The cost of attending America’s most prestigious universities continues to soar.

For the 2024–25 academic year, the total annual cost of the top 10 national universities now ranges from $77,500 to $98,300, according to data compiled from U.S. News & World Report and College Board.

In the graphic below, Visual Capitalist’s Bruno Venditti compares tuition costs for the top 10 U.S. universities with national averages for both private and public four-year colleges.

Elite Education Comes at a Premium

The University of Chicago tops the list, with tuition reaching $71,300. Other elite schools like Duke, Yale, and Stanford also hover near the $70,000 mark. Even Harvard, despite having one of the largest endowments in the world, lists tuition at $59,300.

The Gap Between Elite and Average Colleges

Tuition at the top 10 U.S. universities ranges from $59,000 to $71,000 per year, averaging about 50% higher than the $43,400 charged by the typical private nonprofit four-year college. By comparison, public out-of-state universities average around $29,200, while in-state students pay just $11,600.

In fact, the average college tuition costs have climbed a remarkable 748% since 1963, after adjusting for inflation. This steady rise reflects expanding facilities, faculty salaries, and student services, but it also deepens accessibility challenges.

Fleeing Tuition Hikes

Facing soaring tuition costs, more American students are looking overseas for affordable alternatives.

According to the Institute of International Education’s Open Doors report, the number of Americans earning degrees abroad rose from about 50,000 in 2019 to over 90,000 in 2024.

If you enjoyed today’s post, check out The Extra Earnings of a Bachelor’s Degree by State on Voronoi, the new app from Visual Capitalist.

Authored by Wendi Strauch Mahoney via AmericanThinker.com,

Texas attorney general Ken Paxton has asked the Texas State Securities Board (TSSB) to review what he says is evidence that entities tied to the East Plano Islamic Center (EPIC)’s EPIC City project violated state and federal securities laws — and to refer the matter back so he can file suit.  

Paxton called the alleged misconduct “flagrant,” arguing that state law requires a TSSB referral before his office can bring a securities action.

“After a thorough investigation, it has become clear that the developers behind EPIC City flagrantly and undeniably violated the law,” said Attorney General Paxton.

“The bad actors behind this illegal scheme must be held accountable for ignoring state and federal regulations. In accordance with state law, the TSSB should review our findings and refer this matter to me for further legal action.

EPIC City is a 402-acre master-planned community near Josephine, Texas, spanning Collin and Hunt Counties.  Materials describe housing (single-family, townhomes, multifamily), a mosque, schools, parks, senior living, and retail.  The project vehicle, Community Capital Partners, LP (CCP), has been described in EPIC’s promotions as created by EPIC, with EPIC as the beneficiary of project profits.

In March, Paxton opened a consumer-protection probe and served a Civil Investigative Demand (CID) on CCP, the vehicle formed to develop EPIC City.  The March 25, 2025 press release highlighted EPIC’s own promotional statements that CCP was “created by EPIC” and that EPIC is the “only beneficiary of profits” from the project.

Two days later, on March 27, Gov. Greg Abbott announced that the TSSB would investigate EPIC and “affiliated entities for potential failures to comply with applicable state and federal securities requirements, including protections against fraud.”  In the same press release, Abbott said he sent a letter dated March 26 requesting EPIC “cease and desist funeral service operations.”  He also said that “a dozen state agencies” were investigating “serious legal issues” concerning the potential illegal activities involving the alleged purchase of Texas property by “foreign adversaries … taking place at EPIC.”

On April 14, 2025, Paxton expanded his investigation, demanding communications from Plano, Richardson, Wylie, and Josephine due to alleged local support for the project.  The requests sought emails and records referencing EPIC, EPIC City, and CCP.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) also asked the Department of Justice to open a federal civil rights probe into EPIC City, as highlighted in his April 11, 2025 letter to the assistant attorney general for the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division.  In the letter and subsequent press release, Cornyn expressed concern over the potential for religious discrimination that might “violate the constitutional rights of Jewish and Christian Texans, by preventing them from living in this new community and discriminating against them within the community.”  Cornyn continued,

Religious-based discrimination is a constitutional violation as well as a federal rights violation.  Appropriate steps should be taken to ensure that this community does not run afoul of these obligations.  It may also be appropriate for an investigation to explore whether the proponents of the proposed development are abiding by existing federal and state prohibitions on the enforcement of Sharia law.

The DOJ closed its investigation with no charges, after developers affirmed that the community would be inclusive and marketed under the Fair Housing Act.  However, the decision did not touch the state’s ongoing consumer protection and securities inquiries.

