Tag: finance

For decades, Muse Omar Jama made a living swapping currencies in Mogadishu’s Bakara market, where customers once lined up to trade Somali shillings for dollars and mobile money. Now his office sits mostly silent, and the safes around him are stuffed with cash no one wants, according to The Guardian.

The problem began when traders in Somalia stopped accepting worn-out shilling notes, saying the bills were too damaged to use. The boycott quickly spread to shops, buses, and businesses across the country, wiping out the value of savings held in local currency. Jama describes the shock bluntly: “It’s like we went bankrupt overnight.”

He can no longer exchange the piles of shillings stacked in his office for US dollars, and many former customers leave empty-handed. “I have to turn them away because my safes, shelves and tables are already full of Somali shillings,” he says.

The Guardian writes that the crisis reflects Somalia’s long shift toward a dollar-based economy. The country hasn’t printed new banknotes since dictator Siad Barre was overthrown in 1991, when the central bank collapsed. Since then, US dollars, remittances sent through hawala networks, and mobile payments have increasingly replaced local currency.

The fallout has hit poor households hardest. Prices for essentials like food, medicine, and transport have risen sharply—one small bag of powdered milk reportedly doubled in price. Jama now walks five kilometers to work because buses no longer accept shillings.

Vegetable seller Asha Ali Ahmed says the change has also hurt small traders. Farmers in Afgoye now demand mobile payments, driving up produce costs in Mogadishu markets. With drought already devastating crops, many customers can no longer afford basic groceries.

According to the World Food Programme, about 6.5 million people in Somalia face severe hunger, while 2 million children under five are suffering acute malnutrition.

The federal government has declared refusing Somali shillings a crime, but many traders doubt it can enforce the order. Jama remains pessimistic: “Millions are going to suffer… More families will be pushed into poverty.”

Authored by Ciaran Kelly via DailySceptic.org,

If you want a snapshot of how far Britain has drifted from its liberal inheritance, consider the spectacle of a 78 year-old grandfather and retired pastor being warned by police that he must not preach from the Bible within a public area. His offence was not harassment, obstruction or intimidation. It was reciting and commentating on a verse many learned as children: “For God so loved the world…”

Clive Johnston’s alleged crime was breaching a ‘buffer zone’ around a hospital which houses a sexual health clinic where abortions are performed – despite the fact it was a Sunday afternoon when there were no scheduled abortions, and he made no reference whatsoever to abortion, nor motherhood, nor babies.

The state maintains he risked “influencing” anyone accessing the clinic in relation to abortion or anyone working there – a crime punishable by fine. He was prosecuted, and this week found guilty for doing so.

At this point, it is worth stating plainly: this is no longer about the cultural debate on abortion ethics.

It is about whether the state may decide which ideas are permissible in public space and which must be confined to the private sphere. In footage from the initial confrontation with police now circulating on X, the policeman literally tells Johnston his religious views should be expressed only in a “safe” place like a chaplaincy – not out on the street, where anyone passing by might hear.

Johnston’s case is the latest example in a pattern that has been building for years: the slow but unmistakable attempt to narrow the space in which Christians, in particular, are permitted to express their beliefs.

Take the school chaplain, Dr Bernard Randall, referred to Prevent for discussing Christian teaching during a school assembly. Or the numerous street preachers removed from public areas simply for speaking about Christ. Or the growing list of individuals questioned by police for nothing more than silent prayer within ‘buffer zones’ – cases in which no words were spoken, no signs displayed, no interactions initiated. The mere possibility of internal deviance in belief, it seems, is now sufficient to trigger official concern.

Abortion ‘buffer zones’ were introduced with a defensible aim: to protect women from harassment at a vulnerable moment. Few would quarrel with that objective (albeit one that was already adequately covered by pre-existing laws banning harassment). But like many well-intentioned measures, the law is being stretched beyond its original purpose. If “influence” can be inferred from the mere act of expressing Christian faith – irrespective of what is actually said, and whether it relates to abortion – then we are no longer policing conduct, but the hypothetical impact of ideas. To put it more bluntly, we are policing thought.

Once the elastic concept of “influence” becomes an offence, the implications are difficult to contain. If spoken words are suspect, what about the mere presence of someone with a certain belief? If preaching from the Bible is counted to be too influential, what about someone within the area wearing a Christian cross, or indeed a hijab? Could that deter a woman from an abortion because she knows of faith-based objections to abortion, and therefore be criminal? If influence is defined so subjectively, then almost any expression of belief becomes, in the eyes of someone, a potential offence.

The premise of the law banning “influence” rather than “coercion” or “harassment” is absurd. It suggests that we aren’t all influenced by one another on a daily basis. It isn’t immoral to change one’s mind on a topic – and indeed, it’s patronising to assume members of the public are so feeble-minded that to be in the presence of somebody with an alternative view would cause genuine harm.

Britain has developed a habit of elevating the avoidance of offence above the protection of liberty. From the proliferation of ‘non-crime hate incidents’ to the policing of speech on university campuses, the direction of travel has been unmistakable: fewer risks of discomfort at the cost of fewer freedoms.

Buffer zones are simply the latest and most disproportionate frontier. What is now being tested is not just the boundary of acceptable behaviour, but the boundary of acceptable belief. You need not share Clive Johnston’s theology to see the danger.

A country that tells its citizens their faith belongs only in designated “safe areas” is not protecting pluralism, but actively dismantling it.

The global economic order has shifted dramatically over the last decade, with countries reshuffling positions amid inflation shocks, geopolitical tensions, pandemic disruptions, and the rapid rise of AI-driven industries.

