Authored by Matthew Vadum via The Epoch Times,

The U.S. Supreme Court on Oct. 31 denied a request from adult entertainment providers to halt a federal appeals court ruling that rejected their challenge to zoning restrictions in New York City.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who oversees emergency appeals from New York state, issued a brief order in 59 Murray Enterprises Inc. v. City of New York without comment.

The order rejected a request to grant an injunction blocking a ruling of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

Because Sotomayor acted alone without referring the emergency application to the full court, under Supreme Court rules, the companies that brought the application may present the application to another justice.

Often in emergency applications, the high court asks the responding party to file a brief outlining its position. In this case, Sotomayor made no such request.

In 1995, New York City approved new zoning laws that restricted where adult entertainment-related businesses could operate. The regulations did not govern so-called “60/40” establishments in which under 40 percent of floorspace or the store’s stock-in-trade did not feature adult entertainment or media, according to the application filed with the nation’s highest court on Oct. 22.

The businesses that brought the Supreme Court application are involved in adult entertainment. Eight of the companies operate or lease space to strip clubs and topless bars, while the other six rent out or sell adult books and videos.

The companies involved in this litigation were not affected by the 1995 regulations, but in 2001, the city changed its zoning laws to take away the 60/40 rule, which brought the companies within reach of the laws restricting adult establishments, the application said.

The new zoning amendments were not immediately enforced, but years later when the city began to take steps to enforce them the businesses sued. A federal district court ruled for the city in 2024, holding that the 2001 zoning amendments did not infringe on the businesses’ constitutional rights.

The businesses appealed, arguing that the amendments ran afoul of the free speech clause of the First Amendment and the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. The bookstores involved in the legal challenge argued the 2001 zoning amendments violated the due process clause of the 14th Amendment, the application said.

The Second Circuit ruled in July this year that the 2001 zoning amendments did not violate the companies’ First Amendment rights.

Although the First amendment safeguards adult expression, it also permits a municipality to regulate adult entertainment providers, and as part of its zoning authority, allows a municipality to forbid adult businesses from operating in certain locations, the application said, citing the ruling.

“Even in areas where adult-oriented businesses are allowed, a city may prohibit such businesses from operating close to churches, parks, schools, residential areas, or other adult establishments,” the circuit court said, citing City of Renton v. Playtime Theatres Inc., a 1986 Supreme Court precedent.

A municipality may regulate adult establishments in an effort to mitigate the harmful “secondary effects” that can accompany adult-oriented businesses, such as “crime, decreased property values, and urban decay,” provided that such regulation cannot be used “as a pretext for suppressing expression.”

Limiting where adult businesses may operate may be done to “preserve the quality of life in the community at large,” which is “the essence of zoning,” the court said.

The application argued that the Supreme Court should grant the application because without it, the city could shut down businesses engaged in constitutionally protected expression and this would cause those businesses “irreparable and substantial injury,” the application said.

The application also said that the applicants intend to file a petition for certiorari, or review, of the Second Circuit’s ruling separately from the application.

The applicants’ attorney, Edward Rudofsky of Melville, New York, commented on the denial of the application.

“We respect but are naturally disappointed by the denial of our clients’ application for an injunction pending their petition for a writ of certiorari, which we thought was warranted for all of the reasons set forth in our papers,” Rudofsky told The Epoch Times.

The Epoch Times reached out for comment to the city’s Law Department. No reply was received by publication time.

The case of the mysterious self-shooting SIG M18 gets even stranger – following an August arrest in the case (it wasn’t the gun). 

On Friday, the Air Force said in a statement that two airman at a Wyoming US Air Force base pleaded guilty to making false statements in the late July shooting of Brayden Lovan, 21, an airman with the 90th Security Forces Squadron, 90th Missile Wing at F.E. Warren Air Force Base outside Cheyenne. 

Airmen Sarbjot Badesha and Matthew Rodriguez each pleaded guilty this week to making false official statements related to Lovan’s death July 20, according to the Air Force statement.

Badesha was sentenced to 30 days in confinement and forfeiture of $1,545, while Rodriguez was sentenced to 10 days in confinement, 15 days restriction to base and forfeiture of $500. Both also received administrative demotions.

The two reported hearing White-Allen’s gun go off and then seeing Lovan on the ground, according to the statement.

White-Allen allegedly told Badesha, “Here’s the story. Tell them that I slammed my duty belt on the desk and it went off.” White-Allen allegedly told Rodriguez to tell emergency responders that White-Allen’s “holster went off,” according to the statement.

