Zero Hedge

"Potentially Worst Blizzard In Decade" Set To Hammer Mid-Atlantic And Northeast

"Potentially Worst Blizzard In Decade" Set To Hammer Mid-Atlantic And Northeast

A potentially historic winter storm is set to slam the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast beginning Sunday, bringing heavy snow, damaging winds, and coastal flooding.

As of Sunday morning, 35 million people are under Blizzard Warning alerts from the Mid-Atlantic through New England, according to a post on X from the National Weather Service Prediction Center.

Meteorologists are already labeling the nor'easter as potentially historic and warn it could be the most intense blizzard to hit the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast in a decade.

Snowfall forecasts are already pointing to a high-impact setup along large stretches of the I-95 corridor, from the Washington, D.C., area to Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York City, and Boston, where significant accumulations are possible.

In the Tri-State region, some forecasts suggest localized totals could reach upwards of 2 feet, likely sparking major travel disruptions from the I-95 corridor to air travel.

"DHS suspends TSA PreCheck & Global Entry over shutdown. Millions who paid for faster security now stuck in regular lines—while a historic blizzard cancels 7,000+ flights in the Northeast," Fox News reporter Lucas Tomlinson wrote on X.

Related:

The storm's setup is similar to the 2016 blizzard that blanketed Washington, D.C., Baltimore, and New York City with up to 2 feet of snow in some areas.

Tyler Durden Sun, 02/22/2026 - 08:10

Preparation For Martial Law? Europe To Recruit Migrants For "National Defense"

Preparation For Martial Law? Europe To Recruit Migrants For "National Defense"

Europe's lack of military readiness has become painfully obvious in recent years, due largely to the war in Ukraine as well as the Trump Administration's efforts to force NATO members to fulfill their basic obligations. 

Specifically, Russia's successful use of attrition tactics against NATO supported forces in Ukraine has exposed a significant weakness in western military doctrine.

New and cheap technologies (including drone technologies) are making large scale maneuver warfare obsolete.  The era of super-weapons dominating the battlefield with minimal manpower is over.  As was the case in WWI and WWII, troop strength and boots on the ground are once again the key to victory.  

A Washington DC-based defense think-tank, Center For A New American Century (CNAS), has come to the same realization and suggests a novel (as well as predictable) solution:  Exploit mass immigration from Ukraine and third world countries to the west as a resource to fill the persistent void in military recruitment numbers.  

Writing for Foreign Policy, the CNAS notes:

"Closing manpower gaps may prove harder than writing bigger checks. The continent’s demographic crisis compounds the problem: Births in the European Union fell below 4 million in 2022 for the first time since 1960, shrinking the pool of potential recruits as geopolitical threats—chief among them, Russian aggression—demand larger, more capable forces..."

The argument, of course, presupposes that Russia has any intention of invading greater Europe.  There is no evidence that this is Vladimir Putin's goal.  However, the Russian bogeyman does make for a useful excuse to justify the development of a unified EU military force.  

The threat of war can also be exploited by European officials as a way to justify open borders and mass immigration from the third world.  Immigration from Ukraine makes some sense - It is a legitimate war torn country and Ukrainians are close to the rest of Europeans in terms of cultural attitude.  But, EU elites need a rationale for flooding the region with third worlders and war with Russia seems to be their ticket.  The CNAS uses the "demographic collapse" claim as a catalyst.

"Ukraine’s grinding war of attrition has laid bare an uncomfortable truth: Emerging capabilities in the form of high-tech weaponry cannot substitute for boots on the ground. Soldiers, sailors, marines, coast guardsmen, and airmen are the backbone of national defense. Yet the European Commission estimates a 43 million reduction in the bloc’s working-age population by 2070..."

"...Meanwhile, Europe continues to grapple with significant migration flows from Africa, the Middle East, and other regions. These arrivals, often young, male, and seeking better opportunities, represent exactly the demographic cohort European militaries desperately need. Many migrants arrive with valuable skills: language abilities, cultural knowledge of strategic regions, technical expertise, and, most importantly, motivation to prove themselves and build new lives."

It should be noted that these kind of articles from think-tanks are not so much "suggestions" for future policy initiatives.  Rather, they are propaganda pieces designed to promote policies that governments already intend to implement in the near future.

A number of European countries have already begun the groundwork for recruiting migrants for national defense. 

Ireland just recently announced that their are reviewing a possible program to give fast-track citizenship to immigrants who volunteer to join the military.  Irish leaders assert that this is necessary to boost defense capabilities, but they also argue that it is need to increase Ireland's "diversity."    

Several other European governments are looking at similar programs, including Germany, France and Spain. 

The real question is, would third world migrants actually fight on the front lines for Europe?  Furthermore, is this really the true agenda behind mass immigration?  To boost western demographics to defend against invasion, or to support the economy?

It is clear that third worlders are a net negative on the economic health of the countries they migrate to.  The majority represent a drain on social welfare systems.  Europe is on a downward spiral in terms of economic health and crime over the past decade.  In fact, the more European leaders embrace mass immigration, the more the economy declines and the worse their native demographic crisis becomes.  

It makes more sense if one considers the possibility that mass immigration and military recruitment are designed to keep European citizens in line, not Russia or Putin.  As we mentioned in our recent article on Canada's new program to recruit military trained foreign nationals for their own armed forces, left-wing governments are not really worried about invasion from Russia or China, they are worried about opposition from their own conservative and nationalist populations. 

It is much easier to control native Europeans using immigrant mercenaries with no loyalty to the culture.  The CNAS specifically mentions the use of military service as a way to sooth the concerns of "xenophobic" conservatives.

"The political center regarding migration has collapsed in the face of far-right xenophobic approaches to the migration file, such that few policy initiatives other than hardening land and maritime borders and cutting deals to send migrants away see the light of day..."

"The promise of citizenship provides powerful motivation, and military service demonstrates commitment to the nation in the most tangible way possible. The United States demonstrates that national identity is forged through shared sacrifice, not shared ancestry..."

In other words, sell Europeans on the idea that they have no shared ancestry and that migrants going to war for them is proof enough that they are loyal and should be citizens.  Of course, it's unlikely that migrants will be convinced to risk their lives for Europeans.  They might, however, be easily convinced to help oppress Europeans in exchange for citizenship and the spoils of subjugation.  

It's a threat western citizens need to seriously consider before supporting any government policy for the recruitment of foreign nationals.  They might just be supporting the very recruits that will eventually be used to enslave them.  

Tyler Durden Sun, 02/22/2026 - 07:35

Ukraine's Fast-Tracked EU Membership Would De Facto Advance EU Federalist Goals

Ukraine's Fast-Tracked EU Membership Would De Facto Advance EU Federalist Goals

Authored by Andrew Korybko,

The approval of “reverse enlargement” to Ukraine and other candidate states would institutionalize a three-tiered Europe between the “E6”, Central Europe, and the new partial members from Eastern Europe and the Balkans for facilitating Germany’s divide-and-rule federalist plans.

Politico reported on the EU’s plan to grant Ukraine partial membership by next year at the earliest as part of a comprehensive solution to that country’s conflict. An unnamed official described this as “reverse enlargement” and explained that “It would be a sort of recalibration of the process — you join and then you get phased in rights and obligations.”

This modus operandi would enable all the other candidates to join too and thus complete the bloc’s expansion in Eastern Europe and the Balkans.

If Orban isn’t ‘democratically deposed’ during next month’s parliamentary elections, then the EU plans to appeal to Trump to pressure him into agreeing to this, absent which they’ll remove Hungary’s voting rights.

Left unsaid is the assessment from early November when this general idea was first reported about how “Poland Might Impede The EU’s Push To Speedily Grant Ukraine Membership” if this compels it to open its agricultural market to another deluge of low-cost and low-quality Ukrainian exports.

Per the preceding hyperlinked analysis, “neither half of its ruling duopoly wants to be blamed for the domestic consequences of Ukraine joining the EU, especially not ahead of fall 2027’s next parliamentary elections. Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s ruling liberal-globalist coalition is already facing an uphill battle and would torpedo any hope of keeping control if they supported this, while President Karol Nawrocki from the conservative-nationalist opposition would betray his base if he went along with them.”

It’s therefore possible that the EU’s “reverse enlargement” to Ukraine doesn’t include unlimited tariff-free access of its agricultural products either to the bloc as a whole or only to Poland in order to secure Warsaw’s approval. In any case, Ukraine’s fast-tracked EU membership would de facto advance EU federalist goals by institutionalizing Germany’s “two-speed Europe” proposal, thus leading to three tiers of membership actually between the “E6”, other full members, and the new partial members.

The “E6” refers to the bloc’s six largest economies – Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, and Poland – who’d collectively sit atop this institutionalized hierarchy that would unofficially be led by the German-Franco duopoly (or divided into factions by them if their rivalry becomes unmanageable).

Regardless of Poland’s participation or lack thereof within the “E6”, which the abovementioned hyperlinked analysis argues can’t be taken for granted, the EU would thus be formally divided.

The “E6” would push through reforms for facilitating federalization even if that end goal isn’t openly declared to avoid spooking some countries and their societies. The new partial members would then be pressured to conform with these new policies to obtain full membership, while the remaining full members from the second tier would be pressured by the first and third one into following suit. There’s a distinct geopolitical division between these tiers that deserves mention before concluding the analysis.

The “E6” represents Western Europe (with the exception of Poland), the new partial members would represent Eastern Europe and the Balkans, while the rest represent Central Europe. The EU federalists therefore want to pit the first three against the Central European members who oppose federalism in order to then impose that system upon them as a fait accompli. This observation further contextualizes the perceived urgency over approving “reverse enlargement” to Ukraine and the other candidates.

