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U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro and federal law enforcement officials held a press conference around midday Friday to announce a “Summer Surge” under the D.C. Safe and Beautiful Task Force ahead of America 250 events across the Capital Beltway.

The urgency reflects a decades-long, disturbing pattern of elevated summer violent crime by youths, worsened by failed progressive policies from left-wing officials in the D.C. area and extending into the Baltimore metro area, which have allowed juveniles to terrorize law-abiding citizens with limited consequences.

NBC Washington reporter Mark Segraves, who attended the press conference earlier, said that D.C. law enforcement will “prosecute parents of juveniles breaking curfew”…

DOJ announces “Summer Surge” in DC USAO announces they will now prosecute parents of juveniles breaking curfew. @nbcwashington pic.twitter.com/3MYw9U24w0

— Mark Segraves (@SegravesNBC4) May 15, 2026

Local outlet NBC Washington reports that the summer surge is coming “about two weeks after the D.C. Council chose not to vote on extending Mayor Muriel Bowser’s emergency youth curfew zones over the summer.”

President Trump issued an executive order in early 2025 that established the task force. He declared a violent crime emergency and temporarily federalized the Metropolitan Police Department by late summer 2025. 

DC-Baltimore metro area has a youth violent crime crisis: 

• D.C. Mayor Imposes Juvenile Curfew After Mobs Of Kids Wreak Halloween Night Havoc

• DC Enforces Youth Curfew “To Keep Young People Out Of Trouble”

• Citywide Youth Curfew Begins In Baltimore As Mayor Strives To Restore Law And Order

The broader read is that the Trump administration wants safe streets in the D.C. metro area ahead of America 250 events.

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Cuba’s leader on Monday warned that any U.S. military action against the communist-controlled island nation would cause a “bloodbath” and lead to regional insecurity.

“If it were to materialize, it would trigger a bloodbath with incalculable consequences, plus the destructive impact on regional peace and stability,” Cuban leader Miguel Díaz-Canel said in a May 18 post on X, according to a translation. [ZH: We’re sure Palantir and Anthropic calculated it in roughly 8 seconds…]

He also insisted that Cuba doesn’t pose any threat and doesn’t have “aggressive plans or intentions against any country,” but said that it has the “legitimate right to defend itself against a military onslaught.”

In recent months, the United States has imposed significant pressure on the country’s communist regime, blocking oil shipments from Venezuela following the U.S. military capture of then-Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro in January.

The Trump administration is pressing Cuba’s leadership to end political repression, release political prisoners, and liberalize its ailing economy.

That prompted Cuban Energy and Mines Minister Vicente de la O Levy to announce on May 13 that the country had completely run out of diesel and heavy fuel oil, with its power grid entering a critical state. O Levy said Cuba had not received any oil imports since December 2025 until Russia sent about 700,000 barrels of crude oil last month.

A Cuban official on Sunday accused the U.S. government of creating a fabrication following an Axios report, citing what it said was classified intelligence that claimed Cuba has acquired hundreds of drones.

In a post on social media, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez wrote that “Cuba neither threatens nor desires war” and that the country “prepares itself to confront external aggression in the exercise ​of the right to legitimate self-defense recognized by the UN Charter.”

In a May 18 emailed statement to The Epoch Times, a State Department spokesperson said the Trump administration will move “to protect Americans, our interests and our homeland from any threat.”

“President Trump … has taken historic action to rid our backyard of uncontrolled migration, dangerous narco trafficking, organized crime, and hostile foreign military presence,” the department spokesperson added.

President Donald Trump has said that after the war with Iran, he will turn his attention to Cuba. He pledged “a new dawn for Cuba” during a speech at a Turning Point USA event in April.

During comments to reporters on May 15 aboard Air Force One, the U.S. president said that Cuba’s leadership “needs help, as you know, and you talk about a declining country—they are really a nation or a country in decline.”

CIA Director John Ratcliffe and other U.S. officials visited Cuba on May 14, at the invitation of the country’s communist regime, officials said. An official statement from Cuba’s regime noted that the meeting “took place … against a backdrop of complex bilateral relations.”

