nearly 70% of the GDP calculation, slowing inflation rates, and weak retail sales growth, all suggest that demand destruction is present in the economy. Such a development may further weigh on the Fed’s narrative of a soft landing.

As noted, the Fed’s soft landing narrative requires demand to slow moderately while avoiding recession. However, falling inflation driven by weakening demand and sluggish employment growth suggests a more profound weakness.

Retail Sales Growth Is Not What It Appears

Headline retail sales reports often show month-over-month increases, which reporters interpret as evidence of resilient consumer strength. However, a look at the data tells a different story. For example, since 2022, real retail sales growth has effectively not grown. In fact, previous periods of flat retail sales growth were pre-recessionary warnings.

Secondly, the annual rate of change in real retail sales is at levels that have typically preceded weaker economic environments and recessions.

Notably, retail sales figures are subject to seasonal adjustments, which correct for typical spending patterns. During the holiday and back-to-school seasons, spending increases and the “adjustments” attempt to remove these effects. However, if the adjustment process overestimates normal seasonal strength, the adjusted result will appear firmer than it actually is. Secondly, another distortion comes from changes in price levels. If prices fall because demand weakens, nominal sales may rise while real volumes fall. Consumers buy less but pay lower prices. Nominal retail sales can mislead when viewed without context.

This is what we are currently seeing in the economy. As consumers pull back, businesses face the prospect of weaker revenue. That leads to slower hiring, lower investment, and falling confidence.

This matters for the Fed’s view of a soft landing. If consumer demand remains weak, the economy may slow more than expected, which increases the risk of recession. A “soft landing” requires growth to slow without tipping over, but current economic data points suggest a risk to that growth story.

The Market Risk If The Fed Is Wrong

If the Fed’s soft landing narrative proves incorrect, the downside risk to investors increases significantly. The soft landing narrative has been factored into market prices, earnings expectations, and economic projections. Any deviation exposes valuations and portfolios to sharp repricing. With valuations already very elevated, the risk of a repricing event is not insignificant.

Wall Street’s forward expectations hinge on a growth rebound in 2026. Those projections assume that demand will return and margins will remain stable. However, there is no guarantee that either of those assumptions are accurate. If margins have already peaked, inflation declines as demand erodes, and employment falls, negative earnings revisions could be substantial. The year-over-year change in real retail sales, as shown in the chart, has hovered near recessionary warning levels. With consumers already strained by high debt service costs, weak wage growth, and declining savings, discretionary spending is under pressure, which directly affects earnings across cyclical sectors.

If demand weakens further, companies will face lower revenue and tighter margins. The margin compression will initially impact earnings, particularly for smaller firms with limited pricing power. A repricing of earnings expectations will follow, dragging valuations with it.

The Fed’s historical track record of avoiding recession during tightening and easing cycles is poor. Most rate-cutting cycles have been in response to financial or economic stress, not smooth slowdowns. If the Fed cuts rates next year, it likely won’t be in response to a soft landing. That shift in narrative would catch most investors leaning the wrong way.

Positioning for a soft landing assumes the Fed can control inflation without breaking demand. The data say otherwise. The risk, as always, is that the market wakes up to this reality too late. Therefore, investors should consider preparing for such a possibility in advance.

If the Fed’s soft landing narrative fails, investors will face a different environment than the one markets currently price. The assumptions behind strong equity valuations, tight credit spreads, and risk-on positioning will crack. If it does, that means you will need to act based on risk, not rhetoric. Here are some actions to consider.

1. Reduce Exposure to Overvalued Growth Assets: Tech and growth stocks led the rally on rate cut hopes and soft landing optimism. If earnings disappoint and rates stay higher, these valuations come under pressure.

  • Trim overweight positions in mega-cap tech.
  • Avoid speculative names with no earnings.
  • Focus on companies with strong cash flow and pricing power.

2. Increase Cash and Short-Term Treasuries: If growth slows and volatility returns, capital preservation matters. Cash gives you optionality. Short-term Treasuries offer yield without duration risk.

  • Rebalance toward 3-month to 1-year Treasury bills.
  • Hold cash equivalents yielding over 4.5 percent.
  • Avoid reaching for yield in low-quality credit.

3. Tilt Toward Defensive Sectors: Slower growth hits cyclicals and high beta sectors first. Defensive sectors hold up better in downturns.

  • Favor healthcare, consumer staples, and utilities.
  • Limit exposure to discretionary, financial, and industrial sectors.
  • Screen for dividend sustainability and balance sheet strength.

4. Prepare for Credit Stress: If recession risk rises, corporate credit spreads will widen. Junk bonds will suffer. Bank lending tightens further.

  • Exit high-yield bonds and floating-rate loans.
  • Review credit exposure in bond funds.
  • Consider higher-quality fixed income with lower default risk.

5. Be Patient and Opportunistic: If markets break, forced selling creates dislocations. You want dry powder ready.

  • Hold 10–20 percent in cash or equivalents.
  • Build watchlists of high-quality names at lower valuations.
  • Add in stages as prices adjust, not all at once.

You don’t need to predict a recession. Instead, prepare for the potential risk if the Fed’s hopes for a soft landing fade. You can always increase risk more easily than recovering from losses. Remaining disciplined, protecting capital, and looking for opportunities is always the best course of action.

Trade accordingly.

Tyler Durden Sun, 12/21/2025 - 09:20

Britain's Ruling Class Loves To Cosplay As A Titan

Britain's Ruling Class Loves To Cosplay As A Titan

Authored by Gerry Nolan via The Ron Paul Institute

From the podium, it’s Churchillian thunder: prepare for war, deter Russia, stand tall, lead the free world. Back in the engine room, it’s Whitehall with a calculator, sweating through its suit because the numbers simply don’t work. The Financial Times reports Starmer has delayed the Defence Investment Plan over "affordability," kicking it into 2026, because the military’s wish list collided with the Treasury’s reality. Translation: the rhetoric is premium, the balance sheet is bargain-bin.

And then, because the universe has a sense of irony sharp enough to cut steel, enter Ajax; the £6-plus billion armored vehicle program that has become the British state’s spirit animal. Trials paused again. Fresh safety concerns. Soldiers injured. Crews sickened by vibration and noise. Endless reviews. Endless "lessons learned." Endless press lines insisting this is all somehow progress.

If you want to understand modern Britain, don’t read strategy documents. Watch a procurement program that cannot stop hurting the people it is meant to protect.

Ajax was meant to be the backbone of Britain’s future armored forces, a next-generation reconnaissance and strike platform designed to replace ageing vehicles and restore credibility to the British Army’s maneuver capability. Instead, it has become a case study in institutional failure: spiraling costs, years of delay, fundamental design flaws, and a safety record so poor it forced repeated trial suspensions. Soldiers were not merely inconvenienced; they were physically harmed in testing, suffering hearing damage, sickness, and long-term health concerns.

This is not a marginal technical glitch. It is the predictable outcome of a system where industrial capacity has been hollowed out, accountability diffused, and procurement reduced to a paper exercise optimized for contracts, not combat. Ajax does not fail because Britain lacks engineers or soldiers. It fails because Britain no longer possesses a state machinery capable of translating ambition into functioning hardware at scale.

This is the farce at the heart of the Atlantic security sermon.

Britain speaks about Russia the way a fading aristocrat sneers at a rising industrial superpower… condescending, dismissive, utterly uncurious. For years we’ve heard the same insult recycled like a nervous tic: Russia is a "gas station," a crude petro-state propped up by fumes and nostalgia. Yet here we are.

Russia the “gas station,” under the most comprehensive sanctions regime in modern history, has been forced—by Western institutions themselves—into an inconvenient admission: Russia now ranks as the fourth-largest economy in the world by purchasing-power parity.

So let’s pause and ask the question Britain’s elites refuse to face. If Russia is a glorified gas station, what exactly does that make Britain? A country that cannot publish a defence investment plan on time. A state that cannot field a functioning armoured vehicle without injuring its own troops. An economy that cannot sustain rearmament in spite of private finance gimmicks and accounting contortions. A political class that cannot reconcile its war talk with its industrial capacity.

If Russia is a gas station, Britain increasingly resembles a heritage museum complete with a gift shop, living off past glories while subcontracting its future.

Now let’s move to where the illusion truly collapses, production.

Wars are not won by hysterical speeches, theatrical bravado, summits, or moral pronouncements. They are won by output — steel, shells, access to critical minerals, drones, logistics, and the brutal arithmetic of throughput. On this front, the West has been dragged, kicking and screaming, into recognition of a reality it tried to meme out of existence.

Russia's military-industrial base bureaucratically compressed, hardened, and scaled under pressure —now outpaces NATO’s collective ammunition production by a multiple. Western officials themselves have been forced to admit the gap, even as they scramble to promise future catch-up schedules that read more like aspiration than viable plan.

In sum, while Russia produces, Britain reviews glorified mission statements. And while Russia iterates, Britain delays indefinitely out of impotence. Russia fields game changing adaptations learned from battlefield within months. While Britain commissions another inquiry.

And this is where the mockery turns into indictment.

Because Britain is not merely weak. It is performatively Russophobic, a leading amplifier of a psychological contagion that has swept Western Europe. A political culture that replaced diplomacy with insult, respect with caricature, and strategic realism with adolescent moral posturing.

For decades, Russians asked for nothing exotic. Security guarantees. Recognition of reasonable red lines. A place in a shared European security architecture. Basic respect and dignity after the Cold War. They were met instead with NATO expansion, broken promises, regime-change evangelism, and the casual humiliation of a great civilization reduced to punchlines for Western domestic politics.

And now, after years of stoking this hysteria, inflaming this anger, and dismissing Russian concerns as paranoia, Britain offers the world a confession written in delays, budget shortfalls, and broken machinery.

For all the talk of deterrence, what they’re left with is cold reality, exposure. A state that talks war while failing at procurement is not projecting strength. It is advertising vulnerability at scale. A leadership class that cannot fund its own defence while demanding continental confrontation is not leading, but gambling with other people’s lives.

For a country in this position to posture as a peer adversary to Russia is not serious strategy. It is suicide pact dressed up as virtue. At this point, honesty would demand something radical in London: humility and sober realism.