Why Paxton’s inquiry?

CCP marketed $80,000 shares to accredited investors with “each share purchased [guaranteeing] one lot in EPIC City” with a stated 15% discount, an arrangement that is central to Paxton’s investigation.

Under the Texas Securities Act and the Supreme Court’s Howey test, a “security” includes an investment contract, money invested in a common enterprise with an expectation of return that depends on the managerial efforts of others.  Promising that a discounted $80,000 “share” secures a right to buy a developed lot later signals an expected economic gain that hinges on the developer entitling land, installing infrastructure, and delivering lots.  The arrangement fulfills the investment-contract definition used by Texas and federal law.

Anti-fraud rules would also apply.  If EPIC/CCP’s “share” is treated as an investment contract, it is a security under the Texas Securities Act (TSA).  Once the “share for future lot right + discount” is characterized as a security, certain rules apply.  Before any security is offered or sold in Texas, it must be registered or notice-filed — or the sale must qualify for an exemption — and the issuer must provide truthful, non-misleading disclosures.  Even if an exemption applies, material misstatements or omissions about permitting status, ownership, timelines, lot deliverability, or the use of investor funds can trigger anti-fraud liability.  Paxton’s Oct. 14 statement characterizes the alleged conduct as securities law violations.

The share pitch also heightens the expectation of profit: a guaranteed right to buy a finished lot at a fixed discount functions as a return mechanism that depends on CCP/EPIC obtaining approvals, building infrastructure, and delivering lots.  Investor upside (the discount and potential appreciation) stems from the promoter’s efforts, not the investor’s — classic Howey elements recognized by Texas courts.

Finally, context matters: As of mid-2025, public reporting shows no issued construction permits, raising materiality concerns for any marketing that implies near-term delivery of “developed lots.”  That gap between promotional claims and on-the-ground progress is precisely what securities regulators scrutinize under anti-fraud provisions.

Therefore, the specific potential material flashpoints in EPIC’s marketing/investor pitch are related to

• Deliverability/Timing: Saying a share guarantees the right to a developed lot implies that the developer can obtain approvals, install infrastructure, and deliver lots on a timeline.  If permits/plat approvals weren’t in hand (or were far off), that’s material.

• Economics: A 15% discount and advertised per-lot price ranges anchor investor return expectations.  If cost inputs, financing, or timelines were speculative or changed materially, failing to update buyers can be an omission.

• Use of Proceeds/Structure: Who actually benefits (e.g., the relationship between EPIC and CCP), how funds are escrowed/spent, and contingencies if lots are delayed or never delivered — all are core disclosure items in a securities offering.  If the marketing glossed over these or suggested protections that didn’t exist, that’s classic anti-fraud territory.

Amy “Mek” Mekelburg — an activist and founder and editor-in-chief of RAIR Foundation USA — argues that EPIC City will become a “sharia-controlled enclave.”  

She says she has tracked the project since its inception and highlighted a promotional EPIC City video on X in which Muslim leaders describe the community as the “epicenter of Islam in America.”  According to Mekelburg, her pinned post of that video drew over 7 million views before X removed it.  She points to EPIC’s 76,000-square-foot Islamic complex — “one of the largest in Texas” — as evidence of growing influence and calls EPIC City “a massive, sharia-adherent residential and commercial enclave … a deliberate blueprint for a self-contained Islamic community, built around sharia principles and insulated from public oversight.”

According to the Dallas News, “Yasir Quadhi, resident scholar at EPIC,” said “the only laws the community will enforce will be Texas and federal ones.  They are not seeking to impose religion on anyone.”

Separately, House Bill 4211 — ceremonially signed by Gov. Greg Abbott in September 2025 — “creates a framework for regulating entity-owned residential arrangements,” addressing ownership structures cited in EPIC City and EPIC Ranches, according to Texas Scorecard.  

Abbott said the measure is intended to prevent using religion “as a form of segregation,” framing the debate around both religious freedom and the right to contract, and pledging to ensure that Texas law prevents “discriminatory compounds” from being built.

A Justice Department official recently instructed attorneys to launch an investigation into billionaire George Soros and his son Alex’s influential Open Society Foundations, a move that sent shockwaves across the leftwing NGO-Democrat complex.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly accused George and Alex Soros, both major Democratic donors, of funding violent protests and engaging in unlawful activities, while the president has even suggested the possibility of charges under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). These allegations stem from a report by the Capital Research Center, a conservative research organization, which claims Soros-backed groups like the environmental Sunrise Movement have connections to terrorism.

