Tag: finance

Authored by Mike Fredenburg via The Epoch Times,

Creating an office of U.S. shipbuilding to facilitate America’s return to being a true maritime power is long overdue and is necessary to counter China’s growing maritime dominance.

At the end of World War II, the United States had over 100 shipyards, and its flagged fleet, the largest in the world, carried  57 percent of U.S. trade, while the majority of world trade was carried in U.S.-built ships.

Today, only about 0.2 percent of global commercial tonnage is being carried in ships built in the United States. Collectively, China, South Korea, and Japan build over 90 percent of the world’s large commercial ships. And with China building over 50 percent of the world’s gross shipping tonnage, it is by far and away the world’s largest shipbuilder, with 232 times more shipbuilding capacity than the United States.

While the lack of commercial shipbuilding capacity is not the only reason we have seen the U.S. Navy decline in size and capability, it has created an environment that makes correcting the issues plaguing the Navy very difficult. Indeed, the lack of commercial shipbuilding is arguably the root cause of our Navy’s decline in readiness, its exploding ship costs, and its inability to hold vendors accountable when they deliver underperforming ships overbudget and years behind schedule.

Examples of underperforming, overbudget ships include the Constellation-class frigate, the Littoral combat ship, the Ford-class carriers, and the massive Zumwalt destroyer. It is the failures in these key shipbuilding  programs that has led to the decline of the U.S. Navy’s size and readiness. Moreover, the vendors associated with these failed and or grossly underperforming programs have at worst received a slap on the wrist and are collectively lined up to receive many hundreds of billions more in U.S. Defense contracts over the coming decades.

Shipbuilders have been able to underdeliver with near impunity, in part due to the fact that they are the only game in town, i.e., if you cancel major defense contracts then the government-dependent companies will go out of business and there will be no shipbuilding capacity. For example, there is currently only one shipbuilder that can build and execute the Refueling and Complex Overhaul work on U.S. nuclear-powered aircraft carriers. While there are two firms that can build U.S. nuclear submarines, they are suffering from a lack of skilled labor. In the vast majority of cases, the prime contractors who build the Navy’s ships are almost wholly reliant on military contracts to survive. 

All this means that when contracts are put in place, they are not just put in place to deliver the most powerful ships at the best price, they are put in place to ensure that the company executing the contract can keep its people employed from contract to contract. Thus, contracts are strung out for many years. This makes sense, as having enough people trained up in the skills to rapidly deliver a ship or a number of ships, only to have to let them go when the ships are completed, is not a sustainable business model. Obviously, the Pentagon needs to structure contracts in such a way that defense contractors can stay in business.

However, this leads to the previously mentioned situation where is it well-nigh impossible to hold the defense contractors accountable. This brings us back to the value of having a more robust shipbuilding industry in which major shipbuilders that do business with the Pentagon, also have a robust commercial shipbuilding business. This is the way things were prior to World War II, and for a number of years after the war. For example, while Newport News Shipbuilding has long been the leading vendor when it comes to building U.S aircraft carriers, it also used to also build commercial ships.

But just as important, when the United States had a robust commercial shipbuilding industry, the pool of workers with the skills necessary to build both commercial and military vessels was much larger. This larger pool of skilled workers created a much more resilient shipbuilding environment that benefited the U.S. Navy when it came to negotiating contracts and holding shipbuilders/ship designers accountable. 

Currently, China is the world’s largest commercial and military ship shipbuilder. This means China has a whole bunch of shipyards that can build both military and commercial ships. Its massive shipbuilding industry also ensures China has a huge base of workers with the diverse sets of skills and trades necessary to build ships. The U.S. Navy used to be able to count on a large, robust shipbuilding industry that could build both commercial and military ships, but that has not been case since the 1970s.

Today, according to a Congressional Research Service report, three of the 10 commercial oil tankers selected to ship fuel for the Department of Defense (DOD) as part of the newly enacted Tanker Security Program are Chinese-built. As for dry cargo supplies for the DOD, seven of the 12 most recently built ships in the Maritime Security Fleet are Chinese-built. So, the U.S. Navy, along with the U.S. economy, is now highly dependent on ships built in in other countries, including China. This means that not only is the United States no longer a commercial maritime power, but our military is dependent on Chinese-built ships for logistical support. This is not a good state of affairs.

