Authored by Cara Michelle Miller via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

For years, people have been told their sadness was the result of a chemical imbalance—a fixable flaw—like how insulin helps people with Type 1 diabetes.

The “chemical imbalance” theory has shaped mainstream treatment for depression, fueling widespread prescriptions of antidepressants. Yet, psychiatrist and former U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) medical officer Dr. Josef Witt-Doerring said the theory, popularized in the 1950s, has never been proven and lacks scientific backing.

In a recent episode of American Thought Leaders, Witt-Doerring told host Jan Jekielek that relying on the chemical imbalance narrative can lead to overmedication, often with worse—not better—outcomes for patients, and that the way antidepressants are prescribed needs reform.

Origins of the Chemical Imbalance Theory

The chemical imbalance theory first emerged with doctors’ amazement that a tuberculosis drug called iproniazid seemed to energize and lift patients’ moods. Psychiatrists soon tested the drug on people with depression and saw similar improvements.

Iproniazid worked by preventing the breakdown of neurotransmitters—chemical messengers such as serotonin, norepinephrine, and dopamine—thereby increasing their levels. Researchers theorized, based on their observations, that depression must be caused by a shortage of these chemicals in the brain.

The idea revolutionized psychiatry, offering a biological explanation for emotional suffering and paving the way for widespread prescription of antidepressants. For decades, the chemical imbalance theory dominated both medical practice and public perception.

However, once accepted as a medical fact, the theory has begun to crumble.

“A lot of people think that they [antidepressants] work in that they are fixing this imbalance; they are restoring them to a normal state,” Witt-Doerring said. However, growing evidence disputes this.

For instance, a 2022 systematic review published in Molecular Psychiatry found no consistent evidence that low levels of serotonin cause depression. Additional clinical studies have likewise failed to identify reliable differences in neurotransmitter levels between people with and without depression.

“There is no way to differentiate patients who are depressed from those who are not depressed using any objective markers,” he added. “That’s why when you go and see a psychiatrist or a family medicine doctor, they’re not doing blood tests, they’re not scanning your brain—they’re essentially just doing a checklist.”

What Antidepressants Do

Witt-Doerring said that antidepressants don’t correct an underlying defect but instead create a predictable drug effect. For the most common class—selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs)—the effect is often one of emotional blunting or numbing.

SSRIs boost the amount of serotonin in your brain. Serotonin is a chemical that helps manage your mood and emotions. Normally, once serotonin delivers its message, it is taken back into the brain cell that released it. SSRIs slow down that process, so more serotonin stays active between brain cells for a little longer.

Having more serotonin can help even out your mood and ease feelings of anxiety or sadness. However, it can also make emotions feel somewhat flat—you might notice less excitement or joy, as well as less distress—sometimes referred to as emotional numbing or blunting.

For some patients, the dulling of emotional extremes can be therapeutic. For others, it suppresses emotions that need to be processed, leaving underlying issues unresolved.

“If you are in a state where you’re having a lot of anxiety, and you take a drug and it kind of constricts that, it sort of numbs that out, you’re going to feel better,” he said. “And if you’re highly suicidal, you might even say the medication saved your life.”

Hidden Risks of Long-Term Antidepressant Use

Relief derived from antidepressants can come at a cost. Over time, the body adapts to the medication’s effects.

“People become tolerant to them,” Witt-Doerring said, explaining that the drug starts to wear off, doses are increased, and “eventually you’re maxed out—still struggling with the same issues that led you to seek help in the first place.”

To compensate, other medications—mood stabilizers, sleep aids—may be added, a practice known as polypharmacy. However, stacking drugs can also mask, rather than resolve, the underlying problem.

“And this is why you hear that some people are on four, five, six medications,” he said.

When medications lose effectiveness, the body has simply adapted, yet patients are often told they have treatment-resistant depression and are prescribed more drugs—continuing the cycle. The more medications a person takes, the higher the chance of unpleasant or dangerous side effects—and it can become harder to tell which drug is causing which reaction.

*  *  * Try natural lithium instead…

Higher doses or multiple drugs may also increase the risk of agitation, impulsivity, or, in rare cases—especially among young people—new or worsening suicidal thoughts during the first few weeks of treatment. The risk is greatest for teens and young adults under 25, which is why antidepressants carry an FDA black box warning for suicidal thinking in this age group.

Meanwhile, life’s problems—stressful relationships, work challenges, or unresolved trauma—often remain unaddressed.

The Dangers of Withdrawal

Many people decide to come off antidepressants at some point—sometimes because they’re feeling better, want fewer side effects, or find the medication isn’t helping as much as it used to.

Stopping antidepressants can be challenging. Some people experience withdrawal effects—such as mood changes, dizziness, or “brain zaps”—when they try to come off the medication. Research suggests that nearly a quarter of people who take SSRIs long-term have withdrawal symptoms lasting more than three months.

Witt-Doerring estimates that 5 to 10 percent of people need medical support to safely stop.

He cited the case of Bryson Burks, a promising college athlete prescribed three antidepressants for pain after a football injury—though he’d never had depression—a practice sometimes used for chronic pain.

Burks—known for his leadership, generosity, and aspirations—appeared happier and stronger after recovering from his injury, according to his mother. However, when instructed to taper off the medications, reducing one pill each week, he developed sudden, extreme mood swings and tragically died by suicide during the fourth week, just before his twentieth birthday. His mother has since spoken publicly about the risks of abrupt or poorly monitored discontinuation of psychiatric medications.

