Category: zerohedge

Authored by David Manney via PJMedia.com,

Dr. Mehmet Oz, the 17th administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, answered Joy Behar after the longtime co-host of The View warned viewers about President Donald Trump’s prescription drug initiative.

Behar said once Trump puts his name on prescriptions, “We’re all going to die.”

Joy Behar claims “we’re all going to die” because Trump wants to lower drug prices with TrumpRX. pic.twitter.com/uG458SU1AD

— MRC NewsBusters (@newsbusters) May 19, 2026

She also reached for Trump’s past business failures, as if cheaper medicine belongs in the same dusty joke drawer as casino chatter and late-night monologue scraps.

Dr. Oz didn’t need a medical chart to spot the problem, saying TrumpRx.gov still has no medication for Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS), though they’re working on it.

https://t.co/8XMXPxEXtl pic.twitter.com/1brcfTOarK

— DrOzCMS (@DrOzCMS) May 20, 2026

His joke landed because Behar’s reaction sounded less like analysis and more like a smoke alarm installed over a toaster sitting near a burning pile of pine boughs: loud, frantic, and not especially useful once breakfast remains intact.

President Trump announced on May 18 that TrumpRx would expand with over 600 generic medications. The AP reports:

The beefed-up website is the Trump administration’s answer to criticism from Democrats who have called TrumpRx performative and noted that many of the brand-name drugs it has featured are cheaper with insurance or have lower-cost generic versions sold elsewhere.

It also marks an effort to respond to a top voter concern for November’s midterm elections: affordability. Health costs are a worry for many Americans, an issue compounded by the Republican-led Congress’ recent cuts to Medicaid and the expiration of enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies this year that sent some people’s premiums skyrocketing.

The expansion is made possible by partnerships with other online pharmacies, including Amazon Pharmacy, GoodRx and billionaire investor Mark Cuban’s Cost Plus Drugs, Trump said at an event at the White House.

TrumpRx doesn’t directly sell drugs, and it won’t replace insurance for everyone, but it gives uninsured patients, high-deductible families, and cash-paying customers another place to check before surrendering at the pharmacy counter.

Mark Cuban, co-founder of Cost Plus Drugs and a regular Trump critic, appeared at the White House event and backed the expansion. Cuban’s presence should’ve slowed the usual reflexive sneering; a Trump critic stood beside Trump because lowering drug prices helps people who don’t care which political tribe gets credit when the receipt shrinks.

Behar could’ve asked fair questions;.

Americans should want details about pharmacy benefit managers, deductibles, manufacturers, and insurance rules. Drug pricing has enough trapdoors to swallow a family budget whole.

Instead, she saw Trump’s name, grabbed the nearest panic button, and started whacking it like a carnival game she had no chance of winning.

The token conservative on The View, Alyssa Farah Griffin—I think she’s the sacrifice, honestly; I can’t keep up with the dissected corpses—pushed back during the segment and pointed out that lower drug prices can help real families. Sunny Hostin, unsurprisingly, also raised concerns, but Behar gave viewers doom theater.

Behar’s verbal bullets were blanks, and even the blanks sounded tired. She didn’t test the claim against the numbers, or anything for that matter, simply firing first and hoping the smoke would pass for thought.

Dr. Oz held the stronger ground because he kept the focus on access, prices, and practical relief. Prescription bills don’t arrive with political footnotes; seniors on fixed incomes don’t care whether Joy Behar approves of the label. Parents stretching paychecks want to know whether the medicine costs less, whether the pharmacy has it, and whether they can make rent after filling the bottle.

TrumpRx won’t solve every failure in American health care; no website can unwind decades of government bloat, drugmaker games, insurance headaches, and pharmacy middlemen. Yet a price-comparison tool with more than 600 generic medications gives families one more way around a broken system.

Behar mocked the name, while Oz pointed back to the medicine cabinet. One side filled airtime, as the other side at least tried to lower the bill.

Authored by Micah Zimmerman via Bitcoin Magazine,

The Securities and Exchange Commission has pumped the brakes on its highly anticipated “innovation exemption” for tokenized stocks, pushing back the release of the framework as it weighs input from traditional stock exchanges and other market participants wary of the plan’s sweeping implications, according to Bloomberg reporting.