A state in Britain’s position should not be lecturing the world, moralizing from the sidelines, or inflating its own strategic importance. It should be urgently repairing what it helped to destroy, namely trust, diplomacy, and the basic architecture of European security. It should be suing for peace, not performing toughness it cannot afford.

Because history is unforgiving to former empires that mistake memory for power.

Russia did not arrive at this moment through fantasy. It arrived through necessity, through sanctions, pressure, exclusion, and the steady realisation that the West no longer spoke the language of compromise, only command. Britain, by contrast, arrived here through illusion: convinced it was still a titan while outsourcing its industry, hollowing out its capacity, and replacing strategy with theatre.

This is the real danger now, not Russian strength, but Western self-deception.

A political class that cannot build, cannot fund, and cannot field its own defence has no business escalating confrontation with a civilization that can. When rhetoric races far ahead of reality, history does not intervene gently. It intervenes brutally. Britain is not preparing for a conflict with Russia. It is preparing for a reckoning with the reality of its own weakness.

And reality, unlike Whitehall briefings, legacy slogans, or moral posturing, does not negotiate.

Tyler Durden Sun, 12/21/2025 - 08:10

DNA Evidence Proves "First Black Briton" Was Actually A White Girl

DNA Evidence Proves "First Black Briton" Was Actually A White Girl

In 2021 the establishment media was electrified by a discovery involving the ancient remains of a woman found over a century ago near a village in East Sussex in Britain.  The reason leftist journalists were so hyped?  A supposedly comprehensive study by "experts" in facial reconstruction had determined that the nearly 2000 year old skeleton belonged to a Sub-Saharan African person.

The remains became known as the "Beachy Head Woman" and images of her reconstructed black face began circulating internationally.  This was proof, somehow, that progressives had always been right to support third world immigration.

The new data arrived conveniently in time to support a far-left campaign to defend the ideas of multiculturalism.  Part of this narrative asserts that Caucasian regions of the world have never actually been Caucasian and that western culture doesn't really exist.  In fact, white Europeans have no claim to any lands anywhere, they have no home, and African/Asian migrants have "always" freely traveled throughout Europe.

The political left was enthralled, taking to social media and reposting the discovery millions of times over to "own the fascists".  The BBC even paid to have a plaque constructed on the site where the bones were discovered proudly proclaiming that this is where the first Briton of "African origin" had been found.

School lessons were immediately developed in the UK, teaching students about the multicultural history of Britain.  This was scientific confirmation to back up the avalanche of European entertainment content depicting Sub-Saharan Africans as integral to the history of the continent, roaming the lands as tribesman or enjoying the finery of royal court.   

Leftists argue that their version of history justifies the expansion of open mass immigration, because "things have always been this way" and white people today who want to protect their histories and cultures from erasure are merely ignorant of the past.  

The problem is, Beachy Head Woman is not African or black.  Recently confirmed DNA evidence shows she was white with blonde hair and blue eyes.  She was not a migrant, but born in ancient Britain.

The narrative began to break down in 2023 when genetic studies indicated she might have come from Cyprus (a part of the Roman Empire) and was not of African origin.  More advanced DNA analysis, released this week, destroyed the claims of migration and also embarrassed the "experts" involved in the facial reconstruction of the skull.

The new study, led by researchers at London’s Natural History Museum, working in collaboration with University College London, used advanced ancient DNA sequencing that was not available a decade ago. By extracting a much larger quantity of high-quality DNA, they were able to place her ancestry within a broader Roman-era genetic framework. 

The results show that her DNA is most similar to that of individuals from rural southern Britain during the Roman period and to modern populations from England. There are no traces of recent sub-Saharan African or Mediterranean ancestry. Isotope analysis of her teeth and bones indicates that her early years were spent on the south coast of Britain, and her mobility patterns were similar to those of other local individuals from the same period.

It's a perfect example of the growing problem of ideology mixing with science and poisoning the well of human knowledge.  The rules of scientific investigation require an objective mindset, letting the evidence show whatever the evidence shows.  However, with the invasion of woke cultism into every facet of academia, the goal of science is now to fulfill the demands of the multicultural narrative.

Luckily, the takeover of academia is not total and the truth still slips through the cracks on occasion.  

Woke "science" approaches investigation by developing a desired conclusion first, and then manipulating the evidence to support that conclusion.  In other words, science is nothing more than another propaganda tool.  This is why wokeness can no longer be allowed to spread into western academics or into STEM fields; it's not just destructive to political discourse and social stability, it is also a cancer eating away at the pillars of human knowledge.  

If these people are allowed to continue their conquest of science, modern human civilization will crumble.

Tyler Durden Sun, 12/21/2025 - 07:35

Swiss Authorities Silent As EU Sanctions One Of World's Most Respected Military Analysts

Swiss Authorities Silent As EU Sanctions One Of World's Most Respected Military Analysts

Authored by Peter Hanseler via ForumGeopolitica.com,

When German journalists Röper and Lipp were sanctioned, no one in Switzerland reacted—now one of the world's most respected military analysts is being sanctioned—a Swiss citizen. Weltwoche is waking up, Switzerland is fast asleep.

Introduction

Terrorizing journalists with sanctions in order to suppress the truth is nothing new for the EU.

On May 20, 2025, the EU sanctioned two German journalists for the first time—Alina Lipp and Thomas Röper. At the time, we reported in detail on this case, “EU sanctions German journalists,” and also analyzed the case from a legal perspective.

The result was clear: punishment without crime or trial, disenfranchisement and expropriation without a hearing.

The EU is dangerously close to the Nazi regime of 1936, when Thomas Mann was expatriated.

Following the same pattern, action is now being taken against a Swiss citizen for the first time.

Jacques Baud - You Can't Be More Objective Than He Is

Jacques Baud is one of the most objective and respected military analysts around. He is highly regarded and respected not only throughout Europe, but also in the US.

His work is not limited to analysis on the most prestigious YouTube platforms; he has also written numerous excellent books. His style is unique in that he does not concern himself with politics, but only with the analysis of warfare, in a calm and dispassionate manner. His analyses have never been anti-Ukrainian or pro-Russian, but objective.

He has long seen a NATO defeat on the horizon, not based on his wishes, but on the facts on the long front and the war strategy and tactics of the various parties.

This did not fit in at all with the Russophobic war cries of the EU, which still dreams of ultimate victory today, just like Adolf Hitler did in the spring of 1945.

The latest example comes from Friedrich Merz, whose lucidity must now seriously be called into question. To justify the theft of Russian assets, he said the following before the German Bundestag on December 15, 2025:

“To be very clear and very explicit here: we are not doing this to prolong the war. On the contrary, we are doing this to end this war as quickly as possible, ladies and gentlemen. Because this sends a clear signal to Moscow that continuing this war is pointless for Moscow.”

Friedrich Merz, December 15, 2025

Jacques Baud's crime was therefore that his analyses were correct - no more and no less.

Die Weltwoche Stands up— Finally

When Alina Lipp and Thomas Röper were sanctioned, Weltwoche contented itself with an indifferent, lukewarm article and did not stand up for its colleagues – we were shocked.

It seems that the opportunistic Mr. Köppel has felt the heat from Ms. Kaja Kallas a little too closely for his liking: Köppel is finally standing up, because he could be next, and, as Martin Niemöller said, when it's your turn, you're wide awake.

"First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me

Holocaust Memorial Day Trust

Now Weltwoche is also reflecting on the lack of a fair hearing and politically motivated persecution, not in as much detail as in our article of May 25, 2025, but still.

"Opportunism is costing a 70-year-old military analyst his quality of life"

Weltwoche has published half a dozen articles on Jacque Baud, and Köppel is playing the Joan of Arc of journalists, styling himself in his own way as the Winkelried of his guild. It's rather late in the day. Had Köppel reacted with the same force in May, the men and women in Brussels would probably have thought twice about sanctioning a Swiss citizen. Opportunism is costing a 70-year-old military analyst his quality of life.

Official Switzerland Remains Silent

It is nothing new that my home country no longer has any backbone when it comes to Brussels. Weltwoche writes:

“In Bern, they would prefer to have nothing to do with it and are passing the buck like a hot potato.”

Weltwoche, December 18, 2025

This is obviously worrying, but the Swiss government is behaving in exactly the same way as Köppel did in May this year when German colleagues were sanctioned. They wanted nothing to do with the whole affair.

The Next Litmus Test for Switzerland Is Coming Soon

The EU's plundering of the Russian Federation's frozen funds will soon be complete. Incidentally, this has nothing to do with war, but rather with the sheer financial and political survival of the EU and its criminal leaders, because without the stolen money, the EU is bankrupt.

Despite the clarity that the EU is a criminal organization, Switzerland is negotiating a comprehensive package of new agreements with the EU, including the integration of dynamic legal adoption processes. This means that Switzerland is actually discussing automatically adopting the laws of a criminal organization.

Patrick Baab Interviewed Jacques Baud

We would like to draw your attention to the interview recorded on December 16 by our author Patrik Baab with Jaques Baud.

Tyler Durden Sun, 12/21/2025 - 07:00

Why US Is Such A Popular Destination During Global Migrant Crisis

Why US Is Such A Popular Destination During Global Migrant Crisis

Authored by Chris Summers via The Epoch Times,

The Trump administration recently suspended the processing of all immigration applications from 19 countries, including Afghanistan, citing national security and public safety concerns.

The Dec. 2 decision came a week after an Afghan national who had been allowed into the United States under a Biden-era program was charged with shooting two National Guard soldiers near the White House. The ambush killed one of the victims and left the other in critical condition.

The White House’s move comes amid a global migration crisis, in which millions of people have left their home countries in Latin America, Africa, and Asia for the affluent economies of North America and Europe.

Although the United States was founded by immigrants, experts say that times have changed, and the country has become too popular a destination that now action is needed to restore a functioning immigration system.

“How this country was founded, and the ethos and numbers of people in the 1600s, 1700s, and 1800s are very different than what we’ve been experiencing,” Lora Ries, director of the Border Security and Immigration Center at The Heritage Foundation, told The Epoch Times. “And so our immigration system has just been run away, whether it’s illegal or legal.”