Witt-Doerring also noted that, in rare but serious cases, abrupt medication changes have been linked to extreme agitation or manic reactions. Some high-profile tragedies have prompted questions about whether sudden shifts in psychiatric medication could play a role.

After the 2012 Aurora, Colorado, theater shooting, forensic experts observed that the perpetrator, James Holmes, showed marked behavioral changes after his antidepressant dosage was increased shortly before the attack.

Psychiatrist David Healy, who later interviewed Holmes, said that the timeline warranted closer scientific scrutiny, according to Witt-Doerring. While the courts did not find the medication change to be a legal cause of the violence, the case underscored the importance of careful monitoring whenever antidepressant doses are adjusted or discontinued—particularly for young or vulnerable patients.

Many patients can taper off antidepressants with only temporary discomfort. “Within a couple of months, they have really nasty withdrawal,” but their brains adapt and they move on, Witt-Doerring said. “I would say that they have very healthy, elastic brains.”

A smaller group experiences severe symptoms—insomnia, agitation, tinnitus, cognitive fog—that can last months or even years. For them, a standard two-month taper is too abrupt.

Because doctors rarely expect lingering withdrawal, these symptoms are often mistaken for relapse. Patients are placed back on medication, convinced they cannot live without it, Witt-Doerring said.

In rare but devastating cases, people develop what’s known as protracted withdrawal, a long-term hypersensitivity of the nervous system. “It’s like you’ve had a concussion,” Witt-Doerring said. “It takes 18 months to two years, sometimes longer, for the nervous system to recover.”

Stories like Burks’—who was not Witt-Doerring’s patient—have reshaped how he practices psychiatry. He now runs a tapering clinic specifically for people navigating the withdrawal process, providing careful monitoring and guidance.

His advice to anyone considering coming off antidepressants is to do so gradually—over many months, sometimes years. The safest approach is to proceed slowly and with close support.

Rethinking Care

Today, most psychiatric medications are prescribed by family doctors, gynecologists, and other front-line providers working under intense time pressure. The system often prioritizes quick fixes over long-term wellness.

Witt-Doerring envisions a different care model—embedded in primary care—but focused on “dealing with the real problems.” Patients would receive structured education and group guidance on four areas that drive anxiety and depression: healthy relationships, meaningful engagement—through work, faith, or community—physical health, and substance use.

“Imagine a family doctor saying, ‘You’re struggling with relationships and health issues—here’s an assessment, and then you can join a group to learn and talk through these problems with professionals,’” he said.

“That takes the pressure off prescribing medication as the only solution and gives patients real tools to improve their lives.”

There are around 772,000 homeless Americans (nearly 230 for ever 100,000 Americans), according to the last time a point-in-count assessment was done in 2024.

In this visualization, Visual Capitalist’s Pallavi Rao, take a look at the highest homelessness rates by state, measured per 100,000 residents.

The data for this visualization comes from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, paired with 2024 population estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau.

⚠️ Caveats: Point-in-time counts were conducted in January, 2024 by local Continuums of Care (CoCs), with latitude in methodology. They risk undercounting unsheltered populations, people couch‑surfing, or those avoiding contact.

High Housing Costs & Homelessness

Hawaii tops the ranking with 805 people experiencing homelessness for every 100,000 residents.

This is more than three times the national average of 227.

Washington, D.C. is next at 800, reflecting the high cost of living and limited affordable housing in the nation’s capital.

New York ranks third at 795, driven largely by the concentrated shelter population in New York City.

Together, these three jurisdictions account for nearly 175,000 unhoused individuals.

West Coast Living Costs Pressures Push Numbers Higher

Four West Coast states—Oregon, California, Washington, and Alaska—sit firmly in the top 10.

Oregon’s rate has climbed to 535 amid rising rents in Portland, while California’s 187,000 unhoused people represent the largest absolute total in the country.

Seattle’s booming technology sector and limited housing supply help push Washington to nearly 400 per 100,000.

These states share a common thread: home prices that have consistently outpaced wage growth, leaving some residents on the brink of housing insecurity.

📊 Related: Look at the newest data around average house prices in each U.S. state.

Southern and Midwestern States See Lower Rates

At the opposite end of the spectrum, Southern and Midwestern states generally report far lower rates.

Mississippi posts the lowest figure—just 35 people per 100,000—followed by Louisiana (75) and Virginia (81).

Lower housing costs, sprawling land availability, and fewer large metro areas likely contribute to these lower rates, although undercounts in rural regions remain a challenge.

Even populous states such as Texas and Florida fall near the middle of the pack at 89 and 134 respectively, showing that population alone does not dictate homelessness levels.

Overall, the data underscore a powerful link between housing affordability and homelessness. States with soaring rents and tight markets consistently rank higher, while those with more modest housing costs tend to fare better.

For more related coverage, check out The World’s Most Unaffordable Housing Markets on Voronoi, the new app from Visual Capitalist.

Authored by Benjamin Weingarten via RealClearInvestigations,

After taking the helm at New York’s financially troubled Nassau University Medical Center late last year, Megan C. Ryan stumbled upon something baffling in the books: a two-decade-long series of transactions engineered by New York State that may have shortchanged the hospital by a staggering $1 billion in matching funds.