The SEC, under Chair Paul Atkins, was preparing to release the so-called innovation exemption as soon as this week.

The framework would create a new regulatory pathway allowing digital tokens linked to publicly traded company shares to trade on decentralized crypto platforms — 24 hours a day, seven days a week — bypassing the constraints of traditional stock exchanges. 

The exemption is part of Atkins’ broader “Project Crypto” initiative, which aims to relax existing crypto restrictions in line with the Trump administration’s pro-crypto agenda.

The SEC was reportedly leaning toward permitting third-party tokens — digital representations of stocks like Apple, Nvidia, or Tesla — to be issued and traded without the consent of the underlying public companies. 

This means outside actors, not the issuers themselves, could create blockchain-based wrappers tracking a company’s share price and list them on decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms.

These tokens may not carry traditional shareholder rights like voting or dividends, though the SEC is reportedly considering requiring platforms to provide those rights or risk delisting.

Why the SEC is delaying

The timing of the exemption’s release has been pushed back as the agency weighs feedback from stock-exchange officials and other market participants who met with SEC staff in recent days. 

The World Federation of Exchanges — whose members include Nasdaq, Cboe, and CME Group — previously warned the SEC in a November 2025 letter that such exemptions could “dilute” existing investor protections and “distort” competition by giving crypto exchanges a regulatory shortcut unavailable to traditional markets. 

The group cautioned that granting legitimacy to tokenized stocks before full compliance implementation would “undoubtedly have negative — potentially acute — consequences” for U.S. markets.

The tokenization debate is unfolding against a backdrop of competing visions for the future of U.S. equity markets. Nasdaq, which received SEC approval in March 2026 for its own tokenized securities proposal, is pursuing a different model: one that keeps all trades on-exchange with full shareholder rights intact, built on the DTCC’s enterprise blockchain. 

The innovation exemption, by contrast, would sanction a parallel, crypto-native market running alongside the existing system — potentially fragmenting liquidity across dozens of third-party token issuers for the same underlying stock.

In 1909, New York’s Metropolitan Life Tower became the tallest building in the world at 700 feet. Just over a century later, Dubai’s Burj Khalifa reached 2,717 feet, nearly four times taller.

This timeline, via Visual Capitalist’s Gabriel Cohen, shows every building to hold the title of world’s tallest since 1909, using the most recent data available from the Council on Vertical Urbanism (CVU).

Per CVU methodology, buildings must include floors, excluding structures such as Toronto’s CN Tower and the Stratosphere in Las Vegas. Heights are measured to the architectural top, including spires but excluding detachable antennae, flagpoles, or signs.

New York’s Skyscraper Boom

For most of the 20th century, the U.S. housed the world’s tallest building. New York in particular held the crown, with the Big Apple producing back-to-back skyscraper marvels from 1909 to 1972.

The Metropolitan Life Tower, constructed in New York’s Flatiron District, topped out at 700 feet in 1909. Within a few years, it would be surpassed by Tribeca’s Woolworth Building (792 feet), which itself lost the title by the late 1920s with the arrival of the Art Deco icon known as the Chrysler Building (1,046 feet).

The table below lists the world’s tallest buildings between 1909 and 2026.

The Chrysler Building, found in East Midtown, opened in 1930 as the world’s first supertall skyscraper. At the time, developers were racing to build the world’s tallest building, and the Chrysler Building famously beat rival 40 Wall Street by secretly assembling a 125-foot spire inside the tower before raising it into place after 40 Wall Street was completed.

The Chrysler Building’s victory was short-lived. In 1931, the Empire State Building (1,250 feet) opened and promptly became the world’s tallest building by a significant margin. However, Depression-era economic slowdowns caused abysmal tenancy rates in the new supertall skyscraper, which was popularly derided as the “Empty State Building” in the mid-1930s.

The Twin Towers and Chicago’s Resurgence

The Empire State Building maintained its position until the completion of the Twin Towers in New York’s Financial District in 1972. At that time, One World Trade Center, commonly known as the North Tower, took the title at over 1,368 feet, standing a few feet taller than its South Tower counterpart. The two towers would eventually be destroyed in the September 11 attacks of 2001.