Unsurprisingly, the Open Society Foundations and the Sunrise Movement have strongly denied these allegations.

“We condemn terrorism and we do not fund terrorism, period,” Open Society Foundations President Binaifer Nowrojee said in a statement. In a separate statement, a Sunrise Movement spox claimed that the climate alarmist organization is committed only to nonviolent activism.

The administration is simultaneously pursuing IRS reforms that would strengthen the agency’s ability to conduct criminal inquiries into progressive organizations. Open Society Foundations is projected to distribute $1.4 billion in grants this year to various causes, including Planned Parenthood’s advocacy arm and climate change initiatives in Africa, the Journal reports. The far-left Soros organization told the Murdoch-owned newspaper that it has not received direct contact from the IRS or the Department of Justice but is preparing legal briefs in anticipation of potential inquiries.

Despite the prospect of facing accountability, Open Society Foundations refuses to back away from supporting its far-left causes. “We won’t be intimidated into silence,” Nowrojee told the Journal. “One of the playbooks of authoritarianism is to close a space through threats and to try and chill speech.”

George Soros recently made a $10 million donation to Democrat efforts to redraw California’s congressional map, marking the largest single contribution aimed at countering Republican redistricting initiatives.

Before the current investigation began, Soros had already been supporting organizations that actively oppose President Trump’s policies.

The Open Society Action Fund provided a $3 million grant in 2023 to Indivisible, an organization managing data and communications for the “No Kings” protests, Fox News reports. Since 2017, Soros’s foundations have awarded Indivisible a total of $7.61 million. In 2017, Indivisible also received $350,000 from Tides Advocacy, part of the Tides Network, which has previously faced scrutiny for its connections to controversial campus protests.

As ZeroHedge reported, Soros money is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to far-left groups’ opposition to Trump:

The nation is waking up to the fact that dark-money NGO networks, including the Arabella Network, Soros Network, Gates Foundation, Ford Foundation, Tides Foundation, Rockefeller Network, Singham Network, and many others, are funneling millions of dollars into what investigative researchers Peter Schweizer and Seamus Bruner of the Government Accountability Institute call “Riot, Inc.” – the permanent protest industrial complex and the engine behind “No Kings 2.0” partners and organizers. These protests are far from organic; this movement is manufactured, coordinated, and entirely artificial.

Authored by Matt Taibbi via Racket News,

Last November 8th, on the Saturday after Election Day, one of the more bizarre post-scripts to Donald Trump’s re-election emerged in the form of a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) decision to sideline one official accused of telling FEMA workers to “avoid homes advertising Trump” while canvassing for victims of Hurricane Milton in Florida.

The Daily Wire spoke to multiple FEMA officials who produced screenshots of entries like “Trump sign, no contact per leadership”:

The most painful confirmation, however, came from then-FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell, who testified after the election that the episode was an “isolated incident,” as well as “unacceptable” and “heartbreaking,” suggesting the problem was limited to one eventually-terminated Disaster Survivor Assistance crew leader named Marn’i Washington, adding: “I do not believe that this employee’s actions are indicative of any widespread cultural problems at FEMA.”

Washington didn’t take the CYA maneuver lying down. She made a series of aggressive media appearances, saying repeatedly “my orders come from my superior” from above when instructing subordinates to avoid homes that made some FEMA workers “uncomfortable” by featuring Trump paraphernalia:

Marn’i Washington, the ex-FEMA employee accused of telling her team not to go to Florida homes with Trump yard signs, says the order to avoid certain houses was from her direct superior based on previous team encounters.

More: https://t.co/2z6kdlrOLN pic.twitter.com/xxEqmiSG2E

— NewsNation (@NewsNation) November 19, 2024

The Democrats generally maintained that decisions to skip over houses featuring Trump signs or signs about guns were legit and safety-based. Republicans blasted FEMA workers for comparing Trump voters to “vicious dogs” and suggested instructions like “Per leadership no stop Trump flag,” and “Trump sign, no contact per leadership” were indicative of a wider problem.

A year later, the Privacy Office of the Department of Homeland Security is releasing a review of that episode, the broader issue of using disaster relief work to collect political intelligence on voters, and the potentially withholding of benefits from some with the wrong beliefs. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the new administration found more than just one “isolated incident,” describing violations of the Privacy Act of 1974, which with a few exceptions bars collection of information about First Amendment-protected speech, like political signage. Most tellingly, though, DHS investigators found — in a near-exact parallel to trends in pro-censorship programs — that a lot of the political controversy surrounding FEMA aid grew out of the vague way in which the agency’s Disaster Survivor Assistance Field Operations Guide was written.