The new office of shipbuilding announced by President Trump earlier this month aims to correct this national security concern, but how?  Well, that is a rather complex question, but it will require streamlining of existing regulations, beefing up our steel industry, and yes, it will require government subsidies to be able to compete with China, South Korea, and Japan who all heavily subsidize their own shipping industries.

But if the United States wants to address a serious security concern, and regain its status as a true maritime superpower, taking such actions are not optional.

*  *  *

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

A federal judge has upheld a California law that restricts young adults from buying guns, finding the statute fits within the nation’s historical tradition of gun regulations.

California penal code Section 27510 bars federal gun dealers from selling or otherwise giving possession of guns to people younger than 21. The law does allow 18- to 20-year-olds to buy certain types of guns if they obtain a hunting license, are serving in the military, or were honorably discharged from the armed forces.

Some young adults and gun rights groups challenged the law, arguing it violated the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment.

As Zachary Stieber reports for The Epoch Times, the case has been proceeding through the court system for years. U.S. District Judge James Lorenz said in 2020 that the law did not violate the Constitution, then an appeals court panel said it did. The appeals court later remanded the case back to Lorenz for renewed consideration following the U.S. Supreme Court ordering lower courts to figure out if gun regulations were based on the nation’s history of gun restrictions when deciding whether they are constitutional.

Lorenz on March 26 sided with California Attorney General Rob Bonta, concluding that even though 18- to 20-year-olds are part of “the people” mentioned in the Second Amendment, the young adults have faced gun restrictions throughout much of American history.

The law “is consistent with the Founding Era common law that curtailed commercial firearm purchases by individuals aged 18 to 20,” Lorenz wrote in a 23-page decision.

He also said the law is constitutional because the young adults can buy guns that are not handguns or semiautomatic centerfire rifles if they receive a hunting license or are in the U.S. military. Tens of thousands of young adults have obtained guns under the exceptions in recent years, including 5,431 in 2022.

The young adults can also acquire guns as gifts from family members, the ruling noted.

“Defendants’ evidence supports a reasonable inference that Section 27510 is a commercial restriction that does not meaningfully impair 18-to-20-year-olds’ access to firearms and is therefore not covered by the Second Amendment’s plain text,” the judge said.

The summary judgment ruling means the case is over, unless the plaintiffs appeal.

The Second Amendment Foundation, one of the plaintiffs, said on social media platform X that it is reviewing the opinion.

Bonta, a Democrat, said in a statement that the ruling represents a victory in the fight against gun violence.

“This commonsense regulation will continue to protect our young and vulnerable communities from preventable gun violence,“ he said. ”I am proud of the countless hours my team has put in to defend this law and we know the fight is not over. We will continue to lead efforts to defend commonsense gun-safety laws and protect our communities from senseless violence.”

Authored by George Citroner via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A 30-year study finds a primarily plant-based diet, with minimal ultra-processed food and low to moderate amounts of animal-based foods like fish and dairy, could raise our chances of reaching 70 without developing chronic disease, according to a new study from Harvard researchers.

Healthy aging, as defined by the researchers, means reaching age 70 free of major chronic diseases, with good cognitive, physical, and mental health.

“Our findings suggest that dietary patterns rich in plant-based foods, with moderate inclusion of healthy animal-based foods, may promote overall healthy aging and help shape future dietary guidelines,” senior study author Marta Guasch-Ferré said in a press release.

Two Diets Linked to Optimal Aging

The study, recently published in Nature Medicine, examined the midlife diets and health outcomes of more than 105,000 middle-aged women and men aged 39 to 69 over 30 years.

The team evaluated how effectively the participants adhered to eight different largely-plant-based diets: the Alternative Health Eating Index (AHEI), the Alternative Mediterranean Diet (aMED), the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension diet (DASH), the MIND diet, the Healthful Plant-Based Diet, the Planetary Health Diet Index, the Empirically Inflammatory Dietary Pattern, and the Empirical Dietary Index for Hyperinsulinemia.

