The federal government officially shut down at 12:01 a.m. this morning, the first lapse in funding since 2019.

Roughly 750,000 federal workers are furloughed without pay, with “essential” employees forced to keep working – for now, without a paycheck. Active-duty military service members could soon see missed salaries if the impasse drags on, raising real-world stakes far beyond Capitol Hill.

How long will it last? According to Polymarket, most people think it will last two or more weeks. 

History suggests shutdowns rarely succeed. Republicans’ 2013 gambit to undo Obamacare collapsed. Democrats’ 2018 standoff over DACA died out. Even the drawn-out 2018-2019 shutdown under President Trump produced little more than frustration and missed paychecks.

This time is no different. Lawmakers failed to agree on competing stopgap bills: Republicans pushed a “clean” continuing resolution into November, while Democrats tied funding to extending Obamacare subsidies and blocking cuts to Medicaid (illegals included). Both measures failed in the Senate Tuesday, leaving the government shuttered.

Democrats Spitting Mad

Senate Democrats rejected a Republican stopgap measure to fund the government at current levels through Nov. 21, insisting on an extension of enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies (illegals and all) – and limits on the administration’s practice of withholding federal funds.

“They’re in charge. They have to convene a negotiation. They haven’t done that,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) said Tuesday. “The fact that they aren’t even here in the House of Representatives is proof that they’re not serious about it.”

“Trump has to actually be willing to negotiate and make a deal,” echoed Rep. James Walkinshaw (D-VA). “He wrote a book about making deals. He played a character on a TV show who taught people how to make deals. And he hasn’t really done that as president, but this is his opportunity to do that.”

Republicans counter that Democrats are holding the government hostage. “We’re not going to discuss and negotiate it while they’re holding the hostage of the federal government,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) said Tuesday morning on CNBC. “Release the hostage, and we will have that conversation about how we can keep these exchanges up and going.”

Red Wedding Time?

Meanwhile, President Trump and OMB Director Russ Vought are openly threatening to use the shutdown as a vehicle for sweeping government changes – from layoffs to budget cuts that would never pass Congress otherwise. “A lot of good can come from shutdowns,” Trump mused Tuesday.

Democrats call this intimidation. But if Trump follows through, the pressure on Senate moderates could mount quickly. Already, three Democrats – Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto, Angus King, and John Fetterman – have defected to back the GOP’s funding measure.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has so far held his caucus together, but defections hint at deeper vulnerabilities. Thune is betting that the longer the shutdown drags on, the more centrist Democrats will peel away. He needs at least eight crossovers to reach 60 votes.

At a press conference Tuesday night, Schumer avoided drawing a hard line, pledging only to “fight as hard as we can for [Americans’] health care” – a softer stance than promising to hold out indefinitely.

Shutdown Impacts Across Government

• Federal workforce: Millions furloughed or working unpaid; food inspectors and park rangers affected. Contractors unlikely to get back pay.

• National parks & travel: Parks technically open but mostly unstaffed; law enforcement and fire suppression remain; FAA and TSA deemed essential but unpaid.

• Student loans & education: Loan bills, Pell Grants, and FAFSA processing continue.

• Defense & military: Over a million troops working without pay; new contracts halted; elective care at military facilities postponed; overseas operations continue.

• Taxes: IRS funded short-term with special reserves; nearly all employees reporting for now.

• Health care: Medicare and Medicaid payments flow, but HHS, NIH, and CDC furlough large portions of staff; biomedical research and prevention programs curtailed; FDA maintains recalls but scales back inspections.

• Veterans Affairs: Benefits and medical appointments continue; hotlines, regional offices, and counseling programs suspended.

• Energy & environment: Drilling and mining permitting continues; EPA enforcement inspections largely paused.

• Food safety & nutrition: USDA meat inspectors on duty but unpaid; FDA inspections slowed; WIC nutrition program may run out of funds within days.

• Financial regulation: SEC and CFTC reduced to skeleton crews; rulemaking and most enforcement work halted.

• Tech regulation: FTC litigation and consumer complaint center suspended.

• Cyber defense: DHS’s CISA furloughing two-thirds of staff; only critical cybersecurity operations remain active.

We go into greater detail on this here. 

The Public’s Patience Wears Thin

Beyond Washington, Americans are already feeling the sting: national parks shuttered, Social Security and Medicare services slowed, permits delayed, phones at federal agencies left unanswered. The Bureau of Labor Statistics confirmed it will withhold this week’s jobs report – data that could move markets.

Public anger has historically proven one of the most potent forces for ending shutdowns. A downturn in stocks or a wave of constituent backlash could tilt the balance faster than negotiations alone.

The Outlook: Prolonged Standoff

Federal paydays loom next week, with service members scheduled for Oct. 15. Pentagon officials suggest they could redirect funds from the $150 billion “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” pot to cover military salaries — a move that would enrage Democrats.

The most plausible way out would be Trump deciding to strike a deal — but at the moment, that outcome looks remote. Punchbowl News think that means Trump shifting course and endorsing a deal to restore funding. For now, Washington is locked in familiar gridlock – high stakes for families, a test of moderates’ resolve, and the looming risk that the shutdown lasts far longer than anyone expects.