The Field Operations Guide instructed FEMA workers to “Remove yourself from the situation if you feel threatened” when dealing with “hostile” individuals, the only problem being, as the new report notes: “The Disaster Survivor Assistance Field Operations Guide does not define the term ‘hostile.’”

“The way the guide was written, FEMA employees had leeway to skip outreach to a house if its signs made them feel uncomfortable,” one Washington-based First Amendment lawyer put it last week. “So it’s basically the same concept of a harm or distress standard we’re seeing in Europe with speech issues, where the emotional response of the observer is what matters legally, as opposed to a concrete rule.”

The DHS report doesn’t describe a huge number of instances, but does list examples of FEMA workers from various relief efforts taking down political information well before the incident that actually made the news. FEMA’s actions were “not limited to the Hurricane Milton disaster relief efforts in 2024,” and in fact, “FEMA impermissibly collected prohibited information at least dating back to the Hurricane Ida disaster in September 2021.”

Some examples cited: October, 2021: “Homeowner had sign stated… this is Trump country.” September, 2021: “A lot of political flags, posters, etc. ‘Fuck Joe Biden,’ ‘MAGA 2024,’ ‘Joe Biden Sucks’ ‘Trump 2024’ We do not recommend anyone visiting this location.” November 2024: ‘There was a political flyer so I didn’t leave a FEMA brochure.” Neither Criswell nor Washington responded to requests for comment.

The DHS report lists several recommendations for changing procedures to make both political information-gathering and subjective aid delivery harder, but the problem the report identifies suggests a broader, hairier problem. Federal aid workers empowered to withhold relief based on what they consider “hostile” signage in either direction creates an opening for a federalized version of the old “walking-around-money” operation pioneered by ward-heelers in city elections, in which petty cash made it into the hands of one party’s potential voters. The number of incidents in the new DHS report don’t come close to suggesting an election-altering phenomenon (the most controversial instances came last year, but still totaled under 100 episodes), but as one official who worked on the report noted, the phenomenon still “really escalated in the last administration.”

The DC-based lawyer said the mere fact that FEMA aid can be politicized should worry members of both parties enough to do something about it. “People hate the government enough as it is. If it’s known that disaster relief can be politicized and nobody fixes the problem, imagine how mad people will be one or two cycles from now.”

A federal appeals court ruled on Monday that President Donald Trump can send National Guard troops to Portland, Oregon while a lawsuit against the action works its way through lower courts.

A three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit voted 2-1 to stay an Oct. 4 order by US District Judge Karin J. Immergut of Oregon – who blocked Trump’s move to deploy members of the Oregon National Guard to the city. 

“Defendants are likely to succeed on the merits of their appeal, and … other stay factors weigh in their favor. We grant Defendants’ motion for a stay pending appeal,” wrote the panel – which consists of Circuit Judges Ryan Nelson, Bridget Bade, and Susan Graber, who heard oral arguments in San Francisco on Oct. 9. 

In her dissent, Graber got very dramatic, begging the full 9th Circuit to reverse the decision to “retain faith in our judicial system for just a little longer.” 

👀 An SOS flare from the panel’s dissenting judge, Susan Graber, pleading with her colleagues to reverse the decision and for the public to “retain faith in our judicial system for just a little longer. https://t.co/PlQT9e8vGc pic.twitter.com/mgBiFUWgWF

— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) October 20, 2025

Immergut had issued a temporary restraining order directing the Trump administration not to deploy federalized National Guard troops to Portland – a right that any president may exercise on an emergency basis if the right conditions are met. 

As the Epoch Times notes further, Immergut noted that Trump said in a Truth Social post on Sept. 27 that he was sending troops “to protect War ravaged Portland, and any of our ICE Facilities under siege from attack by Antifa, and other domestic terrorists.”

The judge held Trump was not legally entitled to federalize the Oregon National Guard and that the situation in Portland was not as dire as the federal government claimed.

On Oct. 8, the same Ninth Circuit panel restored Trump’s control over Oregon National Guard troops but said he may not deploy them for the time being. The panel granted what lawyers call an administrative stay of Immergut’s order, which gives the circuit court judges more time to consider the federal government’s emergency appeal.

Authored by James Howard Kunstler,

“Zelensky has been given a Russian ultimatum via Trump. Accept Russia terms or face total destruction.”