This graphic, via Visual Capitalist’s Gabriel Cohen, compares the world’s 15 largest economies in 2016 and 2026 using IMF World Economic Outlook data, revealing which countries gained ground, which fell behind, and which surprised the most.

The U.S. remains the world’s largest economy at $32.4 trillion in 2026 forecasts, while China crossed the $20 trillion mark. India posted one of the fastest growth rates among major economies, while Japan became the only G20 economy to shrink over the decade.

The World’s Reordering of Major Economies

The period from 2016 to 2026 saw major reordering among the world’s top economies, with Mexico overtaking Spain, India overtaking France, and Russia leapfrogging both Brazil and Canada.

The table below lists the world’s 15 largest economies in both 2016 and 2026 based on their nominal GDP in billions of U.S. dollars.

One of the biggest shifts in the rankings came from India, whose economy expanded by 83% between 2016 and 2026. By the end of the period, India’s GDP had nearly caught up with both Japan and Germany.

Meanwhile, Germany overtook Japan to become the world’s third-largest economy, despite relatively modest growth compared to emerging markets.

Germany’s growth was modest compared to emerging markets like China, India, and Mexico, and was tempered in part by the economic slowdown it faced throughout the post-COVID era. However, Germany still grew faster than other major European Union economies like France (46%) and Italy (45%), though not Spain (68%).

The decade between 2016 and 2026 also saw the European Union lose its second-largest member economy, the United Kingdom, in 2020. The UK grew its GDP by 57% to reach $4.3 trillion by 2026.

Another Lost Decade for Japan

Every major world economy expanded over the last decade, with one notable exception. Japan’s GDP shrank from $5.1 trillion in 2016 to $4.4 trillion in 2026, reflecting a 14% contraction.

Following decades of rapid economic expansion in the late 20th century, Japan’s economy has struggled since the 1990s. The government has accumulated a debt-to-GDP ratio of over 200%, while major exporters in the auto and tech sectors have faced rising competition and trade tensions involving both the U.S. and China.

Perhaps Japan’s most pressing challenge is its demographic crisis. The country’s population was roughly 5 million larger in 2016 than in 2026, reflecting a decades-long fertility decline that threatens future growth prospects.

Russia’s Economic Expansion

Russia’s economy more than doubled in size between 2016 and 2026, growing by 107% to reach $2.7 trillion based on IMF forecasts. This expansion came after the Russian financial crisis of 2014–2016, which was driven largely by falling oil prices.

Russia’s growth, fueled heavily by oil and gas exports, came despite sanctions imposed after the country’s occupation of Crimea in 2014 and full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Even as the U.S. and European Union imposed sanctions, Russian energy exports were rerouted toward buyers in China and India, albeit at discounted prices.

How do these countries and economic powers compare with individual U.S. states? Find out with The 50 Largest Economies, Including U.S. States on Voronoi.

Authored by Amil Imani via AmericanThinker.com,

The United Nations functions as a predatory cartel dedicated to the systematic liquidation of national borders. Its agenda demands the total eradication of the nation-state to pave the way for a centralized, unelected global tyranny.

The 2018 Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration serves as the executioner’s blade for national sovereignty. This document transforms migration from a matter of domestic policy into a universal human right, stripping citizens of their power to decide who enters their lands. It creates a legal framework that criminalizes dissent against mass migration under the guise of hate speech suppression.

The UN mandate forces governments to promote migration and eliminate all forms of discrimination against migrants, a directive that effectively prioritizes foreign nationals over the rights and resources of their own taxpayers. This policy transforms the fundamental duty of the state from protecting its citizens to serving a globalist movement of people.

The UN Population Division openly plots the demographic overthrow of Western populations. Their Replacement Migration report outlines a cold, calculated strategy to offset declining birth rates in Europe and North America by importing tens of millions of foreign agents. This is the deliberate engineering of a new, rootless labor force designed to dissolve traditional cultural identities.

The UN identifies replacement migration as the sole, non-negotiable solution for aging Western nations, deliberately ignoring the preservation of indigenous cultures and social cohesion. This mechanism treats human populations as interchangeable economic units, engineering a demographic shift that renders traditional national identities obsolete. The UN’s own demographic projections provide the cold, mathematical blueprint for this replacement strategy.

The United Nations maintains a blood-sealed partnership with the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) to integrate Islamic blasphemy laws into Western legal systems. Through the Combatting Defamation of Religions resolutions, the UN enforces a pro-Islamic bias that shields religious doctrine from legitimate critique. This alliance facilitates the steady Islamization of the European sphere by granting special status to specific religious ideologies under the umbrella of international protection.

Why does Western secularism retreat before the advance of religious expansionism? The OIC utilizes its massive, disciplined voting bloc within the UN to dictate absolute terms on migration and free speech, effectively extorting the international community. This alliance enforces a pro-Islamic bias that shields specific religious doctrines from critique while dismantling the secular foundations of Western nations. The formal cooperation records between the UN and the OIC serve as the public ledger for this strategic surrender.

The UN utilizes the Marrakesh Declaration and subsequent regional summits to bypass national legislatures entirely. This shadow-governance model empowers local municipalities to act as independent entities, funneling UN directives directly into city centers while ignoring federal law. This tactic creates Sanctuary Hubs that fracture the unity of the nation-state from within.

How does the UN fracture a nation from within? By funding local city councils to implement Integration Frameworks, the Machine creates a parallel legal reality where national border enforcement ceases to exist at the street level. This tactical subversion bypasses federal authority, empowering globalist-aligned city networks to operate as independent sanctuary hubs. The UN New Urban Agenda provides the explicit roadmap for this transition of power, detailing the erosion of national governance in favor of localized global control.