Earlier this month, the U.S. State Department reiterated that the United States would provide Cuba with $100 million in humanitarian assistance and support for satellite internet services “if the Cuban regime will permit it.”

“The regime refuses to allow the United States to provide this assistance to the Cuban people, who are in desperate need of assistance due to the failures of Cuba’s corrupt regime,” the department said on May 13.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Authored by Adam Sharp via DailyReckoning.com,

I saw a fascinating clip on Twitter/X recently.

At the graduation ceremony for the University of Central Florida, the commencement speaker brought up AI.

“The rise of artificial intelligence is the next industrial revolution.”

BOOOOOO! HISS! The new college grads are not fans.

To understand how the public attitude toward AI has changed, watch the 1-minute video below of a commencement speech in Florida:

Gloria Caulfield, a real estate executive, was booed by the students when she mentioned AI during her commencement speech at the University of Central… pic.twitter.com/pFdeIbH2dg

— Luiza Jarovsky, PhD (@LuizaJarovsky) May 13, 2026

Source: X

Gloria Caulfield, the speaker, was shocked by the negative response.

“What happened?”, she asked in a Long Island-tinted accent.

Eventually the speaker continued:

“Only a few years ago, AI was not a factor in our lives.”

And the crowd goes wild cheering at that nostalgic thought. But then…

“And now, AI capabilities are in the palm of our hands…”

The crowd absolutely hated this line. More, louder booing and hissing. The speaker said it hesitantly. She knew it wasn’t going to go over well, based on prior reactions. If this young crowd would have had rotten vegetables handy, a volley of tomatoes and eggplant would have been launched in Gloria’s direction.

Young People (Understandably) Hate AI

Put yourselves in the shoes of a young American for a moment.

Houses are unaffordable. Rent and food are almost as bad. To have children comfortably, you’ll need to be in the upper 10% of earners (depending on the area).

You’re watching the stock market zoom ahead, but have little or none invested.

Your country is importing hundreds of thousands of foreign workers, mostly from India, to fill tech jobs. They’re willing to work 60-80 hours a week for far less pay.

And now, along come AI agents. Autonomous artificial workers who plan, complete, test, and complete complex tasks. Coding is currently the primary target, but agents will rapidly expand to every corner of the white collar world.

Ken Griffin’s Revelation

Billionaire Ken Griffin, founder of giant hedge fund Citadel, has been an AI skeptic. Up until now.

With the latest agents, his team is making a disturbing amount of progress. Ken says he went home on a recent Friday afternoon “depressed” about the societal changes these agents would bring.

An excerpt from Fortune’s reporting:

For Griffin, the most striking proof isn’t in coding or content—it’s in high-end financial research. Work that Citadel would previously have assigned to teams with master’s degrees and PhDs in finance, work that took weeks or months, is now being completed by AI agents in hours or days.

“To be blunt, work that we would usually do with people with master’s and PhDs in finance over the course of weeks or months is being done by AI agents over the course of hours or days,” Griffin said at Stanford.

We’ve entered the disruption stage now. And young people are on the front-lines. The first jobs cut were entry-level, but now AI is eating its way up the food chain.

Fortunately AI is still horrible at picking stocks and writing, which is our speciality. And honestly, I don’t see them getting significantly better anytime soon. AI models are trained on the entire internet, good, bad, and horrible. But anything is possible, and nobody is 100% safe from the coming wave.

Three Paths – Blue Collar, AI Master, or Entrepreneur

As I see it, young people today have three primary paths to choose from.

Path #1: Blue-Collar

First, they can take the blue collar route. As I’ve mentioned before, my 16-year old son will be starting an apprenticeship to become an electrician this summer. I’m proud he chose this path, and think it’s a great decision.

Opportunities for plumbers, electricians, welders, mechanics, and other blue collar workers are wide open. It will be many decades before robots replace these jobs.

And of all people, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang recently acknowledged this trend.

“AI gives America the opportunity to build again. Electricians, plumbers, iron workers, technicians, builders—this is your time. AI is not just creating a new computing industry, it is creating a new industrial era.”

