Individual Economists

MiB: Douglas and Heather Boneparth, Money Together

The Big Picture -



 

 

Valentine’s Day Special!

This week, I speak with Douglas and Heather Boneparth. Doug is the president of Bone Fide Wealth and Heather is the firm’s Director of Business and Legal Affairs and Chief Compliance Officer. They also discuss their new book “Money Together.” They discuss the challenges couples can face discussing their finances, why marriages with joint checking accounts tend to last well, and how to navigate money as a couple.

They discuss why in relationships, money issues are sometimes not about money, but something else.

A list of their current reading/favorite books is here; A transcript of our conversation is available here Tuesday.

You can stream and download our full conversation, including any podcast extras, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and Bloomberg. All of our earlier podcasts on your favorite pod hosts can be found here.

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business next week with Hilary Allen, Professor of Law at the American University Washington College of Law. She specializes in financial regulation, banking law, securities regulation, and technology law, with a particular focus on how new financial technologies like fintech, crypto, and AI intersect with financial stability and public policy.

 

 

 

Published Book

 

Current Reading/Favorite Books

 

Books Barry Mentioned

 

The post MiB: Douglas and Heather Boneparth, Money Together appeared first on The Big Picture.

Newsom Tells Europe "Trump Is Temporary," Doubles Down On Failing Green Agenda

Zero Hedge -

Newsom Tells Europe "Trump Is Temporary," Doubles Down On Failing Green Agenda

California Gov. Gavin Newsom spoke at the Munich Security Conference earlier on Friday, telling European elites that President Trump is "temporary" and will be gone within three years.

Newsom, noticeably angered by Trump's push for deregulation and the rollback of climate policy, lashed out at the president, calling him "more destructive" than the current occupant of the White House.

The issue for Newsom is that he still operates within the climate crisis framework promoted by globalists, even as the West is moving on from two decades of nation-killing green policy regime that hollowed out parts of the industrial base and fueled inflation.

On Thursday, President Trump rescinded the 2009 Obama-era "Endangerment Finding," a determination that greenhouse gases threaten public health and welfare, which he said has been used by the radical left to justify $1.3 trillion in regulatory costs that have hurt American households and sent consumer prices soaring, especially for automobiles.

"The single largest deregulatory action in American history. That's a big statement in American history, and I think we can add the words by far," Trump told reporters.

Also this week, there was considerable discussion among industry leaders in Europe about Brussels watering down carbon-pricing markets, which have made electricity outrageously expensive and crushed the industrial base (Goldman explained more here).

And it is not just Trump and European industry leaders pushing to unwind green policies that have financially crushed working-class families and hollowed out the industrial base; major companies are also dialing back EV production plans and softening green targets as the net-zero dream collides with reality.

Here's what Newsom said earlier at the MSC (courtesy of Real Clear Politics):

GOV. GAVIN NEWSOM: Donald Trump is doubling down on stupid.

California has been a leader in climate policy going back to Ronald Reagan. In 1967, Governor Ronald Reagan established the first tailpipe emissions standards in the United States of America and created the California Air Resources Board. Three years later, a president by the name of Richard Nixon — another Republican — codified California's leadership under the Clean Air Act.

Never in the history of the United States of America has there been a more destructive president than the current occupant in the White House in Washington, D.C. He's trying to recreate the 19th century. He's a wholly owned subsidiary of big oil, gas, and coal. He's quite literally reopening coal plants in the United States of America.

He's received close to half a billion dollars in campaign contributions. He asked for $1 billion — look it up — in return for basically eliminating all regulations in the United States of America. De facto, he just did that yesterday with federal regulations and the endangerment finding.

It is code red in terms of American leadership in this space — low-carbon, green growth — and I know a thing or two about this. I represent the fourth-largest economy, from a GDP perspective, in the world, and we ran the fourth-largest economy last year nine out of ten days on 100% clean energy — two-thirds renewable energy.

We've seen our GDP grow by 81% since 2000, and we've reduced our greenhouse gas emissions by 21%. Seven times more clean energy jobs than fossil fuel jobs.

We're proving at scale that we can implement, we can compete, and we can dominate. But Donald Trump is trying to turn back the clock. And so we're showing up, but we're also showing what can be accomplished — the power of emulation.

We are in the great implementation in my state.

Final word. I hope, if there's nothing else I can communicate today: Donald Trump is temporary. He'll be gone in three years. California is a stable and reliable partner in this space, and it's important for folks to understand the temporary nature of this current administration in relationship to the issue of climate change and climate policy.

MODERATOR]: Governor, many have called Joe Biden the climate president, but that didn't help with his re-election. So how important do you think climate issues will be for the 2028 presidential election?

GAVIN NEWSOM: Well, you may not believe in science, but you've got to believe your own eyes. I mean, people are burning up, choking up, heating up. We have simultaneous droughts and floods. Historic wildfires. You may know little about California, but you've seen those images of these wildfires.

Talk about being as dumb as we want to be — places, lifestyles, traditions being wiped off the map. Greenville. Paradise, California.

And so this issue has been brought home in a very personal way, not a political way. Senator Whitehouse is here — he's also someone who deeply understands that climate risk is financial risk. It's becoming uninsurable.

This is an economic issue, not just a moral issue. It's not just a competitiveness issue. And so it's incredibly important that we talk in those terms to address some of the political dynamics. But it's again something we're on the other side of in California.

It's a big blue state, but it also has more Republicans than most Republican states. And we have long moved beyond the partisanship on this issue, because there is no Republican thermometer, there's no Democratic thermometer — there's just reality.

And people in my state have been mugged by reality. Those that have been in denial understand that we're on the other side of the debate.

Watch Here:

The key question is why Newsom continues to prioritize a failed green agenda instead of pursuing deregulation and other relief measures for working-class families; for now, Trump is the one pressing ahead with what he describes as historic deregulation.

We think we know why. Newsom serves...

Tyler Durden Sat, 02/14/2026 - 08:45

UK's Insane New Trans Guidance Says School Kids As Young As Four Can 'Change Gender'

Zero Hedge -

UK's Insane New Trans Guidance Says School Kids As Young As Four Can 'Change Gender'

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

The UK government has issued new guidance allowing primary school children, some as young as four, to ‘socially transition’ the gender by changing their pronouns at school.

According to reports in The Times, the guidelines state that parents should be involved in the “vast majority” of cases where a child questions their gender, and schools should not initiate steps towards social transitioning.

However, the move has sparked outrage, with critics arguing it undermines parental rights and exposes vulnerable children to harmful ideologies.

 

The guidance specifies that “social transitioning in primary schools should happen very rarely,” but “children will be allowed to change their gender and adopt different pronouns.”

Helen Joyce, director of advocacy at Sex Matters, lambasted the new guidance during an appearance on TalkTV, asserting that schools have been “indoctrinating children” with trans ideology for a decade, influenced by online content, influencers, and lobby groups like Stonewall and Mermaids that have been “mis-training teachers.”

She emphasized that “the government has started a de-radicalisation programme but we actually need to de-radicalise a whole generation of teachers,” adding that the guidance falls short because “only total clarity will stop it” at this point, as the issue has “gone so far.”

Joyce urged the public to respond to the 10-week consultation on keeping children safe in education, stressing that “no child can change sex.”

Maya Forstater, chief executive of the campaign group Sex Matters, said: “It should be clear by now that allowing children and parents to think that a child who starts their education as a girl can graduate as a boy, or vice versa, is a dangerous fairytale.”

Forstater noted that while the guidance has generated backlash, there are elements of it that constitute a step forward.

This latest development comes amid ongoing controversies over gender ideology and children, with trans lobbyists continuing to push extreme agendas.

Radicals from Stonewall have demanded schools stop calling pupils ‘boys and girls’ and that they replace ‘he’ and ‘she’ with ‘they’ to “remove any unnecessarily gendered language” from classrooms.

The group also advocated for gender-neutral bathrooms and uniforms in schools, even offering rewards for compliance.

A publicly funded LGBT group in Scotland was exposed for urging teachers not to inform parents about children ‘transitioning,’ with guidance stating that “a transgender young person may not have told their family about their gender identity” and that inadvertent disclosure could cause stress or risk.

These lobbyists, including LGBT Youth Scotland receiving nearly £1 million in taxpayer funds annually, have signed up over half of Scotland’s secondary schools and 40 primary schools to their schemes.

The new English guidance appears to continue this trend, despite the landmark Cass Review in 2024, which concluded that evidence for puberty blockers and gender-affirming care for children is “remarkably weak” and built on “shaky foundations.” 

The review led to a ban on puberty blockers for under-18s outside clinical trials, highlighting risks like impacts on bone health and fertility.

Yet, controversy persists with a planned clinical trial in 2026 assessing puberty blockers’ risks and benefits for about 220 children under 16. 

Campaigners have launched legal efforts and petitions to suspend it, arguing it could harm vulnerable kids, with a government response acknowledging the “unacceptable safety risk” but proceeding to gather evidence.

The new guidance also comes despite the UK Supreme Court ruling in April 2025 that the legal definition of sex under the Equality Act 2010 is based on biological sex at birth, not altered by a Gender Recognition Certificate.

The latest development is thus a massive step backward, allowing activist-driven policies to once again infiltrate education while sidelining science and parental authority.

With detransition lawsuits mounting and evidence mounting against hasty transitions, protecting children’s innocence from ideological overreach remains paramount.

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, 02/14/2026 - 08:10

UK's Insane New Trans Guidance Says School Kids As Young As Four Can 'Change Gender'

Zero Hedge -

UK's Insane New Trans Guidance Says School Kids As Young As Four Can 'Change Gender'

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

The UK government has issued new guidance allowing primary school children, some as young as four, to ‘socially transition’ the gender by changing their pronouns at school.

According to reports in The Times, the guidelines state that parents should be involved in the “vast majority” of cases where a child questions their gender, and schools should not initiate steps towards social transitioning.

However, the move has sparked outrage, with critics arguing it undermines parental rights and exposes vulnerable children to harmful ideologies.

 

The guidance specifies that “social transitioning in primary schools should happen very rarely,” but “children will be allowed to change their gender and adopt different pronouns.”

