Authored by Vince Bielski via RealClearInvestigations,

In southern India, a new enterprise called Peer Publicon Consultancy offers a full suite of services to scientific researchers. It will not only write a scholarly paper for a fee but also guarantee publishing the fraudulent work in a respected journal.   

It is one of many “paper mills” that have emerged across Asia and Eastern Europe over the last two decades. Paper mills are having remarkable success peddling tens of thousands of bogus academic journal papers and authorships to university and medical researchers seeking to pad their resumes in highly competitive fields. 

These sophisticated outfits also engage in trickery to get papers published, infiltrating journals with their own editors and reviewers and even resorting to bribery, according to investigators and a white paper from Wiley, a New Jersey-based publisher. The scale of the fraud is eye-popping: One Wiley subsidiary, Hindawi, retracted more than 8,000 articles two years ago for suspected paper mill involvement. 

U.S. universities and regulators have been able to brush off the threat of paper mills because they have mostly sold their services in China, where research integrity standards are rarely enforced, according to experts. But these rogue operators are building on their success in Asia and expanding to the U.S. and Western Europe, where the prize is the prestige of naming an author on an article from a famous university. 

“Paper mills have become a huge business,” said Jennifer Byrne, professor of molecular oncology at the University of Sydney, who studies the enterprises. “If some journals are pushing back on papers from China, and they probably are, it makes sense that paper mills will try to diversify their clientele and start working with people in different countries.” 

As paper mills expand from the fringe to the center of research, placing professional-looking articles in high-impact journals owned by major publishers like Springer Nature, experts worry about the potential harm to scientific discovery. Researchers willing to break the rules in a Darwinian world of ‘publish or perish’ may mislead other scientists who incorporate their false findings into their own work. “We know little about the actual impact of paper mills on research,” Byrne says. “But if scientists are building on bad information, they are wasting resources and not making progress in their fields.”

Paper Mills Spread to the West

Paper mills appear to be expanding at a rapid clip, aided by AI that enables them to overwhelm journals with dozens of papers in a short period of time, adding to the challenge of detecting fakes. A study by the Committee on Publishing Ethics (COPE) revealed that, on average, journals suspected about 2% of submitted papers came from mills about five years ago. After journals published fake papers, however, the paper mills saw the opening and pounced, accounting for nearly half of new submissions. 

In a corrupt echo of Moore’s Law, a 2024 study concluded that the number of suspected paper mill articles has been doubling every 18 months, “far outpacing that of legitimate science.” 

Researchers in the West appear to be a small but important part of the expansion. Journals have retracted more than 140 papers that name a U.S. co-author because of evidence of organized fraud, and almost 200 retracted papers name a co-author from Western Europe, according to data collected by watchdog group Retraction Watch and analyzed by Cristina Candal Pedreira, an assistant professor at the University of Santiago de Compostela in Spain. Scholars at many leading U.S. universities, including the University of California, Emory University, Georgia Tech, and the University of Texas, have co-authored papers linked to paper mills in recent years. 

The retraction notice for a 2022 paper co-authored by computer scientist Yanhui Guo, a rising star in the field of AI at the University of Illinois Springfield, is typical. Wiley said its investigation of Guo’s paper “uncovered evidence of systematic manipulation of the publication and peer-review process. We cannot, therefore, vouch for the reliability or integrity of this article.”

It’s difficult to know what role, if any, the U.S. researchers had in collaborating with a paper mill. Assuming the paper is a fake, a U.S. co-author could have purchased it or secured an authorship position on it, or they may have been unaware that a paper mill was involved.

Guo’s retracted article illustrates the different possibilities. It has six authors from five countries – a wide geographical spread that’s common on articles from paper mills, which sell authorship slots worldwide, says Elisabeth Bik, a California microbiologist who investigates scientific misconduct. Indeed, Guo could be unaware that another co-coauthor was collaborating with a paper mill, if that occurred. 

It should be up to universities to answer ethical questions about their faculty. But misconduct investigations are cloaked in secrecy. Asked if the university is investigating why two of Guo’s papers were retracted, a spokesperson said, “UIS is following standard protocols and cannot comment further.” Guo didn’t respond to several requests for comment from RealClearInvestigations.

Many U.S. researchers who co-authored suspect papers were born in another country and came to the U.S. as young scholars to make their names. Mohammed Ali Al-Garadi obtained his Ph.D. in computer science in Malaysia before joining Emory University in Atlanta as a postdoctoral researcher in 2019, according to his IEEE profile. While at Emory, he was one of nine authors from seven countries on a 2021 paper that three years later was retracted by a Wiley journal because of “indicators of systematic manipulation of the publication process.” 

In 2022, Al-Garadi landed a plum job at highly ranked Vanderbilt University, where he’s a research assistant professor in biomedical informatics. Al-Garadi and Vanderbilt didn’t respond to questions about the retracted paper, one of two of his articles yanked from a journal.

When more prominent U.S. researchers are named on alleged paper mill articles, experts say “name theft” might be involved. A scholar such as Jonathan Koomey, who has taught at Stanford University and has written more than 200 articles and reports and 10 books, would have no apparent motive to conspire with a paper mill. The mill, however, would have a motive to put his name on a paper without his knowledge to give it more credibility with a publisher. 