Of the participants, 10 percent were identified as aging healthfully and followed the eight diets. Those who closely followed the AEHI and PHDI diets were linked with optimal healthy aging patterns.

The AHEI diet was found to be especially beneficial. It was developed to prevent chronic disease and emphasizes fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, legumes, and healthy fats while limiting red meat, refined grains, and sugar.

Participants scoring highest on this diet were found to have an 86 percent greater likelihood of healthy aging by age 70 and a 2.2-fold higher likelihood by age 75 compared to those with the lowest scores. The PHDI diet also emphasizes plant-based foods and reduces animal-based food intake.

Other diets researchers looked at that were linked to healthy aging were the aMED which follows the Mediterranean model and the DASH diet. The aMED diet prioritizes olive oil, nuts, whole grains, and moderate fish intake. DASH is known for lowering blood pressure and focuses on fruits, vegetables, and low-fat dairy.

“Maintaining a healthy diet rich in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, unsaturated fats, nuts, and legumes during mid-life is linked to a higher likelihood of healthy aging along with better cognitive, physical, and mental health,” Guasch-Ferré told The Epoch Times.

Conversely, higher consumption of ultra-processed foods, particularly processed meats and sugary beverages, was linked to a decreased chance of aging healthfully.

No ‘One Size Fits All’ Diet

The findings also suggest that there isn’t a one-size-fits-all diet.

“Healthy diets can be adapted to fit individual needs and preferences,” lead author Anne-Julie Tessier, assistant professor at the University of Montreal, stated in the press release.

Shelley Balls, registered dietitian nutritionist for Flawless Bloom in Western Wyoming, told The Epoch Times that ultra-processed foods include many convenience snack foods such as potato chips, candy, cookies, and crackers, as well as sweetened beverages such as soda, sweetened tea, and sugar-laden coffees.

“I’m not saying you should never have these types of foods and beverages, but I would highly recommend limiting their intake in order to promote overall health,” she said.

However, certain ultra-processed foods are healthier than others, she said. Potato chips are high on fats and sodium, making them good once-in-awhile, but sugar sweetened beverage quickly adds up when it comes to sugar and calorie intake.

“Even certain diet drinks, although they might not have the calories, could negatively affect digestive health, which is linked to obesity,” she said.

Healthy animal-based food also should not be avoided.

“Healthy animal-based foods such as Greek yogurt, kefir, salmon, eggs, and other lean cuts of meat provide an abundance of healthful nutrients your body needs to function optimally,” Balls said. “When it comes to promoting overall health, variety is key so excluding certain foods out entirely can make it harder.”

Adequate protein intake is also key to promoting healthy aging as “it’s essential in maintaining muscle mass, strength, and function as you age.”

The study had some limitations, including that the participants were exclusively health professionals. Researchers suggest that replicating the study among more diverse populations could provide deeper insights into the findings’ broader relevance.

However, Guasch-Ferré said that while there may be some differences in overall health, such as access to health care and other factors, “we believe that the biological mechanisms underlying the associations between dietary patterns and healthy aging would be similar in other populations.”

According to Balls, “the earlier, the better” when it comes to disease prevention.

“One piece of advice I give to even younger kids is what you’re eating today, can affect how you age,” she added. “So moderation and variety are key at all stages of life!”

Iran has finally issued a formal response to US President Donald Trump’s letter unveiled early this month which was addressed to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. The Trump letter had urged fresh nuclear negotiations, but was coupled with statements from the White House threatening attack if Tehran pursues atomic weapons.

The Islamic Republic in a formal letter issued to the White House in response says it is willing to enter “indirect” negotiations with Washington.

“Iran’s formal response to the letter from US President Donald Trump has been duly sent via Oman,” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told IRNA on Thursday. “The official response comprises a letter wherein our viewpoints regarding the status quo and Mr. Trump’s letter have been fully laid out and relayed to the other side.”

The FM said that while no direct official talks can be held so long as Trump keeps his “maximum pressure” sanctions regimen in place, it remains that “Indirect negotiations, though, can continue, as they existed in the past.” 

“In circumstances where there is ‘maximum pressure,’ no one in their sound mind would enter into direct talks. The format of negotiations is always relevant in diplomatic relations … For now, our tactic is to have indirect negotiations,” Araghchi explained.