Authored by Travis Gillmore via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

WASHINGTON—The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) arrested 670 individuals and seized nearly 77,000 kilograms of narcotics during a five-day operation targeting a Mexican drug trafficking organization, according to an agency statement on Sept. 29.

Agents sought to dismantle the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, designated as a foreign terrorist organization in February with an executive order from President Donald Trump for its role in orchestrating illegal drug distribution.

“Let this serve as a warning: DEA will not relent,” agency administrator Terrance Cole said in a statement.

“Every arrest, every seizure, and every dollar stripped from [the cartel] represents lives saved and communities protected. This focused operation is only the beginning—we will carry this fight forward together until this threat is defeated.”

The cartel operates across the globe in at least 40 countries, with tens of thousands of individuals helping produce, manufacture, and distribute dangerous narcotics, according to the DEA.

Cole said the operation, which ran from Sept. 22 through Sept. 26, involved collaboration between DEA agents in 23 domestic and seven foreign divisions, a Department of Homeland Security Task Force, other federal agencies, and state and local law enforcement partners.

Investigations led to the seizure of nearly 100 kilograms of fentanyl—enough to kill about 50 million people, by the agency’s calculations.

More than 1.1 million counterfeit pills were seized, along with more than 6,000 kilograms of methamphetamine, almost 23,000 kilograms of cocaine, and 33 kilograms of heroin.

Photos from the agency’s Atlanta office show tables piled high with confiscated packages filled with seized narcotics. Another image shows roughly 300,000 counterfeit pills, pressed in a variety of colors, seized in New York.

Approximately $19 million in cash and currency was recovered, and the agency estimated the value of assets impounded at nearly $30 million.

Also confiscated were 244 firearms, officials said.

Hundreds of cartel members and associates were detained, but the group’s leaders have eluded capture.

The U.S. Department of State is offering a $15 million reward for information that leads to the apprehension of co-founder Nemesio Rubén Oseguera Cervantes, known as El Mencho.

Oseguera Cervantes was indicted in the United States in 2017, and again subsequently on multiple occasions, for conspiracy to commit drug trafficking crimes.

According to the State Department, he has also allegedly been involved in assassination attempts on Mexican government officials.

Among other groups that have been designated foreign terrorist organizations by the federal government are the Noreste cartel—previously known as Las Zetas—the Sinaloa cartel, Tren de Aragua, and Mara Salvatrucha, better known as MS-13.

The terrorist designations “expose and isolate” suspects and provide law enforcement with more leverage to investigate and disrupt transnational criminal networks, according to the State Department.

Reddit shares are sinking in New York premarket trading, and if the losses hold into the cash session, it would mark the steepest decline in six months. The drop comes after new Similarweb data indicated that ChatGPT has either scaled back or completely stopped using Reddit as a source for answer generation. Who would have ever guessed that relying on Reddit posts to generate chatbot answers was a brilliant idea?

Several X users are citing Similarweb data that shows Reddit’s collapsing web traffic. This includes one X user by the name of “Bert Tian” who states:

$RDDT US Website DAU (source @Similarweb ) has dropped sharply after ChatGPT massively reduced Reddit citations — traffic is now even close to early-year levels.

Multiple data vendors are all picking up the shift in ChatGPT citation patterns. Reasons still unclear, but one guess is that ChatGPT may be limiting web search for free accounts as a cost-cutting move to push monetization.

Tian posted an image showing Reddit’s U.S. daily active users on a 30-day average, indicating that around September 11 was the point when Reddit sources cited by ChatGPT dropped sharply.

Tian was quoting another X user by the name of “Andrea Bosoni,” who pointed out:

Apparently ChatGPT is not using Reddit much anymore for their answers. I guess they realized that what random people say can’t be considered a trusted source after all. You can all stop spamming it with your fake brand mentions now.

TryProfound blog cited a dataset between August 2024 and June 2025 that showed Reddit accounts for 11.3% of ChatGPT’s citations within its top 10 most-cited sources.

Reddit shares dropped as much as 13% in premarket trading. If losses hold through the cash session, this would mark the largest decline since early March.

So, ChatGPT relies heavily on Wikipedia and Reddit… enough said. That’s why Elon Musk revealed on Tuesday his plans to launch “Grokpedia.”

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

The manufacturer of Tylenol was keeping tabs on research into the drug and neurodevelopmental issues such as autism, and concluded in 2018 that evidence of a link between them was becoming significant, according to newly disclosed documents.

In a Feb. 8, 2018, email obtained by The Epoch Times, Rachel Weinstein, director of epidemiology at Johnson & Johnson subsidiary Janssen, wrote, “The weight of evidence is starting to feel heavy to me.”

Weinstein was emailing Jesse Berlin, Johnson & Johnson’s global head of epidemiology, about a review that concluded that nine studies suggested that use of acetaminophen—the active ingredient in Tylenol—by pregnant women was linked to autism and other neurodevelopmental issues in the women’s children.