– SiriusReport on “X”

Well, “No Kings” came and went. Inflatable animal costumes did a brisk business for one week. The old Boomers got a social space to act out their nostalgic re-visit to the Age of Aquarius. They resisted. . . something. (Mainly authority of any kind, a retarded adolescent fantasy.) And now it’s back to Rachel Maddow for further instructions. The Republic slogs on, albeit with a shut-down government.

Did you forget about Ukraine? Yes, a war is still going on there and it’s a weeping lesion on Western Civ, possibly leading to fatal sepsis. US neocons set the stage in 2014 with the Maidan color revolution as a wedge to wreck and then loot Russia. Then, for eight years, Ukraine harassed the Donbas with US-supplied missiles and artillery. Russia had enough of that in 2022 and ventured in to stop it. For “Joe Biden,” the war was a nice smokescreen to cover his long-running grift operations in Ukraine.

The Euro club stupidly came along for the ride.

It was all a tragic and feckless waste.

Mr. Trump wants to stop it, but Western Civ as a whole is in such a state of florid strategic disorder that he’s had to pretend the US supports Ukraine. Mr. Zelensky could not possibly carry on this mischief without US weapons and loads of US taxpayer cash. Still, the Russians advance implacably on-the-ground. They are going to “win” this war eventually — meaning, the US and Europe will lose — and everybody knows it.

It would be nice if France, Germany, and the UK were still stable, thriving, rational nations, but they are not. They have entered an arc of collapse, largely due to their own stupendously bad choices, and their leadership is insane. Macron, Merz, Starmer. . . these are the Three Stooges of our time, and Europe’s collapse has degenerated to morbid, masochistic slapstick as their factories shutter and the Jihadis go about raping their wives and daughters. Do you think that’s not happening?

Mr. Trump surely realizes he has to cut the US loose from this evil clown-show. That they are our NATO allies complicates things, yet, really, the Euro gang is impotent and NATO has become an irrelevant anachronism. They have no effective military mojo. Their economies are imploding. They have surrendered their culture to a savage cult. Their populations are demoralized, emasculated, in thrall to the menopausal viragos in their councils and ministries. They know full-well that Ukraine lies in Russia’s sphere-of-influence — a centuries-long reality — and that it is none of their business. Yet, Macron, Merz, and Starmer keep pushing the fantasy that Russia seeks to invade them, and so they must strike at Russia before that happens . . . all pure delusion.

You can suppose that Mr. Putin wants a negotiated peace rather than continuing the long grind on-the-ground, with all its casualties and expenditures. Such a negotiated peace really amounts to the US ceasing to support Zelensky’s war effort. Of course, such is the insanity of US political life, that many in our government pretend that we have a stake in Ukraine, and must retain some control of it.

Mr. Trump must know this is insane and is against the interests of the USA. He knows that Ukraine is historically in Russia’s sphere of influence — as Venezuela is in ours — and that the best outcome of this mess would be for Ukraine to return to its prior status as a harmless frontier between Russia and western Europe — as it had been since 1945 — looking to its humble business of growing wheat for export.

We do not need Ukraine to be anybody’s problem, despite the insane yearnings of the neocons, the weapons manufacturers, and the reckless globalists of the EU, to make it everyone’s problem.

Hence, Mr. Trump’s dilemma: how to dissociate from this losing proposition and come out looking like a winner, saving Europe from becoming a smoldering ashtray, stanching the flow of US taxpayers’ money and US-made weapons into this black hole, and forging friendly relations with a Russia that is decades beyond being our ideological enemy? America and Russia’s interests are geopolitically aligned, though no one in the arena is willing to admit it. Russia has much more to worry about with China right at Siberia’s doorstep than with the USA, just as the USA has much more to worry about with China as it weaponizes A-I, moves into outer space, and casts a covetous eye on the resources of the USA, Australia, Africa, and its next-door-neighbor, Russia.

These are the matters that Presidents Trump and Putin must be touching on in those long, two-and-a-half-hour phone confabs they hold. Meanwhile, Mr. Trump must put on a vaudeville show for his US adversaries about maybe giving tomahawk missiles to Ukraine. . . no, maybe not doing that. . . and the rest of the song and dance to make it appear that we are kinda-sorta still on Ukraine’s side when the truth is we are not so much at all.

And so, the two presidents head for Budapest where — if the intel spooks of Euroland don’t try to bump them off there — they might come to the necessary agreement that the war will end because the US no longer supports it, not even the pretense of supporting it. President Viktor Orban of Hungary, who Mr. Trump respects, will be on hand for moral support. Expect some tough-talking mummery from DJT, just to throw the MSNBC lunatics off-balance. Rogue idiots such as Senators Blumenthal and Schiff will fume that “Trump lost Ukraine,” but the 50-plus percent of Americans who are not-insane will understand what actually happened.