In early March, Trump had unveiled before reporters that he had written Iran a letter, saying “I hope you’re going to negotiate because if we have to go in militarily, it’s going to be a terrible thing for them. There are two ways in which Iran can be handled – militarily, or you make a deal.”

According to Axios, the US has lately built up military assets in the Mideast region with an eye toward Iran:

• In recent days, the U.S. military sent several B-2 stealth bombers to the Diego Garcia military base in the Indian Ocean in a deployment a U.S. official said was “not disconnected” from Trump’s two-month deadline.
• The B-2 bombers can carry huge bunker buster bombs that would be a key element in any possible military action against Iran’s underground nuclear facilities.
• A spokesperson for U.S. Strategic Command confirmed the deployment to Axios and said Stratcom “routinely conducts global operations in coordination with other combatant commands, services, and participating U.S. government agencies to deter, detect and, if necessary, defeat strategic attacks against the United States and its allies.”

Just last week Ayatollah Khamenei warned that the US would “a severe slap” and “crushing blow” if it dared carry out any attacks against the Iran.

Iran has long complained that it can’t take US commitments seriously anymore, after the prior Trump White House unilaterally pulled the US out of the 2015 JCPOA nuclear deal.

Authored by Gordon Chang via The Gatestone Institute,

“With our commercial assets, we have observed five different objects in space maneuvering in and out and around each other in synchronicity and in control,” the U.S. Space Force’s Vice Chief of Space Operations Gen. Michael Guetlein told the 16th annual McAleese Defense Programs conference in Arlington, Virginia on March 18. 

“That’s what we call dogfighting in space. They are practicing tactics, techniques and procedures to do on-orbit space operations from one satellite to another.”

Guetlein’s stark comment about China signals a break with the past. “This marks the end of the Western-American-liberal dream of nations leaving wars on Earth so they can cooperate in space to advance humanity,” Richard Fisher of the International Assessment and Strategy Center told Gatestone after the general’s widely publicized remarks. “Communist China has now taken war to the heavens, to low earth orbit, and very likely, will take war to the moon, Mars, and beyond. The heavens are no longer safe for the democracies.”

Space is now a highly contested domain, but it wasn’t always this way. “We told ourselves we would be the dominant power forever,” Brandon Weichert, author of Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower, said to Gatestone. “We coasted on that notion for far too long. Rising powers, notably China and Russia, saw how reliant we were on space—and how poorly defended our systems were. Our access to the strategic high ground is now more threatened than ever before.”

As Weichert points out, “bureaucratic inertia and a lack of visionary leadership from both political parties” allowed China and Russia to develop the capabilities to threaten America in space.

There was another party at fault: The U.S. military failed to protest when it could see there was an obvious threat. “There was a gentlemen’s agreement until recent that we didn’t mess with each other’s space systems,” Guetlein said. “We didn’t jam them, we didn’t spoof them, we didn’t lase them, we just kept them safe.”

Why was the U.S. so gentlemanly? Presidents believed that because the U.S. had more space assets than others, it was not in America’s interest to trigger a race to build weapons to destroy those assets. Yet this view, appearing commonsense at first glance, was naïve: It was apparent even then that neither China nor Russia could be enticed into good behavior. Generals and admirals should have sounded the warning.

There was a lot to warn about. On January 11, 2007, for instance, China demonstrated its intentions by launching a modified ground-based DF-21 missile to destroy an old Chinese weather satellite.

In 2022, a Chinese satellite “grappled” a defunct Chinese satellite and towed it to a “graveyard orbit.”

Moreover, as Fisher notes, China had already configured its one large orbiting platform, the Tiangong Space Station, for military missions as well as civilian ones. One of its modules can launch either very small satellites that can perform interception missions or satellites carrying powerful laser and microwave weapons that can destroy satellites in multiple orbits.

What was the American response to the obvious Chinese advances in space-warfare capabilities? Vice President Kamala Harris in April 2022 announced a unilateral moratorium on ground-launched anti-satellite missile tests, in the hopes that other nations would follow suit.

With this posture, it is no wonder why America’s lead in space warfare—if it exists—is narrowing.