“We need to pop this bubble and get control over our country, [with] a lawful, manageable and orderly immigration system.”

The countries affected by the Dec. 2 memorandum were Burma (also known as Myanmar), Chad, the Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Sudan, Yemen, Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan, and Venezuela. Most of these countries have high visa overstay rates or poor vetting procedures.

In August, the Pew Research Center analyzed Census Bureau data and said 53.3 million immigrants were living in the United States in June 2025.

According to the Migration Policy Institute, immigrants made up 14.8 percent of the population in 2024, a rate the United States has not seen since 1890.

“Our inn is not only full, it is overflowing,” Ries said. “So other countries need to step up and pitch in.”

Push and Pull Factors in Migration

In 2024, the United Nations’ population division published data that suggested a record 304 million people lived in a country other than their country of birth.

That figure—which represents 3.7 percent of the world’s 8.2 billion people—was up from 275 million in 2020.

That number would include the 42 million people who, in June 2025, the United Nations refugee agency said have left their home country due to “persecution, conflict, violence, human rights violations or events seriously disturbing public order,” plus 8.4 million who are claiming asylum in another country.

War and political violence are push factors in some parts of the world, says Paul Morland, demographer and author of “The Human Tide: How Population Shaped the Modern World,” but he said they were less significant than people’s age-old desire to improve their standard of living.

“A bigger story than the security one is the economic one, because that’s always there,” Morland told The Epoch Times.

He noted that the Congo, which has had an ongoing civil war for several years, has not generated large numbers of migrants to Europe or North America, while India and Pakistan—which have been largely peaceful—have seen large numbers move to the West.

Many times, migrants use the persecution justification to pursue the economic motive, Ries noted.

“There are 193 countries on this planet, so if you are truly fleeing for your life, then you should go to the first safe country that you enter,” she said, “You should not be able to country shop and go through multiple safe countries without getting protection there, just because you want to get to the U.S.”

Cultural differences play a role in immigration’s impact on the host country, said Morland.

“What has a very big impact is when people from very radically different cultures arrive,” he said, “They look very different, their practices are very different, their belief systems and values are very different. And the assumption has to be that they will take longer to integrate.”

In America, immigration has historically been associated with positive outcomes, Javier Palomarez, president and CEO of the United States Hispanic Business Council, told The Epoch Times.

“Since its inception, America has thrived by attracting the best and brightest from around the world to contribute to our innovation, economy, and society as whole,” said in a statement sent by email.

“After all, America was founded on the idea that you could leave your former life behind, start anew, and build something for yourself and your family.”

There are reasons behind that success.

“This idea is reliant on the invisible pillars that hold this nation together and attract contributors from around the world: freedom, opportunity, respect for family, patriotism, law and order, and a strong set of rules and guidelines that enable competition and encourage growth,” said Palomarez.

The “ubiquity of English” in much of Africa, Asia, and Latin America also made the United States and Britain attractive for many migrants, said Morland.

Birth of the Immigration Law Industry

In the 1990s, migrants and human traffickers began to realize that if they could get into their destination country and then claim asylum, they could use legal avenues to prevent being deported, Tony Smith, a former director general of the UK Border Force, told The Epoch Times.

“This gave birth to an industry of immigration lawyers who would support migrants who entered your country illegally,” Smith said. “That had the effect of preventing removals, at least temporarily, whilst that application was processed.”

He said the fact that the asylum-seekers had usually passed through numerous safe countries en route made no difference.

“You have people from all over the world coming in through Mexico because they want to go to the U.S.,” said Smith. “They’re not interested in getting refuge in Mexico or South America.”

A masked migrant illegally crosses into the United States outside of San Diego, Calif., on Dec. 5, 2023. John Fredricks/The Epoch Times

But President Donald Trump has upended the system.

“He is doing things that actually will horrify some judges and some lawyers,” said Smith, “[but] he’s had a very significant effect, both in terms of reducing illegal migration across the southern border, but also in terms of the inland activity by [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement] to arrest people who should not be in the U.S., and by exerting political pressure on those countries that have traditionally said, ‘We’re not taking our own people back again.’”

Morland said in countries with grinding poverty, long-distance migration is unlikely.

“Ironically, it’s when people get off the floor [that migration happens],” Morland said. “They get a bit of money. They get an iPhone. They can see what the world’s like. They can afford an airfare. They maybe have already got an uncle in London or Paris. That’s when they move, not when they’re absolutely dirt poor and ignorant sitting in the village.”

Morland said it is also unlikely that migrants would return to countries like Afghanistan, Syria, or Sudan even when peace is restored.

“If the Taliban were overturned, and a beautiful liberal democracy were formed in Afghanistan, I hardly think anyone could go back,” Morland said. “Over many, many years, if that then led to economic prosperity, maybe.”

He said “unforced remigration” is going to be fairly limited from countries such as the United States, Canada, and Germany, where per-capita incomes are $50,000 or more.

Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) holds a photo of Army Spc. Sarah Beckstrom, a West Virginia National Guard member who was shot near the White House on Nov. 26, in Washington on Dec. 2, 2025. Madalina Kilroy/The Epoch Times

National Security and ‘Open Border Welfare State’

Rahmanullah Lakanwal, 29, the Afghan national who has been charged with the first-degree murder of Army Spc. Sarah Beckstrom, 20, and assaulting Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe with intent to kill, in Washington, had worked with the CIA during the war in Afghanistan.

He was one of around 76,000 Afghans allowed to resettle in the United States under a Biden-era resettlement program, Operation Allies Welcome.

It has since faced intense scrutiny from Trump and other U.S. officials over allegations of gaps in the vetting process.

Ries said the president’s actions were a valid response to the Washington shooting, and what the Biden administration had done “in terms of opening the border, and mass paroling of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of inadmissible aliens from around the world.”

Trump’s return to the White House this January also marked the culmination of many American voters’ frustration with the country’s immigration-related policies and concerns about national security, Ries noted.

“People got so fed up with the open border welfare state that we were living in that they voted against that last November,” she said.

“They wanted the border secure. They wanted the portable aliens removed, and they want taxpayer dollars to go to Americans first, not people who aren’t supposed to be here.”

Declining Birth Rate in the US

The global migration crisis also comes amid wildly contrasting fertility rates between the West and the Third World.

Africa has some of the highest rates in the world. Somalia, Chad, Niger, and the Congo all have fertility rates of six or above.

In 1960, the fertility rate in the United States was between four and five. By 2023, that number had halved to 2.2, approaching 2.1, the minimum level at which a population is able to replace itself from one generation to the next.

Macroeconomist Jesús Fernández-Villaverde called low fertility rates “the true economic challenge of our time” in a February report for the American Enterprise Institute.

Palomarez, the president and CEO of the United States Hispanic Business Council, said immigration has been part of the solution for this challenge.

“At the end of the day, especially given our declining birth rate, our nation is reliant upon a steady stream of immigrant workers and entrepreneurs,” Palomarez said.

Ries said the baby bust in the United States should be addressed at a fundamental level.

“The falling fertility rate in America is the result of a long-term destructive campaign against marriage, families, and having children, and so we just need to wake up from this decades-long nightmare of anti-family, anti-marriage, anti-children policies and agenda, and return to how God made us.”

Tyler Durden Sat, 12/20/2025 - 23:20

An AI Campaign War Is Coming: Boomers Vs. Doomers

An AI Campaign War Is Coming: Boomers Vs. Doomers

The battle over artificial intelligence policy is moving from Washington hearing rooms to the campaign trail, where two rival political efforts are preparing to spend at least $150 million to shape the outcome of federal and state elections.

The clash pits industry-backed advocates for rapid AI development against a bipartisan group of former lawmakers calling for stronger regulation and tighter export controls. The scale of the planned spending exceeds the roughly $100 million deployed by crypto-aligned political groups during the 2024 election cycle, Punchbowl News reports.

Unlike the crypto push, however, the emerging AI fight features two organized camps preparing to go head-to-head: pro-industry “AI boomers” and regulation-minded “AI doomers,” each seeking to influence lawmakers and voters ahead of the 2026 midterms.

BOOMERS: AI To The Moon Under One National Framework

On the pro-AI side is Leading the Future, a group of industry-backed super PACs seeded with money from technology leaders and venture capital interests. The effort has received early backing from OpenAI President Greg Brockman, venture capital firm a16z, and Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, and is preparing to spend up to $100 million.

Josh Vlasto, who is co-leading the group’s political strategy, said the goal is to elect candidates supportive of a national, federal-led approach to AI regulation.

"You will see a broad consensus in Congress to have the federal government lead on creating a national, pro-AI, pro-America regulatory framework," Vlasto said.

That approach reflects industry concerns that a patchwork of state-level AI laws could hinder U.S. competitiveness, particularly in the race with China. While Vlasto said his group supports the idea of a federal AI standard, he indicated that policy specifics would be handled by a related advocacy organization.

Leading the Future is expected to support candidates who favor federal preemption of state AI regulations. Vlasto, who also served as a spokesperson for Fairshake - the crypto-aligned super PAC that backed more than 50 candidates in 2024 - declined to set a limit on how many races the AI-focused group might enter.

The group has already signaled its willingness to play offense, announcing plans to spend against New York State Assemblymember Alex Bores, a Democrat who has supported state-level AI regulation and is running for Congress.

Vlasto said the organization is designed to move quickly as policy debates evolve and has leaned heavily into digital advertising, though it has also purchased television spots.

“This is a highly dynamic moment in this policy debate,” he said. “We are built… to use our resources and bring the AI sector together to advocate for this agenda.”

In short, AI Boomers want:

  1. Federal preemption of state AI laws: one national AI framework, not 50 state regimes. States like New York or California passing their own AI rules are seen as a threat to innovation.

  2. Light-touch federal regulation: Support a “federal standard,” but generally oppose detailed, prescriptive rules. Policy specifics are often deferred to industry-friendly agencies or advisory bodies.

  3. Speed over precaution: The belief is that slowing deployment risks losing the global AI race, especially to China. Safety, bias, and misuse concerns are viewed as manageable after deployment.