Chicago, the birthplace of the modern skyscraper, reemerged as a dominant player in tall buildings with the 1974 opening of the Sears Tower (1,451 feet), named for the retailer headquartered there. The building held the title of world’s tallest for nearly a quarter-century, although it was renamed in the 2000s after British insurance broker Willis Group Holdings.

In the late 1990s, the Petronas Towers opened in the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur at 1,483 feet, marking the first time in decades that the world’s tallest building was not located in the United States. Similar to the Chrysler Building nearly 70 years earlier, the Petronas Towers’ spires made the difference, much to Chicagoans’ dismay.

How Asia Took Over the Skyscraper Race

Since the Petronas Towers, the world’s tallest building has remained in Asia, albeit in different regions. TAIPEI 101, in the Taiwanese capital, held the title following its completion in 2004 at 1,667 feet. A few years later, Dubai’s Burj Khalifa opened at a staggering 2,717 feet tall.

The Burj Khalifa is over 60% taller than TAIPEI 101 and nearly four times taller than the Metropolitan Life Tower, which opened a century earlier. Its long reign as the world’s tallest building could come to an end in the coming years, however, as another Middle Eastern tower nears completion in nearby Saudi Arabia.

The Jeddah Tower, which will be the world’s first building to surpass one kilometer in height, is projected to open as early as 2028. Construction began in 2013 but has been plagued by delays and pauses, only passing the 100th floor as of April 2026. When completed, this megatall skyscraper is expected to stand at 3,300 feet, making it over 500 feet taller than the Burj Khalifa.

Where are the world’s tallest buildings concentrated today? Find out with The World’s Tallest Buildings in 2024 on Voronoi.

About 70% of all wrench attacks, physical attacks against crypto holders and their families, carried out in an attempt to steal digital assets, occur in France, according to Bitcoin journalist Joe Nakamoto. 

There have been 41 crypto-related kidnappings in France so far in 2026, Nakamoto said, or about one attack every two and a half days, he added. 

As CoinTelegraph’s Vince Quill reports, Nakamoto attributed the rise in wrench attacks to know-your-customer data collection, which is stored in centralized servers that were compromised in several high-profile data leaks, including the 2020 leak of hardware wallet provider Ledger’s customer data.

That data leak disclosed the identities, home addresses and emails of more than 270,000 customers worldwide, he added. Jameson Lopp, the CEO of crypto wallet and key management company Casa, said:

“France is the canary in the coal mine, demonstrating how financial regulations create a surveillance apparatus that causes direct harm to bitcoin holders.”

An overview of wrench attacks in France so far in 2026. Source: Joe Nakamoto

Opposition to know-your-customer data collection is mounting inside the crypto and Bitcoin communities, as digital asset holders continue to be targeted with physical attacks and kidnappings, prompting a need for increased security measures.

Don’t become a target: Bitcoiners offer advice to safeguard against attacks

The attacks are typically orchestrated by criminals living abroad, who contract young people living in France to carry out the physical attacks, Nakamoto said.

Users can stay safe by using crypto custody services that offer security features like a pre-agreed-upon word or phrase that lets a custodial or key management company know the holder is being actively attacked.

A database of known wrench attacks. Source: GitHub

The company can then freeze the assets, making sure they are not accessed by the attackers, and can even alert law enforcement authorities, he said.

He also suggested keeping a “decoy” crypto wallet with a small amount of funds to hand over to criminals in the event of an attack. 

Finally, crypto holders should keep a low profile and not discuss crypto topics online or make it public knowledge that they hold digital assets, he added.

At least 88 individuals have been arrested in connection with crypto wrench attacks in France, according to Vanessa Perrée, the country’s national prosecutor for organized crime.

Authored by Thomas Brooke via Remix News,

Foreign companies are continuing to shy away from investing in Germany, with the number of new projects falling last year to its lowest level since 2009, representing an eighth consecutive annual decline.

An analysis by the auditing and consulting firm EY, reported by the German Press Agency, found that foreign investors announced 548 new projects in Germany in 2025. That was 10 percent fewer than the year before.

Henrik Ahlers, the head of EY in Germany, said the figures were a “warning sign for Germany as a business location. Germany is falling behind, and other European locations are developing significantly better.”