Now, China is making fast progress in building space weapons. “The Chinese ISR”—intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance—”capabilities are become very capable,” said Guetlein. “They have gone from what we used to call a ‘Kill Chain’ to a ‘Kill Mesh.'” A Kill Mesh combines ISR satellites with an array of weapons systems.

The Chinese array appears impressive. As Fisher points out, the People’s Liberation Army has developed ground-based ASAT—anti-satellite—interceptors to destroy satellites in both low earth orbit and much higher medium earth orbits. At the same time, China, as Guetlein’s comments make clear, is working on “co-orbital” interceptors, satellites that can follow, approach, dock with, or use robotic arms to grapple other satellites into useless orbits.

For the future, Fisher reports, China is developing large, unmanned space planes that can re-enter the atmosphere to maneuver toward a new orbit and then relaunch into space to deploy energy and missile weapons. The PLA also appears to be working on large combat platforms that can attack satellite targets in multiple orbits. Expect the Chinese military also to deploy clusters of combat satellites to attack the Lunar and Martian satellite networks of the future.

“The recent demonstration of Chinese ‘dogfighting’ capabilities in space is an indicator that Beijing means to use force on earth,” says Weichert. “By targeting sensitive U.S. military satellites, the People’s Liberation Army can render us deaf, dumb, and blind, long before it strikes.”

The Chinese are evidently planning to blind not only America’s military but also America’s civilian society, which is heavily dependent on space assets. Almost nothing modern in America will work when the Chinese are finished attacking in the heavens.

As Weichert said, “A space Pearl Harbor is at hand.”

Another Israeli soldier and veteran of Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza has admitted that he was a party to war crimes — and says his commander ordered him and other soldiers to continue perpetrating those crimes even after they’d raised objections. This latest of many such accounts was given to CBS News by an Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) soldier who agreed to speak on the condition that his identity wouldn’t be revealed. The experience that troubled him the most was his unit’s practice of forcing Palestinian civilians to probe buildings for improvised explosive devices.  

“They were Palestinian,” he said. “We sent them in first to see if the building was clear and check for booby traps…They were trembling and shaking.” So apparently common is the practice of using Palestinians in such a manner that it has a name of its own: the “Mosquito Protocol,” where Palestinians civilians are equated with the hated insects.  

The soldier told CBS that he objected to that abusive treatment of civilians, to the point that he took his concern to the chain of command — where it fell on deaf ears. “We talked to our commander, and we asked him to stop doing it,” he said, but said the unconscionable orders continued to be issued.  

The whistleblowing soldier who spoke to CBS says he continues to be troubled by what he personally did in Gaza. “I’m morally wounded. It’s fucked up, you know, to use citizens as your human shield like a dog.” The term “moral injury” describes psychological problems that spring from having observed, perpetrated, or failed to prevent actions that violate one’s sense of right and wrong. 

Of course, the people on the other end of the depraved practice battle their own psychological demons. CBS spoke to a 14-year-old Palestinian in the West Bank, where the IDF is accused of the same form of abuse. He claims he and his nine-year-old cousin were forced at gunpoint to search a four-story apartment building. “I was so scared. Then they started beating us,” he said. The IDF told CBS it prohibits this behavior.  

The soldier said he was witness to other IDF evils: “We’ve burned down buildings for no reasons, which is violating the international law, of course.” That confession should come as little surprise to even the most casual observer of the war, given the IDF’s astonishingly thorough and plainly visible destruction of neighborhoods, towns and cities throughout Gaza — and IDF soldiers’ enthusiastic use of personal social media accounts to share videos of themselves joyfully demolishing entire housing complexes. A January before-and-after analysis of Gaza using satellite imagery concluded that between 50% and 61% of buildings in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed. 

The IDF loves to film themselves blowing up Palestinian homes. pic.twitter.com/poiYVpf9C2

— White Rabbit (@Dark_RabbitHole) January 7, 2025

A 2024 investigation by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, which interviewed soldiers, concluded the IDF has indeed used Palestinian civilians to probe Gaza tunnels which were feared to have been booby-trapped, with soldiers told, “Our lives are more important than their lives.” The soldiers ridiculed the Israel government’s official denials of the practice:

“I saw the IDF’s response [to posted videos said to show human shields at work], which totally doesn’t reflect reality. It’s done with the knowledge of the brigade commander, at the least... [Soldiers] know it’s not a one-time incident of a young and stupid company commander who decides on his own to take somebody.”