President Trump has put Colombia on notice, and will hit the South American nation with new tariffs. He has further charged President Gustavo Petro with being an “illegal drug leader,“ saying the US will also halt all aid to the country.

Trump asserted Sunday on social media that drug trafficking “has become the biggest business in Colombia” and said Petro “does nothing to stop it” despite years of US funding. “AS OF TODAY, THESE PAYMENTS… WILL NO LONGER BE MADE,” the US president wrote.

All of this came after earlier on Sunday President Trump confirmed that US forces previously “destroyed a very large drug-carrying submarine” off the coast of Venezuela – the sixth such strike on alleged narco-vessels in recent weeks. 

In follow-up while speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, Trump officially confirmed what Senator Lindsey Graham had hinted at earlier, saying further details about the tariffs would be released Monday.

Senator Graham said on X that he’d a “very good conversation” with Trump, during which the president vowed to “hit Colombia not only by going after its drug traffickers but also where it hurts most – in its economy.”

Soon after Trump while speaking to reporters decried Colombia as being “out of control” and that “they have the worst president they’ve ever had – a lunatic with serious mental problems.”

Colombia has alleged that among the latest strikes in the south Caribbean was a fishing vessel carrying a Colombian national who was severely injured. But there’s been some confusion over precisely which strike it was.

But speaking to reporters, Trump said “This submarine had one purpose – to transport massive quantities of drugs.” But it appears Colombia is making the allegation about a prior attack, and not the submarine incident.

He added: “They’re producing enormous amounts of cocaine, shipping it worldwide, and destroying countless families.”

Q: The Columbian president says that the US killed an innocent Columbia fisherman

TRUMP: He said that when we shot down a submarine that they were just fishing. This was a submarine that was meant for one reason — to carry massive amounts of drugs

Q: He’s talking about a… pic.twitter.com/FW4O92le14

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 20, 2025

And yet…

The two survivors of an American military strike on a suspected drug-carrying vessel in the Caribbean will be sent to Ecuador and Colombia, their home countries, U.S. President Donald Trump said Saturday.

The military rescued the pair after striking a submersible vessel Thursday, in what was at least the sixth such attack since early September.

Seeking to prove the US narrative of things, Trump and the Pentagon’s public affairs team both shared a video showing US air assets destroying the “drug-carrying submarine.” However, no details were provided regarding the type of aircraft or weapons used in the strike. Some analysts have questioned the legality of such ‘executions’ on the high seas, without warning or attempt to intercept.

Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times,

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said the United States has entered a new “industrial revolution” powered by artificial intelligence, crediting President Donald Trump’s tariff policies and manufacturing agenda for enabling the first-ever production of the company’s most advanced Blackwell AI chips on American soil.

While speaking from a semiconductor fabrication plant in Phoenix, Arizona, on Oct. 17, and later during an interview with Fox News, Huang said that Nvidia and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) have jointly reached volume production of U.S.-made Blackwell wafers—an achievement he called “a historic moment” in both technology and industrial policy.

“It’s the very first time in recent American history that the single most important chip is being manufactured here in the United States by the most advanced fab, by TSMC, here in the United States,” Huang said at the event.

“This is the vision of President Trump of reindustrialization—to bring back manufacturing to America, to create jobs, of course, but also, this is the single most vital manufacturing industry and the most important technology industry in the world.”

The milestone was marked in a ceremony at the Arizona fab, where Huang joined TSMC executives to sign the first U.S.-produced Blackwell wafer—a symbolic gesture meant to highlight the reemergence of cutting-edge semiconductor production in the United States.

In his Fox News interview, Huang credited Trump’s tariffs and energy policies with speeding up the decision to manufacture advanced chips in the United States rather than keeping production overseas.

“This last week was a historic week,” he said on “The Sunday Briefing.”

“We manufactured the most advanced AI chips in the world, in the most advanced fab in the world, here in America for the first time. All of this started with President Trump wanting to reindustrialize the United States. His tariffs were a pressing agent in making this possible at the speed that we’re doing, and now just shortly after less than a year, we’re now manufacturing the most advanced chips for AI here in the United States. This is just the beginning of it.”

Trump has made tariffs the centerpiece of a broader industrial strategy aimed at reshaping global supply chains and reducing reliance on foreign manufacturing. Since returning to the White House, he has imposed a range of duties on imports—from steel and aluminum to vehicles and electronics—while noting that companies can avoid tariffs entirely by building in the United States.