  4. Industry-driven governance: AI companies should have a major role in shaping the rules that govern them. Regulatory capture is not how they describe it; they frame it as “technical expertise.”

DOOMERS: Control AI before it reshapes society

On the opposing side, former Reps. Chris Stewart (R-Utah) and Brad Carson (D-Okla.) are launching two separate super PACs aimed at boosting candidates who favor stronger AI regulation and export controls.

Together, the PACs aim to raise $50 million for the 2026 cycle - roughly half the amount promised by Leading the Future, but enough, organizers say, to compete with tech industry spending.

“Most people are anxious about AI. They’re not opposed to it, they’re anxious,” Carson said, arguing that public concern about the pace of AI development is being underestimated.

Carson criticized what he described as tech companies’ “accelerationist YOLO agenda” and said his PACs would disclose their donors in the coming months.

The groups plan to support candidates for the House and Senate and are also considering investments in state legislative races and gubernatorial contests. Carson said spending decisions will be made across television, digital platforms, and other media as appropriate, with endorsements coming from both political parties.

Two policy issues are central to the effort: AI regulation and export controls on advanced AI chips bound for China.

Carson said the PACs will support candidates “who favor strong export controls,” and he reiterated opposition to President Trump’s decision to allow Nvidia to sell advanced AI chips to China. Carson, who serves as president of Americans for Responsible Innovation, has argued that export restrictions are critical to national security.

The PACs will also back candidates who believe government has a role in regulating AI, including allowing states to act in the absence of a federal framework.

Doomer priorities:

  1. Meaningful regulation, not just federal symbolism: They want enforceable rules on: Model deployment. Safety testing, Transparency, Accountability for harm. 

  2. State authority as a backstop - not a takeover: States should be allowed to regulate AI if Congress fails to act.

    • This mirrors how states regulate: Consumer protection, Data privacy, Product safety, State involvement is seen as a pressure mechanism, not the ideal endpoint.

  3. Export controls and national security: They strongly support restricting advanced AI chips to China. They view unfettered exports as a strategic and military risk.

  4. Public trust as a strategic asset: Their argument is that if voters lose confidence in AI, politicians will overcorrect. Early guardrails are framed as pro-innovation, not anti-innovation.

Competing visions for AI’s future

While Carson and Stewart reject the label “anti-AI,” they argue that guardrails are necessary to maintain public trust in the technology.

“Big tech has lost the confidence of the American people,” Carson said. “And if the American people don’t believe in [AI], you’re going to see politicians turn against it in a very severe way.”

Tyler Durden Sat, 12/20/2025 - 22:45

CIA is Broken... Can It Be Fixed?

CIA is Broken... Can It Be Fixed?

Authored by Larry Johnson via Sonar21.com.

Sy Hersh's latest Substack article on the prospects a successful outcome of the US attempt to broker a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine is important because it reveals the pathetic incompetence of the CIA. It appears that Sy reported what senior Trump officials told him about the on going negotiations with the Russians and Ukrainians, and that those officials were sharing their understanding of the capabilities of Russia and Ukraine based on intelligence reports and intelligence analysis provided principally by CIA analysts.

Here are some of the more egregious claims by these officials:

Both nations are on the verge of economic and military collapse…

Putin is facing economic, political, military, and public pressure...

Putin is facing increasing political, economic, and military opposition in Moscow—mortgage rates are soaring and the Russian military is in serious disarray—has realized that he must end the war…

Ongoing warfare is not going to change the balance of forces. Putin is under pressure to end the war from his military and from a public staggered by its continuing costs, and inflation is at 8.4 percent…

Some of the most senior Russian generals, while still loyal to Putin, urgently want the depleted Russian Army to get out.

Putin is staying afloat by borrowing money from Russian banks that are not permitted to lend to the population.

Rather than debunk each of these claims, I will focus on the last two.

Regarding the claim that Russian banks “are not permitted to lend to the population.” Wrong! Russian banks are fully allowed—and actively do—make loans to Russian citizens . According to Russia's Central Bank and news reports from Reuters , Bloomberg , and The Moscow Times , there are no prohibitions on domestic lending to Russian individuals under current regulations (as of December 2025). Consumer lending (unsecured loans, mortgages, car loans, credit cards) is a major part of the Russian banking sector, with retail loan portfolios growing continuously because Russian wages have increased more than the rate of inflation — 20% — and are greater than the high interest rates. How could the Trump intelligence community get such an easy fact to verify so wrong?

Then there is the assertion that the Russian army is “depleted.” Russia's active-duty military personnel strength as of December 2025 is approximately 1.32 million. This figure comes from the 2025 Global Firepower Index (reviewed January 2025) and cross-verified sources like Statista , which cites ~1.32 million active troops (part of a total force of ~3.57 million including reserves and paramilitary). My sources in Russia put the number at greater than 1.5 million. In February 2022, according to IISS Military Balance 2022 and Global Firepower , Russia's active-duty military forces were 900,000.

In terms of Russia's ground forces, they have grown from 300,000 in February 2022 to 623,000 in just the Ukrainian theater, according to Ukraine's General Syrsky. Total Russian ground forces now exceed 1 million men. Does that sound like depletion to you?

So why does the CIA persist in peddling provably false information. I blame former CIA Director John Brennan. John Brennan, as CIA Director (2013–2017), initiated a major reorganization in March 2015 that integrated analysts (from the Directorate of Analysis) and operations officers (from the Directorate of Operations) into hybrid mission centers.

This “modernization plan” aimed to break down traditional silos — ie, previously analysts and operations officers worked in separate units — by creating 10 new mission centers (focused on regions/threats like counterterrorism and cyber), where analysts, operators, digital experts, and support staff would work side-by-side under unified leadership. Brennan announced the overhaul on March 6, 2015 , with implementation beginning shortly after (eg, assistant directors named April 30, 2015). The ostensible goal was better integration for modern threats like cyber warfare, modeled partly on the existing Counterterrorism Center, but the actual effect subordinated independent analysis to the covert programs directed and managed by the operations officers.

When I started working as an analyst in the fall of 1986, the Directorate of Intelligence occupied the north wing of the CIA headquarters and the Directorate of Operations occupied the south wing… We were in our respective silos. I was the Honduras analyst when the war in Central America was a top priority for the Reagan administration. Funding the Contras and fighting the Sandinista was a major covert action program of the Director of Operations… The Central American Task Force (CATF) to be precise. The case officers in the CATF had every incentive to make the program look like it was being successful.

I vividly recall a briefing that I, along with the Nicaragua branch military analyst, gave to members of Congress on March 12, 1988 about a developing situation on the border of Honduras and Nicaragua. We were accompanied by the Chief of military operations for the CATF. We had intelligence that the Sandinistas were prepared to launch military operations against Contra forces in the Las Vegas salient of southern Honduras. During the course of that briefing we received news from headquarters that the Sandinistas had allegedly overrun a Contra base and were killing the CIA-backed Contras. What a disaster!

As we filed out of that briefing got into the van to take us back to headquarters, the CATF military chief began berating me and the military analyst for the Nicaraguan branch as having contributed to this alleged disaster for the Contras because our analysis did not enthusiastically support the CATF covert program. When I arrived back at headquarters and had a chance to look at the actual intelligence, I discovered that we had been told a lie. Instead of the Sandinistas swarming a Contra camp like Mexican troops attacking the Alamo, the intel report simply stated that a Contra patrol had skirmished with a Sandinista patrol 15 km south of the Contra base. The point of telling this anecdote is to illustrate the kind of pressure that we as analysts faced from the operations side of the house to spin a narrative that portrayed the Contra's in the best possible light while downplaying the competence of the Sandinista forces.

I think a similar phenomena has been at play since the start of Russia's Special Military Operation in February 2022. I believe that the analysts responsible for reporting on the Ukrainians and Russians are fully embedded in a Mission Center , something akin to the CATF, and that analysts face daily pressures from operations officers to paint the Ukrainians as victors and the Russians as losers who are on the verge of economic and political collapse.

It is simple human nature… If you want to get promoted, don't tell the truth, just go along with the program.

I also have learned that the primary source material the analysts are using is generated by the Ukrainians, who are working in concert with CIA officers deployed in Ukraine. I believe that the combination of peer pressure from operations officers to support a covert mission and a steady supply of tainted information from biased Ukrainian sources explains why the US officials who spoke to Sy Hersh are painting such a false and distorted picture of the war in Ukraine and are describing the Russians as incompetent, depleted and on the verge of crumbling. Garbage in, garbage out .

If the CIA has any hope of being able to provide something approaching objective, truthful analysis, the Mission Centers created by Brennan must be dismantled. There was a press report last February that current CIA director Ratcliffe was reviewing whether to reverse Brennan's changes due to perceived negative impacts on human intelligence (HUMINT) and core missions. Let me assure you that the negative impacts are real, not perceived.

So far, Ratcliffe has not acted to reverse Brennan. Maybe the defeat of Ukraine by Russia will finally convince Ratcliffe to take action to rescue analysts from the clutches of the operations officers.

Tyler Durden Sat, 12/20/2025 - 22:10

Target Harasser Issues Forced Apology Amid Job Threat And Police Probe

Target Harasser Issues Forced Apology Amid Job Threat And Police Probe

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

Michelea Ponce, the leftist caught on video unleashing a tirade against an elderly Target employee for daring to wear a “Freedom” shirt featuring Charlie Kirk, has issued a public apology. But with her job on the line and police involved, many see it as a desperate bid to salvage her reputation rather than genuine remorse.

This comes after the video exploded online, exposing the kind of unhinged intolerance conservatives face daily from those who preach “kindness” but deliver harassment.

The incident unfolded in a Chico, California Target store, where Ponce confronted 72-year-old employee Jeanie Beeman over her shirt. As we previously reported in our coverage of the meltdown and the subsequent police investigation, Ponce labeled Beeman as “racist” and “ignorant,” escalating into a public spectacle that left the senior worker shaken.

Ponce, an employee at Enloe Health, filmed the encounter herself, apparently seeking viral clout. Instead, it backfired spectacularly, drawing widespread condemnation for bullying an innocent woman simply expressing her support for conservative values.

The Chico Police Department also investigated the incident after it went viral but determined Ponce’s actions did not constitute criminal conduct.