Helen Joyce, director of advocacy at Sex Matters, lambasted the new guidance during an appearance on TalkTV, asserting that schools have been “indoctrinating children” with trans ideology for a decade, influenced by online content, influencers, and lobby groups like Stonewall and Mermaids that have been “mis-training teachers.”

She emphasized that “the government has started a de-radicalisation programme but we actually need to de-radicalise a whole generation of teachers,” adding that the guidance falls short because “only total clarity will stop it” at this point, as the issue has “gone so far.”

Joyce urged the public to respond to the 10-week consultation on keeping children safe in education, stressing that “no child can change sex.”

Maya Forstater, chief executive of the campaign group Sex Matters, said: “It should be clear by now that allowing children and parents to think that a child who starts their education as a girl can graduate as a boy, or vice versa, is a dangerous fairytale.”

Forstater noted that while the guidance has generated backlash, there are elements of it that constitute a step forward.

This latest development comes amid ongoing controversies over gender ideology and children, with trans lobbyists continuing to push extreme agendas.

Radicals from Stonewall have demanded schools stop calling pupils ‘boys and girls’ and that they replace ‘he’ and ‘she’ with ‘they’ to “remove any unnecessarily gendered language” from classrooms.

The group also advocated for gender-neutral bathrooms and uniforms in schools, even offering rewards for compliance.

A publicly funded LGBT group in Scotland was exposed for urging teachers not to inform parents about children ‘transitioning,’ with guidance stating that “a transgender young person may not have told their family about their gender identity” and that inadvertent disclosure could cause stress or risk.

These lobbyists, including LGBT Youth Scotland receiving nearly £1 million in taxpayer funds annually, have signed up over half of Scotland’s secondary schools and 40 primary schools to their schemes.

The new English guidance appears to continue this trend, despite the landmark Cass Review in 2024, which concluded that evidence for puberty blockers and gender-affirming care for children is “remarkably weak” and built on “shaky foundations.” 

The review led to a ban on puberty blockers for under-18s outside clinical trials, highlighting risks like impacts on bone health and fertility.

Yet, controversy persists with a planned clinical trial in 2026 assessing puberty blockers’ risks and benefits for about 220 children under 16. 

Campaigners have launched legal efforts and petitions to suspend it, arguing it could harm vulnerable kids, with a government response acknowledging the “unacceptable safety risk” but proceeding to gather evidence.

The new guidance also comes despite the UK Supreme Court ruling in April 2025 that the legal definition of sex under the Equality Act 2010 is based on biological sex at birth, not altered by a Gender Recognition Certificate.

The latest development is thus a massive step backward, allowing activist-driven policies to once again infiltrate education while sidelining science and parental authority.

With detransition lawsuits mounting and evidence mounting against hasty transitions, protecting children’s innocence from ideological overreach remains paramount.

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, 02/14/2026 - 08:10

European Official Warns That Americans Can Be Silenced By EU Online Speech Laws

Zero Hedge -

European Official Warns That Americans Can Be Silenced By EU Online Speech Laws

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

Europeans who face criminal charges for what they said or wrote warned that Europe’s speech laws can silence Americans as well, regardless of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment protections. 

Finnish Member of Parliament Paivi Rasanen arrives to attend a court session at the Helsinki District Court in Helsinki, Finland, on Jan. 24, 2022. Antti Aimo-Koivisto/Lehtikuva/AFP via Getty Images

While testifying before the House Judiciary Committee last week, Paivi Rasanen, a member of parliament in Finland, recounted how she has been prosecuted since 2021 for quoting Bible verses to church members and on social media that questioned her church’s participation in a Gay Pride march. Although she was acquitted, first by a local district court and then by an appellate court, prosecutors appealed the decision to Finland’s supreme court, where the case currently sits. 

“My prosecution shows how quickly democratic societies can abandon free expression when the state decides which beliefs are acceptable,” Rasanen told The Epoch Times. 

“I never imagined that quoting the Bible in a Twitter post would lead to years of criminal charges, yet this is now the reality in Europe,” she said. “Americans should be concerned because once censorship is normalized, it never stays confined to one country.”

The trend among Western countries to restrict religious speech has spread beyond Europe, with the Canadian government currently advancing a bill that would remove a religious exemption from “hate speech” laws in the country’s Criminal Code. Similarly, newly proposed legislation in Queensland, Australia, would criminalize certain symbols and phrases, with penalties of up to two years in prison. 

While speaking before Congress, Rasanen was joined by Graham Linehan, an Irish writer and comedian who was arrested upon traveling through Heathrow Airport in 2025 for statements he had made in America on transgender issues. 

“For a decade, the British police have harassed me for expressing views that the majority of the public share,” Linehan stated. “We have simply been punished for objecting to fashionable yet incoherent orthodoxies.”

‘Foreign Censorship Threat’

Their testimony was underscored by the release of a Feb. 3 House report titled “The Foreign Censorship Threat,” which charged that “The European Commission, in a comprehensive decade-long effort, has successfully pressured social media platforms to change their global content moderation rules, thereby directly infringing on Americans’ online speech in the United States.”

More specifically, the report states that “though ostensibly meant to combat ‘misinformation’ and ‘hate speech,’ nonpublic documents produced to the Committee show that for the last 10 years, the European Commission has directly pressured platforms to censor lawful, political speech in the European Union and abroad.” 

This included regular meetings between U.S. tech companies and European Union regulators to put “content moderation” policies and algorithms in place to conform to European laws regarding “hate speech” and “misinformation,” the report states. The EU claims these initiatives were voluntary, but subpoenaed emails from tech executives stated that “we don’t really have a choice.”

Judicial Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) told hearing attendees that, based on subpoenas issued to U.S. tech companies regarding their correspondence with EU officials, a pattern of compelled censorship emerged that included U.S. citizens.

“The European Commission successfully pressured social media companies to change their global content moderation rules, directly harming the speech of Americans in the United States,” Jordan stated. He also referenced an incident in which European commissioner Thierry Breton warned X owner Elon Musk that his company may face penalties for posting an interview with Donald Trump during the 2024 presidential campaign. 

“The European Commission is trying to censor speech and meddle in elections worldwide,” Jordan said. “When the European Commission makes censorship demands, platforms have to listen.”

Safety or Control?

According to the European Commission’s website, the Digital Services Act (DSA) “empowers citizens by strengthening the protection of their fundamental rights online and giving them greater control and more choices when they navigate online platforms and search engines.” The DSA also requires platforms to “minimise the risks of exposing citizens, including children and young people, to illegal and harmful content.”

Critics of EU speech laws say they have become a tool to punish U.S. tech companies for allowing any content that a European country has deemed to be illegal. In countries such as Germany, that could include insulting government officials.

French member of the European Parliament Virginie Joron called the DSA a “Trojan horse for surveillance and control.” Joron accused government officials of having “seized upon the DSA as a political tool to control speech, particularly targeting platforms like X, Facebook, and Telegram.”

And legal analysts say that the reach of the DSA extends beyond Europe. 

The DSA “creates a pathway for foreign governments to influence public debate inside the United States without ever passing a single American law,” Lorcan Price, an Irish barrister who defended Rasanen and testified at the House hearing, told The Epoch Times. 

“The EU’s Digital Services Act gives European regulators unprecedented leverage over American tech companies, which means European speech rules can end up shaping what Americans are allowed to say online,” Price said. “Once U.S. platforms are forced to comply with European censorship demands to avoid massive fines, those restrictions don’t stop at Europe’s borders.”

Enormous Fines and ‘Days of Action’

According to Price, U.S. companies have already been fined €3.8 billion for violating EU speech codes, and Spain has announced that it will impose criminal charges against company owners for violations.

“The enormous fines levied on X corporation by the European Commission since the last hearing, has proved beyond all doubt that the European Union means to strangle free speech by a systemic assault on U.S. companies,” Price told hearing attendees. “The EU has a multi-pronged strategy to open multiple investigations, to add more and more regulations and to impose crippling fines, and ultimately, I fear, to attempt to break up or ban companies such as X who are pro-free speech.” 

Europe has become increasingly aggressive in prosecuting speech crimes, with Germany leading the effort. In June 2025, German police conducted early morning raids on 140 residents who were accused of violating speech laws, as part of Germany’s 12th annual “day of action against hate-posts.”

Germany prosecuted 10,732 of its citizens for “hate speech” or “harmful speech” in 2024, according to Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office. Similar actions have taken place in at least a dozen other European countries, according to Europol, the EU’s law enforcement agency.

These prosecutions have had a chilling effect on public expression. In a 2025 Cato report, author David Inserra stated that Germans now feel increasingly “unable to express their opinions, with multiple polls finding around 44 percent of Germans expressing such concerns, up from 16 percent in 1990.”

The Risks of an Unregulated Internet

The issue of online censorship has recently been complicated by the spread of child sexual abuse images and nonconsensual sexualized images of public figures, many of which were created by artificial intelligence.

On Feb. 3, French police raided the offices of X, the social media company owned by Elon Musk, charging the company with permitting child pornography and pornographic deepfake images on its site. They also summoned Musk for questioning.

British regulators are also investigating instances in which Grok, X’s AI chatbot, created numerous sexualized nonconsensual deepfake images at the request of X’s users. In 2025, the United States passed the “Take It Down Act,” which requires internet service providers, social media sites, and search engines to take down nonconsensual sexual material within 48 hours of being notified, and subjects individuals who post such material to up to two years imprisonment. 

In addition, children’s access to online pornography has prompted many lawmakers, in Europe and America, to advocate for higher age limits to be imposed on internet access. 

In the United States, the age limit for children to access the internet is currently 13. Compliance with such laws, however, generally requires that tech companies verify the identity of whoever uses their apps and websites. 

Tyler Durden Sat, 02/14/2026 - 07:00

European Official Warns That Americans Can Be Silenced By EU Online Speech Laws

Zero Hedge -

European Official Warns That Americans Can Be Silenced By EU Online Speech Laws

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

Europeans who face criminal charges for what they said or wrote warned that Europe’s speech laws can silence Americans as well, regardless of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment protections. 