Weinstein said that Janssen had been discussing with a neurologist about how acetaminophen could be beneficial.

“But now we’ve added the studies in prenatal exposure and neurodev [sic] outcome,” she said.

Berlin wrote that he read the review and that “there appears to be some specificity of the association.” While he took issue with how some papers did not analyze other drugs, “at least one study looked separately at specific indications and the association didn’t go away,” he said.

Johnson & Johnson was the maker of Tylenol for years. In 2023, a newly created company called Kenvue took over the Tylenol brand and other consumer brands.

“These documents show we were doing exactly the right thing,” a spokesperson for Kenvue told The Epoch Times in an email. “We have continuously evaluated the science, and there is no credible evidence that taking acetaminophen causes autism.”

‘Difficult Options’

Dr. Jørn Olsen of Aarhus University in Denmark and other researchers in 2014 released an observational study that determined maternal acetaminophen use during pregnancy was linked to a higher risk of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder-like behavioral problems or hyperkinetic disorders in their children.

Weinstein, in an email, told Olsen that the study had strengths but wondered whether the researchers had tried assessing any association between other drugs pregnant women take, such as aspirin, and the disorders. Olsen, in a brief reply, said the researchers planned to look at those drugs in future studies.

Weinstein forwarded the email to the company’s consumer medical safety division.

“Recall that we have ruled out the possibility of conducting a database study of our own because other existing databases would be underpowered to detect the same effect that the Danish study found, due to the lack of a large enough database,” she wrote in her email.

She asked whether the question for the company was whether there was a willingness to support Olsen “up to a reasonable amount with the provision that the investigator has final say on publication but the sponsor can review and comment on the manuscript prior to publication.”

Weinstein told Berlin that there were several options, including funding Olsen. They could also try to replicate Olsen’s study, conducted in Denmark, with Norwegian data on prescriptions and diagnoses, and by including other drugs.

“The outcome of such a study is unknown. We could end up confirming the Danish findings, for example,” she said.

She later drafted a note to Olsen that initially said Johnson & Johnson would be happy to work with him on additional research. Berlin in response proposed revisions. But Weinstein then told Berlin she was having second thoughts on engaging Olsen.

“Do we really need to stick our neck out and make this offer? Would we be surprised if the new analyses confirmed or did not confirm the existing studies?” she asked.

Berlin responded: “I’m trying to think through what we would do based on what we learn. I don’t have a huge problem abandoning this, if that’s where we end up after talking.”

Weinstein, who is now retired, could not be reached for comment. Berlin, now a professor at Rutgers University, did not respond to a request for comment.

Internal slides from around the time of the emails, obtained by The Epoch Times, stated that the company declined to pursue a collaboration with Danish researchers in part because executives were unsure about “the value to pregnant consumers,” who might be presented with “difficult options” such as “don’t use anything if you have a fever.”

Lawyer: ‘Irresponsible’

The emails came to light in lawsuits brought by women who say they should have been warned by Johnson & Johnson and retailers about the risks of neurodevelopmental problems associated with acetaminophen products.

The women have pointed to papers such as a 2020 prospective study in Canada that found an increased risk of ADHD among children born to women who used acetaminophen while pregnant.

“Drugmakers have a legal and ethical obligation to continually investigate the safety of their products. Yet despite recognizing the heavy weight of the scientific evidence years ago, Kenvue scientists made a deliberate decision not to ’stick our necks’ out to commission further research,” Ashley Keller, senior partner at law firm Keller Postman, which is representing the women in multiple cases, told The Epoch Times via email.

“The reason for that irresponsible choice is obvious. The company didn’t study the question for fear they would not like the answer. But pregnant moms deserve answers, and protecting a multi-billion dollar drug franchise is no excuse for ostrich-like corporate misbehavior.”

The emails were first reported by the Daily Caller and drew the attention of the White House and the Department of Health and Human Services.

Government officials recently warned the public that Tylenol use during pregnancy may be associated with autism in children born to the mothers.

‘We Have Been Looking at It’

Weinstein said in a 2023 deposition that it would be unethical to run a randomized, controlled trial seeking to figure out whether there was a link between in utero acetaminophen exposure and neurodevelopmental problems. It would be good to do “more tightly controlled” observational studies, or research utilizing sources such as medical claims databases, she said.

Weinstein also said that Johnson & Johnson had been tracking literature on the topic for nearly a decade, including epidemiological, safety, and preclinical studies.

She said that the company has “essentially done a systematic review,” or an analysis of strong studies on the matter.

She said the company would be publishing the review but did not know when.

Internal slides from 2018, obtained by The Epoch Times, described the results of a company analysis of 16 studies regarding prenatal exposure to acetaminophen and neurodevelopmental disorders.

The slides stated that individual observational studies “show a somewhat consistent association of increased occurrence of neurodevelopmental outcomes with prenatal exposure,” with strengths including some studies being prospective. Limitations included researchers measuring children at different ages, such as 18 months and seven years.