Neither airman initially reported that information, leading investigators to believe at first that White-Allen’s M18 accidentally discharged, according to the statement.

Meanwhile, the guy who did it was found dead on Oct. 8, and the Air Force won’t say how.

Details about his death were released for the first time Friday, including that the alleged shooter, Marcus White-Allen, had pointed the gun at Lovan’s chest in a “joking manner.” White-Allen after the shooting allegedly urged the other two surviving airmen to lie about what happened, according to the statement.

White-Allen, who was arrested on suspicion of involuntary manslaughter and making a false statement, was found dead on base on the morning of Oct. 8. Air Force officials have not disclosed details surrounding White-Allen’s death, saying it was still under investigation. -AP

What’s hilarious is that Sig has such a bad reputation for self-firing guns that everyone just bought the story. 

The pistol has been dogged for years by claims that it is prone to unintentional discharge if handled or bumped, without the trigger being pulled, according to the Epoch Times, which notes that at least 80 people have been injured since 2014,  and several lawsuits have been filed. In 2021, the U.S. District Court for Eastern Pennsylvania dismissed a claim by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent that his P320 discharged while in its holster, wounding him.

In 2020, Sig Sauer paid an almost $900,000 settlement in a case before the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri. In court documents, Sig Sauer said its agreement to settle was not an admission of negligence or wrongdoing on its part.

Strader said the company stands by its product, but has also listened to its customers’ concerns and offers a trigger upgrade for select models.

“The P320 Voluntary Upgrade is available to P320s produced from 2014-2017. More information can be found here P320 Voluntary Upgrade Program | SIG SAUER,” Strader stated.

In August 2024, the FBI evaluated the pistol for the Michigan State Police after one of its officers reported that he was shot by his holstered P320 at the shooting range.

The FBI report offered no definitive answers as to what happened in that case, but indicated the situation warranted a deeper investigation.

Via Brian McGlinchey at Stark Realities

Chances are, you’re already aware that birthrates are falling throughout the developed world, sagging well below the “replacement rate” and sparking worries about the implications of a future dearth of workers and consumers. However, the emphasis on economic implications has allowed a powerful political undercurrent to go almost entirely unnoticed: Birthrates are varying significantly by political orientation, a trend that has the potential to shape electorates and policies for generations to come — to the benefit of conservatives.

Replacement birthrates vary over time and place depending on shifts in related variables such as child mortality. In developed countries, sustaining populations without immigration currently requires reproduction at a rate of 2.1 births per woman of childbearing age. Except for an outlier replacement-level pace in 2007, the US birthrate has been sub-2.1 since the early 1970s. Last year, America hit a record-low 1.6, with even lower lows recorded elsewhere in the developed world: the birth rate in England and Wales fell to 1.41, while Scotland’s dropped to 1.25 and Italy’s to 1.2. Mainland France’s 1.59 was the lowest since World War I.

Media coverage has uniformly emphasized those top-line numbers. However, Financial Times columnist and chief data reporter John Burn-Murdoch recently waded deeper into the data and illuminated a sub-trend that could shape the future of the West. It turns out the drop-off in top-line birthrates is primarily the result of plummeting parenthood among progressive leftists, with conservative fertility slipping to a far smaller degree.

“From the US to Europe and beyond, people who identify as conservative are having almost as many children as they were decades ago,” Burn-Murdoch wrote. “The decline is overwhelmingly among those on the progressive left, in effect nudging each successive generation’s politics further to the right than they would otherwise have been.”

Readers might reasonably wonder if the birthrate numbers merely reflect the fact that people tend to become more conservative upon having children — particularly on social issues. That’s not the case. Critically, even aspirations to have children vary widely by political orientation. Illustrating the extremes on the continuum, a September NBC News poll found that male, Gen Z Trump voters put “having children” high atop their list of what’s central to their “personal definition of success.” In stark contrast, female Gen Z Kamala Harris voters put raising children in 12th place out of the 13 life goals presented as options, below aspirations like “having a job or career you find fulfilling” (which came in first) and “having emotional stability” (which placed third).

The conservative fertility edge shows up in state-level data. The 10 states with the highest 2023 birthrates were all Republican-majority states, led by South Dakota (2.01), Nebraska (1.92) and North Dakota (1.85). The bottom 10 were all “blue” states, with Vermont (1.30) at the bottom, and Oregon, Massachusetts, California, Washington and Illinois among those in the bottom pack. Paired with the trend of people migrating from blue states, it’s safe to say their lagging birthrates assure continued shrinkage in their congressional delegations, electoral votes and political power.

