Category: zerohedge

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

George Orwell was on to it almost 80 years ago—the problem of below-replacement level birth rates. In a short book written for the Britain in Pictures series in 1947, written just as Britain was emerging from wartime rigors into an uncharted postwar future, Orwell noted that despite an upward blip in birth rates during the war, “the general curve is downward. The position is not quite so dangerous as it is sometimes said to be, but can only be put right if the curve not only rises sharply but does so within ten or at most twenty years.”

“Otherwise,” he went on, forebodingly, “the population will not only fall, but, what is worse, will consist predominantly of middle-aged people. If that point is reached, the decline may never be retrievable.” Orwell did not live to see it—he died at the age of 46 in 1950—but the danger was averted. Postwar birth rates rose in Britain and parts of Europe, though not so robustly as in the United States, where the baby boom peaked in 1957 and petered out after the introduction of the birth control pill in 1962.

The peak U.S. fertility rate, or the projection of how many children the median woman would have if current birth rates continued, hovered above 3.5 and then plunged to 1.74 in the bicentennial year of 1976, just about the same as 2025’s 1.79.

Fertility rates remained low in the 1980s, then rose and occasionally reached the replacement rate of 2.1 in the high-immigration 1990s through the Great Recession of 2007. The latest rate was an uptick from the 1.6 levels of the COVID-19-affected 2020–24 period, leaving the United States with something similar to the dilemma Orwell warned Britons against.

And it’s not just the United States. Plunging birth rates are a worldwide phenomenon. Europe’s fertility rates have been well below replacement for years, with nations’ under-70 populations set to fall by 20 percent in the next decade, not only in economically stagnant Britain and France, where births are tilted toward immigrants, but also in rapidly growing, low-immigration Poland.

Birth rates have dropped below replacement rates since 2000 in most of Latin America, largely because of lower-income mothers, such as Hispanic women in the United States, having fewer children.

China, despite the repeal of its one-child policy in 2015, saw its fertility rate plunge to 0.9 in 2025. If births continued at current numbers, the lowest evidently since the 18th century, China’s population would shrink by more than half, from 1.4 billion to 625 million. Elsewhere in East Asia, the latest birth rates have fallen to 0.8 in Taiwan and Thailand, and even lower in South Korea.

Koreans have shown the determination to maintain their culture, including their alphabet and independence, in a neighborhood with many more Japanese and Chinese. They have risen from abject poverty to become world-class exporters since the 1953 armistice. But they may be at risk of disappearing: At current birth rates, every 100 South Koreans today will have only six great-grandchildren.

What is behind this worldwide trend? At least one thing is clear about what is happening in America—and how it’s different from previous periods. It’s that childbearing has increasingly become a partisan activity.

As the Institute for Family Studies’ Lyman Stone pointed out, American conservatives and progressives each had a fertility rate of 2.7 in 1980, well above replacement level. In the 2020s, conservatives’ fertility rate has dropped marginally to about 2.4, still above replacement level.

But the progressives’ rate has fallen to 1.8, below replacement level, and generally tracks the pattern in economically developed countries.

It’s not difficult to see why. Young women increasingly tilt left politically and also tend to marry less often, hold jobs outside the home, say they don’t want children, and travel more frequently. These behaviors correlate with childlessness or with delaying childbearing, which often results in fewer births than desired.

The gap reflects “systematic differences in family formation between conservatives and liberals,” analyst Zachary Donnini wrote. Before the Great Recession, this was masked by high birth rates among black women who were heavily Democratic. But black (and Hispanic) birth rates fell sharply after 2007.

At the same time, the gap in political and cultural attitudes between young men and women has grown wider, on campus (where young men are increasingly outnumbered) and off, and both marriage and premarital sex rates have declined.

Extrapolate those trends outward, and you see something like the picture revealed in the Census Bureau’s recently released 2026 estimates of states’ populations. They showed two-thirds of the national population increase occurring in safe red 2024 states, 21 percent in the seven seriously contested purple states, and only 11 percent in the safe blue states.

Similarly, since children tend to share their parents’ political views, Wall Street Journal contributor Louise Perry wrote, we can “expect the partisan fertility gap to usher in a United States that is more conservative. In fact, the whole of the developed world is on track to become more conservative.” That’s a trend that Orwell, a proud socialist, might well have found even more dangerous than it’s sometimes said to be.

US and Iranian delegations conducted eight-hours of indirect negotiations mediated by the Omani government in Muscat on Friday, but it was merely minutes after the close of the talks that the US Department of State announced yet more sanctions on Iran.

The punitive measures target 15 entities, two individuals and 14 vessels, charging them of being part of “the illicit trade in Iranian petroleum, petroleum products, and petrochemical products” – or the so-called shadow fleet.

The Friday US statement signaled support for antigovernment protests which dominated headlines for much of the last month, but which have died down since.

“Time and time again, the Iranian government has prioritized its destabilizing behavior over the safety and security of its own citizens, as demonstrated by the regime’s mass murder of peaceful protestors,” the State Dept. explained.

But Tehran has pointed out not all of them were peaceful, given that dozens or even hundreds of police and security personnel were killed and wounded, in some cases by armed rioters who also torched buildings.

The Iranian response to these new actions was for Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi to make clear Tehran’s position that ‘fair’ dialogue as equals must be free of threats or pressure.

In a post on X, he said Iran “enters diplomacy with open eyes and a steady memory of the past year” – which means that “great distrust” now defines US-Iran relations and it needs to be overcome if any agreement can be forged.

But despite this plea, President Trump took more action in the form of slapping tariffs on any country still doing business with Iran:

The executive order, which takes effect on Saturday, directs the administration to impose new tariffs on countries that still do business with Iran.