Finnish Member of Parliament Paivi Rasanen arrives to attend a court session at the Helsinki District Court in Helsinki, Finland, on Jan. 24, 2022. Antti Aimo-Koivisto/Lehtikuva/AFP via Getty Images

While testifying before the House Judiciary Committee last week, Paivi Rasanen, a member of parliament in Finland, recounted how she has been prosecuted since 2021 for quoting Bible verses to church members and on social media that questioned her church’s participation in a Gay Pride march. Although she was acquitted, first by a local district court and then by an appellate court, prosecutors appealed the decision to Finland’s supreme court, where the case currently sits. 

“My prosecution shows how quickly democratic societies can abandon free expression when the state decides which beliefs are acceptable,” Rasanen told The Epoch Times. 

“I never imagined that quoting the Bible in a Twitter post would lead to years of criminal charges, yet this is now the reality in Europe,” she said. “Americans should be concerned because once censorship is normalized, it never stays confined to one country.”

The trend among Western countries to restrict religious speech has spread beyond Europe, with the Canadian government currently advancing a bill that would remove a religious exemption from “hate speech” laws in the country’s Criminal Code. Similarly, newly proposed legislation in Queensland, Australia, would criminalize certain symbols and phrases, with penalties of up to two years in prison. 

While speaking before Congress, Rasanen was joined by Graham Linehan, an Irish writer and comedian who was arrested upon traveling through Heathrow Airport in 2025 for statements he had made in America on transgender issues. 

“For a decade, the British police have harassed me for expressing views that the majority of the public share,” Linehan stated. “We have simply been punished for objecting to fashionable yet incoherent orthodoxies.”

‘Foreign Censorship Threat’

Their testimony was underscored by the release of a Feb. 3 House report titled “The Foreign Censorship Threat,” which charged that “The European Commission, in a comprehensive decade-long effort, has successfully pressured social media platforms to change their global content moderation rules, thereby directly infringing on Americans’ online speech in the United States.”

More specifically, the report states that “though ostensibly meant to combat ‘misinformation’ and ‘hate speech,’ nonpublic documents produced to the Committee show that for the last 10 years, the European Commission has directly pressured platforms to censor lawful, political speech in the European Union and abroad.” 

This included regular meetings between U.S. tech companies and European Union regulators to put “content moderation” policies and algorithms in place to conform to European laws regarding “hate speech” and “misinformation,” the report states. The EU claims these initiatives were voluntary, but subpoenaed emails from tech executives stated that “we don’t really have a choice.”

Judicial Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) told hearing attendees that, based on subpoenas issued to U.S. tech companies regarding their correspondence with EU officials, a pattern of compelled censorship emerged that included U.S. citizens.

“The European Commission successfully pressured social media companies to change their global content moderation rules, directly harming the speech of Americans in the United States,” Jordan stated. He also referenced an incident in which European commissioner Thierry Breton warned X owner Elon Musk that his company may face penalties for posting an interview with Donald Trump during the 2024 presidential campaign. 

“The European Commission is trying to censor speech and meddle in elections worldwide,” Jordan said. “When the European Commission makes censorship demands, platforms have to listen.”

Safety or Control?

According to the European Commission’s website, the Digital Services Act (DSA) “empowers citizens by strengthening the protection of their fundamental rights online and giving them greater control and more choices when they navigate online platforms and search engines.” The DSA also requires platforms to “minimise the risks of exposing citizens, including children and young people, to illegal and harmful content.”

Critics of EU speech laws say they have become a tool to punish U.S. tech companies for allowing any content that a European country has deemed to be illegal. In countries such as Germany, that could include insulting government officials.

French member of the European Parliament Virginie Joron called the DSA a “Trojan horse for surveillance and control.” Joron accused government officials of having “seized upon the DSA as a political tool to control speech, particularly targeting platforms like X, Facebook, and Telegram.”

And legal analysts say that the reach of the DSA extends beyond Europe. 

The DSA “creates a pathway for foreign governments to influence public debate inside the United States without ever passing a single American law,” Lorcan Price, an Irish barrister who defended Rasanen and testified at the House hearing, told The Epoch Times. 

“The EU’s Digital Services Act gives European regulators unprecedented leverage over American tech companies, which means European speech rules can end up shaping what Americans are allowed to say online,” Price said. “Once U.S. platforms are forced to comply with European censorship demands to avoid massive fines, those restrictions don’t stop at Europe’s borders.”

Enormous Fines and ‘Days of Action’

According to Price, U.S. companies have already been fined €3.8 billion for violating EU speech codes, and Spain has announced that it will impose criminal charges against company owners for violations.

“The enormous fines levied on X corporation by the European Commission since the last hearing, has proved beyond all doubt that the European Union means to strangle free speech by a systemic assault on U.S. companies,” Price told hearing attendees. “The EU has a multi-pronged strategy to open multiple investigations, to add more and more regulations and to impose crippling fines, and ultimately, I fear, to attempt to break up or ban companies such as X who are pro-free speech.” 

Europe has become increasingly aggressive in prosecuting speech crimes, with Germany leading the effort. In June 2025, German police conducted early morning raids on 140 residents who were accused of violating speech laws, as part of Germany’s 12th annual “day of action against hate-posts.”

Germany prosecuted 10,732 of its citizens for “hate speech” or “harmful speech” in 2024, according to Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office. Similar actions have taken place in at least a dozen other European countries, according to Europol, the EU’s law enforcement agency.

These prosecutions have had a chilling effect on public expression. In a 2025 Cato report, author David Inserra stated that Germans now feel increasingly “unable to express their opinions, with multiple polls finding around 44 percent of Germans expressing such concerns, up from 16 percent in 1990.”

The Risks of an Unregulated Internet

The issue of online censorship has recently been complicated by the spread of child sexual abuse images and nonconsensual sexualized images of public figures, many of which were created by artificial intelligence.

On Feb. 3, French police raided the offices of X, the social media company owned by Elon Musk, charging the company with permitting child pornography and pornographic deepfake images on its site. They also summoned Musk for questioning.

British regulators are also investigating instances in which Grok, X’s AI chatbot, created numerous sexualized nonconsensual deepfake images at the request of X’s users. In 2025, the United States passed the “Take It Down Act,” which requires internet service providers, social media sites, and search engines to take down nonconsensual sexual material within 48 hours of being notified, and subjects individuals who post such material to up to two years imprisonment. 

In addition, children’s access to online pornography has prompted many lawmakers, in Europe and America, to advocate for higher age limits to be imposed on internet access. 

In the United States, the age limit for children to access the internet is currently 13. Compliance with such laws, however, generally requires that tech companies verify the identity of whoever uses their apps and websites. 

Tyler Durden Sat, 02/14/2026 - 07:00

10 Weekend Reads

The Big Picture -

The weekend is here! Pour yourself a mug of Danish Blend coffee, grab a seat outside, and get ready for our longer-form weekend reads:

• Something Big Is Happening: Here’s the thing nobody outside of tech quite understands yet: the reason so many people in the industry are sounding the alarm right now is because this already happened to us. We’re not making predictions. We’re telling you what already occurred in our own jobs, and warning you that you’re next A developer’s firsthand account of the step-change in AI coding capabilities and what it means for software engineering as a profession. (shumer.dev) see also The Doomsday Scenario for AI and Jobs: What are the strongest cases for it and against it? Derek Thompson on the biggest divide in his coverage of the economy — the growing possibility that AI displaces workers faster than new jobs can be created, and why even optimists should take the downside case seriously. (Derek Thompson)

• Inside the Booming Business of Monster Porn: Teratophiliacs were once a niche group that bonded over their sexual attraction to monsters in obscure forums. Now—as online communities proliferate and genres like romantasy grow—monster porn is going mainstream. (GQ)

• The Big Scary Myth Stalking the Stock Market: The concentration of the S&P 500 in a handful of mega-caps has everyone spooked, but the historical record suggests top-heaviness is more normal than you think. (Wall Street Journal) see also The Fallacy of Concentration: The academic paper making the rounds on why index concentration isn’t the risk everyone assumes it is. (SSRN)

• 26 Rules to Be a Better Thinker in 2026: Ryan Holiday’s annual list of mental models and Stoic-flavored advice for sharpening your thinking. (Ryan Holiday)

• Is inherited wealth bad? Despite associations with the idle rich, the fact that inheritances are rising is a sign of a healthy, growing economy. (Aeon)

• Betting Men: Inside Kalshi and Polymarket’s Bull Market: The CEOs of Kalshi and Polymarket Are Betting On the Most Hated Experiment in Business. Prediction markets entice enterprising nerds to make and lose fortunes by wagering on everything from politics to the weather. Here’s why they’re unstoppable—and only getting more powerful. The prediction market wars are heating up, with billions in weekly volume and a legal battle over whether these are financial instruments or just gambling with extra steps. (Vanity Fair) see also Thousands of Amateur Gamblers Are Beating Wall Street Ph.D.s  Prediction market bettors on Kalshi are proving just as accurate as professional forecasters at predicting economic indicators — and even better on inflation. Turns out the crowd has one big edge: they only bet when they’re confident, while the pros have to guess every month regardless. (New York Times)

• Are We Tripping? The next billion-dollar blockbuster drug could be a psychedelic. There’s just one problem. (Slate)

• Even a Decade of Accidental Shootings Hasn’t Slowed America’s Top Pistol Maker: For years, gun owners have been suing Sig Sauer for alleged design defects in its flagship handgun, the P320. The company’s solution is to ban the lawsuits.  (Businessweek)

• Learning About Longevity From Long-Lived Animals: The secrets to extending human lifespans might lie in the animals that can already live for centuries. What naked mole-rats, Greenland sharks, and immortal jellyfish can teach us about aging — and why the biology of extreme longevity is more complex than any supplement pitch. (Works in Progress)

• The ‘Harvard of Umpire Schools’ Closes as Changing Times Favor Tech Over Tradition: The last independently-run umpire school recognized by MLB is shutting down — a casualty of robo-umps and a sport that increasingly trusts sensors over human eyes. (The Athletic)

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business this week with Heather & Doug Bonaparthe, a married couple who work together and wrote a book on the financial challenges couples face: “Money Together: How to find fairness in your relationship and become an unstoppable financial team.” Our discussion sits somewhere in between financial planning and couples therapy, built around real stories that try to help couples find a healthier approach to money.

 

The Global Cost of Living Index 2026

Source: Visual Capitalist

 

Sign up for our reads-only mailing list here.