Tyler Durden Sun, 02/22/2026 - 07:00

From Blockchain To Ball-And-Chain: Are We Being Borg'd?

From Blockchain To Ball-And-Chain: Are We Being Borg'd?

Authored by Patti Johnson via The Burning Platform blog,

Tokenized Tyranny: How Elites Are Digitizing Our World for Total Control

I’ve followed investigative journalist Whitney Webb’s work for years, and her once-distant warnings now feel eerily prophetic as they unfold in real time. What she has consistently exposed, the systematic digitization and commodification of everything from natural ecosystems to human life itself, is no longer speculative theory. It’s happening before our eyes.

When I first encountered Whitney’s reporting, I found it hard to believe. Could this level of control and financialization truly be underway? It seemed too dystopian, too extreme. Yet after digging deeper the evidence was undeniable. What she described was not exaggeration. It was an accurate and meticulously documented reality.

The tokenization of nature and humanity represents a deliberate strategy by the world’s most powerful financial institutions. Figures like BlackRock’s Chairman and CEO Larry Fink have openly championed turning the planet’s resources, and increasingly aspects of human existence, into fractionalized, tradable digital assets on blockchain-based ledgers. This creates new avenues for elite profit and unprecedented surveillance and control.

With Fink now serving as Interim Co-Chair of the World Economic Forum’s Board of Trustees (alongside André Hoffmann), the technocratic elite have gained an ideal global platform to accelerate this agenda. What better forum than the WEF to mainstream and fast-track “total control” from cradle to grave.

The process begins with assigning unique digital identifiers to virtually everything: land, water, forests, carbon credits, even personal behaviors and biological data. These are then logged on universal ledgers, where ownership is sliced into tradable fractions, much like stocks. But this goes far beyond traditional finance. It encompasses the Earth’s finite resources and, ultimately, the very essence of human life, all reduced to programmable, monetizable units in a centralized system of power.

This is tokenized tyranny in action: a quiet revolution that could redefine ownership, freedom, and existence itself..

Nature on the Chopping Block: From Forests to Fractional Shares

For nature, tokenization means chopping up wild places like the Amazon rainforest into digital securities. Each token represents a piece of land or ecosystem service such as clean air or biodiversity. Companies like O.N.E. Amazon, which is tied to U.S. intelligence and crypto investors, plan to issue these tokens backed by preservation deals. They cap the supply to make them scarce like digital gold. They install massive sensor networks and satellites to monitor every hectare in real time and collect data on everything from tree growth to animal movements. The data feeds into AI systems that manage the assets:

Each initiative will be structured under a transparent, science-based framework ensuring traceability, accountability, and full respect for Panama’s sovereignty. Future projects may also explore nature-backed digital instruments as mechanisms to channel private investment into measurable conservation outcomes.

Juan Carlos Navarro, Minister of Environment of Panama, stated: “As part of the partnership, O.N.E Amazon will pilot its proprietary Internet of Forests (IoF™️), an advanced monitoring system powered by satellites, LiDAR, and ground sensors, to provide real-time ecological intelligence that supports environmental governance and transparency.”

“O.N.E Amazon was created to align global capital with the conservation of our planet’s most valuable ecosystems. Together with Panama, we aim to demonstrate how innovation, transparency, and shared purpose can turn conservation into a true economic opportunity, one that benefits both nature and people. O.N.E Amazon is more than a financial instrument, it is a new contract between humanity, capital markets, and nature. When innovation meets purpose, markets become engines of regeneration,” said Rodrigo Veloso, Founder and CEO of O.N.E Amazon.

Panama and O.N.E Amazon Sign a Letter of Intent to Protect the Darién Region and Pioneer New Models of Conservation Finance

Whitney calls this tokenization of nature “borgifying” the environment (Remember Star Trek and the Borg). It turns planet earth into a controllable grid.

Involved parties include former BlackRock executives, Trump administration figures, and firms linked to stablecoins like Tether. They push this under the banner of sustainability while securing profits through inequitable deals with indigenous groups. Those groups get minimal shares and lose autonomy over their lands.

Greenwashing in Action: Tokenized Nature Happening Now

This is already unfolding through initiatives like Natural Asset Companies (NACs), backed by the Intrinsic Exchange Group and the Rockefeller Foundation. They aim to list ecosystems on stock exchanges as new asset classes. This assigns financial value to untouched nature and creates markets for trading shares in forests or rivers. Clean Air and Water Are Worth Money as ‘Natural Asset’ Companies Attract Cash

The WEF (World Economic Forum) is involved in turning nature into a commodity for investors to profit:

 Finance Solutions for Nature: Pathways to returns and outcomes is out now! This insight report by World Economic Forum and McKinsey & Company provides a practical framework for investors to unlock capital for nature. Key takeaways: A portfolio approach is essential: 10 priority solutions can offer investors and issuers pathways to investable returns and nature outcomes at scale. Model transactions need to be replicated: Over 20 examples of existing transactions show that success in nature finance isn’t just theory — but needs replication. Markets can’t solve nature loss alone: Traditional finance has a central role, but needs enabling policies, robust data, better de-risking mechanisms, and shifting norms to recognize nature’s full value.

Finance Solutions for Nature: Pathways to Returns and Outcomes | World Economic Forum

Another example is Estonia’s Single Earth, which tokenizes forests, swamps, and biodiversity to back its MERIT token. It allows companies to buy fractional ownership for carbon offsets while claiming to make nature the new gold:

“Single.Earth closes the $700 billion nature financing gap by channeling ESG (Environmental Social Governance)-driven company funds to high-impact landowners, while assessing ecological data for maximum impact globally.

Bridging Nature and Finance, Climate and Biodiversity, Corporate Sustainability through Nature Financing Enterprises buy tokens to balance their impact on nature and boost ESG scores, securing a greener financial future.”

In the Central African Republic, the Sango Project is tokenizing land, timber, and diamond reserves to attract investors. It turns national resources into blockchain assets. Even traditional commodities are involved, with platforms tokenizing oil and gas reserves or renewable energy sources:

“The Central African Republic (CAR) has extended its Sango blockchain project to tokenization of its land and natural resources. The country, one of the poorest and most crypto-friendly in the world, is also one of the most active in crypto innovation.”

Central African Republic expands Sango project to land, resource tokenization

In 2023 Australia’s National Australia Bank issued a green stablecoin tied to verified agricultural assets and carbon credits. Their tokenized farms could soon serve as loan collateral. National Australia Bank eyeing a ‘green’ stablecoin – Ledger Insights – blockchain for enterprise

Eco-Dystopia Ahead: When Nature Becomes a Profit Machine

In a future society under this system, nature becomes a Wall Street product where investors buy fractions of forests or rivers without ever setting foot there. Any “conservation” is dictated by profit motives rather than ecological needs. Entire regions could be locked into debt-like swaps where countries trade resource rights for loans. This leads to foreign-owned wind farms or bioenergy plants that displace locals.

Whitney explains that this creates a tokenized world where natural disasters or climate events can spike token values. It encourages exploitation disguised as green finance. Ecosystems are managed by algorithms that prioritize financial returns over life itself.  In the guise of saving ecosystems, they are tokenizing the world and making profit from their exploitation of planet earth.

Humans as Assets: The Financialization of Flesh and Blood

When it comes to human resources, Whitney extends tokenization to the financialization of people themselves. Human potential, data, and behaviors are tokenized into investable assets. This builds on impact investing where elites bet on social outcomes like reducing poverty or improving education through human capital bonds. It turns individuals into data points on a ledger.

Personal information, health records, DNA, and even daily actions get digitized and fractionalized and linked to digital IDs and programmable currencies that track and control spending. It all connects to broader agendas from groups like the World Economic Forum. Humans are seen as resources to be optimized. Blockchain ensures every aspect of life from skills to biometrics becomes a tradeable commodity.

From Blockchain to Ball and Chain

Blockchain is often sold as a liberating technology. It’s sold as a super-secure, shared digital notebook where transactions get recorded in unbreakable blocks that form a chain. These spread across thousands of computers worldwide so no single boss can tamper with it. It promises privacy and freedom from banks or governments. But from my skeptical angle, like the one Whitney Webb takes, it’s actually shaping up to be a high-tech ball and chain designed to track and control every aspect of our lives. This happens despite those privacy boasts. While blockchain claims to be decentralized and anonymous, most versions, like Bitcoin’s, create a permanent, public ledger where every transaction is traceable forever. This makes it easy for powerful entities from governments to corporations to follow your money trail. They link it to your identity through exchanges or data leaks. They can build detailed profiles on your habits, associations, and whereabouts.

Elites are co-opting this tech. They push for things like central bank digital currencies built on blockchain that tie your finances to digital IDs with biometrics. This turns everyday spending into a surveilled activity. In the future non-compliant behavior like buying the “wrong” things or associating with certain people could get you flagged, frozen out, or punished.  This could mean a world where your blockchain-tracked data feeds into AI systems that predict, manipulate, reward or punish your actions.

The ultimate goal is to enforce rules through programmable money. The programmable money can expire, restrict purchases, and track everything you purchase automatically. This is being pushed under the guise of security and efficiency.  Critics on X say that because blockchains are so public and open, it’s easy for others to watch everything you do and even jump ahead of your trades to make quick money off you.

They argue that without true privacy, decentralization just hands control to the most resourced spies. This echoes Webb’s expose on how Bitcoin’s traceability makes it a tool for destroying real financial privacy in favor of elite-controlled systems.

The Blockchain Enabler: Fueling Human Tokenization at Scale

This blockchain backbone is exactly what’s needed to make the tokenization of human resources possible on a massive scale. Without it, you couldn’t reliably slice up and trade fractions of someone’s skills, behaviors, or biometric data. Blockchain provides the immutable ledger that records every tokenized “share” of human capital.