Isn’t it fascinating that the primary beneficiary of the AI boom is touting blue collar work? There’s a good reason for it…

Path #2: AI Masters

The second path young people can choose is a bit riskier, but has a higher upside. They can attempt to become an “AI master”. After all, there will still need to be people in the loop.

We will still need people checking the code AI writes, assigning projects, and overseeing progress.

Over the past few years a saying has taken hold, and it’s worth repeating. There are a few different versions, but here’s mine: “Your job won’t necessarily be taken by AI, but it will be taken by someone using AI better than you.”

Path #3: An Entrepreneurial Boom

The third path, of course, is becoming an entrepreneur. And AI makes this easier than ever. Even non-technical people can write solid code now, so the tech part of building a business has certainly become easier.

I expect many young people will take the entrepreneurial path. They may not have much of a choice in the matter, assuming they’re determined to enter the white collar world.

I fully expect a small-mid sized business boom over coming years. And though these businesses won’t hire as many people as they used to, there will still be significant opportunities to hire smart people.

A Breaking System

For many decades, the goal of most parents was to send their kids to college so they can find a good white collar job.

This era is ending. The transition may take another few decades to complete, but we are now headed in a different direction.

The future of white collar work will look like a smaller number of “AI masters” managing fleets of AI agents.

Blue collar work is on the rise. It will become an increasingly popular option. But many people are still stuck playing the status games, where the “rules” say we must send our kids off to university. They don’t want to tell the neighbors that little Billy’s going to be a plumber. This will change rapidly if AI plays out like I expect it to.

Young people today have many things to be upset about. And they’ve thought about these issues far more deeply than we have. So consider reaching out to the young people in your life, and asking them about their plans.

If they seem confused about what to do, ask if they’ve considered a blue collar career. I’m convinced that it’s the best path for millions of young Americans.

The political left often betrays their true agenda in the legislation they choose to oppose.  The SAVE Act, for example, would require proof of citizenship to vote in US elections; a law which the majority of countries around the world enforce.  It’s widely supported by around 80% of the public, yet, Democrats stubbornly refuse to pass it.  

Why?  Because they know there are illegal immigrants voting in their favor, and they know that mail-in ballot fraud exists and often benefits them. 

By extension, Democrats aggressively attempted to block Trump Administration efforts to ensure that illegal immigrants could not receive healthcare subsidies.  Their argument was that “no illegals actually access those subsidies”.  Of course, if this was true, then it should not matter if Trump adds such restrictions – According to Dems, nothing would change.

In reality, progressive politicians know that around 1.4 million “asylum seekers” (illegal immigrants who entered the country under Biden’s open border policies and then took advantage of the system) were on the healthcare rolls at the end of 2024.  They also know that by offering welfare programs to illegals, they are buying the future loyalty of those migrants (as well as keeping them in the country to rig the census in favor of blue states).   

Today, this loophole is being rectified by a number of states that are now requiring proof of citizenship in order to qualify for public healthcare programs.  You would think this is common sense, but Democrats and some medical institutions are not happy with the changes. 

Hospitals across the state of Tennessee say they are receiving notice from the Department of Health requiring them to verify the citizenship status of everyone enrolled in public benefit programs. 

Opponents to the reforms say this includes Children’s Special Services, which provides access to care for children from birth to 21 years of age.  The process for disenrolling kids 18 to 21 has already begun, and there is a process underway to disenroll kids zero to 17. 

It is a typical Democrat tactic to target and isolate a single “vulnerable” group and use them to justify the existence of welfare benefits for all foreigners.  You don’t want to steal that wheelchair away from little Pedro or snatch life saving medicine away from poor innocent Gabriela, right?  It is also the case than many of these healthcare providers stand to lose millions in government subsidized payments if migrants are kicked off the rolls. 

The propaganda is highly manipulative.  However, just a few months ago, the political left was arguing that “no undocumented immigrants” are receiving government healthcare benefits (Democrats say “undocumented” because they consider asylum seekers “documented”).  Today, they are frantic over patients being checked for citizenship before receiving medical welfare.    

For now, adult applicants who can’t verify their status will be disenrolled by May 29. This comes after the Tennessee General Assembly passed a law requiring all applicants for public benefits ages 18 and older to verify they are in the U.S. legally.