Koomey says he had no idea that his name and prestigious affiliation – Stanford – appeared on a retracted paper by a Sage journal until RCI recently asked him about it. Koomey’s name was listed with four scholars from China on a paper about an English oral evaluation algorithm. Koomey’s specialty is another field altogether: energy and climate change. 

“This is a paper to which I never contributed and have no idea who these authors are,” said Koomey. “They just stuck my name on the paper without my knowledge.”

When U.C. Berkeley retired senior researcher Xiao-Yun Lu recently discovered that he was also a victim of name theft on two retracted papers linked to paper mills, he was alarmed. “I must stop this from happening immediately,” he told RCI.

Lu believed the lead author of the papers, Yi He, a former post-doctoral student at Berkeley, was responsible. So Lu emailed He, who now works at Wuhan University of Technology in China, and told him to follow proper scientific methods in his work and to stop putting his name on papers.

“The research approaches, data and results all need to be scientific and objective,” Lu wrote to He in a September email shared with RCI.

He responded, defending the retracted papers as “original achievements” and assured Lu that he won’t use his name on papers in the future. “I apologize for the trouble caused to you,” He wrote.

How Paper Mills Operate

Wiley, a major academic publisher with 1,600 journals, has warned that its industry faces a “deepening crisis” from paper mills. They first appeared about 15 years ago, and many have evolved into sophisticated businesses, producing complex papers with all the trappings of science. Mills appear to hire scientists, perhaps drawing from the surplus of Ph.Ds., and include lab facilities in their sales pitch. 

The basic business model is selling authorship slots, if not the entire paper, to scholars on a wide variety of topics, from cancer research to economics to education, according to the COPE report. Paper mills write the articles, create charts based on online or fabricated data, respond to queries from editors, and guarantee publication in journals indexed to essential platforms like the Web of Science. It’s a wall-to-wall scam so convincing that journal editors, who are typically unpaid and have limited time for vetting papers, are easily deceived.

Researchers pay more for papers published in high-impact journals and for being the first listed author. While getting named on a low-profile conference paper might cost only $100, the price might jump to $1,200 for the first position in an influential journal, said a source in the academic publishing industry who asked to remain anonymous. “The highest fee I have heard of is $8,500.”

Paper mills operate with a remarkable degree of transparency, advertising their illicit services online to attract customers, with little concern that they will be shut down. They also offer legitimate services that can serve as camouflage for illegitimate ones. 

The website of India’s Peer Publicon Consultancy, for instance, leads off with an offer to correct the grammar and spelling on medical-related papers. That’s fine. Then comes the offer of help in every facet of writing and publishing a literature review article for about $300. Dig deeper to find this suspect offer: “You can join as a co-author for the review articles we prepare for publication in indexed journals.”

RCI reached out to Professor P. Mutha Prasanna, a managing director of a group that oversees Peer Publicon. He is also a co-author of a highly cited paper that is full of plagiarized text, according to Elisabeth Bik, the integrity consultant. Prasanna told RCI that the paper “was drafted mainly by another author” and that Peer Publicon “was recently launched and it has nothing to do with that paper.” He didn’t answer questions about Peer Publicon’s activities. 

In Russia, a paper mill called International Publisher says it operates in a glassy tower in central Moscow and claims to have published more than 4,000 papers, some in high-impact journals. “We can help teach authors how to write articles that will be accepted into international journals,” according to its website. “We can also handle any aspects of the work ourselves.” That includes enhancing the “scientific value of the article (improving the research, updating the relevance and analysis, logically organizing the content, strengthening the conclusion).” The pricing is laid out in a chart: Writing or revising a paper costs $2,400, and getting it published in a top-ranked journal is an additional $4,200.

Anna Abalkina, a research fellow at the Institute for East European Studies of the Free University of Berlin, brought unwanted scrutiny to the paper mill with her 2023 study. International Publisher had listed on its website the titles of papers with co-authorship slots for sale. Abalkina matched the titles with those that were later published, identifying at least 451 papers co-authored by more than 800 scholars over a three-year period. International Publisher didn’t respond to a request for comment. 

The Russian paper mill has extended its reach into the United States. A student at an East Coast university put her name on two published papers with titles that first appeared, almost word for word, on articles for sale on International Publisher’s website. The Russian company also publicizes a long list of U.S. universities that it claims provide “reviewers” for its articles. 

After Abalkina’s study was published, she says the paper mill tried to cover its tracks. It published thousands of abstracts of legitimate papers on its website, claiming it had helped to get them published. “Some of the legit authors complained to a prosecutor,” she said. “But the paper mill continues to operate.”

Secretly Infiltrating Journals

Producing fraudulent articles is only part of the paper mill contagion. They have also infiltrated journals to get them published. 

Journal editors commonly ask authors to recommend scientists who can peer review their work, which theoretically should provide a shield against publishing fake research. But when a mill produces the article, it sometimes recommends its own reviewers who then provide positive feedback to editors about a bogus article, according to the COPE report. In 2021, a SAGE journal pulled 122 published papers because of “clear indications that the submission and/or peer review process … was manipulated.”