Looking more broadly, conservatives already have a population edge in America, with 33% of adults saying they’re conservative or very conservative, compared to just 24% who identify as liberal or very liberal. Self-categorized moderates represent a plurality, at 38%.

As your own extended family tree likely demonstrates, parents’ political leanings don’t strictly determine the views of their offspring. However, while most parents say they don’t make indoctrination a priority, their leanings do have an outsize influence in the grand scheme.

A 2023 Pew Research analysis found that only 16% of parents said it was extremely or very important for their children to grow up to hold political views similar to their own. Despite that, 81% of Republicans’ teenage children identify as either Republican or leaning toward the GOP; the Democratic correlation is 89%. Even if we assume that correlation decreases somewhat after the teen years, the large birthrate gap between conservatives and progressives promises to give the West’s politics a clear shove to the right over the coming decades.

Join thousands of free Stark Realities subscribers

Will immigration weaken that shove? Conservatives have long been wary of the political implications of large immigrant inflows, accusing Democrats of promoting lax border policies in a self-serving scheme to import Democratic voters. Bolstering that case, a 2023 Kaiser Family Foundation survey found that 32% of foreign-born people living in the US prefer the Democratic Party, with only half that number — 16% — saying the Republican Party best represents their views. A hefty 52% preferred “neither party” or were “not sure.”

Importantly, an immigration sea change is underway. At least for the time being, migrant inflows have not only come to a screeching halt, but have even reversed. In January, there were 53.3 million foreign-born immigrants in the country. Six months later, those ranks had fallen by more than a million, the first such decline since the 1960s. Having peaked at 15.8% of the US population, foreign-born people now account for 15.4%.

In what could be a self-reinforcing dynamic, a rightward shift driven by conservatives’ higher fertility could help perpetuate policies that tamp down immigration, further shifting the math in favor of the right. We’ve already seen a major sentiment shift, as Americans attitudes about immigration soured mightily during the Biden presidency: The percent wanting fewer immigrants soared from 28% in 2000 to 55% in 2024, according to Gallup. (The percent dropped way back to 30% this summer, but with dramatically tighter immigration policies resulting in net emigration for the first time in well over 50 years, that particular finding seems like something of an apples vs oranges comparison.)

With European populations displaying their own rising impatience with the effects of mass immigration — a dynamic that has translated into a significant tightening of policies across the continent — immigration doesn’t seem poised to fully offset conservatives’ higher fertility either in Europe or the United States, at least for now.

Many factors are driving declining birthrates in the progressive left, including a lower level of enthusiasm — and often, outright disdain — for traditional family structures, greater prioritization of women’s career success, and a fatalism that makes the gift of life seem like a mixed proposition at best.

The Times’ Burn-Murdoch also points a finger at progressives who’ve convinced themselves that bringing new humans into the world will accelerate climate change. However, he notes that any given country’s level of carbon emissions is overwhelmingly driven by technology, not population, as evidenced by plummeting carbon emissions throughout the developed world even as their populations have continued to rise.

Even among progressives who do aspire to reproduce, there seem to be other self-defeating dynamics at work. For example, in their rebellion against traditional norms and expectations, and their desire to signal their subcultural alignment, progressives are more likely to make personal-appearance choices that could undermine their ability to land a mate.

Purple hair with an unconventional cut may be boldly expressive, but it comes at some unquantifiable price in the dating marketplace. The steepest price probably comes from septum-piercing — nose-rings that stray far from adornment and into outright self-vandalism. Science backs the idea that such piercings are bad for one’s love life: A study published by European Psychologist found that both women and men with facial piercings were perceived as not only less physically attractive but also less intelligent.

This TikToker took off her nose ring for the first time in a long time and immediately realized men are right.

“Someone said I look like a Democrat cause of the nose ring, so I’m taking it out.”

Nose rings and tattoos are some of the worst things women ever got into. pic.twitter.com/oF0zmwtTHr

— George (@BehizyTweets) October 22, 2025

That’s not all. Leftists are also far more likely to limit their dating pool by excluding people with differing political views: Among self-identified “very liberal” people, only 13% are willing to date conservatives. Putting that into perspective, 29% of them are willing to date an ex-felon. On the other hand, very conservative Americans are nearly twice as willing to date their political opposites.