 

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

The Unsettling Truths The Epstein Files Reveal About Power And Privilege

Zero Hedge -

The Unsettling Truths The Epstein Files Reveal About Power And Privilege

Authored by Patrick Keeney via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The public fixation on the Epstein files has settled, predictably, on the most lurid elements of the story.

This is understandable.

Sexual exploitation, particularly of the young, is among the most corrosive of crimes, and the scale of Epstein’s abuse, as well as the apparent indifference of powerful institutions to it, demands moral outrage.

But to focus exclusively on the sexual scandal is to miss the deeper and more unsettling lesson the affair reveals.

Documents that were included in the U.S. Department of Justice release of the Jeffrey Epstein files are photographed on Jan. 2, 2026. Jon Elswick/AP Photo

What the Epstein files expose, above all, is the social and moral estrangement of American elites from the people they claim to govern.

Epstein was not merely a predator who gained access to power. He was a node within a closed world of wealth, influence, and immunity. The scandal is not that powerful people behaved badly in private—history shows many such examples—but that they did so with a confidence rooted in the belief they were insulated from the consequences of their behavior.

They moved through a transnational elite culture that had largely severed itself from ordinary moral constraints, legal accountability, and civic obligation. That culture did not merely tolerate Epstein but normalized him.

This echoes the point Christopher Lasch made decades ago, long before private islands and hedge-fund philanthropy became familiar symbols of elite excess. In his 1994 book “The Revolt of the Elites,” Lasch argued that the modern American ruling classes had stopped seeing themselves as stewards of a shared national project. Instead, they increasingly saw themselves as a mobile, globalized caste, educated in the same institutions, moving through the same cities, governed by the same tastes, and primarily accountable only to each other. Citizenship was seen as a minor inconvenience. Nationhood and patriotism were just sentimental relics from less enlightened times.

The Epstein affair reads like a case study in Lasch’s thesis.

Here was an individual whose wealth was opaque, whose sources of income were rarely scrutinized, and whose social standing seemed immune to ordinary reputational risk. He functioned as a social broker among financiers, politicians, academics, royalty, and celebrities, many of whom publicly advocated policies of moral uplift, social justice, and global responsibility. Yet in private, they inhabited a world defined by indulgence, entitlement, and a contempt for limits.

Elite detachment today is not only economic but also existential, and it is hardly confined to Americans. The governing classes of advanced democracies increasingly inhabit a world defined by mobility, abstraction, and insulation from consequence. Their loyalties are professional rather than civic, global rather than national, and managerial rather than moral. They experience society less as a shared inheritance than as a set of problems to be administered at a distance. In such a world, attachment to place, memory, and common fate appears parochial, even suspect, while belonging itself is quietly redefined as an obstacle to progress.

Those who create policies affecting immigration, policing, education, public health, and national security rarely face the consequences themselves. They do not send their children to failing schools, live in high-crime neighborhoods, compete for scarce housing, or navigate broken public institutions. Their lives are shielded by wealth, location, private services, and increasingly by law itself.

The Epstein files sharpen this reality because they reveal not just hypocrisy, but impunity. Despite extensive documentation, repeated warnings, and credible testimony, accountability arrived slowly and incompletely. This is not because the crimes were ambiguous, but because the accused moved within a protected sphere where consequences were negotiable and enforcement discretionary. Justice, like morality, was something applied elsewhere for other people.

What enrages the public is not prurience, but recognition. The scandal resonates because it confirms a growing suspicion among ordinary people that there is one moral universe for the governing class and another for everyone else. Elites preach restraint, sustainability, and responsibility while living lives of extraordinary consumption and indulgence. They urge social sacrifice while exempting themselves from its costs. They speak the language of progress while practicing a refined form of decadence.

Lasch warned that such a ruling class would eventually forfeit legitimacy, not because of ideology, but because of character. A society cannot be governed indefinitely by people who do not believe they belong to it. When elites become tourists in their own countries, financially global, culturally unrooted, and morally untethered, their authority rests on little more than coercion and spectacle.

The Epstein files should therefore be read less as an aberration than as a symptom. They reveal a governing class that has lost the habits of self-restraint that once justified its power, and the sense of common fate that once bound leaders to citizens.

For many, the salient point of the Epstein files is the scandal. I think it is more accurately seen as a disclosure.

The danger is not merely that such elites are corrupt, but that they are bored. Bored with limits, bored with norms, bored with accountability, and ultimately bored with democracy itself. That boredom, Lasch understood, is the precondition of revolt, not by the masses, but by those who no longer feel answerable to them.

If the Epstein affair provokes lasting anger, it is because it crystallizes a truth many citizens already sense, that the people shaping the future live in a world apart, governed by different rules, and increasingly incapable of moral seriousness. No society can long endure that division without consequence.

The question is not whether further revelations will emerge. It is whether the public will finally insist that elites once again live under the same moral and civic conditions as those they presume to lead.

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

Tyler Durden Fri, 02/13/2026 - 23:25

Germany, France Hold Secret Talks On Continental Nuclear Shield In Pivot From US

Zero Hedge -

Germany, France Hold Secret Talks On Continental Nuclear Shield In Pivot From US

Has Europe really embarked on a nuclear reset, rethinking its US-led deterrent architecture? For the first time since the Cold War, major European capitals are openly debating the need for an independent nuclear deterrent - an emerging theme on clear display this week at the Munich Security Conference.

We've reported before that the turning point came in March, when Washington temporarily halted battlefield intelligence sharing with Ukraine - a move that forced allies to confront the prospect that Washington may no longer serve as a dependable security guarantor, also as ratcheting Trump rhetoric increasingly highlights Europe needing to shoulder its own defense burden.

France's Macron and Germany's Merz held "confidential talks" on European nuclear deterrence, the German chancellor has confirmed. Still, he tried to downplay the full implications in his Friday remarks: "We Germans are adhering to our legal obligations. We consider this strictly within the context of our nuclear sharing within NATO and we will not allow zones of differing security to emerge in Europe," Merz said.

via Reuters

However, President Macron on the same day was a little more forthright, describing amid the backdrop of ongoing direct talks between Moscow and the United States: "We will live with Russia in the same place, and the Europeans at the same place, and I don't want this negotiation to be organized by someone else," he said. And more bluntness on the nuclear issue:

Macron told the gathering in Munich, which focuses on security and brings together world leaders, future parameters of security may include a new, more holistic nuclear deterrence among European allies. Until now, deterrence has been a strictly national domain and a highly delicate issue because of its implications on sovereignty.

The French leader teased a "new strategic dialogue" on nuclear arms.

"We have engaged a strategic dialogue with Chancelor Merz and (other) European leaders in order to see how we can articulate our national doctrine" with special cooperation and common security interests in some key countries, he said.

"This dialogue is important because it's a way to articulate nuclear deterrence in a holistic approach of defense and security, Macron continued. "This is a way to create convergence in our strategic approach between Germany and France."

Macron's remarks before the Munich audience were tinged with implicit (negative) references to the US administration: "We need a much more positive mindset. There has been a tendency in this place and beyond to overlook Europe and sometimes to criticise it outright," he stated.

"Caricatures have been made, Europe has been vilified as an aging, slow, fragmented construct sidelined by history. As an overregulated economy that shuts innovation, as a society preyed by migration that would corruption its precious traditions."

"And most curiously yet, in some quarters, as a repressive continent," he added. "Everyone should take a cue from us, instead of trying to divide us."

Merz had some similarly dramatic things to say on 'lost American leadership'...

"The leadership claim of the U.S. is being challenged, perhaps already lost," Merz said during the opening of the Munich Security Conference, laying out the starkest assessment yet from Berlin of a world increasingly defined by great-power rivalry. “In the era of great powers, our freedom is no longer simply guaranteed. It is under threat.”

He argued the global system itself may already have collapsed. "The international order based on rights and rules… no longer exists in the way it once did," he said.

You will find more infographics at Statista

The Europeans are fundamentally worried that any new regional architecture related to potential settlement to the Russia-Ukraine war could leave the continent weakened and exposed, and that the Trump admin might be willing to cede too much in the way of compromise to Russia.

We underscored previously that ff the US and Russia craft the final settlement, Europe must either accept it or refuse and confront the consequences alone. And yet, neither Paris nor Berlin is prepared for the latter scenario. 

Tyler Durden Fri, 02/13/2026 - 23:00

Germany, France Hold Secret Talks On Continental Nuclear Shield In Pivot From US

Zero Hedge -

Germany, France Hold Secret Talks On Continental Nuclear Shield In Pivot From US

Has Europe really embarked on a nuclear reset, rethinking its US-led deterrent architecture? For the first time since the Cold War, major European capitals are openly debating the need for an independent nuclear deterrent - an emerging theme on clear display this week at the Munich Security Conference.

We've reported before that the turning point came in March, when Washington temporarily halted battlefield intelligence sharing with Ukraine - a move that forced allies to confront the prospect that Washington may no longer serve as a dependable security guarantor, also as ratcheting Trump rhetoric increasingly highlights Europe needing to shoulder its own defense burden.

France's Macron and Germany's Merz held "confidential talks" on European nuclear deterrence, the German chancellor has confirmed. Still, he tried to downplay the full implications in his Friday remarks: "We Germans are adhering to our legal obligations. We consider this strictly within the context of our nuclear sharing within NATO and we will not allow zones of differing security to emerge in Europe," Merz said.

via Reuters

However, President Macron on the same day was a little more forthright, describing amid the backdrop of ongoing direct talks between Moscow and the United States: "We will live with Russia in the same place, and the Europeans at the same place, and I don't want this negotiation to be organized by someone else," he said. And more bluntness on the nuclear issue:

Macron told the gathering in Munich, which focuses on security and brings together world leaders, future parameters of security may include a new, more holistic nuclear deterrence among European allies. Until now, deterrence has been a strictly national domain and a highly delicate issue because of its implications on sovereignty.

The French leader teased a "new strategic dialogue" on nuclear arms.

"We have engaged a strategic dialogue with Chancelor Merz and (other) European leaders in order to see how we can articulate our national doctrine" with special cooperation and common security interests in some key countries, he said.

"This dialogue is important because it's a way to articulate nuclear deterrence in a holistic approach of defense and security, Macron continued. "This is a way to create convergence in our strategic approach between Germany and France."