When publishers seek outside editors for special issues, a popular practice, paper mills have also taken advantage of the opportunity to fill the temporary role. These “guest editors” then fill the special issues with rubbish articles and fabricated authors. A Chinese paper mill boasted about bribing a guest editor with a thousand dollars per paper for a special issue by publisher Hindawi, according to a report in For Better Science. The widespread infiltration of Hindawi’s special issues led to the mass retractions and the closing of the Hindawi brand by Wiley.

Journals that focus on human gene research appear to be a favorite target of paper mills, partly because experimental results are simple to fabricate, according to Sydney’s Byrne. Her research shows that paper mills, which in the past appeared to focus on marginal journals because they may be easier to penetrate, have moved up the food chain, presenting a greater threat to cancer research. 

Byrne and other researchers found that two top-rated high-impact cancer journals from Springer Nature, Molecular Cancer, and Oncogene, have published a significant number of papers with wrongly identified nucleotide sequences that suggest foul play in many cases. Over a span of years ending in 2020, 18% of the Molecular Cancer papers examined in the study contained errors, as did 40% of the 2020 Oncogene papers. 

“Although we can’t be sure that all of these papers with nucleotide sequence errors came from paper mills, at least some of these papers seem likely to have been produced with paper mill support,” Byrne said. 

As paper mills penetrate more influential journals, they may also be collaborating with a significant number of Western researchers who seek such top-shelf exposure. While most of the co-authors of the problematic papers in Molecular Cancer are in China, 8% are in the U.S., and 11% are in Western Europe.

Battle Against Paper Mills

Despite the work of scientists like Bik, Abalkina, and Byrne to expose paper mills, there’s not much getting in the way of their expansion. In the U.S., much of the responsibility rests with universities and their research integrity officers. But they face institutional hurdles, from researchers afraid to blow the whistle on colleagues to pressure from university leaders to slow-walk investigations that could taint an academic institution’s reputation. 

University officials may not even know that a faculty member has been subjected to a retraction. A North Carolina State University computer science professor still posts his paper on the school’s website without noting that it was retracted by a Sage journal in 2023 due to concerns that could include “unauthorized third party involvement” and “unverifiable authors and reviewers.” The researcher didn’t respond to a request for comment. 

In response to the onslaught of fraudulent scholarship, journals are bolstering their efforts against paper mills. A Wiley spokesperson told RCI it has developed AI-powered detection systems to intercept suspect papers before they reach peer review while also scaling up its internal integrity teams. Some publishers, such as Taylor & Francis, are combating authorship sales by making it harder for mills to add and remove names from papers.

Considering the rapid growth in the number of indexed published papers, topping 2.8 million in 2022, publishers don’t vet every paper for every type of wrongdoing. They tend to find and reject the submissions that are clearly fraudulent.

“It’s the people who are lazy or not very good at faking it who probably get caught,” the publishing source said. “But if a paper mill doesn’t put anything in a paper that’s obviously fake and they are not too greedy in terms of numbers of authors, they can definitely get it published.”

Byrne agrees that publishers are still routinely fooled by sophisticated fakes. She was recently asked to peer review a cancer paper submitted to a journal at one of the big five publishers. As a leading expert in the field, Byrne found serious flaws in the complicated paper, which wrongly described the behavior of cancel cells. It was a typical paper mill product – a fancy piece of rubbish.

Byrne’s peer review report to the editor was blunt: “This paper must not be published. It’s absolutely not true,” she said. “But they didn’t listen to me.” Instead, the editor asked the authors to make revisions on the paper that’s now headed for publication. 

“Honestly, this drives me nuts,” Byrne said. “And this is happening at scale all around the world.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth just over a week ago delivered his America First rah-rah higher-military-standards and end-of-wokeness speech to some 800 Generals and Admirals gathered at Quantico. That’s all well and good – and a very welcome and refreshing break from the Biden era… but now he pivots to allowing the Gulf Arab country of Qatar to establish a foreign base in the heart of the United States(!?)…

“Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Friday announced a finalized agreement that will allow the Qatari Emiri Air Force to build a facility at the Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho,” writes CBS on Friday based on the Pentagon announcement.

Until now, there is no foreign military base on American soil – only “joint training programs” or facilities where foreign pilots might have a semi-permanent presence under a US training program.

But the first to build one will be an Arab Gulf Sunni Monarchy?

Hegseth proclaimed at a signing ceremony alongside Qatari Minister of Defense Sheikh Saoud bin Abdulrahman Al Thani at the Pentagon that he is “proud that today we’re signing a letter of acceptance to build a Qatari Emiri Air Force Facility at the Mountain Home Air Base in Idaho.”

So it will be a permanent “Qatari Facility” with the broader Mountain Home Air Base, it appears. A key question remains: will the Qataris be able to treat it as sovereign Qatari soil? 

“The location will host a contingent of Qatari F-15’s and pilots to enhance our combined training, increase lethality, interoperability, it’s just another example of our partnership,” Hegseth described. “And I hope you know, your excellency, that you can count on us.”

“You have been a core part of what has unfolded in Gaza, a historic moment,” Hegseth added. “We’re grateful for the strong partnership that we have, the way you support our troops at Al Udeid, Your Excellency, the line of communication we’ve had together.” The US itself has long had a major airbase outside of Doha, which has actually protected Qatar at times from Iranian missiles.

Again, this seems more than just the typical shared training programs among allies, as the Qataris themselves will build the new facility.