When looking to the political future, it’s often said that “demographics are destiny.” For the most part, progressives have employed the axiom with a swaggering confidence in their inevitable triumph, while conservatives have used it with a tone of grim resignation. Given the reproductive realities, we may soon see a rhetorical role reversal.

STARK REALITIES: Invigoratingly Unorthodox Perspectives For Intellectually Honest Readers 

Sign up and join thousands of free subscribers who benefit from monthly, ad-free insights 

* * *

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

A Washington Parish grand jury in Louisiana has indicted Democratic Bogalusa, Louisiana Mayor Tyrin Z. Truong on charges of malfeasance in office, public intimidation, and theft, according to the Bogalusa Daily News.

The indictment is part of what officials describe as an ongoing multi-agency investigation involving federal, state, and local authorities. Prosecutors allege Truong intentionally carried out his official duties unlawfully and knowingly allowed other city employees to ignore theirs. His arraignment is scheduled for November 10, 2025.

According to prosecutors, the case centers on claims that Truong misused Bogalusa taxpayer funds to pay a personal legal debt from a 2023 Louisiana public records lawsuit in which a judge ruled that Truong personally owed attorney fees and penalties after refusing to release public documents.

When the Bogalusa City Council denied his request to use public money, prosecutors say Truong threatened retaliation, vowing to overwhelm council members with records requests. Investigators allege he then pressured a city insurance vendor to issue a check labeled as a “reimbursement,” had it deposited into a city account, and ordered another check for the same amount to be written to himself.

The Daily News writes that the indictment details additional alleged misconduct, including accepting unauthorized salary and leave payments, forcing a city contractor to pay another contractor who did no work, purchasing illegal narcotics from known drug dealers and failing to report the activity, attempting to solicit a bribe from a local business — a move that allegedly cost the city a major development project — and ordering city workers to perform plumbing repairs at his mother’s home using city materials.

Prosecutors also accuse Truong of using city funds to solicit a prostitute at an Airbnb in Atlanta.

The charges follow Truong’s January 2025 arrest by the Louisiana State Police during a drug-trafficking investigation. At the time, State Police said Truong “organized entertainment with a prostitute” during a mayors’ conference in Atlanta and paid for the Airbnb using public funds, while also being accused of purchasing drugs in Louisiana. Investigators allege a Bogalusa-based drug ring was selling opioids, high-grade marijuana, THC products, and MDMA, with profits used to purchase firearms later connected to local crimes.

Sims emphasized that the probe continues and involves cooperation from multiple agencies. He said, “This case reflects the ongoing commitment to ensuring accountability and integrity in public office.” Truong remains presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.

Authored by Jack Miller & Michael Weiser via RealClearPolitics,

Actions have consequences A lack of consequences is an action that also has consequences.

America is in the throes of an epidemic of civic illiteracy that can be traced to a half-century of not teaching the principles, history, and documents of her founding. In our most prestigious universities down to primary school classrooms, the teaching of our pre-partisan founding principles and history has been downgraded and corrupted, leading to at least two generations of Americans without the knowledge to be participants in self-government or the resolve to defend our republic.

It isn’t as though we weren’t warned: by George Washington, who identified education in civics as an essential pillar of freedom in the earliest days of our republic, and much more recently by the late Supreme Court Justice Sandra O’Connor who reminded us that civic knowledge was not passed from generation to generation in the gene pool but, rather, must be taught and re-taught to each new class of rising Americans. Great Americans have always understood that maintaining our freedom depends on passing down our founding principles and history through education.

In the 20th century, Ronald Reagan also reminded us of freedom’s fragility. “It’s never more than one generation away from extinction,” he once said. “It is not ours by way of inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people.” He was channeling the insights of other great Americans, such as Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, who understood that our heritage of liberty is grounded in enduring moral truths about the equal dignity of all human beings.

It seems as though those truths are no longer self-evident to our republic. Political violence is on the rise, and intolerance colors too many of our public debates and even private discussions. It is no exaggeration to say these are the sorry consequences of a civic illiteracy epidemic that has raged in our body politic, untreated, for years. Yet it would be wrong to blame this crisis merely on the emergence of competing narratives like the New York Times’ “1619 Project,” which traces U.S. history to the arrival of slaves on our shores and labels Americans as irredeemably racist. This and other such narratives filled a void that was created by a shameful inaction for civic education.