He said Germany has talked for years about the need for reform, but has done too little, while other countries have made government services more digital, simplified their tax systems, and made it easier for companies to do business.

“In Germany, high taxes, high labor costs, expensive energy, and at the same time, paralyzing bureaucracy are stifling investment,” Ahlers noted.

“Germany’s inability to reform has now become known worldwide. Unfortunately, little remains of its image as a strong, high-quality location and an economic rock in turbulent times,” he added.

The fall in investment comes at a difficult time for the German economy. Last month, the Halle Institute for Economic Research said company bankruptcies in Germany had reached their highest level since 2005.

The institute recorded 4,573 bankruptcies among partnerships and corporations in the first three months of the year. That was higher than the level seen during the 2009 financial crisis.

The last time the figure was higher was in the third quarter of 2005, when 4,771 bankruptcies were recorded.

The rise was especially sharp in March, when bankruptcies were 71 percent above the average for the same month between 2016 and 2019.

Germany’s industrial sector is also under pressure. A Reuters report last August said 245,500 industrial jobs had been lost in Germany since 2019, before the coronavirus crisis.

Volkswagen has become one of the clearest examples of the problems facing German industry. The carmaker plans to cut around 50,000 jobs in Germany by 2030 after reporting a sharp fall in profits.

Its net profit fell 44 percent in 2025 to €6.9 billion, the lowest level since the fallout from the emissions scandal. Revenue was almost unchanged at just under €322 billion, while global deliveries slipped slightly to just under 9 million vehicles.

Volkswagen blamed the fall in profit on problems at Porsche AG, U.S. import tariffs, and the cost of restructuring the business. Porsche’s operating profit fell from more than €5 billion to just €90 million in a year.

Volkswagen finance chief Arno Antlitz said the company’s current level of profit was not good enough, explaining the drop had been “shaped by geopolitical tensions, tariffs, and intense competitive pressure” but noting that the company’s current operating margin was “not sufficient in the long run.”

Across wider Europe, EY said foreign investors announced 5,026 new projects last year, down 7 percent from the year before.

France remained in first place with 852 projects, followed by the United Kingdom with 730. Germany was third.

AfD co-leader Alice Weidel said the figures showed that international confidence in Germany was falling.

“The world is losing trust: Foreign companies are investing less and less in Germany,” she wrote on X. “In 2025, the number of investments fell by 10% to the lowest level since 2009. Germany can no longer afford the reform refusal of the Black-Red coalition!”

Read more here…

Authored by J.B. Shurk via American Thinker,

Until then, it’s open season on all of us…

Reports last week confirmed that former special counsel Jack Smith “secretly arranged” to preserve evidence in his criminal cases against President Trump in order to maintain the threat of future prosecution once the president leaves office.  This is not a big surprise.  

Democrats have thrown every civic norm out the window in their ruthless efforts to target Trump’s businesses and send him to prison for life.

In his quest to imprison an American president, Jack Smith accused Trump of engaging in a conspiracy to “overthrow” the 2020 election, as well as retaining possession of classified documents after leaving the White House.  Both allegations are ridiculous, and Smith’s own words make him sound like a lawfare hitman and anti-MAGA zealot.  He told members of Congress in January, “Our investigation revealed that Donald Trump is the person who caused Jan. 6, it was foreseeable to him, and that he sought to exploit the violence.” 

 Smith stated emphatically that Trump committed “serious crimes.”

Serious crimes?  You mean like using the FBI to spy on all the Republican presidential primary candidates in 2015 and 2016?  Oh right, that was President Obama.  Or fabricating intelligence in order to justify a counterintelligence operation against candidate Trump?  Oh, that was Obama’s corrupt CIA director, John Brennan.  Or paying British Intelligence operatives to manufacture a fake “Russia collusion” dossier implicating Trump?  Oh, that was Hillary Clinton.  Or using the FBI and CIA to frame President Trump as a Russian spy?  Oh, that was Obama and Clinton, too.  Or sabotaging President Trump’s administration by using a Democrat spy on the National Intelligence Council to construct a false story about an innocuous phone call in order to trigger a bogus impeachment?  Oh, that was Intelligence Community Democrats attempting to hide Joe Biden’s corruption in Ukraine by, again, framing President Trump for a quid-pro-quo “crime” he never committed.  Or submitting fraudulent documents to the FISA Court in order to maintain spying operations against President Trump?  Oh, that was corrupt James Comey, corrupt Robert Mueller, corrupt Andrew Weissmann, corrupt Norm Eisen, corrupt Mary McCord, and their Democrat accomplices in the FBI and DOJ who covered up Obama’s illegal spying operations while framing President Trump as a criminal, spy, and traitor.