All of this follows President Trump very recently signing an executive order “assuring the security of the state of Qatar.” As we described, it provides Article 5-like guarantees, in which an attack on Qatar is considered a threat to the security of the US. It was meant as a US “sorry” for allowing the Israelis to attack Doha, in the strike which took out five Hamas leaders and a Qatari security guard.

The gap between how the pro-Israel MAGA faction talks about Qatar, and Trump’s treatment of Qatar, could not be wider.

That faction constantly depicts Qatar as an evil terror regime infiltrating US institutions.

Meanwhile, Trump loves Qatar, heaps praise on it, and now this: https://t.co/V6ywIjdnkW

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) October 10, 2025

As for US-Qatar relations, they were deepened especially during the decade-plus long war of regime change against Assad. Qatar even hosted FSA and jihadi training camps, reportedly run by the CIA and likely American special forces. Ultimately, the US-Gulf-Israel axis is still strong, despite the Gaza war, which is also what the recent defense pact demonstrates. Some analysts are saying it further prepares the US-Gulf axis for the next round of fighting with Iran.

As for this new Qatari Air Force facility, we wonder what ordinary red-blooded Idahoans think of this permanent Arab military presence in their own backyard.

Authored by Kimberley Hayek via The Epoch Times,

California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill that eliminates the expiration date on the state’s End of Life Option Act, making ongoing access to assisted suicide for adults facing terminal illnesses permanent.

Senate Bill 403, takes effect immediately, as it merely repeals a sunset provision in the Health and Safety Code that would have caused the law to expire in 2031.

The measure, authored by State Sen. Catherine Blakespear, a Democrat from Encinitas, passed the state Legislature last month with bipartisan support. It cleared the Senate in June on a 26–6 vote and the Assembly in September by a vote of 59–12.

Newsom’s signature came without public comment from his office.

Under the End of Life Option Act, California residents who are at least 18 years old and diagnosed with a terminal disease expected to cause death within six months can request a prescription for a life-ending pharmaceutical agent from their physician.

Patients must be mentally competent, make two verbal requests at least 48 hours apart, submit a written request witnessed by two people, and self-administer the drug.

The law includes penalties for coercion or undue influence, which is treated as a felony.

The original act was signed into law by then-Gov. Jerry Brown in 2015 and went into effect in June 2016, making California the fifth state to authorize assisted suicide. As of 2025, medical aid in dying (MAID), is legal in Colorado, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Vermont, Washington state, California, and the District of Columbia.

In California in 2024, 1,591 individuals received prescriptions under the program, and 1,032 ingested the drugs to end their lives, according to State Health Department data. That number includes 50 people who had obtained prescriptions before 2024. The majority of participants—about 88 percent—were enrolled in hospice or palliative care at the time, and most were more than 60 years old, with cancer accounting for roughly two-thirds of cases.

Earlier efforts aimed to broaden eligibility to include individuals diagnosed with certain neurodegenerative diseases even if their prognosis exceeded six months, but those efforts stalled.

Currently, participation is voluntary, and many hospitals opt out. The state health department plans to launch an updated online portal for forms submission later this year to streamline reporting.

Opponents of the bill, including the California Family Council, described it as a “slippery slope,” saying that it normalizes suicide.

Removing the sunset clause removes one of the bill’s major safeguards, Greg Burt, vice president of the California Family Council, said in a statement.

“This bill sends a chilling message that some lives are no longer worth protecting,” he said. “If we make assisted suicide permanent, we are telling the elderly, the disabled, and the depressed that their lives are expendable. That’s not compassion. That’s dehumanizing. That’s abandonment.”

More American troops to the war-ravaged Levant… but this time it is for peace, at least if all goes according to plan. Up to 200 US troops already based in the Middle East will be deployed to Israel to help oversee the ceasefire in Gaza, US officials say.

The military apparatus or operations room which the US will lead will be known as the civil-military Joint Control Center and will include troops from Egypt, Qatar, Turkey and the UAE. Interestingly, the presence of Turkish troops as well as Arab soldiers appears to be a compromise reached at Hamas request. Hamas has specifically wanted greater Turkish involvement in post-war Gaza.

The American role will reportedly be to “integrate” the multinational force, which will actually be sent into the Strip. Turkish and Arab troops will likely be seen as more ‘neutral’ compared to a scenario of American boots directly on the ground.

Admiral Brad Cooper, the head of US Central Command (CENTCOM) will head up the coordination center, and presumably will communicate strategy and actions with the Israelis. “Cooper – I hear he’s been fantastic,” President Trump has said of the commander.

The Associated Press, citing an official, described that American troops with “expertise in transportation, planning, security, logistics and engineering” are being sent, but also underscored that “no American troops will be sent into Gaza.”

But AntiWar.com has flagged a source which says that the troops could eventually be pulled directly into the Palestinian enclave:

However, according to a report from Middle East Eye, Egypt has informed the US that it wants US military personnel to be part of the peacekeeping force that is expected to be established by the Gaza ceasefire deal.

Troops have reportedly already begun arriving, given they were pulled from US bases in the region, and are expected to continue traveling through the weekend, and efforts to establish the center will happen rather quickly.

Already former US military personnel have been present inside the Gaza Strip, manning humanitarian aid distribution checkpoints, in the capacity of defense contractors. This has proven controversial – but the new US deployment is only expected to assist from afar, safely on Israeli soil.