As a hospital primarily serving patients on Medicare, Medicaid, or who are uninsured, the medical center qualified for federal matching grants tied to state contributions. Ryan’s discovery indicated that the state was having the medical center itself post its share of the match – for around 20 years at $50 million per year – essentially cheating it out of the state’s matching dollars. “We just couldn’t wrap our heads around how a hospital that serves the poor would be forced to put up tens of millions of dollars” in place of state funds, Ryan told RealClearInvestigations.

Ryan says she called James Dering, previously general counsel of the New York Department of Health, for a legal opinion about the financial arrangement. That opinion indicated it was improper.

What seems like a local tussle over health care has all the trappings of a bigger partisan political fight in the run-up to one of the more important races for governor next year in New York. 

Democrat Gov. Kathy Hochul, who is running for reelection, is the central player in the dispute. The hospital – already at loggerheads with Hochul’s administration over claims the state was unduly withholding needed aid – filed suit last December against New York seeking to be made whole for the $1 billion it believed it was owed.

That litigation would help set in motion a series of events culminating in the takeover of the hospital by Hochul, removing control of the public benefit corporation from the hands of Republican Nassau County executive, Bruce Blakeman; the firing of Ryan and the mass exodus of the hospital’s leaders as the new regime took over; and new legal battles between Ryan and the hospital’s Hochul-appointed leaders.

Nassau University Medical Center’s ousted leaders say the takeover smacks of retaliation for their filing of a lawsuit that exposed alleged malfeasance and political corruption.

Despite Dering’s opinion, the state has argued there was nothing wrong with the hospital putting up the matching funds, and that its interventions in the hospital’s operations have been necessary to rescue a debt-riddled facility that has been hobbled by Republican-linked cronyism and mismanagement in one of the few downstate areas where the GOP is competitive. “It has been for years a Republican patronage pit,” Jay Jacobs, chair of both the state’s and Nassau’s Democratic parties, told Politico. “The place is run by Republican Party operatives.” 

The hospital saga has already drawn scrutiny from both the FBI and Republican congressional investigators – the latter suggesting that the alleged financial scheme is part of a broader effort to save the state’s balance sheet by shifting the Medicaid burden to counties and low-income hospitals. The state’s Medicaid spending is by far the highest in the country, at $4,942 per person.

Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik, who is expected to run against Hochul, has made healthcare one of her key issues, jousting publicly with the governor over their divergent policies and approaches to Medicaid. Adding to the drama is the partisan battle over federal subsidies for rising Obamacare premiums, which is fueling the ongoing federal government shutdown.

The alleged financial shenanigans at the Long Island medical center focus on the convoluted funding mechanisms used to reimburse hospitals for hundreds of billions of care delivered across the country. The saga playing out in Long Island also illuminates the indelibly political nature of healthcare across the country, where two parties often divvy up and spar over control of facilities that are crucial to the lives of voters.

Nassau University Medical Center is a 530-bed Level I Trauma Center located in East Meadow that serves some 270,000 patients each year. It is the only hospital providing care to all comers regardless of their finances, in the suburbs of Nassau County, east of Manhattan. Until Hochul’s state takeover of the hospital this past May, control of the center was split among state leaders, generally Democrats, and local leaders, sometimes Republicans – with county officials retaining the upper hand.

The medical center’s finances have been shaky for years. A report produced by the turnaround firm Alvarez & Marsal concluded in 2020 that the only “potentially sustainable” option going forward would be to reduce the hospital staff by more than 90% – from 3,400 employees to roughly 300 – while eliminating emergency room and medical/surgical inpatient service altogether. 

Under Ryan, the hospital’s performance had improved. Nevertheless, after years of posting losses, the hospital had accumulated a $1.4 billion deficit as of the end of 2024.

While state leaders attributed this shortfall to mismanagement, local and hospital leaders say it is because of the state’s failure to provide necessary financial support – something the state disputes. 

According to one of the medical center’s lawsuits, its shortfall can be traced to a scheme that worked this way: “[T]he State would instruct the Nassau County Treasurer to instruct the Hospital to make a transfer of funds to the State with the assurance that the funds would be returned to the Hospital – along with the matching federal funds – within 10 days. And indeed, like clockwork, the money was paid to the Hospital within days.”

The state does not deny this description, but it rejects the hospital’s claim that the arrangement was dubious – a “conscious effort to make it appear that the nonfederal portion was coming from the County – when it was in fact coming from the Hospital” – let alone illegal. 

Noting that federal law allows states to cover their non-federal share of Medicaid matching funds through a variety of means, including via intergovernmental transfers from local authorities, New York countered in court filings that counties may put up matching funds and that counties may tap the hospitals themselves for the match. 

Although this would seem to be a straightforward legal issue, the law is murky. Healthcare experts with whom RCI spoke indicated that while intergovernmental transfers are common, they could not opine as to the legitimacy of the ones challenged in the Nassau Center’s case.

The New York State Department of Health and several other county hospitals did not respond to RCI inquiries about whether this arrangement was common practice. 

The courts would never resolve the Nassau University Medical Center dispute. In early May, Hochul effectively seized control of the facility and quashed the hospital’s suits against New York and the hospital’s financial monitor. 