The civic education crisis our country faces seems to us to be part of a larger cultural malaise – one that fails to foresee the consequences of our inactions in other realms of our society and, then once demonstrated, fails to do anything about them. Consider, for instance, inactions to prosecute “petty” thefts under $1,000 that have led to an exodus of retailers no longer able to run their businesses in areas prone to these crimes. Similarly, cash-free bail has led to the release of repeat offenders into society, where they again commit crimes, some of them violent. Indeed, if our actions as a nation sometimes have had tragic consequences – in wars, segregation and financial mismanagement – so have we as Americans demonstrated the sometimes devastating  results of our inactions.

It is not an overstatement to trace at least some of the problems of our society to an insufficient understanding of the rights and responsibilities of citizens in this free society and the values they must share. A requisite understanding of these starts in the home but must be further molded and honed in civic education classrooms throughout our educational system. Too often and in too many places, civic education inaction has won the day and, with it, a withering of our civic culture.

Perhaps the most troubling example of civic inaction’s dangers can be found in the rise of 20th-century totalitarianism. From Lenin and Stalin’s communist revolution in Russia to Hitler’s fascist takeover of Germany, tyrants took advantage of a lack of actions, pushbacks, in their early stages. Even when these regimes began to threaten the West, our own civic ignorance led to shortsighted policies of appeasement and even cooperation. The consequence was a shattered continent and the tragedy of war and genocide –over 6 million in the Holocaust alone, and 70 million over the course of World War II.

Peoples inspired with a greater confidence in their civic tradition, however, have the power to stop the march of tyranny.

While we, thankfully, do not currently face the kind of revolutionary extremism that led to catastrophe in the last century, our civic health is trending in the wrong direction. More and more young people are turning to socialism, communism, or other forms of radicalism because they have not been educated in how our American form of government provides the greatest individual freedom and opportunity. But the good news is that parents, educators, and philanthropists have had enough of this civics inaction. At our organization, the Jack Miller Center, we are taking a number of specific steps to reinvigorate civic education.

For more than two decades, we have supported the careers of university scholars devoted to teaching the principles and history of our country – in intensive, multi-week institutes that bring together new post-doctoral academics with the senior scholars in political science and history, and, once on campus, by supporting campus centers focused on this scholarship. In all, there are 1,300 of these academics – whom we call Miller Fellows – on more than 300 higher-ed campuses.

In recent years, we have been engaging a growing number of these scholars in teaching graduate-level seminars for K-12 teachers, enriching their understanding of our founding documents and strengthening their ability to lead discussions and debates in their own classrooms – the hallmark of our democracy.

And today, the Jack Miller Center is helping to bolster and support a civics renaissance in higher education. Across the country, state legislatures are establishing Schools of Civic Thought at their flagship universities. These separate and independent academic units are sanctioned to teach our founding principles, American history, and Western civilization. Not only are Schools of Civic Thought restoring the traditional liberal arts for a new generation of college students, they are also providing training and content K-12 teachers can use in their classrooms. Schools of Civic Thought are rapidly expanding, and will be a major game changer.

Taken together, these efforts are helping to lead what can truly be called a civics renaissance in our classrooms and on our campuses. We join with others who have recognized the consequence of our inactions and the extraordinary influence that civic learning can have for America.

Reform must begin with acknowledging the crisis at hand: Due to generations of inaction, Americans are forgetting who we are supposed to be. “Something’s eating away at the national memory,” the popular historian David McCullough once said, “and a nation or a community or a society can suffer as much from the adverse effects of amnesia as can an individual.”

Especially as the 250th anniversary of our country’s birth approaches, it has never been more important to remember who we are – and to act so that those memories come alive for the next generation of citizens.

Jack Miller is founder and chairman emeritus of the Jack Miller Center for Teaching America’s Founding Principles & History.

Michael Weiser is chairman of the Board of Directors of the Jack Miller Center.

Straws, soda, now paper bags. Is there anything batshit insane Democratic government officials don’t want to tax or micromanage? 

In Philadelphia, that answer is apparently ‘no’, according to 6ABC.

While drug ravaged Kensington remains an issue, homeless people litter the streets and violent crime remains a problem, Philadelphia’s City Council just voted 10–5 for a truly groundbreaking idea (eye roll): charging 10 cents per paper bag.

The bill is now on Mayor Cherelle Parker’s desk, and she hasn’t said if she’ll sign it.

The fee would hit grocery stores and retailers alike, though bags without handles—like the ones from food trucks—get a free pass. Officials say it’s all about reducing waste and nudging people toward reusable bags.