Adm. Cooper has indicated his fully staffed command post and coordination center should be up and running in the next two-and-a half-weeks.

By the start of next week, Hamas is expected to have begun releasing all of the remaining Israeli hostages, after which the big question will be implementation of phase two and huge obstacles like Hamas laying down its arms and demilitarizing.

Republicans as well as many international leaders have been widely hailing Trump’s Gaza peace deal, but will it stick?

🇺🇸 200 U.S. troops heading to Israel.@RC_Greenway says the mission is to secure hostage transfers — not boots on the ground in Gaza.
A crucial step in holding the peace — and showing the world America still leads. pic.twitter.com/CIoA110eyy

— Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) October 9, 2025

Already as of noon Friday (local), the Israeli military has withdrawn from most urban areas in Gaza, back to an agreed-upon line according to the 20-point peace plan, and the truce is holding.

At least 100 US troops have long been inside Israel to operate the two THAAD missile interceptors, which were heavily relied upon to protect the country from Iranian ballistic missile and drone threats.

As federal courts evaluate the propriety of President Trump’s attempts to deploy National Guard troops to Portland to protect federal assets and agents from radical leftists, those very same Antifa miscreants are openly promoting a coordinated laser attack on federal aircraft on Saturday night — a plot that promises to put lives in danger, but may also bolster Trump’s case that federal intervention is warranted. 

Menacingly describing the scheme as “Laser Tag,” a post on the Rose City Counter-Info website invites readers to deploy themselves around Portland on Saturday night, and to start aiming laser beams at law enforcement helicopters at 9pm: 

“Every night for weeks we are forced to listen to the threatening rhythm of helicopter blades as the federal regime spies on us…This Saturday, October 11th, at 9pm you are invited to fight back. All you need is a laser. Leave home — they can see where the laser is coming from. Go to a park, a field, or some other public place, and once the clock strikes 9 unleash your beam at the cop copter.

Mask up. Coordinate with friends to throw a laser party! Let’s take back the night together! It won’t take many of us to ground the helicopters!” 

Images circulating on social media also appear to show the Laser Tag event being promoted with physical posters affixed to walls. The goal of “grounding” a helicopter could potentially be realized with a deadly crash. Here’s how San Antonio Police Department pilot Natalie Hernandez recently described what it’s like to be on the receiving end of a laser beam at night: 

“Seven miles from where our helicopter was, somebody was shining a blue laser at the helicopter. And so with that, the whole cockpit just lit up. We’ve got windows everywhere, so once a laser hits it, and that light refracts on this plexiglass. It just makes it so bright in here.”

The conspiratorial invitation posted at Rose City Counter-Info also includes guidance on how to avoid leaving an evidence trail that could lead police to perpetrators, Daily Caller reports. Specifically, helicopter assailants are urged to use gloves and to use alcohol to wash the lasers, just in case they have to ditch them under pursuit. A link leads to guidance on how to keep one’s DNA from sticking to objects. 

Last week, the Department of Justice announced the court appearance of 35-year-old Hector Miranda-Mendoza, an illegal alien from Mexico who’s been charged with lasering two Portland police Cessna Skylane 182’s and a U.S. Customs and Border Protection Airbus H125 helicopter. He’s one of four illegals facing federal charges for lasering law enforcement aircraft in and around Portland. Investigators were able to trace the laser to Miranda-Mendoza’s front porch, which was five miles from where the aircraft were flying. 

Portland (Oct. 9) — Antifa and far-left extremists tell a man he can’t walk on their sidewalk near the ICE facility. He refuses to comply with their unlawful orders. pic.twitter.com/EIY8L7CeUU

— Andy Ngo (@MrAndyNgo) October 10, 2025

“The laser strike on a CBP helicopter over the skies of Portland put our community at risk and endangered the lives of federal law enforcement officers,” said Douglas A. Olson, FBI Portland Special Agent in Charge. “This activity is unacceptable, and FBI Portland will aggressively pursue anyone anywhere targeting federal agents, especially those currently holding the line at the Portland ICE facility.” Offenders face fines and prison sentences of up to 20 years. 

🚨 BREAKING: DHS Secretary Noem just met with Portland’s mayor, and gave him an ultimatum:

If the city does NOT clamp down on Antifa militants outside the ICE facility, she will send FOUR TIMES the amount of federal agents out here

DO IT, @Sec_Noem! pic.twitter.com/QxP7SSKATn

— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) October 8, 2025

Meanwhile, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit is poised to rule on an appeal of a lower-court ruling that found Trump likely overstepped his constitutional authority by declaring a “rebellion” was underway in Portland, in justifying his ordering of National Guard troops to the city where ICE agents and facilities have come under siege. Over the course of a hearing on Thursday, the judges left observers with the impression that the court would lift the lower-court injunction and thus allow the troop deployment to proceed. 

Antifa was formally designated as a domestic terrorist organization last month. On Wednesday, Seamus Bruner, Director of Research at the Government Accountability Institute, told President Trump during a public briefing on Antifa that efforts should focus on dismantling the dark-money NGOs and activist groups fueling unrest nationwide through the permanent protest-industrial complex.

Also, notice how the operation flyer was deliberately styled to resemble a harmless children’s game. Think of it as next-generation informational warfare designed to activate younger recruits to commit terror by making it seem as though pointing lasers at helicopters is just a harmless game (or video game).

Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Thursday that Ukraine would nominate President Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize if he provides the country with Tomahawk missiles, a step that would mark a significant escalation of the proxy war and risk a major response from Russia. There’s already anticipation for the 2026 prize.

Zelensky told reporters that he and Trump discussed the possibility of the US supplying Ukraine with Tomahawks, which are nuclear-capable and have a range of over 1,000 miles, during their recent meeting on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York.

“During our most recent meeting, I didn’t hear a ‘no.’ What I did hear was that work will continue at the technical level and that this possibility will be considered,” Zelensky said, according to POLITICO.

“The plan for ending the war won’t be easy, but it is certainly the way forward. And if Trump gives the world — above all, the Ukrainian people — the chance for such a ceasefire, then yes, he should be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. We will nominate him on behalf of Ukraine,” he added.

Vice President JD Vance recently confirmed that the Trump administration is considering supplying Ukraine with Tomahawks by selling them to European countries, though it remains unclear if it’s a realistic option since the Ukrainian military lacks a way to fire them.

Tomahawks are designed to be fired by US Navy warships and submarines, and the US has only recently developed and deployed ground-based launchers after withdrawing from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty in 2019.

Russia has issued strong warnings against the US supplying Ukraine with Tomahawk missiles, saying that it will be detrimental to US-Russia relations.

Below: Nobel Committee was not interested in Zelensky’s opinion while choosing Peace Prize winner — Putin on Zelensky’s ‘RIDICULOUS’ Tomahawks-for-Nobel suggestion for Trump…

Nobel Committee was not interested in Zelensky’s opinion while choosing Peace Prize winner — Putin on Zelensky’s ‘RIDICULOUS’ Tomahawks-for-Nobel suggestion for Trump https://t.co/tTUmVGk6Ro pic.twitter.com/bW9ClBU8ug

— RT (@RT_com) October 10, 2025

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Wednesday that if the US sends Tomahawks to Ukraine, it will “not just send the confrontation into a downward spiral, but also do irreparable damage to Russian-US relations, which have just begun to display certain elements indicating the resumption of a bilateral dialogue.”

The Iran-linked Houthis of Yemen appear to have halted their missile and drone attacks on Israel as the US-backed Gaza ceasefire has gone into effect Friday.

There have not been any recent observable attacks since both sides agreed to accept Trump’s 20-point peace plan, with the Houthis now saying they are ‘monitoring’ the ceasefire and Israel’s compliance, suggesting no more attacks while it is pending. Maritime industry sources in Europe are signaling optimism after a vital global transit route has been effectively blocked for much of the last two years.

Leader of the Houthis, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, declared Thursday, “We must be at the highest levels of caution and readiness, and continue the massive popular momentum with the Palestinian people, until we determine whether the agreement will be achieved, or whether we will continue our path of support and assistance to the Palestinian people.”

“We will remain vigilant, prepared, and monitor the progress of the agreement. Will it lead to an end to the aggression on the Gaza Strip and the entry of aid, food, medicine, and humanitarian needs to the Palestinian people? Will the Americans and Israelis stop their genocide against the Palestinian people and commit to a ceasefire? This is what we hope for, and it was our goal in the support operations and confronting the attack on the Palestinian people and the nation in general,” al-Houthi added.

While last spring President Trump declared a bilateral US-Houthi ceasefire and withdrew US naval forces from the Red Sea, the Shia group’s war on Israeli shipping and also foreign vessels headed to Israeli ports continued, and even ramped up. But Trump successfully ended America’s direct involvement in the anti-Houthi campaign.

But if the new ceasefire holds – which took official effect Friday – and if the Houthis permanently halt their attacks in turn, this means the Trump deal will have resolved the long-running crisis of global shipping through the Red Sea and the Suez Canal. According to Reuters:

Shares of Danish shipping giant Maersk fell two percent in Copenhagen on Thursday, reflecting investor expectations that safer passage through the Red Sea could eventually restore capacity and reduce freight rates. Analysts cautioned, however, that shipping companies would likely wait months for assurances that attacks would not resume.

Diplomats and analysts said the ceasefire in Gaza could have broader geopolitical implications, potentially easing tensions in the region and fostering conditions for the eventual normalization of maritime security in the Red Sea corridor.

However industry insider and maritime shipping monitor TradeWinds offers a more cautious assessment: 

War risks rates for shipping in the Red Sea have remained steady following the Middle East ceasefire deal as underwriters seek to claw back losses from the deadly Houthi campaign, according to market sources.

Underwriters will wait for evidence that the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas will hold before easing rates for ships travelling through high-risk areas in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, said one source.

Insurers are preparing for the return of Greek tanker owners to the region as tensions decline. Longer-term war-risk rates are also likely to fall, with new insurers preparing to join the market.

Since 2023, literally hundreds of missile and drone attacks on commercial vessels have occurred in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. The Houthis have also downed several MQ-9 Reaper drones operated by the Pentagon.