Blakeman, the Republican county executive, called the takeover “illegal” and vowed to file suit.

The takeover had come just weeks after reports had emerged that the FBI was probing the hospital’s underlying allegations of $1 billion in withheld funds, with Blakeman and his handpicked hospital chairman, Matthew Bruderman, cooperating with the investigation.

In July, congressional Republicans running the House Oversight Committee opened a probe into New York’s alleged “abuse of the Medicaid system” through withholding federal Medicaid funds to fill New York budget shortfalls, as well as the alleged years-long $1 billion scheme concerning the Nassau University Medical Center.

A spokesperson for the committee told RCI that there was no update as to its investigation. As for whether other hospitals might be impacted, or analogous efforts were being undertaken in other states, the spokesperson said that the committee believes “this issue is unique to New York State Medicaid.”

In response to inquiries about potential federal probes, the Justice Department and Department of Health and Human Services declined to comment. 

An already complicated saga became even more convoluted this summer with contrasting claims about the hospital’s current finances and its future. Before she was fired in June, Ryan had tendered a letter of resignation in May amid the governor’s takeover that was to be effective July 20. In a separate letter to the hospital’s employees obtained by RCI, Ryan stated that in contrast to claims of mismanagement that had filtered out to the press as the dispute between the hospital and state escalated, the facility had improved its operational and financial performance – including significantly increasing cash reserves – while modernizing and expanding.

“[O]ur team has worked tirelessly to restore financial accountability, clinical excellence, and community trust,” according to the letter. “Despite these gains, powerful interests have spent years trying to undermine this institution and distort my record [through leaks to the press alleging mismanagement]. Their intent is not to improve health care but to consolidate political power, dismantle NUMC’s services, and potentially repurpose our hospital for private development.”

In 2024, as the hospital sought additional New York aid amid accumulated losses totaling several hundred million dollars, the state required that the hospital implement changes to support financial stability, while seeming to endorse Alvarez & Marsal’s 2020 recommendation that the facility be significantly downsized.

Hochul, meanwhile, has undertaken an initiative to repurpose state-owned sites as housing – including easing the ability to create higher-density housing. 

Richard Kessel, the chairman of the hospital’s financial overseer, the Nassau Interim Finance Authority, had previously led the county’s industrial development agency. It had provided economic incentives to aid in several housing projects, repurposing existing land for housing in the vicinity of the medical center.

Seemingly connecting those dots, Bruderman, the former hospital chair, said amid news of Hochul’s upcoming takeover in April that the governor’s efforts aren’t about “saving the hospital, our employees or our patients, but rather a Democratic Party power play. We have documented evidence that Albany intends to shut down the hospital, fire the employees and utilize this land for other purposes for political benefit.”

A Hochul spokesperson said of claims of a hostile takeover, “The board’s restructuring is unequivocally the best possible news for anyone who relies on NUMC.”

“Due to years of gross mismanagement…the hospital is in financial peril,” the spokesperson added. “This is a desperately needed intervention. The state’s priorities for NUMC have always been ensuring quality patient care and achieving financial stability.”

The medical center was reportedly poised to post an $11 million profit in 2025, after posting losses totaling over $140 million in each of the two years prior. 

As for any sort of land deal, a July 2025 opinion piece from a Newsday editorial board member indicated that developers had already begun to reach out to the hospital regarding the nearly 100 acres its facilities cover in a “highly desirable county that has little space to grow.”

“Everything’s on the table except eliminating the safety net hospital,” its Hochul-approved chairman, Stuart Rabinowitz, told the newspaper.

The implication among Hochul’s critics is that high-density housing would most likely benefit Democrats.

Ryan’s attempt to tender her resignation, which was followed by a mass exodus of other hospital leaders, was rejected. Instead, in June, the new board terminated her for cause, denying her severance pay. Ryan notified the hospital that she would seek legal redress.

Before she did so, in August, the hospital filed suit against her seeking $10 million in damages, claiming she had, among other things, engaged in systemic mismanagement, including in authorizing “over $1 million in excessive and improper termination payments” for herself and her exiting colleagues on the way out, and other expenses for reimbursement vastly greater than allowable amounts – including for a lobster dinner on the night one of the executives resigned.

Last month, Ryan countersued, defending her record and claiming the accusations leveled against her were false and defamatory.

Meanwhile, the ousted CEO asserted in her complaint that her successor was hired at a salary roughly 25% higher than her own – which she argues is discriminatory; that the new CEO “has had his hand in prior actual and attempted hospital closures much like the one that now seems imminent” at Nassau University Medical Center; and that the hospital had signed off on $10 million in no-bid contracts in just its first three months under its new board.

While the legal battles intensify, the fate of the safety-net hospital remains unclear.

Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Epoch Times,

For the first time in my career, I’ve been fielding many questions from mainstream reporters. This is because I’ve been tagged as a “person of interest”—as law enforcement would say—in the staffing of federal public health agencies and committees. Sometimes I pick up the phone and sometimes not. The high dudgeon over my supposed role strikes me as wildly overwrought.

The issue is the upheaval going on in public-health bureaucracies. The FDA is changing. The CDC staff and mandate has been winnowed back dramatically. The food pyramid is being overhauled. Priorities are changing as regards NIH science funding. And the vaccine schedule for children is being pared back and changed.