According to accounts from soldiers and those who claim to have been their victims, Palestinians are often detained, dressed in uniforms and flak jackets, mounted with cameras, and sent into buildings with their hands zip-tied behind them. Sometimes, they’re said to be simply stripped to their underwear and their hands tied before being coerced into the potentially lethal situation.    

As ugly as the Mosquito Protocol allegations are, they’re far from the worst claims about the IDF’s conduct. As we covered last summer, a team of 20 humanitarian US doctors who volunteered to work Gaza hospitals were stunned by the volume of civilian harm, and particularly by how frequently they had to treat children with headshot wounds. A doctor who normally works in gunfire-heavy Chicago described the horrific conclusion he reached as the pattern emerged on the treatment tables in front of him: 

“I thought these kids were in the wrong place at the wrong time, like sadly, some of the kids we treat in Chicago. But after the third or fourth time, I realized it was intentional; bullets were being put in these kids on purpose.”

On the other hand, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly said the IDF is “the most moral army in the world.” We’ll give Netanyahu the last word…while President Trump gives the IDF another $4 billion in weapons and ammunition.  

Authored by Melanie Israel via The Daily Signal, a publication of The Heritage Foundation,

A new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about birth data for 2023 is out. For everyone concerned about the long-term decline in America’s birth rate, the report doesn’t show strong signs that much has changed.

Why should we care about declining birth rates, and what’s driving the trend? As a recent Heritage Foundation report warns, U.S. fertility is now below replacement. Fewer births and our historic low fertility rate will affect the future economy. It will affect programs like Social Security. Don’t forget the military. What about caregiving as the elderly age? A declining population will affect our nation’s future in more ways than we can count.

If you ask 10 people why the number of births keeps going down, you’ll probably get 10 different answers, from housing and child care costs to economic anxiety to student loan debt. While there’s not one sole reason (and therefore not one single policy solution,) at the heart of the issue is marriage—fewer marriages, specifically.

Fewer Americans are getting married, and those who do are getting married later, which in turn delays having kids (and how many they eventually have). My colleagues recently published a Special Report analyzing trends in marriage, childbearing, and other important factors of American family life. In it, they note:

“Today, married couples make up less than half (47 percent) of U.S. households, 40 percent of children are born outside marriage, and the birth rate has reached its lowest recorded level. 

The age of first marriage has increased by about seven years for both sexes. 

More adults ages 18 to 44 have cohabited (59 percent) than have been married (50 percent). 

Marriage itself has been legally redefined nationwide with the Supreme Court’s Obergefell v. Hodges decision in a way that rejects the fundamental link between marriage and childbearing.

In fact, for a growing and influential segment of the country, even defining ‘man’ and ‘woman’ seems to be an impossible task.“

Healthy marriages help establish stable families and a thriving civil society. (And no, cohabitation does not provide the same stability and benefits for adults and children as marriage.) Separating marriage + having children has changed the structure of family formation for the worse.

For all the attention that solving the “birth dearth” gets, pronatalism is not enough. It is not enough to look for policies and technology (some with serious ethical concerns) that encourages or assists people to reproduce. Addressing healthy marriages has to be front and center of policy proposals.

There’s no one-size policy to help people enter a healthy marriage and keep it that way. One way to help is using (and building on) existing funding and programing at the state and federal level. But government programs can’t fix decades of cultural forces that have minimized or dismissed the importance of coupling sex, marriage, and childbearing together. The decline in marriage rates didn’t happen overnight just as the decline in births didn’t happen overnight.

Put frankly, it took a long time to make the mess we’re in and it’ll take time to clean it up, too. We can debate the merits of things like student loan “forgiveness,” housing benefits, child care subsidies, and tax credits. But the most meaningful, effective way to address declining births is to reorient society to value family formation within stable, healthy marriages. Want to address the birth dearth? Let’s show our fellow Americans that marriage matters.