Below: A reminder of the kinds of major attacks and explosions which have been occurring in waters off Yemen over the last two years…

Video allegedly showing the MT Sounion exploding and on fire in the Red Sea. The tanker is carrying 150,000 metric tons of oil. A full release of the cargo would make it one of the worst tanker oil spills in history pic.twitter.com/470pc3OQjj

— Mike Schuler (@MikeSchuler) August 23, 2024

It was the Biden administration which first put together an international naval coalition patrolling regional waters, and led by the United States. But after several waves of airstrikes on Yemen, it did nothing to lessen Houthi resolve.

Could Trump’s big Gaza peace plan have the spillover effect of solving the Houthi and Red Sea shipping crisis as well? Time will soon tell.

Submitted by Jason Curtis Anderson of One City Rising, 

President Trump’s latest roundtable on ANTIFA wasn’t just a political statement — it was a long-overdue reckoning against rising far-left political violence. For years, journalists and citizens alike have watched America’s streets burn, our cities vandalized, and our law enforcement vilified under banners of “resistance.” But as the President’s meeting revealed, ANTIFA is only one mask worn by a much larger monster — a transnational network of NGOs, foreign financiers, and ideological operatives quietly fueling what Seamus Bruner of the Government Accountability Institute called “Riot Inc.”

🚨My Full Statement to @POTUS and @WhiteHouse Roundtable on Antifa.🚨 https://t.co/DSL9QcKBPw pic.twitter.com/3x5Bl6JgNx

— Seamus Bruner (@seamusbruner) October 8, 2025

Bruner, GAI’s Director of Research, broke down the mechanics of this sprawling protest industrial complex. He traced the money, the messaging, and the movements, exposing how left-wing extremism has evolved from decentralized networks of anarchist collectives into a well-funded infrastructure with global ambitions. Among the various nodes and financiers, he named Neville Roy Singham — a tech billionaire currently under multiple congressional investigations for allegedly funneling money to American-based protest groups doing the bidding of the Chinese Communist Party.

🚨 @elonmusk is RIGHT! @seamusbruner and our team is still following the money and the numbers keep getting bigger. SHUT IT DOWN! Must read @zerohedge. pic.twitter.com/TFALe4HH5z

— Peter Schweizer (@peterschweizer) October 9, 2025

Jonathan Choe, a journalist at the Discovery Institute, added another dimension, one that hits close to home for anyone living on the West Coast. He described how ANTIFA’s organizing hubs are increasingly intertwined with what he called the “homeless industrial complex,” a web of taxpayer-funded nonprofits that profit off permanent social decay. Cities like Portland, Seattle, and Los Angeles, all suffering the twin crises of homelessness and anarchist violence, have quietly become laboratories for this merger of chaos and cash flow.

One of the Antifa riot arrestees in Portland, Ore. pic.twitter.com/ZjNvckjHmS

— Andy Ngo (@MrAndyNgo) October 9, 2025

Choe also revealed deep connections between ANTIFA networks and the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) — the same group now running Zohran Mamdani for New York City Mayor. In 2019, the DSA’s national convention voted to formally adopt ANTIFA into its organization — a vote that passed with full approval. And according to new reports, ANTIFA’s latest project, “Stop Cop City”, has been holding meetings at the DSA headquarters in New York City.

Within hours of being named at Trump’s roundtable, Mark Bray, the self-proclaimed ANTIFA historian and Rutgers professor, announced he was leaving the country. Bray’s panic was revealing — because just after his name came up, Stop Cop City posted an official response on a well-known anarchist website, calling on supporters to join new “No Kings” protests nationwide.

🚨 Rutgers Professor Calls for “Militant Resistance,” Then Flees to Europe

For years, Rutgers professor Mark Bray, author of Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook, has openly defended political violence as part of “anti-fascist resistance.” In a recent interview, he even admitted… pic.twitter.com/tMbTr1zCfu

— Stu Smith (@thestustustudio) October 9, 2025

Those protests, while marketed as peaceful resistance, have become a predictable cocktail of violence and political theater. In Los Angeles, “No Kings Day” descended into chaos when protesters hurled rocks, bricks, and fireworks at police. Federal buildings were vandalized, hundreds arrested, and at least one deputy hospitalized after a motorcyclist deployed tear gas at law enforcement. In Salt Lake City, a protester was shot and critically injured. In Portland, an ICE facility became the scene of a multi-hour riot. And in Minnesota, a targeted attack on state lawmakers connected to “No Kings” propaganda left two dead and two critically wounded.

All of this, it turns out, was not spontaneous. As ZeroHedge previously reported, the “No Kings” protests were funded by Arabella Advisors, the same dark-money network behind some of the most powerful progressive operations in Washington. Arabella’s fingerprints confirm Bruner’s central thesis: that “Riot Inc.” is a product not of grassroots passion, but of elite engineering — managed, funded, and protected by a nonprofit industrial complex that answers to no voters and fears no audits.

The scale of coordination here should disturb every American. ANTIFA isn’t simply a group of masked agitators smashing Starbucks windows — it’s one visible node of the growing revolution against the West. And while it might be decentralized and loose in structure, the rest of the revolution is not. The permanent protest industry has thousands of nonprofit entities, shell companies, fiscal sponsorships, alternative media arms, an army of lawyers, bail funds, foreign influences, and a multi-billion-dollar network of backers. 

Bruner told Trump earlier this week, “We have identified dozens of radical organizations, not just the decentralized Antifa organizations, but dozens of radical organizations that have received more than $100 million from the Riot Inc investors.” 