Macron's remarks before the Munich audience were tinged with implicit (negative) references to the US administration: "We need a much more positive mindset. There has been a tendency in this place and beyond to overlook Europe and sometimes to criticise it outright," he stated.

"Caricatures have been made, Europe has been vilified as an aging, slow, fragmented construct sidelined by history. As an overregulated economy that shuts innovation, as a society preyed by migration that would corruption its precious traditions."

"And most curiously yet, in some quarters, as a repressive continent," he added. "Everyone should take a cue from us, instead of trying to divide us."

Merz had some similarly dramatic things to say on 'lost American leadership'...

"The leadership claim of the U.S. is being challenged, perhaps already lost," Merz said during the opening of the Munich Security Conference, laying out the starkest assessment yet from Berlin of a world increasingly defined by great-power rivalry. “In the era of great powers, our freedom is no longer simply guaranteed. It is under threat.”

He argued the global system itself may already have collapsed. "The international order based on rights and rules… no longer exists in the way it once did," he said.

You will find more infographics at Statista

The Europeans are fundamentally worried that any new regional architecture related to potential settlement to the Russia-Ukraine war could leave the continent weakened and exposed, and that the Trump admin might be willing to cede too much in the way of compromise to Russia.

We underscored previously that ff the US and Russia craft the final settlement, Europe must either accept it or refuse and confront the consequences alone. And yet, neither Paris nor Berlin is prepared for the latter scenario. 

Tyler Durden Fri, 02/13/2026 - 23:00

Stolen Land At The Grammys: How Hollywood Groupthink Threatens Democracy

Zero Hedge -

Stolen Land At The Grammys: How Hollywood Groupthink Threatens Democracy

Authored by Patrick Keeney via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Commentary

Among the consolations of youth is the certainty with which one holds beliefs about the world. There is comfort in the conviction that one’s moral bearings are firmly set, that one’s understanding of complex questions is not only sincere but also correct. The world appears legible; right and wrong seem sharply drawn; doubt and nuance are dismissed as weakness or evasion.

The 68th Grammy Awards Premiere Ceremony at Peacock Theater in Los Angeles on Feb. 1, 2026. Photo by Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images for The Recording Academy

There is rarely a single moment when these certainties collapse. They loosen instead through the slow accumulation of experience. Over time, one discovers that life resists easy judgments. Circumstances complicate principles. Good intentions collide with unintended consequences. Our friends betray us. The world proves denser, more conflicted, and less amenable to neat and tidy conclusions than youthful confidence would suggest.

This recognition of complexity, fallibility, and the limits of one’s own certainty is among the quiet achievements of maturity. It marks the point at which conviction learns restraint and moral seriousness acquires humility. 

Yet much of our public culture now moves in precisely the opposite direction. It rewards juvenile certainty while punishing hesitation, qualification, or good-faith disagreements. Confidence is applauded regardless of depth; slogans substitute for argument; restraint is recast as moral failure.

That inversion was on clear display at the recent Grammy Awards, when Billie Eilish declared to enthusiastic applause that “no one is illegal on stolen land.” It was left unspecified just whose land was being referenced, by whom it was stolen, and according to what historical or legal criteria that claim could be made.

The audience, however, needed no clarification. Eilish’s statement was rewarded exactly because it avoided complexity and invited no questions.

What was on display was not moral seriousness but a high school performance, an adolescent sense of righteousness delivered with absolute certainty and accepted as self-evident truth. One might charitably attribute such unthinking, categorical statements to Eilish’s youth. Alas, hers is a posture that we have come to expect from many of Hollywood’s men and women: confident, declarative, and curiously uninterested in the burdens of thought that genuine moral judgment requires.

This brings us to the core issue. The greatest threat to free expression today isn’t obvious censorship or government orders. Instead, it’s a more subtle and widespread force: cultural groupthink. This informal but influential system of rewards and punishments quietly limits the range of acceptable opinions, shaping what people feel allowed to say, what they hesitate to voice, and which questions are no longer asked.

Nowhere is this trend more evident than in modern celebrity culture. Hollywood and the broader entertainment sector have become models of ideological conformity, especially on divisive social and political topics. From climate change and gender issues to racial justice and international conflicts, Hollywood repeats the same messages, all delivered with youthful confidence. The same moral language, slogans, and conclusions are echoed with ritualistic consistency.

The Eilish episode was not an aberration but a symptom. It illustrated a broader pattern in which public speech functions less as a means of inquiry than as a test of ideological conformity. The cost of dissent is not a thoughtful and considered rebuttal. Rather, it takes the form of reputational damage through social media pile-ons, calls for boycotts, professional exclusion, or quiet blacklisting. Under such conditions, silence is often the rational choice. Most people have families to support and livelihoods to protect.

The greater danger lies in the lesson this celebrity culture teaches: that there is only one permissible way to think and speak about certain issues, and that deviation signals not error but moral failure. Political and social questions are reduced to dogma rather than debated. Once moralized in this way, disagreement becomes illegitimate by definition.

This logic now extends well beyond Hollywood. Similar patterns can be found in journalism, medicine, academia, corporate governance, and even the legal profession. Approved vocabularies narrow discussion; certain premises must be affirmed before conversation can begin; others may not be questioned at all. Arguments are no longer answered on their merits but dismissed as evidence of bad character or suspect motives.

The consequences for democratic culture are profound. Democracies do not depend on unanimity but on citizens who can weigh competing claims, tolerate uncertainty, and revise their views in light of evidence and argument. Groupthink undermines these capacities by rewarding conformity and punishing independent judgment. Over time, public discourse loses its corrective function. Errors persist not because they are persuasive, but because questioning them carries too high a cost.

When dialogue is replaced by dogma, democratic societies become brittle. They lose their ability to self-correct and grow more intolerant of internal differences. Public conversations turn into moral theater, where the goal is no longer understanding opposing views but performing virtue and condemning heresy. Speech persists only in its performative form, losing its role in testing ideas and correcting errors.

The defense of free speech, therefore, is not a defense of cruelty, indifference, or provocation for its own sake. It is a defense of intellectual diversity and the recognition that complex problems seldom have simple solutions; progress relies on the open debate of ideas. Democracies do not demand that citizens agree; they require honest argument, careful listening, and acceptance that disagreement is not a moral flaw but a civic essential.

It is a hard truth that others, who are just as committed, moral, or intelligent as we are, nonetheless see the world differently. The challenge is in accepting that our opponents are not simply ignorant or malicious but may have reached their conclusions through reasons as serious as our own. This common insight strips away the adolescent comfort of moral superiority. It forces us to face the possibility that we, too, may be wrong.

Such humility is rarely celebrated. But it is among the foundational virtues of democratic life. The alternative is a culture of silence and self-censorship, in which people say only what is safe and believe only what is approved. Such cultures may appear stable—even virtuous—but they are dangerously fragile. When reality intrudes, as it always does, societies that have lost the habit of open debate are poorly equipped to respond.

The strongest defense of democratic life is not enforced consensus but the courage to dissent, the patience to listen, and the willingness to engage in genuine dialogue, where we can change our minds. 

Free speech, properly understood, is not a threat to democracy. It is its foundation.

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

Tyler Durden Fri, 02/13/2026 - 22:35

Stolen Land At The Grammys: How Hollywood Groupthink Threatens Democracy

Zero Hedge -

Stolen Land At The Grammys: How Hollywood Groupthink Threatens Democracy

Authored by Patrick Keeney via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Commentary

Among the consolations of youth is the certainty with which one holds beliefs about the world. There is comfort in the conviction that one’s moral bearings are firmly set, that one’s understanding of complex questions is not only sincere but also correct. The world appears legible; right and wrong seem sharply drawn; doubt and nuance are dismissed as weakness or evasion.

The 68th Grammy Awards Premiere Ceremony at Peacock Theater in Los Angeles on Feb. 1, 2026. Photo by Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images for The Recording Academy

There is rarely a single moment when these certainties collapse. They loosen instead through the slow accumulation of experience. Over time, one discovers that life resists easy judgments. Circumstances complicate principles. Good intentions collide with unintended consequences. Our friends betray us. The world proves denser, more conflicted, and less amenable to neat and tidy conclusions than youthful confidence would suggest.

This recognition of complexity, fallibility, and the limits of one’s own certainty is among the quiet achievements of maturity. It marks the point at which conviction learns restraint and moral seriousness acquires humility. 

Yet much of our public culture now moves in precisely the opposite direction. It rewards juvenile certainty while punishing hesitation, qualification, or good-faith disagreements. Confidence is applauded regardless of depth; slogans substitute for argument; restraint is recast as moral failure.

That inversion was on clear display at the recent Grammy Awards, when Billie Eilish declared to enthusiastic applause that “no one is illegal on stolen land.” It was left unspecified just whose land was being referenced, by whom it was stolen, and according to what historical or legal criteria that claim could be made.

The audience, however, needed no clarification. Eilish’s statement was rewarded exactly because it avoided complexity and invited no questions.

What was on display was not moral seriousness but a high school performance, an adolescent sense of righteousness delivered with absolute certainty and accepted as self-evident truth. One might charitably attribute such unthinking, categorical statements to Eilish’s youth. Alas, hers is a posture that we have come to expect from many of Hollywood’s men and women: confident, declarative, and curiously uninterested in the burdens of thought that genuine moral judgment requires.

This brings us to the core issue. The greatest threat to free expression today isn’t obvious censorship or government orders. Instead, it’s a more subtle and widespread force: cultural groupthink. This informal but influential system of rewards and punishments quietly limits the range of acceptable opinions, shaping what people feel allowed to say, what they hesitate to voice, and which questions are no longer asked.

Nowhere is this trend more evident than in modern celebrity culture. Hollywood and the broader entertainment sector have become models of ideological conformity, especially on divisive social and political topics. From climate change and gender issues to racial justice and international conflicts, Hollywood repeats the same messages, all delivered with youthful confidence. The same moral language, slogans, and conclusions are echoed with ritualistic consistency.

The Eilish episode was not an aberration but a symptom. It illustrated a broader pattern in which public speech functions less as a means of inquiry than as a test of ideological conformity. The cost of dissent is not a thoughtful and considered rebuttal. Rather, it takes the form of reputational damage through social media pile-ons, calls for boycotts, professional exclusion, or quiet blacklisting. Under such conditions, silence is often the rational choice. Most people have families to support and livelihoods to protect.