Whether it’s your work output, health metrics, or social compliance, it links them permanently to your digital ID so the elites can monitor, value, and manipulate them in real time. It turns abstract human potential into concrete, programmable assets that can be bought, sold, or penalized without escape.

Human Commodification Unfolding: From Bonds to Biometrics

It seems truly unbelievable and dystopian but real-world implementations are creeping in through programs like social impact bonds.

There investors fund initiatives such as prisoner rehabilitation or early childhood education.

They profit if metrics like reduced recidivism are met. https://socialfinance.org/social-impact-bonds/

Byte by Byte Humans are Being Tokenized

The World Bank’s Human Capital Project measures countries’ human potential as economic assets:

“The Human Capital Project (HCP) is a global initiative launched by the World Bank to inspire and inform investments in human capital”

It paves the way for tokenized investments in workforce development. In refugee aid, organizations use blockchain combined with biometric IDs like iris scans or fingerprints to deliver and track assistance. This is how they implement the plan byte by byte as seen in UN pilots from the World Food Programme’s Building Blocks project in Jordan, where refugees scan their eyes to buy food with aid stored on a blockchain ledger. Or UNHCR’s efforts in Ukraine distributing programmable stablecoin cash directly to digital wallets. These systems make aid traceable and “efficient.” But I see them turning vulnerable people into monitored data commodities under the guise of inclusion and empowerment.

Your Skills as Tradeable Tokens

Companies are experimenting with turning workers’ skills and performance into digital tokens on blockchain platforms. They break down things like work history, credentials, or gig results into small tradable pieces. This mostly targets gig workers: drivers, delivery people, freelancers who do temporary jobs through apps. Platforms verify and tokenize these, letting people buy, sell, or trade tiny fractions of a worker’s “value” (fractionalized trading: like slicing someone’s skills into shares anyone can own and trade, similar to buying a piece of a stock). It turns personal labor into digital assets that can be bought and sold.

I know this sounds wild and hard to believe for most folks. I didn’t buy it either until I dug into the research myself. It’s all part of a larger agenda to digitize and control everything, your job and skills, your land, even nature under a single digital system run by a tiny elite of powerful companies and tech oligarchs. Critics call this endgame a form of fascist dictatorship known as technocracy, where “experts” and algorithms dictate life instead of democratic choice.

For a real-world example happening today, check out platforms like LaborX (part of Chrono.tech), a blockchain-based freelance marketplace where gig workers’ skills and work history are verified on-chain, and payments/rewards can involve tradable tokens tied to performance bringing tokenized labor closer to reality in the gig economy: https://laborx.com/

Another related case is project tokenization ideas for gig workers, as explored here: https://medium.com/@tradefin101/project-tokenization-for-gig-workers-revolutionizing-the-gig-economy-with-blockchain-20359a1ffcfd. These show early steps toward fractionalizing and trading aspects of human capital.

The Ultimate Warning: A Tokenized Hellscape Awaits

In my depiction of a tokenized future, society looks like a giant database where people own nothing tangible, as the WEF slogan suggests. The WEF idea of happiness is enforced through surveillance. Everyone carries a digital ID that opens access to jobs, services, or even basic rights. Tokens represent shares in human capital markets that reward or punish based on compliance.

Governments and corporations use this to engineer behaviors like tying aid to biometric scans or tokenizing refugee programs for “inclusion.” But it really cements a system of digital serfdom. I see this leading to a loss of freedom where the elite overlords hold all the tokens. They manipulate markets to siphon wealth while the masses are reduced to monitored data streams in a hyper-financialized digital prison.

Technocracy Tokenopoly

The world’s billionaire elite, already far beyond any need for more wealth, now crave absolute power and control. They are quietly fulfilling the 1930s vision of the Technocracy movement led by Howard Scott and Technocracy Incorporated which declared that scientists, engineers, and technical experts should replace democratic governments and elected leaders. They viewed traditional republics and ordinary citizens as too irrational and uninformed to govern effectively, insisting only a data-driven, expert-ruled system could rationally manage resources and society for maximum efficiency.

Today this technocratic ideal unfolds through the tokenization of everything: rainforests, rivers, biodiversity, human labor, skills, behaviors, and data all turned into tradable blockchain assets under the guise of sustainability and inclusion. Earth and humanity become pieces in a high-stakes game, satirized in Tokenopoly, where players buy and sell properties like the Amazon Rainforest, Nile River, Niagara Falls, CAR resources, Human Labor, and Biodiversity Credits, with cards commanding “Collect 100 Tokens” or “Go Directly to Digital Wallet.” Using AI, surveillance grids, programmable money, and immutable ledgers, the elite claim dominance and enforce compliance, building the tokenized, borgified system of digital serfdom

To pull off this nightmare, elites and tech oligarchs are racing to build AI data centers at breakneck speed devouring massive amounts of fresh water and energy just to hoard every scrap of our tokenized data. They can’t build them fast enough, but that desperation is our opening. People are waking up to their plan as their electric bills go sky high and their fresh water is drained by the data centers.  People are starting to speak out.

Could their pride be their downfall?

How supremely arrogant of these self-anointed digital overlords to imagine they hold proprietary title over nature itself and over human beings, treating both as resources to be patented, monetized, and managed. How breathtakingly hubristic for them to insist that scientists, engineers, and technocratic elites are better suited to govern than the democratic process, elected representatives, and the will of the people.

Proverbs 16:18 – Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.

Expose their plan before it’s too late. 

Don’t let them Borgify us and turn free humans into obedient, trackable nodes in their machine. Don’t let them steal nature and turn it into a commodity for the elite. Get active locally. Resist immediately. Slow their rollout to a crawl. The future isn’t theirs yet. We claim it by saying NO!

Resistance is NOT futile.

We will NOT comply.

*  *  *

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

Tyler Durden Sat, 02/21/2026 - 23:20

Amb. Huckabee Claims Israel Has 'Biblical Right' To Conquer Whole Middle East

Amb. Huckabee Claims Israel Has 'Biblical Right' To Conquer Whole Middle East

In a jaw-dropping exchange with Tucker Carlson, US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee openly framed Israel's territorial claims in biblical terms - suggesting the Jewish state has a divine mandate over virtually the entire region.

Asked whether a passage from the Book of Genesis could be read as granting Israel the right to claim all the land between Egypt's Nile River and Syria's Euphrates, Huckabee didn't hedge. He bluntly and without apology said it would be "fine" if Israel and its military took over the whole Middle East. Full interview can be accessed here:

"It would be fine if they took it all," Huckabee, a former Southern Baptist Minister and previously the governor of Arkansas made clear. This led to a wide ranging conversation and back and forth over whether the modern nation-state of Israel, officially founded as a sovereign government on May 14, 1948, is synonymous with the Israel written about in the Old Testament, stretching back thousands of years.

Here's how that contentious segment of the interview unfolded, according to a transcript and commentary: 

Huckabee was asked in an interview with US conservative commentator Tucker Carlson about his understanding of a biblical verse suggesting that land including parts of Egypt, Syria and Iraq had been divinely promised to the Jewish people.

Carlson said that according to the Old Testament, the boundaries would be “basically the entire Middle East.”

He continued: “Does Israel have the right to that land?”

“Not sure we’d go that far,” Huckabee said in reply. “It would be a big piece of land.”

Carlson then pressed him: “Does Israel have the right to that land?”

“It would be fine if they took it all,” Huckabee responded, before adding, “I don’t think that’s what we’re talking about here today.”

Carlson asked: “You think it would be fine if the state of Israel took over all of Jordan?”

That's when Amb. Huckabee must have realized he was entering some hot diplomatic water, which would be sure to outrage Washington's Arab allies in the region.

"They’re not trying to take over Jordan. They're not trying to take over Syria. They’re not trying to take over Iraq or anywhere else, but they do want to protect their people," Huckabee responded. We should note here that the Israeli army has indeed invaded southern Syria and is occupying swathes of territory which lie a mere dozen or so miles from Damascus.

"I think you’re missing something because they’re not asking to go back to take all of that, but they are asking to at least take the land that they now occupy, they now live in, they now own legitimately, and it is a safe haven for them," Huckabee added.

Huckabee on Saturday, the day after the Carlson interview aired, issued a lengthy clarification of his comments, accusing the former Fox show host of twisting his words and engaging in bad faith arguments and attacks.

There are many parts of the rare interview which will be sure to spark lasting debate. Supporters of Huckabee tend to cast any and all criticisms of Israeli policy as 'anti-Semitic' - while critics of Tel Aviv point out that being against political Zionism does not equate to being anti-Jewish in any way.

Tyler Durden Sat, 02/21/2026 - 22:45

Japan's $36 Billion Bet On US Energy Dominance

Japan's $36 Billion Bet On US Energy Dominance

Authored by Irina Slav via OilPrice.com,

  • Japan has committed $36 billion as the first tranche of its $550-billion U.S. investment pledge under last year’s trade deal, including plans to build a 9.2 GW natural gas power plant in Ohio.

  • The remaining funds will support a synthetic diamond factory and the Texas GulfLink deepwater oil export terminal.

  • The massive gas plant reflects surging U.S. electricity demand — particularly from AI-driven data centers — with natural gas emerging as the preferred source of reliable baseload power.

Japan has made the first commitments under a $550-billion investment program that made part of its trade deal with President Trump. Those first commitments are worth $36 billion and include what Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has called “the largest natural gas generation facility in history.”

The U.S. and Japan sealed a trade deal last summer, featuring a reduction in proposed tariffs—from 25% to 15%—on Japanese imports and a $550-billion Japanese investment pledge for the U.S. economy. Japan also pledged under the deal to expand market access for American goods, including cars, agricultural products, and energy.

Most of the money from that first investment tranche would be used to build the largest natural gas power plant, with a capacity of 9.2 GW.