A 2022 internal Kenvue slide deck stated that 12 studies featuring clinically diagnosed endpoints were analyzed. The studies were “too limited in methodological or analytical design to draw conclusions regarding a causal relationship between prenatal acetaminophen use and adverse neurodevelopmental outcomes in children,” and therefore, if acetaminophen is used as directed, it is safe to use during pregnancy, the slide deck stated.

A review coauthored by Kenvue scientists and funded by Kenvue was published by Critical Reviews in Toxicology in February.

The authors of the review said that they reviewed preclinical studies and determined that the data “demonstrates no consistent evidence of adverse effects following developmental exposure to acetaminophen at therapeutic and/or non-systemically toxic doses on the structure and function of the nervous system, including neuroanatomical, neurotransmission, and behavioral endpoints.”

Labeling Change

Other documents labeled the effort to study the matter Project Cocoon, stated that Weinstein was involved, and listed as the mission of the project “to protect acetaminophen.”

One slide stated, “Courage: We don’t need a label change.”

The label of Tylenol has long stated, “If pregnant or breastfeeding, ask a health professional before use.”

In 2017, one document showed that the company changed its internal label to add, “This product should not be used during pregnancy or lactation unless the potential benefit of treatment to the mother outweighs the possible risks to the developing fetus/nursing infant.”

When asked in a 2023 deposition about whether the change means doctors could give patients guidance on potential risks of developmental outcomes, Leslie Shur, Johnson & Johnson’s director of pharmacovigilance, replied, “and the risk of, in the case of fever … of not treating.”

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said on Sept. 22 that it has started the process to change the label for Tylenol and other acetaminophen-containing products “to reflect evidence suggesting that the use of acetaminophen by pregnant women may be associated with an increased risk of neurological conditions such as autism and ADHD in children.”

Regulators said a causal relationship has not been established and noted that acetaminophen is the only over-the-counter drug available to treat fevers in pregnancy.

The FDA in 2014 had decided to take no regulatory action, following advice from reviewers. In 2016, FDA reviewers said, “With growing evidence for adverse neurodevelopmental outcomes being associated with in utero [acetaminophen] exposure, even in the absence of proof of a causal relationship, it would be appropriate for FDA to bring this issue to the attention of consumers and health care providers through one of the communication avenues available to the agency.”

Reviewers in 2019 said data indicated that prenatal acetaminophen exposure “is not necessary completely benign for the fetus” and “it would be desirable for the agency to communicate this message to healthcare providers and pregnant women, considering that acetaminophen is so commonly used by women during their pregnancies, and that many perceive acetaminophen to be risk-free.”

Court Cases

U.S. District Judge Denise Cote dismissed the federal multidistrict litigation over acetaminophen in 2024, after finding that experts offered by the plaintiffs misrepresented the results of studies.

The case was appealed and is set for oral argument before an appeals court on Nov. 17, after being delayed from a date in early October.

Keller and other attorneys in a recent filing alerted the court to the government’s move to update Tylenol’s label. The filing noted that government officials quoted one of the plaintiffs’ witnesses, Dr. Andrea Baccarelli, dean of the faculty at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, who said that, in his expert opinion, “there is a causal relationship” between prenatal acetaminophen exposure and neurodevelopmental disorders.

“Expert opinion that is sound enough to persuade every Senate-confirmed federal scientist easily clears Rule 702(d)’s bar,” or the rule governing expert witnesses in litigation, they wrote. Attorneys for Kenvue told the court that statements from the government and Baccarelli “confirm that the existing evidence does not support a causal relationship.”

In California, a state judge in May turned away a similar case, concluding that evidence on the link between prenatal acetaminophen exposure and autism is “profoundly uncertain and conflicting.”

The judge also wrote that slides and other internal documents showed “candid internal discussion,” which she described as “positive corporate behavior.”

An appeal in that case is ongoing.

Bloomberg reports that China Mineral Resources Group has temporarily halted purchases of all dollar-denominated seaborne iron ore cargoes from BHP Group vessels.

The trade suspension follows failed talks between CMRG (the world’s largest iron ore buyer) and BHP (the world’s largest listed miner) and builds on earlier restrictions targeting BHP’s Jimblebar blend fines. CMRG has now barred mills from taking Jimblebar cargoes at ports or purchasing them in the yuan spot market, forcing some steelmakers to source ore elsewhere. 

“Would China have done this a decade ago, when it heavily depended on imports? No way,” Panmure Liberum analyst Tom Price wrote in a note, adding that the difference now is that Chinese steel demand is sluggish and new supplies from the giant Simandou mine in Guinea are near.

The suspension highlights Beijing’s efforts to exert greater influence in global iron ore markets, shifting power away from global miners (BHP, Rio Tinto, Vale) toward China’s steel industry.

Goldman analyst James McGeoch spoke with traders to gather more insight into the situation.

Here’s what McGeoch told clients earlier:

Press is reporting that “China” halts purchases of “ALL” BHP iron ore ore, traders tell me they see two agendas:

1. Commercial term improvement (the majority of the friction, like 90%) and

2. a desire to shift some sales to RMB denomination (10%).