In their official statement, they noted: “While the interaction was tense and inappropriate, it did not rise to the level of criminal conduct. The customer’s actions, though discourteous, were protected under the First Amendment as freedom of speech. As a result, there are no criminal charges appropriate to file in this case.” You can read the full statement here.

While no charges were filed, the probe underscored the fine line between free speech and outright harassment, a reminder that conservatives often endure such attacks without legal recourse.

In her ‘apology’ statement, Ponce wrote: “I want to take full responsibility for my actions and say clearly and sincerely that I was wrong. I behaved badly, and I regret it deeply.

“I want to directly apologize to Jeannie. I am truly sorry for approaching you at your workplace and putting you in an uncomfortable and unfair position. You did not deserve that, and my behavior was wrong,” the statement continues.

Ponce adds, “I also apologize to Jeannie’s family for the stress and attention my actions caused. I apologize to Target as her employer, I apologize to Enloe, and I apologize to the Chico community. I understand that what I did reflected poorly on myself and disrupted a sense of safety and respect that should exist in a workplace and in our community.”

“I did not handle the situation the way I should have. I allowed my emotions to take over instead of choosing restraint and empathy. That was my failure, and I own it,” She further claims.

The statement concludes, “I regret my actions, and I am genuinely sorry for the harm they caused. I wish I can go back and undo what happened, but I can acknowledge it honestly, learn from it, and commit to doing better moving forward.”

The apology surfaced via a post on X, sparking immediate skepticism. Critics pointed out its polished, almost scripted tone, with one user calling it “fake as F” and another dismissing it as insincere, saying Ponce is only “regretting the consequences of her actions.” Many echoed that she’s not sorry for the act but for getting caught, especially with her employment in jeopardy.

Enloe Health, Ponce’s employer, faced massive backlash, including over 6,000 calls demanding action. CEO Mike Wiltermood addressed the controversy in a video statement, condemning the behavior but refusing to disclose if Ponce had been terminated, citing privacy concerns.

A follow-up statement from Enloe reiterated their disapproval but again stopped short of confirming her status. Rumors swirled on social media that she may have been fired, but as of now, it’s unconfirmed. This opacity has fueled calls for transparency, with users insisting that someone with such evident bias shouldn’t be in healthcare, where vulnerable patients—including conservatives—deserve unbiased care.

In a heartening update, Jeanie Beeman spoke out, showing remarkable forgiveness. “Two wrongs don’t make a right. She wronged me, but I don’t want to wrong her. I really wouldn’t want to see her lose her job over it,” she said in a video interview.

This honorable stance highlights the difference between conservatives, who often extend grace even to their tormentors, and the intolerant left, quick to attack but slow to reflect. Beeman’s response embodies the spirit of resilience and dignity.

The online community rallied around Beeman, launching a GiveSendGo fundraiser to give her a well-deserved vacation. At time of writing, it has raised over $230,000, far surpassing initial expectations.

This outpouring stands in sharp contrast to the hate Ponce unleashed, proving that freedom-loving Americans stick together against bullies.

Incidents like this expose the deep-seated bias against conservatives in everyday life. Ponce’s apology, whether sincere or not, won’t erase the damage, but it does spotlight the need to protect free expression from those who weaponize “tolerance” as a tool of control.

Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

Tyler Durden Sat, 12/20/2025 - 21:00

New Patent Signals Tesla Could Integrate Starlink Dish Into Vehicle Moonroof

New Patent Signals Tesla Could Integrate Starlink Dish Into Vehicle Moonroof

A newly filed patent suggests Tesla may be preparing to embed Starlink dishes directly into vehicle roofs, bringing connectivity costs in-house under Starlink rather than continuing to pay third-party carriers like AT&T. Such a move would unlock space-based, high-speed internet for vehicles. Notably, some Tesla owners are already mounting Starlink Mini dishes onto their vehicles, offering an early glimpse of next-generation connectivity.

Tesla filed a patent covering a vehicle roof assembly that is transparent to radio frequencies, specifically noting that it allows for satellite communications to pass through.

"In some examples, this assembly enables the integration of overhead electrical modules and components, including antennae, directly into the roof structure, facilitating clear communication with external devices and satellites," the patent explained in the abstract section.

Here is a drawing from the patent...

Starlink was not mentioned, but it is important to note that Tesla pays for cellular network access to provide basic connectivity supporting essential functions such as navigation and software updates. Users then pay a monthly fee for "Premium Connectivity" to unlock features like live traffic visualization, satellite maps, and streaming media over cellular networks.

We have already seen some Tesla drivers purchase suction cup mounts for Starlink Mini dishes and attach them to the glass moonroof. The purpose is to provide a high-speed connection to the vehicle and its occupants, especially in areas with low coverage or dead zones.

Here's EV blog Electrek's first take on the new patent:

I think it’ll be about cost. Right now if you have premium connectivity, Tesla pays whatever cellular network for that. If they can bring it totally in "house" then that means Musk pays himself for internet and not AT&T or some other carrier. It might not be much cost savings but every penny counts for those reoccurring fees on the bottom line.

Furthermore, Starlink registered "Starlink Mobile" earlier this month...

Tyler Durden Sat, 12/20/2025 - 19:15

Michael Saylor's Bitcoin Thesis: Money Or Commodity?

Michael Saylor's Bitcoin Thesis: Money Or Commodity?

Authored by Gareth Jenkinson via CoinTelegraph.com,

Satoshi Nakamoto’s Bitcoin white paper envisioned a “peer-to-peer electronic cash system,” but Bitcoin’s biggest proponent seems to have an entirely different view of its purpose.

Strategy executive chairman Michael Saylor, whose company has been buying Bitcoin aggressively for nearly five years since adopting a Bitcoin (BTC) treasury strategy, presented what many described as plans for a “Bitcoin central bank” during his keynote speech at Bitcoin MENA.

Economist Saifedean Ammous, well-known in Bitcoin circles for penning The Bitcoin Standard, was also a notable figure attending the conference in Abu Dhabi.

Ammous and Saylor are understood to converse regularly, with Saylor having written the foreword of Ammous’ most famous book.

Speaking on Cointelegraph’s Chain Reaction show, Ammous acknowledged that Saylor does not view Bitcoin as money through the same lens as other Bitcoin proponents. 

Source: Gareth Jenkinson

“I don’t think he sees Bitcoin as money. He’s been very clear about that. He sees Bitcoin more as an asset. One of the great metaphors he uses is that Bitcoin is like crude oil in that it is a hard asset,” Ammous said.

“Just like Standard Oil refined crude oil into standard forms of consumer oil like kerosene or gasoline, he sees Strategy’s role as refining crude Bitcoin into different forms of financial assets that allow people access to them."

Saylor has used various existing corporate finance mechanisms to allow investors to gain exposure to Bitcoin.

The company’s Class A Common Stock (MSTR) allows investors to buy shares in Strategy, which acts as a leveraged play on the price of Bitcoin, as the company’s primary strategy is to accumulate BTC. 

Strategy has also raised billions of dollars through offerings of convertible senior notes, a type of debt that can be converted into equity at a future date, to buy more Bitcoin.

His most recent innovations saw the issuance of several classes of perpetual preferred stock (STRK, STRF, STRD, STRC) to institutional investors.

As of Dec. 15, Strategy had accumulated 671,268 Bitcoin.

Bitcoin is still money

While Saylor has gone on record to unpack his thesis on why Bitcoin is a hard asset that can serve as the basis for various financial products, Saifedean says Strategy's Bitcoin playbook doesn’t alter Bitcoin's monetary properties. 

“I can see the logic behind it. Ultimately, it’s an academic issue. It doesn’t have much of real-world relevance,” Saifedean said.

“In theory, I think of Bitcoin itself as the money. I think of it as being the asset itself. And I think people just need to hold Bitcoin. And I think in the long run, people are going to hold Bitcoin. Now, as long as the fiat money printer exists, there will be all kinds of fiat games that can and will be played.”

Saifedean said that global monetary supply increases by 7%-15% annually and that the system incentivizes the use of debt. 

“There’s an enormous world that is used to getting into financial debt for all kinds of purposes. You’re going to see that increase. As Bitcoin grows, you’re going to be seeing these kinds of financial fiat tools and products being deployed on Bitcoin.”

What does that actually mean? Well, in short, businesses and individuals will need to acquire Bitcoin as pristine capital to access affordable debt.

“Ultimately, all of that has to be built on a foundation of buying Bitcoin. One way or the other, that just means more and more people buy Bitcoin and the size of cash balances in Bitcoin increases. And in my mind, that inevitably means that Bitcoin becomes the money itself.”

Ammous featured on Chain Reaction after Africa Bitcoin Corporation (ABC) announced that the economist would be advising the company.

ABC’s president, Stafford Masie, said Ammous’ primary motivation for advising ABC was the widespread adoption of Bitcoin across retail stores and the unique circular economies in South Africa.

Tyler Durden Sat, 12/20/2025 - 18:40

Gunboat Diplomacy Accelerated: US Seizes Another Oil Tanker Off Venezuela's Coast

Gunboat Diplomacy Accelerated: US Seizes Another Oil Tanker Off Venezuela's Coast

Update: 

Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem confirmed that the U.S. Coast Guard, with support from the Department of War, has seized another oil tanker that was last docked in Venezuela.

"The United States will continue to pursue the illicit movement of sanctioned oil used to fund narco-terrorism in the region. We will find you, and we will stop you," Noem wrote in a post on X.

Reuters reported earlier about the operation. 

*  *  * 

President Trump's gunboat diplomacy is aimed at disrupting crude oil flows moving from Venezuela to Cuba and onward to China. The foreign-policy campaign began earlier this year with U.S. warships stationed off Venezuela's coast in international waters, but it accelerated sharply weeks ago with the U.S. seizure of a sanctioned tanker in the Caribbean and has now escalated further with reports that another tanker was intercepted and seized.

Reuters cites three U.S. officials on Saturday morning who said U.S. forces are interdicting and seizing another tanker off the coast of Venezuela in international waters. This could mark the second such seizure in weeks and comes days after Trump announced a "blockade" of all sanctioned oil tankers in the Venezuela region.