“We will strengthen grid reliability, expand baseload power, and support American manufacturing with affordable energy,” Secretary Lutnick said in a statement after the deal. The plant will be built in Ohio. The facility will be operated by a subsidiary of Japan’s SoftBank, SB Energy.

The rest of the money would be split between a synthetic diamond factory and a deepwater oil port in the Gulf.

“This project is expected to generate $20–30 billion annually in U.S. crude exports, secure export capacity for our refineries, and reinforce America’s position as the world’s leading energy supplier,” per Lutnick.

The deepwater oil project was greenlit by the Trump administration earlier this month. Led by Sentinel Midstream, the Texas GulfLink facility would have an export capacity of 1 million barrels of crude daily. The approval was part of the federal government’s efforts to boost the United States’ energy dominance through oil and gas exports.

“The Texas GulfLink project is proof that when we slash unnecessary red tape and unleash our fossil fuel sector, we create jobs at home and stability abroad,” Transport Secretary Sean Duffy said in a statement to Reuters at the time.

“This critical deepwater port will allow the U.S. to export our abundant resources faster than ever before.”

In a factsheet on the Japanese deal, the Commerce Department said the deepwater facility would generate between $400 and $600 billion over 20 years and advance President Trump’s energy dominance agenda.

Most countries that struck trade deals with Trump last year to avoid massive tariffs on their U.S. exports made an energy import commitment specifically, with the tariff threat proving a useful tool for pursuing the energy dominance goal. Perhaps the most notable commitment in that respect was the European Union’s promise to buy $750 billion worth of U.S. oil and gas—a feat considered impossible by analysts due to physical factors such as constraints on the availability of such massive volumes of the respective commodities, constraints on consumption, and price considerations.

The largest natural gas power plant in history is most likely a response to the surge in electricity demand—and more specifically, baseload electricity demand, driven largely by the proliferation of data centers as the AI race among Big Tech majors intensifies. Earlier this week, the International Energy Agency said global electricity demand was growing at the fastest pace in 15 years. In the United States specifically, electricity demand rose by 2.1% in 2025 and is expected to grow by nearly 2% annually through 2030. The rapid expansion of data centers will drive half of the increase, the IEA noted.

Natural gas has emerged as the big winner of the AI race alongside nuclear, both of which provide the kind of electricity that data centers depend on: round-the-clock, uninterrupted electricity. Nuclear, however, takes longer to build and costs more, which is why gas power plants have taken priority.

Tyler Durden Sat, 02/21/2026 - 22:10

Boards Are Replacing CEOs At The Fastest Pace In Over A Decade

Boards Are Replacing CEOs At The Fastest Pace In Over A Decade

A historic wave of leadership change is sweeping corporate America. Across 1,500 of the largest publicly traded companies, roughly one in nine CEOs was replaced last year—the highest churn since the post-financial-crisis years., according to the Wall Street Journal.

The turnover has ushered in the largest cohort of new chief executives in more than a decade, and they’re arriving younger and, in many cases, with thinner résumés than their predecessors.

The shake-up hasn’t slowed in 2026. Companies including Walmart, Procter & Gamble and Lululemon Athletica installed new leaders early in the year. On a single February day, Disney, PayPal and HP each announced CEO changes. Grocery chain Kroger also tapped a new chief. Altogether, firms representing trillions in market value have either replaced or appointed top executives in just a few months.

Boards appear to be responding to a business climate that feels fundamentally altered. Artificial intelligence is reshaping operations, global trade norms are fragmenting and geopolitical tensions are harder to ignore. As executive recruiter James Citrin put it, “We’re in a new environment, and someone who’s going to replay the playbooks of the past is not necessarily right.” He added that if a new chief fails to build momentum quickly with both employees and investors, directors are even less patient than before.

Some transitions were carefully choreographed. Warren Buffett handed leadership of Berkshire Hathaway to Greg Abel at the start of the year, completing a succession plan he had previewed years earlier. Others were abrupt. CarMax pushed out its CEO amid weak sales. At Codexis, the chief executive was replaced suddenly and the workforce reduced at the same time. Interim appointments, including at HP, signaled that not every board had a seamless plan in place.

The WSJ writes that retail illustrates how demanding the moment has become. Michael Fiddelke, newly installed at Target, found himself addressing sensitive political issues within days of stepping in, admitting to employees, “This isn’t the first message I imagined I’d send.” Industry executives say the job now requires reinvention rather than simple growth management, as pandemic aftershocks and cautious consumers create persistent headwinds.

The demographic profile of incoming leaders has shifted as well. New CEOs averaged about 54 years old—roughly two years younger than the prior class—and more than 80% were first-time public-company chiefs. Many have never served on a corporate board. Paul Shoukry, promoted at Raymond James at age 42, is emblematic of the trend. Supporters argue that leaders forged in volatile conditions may be better suited to navigate what one board director called dramatic and permanent change.

Not all diversity trends moved forward. Women accounted for just 9% of new CEO appointments last year, down from the year before, and they remain underrepresented across the broader market. As boards accelerate succession and bet on fresh profiles, the leadership reset underway is reshaping not only who runs America’s largest corporations—but what experience they bring to the job.

Tyler Durden Sat, 02/21/2026 - 21:35

Trump Admin Mandates English-Only Tests For Truckers Seeking Commercial Driver's Licenses

Trump Admin Mandates English-Only Tests For Truckers Seeking Commercial Driver's Licenses

Authored by Kimberly Hayek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The federal crackdown on unqualified truckers kicked into a higher gear Friday when the nation’s transportation chief announced that tests for commercial driver’s licenses must be given only in English.

A truck drives through the Port of Oakland in Oakland, Calif., on Nov. 14, 2025. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy revealed the latest policy with a goal of ensuring that truck drivers understand English well enough to read road signs and communicate with law enforcement officers. Florida has already implemented English-only tests.

The new order includes modernizing the commercial driver’s license (CDL) registration system, cracking down on fraud, and improving driver safety.

“American families deserve safe roads and we are going to deliver them,” Duffy said in a post on X.

In another post on Friday, Duffy said that it is easier for noncitizens to get a CDL than U.S. citizens, noting that under the Biden administration, illegal immigrants seeking licenses were not subject to background checks, unlike American applicants.

“Our new rule restricts eligibility and ensures ONLY qualified drivers can operate big rigs,” Duffy added.

Duffy said a number of states have hired companies to oversee CDL tests, but those companies often fail to uphold the standards that drivers are required to meet.

In May 2025, Duffy signed an order implementing new guidance to enforce English proficiency requirements for truckers. Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration regulations stipulate that a driver who cannot read or speak proficient English or understand highway traffic signs and signals does not qualify to operate a commercial motor vehicle.

By December 2025, the administration had removed nearly 9,500 commercial truck drivers from service for failing English proficiency checks.

Unqualified Driving Schools

The Transportation Department on Feb. 18 said more than 550 driving schools fail to meet basic safety standards and should be shut down.

Those commercial driver training providers received notices of proposed removal from the national registry as a result of more than 1,400 investigations, the department said.

Investigators found unqualified instructors, fabricated addresses, improper vehicles, and failures to teach hazardous materials handling, including schools that trained school bus drivers.

“For too long, the trucking industry has operated like the Wild, Wild West, where anything goes and nobody asks any questions,” Duffy said in a statement on Feb. 18. “The buck stops with me. Under President [Donald] Trump, my team is cracking down on every link in the trucking chain that has allowed this lawlessness to impact the safety of America’s roads. American families should have confidence that our school bus and truck drivers are following every letter of the law and that starts with receiving proper training before getting behind the wheel.”

Noncompliant States

The department finalized a rule on Feb. 11 to limit CDL eligibility for foreign nationals to holders of H-2A, H-2B, and E-2 nonimmigrant visas who undergo expanded interagency reviews.

The department has targeted states that handed out commercial driver’s licenses to immigrants who did not qualify, picking up its efforts ever since a fatal crash in Florida in August.

The Trump administration said the truck driver illegally entered the country from Mexico in 2018. The driver, Harjinder Singh, a native of India, allegedly made an illegal U-turn and caused a crash that killed three people. He obtained his licenses in California and Washington.

In October, Florida sued California and Washington over their CDL licensing practices.

The federal government has threatened to withhold funding from states such as California, Washington, and New Mexico for not enforcing English-language standards. California ultimately had more than $40 million withheld.

Nineteen states were allowing drivers to take their license tests in other languages, despite the drivers being required to demonstrate English proficiency.

Tyler Durden Sat, 02/21/2026 - 21:00

The Quiet Revolution Reshaping America's Energy Future

The Quiet Revolution Reshaping America's Energy Future

Authored by Haley Zaremba via OilPrice.com,

  • The geothermal revolution includes both shallow geoexchange systems, such as The Riverie high-rise which uses boreholes for heating and cooling, and deeper, more technologically advanced "enhanced geothermal" techniques.

  • Enhanced geothermal aims to make this alternative energy source viable anywhere by borrowing advanced drilling technologies from fields like hydraulic fracturing and nuclear fusion to access the Earth's core heat.

  • The sector is gaining momentum with significant investment from major tech figures like Bill Gates and Google, and is projected by the U.S. Department of Energy to supply about 90 gigawatts of carbon-free energy by 2050.

A geothermal revolution is unfolding around the United States in ways both flashy and quiet. As Big Tech becomes increasingly involved in developing alternative energy sources to meet skyrocketing energy demand driven by the AI boom, innovative and advanced geothermal technologies have been taking off – but so too have more simple and surface-level solutions like heat pumps. Together, these approaches could reshape the domestic energy industry by providing baseload clean energy solutions and shoring up energy security in urban and rural populations alike.