Listening to Jack Smith call President Trump a “serious” criminal sounds ridiculous when serious criminals Obama, Clinton, Brennan, Comey, and legions of their Democrat colleagues, subordinates, and co-conspirators in the DOJ, FBI, CIA, D.C. courts, and FISA Court (see Judge James Boasberg’s impeachable offenses) have never been properly investigated or punished for undermining President Trump’s election, sabotaging his administration, and framing him for treason.  The most powerful Democrats in the country organized a coup d’état in broad daylight and dragged the country through a barbed-wire field of partisan propaganda for the last ten years, and Jack Smith wants Americans to be upset that President Trump retained documents that he was entitled to possess?  It’s just such lunacy.  The constant gaslighting from D.C. operatives is equally infuriating and exhausting.

Glossing over the Democrats’ monstrous Russia Collusion Hoax, their relentless efforts to subvert the Trump-led government, and their continuing obsession with tossing the president in prison for imaginary crimes is bad enough, but Jack Smith does what all Democrats do: He pretends that the January 6, 2021, protest for election integrity was an attempt by Trump and his supporters to overthrow the government.  This lie is so brazen that it’s astonishing how Democrats can keep telling it with straight faces.

The people who showed up at the Capitol that day had one objective: to express their strong belief that mail-in-ballot fraud, violations of multiple states’ electoral statutes, and numerous voting discrepancies had tainted the 2020 election.  Several senators intended to make these very arguments before the certification of the election’s results.  The people who gathered outside the Capitol were exercising their First Amendment right to assemble peaceably.  They were unarmed.  Most had no criminal records.  A large number had served their country in various capacities.  Most who entered the Capitol walked around as tourists, took pictures, interacted in a friendly manner with Capitol Police, and posed no threat to anyone.

Only after law enforcement officers chose to fire flash-bang grenades on the assembled crowd did a section of the protest turn into something that could be described as a riot.  Trump supporters — not police officers — died on January 6.  Ordinary Americans exercising their constitutional rights were thrown into a state of fear of being hurt or killed.

Nevertheless, Smith continues to propagate the lie that the three-hour event at the Capitol was somehow the greatest threat to the country since 9/11, Pearl Harbor, and the Civil War (real comparisons that Democrat propagandists continue to make).  Smith and his fellow Democrats desperately wish for Americans to believe that a hot-chocolate-drinking gathering of grandparents, revelers, and veterans was somehow going to topple the government of the United States.  If a crowd of retirees is capable of overrunning Washington, what’s the point of a trillion-dollar military budget?

Smith’s perpetuation of the Democrats’ J6 propaganda is bad enough, but the fact that he treats that day as equivalent to the Civil War is all the more preposterous given that Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and their fellow Democrats openly encouraged Black Lives Matter domestic terrorists to burn down neighborhoods, loot businesses, and murder civilians throughout the summer of 2020.  If President Trump “caused Jan. 6” and the events of that day were “foreseeable” to him, then the violence and mayhem of 2020’s so-called “summer of love” were certainly foreseeable to Democrats.  The BLM riots of 2020 were the most costly in American history, and Vice President Harris encouraged Democrats to donate money to a bail fund that put arsonists, rapists, and murderers back on the street.

Were the Democrat-organized riots of 2020 “foreseeable”?  

Of course.  

Did prominent Democrats “exploit the violence,” as Smith accuses Trump of doing with January 6?  

They absolutely did. 

Biden and Harris ran for the White House on the message that the violence would end once they were elected.  

Will preening, self-righteous Jack Smith investigate, harass, arrest, or prosecute any of these Democrats?  Of course not.  Will Democrat rioters be tossed into pre-trial solitary confinement and refused bail by partisan prosecutors and judges?  Definitely not.  To this day, Democrats celebrate BLM and Antifa domestic terrorists as champions for civil rights.  When Democrats burn cities to the ground, the arsonists get statues.  When MAGA Americans protest for free and fair voting, they are condemned for crimes they never committed.