At bottom, anyone regardless of citizenship is typically able to access emergency services in the US.  However, taxpayer funded care should be reserved for citizens only.  Foreigners are not entitled to taxpayer dollars; it’s really that simple.  Keep in mind, this is how it works in almost every country in the world, including communist countries like China with “universal healthcare”.  

A number of states are implementing or are on the path to implementing similar laws, including North Carolina, Indiana, Louisiana, Montana, Wyoming and Oklahoma.  

Ultimately, anyone who cannot afford their own healthcare should not be looking for citizenship in the US in the first place.  Becoming an American citizen is a privilege, not a handout.  

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

Sanctuary jurisdictions in the United States will see more Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) personnel on the ground if they do not allow local law enforcement to cooperate with ICE officers, border czar Tom Homan said in a May 15 interview with the Daily Signal.

In the interview, Homan was specifically asked about New York. In January, the state’s governor, Kathy Hochul, proposed the Local Cops, Local Crimes Act, which bars state and local law enforcement agencies from signing or maintaining any Section 287(g) agreements with ICE.

Such agreements authorize ICE to delegate certain immigration functions to local and state officers under the agency’s oversight. Local and state officers can detain suspected illegal immigrants under the deal.

If passed, the New York bill would void all existing Section 287(g) agreements in the state. Homan said in the interview that he had talked to Hochul about the consequences.

“I said, Look, you end cooperation in the jails, we’re going to have to send more agents to do the job, because now, rather than one agent arresting one bad guy in the jail, which is safer for the agent, safer for the alien, safer for the community, of course, you’re going to release him. Now we got to send a whole team, six or seven agents, to go find him. So, it’s going to result in more agents in the community,” Homan said.

“Totally briefed on the whole thing, but she decided to go ahead and do it anyways. Well, I made a statement that we’re going to send more agents to New York. We have to, as a response to this, go arrest those public safety threats.”

When asked whether any sanctuary jurisdiction that doesn’t cooperate with ICE would face more ICE personnel on the ground, Homan replied, “Absolutely.”

The border czar said that he warned Hochul that there would be more collateral arrests if that’s the situation. For instance, if ICE were to arrest a criminal illegal alien, and the individual was with another illegal immigrant, then the second individual would be arrested as well.

Plus, Hochul’s legislation bans ICE from leasing beds from sheriffs in the state, due to which every illegal immigrant arrested has to be flown out of state for detainment. So, if New York locks ICE out of local jails for detaining illegals, “then we’ll simply fly them out,” Homan said.

Earlier this month, Hochul announced that an agreement had been reached with legislative leaders on the key priorities of the fiscal year 2027 state budget, including a provision banning state, local, and federal officials from wearing masks while on duty.

“Good luck with the law of banning masks. Federal law always trumps state and local law. And while threats are up over 8,000 percent, masks is a non-starter, so good luck enforcing that,” Homan said, regarding that provision.

New Yorkers in Danger

In a Jan. 30 statement, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees ICE, warned that Hochul’s proposal barring local police departments from partnering with ICE would place New Yorkers in danger.

Between Jan. 20, 2025, and Dec. 1, 2025, New York failed to honor several ICE detainer requests that resulted in the release of 6,947 criminal illegal immigrants into the streets, the agency said in an April 16 statement.

This includes people charged with 2,509 assaults, 392 dangerous drugs offenses, 305 robberies, 300 weapons offenses, 207 sexual predatory offenses, 199 burglaries, and 29 homicides.

Meanwhile, in April, a group of lawmakers introduced the Sanctuary City Elimination Act, which aims to ensure that all federal, state, and local law enforcement officers can coordinate with ICE without fear of backlash, according to an April 16 statement from the office of Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas).

“For far too long, sanctuary cities across the nation have sidestepped federal immigration law and created safe havens for dangerous illegal aliens, putting the safety and security of Americans at risk and undermining the rule of law,” Cornyn said.

The act “would ensure local and state law enforcement coordinates with ICE officers, ban certain federal funds from going to sanctuary cities, and allow victims of criminal illegal aliens who are released from sanctuary jurisdictions and reoffend in other states to seek justice.”