Last month, residents started moving into The Riverie, the biggest high-rise geoexchange system in the country, an apartment building in Brooklyn that is situated atop 320 boreholes that help the building heat and cool through tapping into the Earth’s naturally insulated temperatures. In the winter, relatively warm temperatures are piped out of the ground and into the building. In the summer, the process is reversed and heat is pumped downward into the ground. 

“Because it simply moves heat rather than generating it, the Riverie is expected to reduce annual carbon emissions from heating and cooling by 53 percent compared with traditional residential buildings,” reports Scientific American. While up-front costs and red tape can be a major deterrent from building similar models elsewhere, the benefits outweigh the costs – both in terms of economics and environmental factors – in many settings. As a result, the Riverie is likely at the vanguard of a much bigger movement that will start to become more common in urban areas around the country and the world. 

Whereas the major advantage of geoexchange systems such as this one is that they are relatively shallow and easy to drill, the other major innovation taking place in geothermal energy takes just the opposite approach – unlocking new ways to drill deeper into the Earth than ever before. Historically, geothermal energy systems have only been viable in places where the heat from the Earth’s core has naturally escaped to the surface – such as through geysers and thermal pools.  

To make geothermal a practical alternative energy source nearly anywhere on Earth, geothermal startups across the world are working on ‘enhanced geothermal’ techniques capable of drilling to extreme depths. These startups are borrowing technologies from hydraulic fracturing and even nuclear fusion to find more advanced ways to blast and melt away bedrock to access the heat of the Earth’s core. 

Enhanced geothermal startups are being backed by some of the tech industry’s biggest figures and deepest pockets. One such venture, Houston-based Fervo Energy, is backed by Bill Gates and Google, among other major investors. Plus, critically, geothermal has bipartisan backing and outspoken support from the Trump administration – rare for a clean energy technology in the United States. 

As such, the U.S. is poised to become a major frontrunner in the emerging sector. According to projections from the United States Department of Energy, enhanced geothermal projects could provide about 90 gigawatts of carbon-free energy in the U.S. by 2050. That’s roughly enough to power at least 65 million homes. 

“The U.S. has a number of different superpowers and putting holes in the ground and taking things out of those holes is one of them — and doing so more economically and more efficiently than basically any other place on Earth,” Drew Nelson, vice president of Project InnerSpace, was quoted by Cipher News in an article from last year.

Plus, the AI boom is driving an increase in investment in geothermal research and development, which has been a major catalyst for technological advancement. While AI is creating an energy problem that geothermal is needed to solve, it is also providing key solutions for geothermal development and deployment. AI tools are increasingly being used to map out optimal locations for geothermal systems. 

However, there are some key challenges standing in the way of geothermal expansion, including high up-front costs and a talent shortage for the nascent and relatively little-known industry. But while enhanced geothermal gets all of the attention and most of the bottlenecks, smaller and quieter projects like Riviera are continuing to break ground and change the way we heat and cool our cities. These breakthroughs are small, but could add up to huge changes for energy efficiency in coming years.

Tyler Durden Sat, 02/21/2026 - 19:50

Grinding The American Middle Class To Dust

Grinding The American Middle Class To Dust

Authored by MN Gordon via EconomicPrism.com,

The housing market, for much of the 20th century, was the bedrock of the American Dream. Home ownership, and the financial stability it represents, was a sure path to middle-class prosperity.

That dream turned to a nightmare for many American families during the epic real estate bubble and subsequent bust in 2008-09. What’s more, in the near two decades that followed, federal monetary policies coupled with restrictive local development standards have huffed and puffed an even more perilous bubble than the last one.

Now the crumbling façade of American real estate and the associated economic squeeze has become too great to ignore. To understand why the real estate market is falling apart, you must look at who’s expected to buy the houses. The arithmetic simply doesn’t work.

We’ve reached the point where discretionary income, the money left over after you’ve paid for basic needs, has effectively vanished for much of the population. When 67 percent of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, saving for a down payment is impossible.

Currently, about 72 percent of Americans are struggling to pay their monthly bills. We aren’t talking about luxury vacations or even unexpected medical expenses. We’re talking about keeping the lights on and the fridge full. When the buffer is gone, the entire economic engine stalls.

The lack of affordable housing has created a generational rift. Young workers find themselves trapped in a permanent renter class. They’re unable to build the equity that once anchored the nation’s middle class.

Right now, more than 75 percent of homes across the country are unaffordable for the typical household. Most Americans are effectively priced out of the housing market. And this number is climbing.

Between higher interest rates, relative to four years ago, and artificially inflated valuations, the entry-level home no longer exists.

The Mortgage Death Trap

The ladder of social mobility has been pulled up. Millions of Americans have been left behind. Shelter is no longer a basic path to financial stability, but an unreachable speculative asset.

What we are seeing is the rent servitude of a generation. If you can’t buy, you rent. If you rent, you can’t save to buy. It’s a closed loop that keeps equity in the hands of the few while the middle class are stuck paying for a roof they will never own.

The modern American household also operates in a fragile state. Most families require two incomes just to keep the mortgage current. This dual-income trap means there is zero margin for an unexpected job loss.

If even one spouse loses their job, which is becoming a looming threat as the labor market adjusts to the realities of AI, the house quickly turns from a burden to a liability. The timeline from missed paycheck to foreclosure notice is shorter than most people realize.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the labor market is strong. But the reality on the ground tells a different story. We are staring down a year where millions of jobs are projected to vanish.

Automation and AI are displacing white-collar jobs that used to be safe. There have been massive layoffs in technology, finance, and manufacturing. In previous downturns, there were usually sectors that could absorb the displaced. Today, every sector, except low-cost elder care jobs, is contracting simultaneously.

When the jobs go, the houses follow. A bank doesn’t care about your years of loyal service. When the 30-day clock on a missed payment starts ticking that’s all that matters.

Engineered Collapse

Despite what the data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics says, there’s mounting evidence that this isn’t just a run of the mill economic cycle. When you look at the speed of the decline and the specific targeting of the middle class, it appears to be something else entirely.

The middle class, specifically the segment that has historically held the most private property, is under attack. By squeezing the life out of the housing market, wealth is being funneled upward. When families lose their homes to foreclosure, they don’t just lose a roof, they lose their primary vehicle for intergenerational wealth.

The result is a civilization of serfs. We’re rapidly transitioning to a rentership society. If you don’t own property, you don’t have a stake in the future. You’re left out in the cold.

In 2008, the crash was about bad paper and subprime loans. Today, the crisis is about affordability and insolvency. House price inflation in the face of stagnating wages has become too much to overcome.

Moreover, as houses are lost en masse to the banks they aren’t being foreclosed on and put back on the market at a lower price. They’re being sold in bulk to hedge funds, who promptly jack up the rents. What this means is your neighborhood could soon be owned by a corporation that doesn’t have a face, let alone a soul.

The real estate market isn’t just cooling off. It’s being hollowed out. Between the loss of discretionary income, the instability of the job market, and the sheer impossibility of the two-income mortgage, the American middle class is standing on a trap door.

Yet the collapse isn’t coming. It has already begun. The question isn’t whether the market will survive, but who will be left owning anything when the dust settles.

Grinding the American Middle Class to Dust

For decades, the home was a forced savings account that allowed a mechanic or a teacher to retire with dignity. Today, that vehicle has been hijacked by institutional capital.

As the supply of affordable homes dwindles, we see the rise of the build-to-rent trend. This is where entire subdivisions are constructed not for families to buy, but for corporations to lease back to them in perpetuity.

This shift marks the transition from a stakeholder society to a subscription society consistent with the WEF diktat of, “you will own nothing and be happy.” Housing, the most basic of human needs, has become a subscription service.

Thus, the ability to accumulate private wealth through long-term home ownership has disappeared. As a renter, you are no longer building equity and wealth, you are funding a hedge fund’s quarterly dividends.

This exploitive model ensures that the fruits of one’s labor are siphoned away from the community and into the coffers of distant shareholders. As a result, the working class are left with nothing but receipts and a sense of perpetual instability. The economic ladder has been replaced by a treadmill to nowhere.

In addition, a society of renters is a society of transients that lack the long-term community ties that homeownership once encouraged. As the trap door swings open, the fall both destroys people’s finances and shatters the very concept of the neighborhood.

Community engagement and local pride disappear when the residents of a street have no permanent stake in its future. Vibrant towns turn into anonymous places for an increasingly displaced workforce. No one makes eye contact. No one cracks jokes. No one helps their elderly neighbor bring in the groceries.

The doors are closing on the era of American middle-class independence. The dream of home ownership is being replaced by the reality of permanent debt, and the bedrock of the American middle class is ground into dust.

Tyler Durden Sat, 02/21/2026 - 18:40

Trump Hikes Global Tariffs To 15%, Blasts "Ridiculous, Anti-American" SCOTUS Ruling

Trump Hikes Global Tariffs To 15%, Blasts "Ridiculous, Anti-American" SCOTUS Ruling

Hell hath no fury like a Donald scorned...

One day after 'The Supremes' struck down his IEEPA tariffs, President Trump has announced, in a statement issued on Truth Social, that he will raise his new, global tariff to 15% (the maximum allowed under a separate trade law), a day after he took hiked global tariffs to 10% (in response to the SCOTUS ruling).

Trump further slammed the SCOTUS decision as "anti-American"...

"Based on a thorough, detailed, and complete review of the ridiculous, poorly written, and extraordinarily anti-American decision on Tariffs issued yesterday, after MANY months of contemplation, by the United States Supreme Court,

Then dropped the hammer...

"...please let this statement serve to represent that I, as President of the United States of America, will be, effective immediately, raising the 10% Worldwide Tariff on Countries, many of which have been “ripping” the U.S. off for decades, without retribution (until I came along!), to the fully allowed, and legally tested, 15% level."