Brief background:  I wrote the below last Monday  “last week it was reported (19 Sept) that Chinas CMRG halting some BHP product link, at the time we understood it related to Jimblebar fines, these acct for c.14mt annually. There is 2mt reported at port, which would be the number to focus on right now. Traders tell me BHP won’t sign a discounted supply deal, so the games begin as CMRG gets bigger. RIO as I understand recently signed a deal floating price deal to year end. Until Simandou comes on and the mkt rebalances those tonnes everyone is nervous and China smells that fear, CMRG is doing exactly what people believe it was designed for….”… This may be a misplaced comment, however its always been my personal impression that BHP’s MOU is to be the best producer,  let the mkt clear at the most efficient price. Its black and white. CMRG is introducing shades of grey and BHP are holding the line….

Making sense of the iron ore market, McGeoch published a few charts for clients:

Iron Ore does tend to trend higher into year-end

Singapore iron ore futures rose about 1% to $104 a ton. BHP shares in London fell 2%. 

Last month, BHP reported annual profit that slid to the lowest level in half a decade, as dismal demand from China’s sluggish economic recovery weighed on iron ore prices and prompted a cut in capital and exploration spending. 

Related:

• Iron Ore Hits Six-Month Highs Despite UBS Calling It “Least Discussed” With Investors

• Iron Ore Price Volatility Now At 2008 Low

• Iron Ore Soars As China Pledges Crackdown On Industrial Overcapacity

. . . 

Via eugyppius.com,

On September 25th 2018, US President Donald Trump delivered his first speech before the United Nations General Assembly.

At one point he warned Germany about its plans for Nord Stream 2, which he said would make the country “totally dependent on Russian energy if it does not immediately change course”. German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas (SPD) and Permanent UN Representative Christoph Heusgen laughed in his face.

These clowns thought they had it all figured out back then. We would build a lot of wind turbines and install a lot of photovoltaic panels and make up the difference with Russian natural gas. It would be cheap, it would keep the climatists happy and also too a lot of special interests could profit.

Nobody is laughing anymore.

The entire strategy has collapsed, because without Russian gas the energy transition is hopeless. It can never succeed, it will never go anywhere and the only question is how long we will persist in destroying our economy for no reason. The highly intelligent, extremely mature and deeply far-sighted adults of the German political establishment are facing a slow-burning economic and political emergency, and they are utterly unprepared even to acknowledge it, let alone do anything about it.

This would be why, when Trump returned last week to deliver a second speech to the UN General Assembly, nobody laughed. With an eye towards Europe, Trump said that “Your countries are going to hell”, before deploring particularly what he called the “double-tailed monster” of mass migration and climatism. He said all of this while standing directly in front of the President of the General Assembly, who just happens to be the arch-Green environmentalist bimbo Annalena Baerbock.

I have transcribed his most important statements on climatism and the energy transition:

Energy is another area where the United States is now thriving like never before.

We’re getting rid of the falsely named renewables. By the way, they’re a joke. They don’t work. They’re too expensive. They’re not strong enough to fire up the plants that you need to make your country great. The wind doesn’t blow. Those big windmills are so pathetic and so bad, so expensive to operate, and they have to be rebuilt all the time and they start to rust and rot. Most expensive energy ever conceived. … You’re supposed to make money with energy, not lose money. You lose money, the governments have to subsidise. You can’t put them out without massive subsidies. And most of them are built in China, and I give China a lot of credit. They build them, but they’re very few wind farms. So why is it that they build them and they send them all over the world, but they barely use them? You know what? They use coal, they use gas, they use almost anything, but they don’t like wind, but they sure as hell like selling the windmills.

In 1982, the executive director of the United Nations Environmental Programme predicted that by the year 2000, climate change would cause a global catastrophe. He said that it will be irreversible as any nuclear holocaust would be. This is what they said at the United Nations. What happened? Here we are. Another UN official stated in 1989 that within a decade, entire nations could be wiped off the map by global warming. Not happening. All of these predictions made by the United Nations and many others, often for bad reasons, were wrong. They were made by stupid people. …

I’m telling you that if you don’t get away from the green energy scam, your country is going to fail. … I’m the President of the United States, but I worry about Europe. I love Europe. I love the people of Europe, and I hate to see it being devastated by energy and immigration. This double-tailed monster destroys everything in its wake, and they cannot let that happen any longer. You’re doing it because you want to be nice, you want to be politically correct and you’re destroying your heritage.

They must take control strongly and immediately of the unmitigated immigration disaster and the fake energy catastrophe before it’s too late. The carbon footprint is a hoax made up by people with evil intentions and they’re heading down a path of total destruction. …

Europe reduced its own carbon footprint by 37%. Think of that. Congratulations Europe. Great job. You cost yourself a lot of jobs, a lot of factories closed, but you reduced the carbon footprint by 37%. However, for all of that sacrifice and much more, it’s been totally wiped out and then some by a global increase of 54%, much of it coming from China and other countries that are thriving around China, which now produces more CO2 than all the other developed nations in the world. So all of these countries are working so hard on the carbon footprint, which is nonsense by the way. It’s nonsense. …

The whole thing is crazy. The primary effect of these brutal green energy policies has not been to help the environment, but to redistribute manufacturing and industrial activity from developed countries that follow the insane rules that are put down, to polluting countries that break the rules and are making a fortune. They’re making a fortune.