This follows the city’s plastic bag ban from 2021, because apparently lugging your own bags wasn’t inconvenient enough already.

No word on whether or not DA Larry Krasner will supports the idea, or if he still supports just cashless bail, instead of ‘cashless bale’. 

Meanwhile, in Northeast Philadelphia…

Authored by Jacki Thrapp via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The Food and Drug Administration on Oct. 31 issued a nationwide recall of powder supplements sold at Sam’s Club after 11 salmonella infections were reported.

Health officials recalled Member’s Mark Super Greens Powder Supplements, sold at the members-only division of Walmart, after people fell ill between May and September.

Three were hospitalized and eight others reported falling ill.

Infections were mostly reported on the East Coast, such as in Florida, North Carolina, New York, South Carolina, and Virginia. There have also been reports of illness in Kansas and Michigan.

The supplements, sold nationwide at Sam’s Club and online, contained moringa leaf powder that health officials suspect may be contaminated with salmonella bacteria.

But FDA investigators fear that the Sam’s Club supplements may not be the only product contaminated with the problematic batch of moringa leaf powder from a farm in Johdpur, India.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention interviewed 10 of the 11 people who fell ill and even though nine of them admitted to eating powdered dietary supplements, only six reported eating Member’s Mark Super Greens Powder specifically. Three others reported consuming products containing moringa leaf powder from a different brand.

“The implicated lot of moringa powder was supplied to multiple U.S. distributors,” the FDA said.

The FDA’s recall includes all Member’s Mark Super Greens dietary supplement powder, “regardless of lot codes and best by/use before dates.”

“FDA is working to determine the point of contamination and what additional products were made with the implicated lot of moringa leaf powder,” the FDA added.

The Virginia Department of Health and the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services have collected samples from two of those affected. Both tested positive for salmonella.

The product has been removed from store shelves and health officials urge Americans not to eat, sell, or serve the product. They suggest people who bought it either throw it away or return it to the store for a refund.

The Epoch Times reached out to Walmart for comment.

Symptoms of salmonella infection can occur within a few hours to several days after eating food contaminated with the harmful bacteria.

Symptoms of salmonella include diarrhea, fever, and abdominal cramps. It can last four to seven days.

Seniors, children under the age of five and people with weakened immune systems are more likely to have severe infections.

Salmonella is one of the most common forms of food poisoning, according to the Cleveland Clinic. More than a million people get salmonella every year, and about 420 cases are fatal.

Your credit score has long determined whether you can get a mortgage, car loan, or credit card. For decades, the FICO score dominated that decision. Created in 1956 by William Fair and Earl Isaac, it became the standard measure of a borrower’s risk and is used in about 90% of lending decisions in the U.S, according to the Wall Street Journal.

But WSJ writes that a recent $10 fee increase has sparked an open battle over control of this critical number. Fair Isaac Corp. depends on credit data from Equifax, Experian and TransUnion. Those three firms have spent years trying to weaken FICO’s power by promoting their own scoring model, VantageScore.

When Federal Housing Finance Agency chief Bill Pulte accused FICO of anticompetitive behavior and declared that VantageScore could be used in many mortgage approvals, tensions exploded. Pulte wrote, “FICO, and any other monopoly who has ripped off Americans for decades, should not be using improper efforts to threaten regulators.”

The relationship among the four companies has turned hostile. One longtime industry figure said what previously looked like a mutually beneficial partnership now appears closer to war. At FICO, CEO Will Lansing raised prices to reflect what he called the true value of their score. FICO’s mortgage-score fee climbed from just cents years ago to $4.95 in 2025 and is set to double to $10. Mortgage lenders complain the increases cut into already thin margins, especially when borrowers back out and lenders must absorb the fee.

Lansing argues that competition will motivate lenders to favor lenient scoring, warning that “choice encourages mortgage participants to shop for the most lax score” and creates a “race to the bottom.” He said, “The FICO score is the backbone of safety and soundness in the mortgage industry.” Meanwhile, the bureaus say VantageScore can evaluate millions of people who lack traditional credit histories and expand access to homeownership.

You know, the kind of people that probably shouldn’t own homes…

As pressure rose in Washington, lawmakers took interest. Sen. Josh Hawley said, “FICO has abused its government-granted market power.” FICO lobbied aggressively, while Pulte and his agency pushed for more competition.