It even has political allies running for major office in America’s biggest cities.

President Trump deserves credit for forcing this conversation into the open. But as Bruner warned, dismantling ANTIFA’s street operations will only address the symptoms. To truly stop the bleeding, America must go after the bloodstream — the NGO networks and offshore foundations that bankroll domestic destabilization.

A “bottom-up” crackdown targets the foot soldiers; a “top-down” strategy targets the financiers, the academics, and the nonprofit executives turning activism into industry.

Riot Inc. is real. It’s organized. And it’s finally being exposed.

President Donald Trump signed a proclamation on Oct. 9 recognizing Oct. 13 as Columbus Day in honor of Italian explorer Christopher Columbus.

“Columbus Day, we’re back, Italians. We love the Italians,” Trump said after signing the proclamation at the White House.

As The Epoch Times’ Aldgra Fredly reports, this marks a departure from President Joe Biden’s practice since 2021 of issuing dual proclamations that observed both Columbus Day and Indigenous Peoples’ Day on Oct. 13.

In his proclamation, Trump hailed Columbus—whose 1492 expedition from Spain reached the Caribbean and marked the beginning of sustained European exploration and colonization of the Americas—as “the original American hero” and “a giant of Western civilization.”

“As we celebrate his legacy, we also acknowledge the contributions of the countless Italian-Americans who, like him, have endlessly contributed to our culture and our way of life,” the president stated in his proclamation.

Trump denounced who he called “left-wing radicals” who attempted to “erase our history” and “attack our heritage” by toppling Columbus statues and tarnishing the explorer’s character.

“Under my leadership, those days are finally over—and our Nation will now abide by a simple truth: Christopher Columbus was a true American hero, and every citizen is eternally indebted to his relentless determination,” he stated.

Trump called on U.S. citizens to observe Columbus Day with “appropriate ceremonies and activities,” and directed that the U.S. flag be displayed on all public buildings on that day.

The proclamation follows Trump’s earlier post on social media in which he vowed to commemorate Columbus Day “under the same rules, dates, and locations, as it has had for all of the many decades before.”

Columbus Day is a federal holiday in the United States, which is celebrated on the second Monday of October to honor Italian Americans and Christopher Columbus.

The federal holiday was still known as Columbus Day during Biden’s term, but also as Indigenous Peoples’ Day. Activists had long wanted to shift the focus from commemorating Columbus’s navigation to the Americas to his and his successors’ exploitation of the indigenous people he encountered there.

Biden’s 2021 Columbus Day proclamation acknowledged “the painful history of wrongs and atrocities that many European explorers inflicted on Tribal Nations and Indigenous communities.”

During his first term, Trump stated in a 2020 proclamation that “radical activists have sought to undermine Christopher Columbus’s legacy,” amid reports of vandalism targeting statues of the Italian explorer in some states. In October 2019, vandals threw red paint and sprayed graffiti on two Columbus statues in Rhode Island and California.

Whether you read institutional commentary from the desks at Goldman, UBS, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, or others, all indications are that the growing power demand from AI chips in server racks has rendered air cooling obsolete, with liquid cooling now the premier choice. But the broader concern is that soaring power loads from data centers are straining already fragile grids, tightening supply, driving up electricity prices, and raising the risk of blackouts.

With nuclear power restarts and new buildouts years away. We pointed out on Thursday night, “Each 1GW of AI computing capacity costs $50bn to deploy in today’s prices, according to OpenAI execs. By 2028, Morgan Stanley projects at least 65 GW of new data center demand. Do the math…” 

We were referring to our previous X post about power blackout risks due to the surging new power demand from AI data centers and those that will be brought online in the near-term, colliding with a fragile grid with limited spare capacity.

Each 1GW of AI computing capacity costs $50bn to deploy in today’s prices, according to OpenAI execs. By 2028, Morgan Stanley projects at least 65 GW of new data center demand.

Do the math https://t.co/EMMQtMc4up

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) October 10, 2025

“There is no way the current US grid can support this,” we mentioned on X, commenting on our report for ZeroHedge Pro Subs, titled “Behind The $500 Billion Data Center Boom: Here’s Who Makes All The Key Components.” 

Last night, Elon Musk commented on our data center power X post, explaining how large-scale industrial batteries, such as the one Tesla offers, can be a winning solution to stabilize the grid. 

“Batteries. US grid is capable of 1TW steady state, but average usage is ~0.5TW. Run the power plants at night to charge up the packs and then discharge packs during the day to power AI,” Musk said, adding, “That would double US electrical energy output per year.” 

That would double US electrical energy output per year

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 10, 2025

With nuclear power still years away, and with Goldman already warning of “price spikes and power blackouts“, the federal government or power grid operators must figure out a cost-effective, scalable energy solution to ensure power prices don’t continue spiraling out of control and proper grid stabilization occurs to ensure grid stability amid the AI arms race with China. Also, Goldman labeled the “vulnerable link” at the center of energy security as power grids.

At the rate AI is pushing up electricity prices, Tesla Energy will be more valuable than the car company

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) August 21, 2025

We cited Morgan Stanley’s Adam Jonas in June of 2024… 

• Morgan Stanley’s Adam Jonas Says Tesla “May Hold Important Cards” In The Next AI Trade

And batteries it is?