The UN Machine operates through a web of extortionate financial mechanisms. It funnels billions into NGOs and humanitarian fronts that facilitate the transit of migrants across sovereign borders. These organizations act as the logistics arm for the invasion, providing the maps, the legal aid, and the transport necessary to breach the defenses of the West.

Every refugee represents a calculated line item in a massive, globalist budget that extracts profit from the deliberate destabilization of stable societies. This predatory financial structure forces sovereign nations to fund their own destruction through mandatory contributions to agencies that actively bypass national immigration laws. The UN effectively turns the taxpayer into an unwitting financier of the very machine that dismantles their security and sovereignty.

Objective journalism dies under Objective 17 of the Global Compact for Migration. This provision demands that signatory nations sensitize and educate media professionals to promote migration as a positive force while cutting off public funding to media outlets that provide intolerance or xenophobia. In the UN’s vocabulary, intolerance equals any factual reporting on the social or economic costs of mass migration.

This directive establishes a state-sponsored propaganda machine that aggressively deplatforms critics while it rewards outlets that parrot the globalist narrative. By enforcing these standards, the UN ensures the total eradication of dissent, transforming independent journalism into a mouthpiece for borderless expansion.

The UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) actively re-engineers school curricula across the West to foster Global Citizenship. This program replaces national history and identity with a loyalty to globalist institutions. It frames the arrival of foreign populations not as a demographic shift, but as an inevitable and superior evolution of society, ensuring the youth remain compliant during the transition.

So what is the indoctrination involved here? UNESCO’s Global Citizenship Education (GCED) initiates a psychological re-engineering of the youth, targeting children as young as five to convince them that national loyalty remains a mere relic of a dead past. This program systematically replaces the concept of the sovereign citizen with a rootless global identity, ensuring the next generation views the dismantling of their own borders as a moral necessity.

The evidence sits in plain sight. The UN hides its war in the light of official documents, betting on the apathy of the masses. The borders fall. The cultures fade. The Machine remains.

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

Authored by Lipton Matthews via The Mises Institute,

In recent years, a strand of environmental thinking has emerged that places population at the center of ecological crises. Some activists, including figures associated with the Extinction Rebellion and the Stop Having Kids Movements Movement in the United Kingdom and the United States have expressed anti-natalist views, arguing that choosing not to have children is a meaningful response to climate change. The reasoning is lucid and, at first glance, convincing: fewer people should mean less consumption, lower emissions, and more space for the natural world to recover.

Yet this argument becomes less compelling when examined more carefully. Depopulation, on its own, is neither a sufficient nor a reliable solution to environmental problems. Once questions of timing, infrastructure, and land use are considered, the connection between population decline and environmental improvement appears far more uncertain.

The first issue is one of timing.

Climate change is seen as an urgent problem that must be addressed within the next few decades. Population decline, however, unfolds over a much longer horizon. Even if fertility rates were to fall sharply today, the total number of people would remain high for decades because of population momentum. Large existing generations will continue to live, consume, and emit throughout the period in which climate action is most critical.

For this reason, the impact of falling fertility on emissions is minimal within the relevant timeframe. Climate-economy modeling indicates that even substantial differences in long-term population size produce only very small differences in projected global temperatures. This conclusion is difficult to avoid. Demographic change happens too slowly to meaningfully influence climate outcomes in the near term. What ultimately matters is not population growth, but the speed at which economies innovate by developing technologies that reduce reliance on greenhouse gas emissions.

Furthermore, it is sometimes posited that countries experiencing population decline also see falling energy use. However, this relationship is often misunderstood. Declines in energy consumption are frequently linked to economic stagnation or contraction rather than to demographic change itself. When economies slow, industrial output falls, investment weakens, and consumption declines. These conditions can reduce total energy use, but they do so because of reduced economic activity, not simply because there are fewer people. In this sense, lower energy demand may reflect a slump rather than a structural environmental improvement.

At the same time, population decline can introduce inefficiencies that push in the opposite direction. As populations shrink, households tend to become smaller and buildings are used less intensively. A home that once accommodated a family may later be occupied by a single individual, yet it still requires heating, lighting, and maintenance at nearly the same level. This spreads energy use across fewer people, increasing consumption per person.

A similar pattern appears in infrastructure.

Transport systems, utilities, and public services are typically designed for larger populations. When the number of users falls, these systems rarely contract at the same pace. Instead, they continue operating below capacity, often with aging equipment that is not replaced quickly due to weaker economic incentives. Under these conditions, overall energy use may not decline as much as expected, and each remaining resident may account for a larger share of it.

Depopulation, therefore, does not automatically deliver greater efficiency and can, in some cases, entrench wasteful patterns of energy use.

The question of biodiversity introduces a further layer of complexity.

A common expectation is that when populations decline, land will be abandoned and nature will gradually reclaim it. However, evidence from Japan—one of the clearest examples of sustained depopulation—suggests that this outcome is far from automatic.

Across a wide range of species and ecosystems, biodiversity loss continues regardless of whether human populations are increasing or decreasing.

The crucial factor is land use.

In depopulating regions, farmland does not simply revert to forest or natural habitat. Some areas fall into disuse, but others are sold for development or reorganized into more intensive forms of agriculture. Urban land use often continues to expand even in areas where population is shrinking, while agricultural land declines without being replaced by ecologically-rich environments. These patterns interrupt the processes, such as natural succession and afforestation, that would otherwise support biodiversity recovery. Instead of a steady return to nature, landscapes become fragmented and unstable, limiting ecological regeneration.

This helps clarify an important point. Biodiversity does not recover simply because human numbers fall. It depends on how land is managed, how ecosystems are protected, and whether long-term ecological processes are allowed to take hold. Without deliberate intervention, depopulation alone may do little to reverse biodiversity loss.