Apparently, U.S. Coast Guard teams are leading this operation amid a broader U.S. military buildup in the region, though officials have not disclosed the exact location of the latest tanker seizure.

Trump's gunboat diplomacy is aimed at the country's autocratic leader, Nicolás Maduro. This ploy could accelerate regime instability in Caracas and materially weaken Cuba.

"Their theory of change involves cutting off all support to Cuba," Juan S. Gonzalez, who was President Joe Biden's top White House aide for Western Hemisphere affairs, recently said. "Under this approach, once Venezuela goes, Cuba will follow."

On Tuesday, Trump ordered a "total and complete blockade" of all sanctioned oil tankers going into and out of Venezuela. He further boasted of the country having been "completely surrounded" with the "largest Armada ever assembled in the History of South America."

He then warned, "It [the blockade] will only get bigger, and the shock to them will be like nothing they have ever seen before — Until such time as they return to the United States of America all of the Oil, Land, and other Assets that they previously stole from us."

Brent crude markets slipped underneath $60/bbl last week, ending the week at $60.57, as traders appear numb to Trump's gunboat diplomacy in the Caribbean.

We're surprised Beijing hasn't lashed out at the U.S. for such actions in the Caribbean, given that this disrupts oil trade flows from West to East. Perhaps a deal was made at the Trump-Xi meeting in the fall.

Tyler Durden Sat, 12/20/2025 - 18:05

Nebraska To Become First State To Launch Medicaid Work Requirements

Nebraska To Become First State To Launch Medicaid Work Requirements

Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times,

Nebraska plans to become the first state in the nation to implement work requirements for certain Medicaid recipients, with Gov. Jim Pillen and federal health officials announcing an accelerated rollout under provisions of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBB).

At a news conference earlier this week, Pillen said the state has formally notified the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) of its intent to require Medicaid expansion enrollees to meet work or community engagement standards beginning May 1, 2026—well ahead of the federal compliance deadline.

The event was also attended by Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services CEO Steve Corsi, and remotely by CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz.

Under the new rules, able-bodied adults aged 19 to 64 enrolled through Medicaid expansion will be required to complete at least 80 hours per month of employment, education, job training, community service, or other qualifying activities to maintain coverage, unless they qualify for an exemption.

“These requirements will help Nebraskans achieve greater self-sufficiency through employment and other meaningful activities,” Pillen said.

“Working not only provides purpose but helps people become active, productive members of their communities.”

Pillen added that Nebraska will be ready to move forward with the work requirements well before the federally mandated start date of Jan. 1, 2027.

His office said that work requirements are associated with greater success in finding better-paid work and more stable incomes over time, and that higher employment rates are linked to lower crime rates. Children in working households also tend to have improved educational outcomes and stronger routines.

Federal Law Mandates Medicaid Work Rules

The work requirements stem from the OBBB Act, which President Donald Trump signed into law on July 4. The bill mandates work or community engagement conditions for most adults covered through Medicaid expansion nationwide. While it directs states to implement the requirements by the end of 2026, states may move sooner, as Nebraska now plans to do.

Oz, who joined the conference by video, praised Nebraska for acting quickly.

“Nebraska is leading the way as the first state to launch its community engagement requirements, and we congratulate Governor Pillen and his team for their commitment to helping more Nebraskans move toward greater independence and opportunity,” he said.

“CMS will be working together with Nebraska and its 50 counterparts to ensure every program is implemented smoothly, responsibly, and in compliance with federal law.”

According to state officials, the policy will apply only to the Medicaid expansion population—low-income adults earning up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level—while leaving traditional Medicaid groups unaffected. Children, pregnant women, seniors, and people who are blind or disabled are excluded from the requirement.

The Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services estimates that around 350,000 residents are enrolled in Medicaid, with Pillen saying that some 30,000 Nebraskans will be subject to the new work requirement once it is implemented.

Critics contend that the accelerated timeline could strain Nebraska’s eligibility system and lead to coverage losses among people who qualify for exemptions but struggle with paperwork or verification.

“We have seen in other states that when Medicaid work requirements are implemented too quickly, like what Nebraska is proposing here, thousands of people who are eligible for the program unnecessarily lose coverage and millions of state dollars are wasted on ineffective administrative costs,” Nebraska Appleseed Health Care Access program director Sarah Maresh said in a statement.

“We know a vast majority of Nebraskans subject to these requirements work or meet an exemption to work requirements, but rushing to implement work requirements will cause them to lose coverage anyway.”

The Congressional Budget Office projected in June that 4.8 million able-bodied adults would lose Medicaid coverage by 2034 for failing to meet new work requirements under the OBBB.

Tyler Durden Sat, 12/20/2025 - 17:30

"Maduro Can Get The F**k Out"; Venezuela 'Regime Change' Debate Gets Fiery

"Maduro Can Get The F**k Out"; Venezuela 'Regime Change' Debate Gets Fiery

Potentially on the cusp of another regime change war, last night ZeroHedge collaborated with The Matt Gaetz show to host a pointed debate on how Trump should handle the evil and corrupt Maduro regime—a familiar Washington storyline now resurfacing amid renewed sanctions pressure, significant U.S. military maneuvers, and Beltway think tank consensus.

The debate featured Curt Mills, Executive Director of The American Conservative, and Venezuelan opposition figure Emmanuel Rincon, moderated by former Congressman Matt Gaetz.

We strongly recommend the full hour-long debate, but here the highlights for those short of time:

The Venezuelan Chalabi

Mills warned that Washington is once again falling for a familiar con, comparing the case for regime change in Venezuela to the pre-Iraq War fantasy sold by exiles promising instant democracy if only the U.S. removes the “bad man” at the top.

“I suppose I’m debating the Venezuelan Ahmed Chalabi,” Mills said, noting that diaspora groups routinely make sweeping claims about what “the people on the street” believe and what the country will supposedly look like “the day after,” all while assuming they and their allies would be handed power.

The truth, he argued, is simpler and more damning: “We don’t know. And this is not the U.S.’s business.”

Context: Ahmed Chalabi—a wealthy Iraqi exile—was a pivotal figure in selling the Iraq War to U.S. neoconservatives, largely by feeding them what they most wanted to believe: that toppling Saddam would quickly yield a secular, pro-Western Iraqi democracy that would also normalize ties with Israel. Chalabi’s circle also supplied “crucial intelligence” about Iraqi weaponry that “almost all… turned out to be false,” helping justify the invasion and underpin the “liberators” fantasy.

Mills also took aim at the security rationale behind intervention, arguing that regime change is a wildly inefficient response to crime or drugs.

“The U.S. does not need to stop all crime everywhere,” he said, adding that protecting Americans can be achieved far more effectively through border enforcement and cooperation with law enforcement than through a war.

The real danger, he cautioned, is strategic self-harm: Venezuela risks becoming “the American Ukraine,” a war of choice that bogs the U.S. down and consumes an entire presidency.

Drug-Busting, Not Regime Change

The exchange turned on whether regime change could be sold as something short of war.

Emmanuel Rincon insisted that it could, arguing, “You’re not going to war against Venezuela. You are going to war against a drug cartel. It’s not the same.”

In Rincon’s telling, the scenario would not involve Venezuela’s military at all:

“You’re not going to have all the military of Venezuela going into a war with the United States. That is not going to happen.”

Mills dismissed that framing as semantic evasion.

“Like in World War II, they could argue that we weren’t going to war with Germany—we were going to war with the Nazi regime, with the SS,” he said. “But of course we’re going to war with Germany.”

Stripping away the euphemisms, Mills argued the same logic applies in Caracas:

“We would be going to war with Venezuela—the people that run Venezuela today.” 

Watch the full debate below because - while Tucker v Ben Shapiro drama may be stealing the show right now - how this Venezuela debate pans out within the Trump admin could put lives on the line… and very soon.

Tyler Durden Sat, 12/20/2025 - 16:55

Project Sunrise: Inside The $112BN Plan To Rebuild Gaza As 'High Tech Metropolis'

Project Sunrise: Inside The $112BN Plan To Rebuild Gaza As 'High Tech Metropolis'

Via The Cradle

US special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner have presented a $112 billion reconstruction plan to Gulf officials to build a “high-tech metropolis” atop the remains of Gaza, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday. The 32-page PowerPoint presentation labeled "sensitive" and titled "Project Sunrise" was developed over 45 days and reportedly presented to officials from Qatar, UAE, Egypt, and Turkiye. 

The plan envisions turning the Gaza Strip into a "high-tech metropolis" over the next two decades with four phases of reconstruction beginning in southern Gaza. It also calls for turning Rafah into Gaza's new "administrative center," housing over 500,000 residents.

However, the plan does not specify where two million Palestinians would be sheltered during the reconstruction period. Israel's blockade of shelter materials has left Palestinians sheltering in bombed-out buildings and tattered tents.

In early December, a severe winter storm caused over a dozen fatalities, including three infants who succumbed to exposure, and led to the collapse of several buildings. About 95 percent of Gaza's tent camps have flooded due to the heavy rain.

Witkoff and Kushner's reconstruction plan also proposes monetizing 70 percent of Gaza's coastline beginning in year ten of the project, a move officials hope would generate over "$55 billion in long-run investment returns for prospective investors."

Both Witkoff and Kushner come from prominent Jewish real estate families rooted in New York’s property sector, with careers built around large-scale, high-value developments and deep financial ties to Gulf sovereign wealth funds.

According to the proposal, the US would provide $60 billion in grants and loan guarantees to back new debt, with expectations that the project would become self-financing as local industry and the broader economy recover. The World Bank would also have a role in the project.

The proposal is contingent on Hamas demilitarizing and decommissioning all weapons and tunnels. This precondition is highlighted in bold red type on the second page of the slide deck.

Hamas officials recently offered to "bury" the group's weapons and hand over power to a Palestinian governing body.

However, Israel has blocked those efforts and refused the participation of nearly all Palestinian technocrats and bureaucrats who would be suited to govern Gaza.

Earlier this year, Trump proposed permanently relocating Gaza's Palestinian residents to transform the strip into a "Riviera of the Middle East," a plan rejected by several countries but welcomed by Israel's government.