The greater danger lies in the lesson this celebrity culture teaches: that there is only one permissible way to think and speak about certain issues, and that deviation signals not error but moral failure. Political and social questions are reduced to dogma rather than debated. Once moralized in this way, disagreement becomes illegitimate by definition.

This logic now extends well beyond Hollywood. Similar patterns can be found in journalism, medicine, academia, corporate governance, and even the legal profession. Approved vocabularies narrow discussion; certain premises must be affirmed before conversation can begin; others may not be questioned at all. Arguments are no longer answered on their merits but dismissed as evidence of bad character or suspect motives.

The consequences for democratic culture are profound. Democracies do not depend on unanimity but on citizens who can weigh competing claims, tolerate uncertainty, and revise their views in light of evidence and argument. Groupthink undermines these capacities by rewarding conformity and punishing independent judgment. Over time, public discourse loses its corrective function. Errors persist not because they are persuasive, but because questioning them carries too high a cost.

When dialogue is replaced by dogma, democratic societies become brittle. They lose their ability to self-correct and grow more intolerant of internal differences. Public conversations turn into moral theater, where the goal is no longer understanding opposing views but performing virtue and condemning heresy. Speech persists only in its performative form, losing its role in testing ideas and correcting errors.

The defense of free speech, therefore, is not a defense of cruelty, indifference, or provocation for its own sake. It is a defense of intellectual diversity and the recognition that complex problems seldom have simple solutions; progress relies on the open debate of ideas. Democracies do not demand that citizens agree; they require honest argument, careful listening, and acceptance that disagreement is not a moral flaw but a civic essential.

It is a hard truth that others, who are just as committed, moral, or intelligent as we are, nonetheless see the world differently. The challenge is in accepting that our opponents are not simply ignorant or malicious but may have reached their conclusions through reasons as serious as our own. This common insight strips away the adolescent comfort of moral superiority. It forces us to face the possibility that we, too, may be wrong.

Such humility is rarely celebrated. But it is among the foundational virtues of democratic life. The alternative is a culture of silence and self-censorship, in which people say only what is safe and believe only what is approved. Such cultures may appear stable—even virtuous—but they are dangerously fragile. When reality intrudes, as it always does, societies that have lost the habit of open debate are poorly equipped to respond.

The strongest defense of democratic life is not enforced consensus but the courage to dissent, the patience to listen, and the willingness to engage in genuine dialogue, where we can change our minds. 

Free speech, properly understood, is not a threat to democracy. It is its foundation.

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

Tyler Durden Fri, 02/13/2026 - 22:35

WhatsApp & YouTube Blocked In Russia, Telegram Throttled As State "Super-App" Falters

Zero Hedge -

WhatsApp & YouTube Blocked In Russia, Telegram Throttled As State "Super-App" Falters

The West has been calling Russia's ever-tightening internet regulations on its citizenry a "digital Iron Curtain". Already over a period of months and years of the Ukraine war, various popular US-based social media apps have been throttled and even banned, but this week things have escalated with YouTube and WhatsApp being blocked in Russia:

Russia's internet regulator Roskomnadzor has removed"youtube.com" from its DNS (Domain Name System) servers. If a user tries to access the site directly without a VPN (Virtual Private Network), their router can no longer assign the address to its IP address.

This means that You Tube is no longer accessible in Russia. The WhatsApp domain has also disappeared from Roskomnadzor's servers. The Russian government has also launched a campaign against the messenger app Telegram, leading analysts to say Roskomnadzor is cracking down on platforms beyond its control.

But perhaps even more impactful - in terms of Russians quickly getting news, information, and public statements (even from their own government channels) - is the new move to throttle and block Telegram.

An interesting theory, especially in the wake of the shocking Wagner mutiny of 2023...

Russia’s state media watchdog Roskomnadzor has tightened the screws on Telegram, accusing the messaging giant of failing to curb fraud and safeguard user data, which ironically is similar to what the French government accused the company of when it famously detained billionaire Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov.

The platform has an estimated over 93 million Russian users, which is more than 60% of the total population, but the Kremlin hopes to replicate with its state-backed messenger, Max. The all-in-one 'super-app' has been described in the following:

Max, a state-backed messenger developed by VK, is being positioned as a patriotic alternative to WhatsApp and Telegram — platforms that in recent weeks have suffered complete or partial disruptions to voice and video calls across the country.

Max is further being dubbed a "state app":

Beyond the glitzy marketing, Max is built to serve a political purpose. Officials want it integrated with the state services portal Gosuslugi via the Unified Identification and Authentication System (ESIA). That would allow citizens to log into government platforms, pay utility bills or sign documents directly through the app, in effect making Max a digital gateway to basic civil services.

But at a government commission meeting in early August, the Federal Security Service (FSB) initially blocked Max's immediate connection to ESIA, citing the risk of personal data leaks. According to IT industry sources cited by Russian media, the FSB submitted a multi-page list of requirements ranging from certified encryption systems to source code audits. Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Grigorenko, who oversees the project, voiced similar concerns.

BBC has pointed out: "Moscow has made extensive efforts to push Russians to its state-developed Max app, which critics say lacks end-to-end encryption."

As for Telegram, it's loss will be huge for Russians, given that for starters every major Russian media outlet operates a Telegram channel, some even publishing there exclusively.

Major state and legacy outlets including RIA Novosti, TASS, RBC, Interfax, and Kommersant maintain large, highly active channels. In border regions like Belgorod, battered by power outages and municipal disruptions from Ukrainian strikes, Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov uses Telegram to deliver updates directly to residents.

The same goes for many oblasts across Russia's south which have remained a frontline of sorts when it comes to cross-border attacks out of Ukraine.

Moskva News Agency

The other problem in getting rid of Telegram is that Russia's Defense Ministry pushes near-daily battlefield briefings, combat footage, and soldier interviews to its several hundreds of thousands of followers. So clearly any kind of major 'transition' - as is now apparently being forced on the population, won't come easy.

The Kremlin has long warned against Western intelligence infiltration and data exploitation especially via US-based platforms. It has also long battled what it deems 'propaganda' via content on these apps. But to some degree they are also mediums where Russian and Ukrainian officials can directly address the other side, serving the cause of public diplomacy, or at least clarifying each's position.

Tyler Durden Fri, 02/13/2026 - 22:10

WhatsApp & YouTube Blocked In Russia, Telegram Throttled As State "Super-App" Falters

Zero Hedge -

WhatsApp & YouTube Blocked In Russia, Telegram Throttled As State "Super-App" Falters

The West has been calling Russia's ever-tightening internet regulations on its citizenry a "digital Iron Curtain". Already over a period of months and years of the Ukraine war, various popular US-based social media apps have been throttled and even banned, but this week things have escalated with YouTube and WhatsApp being blocked in Russia:

Russia's internet regulator Roskomnadzor has removed"youtube.com" from its DNS (Domain Name System) servers. If a user tries to access the site directly without a VPN (Virtual Private Network), their router can no longer assign the address to its IP address.

This means that You Tube is no longer accessible in Russia. The WhatsApp domain has also disappeared from Roskomnadzor's servers. The Russian government has also launched a campaign against the messenger app Telegram, leading analysts to say Roskomnadzor is cracking down on platforms beyond its control.

But perhaps even more impactful - in terms of Russians quickly getting news, information, and public statements (even from their own government channels) - is the new move to throttle and block Telegram.

An interesting theory, especially in the wake of the shocking Wagner mutiny of 2023...

Russia’s state media watchdog Roskomnadzor has tightened the screws on Telegram, accusing the messaging giant of failing to curb fraud and safeguard user data, which ironically is similar to what the French government accused the company of when it famously detained billionaire Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov.

The platform has an estimated over 93 million Russian users, which is more than 60% of the total population, but the Kremlin hopes to replicate with its state-backed messenger, Max. The all-in-one 'super-app' has been described in the following:

Max, a state-backed messenger developed by VK, is being positioned as a patriotic alternative to WhatsApp and Telegram — platforms that in recent weeks have suffered complete or partial disruptions to voice and video calls across the country.

Max is further being dubbed a "state app":

Beyond the glitzy marketing, Max is built to serve a political purpose. Officials want it integrated with the state services portal Gosuslugi via the Unified Identification and Authentication System (ESIA). That would allow citizens to log into government platforms, pay utility bills or sign documents directly through the app, in effect making Max a digital gateway to basic civil services.

But at a government commission meeting in early August, the Federal Security Service (FSB) initially blocked Max's immediate connection to ESIA, citing the risk of personal data leaks. According to IT industry sources cited by Russian media, the FSB submitted a multi-page list of requirements ranging from certified encryption systems to source code audits. Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Grigorenko, who oversees the project, voiced similar concerns.

BBC has pointed out: "Moscow has made extensive efforts to push Russians to its state-developed Max app, which critics say lacks end-to-end encryption."

As for Telegram, it's loss will be huge for Russians, given that for starters every major Russian media outlet operates a Telegram channel, some even publishing there exclusively.

Major state and legacy outlets including RIA Novosti, TASS, RBC, Interfax, and Kommersant maintain large, highly active channels. In border regions like Belgorod, battered by power outages and municipal disruptions from Ukrainian strikes, Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov uses Telegram to deliver updates directly to residents.

The same goes for many oblasts across Russia's south which have remained a frontline of sorts when it comes to cross-border attacks out of Ukraine.

Moskva News Agency

The other problem in getting rid of Telegram is that Russia's Defense Ministry pushes near-daily battlefield briefings, combat footage, and soldier interviews to its several hundreds of thousands of followers. So clearly any kind of major 'transition' - as is now apparently being forced on the population, won't come easy.

The Kremlin has long warned against Western intelligence infiltration and data exploitation especially via US-based platforms. It has also long battled what it deems 'propaganda' via content on these apps. But to some degree they are also mediums where Russian and Ukrainian officials can directly address the other side, serving the cause of public diplomacy, or at least clarifying each's position.