As a result, industries and their media backers are agitated and angry. They simply cannot understand why this is happening. As a result, several major stories have appeared in the press that seem to blame me personally and the institution I head (Brownstone). Reading their stories, I’m truly in a state of disbelief that this is a prevailing outlook, as if I’m some kind of behind-the-scenes puppet master.

In other words, these reporters assume there is some kind of conspiracy. Seriously. They are asking detailed questions about my phone contacts, conversations I might be having with this or that person, my personal relationships with administration employees, funding sources, payment systems, with whom I am socializing, and so on.

At some point, I flat-out said it’s no one’s business. No, I won’t hand over my cellphone and bank records.

It’s all quite absurd. As I’m talking with these reporters, and trying to help them understand the broader context and the organic nature of these reforms—they had to happen in light of the last five years—it’s like talking to a brick wall. They begin their reporting with the presumption that there is some plot afoot. Their job is to find the malefactor. I’m just a convenient target.

It’s as if these people haven’t considered that what is happening is a reflection not of a scheme but of a population-wide blowback against terrible policies that were shockingly imposed upon the whole population that turned out to be enormously destructive. It would be more surprising if the status quo remained in place.

If anything, the reforms are going too slowly to satisfy public demands. The loss of trust in the CDC is an example. About one-third of the staff has been fired. Is that really so shocking? This agency is the one that imposed six feet of distance, one-way grocery aisles, sanitizer baths, the rental moratorium reversed by the Supreme Court, small-business closures, school closures, and even mail-in ballots.

Did they really think that once this was over, it would be business as usual? That seems to be what many ideologues on the left want. But it is not to be. What happened instead is exactly what one would expect in a democracy: the systems of government are responding to the grassroots. The bureaucracies are being rolled back. The mandates are being restricted. Protocols are being changed.

What’s at issue here comes down to a kind of worldview. I was explaining this strange problem to a friend who said plainly that these reporters on the left are simply assuming that we are operating as they have always operated. They plot, scheme, and trade quid pro quos, so they naturally assume we do too. Their operations are driven by the cash nexus so they assume that ours are too.

That could be the whole explanation. And yet I sense there is more going on.

Think about the term Progressive. Its root is progress. Real progress can take many forms but in the minds of the Progressives, there was only one way forward. That way involved the march of the state in league with corporate elites and academics. The most intelligent and credentialed people in society would take possession of society’s resources and organize them more intelligently than they otherwise would be.

That was and is the essence of the Progressive agenda.

And what were the Progressives against? They were opposed to a society that turned over the forces of social evolution to the people themselves in their communities and lives as individuals. To them, this was the essence of the old world they wanted to leave. It meant free markets, organically emerging community structures, decentralized government, families of any size including very large ones, and businesses that came and went based on the wiles of the market.

Every Progressive was against this sort of system on grounds that it all seemed too chaotic, unpredictable, and random. It seemed unintelligent. Thus was born the binary of Progressive vs. Reactionary. To them, history would, should, and could only move one direction: toward social and economic planning. Everything and anything else was considered reactionary or revanchist.

And from where did this strange view of history arrive? It traces back to the usual suspect: G.F.W. Hegel writing in the early decades of the 19th century. He was a German nationalist who was trying to bring a form of philosophical therapy to the German people following the loss of territory at the end of the Napoleonic Wars.

Hegel’s solution was a new model of history that removed personal forces and replaced them with a meta-narrative. Impersonal forces were in charge that were ultimately driving the narrative of history toward a single end, that of the triumph of the German state against all its enemies.

Hegel’s views became hugely influential in German academia, particularly among those people who favored empire and a unity of nation, corporation, church, and state. In the second half of the century, communists like Karl Marx picked up the Hegelian view of history and wedded it to socialist utopianism. Marx called his views scientific precisely because they were rooted in this strange Hegelian view of history. The triumph of communism was inevitable, he said, and therefore everyone who resists it is a reactionary holding back the “tides of history.”

These Marxian views became so influential that the Fabians in the UK and the left-socialists in the United States picked them up. That’s how movements for higher taxation, public school, the banning of youth labor, and so many other causes—not all of them bad—came to be called Progressive. Progress toward state control by administrative elites was inevitable.

This entire paradigm of progress/regress has dominated the public mind for a century.

Even low-end reporters for mainstream media outlets have picked it up. This is why Trump’s efforts to drain the swamp and gut the deep state have been greeted with such hostility. It is why RFK Jr.’s efforts on health are considered reactionary even though his views have not changed from decades ago when they were aligned with crunchy liberalism.

As a result of this worldview—people learn their Hegel not from books but from the streets of academia—people who accept it simply cannot imagine that any rollback of their plans is due to anything other than a scheme or plot or conspiracy designed to thwart the forward march of “progress” toward ever more control by the administrative state. This mindset rules out the existence of organic shifts in public life that do not go their way.

I can assure these reporters all day that I’m a mild-mannered guy with a newspaper column and a research institute but it doesn’t matter. They still believe that I’m some kind of string-puller with hidden billions and a mysterious control over the levers of power. They would rather believe this than come to terms with how horrible the COVID response was and how fed up people are with the bureaucrats in Washington, D.C.

They say the same about Donald Trump. He surely did not win fairly either in 2016 or 2024. He must have cheated or had Russian help. He is not legitimate precisely because he wants to take the country in a different direction than the one of which they approve. He is seen as “reactionary” whereas they are “progressive” and therefore he is wrong and they are correct.