Japan’s demographic experience reinforces this insight. As explored in Peter Matanle’s work on the “depopulation dividend,” population decline does not automatically produce environmental benefits. Outcomes depend on how societies respond to it. In Japan, rural depopulation has often led to the erosion of traditional land management practices that once sustained diverse ecosystems, while urban areas continue to concentrate economic activity and resource use. Environmental change, in this sense, is shaped less by the number of people than by the systems within which they live.

All of this points in the same direction. Depopulation may influence environmental pressures over very long periods, but it does not address their underlying causes. Climate change is driven primarily by energy systems and industrial activity, while biodiversity loss is shaped by land use and ecological management. Neither problem can be resolved simply by reducing the number of people.

The appeal of anti-natalist thinking lies in its simplicity. It offers a clear and individual response to a complex global issue. But that simplicity is misleading. Environmental challenges are structural, not merely demographic. Without changes to how energy is produced, how infrastructure is organized, and how land is used, a smaller population will not automatically result in a more sustainable world.

In the end, the central question is not how many people there are, but how societies choose to live. Depopulation, by itself, is too slow, too indirect, and too uncertain to serve as a meaningful solution to the environmental crises we face today.

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

Goldman’s latest edition of “Nuclear Nuggets: Global Reactor Tracker” reinforces that the buildout of the cleanest and most reliable form of so-called “green” energy, nuclear power, continues to gain momentum. The theme we first laid out in December 2020 continues to broaden, with buildouts accelerating across both large-scale and small modular reactors, even as the growing risk of a massive uranium supply deficit emerges.

Focusing on the latest North American reactor progress and announcements:

4/16/2026 – Canada – Bruce Power has signed an MoU with SaskPower to share its experience in large-scale nuclear reactors, including project development and long-term operations, as Saskatchewan evaluates large reactor technologies alongside its SMR program. The agreement formalizes information-sharing and aligns provincial and federal nuclear strategies.

4/24/2026 – United States – Duke Energy’s Robinson nuclear power plant has been cleared for extended operation to 80 years, after the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission completed its fastest-ever subsequent license renewal review. The approval allows the 759 MW Robinson Unit 2 in South Carolina to operate until 2050 under new accelerated federal timelines.

4/29/2026 – United States – The U.S. NRC has approved subsequent license renewals for St. Lucie Units 1 and 2, clearing the Florida Power & Light plant to operate for up to 80 years, with Unit 1 licensed to 2056 and Unit 2 to 2063. The decision follows aging-management reviews for the extended operating period and secures the long-term operation of the two pressurized water reactors.

5/5/2026 – United States – Brookfield and The Nuclear Company have formed a JV to manage the potential completion of the two VC Summer AP1000 units in South Carolina, supporting due diligence and execution if the project proceeds, subject to approvals and a final investment decision.

One of the biggest shifts in the note penned by analyst Brian Lee is the addition of small modular reactors to Goldman’s uranium supply-and-demand model, which forecasts cumulative SMR deployments of nearly 46 GW by 2045.

In turn, this would lift its 2045 nuclear generation forecast by about 6% and create an additional 62 million pounds of uranium demand, or a 17% upside to its prior long-term demand estimate.

Global reactor construction tracker, by country:

Years under construction, by country:

Chinese reactors, years under construction:

Lee said uranium spot prices stabilized in the mid-to-high $80s per pound after rebounding in April, supported by buying activity in the Sprott Physical Uranium Trust. Term pricing held near $90 per pound, signaling that utilities continue to accept higher long-term pricing deals.

As new reactors come online, Lee warns of a cumulative uranium supply deficit of 2.3 billion pounds between 2025 and 2045.

Uranium prices will be up and to the right for quite some time…

Latest uranium coverage:

February 2026

• Big Tech Turns To Uranium As Data Center Power Demand Soars (Feb 18) – Discusses tech companies exploring uranium mining/supply deals for reliable data center power.

• No Substitute: Uranium At The Center Of The AI Power Shock (Feb 19) – Covers uranium’s role in AI-driven power demand, supply reliability issues, and reactor buildouts.

March 2026

• Oklo And Centrus Signal Progress On America’s Nuclear Fuel-Chain Bottleneck (Mar 9) – Joint venture on HALEU deconversion services and fuel-cycle advancements.

• Nano Nuclear Progresses HALEU Transport Package (Mar 16) – Progress on high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) transportation for advanced reactors.

• How To Transport Next-Gen Nuclear Fuel Safely? NANO Nuclear Hits Key Milestone (Mar 20) – HALEU transport package development for multiple fuel types.

• U.S. Must Boost Domestic Uranium Enrichment To Counter Proliferation Risks (Mar 31) – Need for U.S. enrichment capacity expansion amid import bans and market bottlenecks.

April 2026

• Goldman Highlights Global Nuclear Progress Across SMRs And Fuel Chain (Apr 15) – Updates on uranium spot/term pricing, supply-demand models, and fuel chain developments.

• Nuclear Fuel Consortium To Provide Update On Approved Plans Of Action (Apr 23) – Progress on addressing shortages across the full nuclear fuel supply chain (mining to fabrication).

• Uranium Supply Crunch Worsens Amid Kazakhstan’s Plan For Strategic Reserve (Apr 30) – Kazakhstan’s strategic reserve plans and ongoing global uranium supply-demand mismatch (~$86/lb spot).

May 2026

• DOE’s NNSA Removes Enriched Uranium From Venezuela And Japan (~May 9) – HALEU fuel transfers supporting U.S. domestic nuclear supply chain.

• ASP Isotopes Subsidiary Signs MOU With European Nuclear Technology Company For Fuel Supply (~May 11) – Long-term HALEU supply partnership for advanced reactors.