Tyler Durden Fri, 02/13/2026 - 22:10

Amazon's Ring And Google's Nest Unwittingly Reveal The Severity Of The U.S. Surveillance State

Zero Hedge -

Amazon's Ring And Google's Nest Unwittingly Reveal The Severity Of The U.S. Surveillance State

Authored by Glenn Greenwald via Substack,

That the U.S. Surveillance State is rapidly growing to the point of ubiquity has been demonstrated over the past week by seemingly benign events. While the picture that emerges is grim, to put it mildly, at least Americans are again confronted with crystal clarity over how severe this has become.

One of Google’s Nest surveillance cameras, whose recordings can be accessed by Google even if users don’t subscribe to the security firm’s services. CC Photo Lab / Shutterstock

The latest round of valid panic over privacy began during the Super Bowl held on Sunday. During the game, Amazon ran a commercial for its Ring camera security system. The ad manipulatively exploited people’s love of dogs to induce them to ignore the consequences of what Amazon was touting. It seems that trick did not work.

The ad highlighted what the company calls its “Search Party” feature, whereby one can upload a picture, for example, of a lost dog. Doing so will activate multiple other Amazon Ring cameras in the neighborhood, which will, in turn, use AI programs to scan all dogs, it seems, and identify the one that is lost. The 30-second commercial was full of heart-tugging scenes of young children and elderly people being reunited with their lost dogs.

But the graphic Amazon used seems to have unwittingly depicted how invasive this technology can be. That this capability now exists in a product that has long been pitched as nothing more than a simple tool for homeowners to monitor their own homes created, it seems, an unavoidable contract between public understanding of Ring and what Amazon was now boasting it could do.

Amazon’s Super Bowl ad for Ring and its “Search Party” feature.

Many people were not just surprised but quite shocked and alarmed to learn that what they thought was merely their own personal security system now has the ability to link with countless other Ring cameras to form a neighborhood-wide (or city-wide, or state-wide) surveillance dragnet. That Amazon emphasized that this feature is available (for now) only to those who “opt-in” did not assuage concerns.

Numerous media outlets sounded the alarm. The online privacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) condemned Ring’s program as previewing “a world where biometric identification could be unleashed from consumer devices to identify, track, and locate anything — human, pet, and otherwise.”

Many private citizens who previously used Ring also reacted negatively. “Viral videos online show people removing or destroying their cameras over privacy concerns,” reported USA Today. The backlash became so severe that, just days later, Amazon — seeking to assuage public anger — announced the termination of a partnership between Ring and Flock Safety, a police surveillance tech company (while Flock is unrelated to Search Party, public backlash made it impossible, at least for now, for Amazon to send Ring’s user data to a police surveillance firm).

The Amazon ad seems to have triggered a long-overdue spotlight on how the combination of ubiquitous cameras, AI, and rapidly advancing facial recognition software will render the term “privacy” little more than a quaint concept from the past. As EFF put it, Ring’s program “could already run afoul of biometric privacy laws in some states, which require explicit, informed consent from individuals before a company can just run face recognition on someone.”

Those concerns escalated just a few days later in the context of the Tucson disappearance of Nancy Guthrie, mother of long-time TODAY Show host Savannah Guthrie. At the home where she lives, Nancy Guthrie used Google’s Nest camera for security, a product similar to Amazon’s Ring.

Guthrie, however, did not pay Google for a subscription for those cameras, instead solely using the cameras for real-time monitoring. As CBS News explained, “with a free Google Nest plan, the video should have been deleted within 3 to 6 hours — long after Guthrie was reported missing.” Even professional privacy advocates have understood that customers who use Nest without a subscription will not have their cameras connected to Google’s data servers, meaning that no recordings will be stored or available for any period beyond a few hours.

For that reason, Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos announced early on “that there was no video available in part because Guthrie didn’t have an active subscription to the company.” Many people, for obvious reasons, prefer to avoid permanently storing comprehensive daily video reports with Google of when they leave and return to their own home, or who visits them at their home, when, and for how long.

Despite all this, FBI investigators on the case were somehow magically able to “recover” this video from Guthrie’s camera many days later. FBI Director Kash Patel was essentially forced to admit this when he released still images of what appears to be the masked perpetrator who broke into Guthrie’s home. (The Google user agreement, which few users read, does protect the company by stating that images may be stored even in the absence of a subscription.)

Image obtained through Nancy Guthrie’s unsubscribed Google Nest camera and released by the FBI.

While the “discovery” of footage from this home camera by Google engineers is obviously of great value to the Guthrie family and law enforcement agents searching for Guthrie, it raises obvious yet serious questions about why Google, contrary to common understanding, was storing the video footage of unsubscribed users. A former NSA data researcher and CEO of a cybersecurity firm, Patrick Johnson, told CBS: “There's kind of this old saying that data is never deleted, it's just renamed.”

It is rather remarkable that Americans are being led, more or less willingly, into a state-corporate, Panopticon-like domestic surveillance state with relatively little resistance, though the widespread reaction to Amazon’s Ring ad is encouraging. Much of that muted reaction may be due to a lack of realization about the severity of the evolving privacy threat. Beyond that, privacy and other core rights can seem abstract and less of a priority than more material concerns, at least until they are gone.

It is always the case that there are benefits available from relinquishing core civil liberties: allowing infringements on free speech may reduce false claims and hateful ideas; allowing searches and seizures without warrants will likely help the police catch more criminals, and do so more quickly; giving up privacy may, in fact, enhance security.

But the core premise of the West generally, and the U.S. in particular, is that those trade-offs are never worthwhile. Americans still all learn and are taught to admire the iconic (if not apocryphal) 1775 words of Patrick Henry, which came to define the core ethos of the Revolutionary War and American Founding: “Give me liberty or give me death.” It is hard to express in more definitive terms on which side of that liberty-versus-security trade-off the U.S. was intended to fall.

Read the rest here...

Tyler Durden Fri, 02/13/2026 - 21:45

Amazon's Ring And Google's Nest Unwittingly Reveal The Severity Of The U.S. Surveillance State

Zero Hedge -

Amazon's Ring And Google's Nest Unwittingly Reveal The Severity Of The U.S. Surveillance State

Authored by Glenn Greenwald via Substack,

That the U.S. Surveillance State is rapidly growing to the point of ubiquity has been demonstrated over the past week by seemingly benign events. While the picture that emerges is grim, to put it mildly, at least Americans are again confronted with crystal clarity over how severe this has become.

One of Google’s Nest surveillance cameras, whose recordings can be accessed by Google even if users don’t subscribe to the security firm’s services. CC Photo Lab / Shutterstock

The latest round of valid panic over privacy began during the Super Bowl held on Sunday. During the game, Amazon ran a commercial for its Ring camera security system. The ad manipulatively exploited people’s love of dogs to induce them to ignore the consequences of what Amazon was touting. It seems that trick did not work.

The ad highlighted what the company calls its “Search Party” feature, whereby one can upload a picture, for example, of a lost dog. Doing so will activate multiple other Amazon Ring cameras in the neighborhood, which will, in turn, use AI programs to scan all dogs, it seems, and identify the one that is lost. The 30-second commercial was full of heart-tugging scenes of young children and elderly people being reunited with their lost dogs.

But the graphic Amazon used seems to have unwittingly depicted how invasive this technology can be. That this capability now exists in a product that has long been pitched as nothing more than a simple tool for homeowners to monitor their own homes created, it seems, an unavoidable contract between public understanding of Ring and what Amazon was now boasting it could do.

Amazon’s Super Bowl ad for Ring and its “Search Party” feature.

Many people were not just surprised but quite shocked and alarmed to learn that what they thought was merely their own personal security system now has the ability to link with countless other Ring cameras to form a neighborhood-wide (or city-wide, or state-wide) surveillance dragnet. That Amazon emphasized that this feature is available (for now) only to those who “opt-in” did not assuage concerns.

Numerous media outlets sounded the alarm. The online privacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) condemned Ring’s program as previewing “a world where biometric identification could be unleashed from consumer devices to identify, track, and locate anything — human, pet, and otherwise.”

Many private citizens who previously used Ring also reacted negatively. “Viral videos online show people removing or destroying their cameras over privacy concerns,” reported USA Today. The backlash became so severe that, just days later, Amazon — seeking to assuage public anger — announced the termination of a partnership between Ring and Flock Safety, a police surveillance tech company (while Flock is unrelated to Search Party, public backlash made it impossible, at least for now, for Amazon to send Ring’s user data to a police surveillance firm).

The Amazon ad seems to have triggered a long-overdue spotlight on how the combination of ubiquitous cameras, AI, and rapidly advancing facial recognition software will render the term “privacy” little more than a quaint concept from the past. As EFF put it, Ring’s program “could already run afoul of biometric privacy laws in some states, which require explicit, informed consent from individuals before a company can just run face recognition on someone.”

Those concerns escalated just a few days later in the context of the Tucson disappearance of Nancy Guthrie, mother of long-time TODAY Show host Savannah Guthrie. At the home where she lives, Nancy Guthrie used Google’s Nest camera for security, a product similar to Amazon’s Ring.

Guthrie, however, did not pay Google for a subscription for those cameras, instead solely using the cameras for real-time monitoring. As CBS News explained, “with a free Google Nest plan, the video should have been deleted within 3 to 6 hours — long after Guthrie was reported missing.” Even professional privacy advocates have understood that customers who use Nest without a subscription will not have their cameras connected to Google’s data servers, meaning that no recordings will be stored or available for any period beyond a few hours.

For that reason, Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos announced early on “that there was no video available in part because Guthrie didn’t have an active subscription to the company.” Many people, for obvious reasons, prefer to avoid permanently storing comprehensive daily video reports with Google of when they leave and return to their own home, or who visits them at their home, when, and for how long.

Despite all this, FBI investigators on the case were somehow magically able to “recover” this video from Guthrie’s camera many days later. FBI Director Kash Patel was essentially forced to admit this when he released still images of what appears to be the masked perpetrator who broke into Guthrie’s home. (The Google user agreement, which few users read, does protect the company by stating that images may be stored even in the absence of a subscription.)

Image obtained through Nancy Guthrie’s unsubscribed Google Nest camera and released by the FBI.

While the “discovery” of footage from this home camera by Google engineers is obviously of great value to the Guthrie family and law enforcement agents searching for Guthrie, it raises obvious yet serious questions about why Google, contrary to common understanding, was storing the video footage of unsubscribed users. A former NSA data researcher and CEO of a cybersecurity firm, Patrick Johnson, told CBS: “There's kind of this old saying that data is never deleted, it's just renamed.”