It states that tariffs “may be imposed on goods imported into the United States that are products of any country that directly or indirectly purchases, imports, or otherwise acquires any goods or services from Iran.”

The order also sets out a mechanism for determining and applying those duties, with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio tasked with setting the rate.

These tariffs could reach as high as 25%, echoing a threat first floated by Trump in mid-January. This would significantly impact the single biggest buyer of Russian oil, China.

The additional tariff would also be felt by Russia, Germany, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates – the latter three of these being Washington allies.

Via Middle East Eye

Thousands of Iraqis have signed a pledge to help defend Iran in the event of a US attack on the Islamic Republic. According to a statement, almost 5,000 people in Iraq’s Diyala province gathered to declare their intent to defend both Iraq and its eastern neighbor, as well as Iran-backed armed groups, “without any compensation”.

“We announce our readiness to volunteer to support our security forces, the Popular Mobilization Forces, and the Islamic Republic of Iran, and we categorically reject American intervention in the Islamic Republic,” the statement read.

The announcement comes as tensions have continued to mount between Iran and the US, despite ongoing talks between the two states in Oman.

Washington announced new sanctions on Friday aimed at curbing Iran’s oil exports, including measures targeting 14 vessels flagged in countries such as Turkey, India and the United Arab Emirates. It also announced sanctions on 15 entities and two people.

US aircraft carriers, meanwhile, remain positioned off Iran’s coastal waters, with US Central Command (Centcom) releasing footage showing the Nimitz-class USS Abraham Lincoln conducting a replenishment operation in the Arabian Sea.

On Thursday, Iran’s army spokesperson, Brigadier-General Mohammad Akraminia, said the military was ready for war, which would “encompass the entire region and all US bases” if that is what Washington wanted. US President Donald Trump has previously warned that “bad things” would likely happen if a deal could not be reached. 

Ammar al-Tamimi, a leader in the Iran-backed Badr Organization, which coordinated the gathering in Diyala, said the volunteers were not associated with any specific armed faction. “Rather, we are volunteers ready to serve as a reserve force for the security forces,” Tamimi told Rudaw.

“This formation consists of 4,947 names, and its organizational structure, along with the names of each volunteer, will be submitted to the Diyala Operations Command, which will then forward them to the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Araghchi:

If the United States launches an attack against us, we do not have the capability to attack its territory, so we would target American bases in the region.

This would draw the entire region into war. We do not attack neighboring countries; we… pic.twitter.com/IoC3wYKNDD

— Clash Report (@clashreport) February 7, 2026

Iraq has maintained close ties with Iran since the 2003 war that overthrew Saddam Hussein. Both Iran and the United States have competed for influence in Iraq, where thousands of US troops remain stationed, and numerous political parties and armed groups are aligned with Tehran.

Iran-aligned groups in Iraq such as Kataeb Hezbollah and Harakat al-Nujaba have also set up recruiting stations across the country, including in Baghdad, to enlist volunteers in the event of a US attack on Iran.

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

A federal appeals court has sided with the Trump administration in upholding a policy that mandates detention without bond hearings for illegal immigrants in the United States who entered without inspection.

In a 2–1 decision issued Feb. 6, the New Orleans-based Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed lower court rulings that had granted habeas petitions to two Mexican nationals, Victor Buenrostro-Mendez and Jose Padron Covarrubias. The panel determined that such individuals qualify as “applicants for admission” under federal immigration law, subjecting them to mandatory detention under 8 U.S.C. § 1225(b) rather than discretionary release options available under § 1226(a).

The majority opinion, authored by Circuit Judge Edith Jones, emphasized adherence to statutory text. “The text says what it says, regardless of the decisions of prior administrations,” the court stated, rejecting arguments that the policy represented an unlawful shift from prior interpretations by the Department of Homeland Security and Board of Immigration Appeals.

“By eliminating the exclusion/deportation dichotomy, [Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act] put aliens seeking admission lawfully on equal footing with those who entered without inspection,” Jones wrote. “It seems strange to suggest that Congress would have preserved bond hearings exclusively for unlawful entrants.”

Circuit Judge Dana Douglas dissented. She argued that the Congress, which enacted the 1996 Act, “would be surprised to learn it had also required the detention without bond of two million people.”

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi praised the ruling in a post on X.

“The Fifth Circuit just held illegal aliens can rightfully be detained without bond,” she said. “A significant blow against activist judges who have been undermining our efforts to make America safe again at every turn.

Tonight our @TheJusticeDept attorneys secured yet another crucial legal victory in support of @POTUS Trump’s immigration agenda.

The Fifth Circuit just held illegal aliens can rightfully be detained without bond – a significant blow against activist judges who have been…

— Attorney General Pamela Bondi (@AGPamBondi) February 7, 2026

The policy, implemented in September 2025, expands mandatory detention beyond arrivals at ports of entry to include illegal immigrants in the U.S. interior, potentially affecting thousands held in facilities across Texas and Louisiana, where the Fifth Circuit holds jurisdiction.

Another Fifth Circuit ruling in September 2025 in W.M.M. v. Trump granted a preliminary injunction against deportations of Venezuelan nationals under the Alien Enemies Act, citing inadequate notice periods for due process.

In that case, the court found seven-day notices insufficient, requiring at least 21 days given detention barriers like limited access to counsel and legal resources.

“Notice must be ‘reasonably calculated, under all the circumstances,’ to afford parties ‘a reasonable time to make an appearance,’” the majority wrote, drawing parallels to challenges in expedited removals and mandatory detentions.

The consolidated appeal stemmed from district court dockets in the Southern District of Texas, where judges had ruled the detainees eligible for bond hearings.