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

Bill Clinton Responds After Half-Naked Photos Appear In Latest Epstein Drop

Bill Clinton Responds After Half-Naked Photos Appear In Latest Epstein Drop

For months, Democrats have tried to weaponize the delayed release of the Epstein files against President Donald Trump, after Trump got all weird about releasing the files in February. In recent weeks, House Dems selectively leaked materials to suggest the delay meant Trump had something to hide, even though none of the photos or emails implicated him in Epstein's sex-trafficking (something the NY Times even admitted). And after enormous bipartisan pressure spearheaded by Rep. Thomas Massie and MTG, Trump finally signed the Epstein Files Transparency Act into law - requiring the release of 'all' the Epstein files no later than Friday. And while the DOJ only released 'about half' of what they were supposed to, they did offer a deeper peek into what was going on behind the scenes.

The first tranche of DOJ files released Friday include thousands of pages of material on Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, along with photos featuring high-profile figures such as Bill Clinton, Michael Jackson, Diana Ross, Mick Jagger, Kevin Spacey, Chris Tucker, Sarah Ferguson, Prince Andrew, and Bill Gates.

While no major bombshells have surfaced yet, former President Bill Clinton is facing renewed scrutiny because of some of the photos in the latest release: him posing with Epstein in matching shirts, chatting up a dancer, and lounging on what appears to be a plane with a redacted woman on his lap. Clinton also appears at a dinner table with Mick Jagger, Epstein, and Maxwell.

One standout image captures Clinton in a pool or hot tub with an unidentified woman whose face the DOJ blacked out, indicating that the individual is a victim and/or underage, which was allowed by the Epstein Files Transparency Act.

Mr. Clinton is one of the few people whose faces were not redacted, along with Mr. Epstein himself and Ms. Maxwell. In posts on X after the release, a White House spokeswoman repeatedly pointed out photos of Mr. Clinton and argued that the news media did not want to focus on the images.

“Here is Bill Clinton in a hot tub next to someone whose identity has been redacted. Per the Epstein Files Transparency Act, DOJ was specifically instructed only to redact the faces of victims and/or minors. Time for the media to start asking real questions,” White House deputy press secretary Abigail Jackson wrote on her personal X account.

Meanwhile, Republicans on the House Oversight Committee are also seeking to force Bill and Hillary to give in-person depositions in their own investigation. On social media, Trump has claimed without evidence that Clinton and other Democrats spent “spent large portions of their life with Epstein, and on his ‘Island.’”

Unsurprisingly, the Clinton camp wasn’t happy about the latest drop. Angel Ureña, Clinton’s deputy chief of staff, posted an angry statement attacking the release on X. “The White House hasn't been hiding these files for months only to dump them late on a Friday to protect Bill Clinton. This is about shielding themselves from what comes next, or from what they'll try and hide forever. So they can release as many grainy 20-plus-year-old photos as they want, but this isn't about Bill Clinton. Never has, never will be. Even Susie Wiles said Donald Trump was wrong about Bill Clinton,” Ureña wrote. ”There are two types of people here. The first group knew nothing and cut Epstein off before his crimes came to light. The second group continued relationships with him after. We're in the first. No amount of stalling by people in the second group will change that.”

Ureña concluded, “Everyone, especially MAGA, expects answers, not scapegoats.”

Clinton’s ties to Epstein have been well documented - having moved in the same elite circles as far back as the early 1990s, leaving behind a trail of photos over the years. Epstein and Maxwell visited the Clinton White House multiple times, and Maxwell later appeared at Chelsea Clinton’s 2010 wedding.

Clinton also flew on Epstein’s jet in the early 2000s for trips his team says were connected to Clinton Foundation work in Europe, Asia, and Africa. Clinton faces no criminal charges related to Epstein, and his representatives insist he did not know about Epstein’s crimes.

And of course, the MSM is pissed!

“The images and documents have been released without context or background information,” the New York Times writes. “It is unclear which photographs might have been taken by Mr. Epstein and which might have been sent to or acquired by him, or where many of them were taken. Justice Department officials have not said how they selected the particular tranche of documents that were released on Friday.”

Tyler Durden Sat, 12/20/2025 - 15:45

Fulton County Admits Certification Of 315K Potentially Unlawful Ballots In 2020

Fulton County Admits Certification Of 315K Potentially Unlawful Ballots In 2020

Authored by Luis Cornelio via Headline USA,

An attorney for Fulton County, Georgia admitted earlier this month that the county accepted roughly 315,000 early votes that were not lawfully certified in the 2020 presidential election. 

Attorney Ann Brumbaugh made the admission while representing the Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections at a Dec. 9 hearing before the Georgia State Election Board, according to Wednesday’s reporting by The Federalist. 

The SEB hearing pertained to a complaint filed by election integrity activist David Cross, who accuses Fulton County of having violated Georgia law by counting early votes that were not properly signed off by election workers. 

As quoted by The Federalist, Brumbaugh told the board that Fulton County does “not dispute that the tapes were not signed.” 

She added, “It was a violation of the rule. We, since 2020, again, we have new leadership and a new building and a new board and a new standard operating procedures. And since then the training has been enhanced. … But … we don’t dispute the allegation from the 2020 election.” 

According to The Federalist: 

“Georgia’s Secretary of State Office investigated the alleged failure to sign tabluation [sic] tapes and ‘substantiated’ the findings that Fulton County ‘violated Official Election Record Document Processes when it was discovered that thirty-six (36) out of thirty-seven (37) Advanced Voting Precincts in Fulton County, Georgia failed to sign the Tabulation Tapes as required [by statute],’ according to a 2024 investigation summary. In addition to probing the unsigned tabulation tapes, the investigation also found that officials at 32 polling sites failed to verify their zero tapes.” 

The issue, as detailed by the outlet, is that Georgia statute orders election officials to print three “closing tapes” toward the end of each voting day.  

Doing so allows officials to officially end counting for the day and avoid votes from the previous day being overcounted. 

“These signed tapes are the sole legal certification that the reported totals are authentic,” Cross said during the SEB hearing.

“Fulton County produced zero signed tabulator tapes in early voting.” 

Cross reportedly uncovered the discrepancy through open records requests that cost him $15,800.  

“These are not clerical errors. They are catastrophic breaks in chain of custody and certification,” Cross said.

“Because no tape was ever legally certified, Fulton County had no lawful authority to certify its advanced voting results to the secretary of state. Yet it did. And Secretary Raffensperger accepted and folded those uncertified numbers into Georgia’s official total without questioning them. This is not partisan. This is statutory. This is the law. When the law demands three signatures on tabulator tapes and the county fails to follow the rules, those 315,000 votes are, by definition, uncertified.” 

Tyler Durden Sat, 12/20/2025 - 15:10

ICE Announces 'Most Successful' Recruitment Campaign In US History

ICE Announces 'Most Successful' Recruitment Campaign In US History

Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times,

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) received more than 220,000 applications for more than 10,000 open positions at Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), ICE said in a statement on Dec. 18.

DHS has officially hired 11,751 law enforcement officers, attorneys, criminal investigators, and mission support staff, the agency said. This is the “most successful federal law enforcement agency recruitment campaign in American history,” the agency said.

DHS launched the ICE “Defend the Homeland” recruitment drive on July 29. The recruitment effort is backed by funding from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBB), signed into law by President Donald Trump in July, which allocates $170 billion to border security and immigration enforcement initiatives.

OBBB had granted ICE $76.5 billion, of which $30 billion was to be used to hire 10,000 additional staff members.

In a Dec. 18 post on X, ICE said it hit its goal of hiring more than 10,000 personnel in less than a year.

ICE Deputy Director Madison D. Sheahan praised the OBBB for providing the agency with necessary resources to enforce immigration law “as it’s been written and codified by Congress.”

“The president and Secretary Noem set a goal, and we exceeded it, but that doesn’t mean we’re done. We continue to call on American patriots to serve the homeland because we know that there’s still more work to do—and we will not stop until every community in this nation is safe,” Sheahan said, referring to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem.

ICE said it was offering “unparalleled” incentives to recruits, including a signing bonus of up to $50,000, up to $60,000 in student loan repayment, and an attractive benefits package that includes health insurance, paid federal holidays, and a retirement plan.

Meanwhile, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) announced new recruitment and retention incentives on Dec. 18 to attract skilled individuals to key law enforcement positions in the agency.

CBP is offering new border patrol agents up to $60,000 in incentives, with current agents eligible for up to $50,000 in retention incentives, the agency said.

New Air and Marine agents can become eligible for up to $10,000 in signing bonuses once they complete academy training. Both new and current agents are also eligible for retention incentives of up to 25 percent of their salary.

For new CBP officers in the Office of Field Operations who sign up for hard-to-fill and most difficult-to-fill locations, incentives of up to $60,000 are being offered. Experienced supervisors and officers eligible to retire in certain locations also may qualify for up to $60,000 in retention incentives.

“CBP is committed to recruiting and retaining top talent for our critical mission,” CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott said.

“By offering competitive incentives, we are investing in skilled professionals who will help secure America’s borders and advance national security.”

The strong recruitment numbers come despite immigration enforcement officers facing unprecedented violence against them. On Dec. 12, DHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin said that officers were facing an 8,000 percent increase in death threats along with a 1,150 percent increase in assaults.

Federal Immigration Enforcement

Democrats have criticized ICE and CBP for their part in federal immigration enforcement.

This month, a group of Democratic senators introduced the “Accountability for Federal Law Enforcement Act,” which seeks to grant individuals the right to sue law enforcement agencies and officers in civil court for any constitutional or civil violations, according to a Dec. 15 statement from the office of Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.)

This right to sue will be made available to all individuals in the United States “regardless of citizenship,” it said.

“For months, ICE and CBP officers have terrorized communities across the country, deploying violent and excessive tactics against immigrants, U.S. citizens, journalists, and bystanders alike with no accountability,” Padilla said.

“These abuses of individuals’ constitutional rights without consequence shatter public trust and stoke fear among hardworking members of our communities.”

DHS says ICE arrests target illegal immigrants with a history of criminal activities and has recently launched a website to boost transparency regarding the arrests.