Unfortunately, this is how leftists all over the world now operate.  

Brazil’s communist President Lula has imprisoned his predecessor, President Bolsonaro, for supposedly trying to overthrow the government.  French President Macron has permitted his political opposition, Marine Le Pen, to be prosecuted and convicted for similarly bogus “embezzlement” crimes.  Germany has flirted with designating the popular anti-immigration party, Alternative for Germany, a “terrorist” organization and banning its candidates from running for office.  When the “wrong” candidate won Romania’s presidential election eighteen months ago, the country’s Constitutional Court annulled the outcome by blaming “Russian interference.”

If President Trump hadn’t possessed the financial resources and sheer grit to face down the onslaught of malicious and meritless prosecutions against him, he would likely be in a courtroom or a prison today.  If he hadn’t been re-elected a third time, January 6 defendants would still be awaiting trial or serving time in prison for an imaginary “insurrection.”

Screw Jack Smith.  He’s no lawman, and he has no principles.  He’s nothing but a corrupt propagandist, partisan hack, and lawfare assassin.

Nothing will change until prominent Democrats are prosecuted and convicted for their crimes.  Until then, it’s open season on all of us.

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

Nearly 15 million Americans moved in 2025, with many relocating across state lines in search of lower costs, job opportunities, and warmer climates.

This map, via Visual Capitalist’s Gabriel Cohen, shows net migration per 10,000 residents across all 50 states in 2025, revealing where population inflows were strongest and which states saw the biggest outflows.

The data comes from HireAHelper.

Southern and Mountain West states dominated the rankings for inbound migration, while several high-cost coastal states continued to lose residents.

The data reflects large-scale shifts happening in the country’s population distribution, both from the Eastern half to the Western half, as well as shifts away from more expensive states to cheaper, often inland ones.

The Mountain West Over the West Coast

In 2025, the Western half of the U.S. saw a continuation of post-COVID trends as people left behind coastal states like Washington (-10.7) and Oregon (-9.0) in favor of more inland Mountain West states like Wyoming (+26.0), Utah (+7.3), and especially Idaho (+63.2).

The data table below highlights the net migration loss/gain per 10,000 inhabitants in 2025:

The more populous coastal states, which have long been hubs for key economic sectors like tech and aviation, have seen a number of moves in recent years owing to jobs either relocating or shifting to remote work.

Nowhere on the West Coast saw a bigger drop than California, which saw a net migration loss of -25.1, as nearly 100,000 residents left behind the increasingly unaffordable state in favor of cheaper neighboring states like Nevada, which lacks a state income tax.

The Cost of Living Factor

California is not alone in losing people over affordability issues. If net migration trends are any indication, other high cost of living states such as New York (-28.2) and Massachusetts (-37.9) also increasingly shed residents.

A majority of the Northeast fared similarly, with all states but Delaware, Maine, and New Hampshire seeing more people leave than arrive in 2025.

And in the immediate region surrounding the nation’s capital, the states of Maryland (-27.4) and Virginia (-13.7) also saw negative net migration, likely reflecting in part the large reduction in the federal workforce seen over the course of the year.

The Rise of the Sunbelt

If one region is seeing across-the-board growth, it’s the South, led by states like South Carolina (+79.7), Tennessee (+43.6), and Alabama (+36.6).

Long one of the more economically depressed regions of the country, a combination of lower costs of living and nicer weather has led to rapid growth for southern “Sun Belt” states such as Arkansas and Oklahoma, to say nothing of massive favorites like Texas and the Sunshine State of Florida.

If you enjoyed today’s post, check out The Decline of Housing Affordability in the U.S. on Voronoi, the new app from Visual Capitalist.

Authored by Adam H. Douglas via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

If you inherited a traditional IRA from someone who was already taking required minimum distributions (RMDs), you may have to take annual withdrawals for the next decade, and the account must be empty by the end of the tenth year.