How the mighty have fallen.

In a “poetic ending” plot twist, that even jaded conspiracy theorists would have had trouble scripting, Washington Post CEO and publisher Will Lewis has abruptly and unexpectedly stepped down from his perch atop Jeff Bezos’s crumbling media empire. Well, maybe not that unexpectedly…

That’s right, the same WaPo that spent years hurling “fake news” grenades at us here at ZeroHedge, trying to get us deplatformed, demonetized, and disappeared from the internet, is now eating crow as their own house of CIA-funded cards collapses. Yes, this is our unapologetic victory lap – we’ve outlasted another establishment hack, which earlier this week saw an in house “Red Wedding” where hundreds of CIA conduits “reporters” were fired… and it feels good.

Lewis’s exit was announced late on Saturday around 6pm ET, just days after he orchestrated a bloodbath of layoffs that axed a whopping 30% of the staff – over 300 journalists sent packing in what can only be described as a desperation move to staunch the bleeding from years of financial hemorrhaging and dwindling readership.

Lewis, ever the gracious Brit, framed his departure as a noble sacrifice “in order to ensure the sustainable future of The Post.” Sure, Will – because nothing says “sustainable future” like firing a third of your workforce and then bailing before the pitchforks come out. 

Meanwhile, as Semafor notes, the real reason for Lewis’ departure is the he presided over two major errors, one his, and the other that of his boss, Jeff Bezos who clearly has grown bored with his vanity media project. 

First, Lewis blocked the Post reporting on his role in the UK phone hacking scandal, preventing the publication of a story few would have read anyway. Then, Bezos pulled a planned endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris at the 11th hour, for apparent fear of offending Donald Trump. That endorsement wouldn’t have made much of a difference politically, but hundreds of thousands of subscribers canceled over what they saw as a craven capitulation.

.@maxwelltani on the Post’s lost years, and strategic void pic.twitter.com/wc8OEdD8AM

— Ben Smith (@semaforben) February 8, 2026

Let’s rewind a bit on Lewis’ illustrious – if catastrophically short – tenure. Handpicked by billionaire overlord Jeff Bezos – whose Amazon three times tried to ZeroHedge not once, not twice, but three times (and only thanks to the FCC intervening do we have any Amazon ads showing) at the start of 2024, Lewis was supposed to be the savior who would “transform” the once-venerable rag and reverse its slide into irrelevance.

Instead, he presided over a dumpster fire of epic proportions, culminating in this latest round of pink slips that left the newsroom in shambles. Former editor Marty Baron, the guy who once helmed the paper during its Watergate glory days or whatever passes for glory in legacy media these days, didn’t mince words: he called it one of the “darkest days in the history of one of the world’s greatest news organizations.”

Ouch. And Katie Mettler, ex-chair of the WaPo guild, piled on with a zinger: “I’m glad Will Lewis has been fired. I wish it had happened before he fired all my friends.” Tell us how you really feel, Katie.

Cutting through the shades of gray, we were more laconic: WaPo is finished. 

In the interim, the keys to the kingdom go to some dude named Jeff D’Onofrio – the former CFO who’ nobody had ever heard of until now, and who is stepping up as the placeholder boss.

Good luck, Jeff – you’ll need it. With readership tanking, ad revenue in freefall, and trust in mainstream media at all-time lows, the WaPo’s “sustainable future” looks about as promising as a subprime mortgage in 2008.

But let’s not forget the delicious irony here. This is the same Washington Post that has repeatedly tried to kneecap ZeroHedge, labeling us as purveyors of “disinformation” and cozying up to Big Tech censors – such as Amazon and Google – in a bid to silence dissenting voices. 

Remember when they accused us of being Russian bots or spies, or whatever flavor-of-the-month smear was trending? That aged like milk. And while the CIA’s favorite (well, no longer favorite) mouthpiece was busy playing hall monitor for the establishment narrative, we’ve been here, grinding away, delivering truth that their advertisers wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole. And guess what? We’re still standing, stronger than ever, with record subscribers and 100 million page views per month, while their imported CEO packs his bags and slinks back across the pond.

Is there a Polymarket, we wonder, on when ZeroHedge will surpass WaPo in readership. 

But we digress: Karma, folks, is real, and it’s spectacular. And as WaPo licks its wounds and hunts for yet another white knight to bail them out (or maybe they’ll go for a black knight this time, after all the whole equity thing), we’ll be over here popping the champagne. After all, in the cutthroat world of media, survival isn’t about being “respectable”; it’s about being right. And on that front, ZeroHedge wins again.

In the end, Democracy may well die in darkness, but WaPo’s time of death was 6pm on February 7, 2026.

Ukraine has become the proving ground for 2030s warfare, where Western weaponry, Russian weaponry, and anyone else’s “next gen” weaponry collide on a modern battlefield that’s already providing a sneak peek of what conflict will look like: weaponized AI, ground robots, FPV swarms, and automated kill chains, with humanoid robo-killers that could enter field testing as early as this year.

The focus of this note is how “kill chains” are becoming central to modern warfare, with humans increasingly pushed out of decision-making on the Ukrainian frontlines, according to a report by The Times, which adds: “AI will soon be able to meld weapons systems faster than armies’ commanders can think.”

Framed as an “intelligent kill web,” a human commander, analyst, or soldier sits at the center like a spider, viewing vast streams of sensor data and weapons systems that talk to each other faster than the speed of thought. The result is a compressed kill chain, in which identifying targets and killing opponents happen at extraordinary speed.

“You need to be able to collect information, to process information, to write and disseminate your order faster than your opponent,” Yvan Gouriou, a newly retired French army general, told The Times. He is now a strategy adviser to the defense software firm Systematic Defence.