With the policy taking effect immediately, Trump further signaled that he would press ahead with his trade war despite the major legal setback.

"During the next short number of months, the Trump Administration will determine and issue the new and legally permissible Tariffs...

...which will continue our extraordinarily successful process of Making America Great Again - GREATER THAN EVER BEFORE!!! Thank you for your attention to this matter."

Ironically, for those cheering yesterday's court ruling, for some countries, President Trump’s new 15% tariff may actually be higher than the rates that previously applied to their exports to the US.

Trump is applying the new baseline tariff under Section 122 of the 1974 Trade Act, which allows the president to impose tariffs for 150 days without congressional approval.

Securing that approval could prove challenging, as Democrats and some Republicans have opposed elements of his trade policy

The Trump administration has indicated that it will use other legal authorities, like Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, to impose tariffs on countries individually based on their trade practices.

But those investigations will take time to prepare.

At least temporarily, exports from all countries will now face a 15 percent tariff rate, regardless of their trade practices, or the concessions they have made.

Presumably, at some point soon, the 'left' will sue to halt these tariffs too (even though - as Trump noted - they have been 'tested' in court previously).

Tyler Durden Sat, 02/21/2026 - 18:15

Ed. Dept. Scraps "Unconstitutional" Race Preferences In Federal PhD Grant Program

Ed. Dept. Scraps "Unconstitutional" Race Preferences In Federal PhD Grant Program

Authored by Jennifer Kabbany via The College Fix,

The U.S. Department of Education has agreed to rewrite the exclusionary race-based eligibility rules of a federal student scholarship program, resolving a lawsuit filed against the program.

“That means the McNair Post-Baccalaureate Achievement Program–a federal program distributing roughly $60 million annually to help students pursue graduate education–will no longer discriminate based on race,” stated Young America’s Foundation, which had sued the Biden administration in 2024 over the program.

The lawsuit had alleged the program excluded Asians, Arabs, Middle Easterners, non-Hispanic Latinos, some Africans, and whites unless they meet a limited exception for first-generation low-income students.

Instead, it supported primarily black, Native American and Pacific Islander students, according to the complaint.

“The McNair Program’s race-based provisions are unconstitutional, should not and will not be enforced, and are subject to a planned forthcoming regulatory change to rescind the race-based criteria,” according to YAF’s Feb. 17 motion to dismiss, with which the Education Department agreed to by not objecting.

U.S. Department of Education press secretary for higher education Ellen Keast confirmed the changes in a statement to Fox News:

“Consistent with the Department of Justice opinion, the Department of Education has agreed not to implement the racially discriminatory aspects of the McNair program, and we plan to make corresponding changes to our regulations.”

The lawsuit was filed by the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty on behalf of Young America’s Foundation and its members Benjamin Rothove, a University of Wisconsin-Madison student and reporter for The College Fix, and Avery Durfee, a University of North Dakota student.

“For years, the McNair Program operated under federal rules that explicitly favored certain racial groups while excluding others–including students who were white, Asian, Middle Eastern, Jewish, and more–simply because of their skin color,” YAF stated in an X post Thursday.

“This is another victory for equal treatment under the law, and a reminder that Americans don’t have to accept unconstitutional discrimination just because it’s dressed up as ‘equity.’”

Tyler Durden Sat, 02/21/2026 - 17:30

"It's Not Going To End Well For Them": Susan Rice Joins Call For Revenge Purge After Democrats Re-Take Power

"It's Not Going To End Well For Them": Susan Rice Joins Call For Revenge Purge After Democrats Re-Take Power

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

As Democrats plan for the possible takeover in the midterms and 2028 election, they are already openly discussing their push for radical changes in our political system, including packing the Supreme Court to guarantee that those changes are allowed.

Many are also pledging trials, impeachments, and investigations of anyone who supported President Donald Trump in a purging of politics and government.

The latest to join the revenge purge pledge is Susan Rice, Democratic powerbroker and top policy adviser to both President Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

In an interview this week, Rice declared that supporters of Trump can expect the proverbial knocks on their doors:

“A very prominent public figure, who has served at nearly the very highest levels, once told me … ‘Revenge is best served cold,’ and the older I get, the more I see the wisdom of that.”

She added:

When it comes to the elites, you know, the corporate interests, the law firms, the universities, the media … it’s not going to end well for them, for those that decided that they would act in their perceived very narrow self-interest, which I would underscore, is very short-term self-interest, and, you know, take a knee to Trump.

The promise to crackdown political opponents is hardly unexpected in this age of rage.

Indeed, Democrats can point to the purging of the federal ranks, particularly at the Justice Department, as further justification for a tit-for-tat response.

Democratic politicians and pundits have been fueling the anger of their base with ludicrous claims that democracy is about to die since the 2020 election.

They have now used anti-ICE protests to stoke the anger in the hope that it will return them to power in the midterm elections.

Bravo star and liberal podcast host Jennifer Welch praised footage of a “No Kings” protester celebrating the death of Charlie Kirk. After playing the clip, Welch laughed with joy and declared, “So listen up, Democratic establishment. You can either jump on board with this s—, or we’re coming after you in the same way that we come after MAGA. Period.”

The pledge for revenge purges is an obvious way to further motivate a mob. In my book, Rage and the Republic, I discuss how elected officials often try to enlist mobs to advance their political agendas — only to be consumed by the unrest they helped fuel.

This yielding to a “mobocracy” was one of the critical dangers that the Framers sought to deter through protections against majoritarian tyranny.

It is a history that figures like Rice are ignoring in the hope of riding this rage wave back into power.

The fact is that history has shown that “it’s not going to end well” for establishment figures like Rice who believe that they can control a mob.

Tyler Durden Sat, 02/21/2026 - 16:20

White House Ready To Offer Iran "Token" Nuclear Enrichment Instead Of All-Out War

White House Ready To Offer Iran "Token" Nuclear Enrichment Instead Of All-Out War

When it comes to the potential of achieving a lasting US-Iran deal centered on the country's nuclear program, headlines have been changing rapidly, on a daily basis - as the specter of another US-led regime change war in the Middle East looms.

Axios is reporting that the latest big diplomatic option the Trump White House is mulling is a proposal that allows Iran "token" nuclear enrichment - but with no path to a bomb, according to unnamed US officials.

via Iranian state media

But alongside this are the typical 'military options' which have been reported for weeks, with Trump currently said to be considering 'limited' strikes, or even decapitation attacks to take out the Ayatollah and top leadership - though concerns are this would unleash uncontrollable full war, given Tehran's retaliation would likely be all-out.

Axios says of negotiations and the "token" enrichment option - that "This suggests there could be an opening, if only a small one, between the red lines set by the U.S. and Iran for a deal to constrain Iran's nuclear capabilities and prevent war."

The unspoken irony and contradiction in all of this - which the Iranians are fully aware of - is that this is precisely what the original Iran JCPOA nuclear deal under Obama aimed for. Trump, of course, during his first term pulled the US out of the deal, in April 2018, finding it insufficient.

"President Trump will be ready to accept a deal that would be substantive and that he can sell politically at home. If the Iranians want to prevent an attack they should give us an offer we can't refuse. The Iranians keep missing the window. If they play games there won't be a lot of patience," a senior American official told Axios.

All of this has led to premature reports that Washington has already 'accepted' a scheme whereby Iran could keep its nuclear program, for domestic energy purposes. Yet the two sides in reality appear nowhere near the goal line or final agreement.

The same outlet agrees, concluding: "U.S. officials say the bar for Iran's forthcoming nuclear proposal is very high because the plan would have to persuade the many skeptics inside the Trump administration and in the region."

The US is still escalating the immense military pressure by the day, as this past week it became very clear that we are witnessing the biggest American military build-up in the region since the 2003 Iraq war.

An 'alternate' plan is to take out Ayatollah Khamenei and his son, the latest reporting says...

A sticking point for the US remains the limitation or elimination of Iran's formidable ballistic missile program. But Tehran naturally sees this as impossible, as it would in essence be disarming itself, assuring its own demise if ever attacked by an enemy like Israel.

Israeli has meanwhile made no secret that it wants to see the collapse of the Islamic Republic, seeing in it a forever enemy of the Jewish people. But Iranians say they are the ones repeatedly attacked in an unprovoked fashion.

Tyler Durden Sat, 02/21/2026 - 15:45

Syria Asks Germany Not To Deport Its Citizens Back Home, Fearing It Would Make Country 'Unsafe'

Syria Asks Germany Not To Deport Its Citizens Back Home, Fearing It Would Make Country 'Unsafe'

Authored by Thomas Brooke via Remix News,

Syria has formally asked Germany for patience over the deportation of Syrian nationals, warning that the return of thousands could lead to insecurity in the country and worsen the country’s fragile humanitarian situation.

As reported by Welt, Mohammed Yaqub al-Omar, director of the consular department at the Syrian Foreign Ministry, urged Germany “to understand the Syrian refugees and give us more time for reconstruction.”

He warned that “the return of thousands of Syrians to Syria at this time could exacerbate the humanitarian crisis and mean that many people will have to live in refugee camps.”

According to al-Omar, 1.5 million people are currently living in tent camps in northern Syria alone due to destroyed homes, schools, roads, and a lack of electricity. Large-scale deportations from Germany, he suggested, would place further strain on already overstretched infrastructure.

Politicians from the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), argue that legal protection grounds no longer apply, but members of the co-governing left-wing Social Democrats (SPD) were more amenable to Damascus’ request.

“Residence rights are not determined by the wishes of the countries of origin, but by whether a claim to protection exists. This claim, however, ceased to exist after the fall of the Assad regime,” Alexander Throm, domestic policy spokesman for the CDU/CSU parliamentary group, told Focus magazine. He added that returns to safe areas of Syria are possible, asking, “Who, if not Syrians, should rebuild the country after the civil war?”