The Internal Revenue Service waived penalties for missed withdrawals from 2021 through 2024 while the rules were being finalized. That grace period is over. Starting with the 2025 tax year, the rules are fully enforced. If you missed a 2025 RMD, a 25 percent penalty applies unless you take corrective action now.

Who Does The 10-Year Rule Apply To?

The SECURE Act, passed in 2019, eliminated the “stretch IRA” for most non-spouse beneficiaries. Under the old rules, you had an option to spread withdrawals across your own lifetime. That option is gone for most people who inherit today.

If you are a non-eligible designated beneficiary (NEDB), which covers most adult children and other non-spouse heirs, the 10-year rule is probably going to apply to you. In general, you are exempt if you fall into one of these categories:

• The surviving spouse of the deceased
• A minor child of the deceased, though the 10-year rule applies once you reach adulthood
• A beneficiary who is chronically ill or disabled
• A beneficiary who is not more than 10 years younger than the original owner

What if none of those apply to you? Then the 10-year rule is likely to be your framework.

When Do Annual Withdrawals Have To Start?

The answer depends on whether the original IRA owner died before or after their required beginning date (RBD), generally April 1 of the year following the year they turned 73.

• If the original owner died before their RBD and was not yet taking RMDs: No annual withdrawals are required, and the account must be emptied by end of year 10.
• If the original owner died on or after their RBD and was already taking RMDs: The general rule is that annual withdrawals are required every year, and the account must be emptied by end of year 10.

If your parent was already taking RMDs when they passed, you must take a distribution every year from year one through year 10 – you cannot skip years and take everything in year 10.

The 10-year clock starts the year after the original owner’s death. If you inherited the IRA in 2022, your deadline to fully empty the account is Dec. 31, 2032.

How Much Has To Come Out Each Year?

There is no fixed percentage. Your annual RMD is calculated using two inputs:

• The account’s balance as of Dec. 31 of the prior year
• Your life expectancy factor from the IRS Single Life Expectancy Table in IRS Publication 590-B

The calculation:

Prior year-end balance ÷ life expectancy factor = Your RMD for the year

Your life expectancy factor is based on your age as of Dec. 31 of the current distribution year. Look up that number in the IRS table each year; it changes as you age. You recalculate annually using the updated factor and the prior year’s Dec. 31 balance.

Your IRA custodian can often provide this calculation directly. A tax professional can verify it, which is worth doing in your first distribution year.

What Happens If You Missed Your 2025 RMD?

The penalty for a missed RMD is 25 percent of the amount you should have withdrawn. The IRS reduces that to 10 percent if you take the corrective distribution and file Form 5329 within the two-year correction window.

Here is what to do if you missed a 2025 distribution:

• Take the missed distribution now. Withdraw the full amount you should have taken in 2025 as soon as possible.
• File Form 5329. This IRS form reports additional taxes on qualified retirement plans. You will attach it to your tax return or file it as a standalone form.
• Request penalty abatement, if applicable. If this is your first missed RMD and you have a reasonable explanation, the penalty might be waived by the IRS. Attach a written explanation to Form 5329 when you file.

Rather than risk it not being waived, act now. The two-year window for the reduced 10 percent penalty is already running.

FAQs About The Inherited IRA 10-Year Rule

What Is The Difference Between An Eligible Designated Beneficiary And A Non-Eligible Designated Beneficiary?

An eligible designated beneficiary includes surviving spouses, minor children of the deceased, disabled or chronically ill individuals, and beneficiaries not more than 10 years younger than the original owner. These individuals can spread withdrawals over their lifetime instead of following the 10-year rule. Everyone else is a non-eligible designated beneficiary subject to the 10-year rule. Most adult children who inherit a parent’s traditional IRA fall into the NEDB category.

Can I Wait Until Year 10 And Take Everything Out At Once?

It depends on when the original owner died. If they died before their required beginning date and had not yet started RMDs, you are not required to take annual distributions and may take the full balance in year ten. If they had already started RMDs, annual withdrawals are required throughout the 10-year period. Taking everything in year ten in that case does not avoid penalties for missed annual distributions in earlier years.

How Do I Find My Life Expectancy Factor For The RMD Calculation?