According to dozens of current and former Western military officers, defense industry sources, and analysts who spoke with the outlet, the “intelligent kill web” marks the dawn of the age of algorithmic warfare.

Examples:

• The French Army upgraded command software to add real-time AI analytics (moving beyond traditional homegrown tools).

• The United States Army 4th Infantry Division ran exercises in Colorado testing an AI “lattice” that detected, labeled, and assessed targets, tied to a next-gen C2 prototype led by Anduril with software contributions from Microsoft and Palantir Technologies.

• The United States Air Force ran “Dash” experiments where AI planners reportedly became far faster than human officers and, in newer results, materially more accurate on tactical viability (though earlier iterations made subtle errors).

An insider at one European arms manufacturer told the outlet that integrating AI into defense is “akin to the introduction of electricity.” The person warned that this technological advance raises a serious question: how much control human commanders will retain on a modern battlefield in the years ahead.

Here’s what 2030s warfare will look like:

Separately from the report, the Ukrainian military recently hosted a closed-door war-tech conference where they showcased AI already on the battlefield.

Drone boats with missiles…

The broader takeaway here is that weaponized AI, robots, FPVs, and other advanced systems, soon including humanoid robots, on the modern battlefield in Eastern Europe, offer a glimpse of what 2030s conflict could look like. Most disturbing of all, the rise of “Skynet-like” weapons and autonomous kill chains has already arrived.

Authored by Micky Horstman via RealClearPolitics,

One and a half million more young adults live with their parents today than a decade ago. They’re losers … economically. 

Since the pandemic, fair market rents have increased as much as 40% in Chicago, the cost of owning a car is up more than 40%, and car insurance and health care prices have spiked. Student loan debt has quadrupled since 2000, and entry-level wages haven’t kept pace with inflation.

For young people without financial or family support, it’s an affordability crisis that feels insurmountable. Cost of living was Gen Z’s top political issue in 2024; they feel the “American Dream” slipping farther away.

And it’s driving them to the extremes. While political pundits insist Gen Z is “more well-off,” than other generations, and reporters write about “the big myth of zoomers’ economic conditions” – pointing to rising wealth and low unemployment compared to previous generations – political extremists from Democratic Socialist Hasan Piker to far-right nationalist Nick Fuentes are validating the distressed generation narrative.

As Gen Z flocks to the fringes, it’s on lawmakers to bring them back and renew their belief in the American Dream. They can do this by repairing the systems holding young people back, not pushing populist quick fixes or pretending these lived experiences aren’t real.

Wealth rises when you’re living in your childhood bedroom. Low unemployment doesn’t matter if jobs on the market are temporary, low-wage, or evaporate the moment the economy hiccups or AI replaces you. The kids are scared.

The far right blames immigrants. The far left blames billionaires. Leaders propose handing out $25,000 in down-payment support or mass deportations to solve the youth’s housing problems. These extremes are wrong.

The reality is: Government regulations have spiked costs and killed opportunities for young people.

For years, lawmakers infused aspects of left- and right-wing populism into the economy through government mandates, zoning hurdles, rent regulations, and most recently, tariffs. Then they acted surprised when prices climbed and jobs plummeted.

These policies don’t work, regardless of which party implements them, and they are especially harmful for younger generations. Whether it’s California’s disastrous Prop 13, which has kept property taxes locked while home prices skyrocketed, or Florida’s plan to eliminate property taxes for retirees, these policies limit housing supply and raise costs for young and first-time homebuyers.

In New York City, voters were swayed by a Socialist candidate who promised to solve the affordability crisis and make billionaires pay their “fair share.” Zohran Mamdani’s housing platform calls for rent stabilization efforts and expanding government-funded affordable housing development. Ultimately, rent control measures will drive up the cost of housing, and public sector development will come at a high cost for taxpayers – as seen in Chicago where similar “affordable” units cost taxpayers as much as $700,000 each.

Cities such as Austin and Minneapolis, which are becoming havens for Gen Z, prove what happens when free-market barriers come down: Buildings go up, rents drop, and jobs appear.

Minneapolis voters rejected a far-left Socialist candidate for mayor who ran on a similar platform to Mamdani. Populism isn’t attractive to voters when rent is cheap. The secret to affordable living, as it turns out, is removing barriers that restrict housing supply, such as zoning, permitting, and aesthetic requirements.

On the labor front, the progressive push for a $15 minimum wage has put businesses in a chokehold for a decade. In Chicago, Mayor Brandon Johnson removed the subminimum wage, forcing restaurants to pay employees a staggering new hourly rate. As a result, restaurants closed and businesses fled. When the incentives for hiring youth and tipped employees vanished, wages began to slow and youth employment declined. Instead of creating new incentives for businesses to hire young workers, the progressive solution has been calls to “tax the rich” and pour taxpayer dollars into city-run youth job programs.

On the other side, Nalin Haley, political commentator and son of Nikki Haley, and Jarrod Wright, host of an America First-themed podcast called “The Wright Wing,” have advanced anti-immigration talking points and convinced Gen Z that workers with H-1B visas will ruin the economy, encouraging an end to the program. Now, Texas is launching investigations to evaluate the program and curbing new applicants. Meanwhile, President Trump’s tariffs are raising costs on everyday items and essentials for the “American dream” including cars and housing. Immigration crackdowns have created only political unrest, not economic security for Americans.

Cost reduction, job creation and wage growth won’t be found in government mandates or in eliminating who comes into the country.

Gen Z needs policies that increase opportunities and lower the regulatory and tax burdens. Lawmakers must reform barriers to work, such as occupational licensing and degree requirements, to expand opportunities for young workers.