Marion Gentges, Justice and Migration Minister in Baden-Württemberg from the CDU, warned against delaying deportations because of the current debate. “We have an interest in ensuring that serious criminals and dangerous individuals leave our country. Therefore, such deportations, including those to Syria, must be carried out consistently,” she said.

The topic of Syrian deportations could lead to friction within the federal coalition, however, with SPD lawmakers suggesting that Damascus’ request for more time was reasonable.

“Syria still needs time to create structures that allow for returns,” said Serdar Yüksel, SPD chairman of the German-Turkish Parliamentary Group. In many areas, he reported, there are “no schools, no hospitals, no running water, no sewage system.”

In some places, there is “virtually no reconstruction” taking place, he added, without responding to the suggestion that perhaps Syrians themselves should be leading the reconstruction.

The issue is already partially addressed in the coalition agreement between the CDU/CSU and SPD, which provides for the resumption of deportations to Syria, beginning with criminals and individuals considered threats to public safety.

However, a broader deportation policy back to the country has not been agreed upon.

Alice Weidel, co-leader of the Alternative for Germany (AfD), slammed the request by the Syrian government, and suggested that a remigration policy for Syrians would already be in full force were her party in office.

She wrote on X, “Syria is demanding that Germany not send back criminal Syrians – and the German government is complying. With the AfD in government, the deportation offensive would begin immediately – and the safety of its own citizens would be prioritized!”

Her party added in a separate post, “Syria refuses to take back Syrians – so the country doesn’t become ‘unsafe.’ Criminal Syrians are supposed to stay in Germany – and the German government is complying. Instead: launch a deportation offensive, send Syrians back to Syria!”

Voluntary deportation programs were launched in some German states last year, but resulted in extremely poor conversion rates. Despite financial incentives being offered at German taxpayers’ expense, just a fraction of those offered assistance to return home took up the offer.

Read more here...

Tyler Durden Sat, 02/21/2026 - 15:10

These Are The Most Dangerous Fields Of Work

These Are The Most Dangerous Fields Of Work

Fatal workplace injuries remain a pressing issue in the United States, with stark disparities across occupational fields.

Statista's Tristan Gaudiaut reports that, according to data published by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics in February 2026, farming, fishing and forestry are still by far the most dangerous fields of work, recording around 22 fatal injuries per 100,000 workers in 2024.

The Most Dangerous Fields of Work | Statista

You will find more infographics at Statista

A little further behind are transportation and material moving (12.8) and construction and extraction (12.6), followed by protective services (8.2) and building/ground cleaning and maintenance (6.9).

These figures underscore the persistent risks faced by workers in physically demanding and high-hazard industries, despite ongoing safety regulations and enforcement efforts.

Tyler Durden Sat, 02/21/2026 - 14:35

Welcome To The Lowest-Common-Denominator Society

Welcome To The Lowest-Common-Denominator Society

Authored by James Hickman via SchiffSovereign.com,

For decades, Germany operated its rail system on an honor model. There were no turnstiles, no barriers. Passengers bought tickets, boarded trains, and conductors performed random spot checks to make sure everyone had paid.

It was a system built on trust— and for a long time, it worked, because Germany was a fundamentally law-abiding society.

That system has been fraying over the last several years as Germany aggressively imported millions of migrants who don’t respect the law.

The most egregious example took place earlier this month, when a train conductor asked a passenger— a 26-year old migrant— for his ticket.

Not only did the passenger not have a ticket, but he beat the conductor so severely that the man died of his injuries the next morning.

The government’s response is extraordinary.

Rather than establish law and order and rain holy hell upon the criminals, Deutsche Bahn— which is owned by the German government— has told conductors to NOT approach passengers who present a “high risk of escalation.”

In short, the new policy is— if someone looks dangerous, don’t bother checking their ticket.

Meanwhile, ordinary passengers— the ones who actually follow the rules— will continue to be checked (and punished) if they’re caught without valid fare.

The same logic already governs retail theft across much of Germany.

Shoplifting hit record levels in 2024— roughly €3 billion in losses— and according to industry data, 98% of retail theft goes unreported to police. Retailers have largely given up because prosecutors rarely pursue the cases.

Moreover, employees who do try to intervene face increasingly aggressive and violent offenders… which is why retail stores have instructed staff to not intervene.

We’ve seen the same type of policy in the US.

Last August in Charlotte, North Carolina, a 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee named Iryna Zarutska was sitting on a light rail train when a man behind her pulled out a knife and stabbed her to death.

The killer— DeCarlos Brown Jr.— had 14 prior arrests including armed robbery and had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. His own mother had tried to have him involuntarily committed. Seven months earlier, a magistrate “judge” named Teresa Stokes released him without bond— on nothing more than a written promise to appear.

I put “judge” in quotes because Ms. Stokes had never graduated from law school, nor passed the bar in any state. She wasn’t qualified to adjudicate a traffic ticket, let alone violent crime.

At least there was outrage in America over Zarutska’s violent slaying.

But in Germany, the response to a train conductor being beaten to death was to tell other train conductors to stop doing their jobs.

And this isn’t some isolated lapse in judgment. It’s a pattern that runs through practically every layer of German governance.

Start with free speech.

The Alternative for Germany party (the AfD) won 20.8% of the vote in last year’s federal election, and current polls put them at 25-27%— neck and neck with the governing party.

The AfD’s surge in popularity is literally BECAUSE of the lawlessness and criminality that’s rampaging across the  country.

But rather than admit their policies have been catastrophic failures… and reverse course… the German establishment’s response was to classify the entire AfD as a “confirmed right-wing extremist endeavor”. They even authorized the domestic intelligence agency to wiretap and spy on AfD members.

Politicians have also filed hundreds of criminal complaints against citizens who criticized them online. Robert Habeck, the former deputy chancellor from the Green Party, personally filed 805 complaints. Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock filed 513.

The government frequently conducts early-morning raids on citizens’ homes over social media posts— they literally call them “Action Days Against Hate.” Ironically, one man received a suspended prison sentence for posting a meme that said a politician “hates freedom of speech.” You can’t make this stuff up.

A 2024 study by The Future of Free Speech found that 99.7% of content deleted on Facebook under Germany’s censorship law was perfectly legal speech.

Rather than asking why millions of Germans are angry— the economy in its longest downturn since reunification, 120,000 manufacturing jobs lost in a single year, rising violent crime— the government’s answer is to label them extremists, censor their speech, and try to ban the party they vote for.

Then there’s German energy policy.

Remember, this is the same government that lectured the entire world on climate change while shutting down all 17 of its nuclear power plants— the last three in April 2023, during an energy crisis.

Before Russia invaded Ukraine, Germany imported 55-65% of its natural gas from Russia.

When Russia cut the gas in 2022, Germany frantically restarted more than 20 coal-fired power plants and imported 42 million tonnes of coal, including a 278% surge from southern Africa.

They bulldozed an entire village called Lutzerath (in South Africa) to expand a coal mine, dragging 6,000 protesters away.

The country that wagged its finger at the West over carbon emissions ended up with a dirtier power grid than China’s.

And having shut down its own perfectly clean nuclear plants, Germany became a net electricity importer for the first time, buying power from France’s nuclear grid.

Under German law, if a bartender overserves a customer who then causes a fatal car crash, the bartender can be prosecuted for negligent homicide. Courts have ruled that by serving the alcohol, the bartender becomes legally responsible for the danger they created.

But a government that shuts down its own energy supply, censors its own citizens, and tells law enforcement to look the other way when criminals get aggressive? Apparently no such accountability applies.

And the same goes for the US, where if there was any justice, Teresa Stokes would be in prison for the negligent homicide of Iryna Zarutska.

It’s worth paying close attention, because Germany may be one of the worst offenders, but it isn’t the only Western nation making these choices.

That’s how you build a lowest-common-denominator society— by catering every policy to benefit the worst people in it.

Tyler Durden Sat, 02/21/2026 - 14:00

'Incubator Babies' Are Back, With Iran In Crosshairs

'Incubator Babies' Are Back, With Iran In Crosshairs

Tehran is once again pointing the finger at "terrorists" for last month’s bloodshed, rejecting outside estimates and doubling down after President Trump just issued his own high estimate.

Trump told reporters Friday that 32,000 people were killed in the unrest, declaring that "the people of Iran have lived in hell" under the ruling clerical regime of the Ayatollah.

Source: qantara.de

That figure is one of the highest offered so far, even significantly beyond some Iranian opposition claims. But Tehran has rejected this. It's far beyond even what most Washington-friendly mainstream media said in real time as the bloody protests were unfolding.

Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi announced Saturday that the government has published a list of 3,117 individuals he called "victims of recent terrorist operation."

The official figure notably includes roughly 200 security personnel - suggesting at least some elements of the protests were armed, dangerous, and attacked police and military.

Iranian officials have alleged the protesters had outside covert help from Israel and the United States. Indeed, US mainstream media has lately confirmed the US government covertly shipped in thousands of Starlink terminals to aid the anti-government movement's communications and ability to organize.

"If anyone disputes accuracy of our data, please share any evidence," Araghchi wrote on X. He had previously claimed that at least 690 of the names offered were "terrorists" armed and funded by the US and Israel.

There could be signs of yet more protests emerging, as Fox Chief Correspondent Trey Yingst writes Saturday, "Large protests today in Iran, led by university students. Monitoring."

Meanwhile the New York Post has just issued this conflict's version of the "incubator babies" - with a new report claiming babies are being ripped from mothers' wombs(!). 

NYP claims: "Iranian police officers are gang-raping imprisoned female protesters and then cutting out their uteruses to cover up the horrific torture – before shipping their lifeless bodies home to their families, according to a shocking new report."