Trump administration officials have said the goal of the tariffs is not only to raise federal revenue but also to force corporate investment back onto U.S. soil—a stance that has drawn both manufacturing commitments and legal challenges.

Huang estimated that within several years, roughly $500 billion worth of AI supercomputing systems could be built and installed in the United States, including data centers, chip fabs, and advanced packaging plants. He said the scale of construction would also generate demand for skilled trades such as electricians, welders, and precision technicians.

With his remarks, Huang joins other business leaders who have recently endorsed Trump’s tariff approach as a catalyst for reshoring. Whirlpool CEO Marc Bitzer, for example, said recently that tariffs helped justify a $300 million expansion of its Ohio manufacturing plants, calling the policies essential to a “level playing field.”

“Any investment is a bet for the future,” Bitzer said. “Our bet is that these tariff policies stay.”

Meanwhile, Trump’s trade program faces a pivotal test at the U.S. Supreme Court, which is set to hear arguments next month on whether the administration exceeded its authority in imposing certain tariffs under emergency powers.

Trump has said that overturning the tariffs would jeopardize national security and undermine U.S. leverage abroad, saying during an Oct. 19 interview, “If they took away tariffs, then they’ve taken away our national security,” adding that an unfavorable ruling could mean the United States will struggle “for years.”

Update (1507ET):

Fast forward to late in the U.S. cash session, and Amazon Web Services (AWS) is still experiencing “degraded” service in its US-East-1 (Northern Virginia) region, resulting in disruptions across a number of apps and websites today.

But forget the disruptions seen on Snapchat, Facebook, Fortnite, and many other websites today. We want to focus on the potential for delays in Amazon package deliveries. 

For instance, several packages we ordered for the research desk early in the European session were just delayed, as we received this notification from Amazon via email:

“We’re encountering a delay in delivering your order. We’ll send a confirmation as soon as it ships and communicate the expected delivery date. We know this delivery is important, and we apologize for the inconvenience.” 

Next. We clicked on the “track package” button for each package, but a “Sorry, something went wrong on our end” page appeared.

Now packages? Are all those warehouse robots running on AWS fine?

*   *   * 

Update (0615ET):

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has largely restored operations after a major disruption in its US-East-1 (Northern Virginia) region earlier this morning that affected numerous apps and websites relying on the service.

Root Cause Identified:

AWS engineers traced the issue to a DNS resolution problem affecting the DynamoDB API endpoint in the US-East-1 region. The failure also disrupted other AWS services and global features dependent on that region, including IAM updates and DynamoDB Global Tables.

Timeline of Recovery:

• 2:01 AM PDT: Engineers identified the DNS issue and began applying fixes.

• 2:22 AM PDT: Early signs of recovery appeared after initial mitigations, though many requests were still failing.

• 2:27 AM PDT: AWS reported significant progress, with most requests beginning to succeed.

• 3:03 AM PDT: AWS confirmed broad recovery across most affected services, including global systems relying on US-East-1, though teams continue working toward full resolution.

*   *   * 

A massive internet outage is being reported at the start of the new workweek. The problem appears to be originating from Amazon Web Services (AWS), which provides infrastructure that powers much of the modern internet.

AWS’ Service Health Dashboard shows “operational issues” in its US-East-1 region (Northern Virginia), one of its largest data centers.

What’s happening:

• Several AWS services, including DynamoDB and others, are experiencing slow performance (high latency) or failures (high error rates).

Impact:

• Apps and websites that rely on AWS may be loading slowly, timing out, or not working at all.

• Users may be unable to create or update support cases through AWS’ help system.

• Widespread slowdowns and outages are being reported across major platforms that depend on Amazon’s cloud, including Snapchat, Roblox, Amazon Alexa, Fortnite, Ring, Robinhood, Venmo, Lyft, and many others.

There’s no official statement yet on what sparked the outage at AWS’ Virginia data centers.

Developing.

By Rabobank

The Dow Jones, NASDAQ and S&P500 closed around half a percentage point higher on Friday following comments by Donald Trump to Fox News that elevated tariffs on China are not “sustainable”. Markets seem to be interpreting this line as the latest incidence of TACO (Trump Always Chickens Out) and bidding up risk (except Bitcoin) as a result. Gold prices dipped from record highs, yields on 10-year Treasuries fell 3.5bps and the DXY index strengthened to 98.43

Unfortunately, Trump didn’t quite clarify who the tariffs were unsustainable for, and neglected to mention that other features of the US economic relationship with China are not sustainable either. Large and growing trade imbalances and Chinese power over critical supply chains are cases in point. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent pointed to these last week when he accused China of pointing “a bazooka at the supply chains and the industrial base of the entire free world.” Saying “we’re not going to have it.” Thems don’t sound like TACO words to me.