Only when the American Dream feels within reach will leaders be able to pull Gen Z back from the extremes.

A U.S. jury ordered Uber on Thursday to pay $8.5 million to a woman who said she was sexually assaulted by a driver, a verdict that could shape the course of thousands of similar lawsuits pending against the ride-hailing company.

The case, brought by Jaylynn Dean, was the first bellwether trial among more than 3,000 claims consolidated in federal court. Bellwether trials are designed to test legal theories and help both sides assess potential settlement values. Jurors sitting in Phoenix found that the driver acted as an agent of Uber, holding the company responsible for his conduct. They awarded $8.5 million in compensatory damages but declined to impose punitive damages. Dean’s attorneys had sought more than $140 million.

Dean, an Oklahoma resident, sued in 2023, one month after the alleged assault in Arizona. Her complaint argued that Uber knew of a pattern of sexual assaults by drivers but failed to take basic steps to improve rider safety—claims that have followed the company for years and drawn congressional scrutiny.

During closing arguments, Dean’s attorney Alexandra Walsh said Uber had marketed itself as a safe option for women traveling at night, particularly after drinking. “Women know it’s a dangerous world. We know about the risk of sexual assault,” Walsh told jurors. “They made us believe that this was a place that was safe from that.”

Uber has long argued it shouldn’t be held liable for criminal acts committed by drivers using its platform. The company maintains that drivers are independent contractors and that, regardless of classification, it cannot be responsible for actions outside the scope of their duties. “He had no criminal history. None,” Uber attorney Kim Bueno said of the driver during closing arguments, noting that he had completed about 10,000 trips with a near-perfect rating. “Was this foreseeable to Uber? And the answer to that has to be no.”

According to the lawsuit, Dean was intoxicated when she requested a ride from her boyfriend’s home to her hotel. The driver allegedly asked harassing questions during the trip, then stopped the car and raped her.

The trial was overseen by U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer, who is managing the federal cases centralized in San Francisco. Uber also faces more than 500 similar suits in California state court. In the only one of those cases to reach trial so far, a jury last September sided with the company, finding that while Uber had been negligent in its safety measures, that negligence wasn’t a substantial factor in causing the plaintiff’s harm.

The broader financial impact of Thursday’s verdict remains uncertain. Mark Giarelli, an analyst at Morningstar, said the ruling nonetheless highlights the importance of screening measures on app-based platforms. “This underscores the importance of robust background checks on convenience applications such as Uber, Lyft and DoorDash where there is interaction between customers and the supply side—drivers and delivery agents,” he said.

Uber shares fell 1.5% in after-hours trading. Shares of rival Lyft, which faces similar claims, declined 1.8%.

In a statement, an Uber spokesperson said the company would appeal, adding that the jury rejected other claims that Uber was negligent or that its safety systems were defective. “This verdict affirms that Uber acted responsibly and has invested meaningfully in rider safety,” the spokesperson said.

Sarah London, another attorney for Dean, called the decision a validation for plaintiffs across the country. The verdict, she said, “validates the thousands of survivors who have come forward at great personal risk to demand accountability against Uber for its focus on profit over passenger safety.”

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

In the dystopian novel 1984,  George Orwell wrote, “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”

The true meaning of that line was never more clear than watching the truly bizarre photo op of California governor Gavin Newsom heralding the success of the greatest boondoggle in history: his high-speed train to nowhere.

Without laying a single yard of track after burning $12 billion, Newsom showed a diesel freight train on a conventional track to create the appearance of a working railroad.

I have been writing about this boondoggle for years. Newsom promised years ago that the project would be transformative. It was, but not as he promised.

Voters approved a $9.95 billion bond issue in 2008 after absurdly low estimates of the projected cost. Influential figures and companies stood to make a fortune, and the key was to secure a “buy-in” worth billions, so that it would become increasingly difficult to abandon the project as overruns and delays sent costs soaring.

Now the official estimate of future ridership has dropped by 25% , and it demands billions more to complete a project delayed by decades. Remember that this entire project was meant to create a rail line of only 171 miles. It is projected to exceed $128 billion and could ultimately cost a billion dollars per mile. There are still uncompleted environmental assessments and challenging rail lines through the mountains.

There is still no train and not a yard of track almost 20 years later.

The inspector general, Benjamin Belnap, issued a scathing report on the first phase of the still uncompleted project.  That is only the stretch from Merced to Bakersfield which was supposed to be completed by 2033. Belnap wrote:

“With a smaller remaining schedule envelope and the potential for significant uncertainty and risk during subsequent phases of the project, staying within the 2033 schedule envelope is unlikely. In fact, uncertainty about some parts of the project has increased as the authority has recently made decisions that deviated from the procurement and funding strategies that were part of its plans for staying on schedule.”

Rather than deliver on the promise of high-speed rail from Los Angeles to San Francisco, the Merced-Bakersfield line would now cost $35.3 billion, exceeding the 2008 projection for a complete system.

Merced and Bakersfield have a combined population of roughly 500,000. That works out to roughly $22,000 per person, based on state ridership estimates.

However, Newsom still wants to be president even as citizens are fleeing his state in record numbers.  The “train to nowhere” is a problem. Even the New York Times is writing editorials on whether Newsom will be the next mistake of the Democratic Party.

Newsom’s response is to arrange for gushing columns like Maya Singer’s embarrassing piece in Vogue:

Let’s get this out of the way: He is embarrassingly handsome, his hair seasoned with silver, at ease with his own eminence as he delivers his final State of the State address…

Newsom’s lanky frame was folded onto a sofa a bit too low-slung for him. This made him lean back—away from me. Or it could be that his body language had nothing to do with ergonomics and is a function of Newsom’s quality of being at once gregarious and aloof.”