DHS operates the website, “Worst of the Worst,” which allows users to search, based on location, for criminal illegal immigrants who have been arrested and removed from communities. On Dec. 18, the agency said it had added another 5,000 criminal illegal immigrants to the growing list of 15,000 profiles on the website.

“This new update represents just a small sample of the total number of arrests we’ve made—70 percent of ICE arrests are of criminal illegal aliens that have been charged or convicted of a crime in the United States,” McLaughlin said.

Tyler Durden Sat, 12/20/2025 - 14:00

Dumber, Sicker, & Poorer

Dumber, Sicker, & Poorer

The chart below is a fascinating snapshot of the last 75 years in the demise of the American empire.

As The Burning Platform's Jim Quinn explains in his no-nonsense manner, there are currently 164 million people employed in America. About 34 million of those are employed part-time.

When you understand the working age population is 275 million and your friendly number fudgers at the BLS declare 103 million of them NOT IN THE LABOR FORCE, and hysterically declaring only 7.8 million Americans are unemployed, you understand what a fraudulent economy we have.

The reported 4.6% unemployment rate is complete and utter bullshit. In reality, it is north of 20%.

Welcome to the golden age...

  • The percentage of total jobs in the Education and Health Services sector has grown from 4.8% in 1950 to 17.8% today. Wow!! We must be the smartest, healthiest nation on earth. Not quite. With 28 million teachers, doctors, nurses, and mostly administrators (aka overhead), our education system matriculates millions of barely functional idiots into society every year. Meanwhile, as a country, we are sickly, fat, lazy, dependent upon Big Pharma drugs, and spend more on healthcare than any country on earth. To quote the immortal Dean Wormer,  “Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son.”

  • Proof we have become a non-productive, debt dependent, government dependent, shadow of our former industrial powerhouse is the decline in the percentage of manufacturing jobs from 30.2% in 1950 to 8.0% today. We borrow and consume, when we used to invest and build. Trump can threaten, tariff the world, and make bullshit announcements about manufacturing jobs coming back, but they are not coming back. Any new manufacturing plants will be operated by robotics.

  • Even though the percentage of government employees (aka parasites) has remained relatively steady since 1950, we are stuck with 24 million blood suckers who contribute nothing to the country’s productivity. The average working schmuck has to pay outrageously high taxes to pay the bloated salaries and pensions of these government freeloaders.

  • And now some bad news for the formerly well paid workers in the Professional & Business Services sector, which had grown from 6.6% of total jobs in 1950 to 14.1% today. ChatGPT and the avalanche of AI tools are eliminating jobs in these sectors at hyperbolic speed. These are the same assholes who used to tell blue collar workers to “learn to code”. Well, now the plumbers, electricians, and construction workers can recommend they learn to be fry cooks at McDonalds, but too late, robots are taking those jobs.

The relatively stable employment situation over the last few years has been the only thing keeping this ship of fools from sinking.

But, the increase in the fraudulent unemployment rate from 4.0% when Trump took office to 4.6% today shows the ship is taking on water and it won’t be long before millions are drowning under the waves of debt, delusion, and dumb decisions.

Tyler Durden Sat, 12/20/2025 - 13:45

Netanyahu Wants To Attack Iran Again, Will Lobby Trump In Mar-a-Lago Visit

Netanyahu Wants To Attack Iran Again, Will Lobby Trump In Mar-a-Lago Visit

Many analysts agree that the last round of fighting between Israel and Iran last June was not the final conflict the two regional powers will face.

Despite President Trump having declared that the Islamic Republic's nuclear program had been completely obliterated in the US knock-out strikes against three nuclear facilities which came at the end of the 12-day war, Israel suspects the Iranians are still conducting nuclear development activity in secret, and are busy reconstituting and expanding their ballistic missile arsenal.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is due to visit the United States yet again, from December 28 to January 4, and will meet with President Trump at the Mar-a-Lago estate. Netanyahu will reportedly lobby the president to take more military action against Tehran.

via Associated Press

NBC reports Saturday, "Israeli officials have grown increasingly concerned that Iran is expanding production of its ballistic missile program, which was damaged by Israeli military strikes earlier this year, and are preparing to brief President Donald Trump about options for attacking it again, according to a person with direct knowledge of the plans and four former U.S. officials briefed on the plans."

"Israeli officials also are concerned that Iran is reconstituting nuclear enrichment sites the U.S. bombed in June, the sources said," the report continues. "But, they added, the officials view Iran’s efforts to rebuild facilities where they produce the ballistic missiles and to repair its crippled air defense systems as more immediate concerns."

But the timing of potential new Pentagon action against Iran couldn't be worse, given the concentration of American military assets currently in the southern Caribbean at a moment the US is threating regime change actions against Venezuela's President Maduro and cartels in Latin America.

The USS Gerald R. Ford carrier group was even recently moved from the Mediterranean, where it was closer to the Middle East and CENTCOM region, to join operations threatening Venezuela in the Caribbean.

However, the Pentagon has just this week engaged in new 'counter ISIS' strikes in Syria, and so presumably would have enough or limited support assets in the region if it chose to assist with some new Israeli anti-Iran operation.

Still, all of these unprovoked attacks on foreign powers and adventurism abroad could grow increasingly unpopular with the American people, and certainly there's a large chunk of the MAGA base which is dead set against the US entering new wars and conflicts, also at a time the Ukraine proxy war shows no signs of slowing.

The Trump administration is still standing by its assessment that Iran's nuclear capabilities have been destroyed. "The International Atomic Energy Agency and Iranian government corroborated the United States government’s assessment that Operation Midnight Hammer totally obliterated Iran’s nuclear capabilities," White House spokesperson Anna Kelly has said in a statement.

There's widespread acknowledgement that Iran's ballistic missile capability is among the most advanced in the broader region, and that it did real damage against Israel in the June war:

She further warned: "As President Trump has said, if Iran pursued a nuclear weapon, that site would be attacked and would be wiped out before they even got close." So while Trump might be open to mulling new action, the official US stance is that there's no need to at this point.

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

After Trump Withholds Endorsement, Stefanik Suddenly Bails On NY Gov Bid And Congress Too

After Trump Withholds Endorsement, Stefanik Suddenly Bails On NY Gov Bid And Congress Too

In a surprise move, Republican New York Rep. Elise Stefanik has not only pulled the plug on her recently-launched gubernatorial campaign, but will also refrain from seeking reelection to the US House. The decisions cap a year in which the ardent backer of Donald Trump has been through a hot-and-cold relationship with the mercurial president that's seen him first cancel her nomination to serve as UN ambassador and then fail to endorse her in the governor's race. 

Stefanik's national profile surged when she grilled university presidents over alleged antisemitism on their campuses in December 2023

Stefanik dropped the big news in a lengthy afternoon post on X. Key excerpts:  

"While spending precious time with my family this Christmas season, I have made the decision to suspend my campaign for Governor and will not seek re-election to Congress... While we would have overwhelmingly won this primary, it is not an effective use of our time or your generous resources to spend the first half of next year in an unnecessary and protracted Republican primary, especially in a challenging state like New York... 

While many know me as Congresswoman, my most important title is Mom. I believe that being a parent is life's greatest gift and greatest responsibility... I will feel profound regret if I don't further focus on my young son's safety, growth, and happiness -- particularly at his tender age."  

The 41-year-old Stefanik was first elected to Congress in 2014, after her campaign as a moderate helped her flip her upstate New York seat back into the GOP column -- taking it from a Democrat who'd ruined a Republican winning streak in the district that spanned a century. As Trump's first term unfolded, Stefanik strayed from the moderation of her campaign and increasingly aligned herself with Trump, calling herself "ultra MAGA." 

Though there's no indication of malice on Trump's part, Stefanik suffered a series of embarrassments and setbacks inflicted by the president (Hans Pennink/ AP via Politico)

Stefanik's national profile surged in December 2023 with her heated grilling of the presidents of Harvard, Penn and MIT, who she accused of tolerating antisemitism on their campuses amid protests over Israel's devastation of Gaza following the Oct 7 Hamas invasion of Israel. Critics contended that Stefanik wielded a false definition of "antisemitism," equating common pro-Palestinian slogans -- such as "Palestine will be free from the river to the sea" -- with "calling for the genocide of Jews." Regardless, Stefanik's questioning of the university presidents was enormously impactful: Video of her histrionic performance went viral, and Penn president Liz Magill and Harvard president Claudine Gay both announced their resignations within weeks. 

She was poised to rise to even greater visibility when Trump nominated her to serve as ambassador to the UN in his second term. Stefanik's Zionist credentials made her a perfect fit for that role, which, even more so in a Trump administration, disproportionately centers on advancing the Israeli agenda. However, in March, Trump yanked her nomination over concerns that pulling her from Congress would endanger the GOP's thin House majority. Compounding the gut-punch, by that time, Stefanik had already resigned as chair of the House GOP caucus -- the fourth-ranked Republican slot in the House.  

More indignities awaited. When socialist New York mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani visited the Oval Office in November, a reporter referenced Stefanik's condemnation of Mamdani as a "jihadist" and asked Trump if he agreed. Trump disagreed, praising Mamdani as a "very rational person...a man who really wants to see New York be great again." 

Next came an in-person White House embarrassment. Last month, Stefanik announced her candidacy for governor, in a bid to oust Democratic incumbent Kathy Hochul. Long Island Republican Bruce Blakeman, also a Trump ally, then announced his own candidacy. Last week, with Stefanik standing next to Trump, reporters asked him about the contest. Trump merely said Stefanik has "got a hell of a shot at it...she's got a little competition with a very good Republican, but she's a great Republican, so we'll see what happens." Earlier in the month, when asked if he had a preference, he merely said, "They're both great people." 

A December Siena College poll had Stefanik trailing Hochul by 19 points. Stefanik's favorability rating was a lousy 22% against 33% unfavorable. Her departure from the governor's race comes after she raised more than $12 million for the bid. It's not clear what she'll do with that cash horde. She could refund it to her donors, but under federal law, she has other options, like reallocating money to other candidates or PACs, or keeping it for a possible future run at another office.  

Tyler Durden Sat, 12/20/2025 - 12:15

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