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

It was a good run, but they had to know it was going to end at some point. Now that the federal government funding gravy train that began with COVID is finally starting to come to an end, suddenly Pennsylvania is crying poor. 

PA Governor Josh Shapiro’s administration has said it is bracing for some Pennsylvania towns to fall into financial distress as federal COVID stimulus money runs out, according to ABC 27.

During the pandemic, state and local governments leaned heavily on federal aid to stay afloat. But with that support ending, cracks are starting to show.

Now the Department of Community and Economic Development is asking for a $10 million boost to the state’s emergency fund for struggling municipalities in its 2025-26 budget—just 2.3% of Gov. Josh Shapiro’s $430 million request for the agency.

Some argue the funding is too little, while others say it would be smarter to help towns before they reach crisis levels. Under Act 47, distressed municipalities can access recovery support once they officially declare financial hardship.

As billions in federal COVID relief dollars run out, Pennsylvania is preparing for a wave of municipal financial distress. The Department of Community and Economic Development (DCED) wants to add $10 million to the Act 47 fund, which supports struggling local governments. As of March 18, the fund held $17.4 million, and current participants include Harrisburg, Chester, and Newville.

The ABC report notes that DCED Secretary Rick Siger called the proposal a proactive step to prepare for “any potential impact for the ARPA cliff,” referring to the end of American Rescue Plan Act funding. Passed in 2021, ARPA sent $350 billion to governments nationwide, including $7.29 billion for Pennsylvania, $4.95 billion for large counties and cities, and $1.21 billion for smaller municipalities.

Governments had until the end of 2024 to commit ARPA funds, and must spend them by Dec. 31, 2026. Most Pennsylvania municipalities used their share to replace lost revenue—an easy reporting route under Treasury rules. Nearly two-thirds of the state’s 2,140 smallest recipients (Tier 5 entities) did exactly that.

But the relief was temporary. “This money is not going to be replaced. It was designed for an emergency. The emergency is gone,” said William Glasgall of the Volcker Alliance. He warned that limiting expenses and raising taxes will soon be “very common” for local governments. Glasgall also dismissed DCED’s proposed boost: “I mean, [$10] million will last about three seconds.”

Some towns already feel the squeeze. State College avoided tax hikes for three of the last four years thanks to ARPA funds—but a property tax increase is coming in 2025.

Still, not all municipalities are panicking. David Sanko of the Pennsylvania State Association of Township Supervisors said many local governments are “not stressed at all” because they planned ahead. His group urged members not to rely on ARPA for ongoing costs and is now pushing the state to cut expenses—like repealing prevailing wage mandates—rather than only expand aid.

Sen. Patty Kim (D-Dauphin), who represents Harrisburg, agrees prevention is better than rescue. “More needs to be done to prevent communities from becoming financially distressed instead of offering help afterward,” she said. As for the $10 million increase, she’s uncertain it will make it through the legislature. With possible federal funding cuts ahead, Kim warned, “I am bracing myself for a very, very different budget in the next couple of months.”

Authored by Jon Fleetwood,

Texas administered 15,000 more measles vaccinations this year compared to 2024—and now there’s a growing measles outbreak that has surpassed the total number of cases reported across the entire United States last year.

The news follows this website’s February report that measles cases in Gaines County, Texas, had jumped 242% following a health district campaign to hand out free measles vaccines.

A measles outbreak after higher vaccination rates in Texas calls into question the shot’s claimed effectiveness and underlying design.

Timeline & Numbers

Between January 1 and March 16 last year, 158,000 measles vaccines were administered in the state, according to CBS News.

During the same time this year, 173,000 measles doses were given.

There are now more measles cases in Texas than there were across the United States in all of 2024.

On Friday, the Texas Department of State Health Services reported 309 cases have been identified in the state since late January.

That’s compared to only 285 cases nationwide last year, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data.

What’s worse, measles cases in West Texas are “still on the rise” and “local public health officials say they expect the virus to keep spreading for at least several more months and that the official case number is likely an undercount,” according to CBS.

The numbers don’t lie—Texas is witnessing a record-breaking measles outbreak in the wake of increased vaccination efforts.