It is the type of teenybopper heartthrob coverage that Newsom is counting on from the media. It is not the billions burned on a non-existent railway but his glorious hair and “eminence.”

However, others beyond Vogue readers may be interested in his actual record. Hence, the need to release this absurd photo op that would make a propagandist blush:

“All of the hard work behind us. Now we’re going to see the fruits of that. We’re going to start seeing precisely what you see here. Real tracks, real progress.”

It is like paying for a meal at a restaurant and the Chef charging you ten times what was on the menu, not producing the meal for hours, and then showing you a picture of a different dish as a sign of his progress.

The difference is that Newsom has taken almost two decades to deliver and cut the original dish to a fraction of its original size while increasing the price exponentially.

Californians are now captives on a train to nowhere. The state must continue to burn billions because too much is invested economically and politically. They must ride the train with Gavin Newsom to the very end.

Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”

Authored by Jim Quinn via The Burning Platform blog,

“If you depreciate the money, it makes everything look like it’s going up.” – Ray Dalio

“People don’t realize how hard it is to speak the truth to a world full of people who don’t realize they’re living a lie” – Edward Snowden

My government overlords and their legacy media propaganda outlets tell me the economy is booming because GDP is between 4% and 5%, the stock market is near all-time highs, inflation is declining, unemployment is low, and AI is going to transform our world for the better. According to their narrative, All is Well. Meanwhile, all hell is breaking loose in every facet of our everyday lives. We are seeing 6 sigma (once in 500 million) events in multiple markets (gold, silver, JPY bonds) within one week. Well functioning non-manipulated markets based on price discovery do not crash by 40% in one day, like silver did last week.

Government shutdowns, ICE shootings, massive welfare program fraud, passing more bloated spending bills, fake staged shutdowns, violent upheaval in Democrat run urban shitholes, uncovering and ignoring the 2020 election fraud, Democrats (with RINO support) desperately trying to stop the SAVE Act voter ID bill to continue their election fraud scheme, and Trump tariffing and threatening every country on earth if they don’t do what he says, makes every day seem like an exhausting slog towards perdition.

And now we know for a fact the world is run by Satan worshiping, vile, child molesting pedophiles, powerful sadistic billionaires, who use politicians, bankers, and their propaganda media whores to coverup their crimes against humanity. The information which has seen the light of day is revolting, disgusting, criminal, and makes any normal person physically ill. Imagine the material they haven’t released or have already destroyed. The evilness, degeneracy, and immorality of their acts is incomprehensible to the average person trying to live a moral life, earn a living and raise a family.

What is really stupefying to me is no one other than Epstein and Maxwell have been arrested. And it is pretty clear the Trump DOJ has absolutely no plans to arrest anyone for the most heinous crimes ever documented. Meanwhile, Trump rages against Thomas Massie, who was solely responsible for forcing the release of these incriminating documents, while being completely silent regarding the evil men who committed these despicable depraved acts upon children.

More revealing is the complete blackout on all the legacy media outlets of the Epstein file release. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. It’s almost as if they have been instructed to circle the wagons and pretend the Epstein files don’t exist. Remember the videos of dozens of news anchors mouthing the exact same propaganda slogans during the covid scamdemic? Our government and media are completely controlled by evil men wielding undue influence and power over every aspect of our lives. Without Twitter and some dedicated alt-media websites, the truth about the true nature of how our world actually runs would be completely silenced.

Our overlords use the CIA, Mossad, NSA, FBI and other means to control the narrative and lead the ignorant masses to their demise. It is absolutely true the MSM being silent about the Epstein files means at least 80% of the population has absolutely no idea they were even released. And even if they know, after decades of government school indoctrination, they are incurious and incapable of critical thought, just as the pedophile psychopaths planned. Aldous Huxley was right about so many things, especially how our masters deal with the truth.

“Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth” – Aldous Huxley

Silence about the truth is their plan and they continue to implement it with deceptive gusto, while manipulating the propaganda levers of mind control through the media, Wall Street, the DC swamp, billionaire funded NGOs creating chaos across the land, and bought off social media influencers pushing whatever narrative they are instructed to spew by Israel and their child sacrificing co-conspirators throughout the government, finance, media, and entertainment industries. The narrative is ALL IS WELL, when anyone capable of examining the facts knows all is not well. In fact, our current situation is awful and deteriorating by the minute. I will briefly examine whether things are well in the markets, the economy, personal finances, politics, and global relations.

The standard response by those promoting the ALL IS WELL narrative is the stock market being within 2% of an all-time high. Scott Bessent and his band of hedge fund acolytes know they can manipulate the market upward whenever Trump does or says something astoundingly stupid. It can work in the short term because daily moves are based on emotion and momentum trading, but over the long term, earnings, valuations and reality will always win the day. The stock market valuation is currently 3 standard deviations above the long-term average and 45% above the Dotcom bubble valuation. We appear to be in a bubble seeking a pin.

There is nothing like having the most overvalued market in history with margin debt at an all-time high as Wall Street has lured the suckers in at the top. Smart money exiting and selling to the noobs who have leveraged themselves in this “can’t miss opportunity of a lifetime”, is par for the course this century, as we pop our 4th bubble in 25 years. The engineered take down of gold and silver last week was violent and rapid, with no escape for the leveraged. The bloodbath when the margin calls begin to cascade during the coming stock market collapse will be a sight to see. It will be blood in the streets once again. Some people never learn.