European electricity bills are now four to five times more expensive than those in China, and two to three times higher than the United States. … The entire globalist concept of asking successful, industrialised nations to inflict pain on themselves and radically disrupt their entire societies must be rejected immediately, and it must be immediate.

A day after these devastating remarks, Wopke Hoekstra, the European Union Climate Commissioner, betook himself to the New York Times to assure progressive Americans that “the world isn’t slowing on climate”. That is only true on a very superficial level. Ideologically, climatism is finished. All of its grassroots support is gone, and it persists only because of institutional inertia, as a complex array of technocratic grifting operations. The German Greens have bled almost all their support beyond their terminally committed base of clueless urbanite dead-enders. They are on the verge of disappearing from the state parliaments of East Germany entirely, and in the West they’re also taking a powerful beating. The voters in Nordrhein-Westfalen have just sent most of the Green mayors of major municipalities packing. Across the Federal Republic, Leftist energy has moved to the hardcore socialists of Die Linke.

Four days after Trump’s speech, the German climatoids of Fridays for Future held a nationwide ‘climate strike’ of the kind they once conducted every Friday afternoon in 2019. These events used to bring hundreds of thousands of naïve university women, befuddled bureaucratic Gutmenschen and school children to the streets. Now the protests are only nominally a strike; they had to move their big event to a Saturday, because nobody wants to waste working hours on this shit anymore.

At Apollo News, Marius Marx writes of ‘The Quiet Downfall of the Climate Movement‘:

The images from the weekend speak volumes: In Berlin, even according to the organisers’ own figures, only 4,300 people turned up, while the police counted just 3,000.

In Hamburg, there were around 2,500 demonstrators, in Munich around 1,500. And in Potsdam, where celebrities Luisa Neubauer and climate researcher Stefan Rahmstorf were present, there were only a few hundred. Nationwide, fewer than 50,000 people took part. … By way of comparison, in 2019, when the demonstrations initiated by Greta Thunberg took place every Friday, hundreds of thousands took to the streets in Berlin alone.

What was once a widely courted and naïvely idealised mass movement with broad social impact… has become a small splinter group ideologically walled up in its own worldview: the climate movement has long since shrunk to a core of radical dreamers. Even Greta Thunberg, the former climate icon, has moved on to newer, more current concerns.

The slogans on the banners alone show how far the movement has strayed from its original cause.

That’s Luisa Neubauer herself, marching with a smattering of leftist activists in Potsdam. The banner behind her reads: “For climate justice. Do you get it?” Since the war in Gaza we hear a lot more about “climate justice” than we do about “climate change”, because the climatoids are no longer leading the eternal Leftist protest. Anticolonialism is more important; CO2 only matters to the extent it represents a Western injustice imposed upon brown people somewhere. In fact, on the Left, climatism is taking a back seat to all kinds of other concerns. This would be why our climatoids have pasted their logo onto the trans flag and why they have to march alongside activists carrying banners complaining about ‘the rich’ and taking potshots at ‘Nazis’. The whole movement is devolving into the standard Leftoid grievance gruel.

The weekend has shown that Fridays for Future has lost its mass base, and that climate as a political issue has lost its mobilising potential. While the general public is discussing a return to climate-friendly nuclear power, the home heating policies, electricity prices and mobility, the German climate movement is marching through city centres with placards whose messages clearly have nothing to do with the everyday lives of most citizens. For this reason, and because some of the 2019 protesters have probably come to understand that Fridays for Future may say climate protection, but in reality means degrowth, deindustrialisation and deliberate destruction of prosperity, the movement is now on the verge of insignificance.

Climatism always had two parts.

• The first part was a hysterical narrative about how industrialisation is destroying the atmosphere via carbon emissions, how the coral reefs are dying, the polar ice caps are melting and the oceans are rising.

• The second part was the energy transition – a package of ominous policies that together spell deindustrialisation for any nation that dares to implement them seriously, but that have no hope of ameliorating even the slightest bit of the panic narrative from the first part.

If you were to reduce this nonsense to a Venn diagram, you would see two non-intersecting circles. The activist Left hyped the hysteria panic narrative of the first part while supporting the catastrophically destructive policies of the second part (if occasionally complaining that these policies did not go far enough). The technocracy hyped the catastrophically destructive policies of the second part and supported (if often tacitly) the hysteria of the first part.

This deviously incoherent ideological system is entirely broken. The activists are pushing a whole myriad of grievances about global injustice that have very little to do with technocratic policies, and the technocrats continue to deindustrialise Germany in the absence of any ideological support or justification from the Left – and sometimes even in opposition to a traditional and resurging Leftist anti-elitism. (Few ideologies, after all, embody elite concerns as clearly and with as little regard for the economically disadvantaged as climatism.) It is the beginning of a general climatist disintegration.