• Uranium – Cameco Guidance Hanging by a Thread, Implications for Market Purchases (May 11) – Cameco production guidance and direct impacts on uranium market/spot purchases.

• Up To $170 Billion Needed To Secure Full Domestic Nuclear Fuel Supply Chain (~May 13–14) – Massive investment requirements for U.S. uranium mining, milling, conversion, enrichment, etc.

Professional subscribers can read the full nuclear note here at our new Marketdesk.ai portal.

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Population growth in medium-sized cities largely remained steady even as the national population barely grew, Census Bureau officials said on May 14.

Midsize cities grew by an average of 0.7 percent from July 1, 2024, to July 1, 2025, compared with 1 percent the year prior, according to the newly released analysis. In comparison, the average growth for the largest cities and large cities was just 0.3 percent and 0.5 percent, respectively, down from 0.9 percent and 1 percent.

Small cities had an average population growth rate of 0.1 percent, down from 0.3 percent.

“Big-city growth slowed significantly between 2024 and 2025, with some major hubs even seeing small declines,” Matt Erickson, a statistician in the Census Bureau’s Population Division, said in a statement. “In contrast, midsized cities found a ‘Goldilocks zone’ where domestic and international migration, paired with new housing, helped prevent the sluggish growth seen in small towns and larger metropolitan centers.”

The new data came several months after the Census Bureau estimated that immigration to the United States plummeted from mid-2024 to mid-2025, amid a Trump administration crackdown on illegal immigration.

The bureau estimated at the time that the country added 1.8 million people, for a growth rate of 0.5 percent.

The bureau classifies cities as: largest cities (at least 250,000 residents), large cities (50,000 to 249,999 residents), medium-sized cities (5,000 to 49,999 residents), and small cities (fewer than 5,000 residents).

Some of the fastest-growing cities are in the medium-sized group, including Princeton in Texas, which grew by 18 percent to 43,524 residents.

Other large population jumps were recorded in the medium-sized cities of Melissa, Anna, and Forney in Texas; Haines City in Florida; Waukee in Iowa; Kuna in Idaho; and Foley in Alabama.

Even when larger cities saw strong population growth, they were often eclipsed by nearby suburbs. Charlotte, North Carolina, for instance, grew by 20,731 residents between 2024 and 2025, numerically more than any city in the country.

The population in nearby Fort Mill, South Carolina, though, jumped by a larger percentage, increasing by 6.8 percent to 38,673.

Fort Worth, San Antonio, and Celina in Texas, and Seattle, Washington, increased the most numerically behind Charlotte.

New York City, easily the most populous city in the country with some 8.5 million people, logged a population decline of 12,196 during the time period in question.

Most growth across cities of all sizes took place in the South, which includes Texas.

Austin crossed the 1 million threshold between 2024 and 2025, marking the 12th U.S. city to reach seven digits in population.

Authored by Paul D. Thacker via The DisInformation Chronicle,

“DLA Piper wants to get you,” I was told, from a source in DC over the weekend.

“Well, what can they do to me?” I asked.

“They can’t really do anything,” she said. “But they are pissed off.”

Well, they should be. DLA Piper is one of the largest law firms on the planet, with over 90 offices scattered across more than 40 countries. A week back, I took a shot at one of DLA Piper’s top lobbyists, former Republican North Carolina Senator Richard Burr, and one of DLA Piper’s major clients, the University of North Carolina (UNC).

As I reported last month for RealClearInvestigations, The National Institutes of Health removed UNC virologist, Ralph Baric, from all his NIH grants. And UNC put Baric on administrative leave. This all took place last year, but remained hidden until I exposed it all in a sprawling investigation that delved into Baric’s career, his past lobbying efforts of the federal government to keep taxpayer money pouring into his UNC lab, and Baric’s manipulations of public opinion to shut down speculation that the pandemic started because of the dangerous virus research that he pioneered in collaboration with Shi Zhengli at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

That’s right. Baric’s main collaborators to create experimental pandemic viruses were virologists working in the same city where the COVID pandemic started in 2019.

Neither Baric nor UNC would respond to my repeated inquiries. However, when a reporter sent them questions about my article, UNC said that they couldn’t discuss Baric “citing the university’s policy on personnel matters.” Another reporter who sent UNC questions, received this reply: “Thanks for reaching out. Under the North Carolina State Human Resources Act, the University of North Carolina does not comment on personnel matters.”

But the pressure became overwhelming and the dam finally burst on Tuesday, when UNC administrators sent out an email saying that Baric was retiring. (That email was then leaked to a local North Carolina paper.) Baric also collaborated with Science Magazine’s Jon Cohen, providing him all the details about my prior reporting that NIH removed Baric from grants last year and UNC placed him on leave. Cohen’s editor, John Travis, then tried to sell this repeat of my reporting from last month as an “exclusive backstory” to readers of Science.

Journalism can be a sleazy business. Since the pandemic’s beginning, Jon Cohen has distinguished himself as a soft touch for Tony Fauci-financed virologists who downplayed evidence that the pandemic began at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, earning himself the moniker: “Crooked Cohen”.

UNC’s Biodefense Lobby Hustle

Baric got away with shenanigans for years because, while he was in an elected official and purportedly serving voters, North Carolina Senator Richard Burr helped to protect Baric and sponsored legislation that poured tens of billions of taxpayer cash into biodefense research that paid Baric’s UNC lab, as well as a North Carolina company Baric founded. And let’s not forget all the biopharmaceutical companies that work with Baric and other virologists to suck down taxpayer-financed federal contracts to stockpile government warehouses with biomedical products.

One of Baric’s major sponsors was Tony Fauci, who ran the biodefense program at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Trump officials now tell me that Baric’s cutting-edge biodefense studies led to virus experiments at the Wuhan Institute of Virology that caused the COVID pandemic.