It is rather remarkable that Americans are being led, more or less willingly, into a state-corporate, Panopticon-like domestic surveillance state with relatively little resistance, though the widespread reaction to Amazon’s Ring ad is encouraging. Much of that muted reaction may be due to a lack of realization about the severity of the evolving privacy threat. Beyond that, privacy and other core rights can seem abstract and less of a priority than more material concerns, at least until they are gone.

It is always the case that there are benefits available from relinquishing core civil liberties: allowing infringements on free speech may reduce false claims and hateful ideas; allowing searches and seizures without warrants will likely help the police catch more criminals, and do so more quickly; giving up privacy may, in fact, enhance security.

But the core premise of the West generally, and the U.S. in particular, is that those trade-offs are never worthwhile. Americans still all learn and are taught to admire the iconic (if not apocryphal) 1775 words of Patrick Henry, which came to define the core ethos of the Revolutionary War and American Founding: “Give me liberty or give me death.” It is hard to express in more definitive terms on which side of that liberty-versus-security trade-off the U.S. was intended to fall.

Read the rest here...

Tyler Durden Fri, 02/13/2026 - 21:45

Tim Walz Demands Federal Government Foot Bill For Minnesota’s 'Recovery' From Anti-ICE Riots

Zero Hedge -

Tim Walz Demands Federal Government Foot Bill For Minnesota’s 'Recovery' From Anti-ICE Riots

Last month, President Donald Trump sent Homan to Minnesota to personally oversee immigration enforcement operations and end the chaos, after ICE and CBP officers shot two protesters and the situation began to spiral out of control. Soon after, Homan successfully convinced Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey to allow local law enforcement to coordinate with federal agents, prompting an initial drawdown of 700 agents.

“Given this increase in unprecedented collaboration, and as a result of the need for less law enforcement officers to do this work in a safer environment, I have announced effective immediately, we will draw down seven hundred people effective today. Seven hundred law enforcement personnel,” Homan said at the time.

On Thursday, Homan announced the end of Operation Metro Surge in Minnesota, declaring it a successful mission accomplished. The operation, which began in early December with approximately 3,000 immigration enforcement officers deployed to the sanctuary state, achieved thousands of arrests.

Despite the operation’s obvious success, Gov. Tim Walz spun the news as a victory for the agitators and thanked Minnesotans for driving federal agents out. 

“Minnesota, on behalf of not just this state but the country, thank you. That same energy now needs to be directed towards recovery, to finding ways that people have done during these challenging months to go forward,” he said.

Walz then promptly pivoted to pushing the narrative that Minnesota needs to recover from immigration enforcement efforts that took place.

“So, I want to say, this damage is still being assessed, but we do know … we’re going to be proposing a reinstitution of our small business emergency fund. It’s what we use very successfully during COVID in the recovery, the economic recovery that we saw in Minnesota that outpaced most of the rest of the country. We’re going to be proposing a first-time $10 million one-time targeted loans, forgivable loans that we know, and I want to be very clear, is a very small piece of this.”

And Walz wants the federal government to pay for it.

“But what I am going to challenge, as we get ready to start here in a few days the legislative session, this legislative session needs to be about recovery of the damage that’s been done to us,” Walz continued. “I am also asking our team—and I’m going to make appeals to our federal delegation—the federal government needs to pay for what they broke here.”

According to a report, the city of Minneapolis spent $1 million in rental assistance for those impacted by the raids, and burned through $4.3 million in police overtime during the anti-ICE riots and protests, and that figure is still climbing. The department had only 600 officers trying to manage the chaos created by anti-ICE rioters destroying property.

“They are going to be accountability [sic] on the things that happen, but one of the things is the incredible and immense costs that were born by the people of this state,” Walz continued. “The federal government needs to be responsible. You don’t get to break things and then just leave without doing something about it.”

While Walz talks tough about demanding that the federal government pay for the mess he and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey created, he appeared to concede that the effort to get the federal government to fund this “recovery” plan would fail.

“So the changes that need to be made, the investments that need to come back, they need to show—they being the federal government and they being this administration—they need to do more. But I’m not going to hold my breath that the federal government is going to do the right thing.”

Tyler Durden Fri, 02/13/2026 - 21:20

Tim Walz Demands Federal Government Foot Bill For Minnesota’s 'Recovery' From Anti-ICE Riots

Zero Hedge -

Tim Walz Demands Federal Government Foot Bill For Minnesota’s 'Recovery' From Anti-ICE Riots

Last month, President Donald Trump sent Homan to Minnesota to personally oversee immigration enforcement operations and end the chaos, after ICE and CBP officers shot two protesters and the situation began to spiral out of control. Soon after, Homan successfully convinced Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey to allow local law enforcement to coordinate with federal agents, prompting an initial drawdown of 700 agents.

“Given this increase in unprecedented collaboration, and as a result of the need for less law enforcement officers to do this work in a safer environment, I have announced effective immediately, we will draw down seven hundred people effective today. Seven hundred law enforcement personnel,” Homan said at the time.

On Thursday, Homan announced the end of Operation Metro Surge in Minnesota, declaring it a successful mission accomplished. The operation, which began in early December with approximately 3,000 immigration enforcement officers deployed to the sanctuary state, achieved thousands of arrests.

Despite the operation’s obvious success, Gov. Tim Walz spun the news as a victory for the agitators and thanked Minnesotans for driving federal agents out. 

“Minnesota, on behalf of not just this state but the country, thank you. That same energy now needs to be directed towards recovery, to finding ways that people have done during these challenging months to go forward,” he said.

Walz then promptly pivoted to pushing the narrative that Minnesota needs to recover from immigration enforcement efforts that took place.

“So, I want to say, this damage is still being assessed, but we do know … we’re going to be proposing a reinstitution of our small business emergency fund. It’s what we use very successfully during COVID in the recovery, the economic recovery that we saw in Minnesota that outpaced most of the rest of the country. We’re going to be proposing a first-time $10 million one-time targeted loans, forgivable loans that we know, and I want to be very clear, is a very small piece of this.”

And Walz wants the federal government to pay for it.

“But what I am going to challenge, as we get ready to start here in a few days the legislative session, this legislative session needs to be about recovery of the damage that’s been done to us,” Walz continued. “I am also asking our team—and I’m going to make appeals to our federal delegation—the federal government needs to pay for what they broke here.”

According to a report, the city of Minneapolis spent $1 million in rental assistance for those impacted by the raids, and burned through $4.3 million in police overtime during the anti-ICE riots and protests, and that figure is still climbing. The department had only 600 officers trying to manage the chaos created by anti-ICE rioters destroying property.

“They are going to be accountability [sic] on the things that happen, but one of the things is the incredible and immense costs that were born by the people of this state,” Walz continued. “The federal government needs to be responsible. You don’t get to break things and then just leave without doing something about it.”

While Walz talks tough about demanding that the federal government pay for the mess he and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey created, he appeared to concede that the effort to get the federal government to fund this “recovery” plan would fail.

“So the changes that need to be made, the investments that need to come back, they need to show—they being the federal government and they being this administration—they need to do more. But I’m not going to hold my breath that the federal government is going to do the right thing.”

Tyler Durden Fri, 02/13/2026 - 21:20

Tim Walz Demands Federal Government Foot Bill For Minnesota’s 'Recovery' From Anti-ICE Riots

Zero Hedge -

Tim Walz Demands Federal Government Foot Bill For Minnesota’s 'Recovery' From Anti-ICE Riots

Last month, President Donald Trump sent Homan to Minnesota to personally oversee immigration enforcement operations and end the chaos, after ICE and CBP officers shot two protesters and the situation began to spiral out of control. Soon after, Homan successfully convinced Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey to allow local law enforcement to coordinate with federal agents, prompting an initial drawdown of 700 agents.

“Given this increase in unprecedented collaboration, and as a result of the need for less law enforcement officers to do this work in a safer environment, I have announced effective immediately, we will draw down seven hundred people effective today. Seven hundred law enforcement personnel,” Homan said at the time.

On Thursday, Homan announced the end of Operation Metro Surge in Minnesota, declaring it a successful mission accomplished. The operation, which began in early December with approximately 3,000 immigration enforcement officers deployed to the sanctuary state, achieved thousands of arrests.

Despite the operation’s obvious success, Gov. Tim Walz spun the news as a victory for the agitators and thanked Minnesotans for driving federal agents out. 

“Minnesota, on behalf of not just this state but the country, thank you. That same energy now needs to be directed towards recovery, to finding ways that people have done during these challenging months to go forward,” he said.

Walz then promptly pivoted to pushing the narrative that Minnesota needs to recover from immigration enforcement efforts that took place.

“So, I want to say, this damage is still being assessed, but we do know … we’re going to be proposing a reinstitution of our small business emergency fund. It’s what we use very successfully during COVID in the recovery, the economic recovery that we saw in Minnesota that outpaced most of the rest of the country. We’re going to be proposing a first-time $10 million one-time targeted loans, forgivable loans that we know, and I want to be very clear, is a very small piece of this.”

And Walz wants the federal government to pay for it.

“But what I am going to challenge, as we get ready to start here in a few days the legislative session, this legislative session needs to be about recovery of the damage that’s been done to us,” Walz continued. “I am also asking our team—and I’m going to make appeals to our federal delegation—the federal government needs to pay for what they broke here.”

According to a report, the city of Minneapolis spent $1 million in rental assistance for those impacted by the raids, and burned through $4.3 million in police overtime during the anti-ICE riots and protests, and that figure is still climbing. The department had only 600 officers trying to manage the chaos created by anti-ICE rioters destroying property.

“They are going to be accountability [sic] on the things that happen, but one of the things is the incredible and immense costs that were born by the people of this state,” Walz continued. “The federal government needs to be responsible. You don’t get to break things and then just leave without doing something about it.”

While Walz talks tough about demanding that the federal government pay for the mess he and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey created, he appeared to concede that the effort to get the federal government to fund this “recovery” plan would fail.

“So the changes that need to be made, the investments that need to come back, they need to show—they being the federal government and they being this administration—they need to do more. But I’m not going to hold my breath that the federal government is going to do the right thing.”

Tyler Durden Fri, 02/13/2026 - 21:20

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