In other words, the real conspiracy theorists are on the mainstream left these days, simply because they refuse to believe what is in front of their eyes. They cannot see their own failure for what it is and therefore cannot see the efforts to unravel the messes they made as a just and necessary correction.

Today, BRICS countries represent half of the global population, a coalition with growing economic heft.

Unlike many Western powers, many BRICS countries are seeing rapid GDP growth driven by significant investment, trade, and demographic change. In an increasingly multipolar world, this group is exerting more influence as it expands.

This graphic, via Visual Capitalist’s Dorothy Neufeld, compares real GDP growth projections of BRICS vs G7 countries, based on data from the IMF’s World Economic Outlook October Update.

BRICS vs G7 Real GDP Growth

Below, we show GDP growth forecasts for BRICS nations in 2025 and 2026:

As we can see, India is projected to see one of the fastest growth rates across the bloc, at 6.6% in 2025 and 6.2% in 2026.

In China, 4.8% growth is forecast for 2025 as the country strengthens trade across Asia, Europe, and Africa. Like India, growth is forecast to decline in 2026.

On average, BRICS growth will exceed G7 rates by more than threefold in both 2025 and 2026—a stark contrast visible in the table below.

With just 1% average growth for G7 countries, many countries are facing headwinds of aging populations and trade uncertainty.

Notably, Germany is forecast to see one of the world’s slowest GDP growth rates in 2025, rising just 0.2%. However, it is set to pick up to 0.9% in 2026—a trend mirrored in several other G7 nations.

To learn more about this topic, check out this graphic on BRICS share of GDP compared with G7 countries.

Authored by Jill McLaughlin via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

One of three virus-infected monkeys that escaped on a highway in Mississippi this past week was shot and killed by a homeowner who said she feared for her children’s safety.

Jessica Bond Ferguson told authorities that her 16-year-old son walked into their home and told her he thought he spotted one of the primates.

“I did what any other mother would do to protect her children,” Bond Ferguson said.

The mom, who lives near Heidelberg, Mississippi, with five children aged 4 to 16, first called the police, who told her to keep an eye on the monkey. But she said she worried that if it got away, it would threaten children at another house.

“If it attacked somebody’s kid, and I could have stopped it, that would be a lot on me,” Bond Ferguson said.

She said she grabbed her gun and cellphone and went outside, and found the monkey about 60 feet away in the yard.

“I shot at it and it just stood there, and I shot again, and he backed up and that’s when he fell,” she said.

The Jasper County Sheriff’s Department confirmed that a homeowner near Heidelberg found one of the monkeys on her property Sunday morning. The state’s Department of Wildlife, Fisheries, and Parks responded and took the animal away, the sheriff’s department said on Facebook.

Bond Ferguson, a 35-year-old professional chef, was being hailed locally as a hero.

“Ya don’t mess with a Mississippi momma’s young’uns,” Doug Jernigan, of Meridian, Mississippi, commented on Facebook on Nov. 3.

The local community had been on alert since last Tuesday, when a semi-truck carrying 21 monkeys overturned while transporting them from Tulane University to an out-of-state testing facility.

Initial reports said that only one of the monkeys, which were infected with COVID, herpes, and hepatitis C, escaped capture, but that number was increased to three.

The accident happened at about 2 p.m. local time on Interstate 59, about 86 miles east of Jackson, Mississippi, near Heidelberg.

The truck had picked up the Rhesus monkeys from the university’s biomedical research center in New Orleans, Louisiana, which provides primates to scientific research organizations, according to the university’s statement this past week.

Authorities said the truck driver warned them about the “dangerous and aggressive” primates. The monkeys were not infectious, however, according to the university.

Eight of the monkeys were ejected from their cases, of which five were killed and three escaped. Thirteen monkeys from the shipment were taken from the accident scene and arrived at their original destination in Florida this past week.

Two escaped monkeys remain unaccounted for, according to the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fish, and Parks. Department officers in the area are continuing to search for the monkeys and are asking for the public’s help to find them, a department official told The Epoch Times on Monday.

The monkeys are known to be aggressive, and the public was advised to avoid contact, according to the department.

The Mississippi Highway Patrol said it was investigating the cause of the crash.

After weeks of ground stops and flight delays across airports nationwide due to a severe shortage of air traffic controllers amid the ongoing government shutdown, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy warned today that the worst-case scenario could unfold as early as next week: a partial shutdown of U.S. airspace. 

Duffy warned Tuesday that the Department of Transportation may be forced to close parts of U.S. airspace if the government shutdown continues into next week. As of Tuesday, the shutdown has reached 35 days – a record – with little to no indication that Democrats will agree to a clean resolution to reopen the government. 

“So if, if you bring us to a week from today, Democrats, you will see mass chaos,” Duffy warned, adding, “You will see mass flight delays. You’ll see mass cancelations, and you may see us close certain parts of the airspace, because we just cannot manage it because we don’t have the air traffic controllers.”

Duffy noted that thousands of controllers have already missed paychecks, and another $0 pay stub is expected later this week. He said many cannot afford to continue working unpaid, leading to widespread absences, which have triggered ground stops at airports almost daily at this point. 