“Baric designed the gun,” I was told by a senior health official. “But the Chinese built it, and then they pulled the trigger.”

A senior Trump official at one of the intelligence agencies refers to this multi-billion dollar biodefense complex as a “contract racket.” Here’s how he said it works:

NIH and other taxpayer-funded federal agencies give grants and contracts to university virologists to find viruses hidden throughout the world, and bring them back to labs for experiments, including dangerous gain-of-function studies that make viruses more deadly;

Academic virologists then partner with Big Pharma and biotech companies to create profitable therapeutics and vaccines to these experimental viruses, with universities getting a cut of the deal;

Biotech executives, academics, and universities make a windfall after these therapeutics and vaccines get sold back to the very taxpayers who paid for all this research in the first place.

I wrote about some of this back in 2023, the year in which President Biden began drowning the academic/biodefense industry in an historic amount of cash: $88.2 billion. That same year, Senator Burr left federal office to catch some of that deluge in dollars as a biodefense lobbyist. However, in 2023 this was all so new, and far too complicated to understand.

But today it’s no longer hard to follow once you take a look at Burr’s 18 lobbying clients:

Academic Research Centers: University of North Carolina, Duke University, Duke University Health System, Wake Forest University, Association of American Universities.

Pharma/Biotech in BioDefense Sector: Biogen, Biotechnology Innovation Organization Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America PhRMA, Novartis AG, REGENEX BIO, AdvaMed, Avalyn Pharma, Lazarus AI, Defence Security and Resilience Bank Development Group.

It’s quite something.

Burr laid the foundation for his lobbying career by sponsoring most of the major pieces of legislation that fund and regulate the biomedical and biodefense industry during his three decades in office. And he’s not shy about trumpeting these accomplishments, because he advertises them to potential clients in academia and corporate America on his bio at DLA Piper.

Burr helped pass the 1997 FDA Modernization Act which regulates pandemic products, and he was a primary architect of the 2006 Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act (PAHPA) which provided new authorities for companies to develop medical countermeasures which the government then buys from them. The PAHPA also created BARDA (Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority). BARDA spends billions every year to subsidize pandemic research, with a big portion of that money buying vaccines and other pandemic products that fill up government warehouses, in case a crazy virus (maybe leaked from a lab!) starts sweeping across the planet, killing people.

But there’s more money. So much money.

In his final year as a United States Senator, Burr introduced a bill to create ARPA-H inside the NIH, providing billions more in taxpayer spending for biodefense companies. As the Republican leader of the Senate Committee on Health Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP), he then published a report on COVID origins that placed sole blame for the pandemic on Chinese scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, while ignoring extensive published evidence of the research ties between UNC’s Ralph Baric and the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

“With COVID-19 still in our midst, it is critical that we continue international efforts to uncover additional information regarding the origins of this deadly virus,” Burr wrote in the report’s forward. “I hope this report will guide the World Health Organization and other international institutions and researchers as they proceed with planned work to continue investigating the origins of this virus.”

To give this report’s distorted conclusions some added media juice with liberals, Burr co-opted reporter Katherine Eban to promote his misdirection from Baric’s lab in North Carolina to focus on the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Wittingly or not, that’s exactly what Eban did with an “exclusive” she co-published with ProPublica and Vanity Fair. Eban’s involvement was my first clue that this Burr’s report was a misdirection. As Politico reported in 2012, Eban has a habit of allowing her journalism to serve as “demonstrably false” propaganda for sources who dump documents in her lap. [SEE BELOW: “Katherine Eban Tells You What Power Tells Her”]

Spotlight on Ralph Baric

My investigation for RealClearInvestigations runs for several thousand words and the details of Senator Burr, his 2022 report, and Katherine Eban is only one section. But none of it has been told before.

And my reporting created waves in DC that washed down into North Carolina.

The day before the investigation went live, I sent Richard Burr details about my reporting via his email at DLA Piper. I wrote to Burr that I was a former Senate investigator, telegraphing to him that I understood how Committees put together reports. I then detailed all the problems I found in the 2022 report he released before leaving the Senate to become a biodefense lobbyist.

In my email to Burr, I included a set of facts that we were reporting at RealClearInvestigations and asked him to comment, correct, or clarify.

1) In your final year as Ranking on HELP, you released a 2022 report on the pandemic’s origin. That report pointed the finger solely at China as the purported origin of the virus.

2) That report made no mention of gain-of-function research funded by the NIH, nor any mention of gain-of-function research conducted in the United States.

3) The most notable researcher in the world for generating gain-of-function coronaviruses is Ralph Baric, professor at UNC, who is funded by the NIH.

4) Sources who Committee staff interviewed for your report said that Bob Kadlec removed any mention of gain-of-function research in the United States. Others said you made this decision.

4) After you left office, you joined DLA Piper as a lobbyist on pandemic preparedness, taking with you staff from the HELP Committee.

5) You then joined the board of the company Baric set up for pandemic preparedness, which had also received NIH money.

A few hours later, I got a text message from Douglas Heye, a former speechwriter for the Republican National Committee, and former Republican Hill staffer. According to one bio, Heye is from Burr’s home state of North Carolina and runs a PR firm called “Douglas Media.”

Heye wanted to talk to me about Senator Burr, but I wasn’t interested. He then called me, but I didn’t pick up. I then texted Heye back that Senator Burr could call me himself or email me to answer my questions.

Burr later emailed me that he couldn’t discuss the matter as DLA Piper represents UNC. What he didn’t tell me is that he, Richard Burr, is the person at DLA Piper who lobbies for UNC.