Via The Cradle

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said in a statement on Monday that it foiled an attempt to smuggle a large shipment of US-made weapons and ammunition into the country.

“Counter-revolutionary terror groups based in north Iraq, acting on behalf of the US and Zionist regime, intended to transfer a large shipment of brand-new US weapons and ammunition into the country. They were targeted and struck in Baneh, Kurdistan Province. Large quantities of weapons and ammunition were discovered and confiscated,” the statement said.

The statement added that intelligence efforts are ongoing to identify and arrest all internal collaborators allegedly linked to the armed groups.

The IRGC Hamzeh Sayyed al-Shuhada Headquarters warned “all mercenary elements, their agents, and their leaders that any security-related action will be met with severe force, and … a regret inducing response.”

The announcement comes as Washington has been seeking to arm separatist Iranian Kurdish groups in order to destabilize the Islamic Republic. At the start of the war, reports said that US President Donald Trump was seeking to turn Kurdish militias into a “ground force” within Iran. 

Kurdish groups opposed to the Islamic Republic denied last month US claims that Washington armed their fighters during the January 2026 unrest in Iran. 

Last week, Trump slammed Iranian Kurds for “stealing” US weapons and failing to deliver them to “protesters” and dissidents who, according to Washington, were willing to fight against Iranian forces. 

“The Kurds take, take, take,” the president told reporters, adding that they “kept” the weapons and “only fight hard when they get paid.”

Iranian Kurds were heavily involved in the 2022 armed riots, which broke out in Iran following the death of Mahsa Amini. Former US national security advisor John Bolton openly admitted that year that weapons from the Iraqi Kurdistan region were being smuggled into Iran for separatists to use against government troops.

President Trump on being ‘disappointed’ in the Kurds…

#Trump on #Kurds and his order to attack #Iran:

I’m very disappointed in the Kurds, we gave them weapons to deliver inside Iran, but they kept them instead. pic.twitter.com/lknQd6AOrr

— Mina (@Mina696645851) May 12, 2026

Kurdish groups also participated in this year’s unrest in January, during which thousands of people were killed, including security forces, armed anti-government rioters, and civilians. 

After the US-Israeli war erupted in February, Iraqi-based, Iranian Kurdish militias came under heavy missile and drone attacks – from both Tehran and its allies in the Iraqi resistance. 

Authored by Micah Zimmerman via BitcoinMagazine.com,

The White House is on the verge of a formal announcement on the U.S. Strategic Bitcoin Reserve — and the official leading the charge says the hard part is done.

Patrick Witt, Executive Director of the President’s Council of Advisors for Digital Assets, told an interviewer this week that the administration has cleared a major legal hurdle in standing up the reserve. 

“We’ll have an announcement,” Witt said.

“I wish I could say more… It’s a breakthrough as far as getting everything in place, legally sound, properly safeguarding the assets.” 

The signal follows a similar declaration Witt made at the Bitcoin 2026 conference in Las Vegas, where he told the crowd an update was coming within weeks.

President Trump signed the executive order establishing the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve on March 6, 2025.

Since then, Witt says his deputy Harry John has driven the interagency process: identifying what legal authorities exist, commissioning the necessary legal memos, and building a custody and reporting infrastructure across federal agencies that were designed for gold, not private keys. 

The reserve holds an estimated 328,372 BTC — roughly 1.6% of total global supply — accumulated through law enforcement seizures, including the Silk Road takedown, the 2022 Bitfinex hack recovery, and years of criminal forfeitures. 

The executive order bars the Treasury from selling a single coin.

A government bitcoin hack lit a fire for the U.S. government

Witt pointed to a breach at the U.S. Marshals Service as proof that the reserve’s security mandate is urgent. A government contractor named John Daghita allegedly stole more than $46 million in cryptocurrency from USMS custody accounts in late 2025, and the FBI arrested him in March 2026. A separate $24 million theft was traced to October 2024. 

“It’s a case in point for why it was so necessary that the president established the SBR,” Witt said.

An executive order dies the moment a new president takes office. That vulnerability is the core argument for two bills now moving through Congress.