Happily, for markets, Bessent DID say that there is a good chance that the additional 100% tariff on China slated to come into effect on November 1st won’t actually happen, but he framed this as a decision that would ultimately depend on the outcome of an upcoming meeting between Trump and Xi Jinping later this month. Effectively, this should be read as a statement that the ball is in China’s court.

If Beijing engages on rebalancing its economy towards domestic consumption and walks back restrictions on the export of critical minerals, the tariffs won’t happen (this might be called the ‘XACO trade’). If Beijing doesn’t engage, well… Bessent also just warned that national policy won’t be directed by the price action of the S&P500 – he doesn’t care about your stock portfolio.

The United States is hardly standing still on addressing its own weaknesses when it comes to supply chains. US port fees on Chinese-owned and Chinese-built vessels took effect last week, and the Australian PM Albanese will be meeting with President Trump today with a menu of offerings to help solve US vulnerabilities regarding rare earths.

Albanese himself will be walking something of a geopolitical tightrope as he seeks to offend China (Australia’s #1 trading partner) as little as possible while also securing US investment in rare earths mining and processing to break China’s monopoly, US commitment to the China-oriented AUKUS defence pact and a sweetheart deal on tariffs (perhaps emulating the UK’s arrangements for steel and aluminium), all while resisting Scott Bessent’s suggestion of last week that the world should “decouple” from China over rare earths. Securing US subsidies for investment in foreign commodity production is likely to be a tall ask. Might Trump seek to extract a 3.5% of GDP defence spending commitment in return? Would Albo agree? What will Beijing say if he does?

Needless to say, the US continues to make waves geopolitically. This is particularly the case regarding the revamped Monroe Doctrine in South America. Trump recently disclosed that the CIA has been active in Venezuela while holding out the possibility of land strikes. The FT yesterday reported that Trump’s goal has now shifted from countering drug trafficking to toppling the Maduro regime, who happens to preside over the world’s largest proven oil reserves alongside deposits of gold, diamonds and coltan (used for capacitors, aerospace applications, electric vehicles and 5G infrastructure).

Additionally, Trump has recently tied commitments to provide financial bailouts and US Dollar swaplines to Argentina to Javier Milei’s fortunes at upcoming midterm elections. “If he wins, we’re staying with him. If he doesn’t win, we’re gone.” He has also suspended aid payments to Colombia, accusing the country’s left-wing President of being a “drug dealer”. Bolivia, meanwhile, looks set to close the book on 20 years of socialist government to elect a right-wing hardliner in what US Secretary of State Rubio described as “one of the more promising developments” in Latin America.

Clearly, the US is directing traffic in its own backyard. The ‘Western Hemisphere’ is seen as the US’s exclusive domain, and other Great Powers are not invited. For evidence of this think the tariff treatment of Brazil after cozying up to China, the bolstering of US naval supremacy across two oceans by taking back the Panama Canal, and the joking-but-not-really offers to make Canada the 51st state and to buy Greenland to freeze China and Russia out of Arctic shipping and resources (to whit, the US is now collaborating with Finland to build a new fleet of icebreakers). Expect all of this to feature in the updated National Defense Strategy set to be published soon.

Additionally, the US has been racking up wins in the Middle East and denting the ambitions of Russia and China to exert influence in central Asia – a geography that virtually every Great Power since Alexander the Great has understood to be vitally important. The Gaza peace is holding, despite wobbles over the weekend, and Iran has been cowed (for now). Oil continues to be priced in Dollars and the Israeli strike on Qatar seems to have sufficiently put the wind up other regional players to convince them to play ball with US foreign policy goals. Saudi Arabia is reportedly in talks for a new defense pact with the USA that is likely to be signed next month, the Abraham Accords are suddenly back in play and hints of trade détente with India might put the IMEEC corridor back on the horizon as a challenger to China’s One Belt One Road initiative.

So, geopolitically the cards still look to be falling the way of the United States in many respects but the huge structural imbalances on trade remain. Before we get too carried away with buying the dip on the latest hopes of TACO perhaps it is worth remembering that the advocates of TACO theory are mostly the same people who told us that universal tariffs would never happen, yet here we are. To predict what is likely to be the direction of travel on trade there is only one indicator you need to watch, and that is the US goods trade balance.