The Ron Paul Institute's Daniel McAdams exposes the report for the laughably crude propaganda that it is...

Every. Single. Time. 

And people still actually fall for such simplistic, evidence-free claims amid the drum-beat for war. We are always told coming off each and every failed Neocon war: "but this time it's different!"

Americans are some of the most propagandized people on earth, and often this translates to disastrous 'shock and awe' style consequences for nations in Washington's immediate crosshairs.

* * *

For a trip down memory lane...

Three months after Nayirah testified, President George H.W. Bush launched the invasion of Iraq. But it turned out Nayirah’s claims weren’t true. No human rights group or news outlet could confirm what she said. It also turned out Nayirah was not just any Kuwaiti teenager. She was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States, Saud Nasser al-Sabah. She had been coached by the public relations firm Hill & Knowlton, which was working for the Kuwaiti government.

Tyler Durden Sat, 02/21/2026 - 13:25

Was Climate Change The Greatest Financial Scandal In History?

Was Climate Change The Greatest Financial Scandal In History?

Authored by Stephen Moore via The Epoch Times,

Environmental scholar Bjorn Lomborg recently calculated that across the globe, governments have spent at least $16 trillion feeding the climate change industrial complex.

And for what?

Arguably, not a single life has been or will be saved by this shameful and colossal misallocation of human resources.

The war on safe and abundant fossil fuels has cost countless lives in poor countries and made those countries poorer by blocking affordable energy.

Since the global warming crusade started some 30 years ago, the temperature of the planet has not been altered by one-tenth of a degree—as even the alarmists will admit.

In other words, $16 trillion has been spent—a lot of people got very, very rich off the government largesse—but there is not a penny of measurable payoff.

But it’s much worse than that.

In economics there is a concept called opportunity cost: What could we have done with $16 trillion to make the world better off?

What if the $16 trillion had been spent on clean water for poor countries?

Preventing avoidable deaths from diseases like malaria?

Building schools in African villages to end illiteracy?

Bringing reliable and affordable electric power to the more than 1 billion people who still lack access? Curing cancer?

Many millions of lives could have been saved.

We could have lifted millions more out of poverty.

The benefits of speeding up the race for the cure for cancer could have added tens of millions of additional years of life at an economic value in the tens of trillions of dollars.

Instead, we effectively poured $16 trillion down the drain.

For this reason, it is important that we identify the green “climate change” derangement syndrome as perhaps the most inhumane political movement in history.

The one sliver of good news is that it appears the climate change neuroses have finally started to subside. We’ve reached peak global warming craziness in the U.S., for sure, and even Europe seems to have turned its back on its economically masochistic net zero fossil fuels obsession.

Donald Trump is wisely and rapidly dismantling the climate change industrial complex.

Of all his pro-growth economic policies, there may be none with a higher longtime payoff than his recent order to repeal the mother of all costly regulations: the anti-fossil fuels “endangerment rule” taxing carbon dioxide emissions. The cost of that regulation had been estimated to exceed $1 trillion over time.

We can’t recapture the $16 trillion wasted on a false crisis. Sunk costs are, alas, sunk.

But we can stop the madness of actually believing that politicians who can’t even pay off the balance on their credit cards can somehow change the world’s temperature.

Tyler Durden Sat, 02/21/2026 - 12:50

What Have You Learned In The Last 6 Hard Years?

What Have You Learned In The Last 6 Hard Years?

Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Epoch Times,

The last six years have been a time of astonishing revelation about many features of public life that had been previously hidden.

I’m not just speaking of the Epstein files though they are part of it.

We’ve all seen and experienced things over these years that (at least to me) would have been nearly inconceivable before. It’s shaken us and forced people to recalibrate their understanding of the world.

If you have changed your mind on some important matters, congratulations? That’s a sign of humility, curiosity, adaptability, and adherence to facts over bias. This is a virtue. People who report no change are either omniscient, which is doubtful, not paying attention, or just too doggedly attached to prior views that nothing can unsettled them.

I have a huge archive of my own writings over decades and I look through sometimes just to test how and to what extent my own outlook has shifted. Indeed it has. There is value in my old books and articles but reading them now, I detect a kind of naivete, a simplicity in theory and understanding. I don’t think it is just maturing here. There is more going on.

Below I list some of the issues on which our times have introduced depth and complexity that defy conventional ideological categories.

I suspect you might have undertaken a similar journey yourself but likely with different starting points and different conclusions. We all process this new transparency in different ways. I can only chronicle my own, which I’ve summarized in ten points.

1. We were introduced to a new conception of what government is in real life.

Perhaps we once thought of government as the people we elect. That’s supposed to be how it works. As it turns out, gradually over a century and a bit more, an unelected bureaucracy has come to take power. It runs circles around the elected representatives of the people. It has deep links throughout society. The administrative state also has the institutional knowledge and holds on for dear life from the turning of one leader to another.

The U.S. Constitution says that the president is head of the executive branch. Trump has attempted to control its 444 agencies but has been stopped by a flurry of lawsuits. As it turns out, the machinery of state is impervious to elected leaders and designed to be exactly that. The same is true of Congress, which has its own staff that migrates and lasts through every political turning. This is not democracy. This is an entrenched and unelected oligarchy. It needs to change, lest the people be disenfranchised forever.

2. We newly understand what industry capture means.

In the past, it’s not been entirely clear how agency government works with industry. Two views have prevailed: agencies existed in an antagonistic relationship to business in ways that harm enterprise, or agencies work to protect the people against the depredations of corporations. Now that we’ve had a closer look, we see a more symbiotic relationship between large and powerful corporations and the agencies that are supposed to control them. We see this in agriculture, pharmaceuticals, education, technology, and munitions. This problem is pervasive.

3. Academia, as it turns out, is not the bee’s knees.

University intellectuals have long been valorized as the best and the brightest, the institutions guarding an independent version of truth that rises above the exigencies of the mutating public mind. But think about the major controversies of our time that academia has in general done little to nothing to resolve and much to promote: transgender issues, woke ideology, lockdowns for infectious disease, censorship, welfare corruption, the integrity of science, the problem of citizenship, and on and on. Academia in general has given off the appearance of aloofness to it all or merely being a participant in sketchy financial dealings. Think of it: when Trump started cutting the funding of elite universities, there was no real outcry at all. This is because academia has lost its once-high status in American life.

4. Big Media mostly is hopelessly partisan.

There was a time when we might have believed that the watchdog media was the essential bulwark to stand between the citizens and political power, holding elected leaders to account. This old view has been proven unsustainable in light of the last decade in which its blatant partnership has been unbearably obvious. The war on Trump that began in 2016 led inexorably to a complete takeover of the newsroom which then diminished trust in media, which is at historic lows. What’s more, we’ve learned that the biggest media players also operate in a cooperative relationship with state priorities, much more so than we knew before.

5. Big business partners with big government.

There was a reason why during the recent respiratory pandemic that your local small businesses were closed whereas the big-box stores were open. There is a reason why when the opening started happening, capacity restrictions hit small coffee shops but large eat-in restaurants thrived. It’s because of their pull in Washington and state houses. The big guys have political pull whereas the small guys do not. The big guys deploy the power of government to hurt the competition. Is this how it works? Maybe I knew this abstractly but seeing it all unfold in real time was remarkable.

6. The science is skewed at best.

Like you, I used to think that peer-reviewed publications in prestigious journals were likely approximating some truth. Then I watched as these same journals and publications ran articles that were obviously manipulated, false, and some just completely made up to fit with a prevailing political agenda. Once we found out that these venues are funded by the very industries they cover, it started to make sense. Now most of us have come to doubt the truth of much if not most of what they publish. This is supposed to be the age of science and yet we cannot presume to trust what appears under the name science.

7. Courage is scarce.

I once believed that when people thought the right things—freedom matters, humans have rights, we should follow laws, censorship is wrong, bureaucrats should not rule outside their realm of competence—that we have won most of the battle. What I did not understand entirely is that the courage to act on convictions is far more rare than convictions themselves. Indeed, without the courage to stand up for truth at some risk to reputation and financial well-being, it’s not clear that one’s convictions matter much. Not only that, such courage is exceedingly rare. Most people can be cowed by fear of the unknown. I did not know this.

8. The left and right are fuzzy concepts.

We all used to think we understood what was right and what was left, as if they are fixed categories. Same with the word libertarian: we thought we could predict views and actions based on those labels. I no longer believe that. I’m now allied with people schooled on the left in ways I never imagined possible, and with others on the right who I once seriously doubted. Nor do these words seem to mean much now that the left seems to push things that make zero sense according to their previous principles, and the right has warmed up to topics that were only of interest to the left. In general I’m glad for this but I’m waiting for all of it to settle in some ways that it is not now.

9. Food matters as much as medicine.

I once believed that concern over chemicals in food and large-scale industrial agriculture was wildly overwrought. But after discovering the problems in the medical world and Big Tech, it seemed obvious to consider the ways in which government intervention in agriculture is also creating cartels and distortions. Put that together with genuine concerns over health and you see the problem that has been highlighted by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. This issue that I had completely dismissed ten years ago is now front and center in my thinking, along with a passion to see the restoration of small regenerative agriculture.

10. You can make a difference.

Here is what has shocked me most. I’m now connected with a large group of Americans who are deeply concerned for the future of freedom in every sector: education, medical, agriculture, technology, and citizenship rights including voting integrity. I’ve seen this movement blossom from nearly non-existent to becoming enormously powerful and influential, not only in the United States but all over the world. Things are changing today and not because the establishment wants it that way. Things are changing because people are learning, gathering, acting, and insisting on change. This inspires me to no end. We need more of this in every area of life.

Tyler Durden Sat, 02/21/2026 - 11:40

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