Measles Vaccine Virus Is Product of Gain-of-Function & Can Shed Onto Unvaccinated

U.S. military biodefense experts confirm in a May 2016 publication in The Journal of Infectious Diseases that the live virus inside the measles (MMR) vaccine is engineered using “a technique that could be considered, by current definitions, GOF research.”

GOF (gain-of-function) experiments can cause viruses to become more infectious.

The wild-type measles virus (Montefiore 89 strain) purportedly found in nature mostly uses a receptor called CD150 to gain entry to and infect immune cells.

However, the vaccine strain (Edmonston strain) is manipulated in the laboratory to acquire the ability to bind another receptor called CD46, which is more abundant in the body and expressed on most human nucleated cells.

This means the measles virus injected into the MMR-vaccinated has the potential to enter many more cells compared to the wild-type virus, due to its acquired ability to use an additional cellular receptor.

The vaccine virus also sheds.

An August 2024 study in the peer-reviewed Journal of Clinical Virology confirms the measles vaccine virus sheds in recently vaccinated children for 29 days, meaning the vaccinated can spread the virus to the unvaccinated for about a month.

A 1995 CDC study found that 83% of vaccinated children had measles virus shed in their urine.

With a genetically modified vaccine virus capable of shedding for nearly a month and entering a broader range of human cells than the wild-type strain, the question becomes harder to ignore: Is the vaccine itself playing a role in the surge?

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

The US Agency for International Development (USAID) has been officially shuttered after a federal appeals court Friday determined that the Trump administration could continue dismantling it.

The ruling nullifies a lower court ruling that found that Elon Musk and DOGE were exercising enough independent authority to require Senate confirmation under the Constitution’s Appointments Clause.

“While defendants’ role and actions related to USAID are not conventional, unconventional does not necessarily equal unconstitutional,” wrote US Circuit Judge Marvin Quattlebaum, a Trump appointee. “And none of this is to say that plaintiffs will not be able to develop evidence of unconstitutional conduct as the case progresses. Time will tell,” he continued.

USAID was one of DOGE’s first targets. In addition to finding all sorts of waste, fraud and abuse, America First Legal found last week that USAID was behind an online censorship scheme. 

A week before that, a senior USAID official ordered the agency’s remaining staff to report to their now-former headquarters in Washington DC for an “all day” group effort to destroy documents, many of which contain sensitive information.

After DOGE cleaned house, 26 current and former USAID employees sued – arguing that Elon Musk and DOGE have no actual independent authority. Earlier this month, US District Judge Theodore Chuang, an Obama appointee, indefinitely blocked Musk and DOGE personnel from shutting down the agency.

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In response, the 4th Circuit panel unanimously agreed that Chuang’s ruling should be nullified as the administration’s appeal proceeds – though just two of the judges on Friday found that Musk was likely acting constitutionally.

“As to Musk, the evidence before us creates a strong likelihood that he functioned as an advisor to the President, carrying out the President’s policies of shrinking government and reducing spending, not as an Officer who required constitutional appointment,” wrote Quattlebaum, who was joined by US Circuit Judge Paul Niemeyer, a George HW Bush appointee.

US Circuit Judge Roger Gregory said he only voted with his colleagues because the USAID workers sued the wrong defendants – and if they’d sued USAID itself, he would have sided with them.

“We may never know how many lives will be lost or cut short by the Defendants’ decision to abruptly cancel billions of dollars in congressionally appropriated foreign aid,” Gregory wrote. “We may never know the lasting effect of Defendants’ actions on our national aspirations and goals. But those are not the questions before the Court today.”

Rubio Shutters

Meanwhile, the US State Department on Friday announced that it is officially closing down USAID – with the formal last day set to take place before July 1, the NY Post reports.

According to ABC News, ex-DOGE official Jeremy Lewin announced USAID’s shuttering in an internal memo earlier Friday.

“Foreign assistance done right can advance our national interests, protect our borders, and strengthen our partnerships with key allies,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio posted to X. “Unfortunately, USAID strayed from its original mission long ago. As a result, the gains were too few and the costs were too high. Thanks to President [Donald] Trump, this misguided and fiscally irresponsible era is now over.”

According to Rubio, the department is “reorienting” the agency’s foreign assistance programs, and will continue its “essential lifesaving programs.”