Charts become out of date pretty quickly when markets move as crazily as they have over the last month. Despite the USD only falling by about 1% since Powell’s August 21 speech confirming more rate cuts and the initiation of QE to infinity when markets were at record highs and the economy was supposedly booming, gold and silver took notice by soaring by 46% and 120% respectively. And this is after last week’s crash. When gold and silver act like meme stocks, all is not well beneath the surface of this economic system. Something is broken, on par with September 2019.

When you hear the bubble headed bimbos on CNBC cackle like Kamala about the all-time high in the S&P 500, you might want to keep the chart below in mind. The stock market measured in gold is at a 12 year low and is exactly where it was during the 2008 Great Financial Crisis. Those vacuous nitwits will never tell you gold has been the investment of the 21st century, going up by a factor of 17.5 versus a factor of 5 for the S&P 500. Gold isn’t really going up, the value of your perpetually printed fiat is going down.

If you want to know the real reason gold and silver have soared and inflation numbers have begun to go higher, look no further than Powell and his Fed cronies firing up the old fiat printer by printing like we are in a financial crisis. Why would the Fed need to rapidly expand the money supply, cut rates by 175 basis points, and begin new QE bond purchases if ALL WAS WELL? Because all is unwell. This Potemkin economy is nothing but kabuki theater smoke and mirrors, with the average person struggling to survive, seeing utility, food, rent, insurance, taxes, tolls, and all daily living expenses continuing to outpace their income.

While Trump, his minions, and the banking cabal pretend the USD is solid as a rock, the rest of the world (mostly China) is in the midst of de-dollarizing their holdings. The tide has turned as the tsunami of inflation unleashed in 1913 has already wiped out 97% of the purchasing power of the USD. This flailing empire of debt is completely dependent upon the USD being the world’s reserve currency and will do anything (including war and kidnapping other world leaders) to maintain that supremacy. But, $2 trillion annual deficits, a $38.6 trillion national debt, over $200 trillion in unfunded welfare liabilities, and trying to provoke World War 3 should make the final 3% depreciation of the USD a real extravaganza of wealth destruction, bloody war, and societal collapse.

If ALL IS WELL, why has Trump used every possible means to bully Powell into cutting interest rates drastically, even demanding 1% rates again? If the economy is as fantastic as he says and the stock market is at all-time highs, why would we need much lower rates? The Fed began cutting in September of 2024, reducing rates by 1.75%. The 10 Year Treasury was at 3.65% when Powell began cutting. Today it is at 4.27%. For the math challenged, that is a .62% INCREASE since the Fed started cutting. The cuts have done nothing to make housing more affordable, while drastically reducing the interest income senior citizens and conservative savers were earning on their money market accounts.

The real reason Powell has cut rates and Trump wants them cut more is because they are both beholden and controlled by the banking cabal and billionaire financiers. The titans of finance are sitting on hundreds of billions of unrealized losses due to their purchase of government bonds when interest rates were 0%. In a financial crisis, those unrealized losses would become realized losses due to forced selling. Trump, Powell and Warsh know what is coming and will do anything to protect their billionaire brethren, while throwing grandma and you under the bus.

The selection of Kevin Warsh as the next Fed chairman is a bit of a head scratcher, because he has spent years criticizing Yellen and Powell about keeping interest rates too low and implementing QE to infinity in response to the Fed/Wall Street created financial debt disaster in 2008. He is supposedly a hawk, when Trump wants an ultra-dove who will slash rates. Trump has also done a 180 on home prices, as he declared during his campaign he wanted them 30% lower to help young people, and now he wants them higher to keep Boomers rich and his Wall Street pals richer.

We currently have the most overvalued home prices in history, 60% higher than the 2005 bubble, and Trump wants the bubble to get bigger. After the last bubble, prices fell 30% over the next seven years, until the Fed, their Wall Street owners, and the government colluded to drive prices up by having hedge funds buy up the excess inventory, initiating the current bubble. I don’t know what will prick this bubble, but it is clearly unsustainable, as the average person can no longer afford to buy a home. A 50% decline over several years would be a best case scenario, but I believe the coming financial crisis will ignite a contagion that can’t be stopped.

The housing market is currently frozen, as sellers refuse to reduce prices and buyers can’t afford the current prices. This is why Trump desperately wants 3% mortgage rates again. Ain’t happening. The devastating inflation created by the Fed’s ZIRP has not been unwound. Inflation helps the banking cabal and billionaires, but destroys the standard of living for the average American. The curious selection of Warsh seems like a setup for when they “pull it”. Does Trump want a fall guy for when it all goes to hell, or is this all part of the Great Taking/CBDC plan to subjugate the masses in poverty, while the satanic demon child sacrificers reap the riches and increase their power and control over the world?

While financial and housing markets are simultaneously the most overvalued in world history, the average person trying to just live their life, raise a family, maintain a decent standard of living, and go on a modest annual vacation to the beach or mountains, is more financially stressed than they have ever been. The people who are not stressed are the 0.1% who rule the world (aka Epstein friends and family). They control over 14% of the country’s net worth, up from less than 9% in 2003. This has happened under the rule of both parties. The ruling class has engineered the financial system in way that siphons the riches to them, while steadily depleting the wealth of the masses.

Klaus Schwab’s Great Reset vision is materializing before our very eyes. The bottom 80% own nothing, have less and less to spend, but they aren’t very happy. When 80% of the population is seeing their standard of living decline rapidly, while observing the wealthy getting wealthier, and the evil elite normalizing pedophilia, child mutilation, and degeneracy as a lifestyle, the groundwork for violent revolution should be underway, with guillotines and gallows being constructed across the land.