To limit the bureaus’ influence, FICO changed strategy and enabled “tri-merge resellers” to generate scores using the company’s algorithm. That move cut out the bureaus and shifted profits toward FICO, driving its stock higher and theirs lower. In response, the bureaus began offering VantageScore for free on many loans.

The outcome will determine who controls access to credit in America and how much borrowers pay. What began as a small fee hike has escalated into a fight over the financial future of millions. Stay tuned…

Authored by Panos Mourdoukoutas via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Some major companies have recently triggered a wave of layoffs, eliminating tens of thousands of jobs. Most cited artificial intelligence (AI) integration and automation as factors behind these moves.

Experts say that while a significant portion of jobs cannot be replicated by machines, AI will likely usurp white-collar analytical roles and robotics will replace manual labor jobs.

Amazon announced on Oct. 28 that it will eliminate about 14,000 corporate positions to stay “nimble.”

UPS, meanwhile, revealed that it had cut 34,000 operational jobs during the first nine months of this year—a significantly larger reduction than the 20,000 layoffs announced in April—as part of its “efficiency reimagined” initiative.

Nestlé said on Oct. 16 that it will reduce 16,000 jobs worldwide over the next two years in an effort to achieve “operational efficiency” by “leveraging shared services and automating [its] processes.”

In August, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff disclosed on an podcast that the company had replaced about 4,000 customer support workers with AI agents.

In the past, businesses typically downsized during economic downturns, but these recent staff reductions occurred during a period of robust profitability, signaling something different—a transformation in the way work itself is organized, driven by the rapid diffusion of AI.

Unlike past automation waves that mimicked the functions of the human body—replacing manual or routine tasks—AI targets the human brain’s cognitive abilities. It doesn’t just perform repetitive processes; it learns, analyzes, and makes decisions.

Together, these twin shifts—manual automation and cognitive automation—are remaking both unskilled and skilled labor. The result: some jobs are being transformed, others are being cut.

In a statement included in its job cut announcement, the company explained that AI’s transformative force requires new organizational structures: “It’s enabling companies to innovate much faster than ever before … We’re convinced that we need to be organized more leanly, with fewer layers and more ownership, to move as quickly as possible for our customers and business.”

However, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said during the company’s Oct. 30 earnings call that the recent layoff announcement was not “really AI-driven, not right now, at least.”

AI Diffusion Across the Workforce

Economists, central banks, and think tanks have documented AI’s rapid spread across workplaces.

A report by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis found that by early 2023, generative AI—the class of AI capable of creating new content—had become widespread across the American workforce. Tools such as ChatGPT were embedded in browsers, office software, and search engines, making large language model usage routine for millions of workers.

The bank found that occupations adopting generative AI most intensively—particularly computer and mathematical fields—experienced the steepest unemployment gains.

“Our results suggest we may be witnessing the early stages of AI-driven job displacement,” the report noted. “Unlike previous technological revolutions that primarily affected manufacturing or routine clerical work, generative AI can target cognitive tasks performed by knowledge workers—traditionally among the most secure employment categories.”

A Brookings Institution report estimates that 30 percent of all U.S. workers could see at least half of their job tasks disrupted by generative AI. Unlike earlier automation, which primarily affected blue-collar work, AI is expected to reshape a broad range of “cognitive” and “nonroutine” occupations—especially those in middle- and high-income professions.

Similarly, the McKinsey Global Institute has projected that automation (a combination of AI and robotics) could displace up to 54 million workers in the United States by 2030.

Meanwhile, a Goldman Sachs analysis projects that widespread AI adoption could displace 6 to 7 percent of the U.S. workforce, equivalent to millions of jobs.

Goldman Sachs economists estimate that temporary unemployment spikes by roughly 0.3 percentage points for each percentage-point gain in productivity from labor-saving technology.

Jobs Most at Risk

A Society for Human Resource Management study, published on April 25, offers a detailed snapshot of U.S. employment exposure to AI.

According to the report, 12.6 percent of jobs—approximately 19.2 million positions—face a high or very high risk of automation-related displacement. Among them, 14 percent of blue-collar jobs, 12.3 percent of white-collar jobs, and 12.1 percent of service-sector jobs are considered at high risk.

Meanwhile, a June 9 report from the freelance work platform Upwork identifies 120 jobs that are hard to be replaced by AI, including clinical, creative, and skilled trades roles.

AI and Changing Nature of Skills

A December 2024 Harvard Business School paper shows that AI has a mixed impact on businesses’ labor demand.