🚨 “If you bring us to a week from today, Democrats, you WILL see mass chaos,” says @SecDuffy as the Democrat Shutdown means air traffic controllers are about to miss another paycheck.

“You may see us close certain parts of the airspace because we just cannot manage it.” pic.twitter.com/CkU98hd3fN

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) November 4, 2025

FAA data shows that about 13,000 air traffic controllers are currently working without pay. The federal agency warned that 80% of the staff in the New York metro area had called out. 

On Tuesday afternoon, more than 2,450 flights traveling within, to, and out of the U.S. were delayed, and over 91 were canceled, according to data from FlightAware.

Last week, airline heads blasted Democrats on the government shutdown, urging the party of crazed leftists to back the Republican-led clean CR. Those airline bosses include:

• United CEO Scott Kirby, speaking from the White House alongside Vice President J.D. Vance and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, called for passage of a “clean CR”—the House GOP’s stopgap funding bill that would reopen the government without new spending measures.

• American, Delta, and Southwest joined United in supporting an immediate extension of current spending levels, warning that the situation was untenable as air-traffic controllers and TSA staff continue to work without pay.

• Southwest spokesperson Lynn Lunsford said the public “expects and deserves to travel in a system where safety and security employees are paid in a timely fashion.”

Besides airlines, the American Federation of Government Employees, representing hundreds of thousands of federal workers, also urged Democrats to back the GOP’s clean-CR. 

Anyone planning to travel by plane next week should prepare for widespread delays and cancellations if the shutdown is not resolved by the end of this week.

Authored by Kenin M. Spivak via RealClearPolitics,

Leaders should seek to unify people. Instead, California governor and likely 2028 presidential candidate Gavin Newsom is mired in identity politics, dividing his constituents into those entitled to privileges and subventions by reason of their melanin, sex, or sexual orientation – and those who are required to fund the largesse.

He opposed race neutral admissions to the California state university system (overruled by the people of California – twice), imposed gender and racial requirements on corporate boards (held unconstitutional – twice), required ethnic studies and ethnically dumbed-down math in K-12 curricula, and is carefully advancing a potentially multi-trillion dollar reparations plan for California’s black residents.

Newsom’s unconstitutional quest to curry favor with, undermine the confidence of, and potentially spend trillions of dollars on, California’s 2.5 million black residents began in 2020 when he signed AB3121 into law. That act required the state to study and develop reparation proposals for black Californians, with “special consideration” for descendants of slaves.

Then, in 2022, Newsom created a commission to develop policies that impact racial equity and disparities. The following year, it recommended payments exceeding $1 million for each descendant of slaves, as well as housing assistance, guaranteed wages, racially segregated education, and overturning California’s ban on affirmative action in college admissions, among hundreds of other racially abhorrent policies.

Now, Newsom has established a new bureau nominally to develop programs to implement the commission’s report, but with legislative authority to “expand” its mission to address remedies for the “lasting harms” of disenfranchisement, segregation, discrimination, exclusion, neglect, and violence impacting black Californians. The bureau is also authorized to collect nonpublic personal and genetic information to identify those who should obtain preferential treatment.

Newsom vetoed legislation to give admissions preferences to descendants of slaves, which he said colleges can already do; investigate racist property taxes, which is already within the new bureau’s mandate; and allocate 10% of state loans to slave descendants, which is clearly unconstitutional. An appearance of balance is important for a nascent presidential campaign.

Nonetheless, whether borne of intense self-loathing or kowtowing to the radical left, the arc of Newsom’s support for reparations is racist political pandering at its worst.

Reparations are particularly inappropriate in California. The state was admitted to the Union in 1850 as a free state, in which slavery was prohibited. Its population today is about 37% non-Hispanic white, 39% Hispanic, 16% Asian, and 6% black. Over a quarter are foreign-born.

There is no doctrine in the United States that holds children liable for the crimes of their parents, much less their distant ancestors; nor do children inherit their ancestors’ debts. In 1860, there were 395,216 slave-owners in the 15 states that permitted slavery, and none in the other 18 states. In total, about 5-6% of all U.S. households owned slaves.

Today, most blacks are at least middle class, live in diverse suburbs, and pursue the same careers as do whites. They are doctors, lawyers, and chief executives. With about 12.5% of the population, blacks account for a somewhat larger share of House members and about one-third of the mayors in America’s 100 largest cities. Blacks have held the highest offices in government, from president and vice president to numerous cabinet positions and 22% of current Supreme Court justices.

In a 2002 Gallup poll, 14% of Americans favored the payment of cash reparations to descendants of black slaves. A 2019 Associated Press-NORC poll found 29% approval. In 2024, a Princeton University-Liberations poll found that 36% of Americans supported at least some form of reparations, with 15% strongly supporting cash payments. A 2022 Rasmussen poll and a 2025 YouGov poll and had similar results. About a quarter of blacks oppose reparations.

At least 23 cities and states are considering paying reparations, including New York City, San Francisco, and Boston. Under most reparation proposals, the national cost would range from about $12 trillion to $20 trillion.

While polls usually ask about reparations for descendants of slaves, most commissions also consider payments to other black Americans. A Brookings Institution report justifies giving reparations to wealthy blacks and recent immigrants by the wealth gap between black and white families.