The average person has depleted their savings and now lives month to month on their credit card, paying 20% interest to the Wall Street cabal. This is the way our overlords want it. The plebs are so busy trying to survive, while AI replaces their jobs, they have no time or hope, keeping them from ever revolting. The proles will never revolt because they don’t even know they are oppressed.

“The masses never revolt of their own accord, and they never revolt merely because they are oppressed. Indeed, so long as they are not permitted to have standards of comparison, they never even become aware that they are oppressed” – Orwell’s 1984

No matter how hard the propaganda machine insists the economy is great, the average person knows they are being screwed over by the ruling class and lied to by their president and his government apparatchiks. Consumer confidence is at a 12 year low, and falling, because consumers are out of money. When, even using the massively manipulated CPI promulgated by your government overlords, your dollar purchases 26% less than it did in 2019, while your income rose 15%, your confidence might be eroding. In reality, we all know prices are up at least 50%, no matter what Big Brother declares with certitude.

When it comes to consumers, especially the young, does the following chart seem to support the ALL IS WELL narrative? The Biden student loan “pause” is over and 3.6 million young adults who were lured into believing a degree in Transgender African Lesbian Studies would get them a high paying job FAFO. This is just student loan debt. Charts showing auto loan debt, credit card debt, and mortgage debt are all showing delinquency rates at the highest rates in over a decade. Yes, the richest of the rich are doing fabulously well as their stock portfolios soar and their AI scam continues to rake in more fools, but the average working stiff knows they have been abandoned by the people they elected, like always. Satanic Pedophiles rule!!!!

I believe the only thing keeping this shitshow from crashing down immediately is the no hire – no fire jobs market which has been in effect for the last year. If you still have some sort of job and can make the minimum payment on your credit card and your monthly rent payment, financial Armageddon is temporarily delayed. It is defaults on debts that begin the banquet of consequences for the economy, corporations, politicians, and bankers. We are essentially in an extend and pretend phase which is transitioning into another debt debacle crisis. Job cuts will be the spark that ignites the powder-keg of debt. Job cuts in January were 35% higher than last January and double the number in December. Not supportive of the ALL IS WELL narrative.

Meanwhile, on an annual basis the Challenger, Gray & Christmas job cut announcements in 2025 were 58% higher than 2024, and the highest in a decade, excluding the Covid scam year of 2020. The trend is not Trump’s friend.

The number of recently announced job cuts by major employers does not bode well for 2026:

• US Government: 307,000 employees
• UPS: 78,000 employees
• Amazon: 30,000 employees
• Intel: 25,000 employees
• Nissan: 20,000 employees
• Nestle: 16,000 employees
• Microsoft: 15,000 employees
• Bosch: 13,000 employees
• Dell: 12,000 employees
• Verizon: 13,000 employees
• Accenture: 11,000 employees
• Ford: 11,000 employees
• Novo Nordisk: 9,000 employees

The consumer confidence of AI and robots is probably at all-time highs, if they measured such stuff.

Based on the facts, not narratives, ALL IS NOT WELL and it will never be well again. So what does this mean for you and me? The mid-term elections are in ten months. Based on history, the president’s party loses seats 90% of the time. Based upon this do nothing GOP congress accomplishing nothing beneficial to the average person, Trump will surely lose the 6 seat majority House by at least 25 seats and at least a couple Senate seats. The GOP will not even pass the SAVE Act to secure honest elections. The Uni-party doesn’t seem to want honest elections. Trump’s approval rating continues to plummet and his daily unhinged posts on Truth Social are not helping. I expect Trump to act in an even more authoritarian manner as the elections approach. The MAGA NPCs will approve.

The real question in my mind is whether they “pull it” before or after the mid-terms. Based on Trumps actions, totally contrary to what he campaigned on and promised his voters, I have begun to believe he was installed to usher in another global financial collapse, with his “solution” being totalitarian government control of everything and everyone. The First and Second Amendment will be discarded. When the financial system enters collapse mode, they will bail-in (take) your 40lks, investment accounts and bank accounts in order to “Save the System”. All good patriots will go along, just like they did during the Covid plandemic. Your beloved overlords will dole out a certain amount of CBDC tokens to replace the money they stole from you.

Trump is one of them, as revealed by the Epstein files. When your government redacts the names of the pedophiles who raped children rather than the victims, you know your government does not represent you. The release of these monstrously despicable documents, with no effort to prosecute or arrest anyone, is meant to make us feel helpless and powerless to hold these fiends accountable. We are ruled by demonic, child sacrificing, satanists and we are not voting our way out of this. They seem to want violent upheaval, war, and chaos across the globe because they think it will benefit them. No one is coming to rescue us, because they are all in on it. After listening to Putin’s assessment of the West, you know why they are trying to destroy Russia.

“The West is being run by satanic pedophiles. They want to normalize pedophilia. They got accustomed for centuries to filling their bellies with humans flesh and their pockets with money. But the vampire ball is coming to an end.” – Vladimir Putin

We are truly in an existential battle between good and evil. The sinister  psychopaths and their fiendish acolytes wield their power and wealth like a cudgel against the common man. They take joy in the misery and suffering of others. This is nothing but a game to them, and we are all expendable pieces on their board. Time is growing short and trust in any and all politicians, bankers, academics, and media personalities has dissolved. Our future as a country and a people will depend on the individual choices of millions of good people over the next few years. We outnumber these Satan worshiping deviants by millions. The law does not matter, because they wrote the law. They need to pay for their crimes by any means necessary. Buy more guns and ammo. Prepare for the ultimate battle.

“The greedy elite would rather be extremely rich in a suffering nation than modestly rich in a successful nation. The greater the misery, the greater their power, since power is the difference in wealth and influence between one person and another.” –Jesse,  September 2012