In automation-prone roles, AI reduces the need for specialized expertise by simplifying complex tasks. In augmentation-prone roles, however, it boosts productivity and increases demand for advanced, complementary skill sets.

“As generative AI continues to evolve, understanding its heterogeneous effects on labor demand is critical,” the authors wrote. “Policymakers and business practitioners must recognize the dual forces of automation and augmentation to ensure that workers are equipped to adapt and thrive.”

At the same time, research by Nobel laureate Daron Acemoglu and colleagues—published in the Journal of Labor Economics—shows that as establishments adopt AI, they reduce hiring in non-AI positions and shift skill requirements across remaining roles.

Andy Zenkevich, founder and CEO of Epiic, a digital agency specializing in generative engine optimization (GEO), told The Epoch Times that the fear of mass AI-driven job losses is overstated.

“Among the companies we work with in digital marketing—including major tech firms—layoffs haven’t been the story,” he said. “Instead, jobs are morphing. A junior copywriter becomes an ‘AI content editor,’ responsible for prompt engineering, fact-checking, and editing AI-generated copy.”

Zenkevich estimated that roughly 2.5 percent of jobs are genuinely at risk under a full-scale AI rollout, noting that “true end-to-end automation is much harder than headlines suggest.”

“Over a third of jobs now require hybrid skill sets that combine technical literacy with human qualities machines can’t replicate,” he said.

Georgios Koimisis, associate professor of finance at Manhattan University, echoed a similar skepticism.

“There’s a growing fear that artificial intelligence is wiping out jobs, but the reality is more complex,” he told The Epoch Times. “Companies aren’t cutting workers simply because AI made them redundant. In an uncertain economy, firms want to appear modern and future-ready. Announcing an ‘AI transformation’ reassures investors that management has a plan.”

Koimisis argues that some layoffs, framed as part of AI restructuring, are more about signaling discipline to shareholders than about reflecting genuine technological necessity.

“AI is changing not just how work is organized, but how value itself is defined,” he said.

Izhar Haq, director of the School of Professional Accountancy at Long Island University, agrees that the slowing economy and business cycle are also contributing factors to recent job reductions.

Haq told The Epoch Times that while the long-term economic effects of AI remain uncertain, “white-collar analytical jobs are most at risk from AI integration, while manual labor jobs face risk from robotics.”

The UAE and United States have agreed to work together to ‘accelerate collaboration’ on energy and artificial intelligence. According to The National;

Under the agreement, the UAE and the US will work together on increase advanced industrial capabilities and adopt smart manufacturing technologies. It covers the use of AI in robotics and automation, alongside efforts to promote the sharing of knowledge and capacity building.

UAE President Dr Sultan Al Jaber, Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology, managing director and group chief executive of Adnoc, and executive chairman of XRG, and Doug Burgum, US Secretary of the Interior and Chairman of the National Energy Dominance Council were all present at the signing. 

Meanwhile, Microsoft plans to invest more than $7.9 billion in the United Arab Emirates over the next four years as part of the Gulf state’s push to become a global tech hub, according to Bloomberg.

Announcing the commitment in Abu Dhabi, Microsoft President Brad Smith said, “This is not money we’re raising here. It’s money we’re investing and spending here… We are seeing demand here explode.”

The investment includes nearly tripling the number of advanced Nvidia chips the company will run in the UAE — hardware that had previously faced US export restrictions. Smith said Microsoft received US licenses in September after meeting “very strict conditions” to keep the chips “under our control.”

Bloomberg writes that Microsoft expects to spend $5.5 billion on cloud and AI infrastructure from 2026–2029 and around $2.4 billion on hiring and operations. The company already has about 1,000 engineers and an AI lab in the country.

The UAE is central to Microsoft’s global AI expansion as it races other tech giants to add data-center capacity. Microsoft reported $34.9 billion in global capital spending in the latest quarter and recently announced a $9.7 billion Texas data-center deal.

The software giant has invested $5.8 billion in the UAE since 2023, including $1.5 billion in Abu Dhabi AI company G42, where Smith now serves on the board. OpenAI — backed by Microsoft — has also picked the UAE for its first Stargate data-center project outside the US.

Washington continues to scrutinize chip access in the Gulf amid concerns the technology could leak to China. Microsoft previously deployed 21,500 Nvidia A100-class chips in the UAE and plans to send 60,400 more — including Nvidia’s new GB300 — arriving “in months, not years.”

Overall, Microsoft says its UAE investments will total $15.2 billion from 2023 to 2029.