Rep. Nick Begich recently rebranded the BITCOIN Act as the American Reserves Modernization Act (ARMA), which would authorize the U.S. Treasury to purchase up to 200,000 BTC per year for five years — with holdings locked for a minimum of 20 years.

Senator Cynthia Lummis has put Congress on a deadline, pushing for a vote before the summer recess as midterm campaigning begins to consume floor time. 

If the BITCOIN Act passes, the Treasury’s first open-market Bitcoin purchase is projected for Q4 2026 — making the U.S. the first sovereign nation to actively accumulate Bitcoin as a strategic reserve asset. 

The U.S. government on May 18 said it will not let people without U.S. passports enter the United States if they have been to African countries affected by, or close to, a new Ebola outbreak within the past 21 days.

As Zachary Stieber reports for The Epoch Times, the countries are Uganda, Congo, and South Sudan, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said in a public health order.

The order, signed by acting CDC Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, suspends the right of people from those countries to enter the United States because of “the serious risk posed by the introduction of Ebola disease into the United States by covered aliens based on the emergent outbreak of Ebola disease” in Congo.

The public health order will be in effect for 30 days, according to the CDC.

Federal law enables the CDC to prohibit entry by certain migrants if officials judge that barring their entry will prevent the “introduction, transmission, or spread of communicable diseases from foreign countries.”

U.S. officials also said they are going to step up public health screening and monitoring of other travelers who have arrived from areas affected by the outbreak. Screening includes identifying symptoms such as fever and analyzing possible exposure history.

“At this time, CDC assesses the immediate risk to the general U.S. public as low, but we will continue to evaluate the evolving situation and may adjust public health measures as additional information becomes available,” the public health agency said in a statement.

One American who was in Congo has tested positive for Ebola, and six others were exposed, CDC officials said in a briefing on May 18.

African officials on May 15 first confirmed the outbreak in Congo, reporting 80 confirmed and suspected deaths, and hundreds of confirmed and suspected infections.

The outbreak has since spread to Uganda, and South Sudan borders the region in Congo where many of the cases have been recorded.

The World Health Organization has declared a public health emergency of international concern over the situation, in part because the organization said there were “significant uncertainties to the true number of infected persons and geographic spread associated with this event at the present time.”

The virus behind the outbreak, the Bundibugyo virus, has no vaccine or specific treatment.

Dr. Satish Pillai, the CDC’s manager for Ebola response, told reporters on a call on May 18 that the outbreak is “a highly fluid situation” and that the CDC’s response includes deploying experts to the region as well as helping authorities in Africa attempt to prevent further infections and trace contacts of confirmed cases.

African Officials Say US Ebola-Related Restrictions Unnecessary

Stieber goes to report that African officials said on May 19 that travel restrictions imposed by the U.S. government over fears that Ebola could enter the United States are unnecessary and counterproductive.

The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said “travel restrictions and border closures are not the solution to outbreaks” and called on countries to refrain from imposing such restrictions.

“The world must avoid repeating the mistakes of previous health emergencies, where fear-driven measures caused major economic damage without delivering proportionate public health benefits,” the public health agency said.

“Africa needs solidarity, not stigma. Africa needs investment, not isolation. Africa needs partnerships that strengthen both economies and health systems. No one is safe until Africa is safe.”

U.S. President Donald Trump told reporters at an unrelated event on Monday that he was concerned about Ebola.

Heidi Overton, deputy director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, said during the event that there are “no cases of Ebola in America.”

“We want to keep it that way, and we are doing everything we can to support Americans in the region,” she added.

Congolese authorities said on Tuesday that there are more than 130 suspected deaths and more than 500 suspected cases linked to the outbreak.

The organization said that international officials should improve communication on risk, invest more in surveillance and infection prevention, accelerate the development of vaccines, and expand laboratory testing for the Bundibugyo virus.

Case fatality rates from past outbreaks caused by the virus have ranged from 30 percent to 50 percent, according to the World Health Organization.

“In the absence of a vaccine, there are many other measures countries can take to stop the spread of the virus and save lives, even without medical countermeasures, including risk communication and community engagement,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the organization, told the 79th World Health Assembly in Geneva, Switzerland, on Tuesday.