While the Eurocrats presently pursuing climatism are well-insulated from shifts in the popular mood, they cannot ignore these indefinitely. The policies at the centre of climatism of course have a deeper purpose that is largely distinct from the panic narrative sold by the activists. If the Eurocrats continue to pursue these policies, they will have to come up with new stories about why the economic destruction they are wreaking is necessary. Thus far, they show no interest in that kind of ideological invention. The stories they are telling right now are of an entirely different flavour. They are about foreign threats and domestic wreckers, about the grave dangers posed by the Russians abroad and the fascists at home. In retrospect, I think climatism was an ideology crafted for a world bereft of concrete villains – a world where industrial processes and gases were the only conceivable enemies. We’re not in that world anymore, and that is why climatism is finished.

Exxon plans to cut about 2,000 jobs worldwide as part of its years-long effort to streamline operations and consolidate smaller offices into regional hubs, according to Bloomberg.

The reductions, equal to roughly 3%–4% of its workforce, were announced in a memo to employees from CEO Darren Woods on Tuesday.

Bloomberg writes that Exxon received attention Monday when Imperial Oil Ltd. — nearly 70% owned by Exxon — disclosed it would reduce its workforce by 20%. Combined, the moves highlight a sweeping restructuring effort that Woods has pursued since 2019 to simplify Exxon’s sprawling global footprint, a legacy of its merger with Mobil two decades ago.

Woods said the company is making “tough decisions” to sharpen competitiveness. “The changes we’ve announced today will further strengthen our advantages and grow the gap with our competition, helping to keep us in the lead for decades to come,” he told employees.

The company declined to comment beyond the memo, but noted that its new hubs will focus on growth areas like oil in Guyana, liquefied natural gas along the Gulf Coast, and global trading. As part of the shift, employees in Brussels and Leatherhead, U.K., are being moved to central London to align with the firm’s trading operations.

When Woods took over in 2017, Exxon had nine semi-independent units that created layers of bureaucracy and duplication. Now the company operates with three divisions — production, refining, and low-carbon — supported by shared services such as IT and engineering. That structure has already helped Exxon cut $13.5 billion in annual costs, more than all other international oil majors combined. The company, which employed 61,000 people at the end of 2024, expects to boost savings another 30% by 2030.

Exxon is hardly alone in trimming staff. As we have noted over the past few months…Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and BP have also each announced thousands of job cuts in recent months as crude prices faltered under pressure from OPEC and its allies.

Authored by Thomas Brooke via Remix News,

Torelló, a town in the Osona region of Catalonia, is facing growing insecurity after a leaked recording revealed local police officers acknowledging they are unable to control violent migrant groups gathering in certain areas, and have been laughed at and forced to retreat from dispatch calls.

The audio, verified by authorities and reported by ElCaso.cat, captures an officer telling a resident that police cannot act against around 25 rioters in Sant Josep Street because only two officers were on duty.

“They are laughing at us,” the officer said in the call. “They are throwing us out. If we don’t want to get hurt, we too [must leave],” he added, describing how officers had to withdraw after being met with hostility.

Residents say the area around the old Vitri lot has become a hotspot for antisocial behavior, fights, and intimidation.

The call has been widely circulated by neighbors, who see it as a symbol of law enforcement’s loss of control. Many have organized a rally outside the town hall for Monday evening to demand action from local authorities.

Security Councillor Elisabet Viñas, from the Republican Left, confirmed the recording’s authenticity and acknowledged the seriousness of the situation. In a private message to residents, she wrote: “The Local Police are going there, they are there and have arrested them many times. The laws are not strong enough, nor justice fast enough to get rid of these filthy people.”

She added that the problem stemmed largely from young men, “mostly foreigners from the Maghreb,” who had occupied several nearby apartments and were allegedly involved in burglaries and shop break-ins.

Municipal sources admitted the issue extended beyond Torelló. “We need stronger laws, faster justice, and more police on the streets,” one official said, noting that insecurity was a growing concern across the country. The town council has announced the creation of five new positions in the Local Police to strengthen its force.

Catalonia has become the epicenter of violent crime in Spain, with foreigners vastly overrepresented in serious offenses, according to interior ministry crime stats published in January.

The stats portal for 2023 showed that all 10 Spanish cities with the highest rates of violent robberies and intimidation are located in Catalonia, with Barcelona leading the list.

Remix News previously reported in November last year on statistics highlighting the extent of foreign overrepresentation in Catalan prisons. At the time, 50.48 percent of the inmate population comprised non-Spaniards.

Read more here…

“Russia always supports and welcomes any efforts by President Trump aimed at ending this ongoing tragedy,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Tuesday, offering Moscow’s first reaction to the White House’s newly unveiled 20-point plan for Gaza peace.

“Of course, we want this plan to be implemented and for it to help bring events in the Middle East to a peaceful conclusion,” Peskov added, though without commenting on specifics.

He only mentioned that Russia was not part of the US ceasefire plan or consulted, though key Arab nations did, led by Qatar and Egypt, which dubbed the initiative “sincere”. Even the Palestinian Authority has welcomed Trump’s “sincere and determined efforts.”