I now know that Burr is deeply embedded within the academic biomedical and biodefense industry that he helped to create with all the legislation he passed during three decades in Congress. Again, just look at his DLA Piper bio explaining all this, and check out Burr’s list of clients in academia and biodefense.

Between two laws he sponsored—BARDA and ARPA-H—taxpayers shovel several billions of dollars down the gaping maw of academic research centers and private companies in grants and contracts every year. Most of BARDA money has gone to big pharma companies such as Moderna, Pfizer/BioNTech, Janssen (Johnson & Johnson), AstraZeneca, and Sanofi/GSK.

That’s apparently why Burr put out a report in his final months as a United State Senator that pointed the finger at the Wuhan Institute of Virology as the sole problem in dangerous virus research. He couldn’t shine a spotlight on UNC and other American universities, as well as their corporate partners in biomedical and biodefense and then expect these same people to hire him as their man in DC.

Katherine Eban Tells You What Power Tells Her

When Katherine Eban partnered with Senator Burr and his staff in 2022, she understood that, in exchange for access to inside information, her role in this alliance was to promote the Senator’s report, not question the conclusions.

Renowned investigative reporter Dean Starkman laid out the problems inherent in Eban’s type of journalism many years ago in a critique of “access” versus “accountability” reporting—the latter being my preference. Access reporting tells you what the powerful said, Starkman explained, while accountability reporting tells you what they did.

And Eban has long snuggled up to the powerful for access, which inescapably hides what they did. It’s a fatal flaw in the scribblings of all stenographers to power.

In 2011, Special Agent John Dodson with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) blew the whistle on the Fast and Furious gun walking scandal. This federal operation allowed over 2,000 firearms to be illegally purchased and then trafficked to Mexican drug cartels in order to track those weapons back to drug smugglers. The tactic was known as “gunwalking.” However, agents lost track of most weapons, which were later used in crimes, including the killing of a U.S. Border Patrol agent.

This inept operation drew a target on the back of Agent Dodson’s superiors and U.S. Attorneys who supervised the Fast and Furious Operation. And they retaliated against him by leaking sensitive internal government documents to reporters in a smear campaign. One of those reporters who got inside access to government documents and then smeared agent Dodson was Katherine Eban.

In a June 2012 “exclusive” for Fortune, Katherine Eban made a series of false allegations against Dodson, claiming that his whistleblowing was just a “grudge” against his superiors.

Dodson hired an attorney and sued Eban’s publisher Time Inc. for defamation, noting that Eban’s reporting was “dubious” and filled with falsehoods. A spokesperson for the Senate Committee investigating the Fast and Furious scandal told Politico, “This kind of misleading and highly opinionated narrative masquerading as objective mainstream journalism is an example of why many Americans distrust what they’re told by the media.”

Eban tried to defend hersefl, but Time Inc. later settled with Dodson.

The Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General later released a report that found a United States Attorney leaked internal government documents “motivated by a desire to undermine Special Agent Dodson’s public criticisms of Operation Fast and Furious.” The ACLU then protested the ATF’s attempt to censor Agent’s Dodson’s 2013 memoir on this gun trafficking scandal, “The Unarmed Truth: My Fight to Blow the Whistle and Expose Fast and Furious.”

That same year, ATF cleared Agent Dodsons of all false allegations made against him by his superiors.

When Fast and Furious first blew up, I had left my job as a Senate investigator so I did not deal with Agent Dodson and the smear campaign orchestrated against him. However, I was friends with the Senate staffer who ran the Dodson investigation alongside a Secret Service Agent who was on detail to the Committee that I had left.

I was appalled at the Eban’s shoddy reporting and defamation of Agent Dodson, and I have never trusted her since.

Eban viciously attacked an American hero, who risked his career and reputation to protect the United States and federal law officers. When I spoke to Agent Dodson a couple years ago about what happened to him, he said he couldn’t discuss the details of his settlement with Eban’s publisher. He did tell me that ATF punished him by never giving him a promotion after he went public about the scandal.

Eban did not return repeated requests to explain her defamation of Agent Dodson, and why she has never apologized publicly. Lionsgate studio picked up the rights to Dodson’s book in 2015 and chose “World War Z” writer Matthew Carnahan to adapt the memoir into a movie. However, plans for a movie on Agent Dodson appear to have been shelved.

Eban reprised her role as unquestioning sidekick to the powerful when she rode shotgun with Senate Burr to promote his 2022 report in co-published stories that ran in ProPublica and Vanity Fair. The articles provided intimate details of the Committee staffers she had grown close to, including colorful highlights of one with “very blue-collar” roots in Greenville, South Carolina.

Just like North Carolina’s Senator Burr, Eban ignored mountains of evidence, available at the time, that NIH-funded scientists like Ralph Baric of North Carolina were partnering with scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. And just like Senator Burr, Eban focused solely on China as the problem with dangerous virus experiments.

In fact, this laser-like focus on Wuhan, China, is right there in the title of Eban’s ProPublica article.

Propublica later published an editor’s note to Eban’s regurgitation of Senator Burr’s report, adding context and corrections that stretches on for over 2,500 words. I’m not joking. The editor’s note is longer than this article that you are reading now.

Eban pulled a second stunt like this in 2023, shielding Ralph Baric and other corrupt virologlists from scrutiny, when she appeared at a University of Pennsylvania event discussing the origins of the COVID pandemic alongside virologist Susan Weiss. “There is no field where there is more need for clear communication than on the subject of the COVID origins debate,” said the event organizer, professor Claire Finkelstein. “We decided to get five of the smartest, most interesting, and level headed people that we could find together, to rise above the fray to have a serious intelligent discussion.”

Surprise: Event organizer Claire Finkelstein is Katherine Eban’s sister!