Your life expectancy factor comes from the Single Life Expectancy Table in IRS Publication 590-B, available at irs.gov. Find your age as of Dec. 31 of the current distribution year and read the corresponding factor. Divide the account’s prior December 31 balance by that factor to get your RMD amount. Your IRA custodian may also calculate this for you. Verifying it independently is advisable, particularly in the first year of distributions.

It’s no secret that some humanoid robotics companies are training their machines for work on factory floors, while others are positioning their bots to enter homes in the coming years.

One of the first real signs of humanoids entering homes today is a new cleaning service in San Francisco that uses what appear to be Unitree humanoid robots trained to clean everything from floors and countertops to stovetops, mirrors, and nearly any surface in the house.

Called “Gatsby,” the new service deploys humanoid robots to homes for a flat service charge of $150.

“We just made U.S. history. Today, Gatsby ran the first-ever consumer cleaning by a humanoid robot in the United States,” Gatsby wrote in a press release earlier this month.

The company noted, “We picked someone random off our SF waitlist, they booked a cleaning, we delivered the robot, and it cleaned their entire apartment on its own. No humans inside. This is the first of its kind in the U.S., and we’re proud to be the pioneers writing this line in the history books today.”

For the average deep clean of a typical U.S. home, the price ranges between $200 and $400, and for much larger homes, $500 or more, according to Angi List. This means the robotic cleaning service can even undercut an independent cleaner or a professional cleaning company, which often employs migrant workers.

News of Gatsby’s cleaning service comes as shipments of humanoid robots are expected to ramp up this year and accelerate by the end of the decade, according to a recent UBS note.

The goal of tech firms is very clear: deploy these bots first on factory floors, in warehouses, and at logistics hubs, then move into consumer markets once the machines become reliable enough for home use.

Once these bots enter the consumer market, they will begin to chip away at demand for migrant labor and drive down household costs for services such as cleaning, cooking, laundry, and other chores, which have traditionally required human labor and can cost hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars per month.

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

President Donald Trump has indicated he would sign a bill to make daylight saving time permanent as a House of Representatives committee advanced a measure that would codify the change.

“Big Vote today (48-1!) in the Energy and Commerce Committee on a Bill including The Sunshine Protection Act, which will be making Daylight Saving Time Permanent! This is so important in that Hundreds of Millions of Dollars are spent every year by people, Cities, and States, being forced to change their Clocks. Many of these Clocks are located in Towers, and the cost of renting, or using, Heavy Equipment to do this twice a year is prohibitive!” Trump wrote on Thursday in a Truth Social post.

The president said that there is considerable “work and money that is spent on this ridiculous, twice yearly production,” referring to the changing of the time. He also said that “it will also be a very nice WIN for the Republican Party.”

“We are going with the far more popular alternative, Saving Daylight, which gives you a longer, brighter Day – And who can be against that – This is an easy one!” Trump added.

Known as the Sunshine Protection Act, the bill was proposed by Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-Fla.), who released a statement saying that it would “bring us one step closer to ending the outdated and unpopular practice of changing our clocks twice a year.”

“Floridians and Americans across the country are tired of the biannual time change, and the evidence is clear that permanent daylight saving time can improve public health, reduce traffic accidents, lower crime and encourage more outdoor activity,” he said in the statement.

In a social media post last year, Trump urged Congress to address the issue.

“The House and Senate should push hard for more Daylight at the end of a day. Very popular and, most importantly, no more changing of the clocks, a big inconvenience and, for our government, A VERY COSTLY EVENT!!!” he wrote in April 2025.

For years, advocates have called for the United States to stop making the twice-yearly changes. Among those urging that the country stick to one time for the entire year are the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Sleep Medicine.

A poll from The Associated Press and NORC released in October 2025 also found that only 12 percent of Americans favor the current daylight saving time system. Around 47 percent are opposed to the current system and 40 percent are neutral, it also found.

The United States first started using the time shift more than a century ago, during World War I, and again during World War II. Congress passed a law in 1966 that allowed states to decide whether to participate but required their decisions to be uniform across their territories. All states except Arizona and Hawaii make the time shifts, and those two states remain on standard time year-round.

According to Buchanan’s office, the Sunshine Protection Act was included in an amendment to a larger bill, the Amendment in the Nature of a Substitute to the Motor Vehicle Modernization Act.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.