However, many points remain very controversial, especially a ‘Peace Board’ headed by Trump himself, which will oversee the disarming of Hamas. Additionally, the president made clear that if the Palestinian militant group doesn’t agree to the plan, then Israel will have the full backing of the United States to “finish the job”.

The plan actually calls for a partial Israeli military withdrawal within the Strip and the handing over of all remaining Israeli hostages, living and deceased.

Trump ended Monday’s presentation of the plan alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by warning that Hamas must accept the plan or face the consequences. He has since warned the group has “three or four days” to respond.

Trump declared that both Israeli and Arab leaders had accepted the proposal and “we’re just waiting for Hamas.” Though in reality it doesn’t look like Hamas or the Palestinians had any real part to play in hashing out the conditions of the plan.

He even stipulated that at this late point, there’s “not much” room for negotiations and that: “Hamas is either going to be doing it or not, and if it’s not, it’s going to be a very sad end.”

Meanwhile, on Tuesday…

• TRUMP: SO DISAPPOINTED IN PRESIDENT PUTIN
• TRUMP: PUTIN SHOULD’VE HAD THAT WAR DONE IN A WEEK

Other world leaders, including Indian prime minister Narendra Modi, welcomed the Gaza plan on Monday. He posted on X that it “provides a viable pathway to long term and sustainable peace, security and development for the Palestinian and Israeli people, as also for the larger West Asian region.”

He added: “We hope that all concerned will come together behind President Trump’s initiative and support this effort to end conflict and secure peace.”

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

Rose Docherty is what they call a criminal recidivist in the United Kingdom. The 75-year-old woman has been arrested for a second time for the same fiendish act: offering to speak to women considering an abortion. She was arrested  outside the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow for carrying a placard which stated “Coercion is a crime, here to talk, only if you want.” Fortunately, she and her sign were quickly seized by the local police to protect the public.

Free speech literally does not have a prayer in the United Kingdom. We previously discussed the case of Isabel Vaughan-Spruce, who was arrested for standing near an abortion clinic while silently praying. Police asked what she was doing standing at the location and when she said that she was praying in her head, they arrested her.

How Docherty ended up in the hoosegow in Glasgow is a chilling tale of how censorship can consume a nation.

The Abortion Services (Safe Access Zones) Act came into force last September. The architect of the law, Scottish Green MSP Gillian Mackay, denounced protests of abortions as “totally unacceptable abuse and obstruction” outside hospitals. So it is now a crime to behave in ways that could influence the decisions of women and staff to access services within the buffer zones.

In other words, it is a crime to exercise free speech. In this case, the “unacceptable abuse” was offering to speak with other women about abortion.

The United Kingdom shows how limiting speech can create an insatiable appetite for greater and greater speech controls. I discuss the UK as a cautionary tale for the United States in my book, The Indispensable Right.

A man was convicted for sending a tweet while drunk referring to dead soldiers. Another was arrested for an anti-police t-shirt. Another was arrested for calling the Irish boyfriend of his ex-girlfriend a “leprechaun.” Yet another was arrested for singing “Kung Fu Fighting.” A teenager was arrested for protesting outside of a Scientology center with a sign calling the religion a “cult.”

British censorship now extends to not just silent prayers but toxic thoughts.

Last year, Nicholas Brock, 52, was convicted of a thought crime in Maidenhead, Berkshire. The neo-Nazi was given a four-year sentence for what the court called his “toxic ideology” based on the contents of the home he shared with his mother in Maidenhead, Berkshire.

While most of us find Brock’s views repellent and hateful, they were confined to his head and his room. Yet, Judge Peter Lodder QC dismissed free speech or free thought concerns with a truly Orwellian statement: “I do not sentence you for your political views, but the extremity of those views informs the assessment of dangerousness.”

Lodder lambasted Brock for holding Nazi and other hateful values:

“[i]t is clear that you are a right-wing extremist, your enthusiasm for this repulsive and toxic ideology is demonstrated by the graphic and racist iconography which you have studied and appeared to share with others…”

Even though Lodder agreed that the defendant was older, had limited mobility, and “there was no evidence of disseminating to others,” he still sent him to prison for holding extremist views.

After the sentencing Detective Chief Superintendent Kath Barnes, Head of Counter Terrorism Policing South East (CTPSE), warned others that he was going to prison because  he “showed a clear right-wing ideology with the evidence seized from his possessions during the investigation….We are committed to tackling all forms of toxic ideology which has the potential to threaten public safety and security.”

The idea of cracking down on “toxic ideologies” is of course nothing new in countries like China and Iran. However, the anti-free speech movement in Europe has succeeded in destroying the foundations for free speech in the West. the European Union is now one of the most hostile, anti-free speech organizations in the world.

As the anti-free speech movement grows in this country, citizens need to look at Europe for where this path would take us. Americans are appearing before the EU and speaking at European conferences in support of such measures. Anti-free speech views and books are all the rage in academia. It is a dangerous conceit to believe that what has occurred in Europe cannot occur here.

Just ask Rose Docherty.