Years prior to her sister hosting a university event for Eban to rub shoulders with Weiss, emails spilled out showing that Weiss had allowed Ralph Baric to ghostwrite a 2020 essay she co-authored downplaying the possibility of a lab accident.

Weiss’s 2020 commentary was titled “No credible evidence supporting claims of the laboratory engineering of SARS-CoV-2” and appeared in the journal Emerging Microbes & Infections. Taylor and Francis later congratulated Weiss and her co-authors as their commentary became one of the most widely read pieces published in 2020. Media outlets such as The Week, Buzzfeed, and Baric’s local newspaper, the Raleigh News & Observer, cited the article in passages that dismissed a possible lab accident.

Emails show that both Baric and Shi Zhengli of the Wuhan Institute of Virology provided secret edits to Weiss’s manuscript. After one of the Weiss’s co-authors sent Baric a draft, asking for his input, Baric responded, “Sure, but don’t want to be cited in as having commented prior to submission.”

After then submitting alterations to the text in track changes, Baric added, “I think the community needs to write these editorials and I thank you for your efforts.”

But sitting on the stage next to Weiss, Eban didn’t ask a single question about this unethical incident. Even though the story and supporting emails had been made public years prior. Now why is that?

Here’s what I reported for RealClearInvestigations about this tawdry research episode involving Ralph Baric and Susan Weiss:

Although failing to disclose authors on a paper is considered a form of research misconduct, the journal failed to take action. Five years after publication, the journal added a disclosure in January 2025 that acknowledged Ralph Baric’s contribution to the commentary.

This is partly why we’re still trying to figure out today what happened during COVID coverup. Much of the dirt kicked up with these media deceptions is still floating in the air. But let’s keep blowing that dust away.

Authored by Jackson Richman via The Epoch Times,

The Senate unanimously approved a resolution on May 14 that would suspend senators’ pay during government shutdowns.

The measure, introduced by Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.), passed by voice vote and is scheduled to take effect after the November midterm elections.

Under the resolution, the Senate secretary would withhold lawmakers’ salaries whenever a government shutdown affects one or more federal agencies. Pay would be released once government funding is restored.

Supporters say the proposal is intended to hold Congress accountable as shutdowns become increasingly frequent and prolonged.

“Shutting down government should not be our default solution to our refusal to work out our issues and our differences,” Kennedy said in a floor speech on Wednesday.

“This is about putting our money where our mouth is.”

Kennedy initially wanted the measure to take effect immediately, but included delayed implementation language to comply with the 27th Amendment, which bars changes to congressional pay until after the next House election.

He also accused Democrats of potentially using a shutdown before the elections “to create chaos” and influence the political environment heading into the midterms.

The legislation follows two major shutdowns over the past year that caused financial strain for thousands of federal employees, especially workers at the Department of Homeland Security. The agency reopened last month after a 76-day partial shutdown—the longest funding lapse affecting a federal agency in U.S. history.

That shutdown came shortly after a separate 43-day closure of the entire federal government, another record-setting disruption.

While federal workers often miss paychecks during shutdowns, members of Congress continue to receive salaries because the Constitution guarantees lawmakers’ compensation.

During a previous shutdown tied to disputes over health care subsidies, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) proposed a constitutional amendment requiring lawmakers to forfeit their pay during shutdowns.

“If members of Congress had to forfeit their pay during government shutdowns, there would be fewer shutdowns, and they would end quicker,” Graham said at the time.

Graham argued that a constitutional amendment would be the most legally secure solution, though such an effort would require ratification by three-fourths of the states.

Lawmakers have previously pledged to voluntarily reject their salaries during shutdowns, but Kennedy told reporters his proposal would ensure that “shared sacrifice” becomes official policy.

He acknowledged the resolution does not apply to the House of Representatives, saying, “the House’s business is the House’s business,” while also referencing tensions between the two chambers.

“There’s a very strong undercurrent of animosity among some of my friends in the House,” Kennedy said. “It’s quickly becoming like two kids fighting in the back of a minivan.”

Billionaire and Democrat donor Stephen Cloobeck was arrested Tuesday in Los Angeles on suspicion of felony charges of attempting to prevent or dissuade a victim or witness from testifying after a warrant was issued for his arrest. 

Cloobeck, founder of Diamond Resorts – who until recently was a major financial supporter of former Rep. Eric Swalwell’s (D) failed campaign for California governor, was booked into custody in West Hollywood, according to Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department records. He was later released on $300,000 bail.

In a terse statement to the California Post, a press representative for Cloobeck said of the arrest: “These charges are false and we look forward to our day in court.”

Cloobeck cut ties with Swalwell following multiple allegations of sexual assault – but not before the now-former congressman recorded a bizarre apology video from inside his swanky mansion.

“I was with my counsel and we had a chat with him, I just told him, ‘You busted the trust,’” Cloobeck said of Swalwell at the time the allegations broke. “I’m shocked, I’m disturbed and get the fuck out of here.’ Then I walked away and that was it.”

“I was blown away!” the billionaire claimed. “Like blown away. Like, there’s no way I would have endorsed him. It’s such a shock.”

The billionaire, who briefly ran for governor himself last year before dropping out to support Swalwell, has since rebranded himself a Republican.

“I am no longer supporting Eric. Fucking tell everyone I’m a libertarian. Fuck you, Democrat Party,” he told the California Post.

Cloobeck has also recently made headlines thanks to his 28-year-old fiancée, Penthouse Pet Adva Lavie, who faces six felony charges for allegedly preying on older men through dating apps. However, his lover’s legal troubles haven’t impacted the impending nuptials, according to the billionaire.

“The marriage is still on, the date is now a secret,” he said.