Polls and partisan commissions aside, the 14th Amendment prohibits governments from allocating benefits based on race. The Supreme Court has been clear that our detour into justifying affirmative action and other race-based programs was a “pernicious aberration.”

There have been trillions of dollars of transfer payments to black Americans through welfare, food stamps, loan payments, enterprise zones, minority contracting, and affirmative action. These giveaways deprive blacks of agency and create dependency, not a path toward self-actualization.

Chief Justice John Roberts said it well in the Supreme Court’s decision ending affirmative action in college admissions: “Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it. … [T]he guarantee of equal protection cannot mean one thing when applied to one individual and something else when applied to a person of another color.”

Gavin Newsom knows all this. He just doesn’t care.

A top bank watchdog said he was making sure big banks have finally ditched those “oops, we just destroyed your business because we don’t like your political beliefs” – er, debanking rather, policies. You remember those, right? We sure do. It happened around the same time Google, Paypal and Amazon all banned us due to our (correct) take on the origins of Covid-19 and because they didn’t like our (correct) take on the BLM movement.

For those that missed it, a slew of banks under the Biden administration outright cancelled people’s accounts and didn’t allow them access to a bank account based on the industry they worked in, or many times their political views (surprise, none of them were Democrats).

Jonathan Gould, head of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, or OCC, told a conference that supervisors are double-checking banks really did stop blacklisting sectors like firearms from banks, according to Reuters.

This oversight follows a June executive order from President Donald Trump directing banks to avoid denying services based on industry type or political considerations. Reuters writes that supervisors are now ensuring that the largest banks are in compliance with the updated approach.

As The Epoch Times wrote back in August, President Donald Trump’s executive order banning politicized debanking is intended to reverse what some analysts say is a trend of banks and payment services refusing service to people and companies for political, religious, or ideological reasons. 

Advocates against political debanking cite cases of Christians and conservatives who they say have been victims of this process. This includes allegations by Christian organizations including Tennessee-based nonprofit Indigenous Advance Ministries, as well as Sam Brownback, the chairman of the National Committee for Religious Freedom (NCRF), and the president himself.

Speaking to bank executives at the World Economic Forum in January, Trump said, “I hope you start opening your bank to conservatives, because many conservatives complain that the banks are not allowing them to do business within the bank, and that included a place called Bank of America.”

Debanking is one of the most nefarious secrets of the financial system: It is never in public forums, only specialists write about it, yet it is a threat to everyone in the most intensely effective way. The practice denies people access to the basics of life and there is no appeal, no process, no methods of challenge, and no remediation.

In her biography, Melania Trump revealed that she and her son Barron were victims of debanking. This happened in 2021, after her husband had left the office of the presidency. There were concerted efforts at the time to wipe out the memory of his time in office. Here’s more from Eric Trump on what his family endured.

Lets hope the era is over, permanently, no matter who is in the White House.

Watch Live:

* * * 

Dramatic footage from Louisville’s Muhammad Ali International Airport on Tuesday evening shows a UPS jumbo jet on departure before what appears to be a catastrophic mechanical failure – possibly an engine fire. The aircraft failed to generate enough altitude before crashing and erupting into flames moments later.

“UPS Flight 2976 crashed around 5:15 p.m. local time on Tuesday, Nov. 4, after departing from Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport in Kentucky. The McDonnell Douglas MD-11 was headed to Daniel K. Inouye International Airport in Honolulu. The FAA and NTSB will investigate. The NTSB will lead the investigation and will provide all updates,” the FAA wrote on X. 

UPS Flight 2976 crashed around 5:15 p.m. local time on Tuesday, Nov. 4, after departing from Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport in Kentucky. The McDonnell Douglas MD-11 was headed to Daniel K. Inouye International Airport in Honolulu. The FAA and NTSB will investigate.…

— The FAA ✈️ (@FAANews) November 4, 2025

Absolutely shocking footage coming out from Muhammad Ali International Airport…

FOOTAGE: Another perspective of the UPS Flight 2976, a McDonnell Douglas MD-11 cargo plane crashing just after takeoff from Louisville International Airport.
pic.twitter.com/AcpGfZhfil

— RedWave Press (@RedWave_Press) November 4, 2025

🚨#BREAKING: A major emergency response is currently underway after a UPS cargo plane crashed, leaving multiple people injured a shelter-in-place order within a five-mile radius of the airport.

📌#Louisville | #Kentucky

A significant emergency response is currently underway in… pic.twitter.com/hxw8yQdNBa

— R A W S A L E R T S (@rawsalerts) November 4, 2025

WATCH: UPS plane (UPS2976) crashes after takeoff from Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport.

Video validated by the Network pic.twitter.com/h9FtsLRumc

— Faytuks Network (@FaytuksNetwork) November 4, 2025

Reports of a massive explosion and resulting fire, possibly the result of a crash involving a cargo plane with UPS Airlines, near Muhammad Ali International Airport in Louisville, Kentucky. pic.twitter.com/HtTQLVDH6D

— OSINTdefender (@sentdefender) November 4, 2025

Muhammad Ali International Airport in Louisville, Kentucky is currently closed to arriving and departing flights, following the crash of (UPS2976), a McDonnell Douglas MD-11 being operated as a cargo plane by UPS Airlines that had just taken-off from the UPS Worldport in… pic.twitter.com/vck5PmJMNK

— OSINTdefender (@sentdefender) November 4, 2025

*Developing…