Authored by Autumn Spredemann via The Epoch Times,

Artificial intelligence-powered harvesters, drones, and precision farming systems are quickly entering the mainstream of American agriculture. At its core, the technology promises efficiency and sustainability and carries a potential solution to a decades-old farming problem: the need for physical labor.

As the capabilities of robotics evolve, many jobs that once required human hands are being delegated to machines. Some artificial intelligence (AI) developers working on integrating this technology into America’s farms say early data support the possibility of a major farm labor force reduction.

The American Farm Bureau Federation estimated 17 percent of all U.S. agricultural labor in fiscal year 2024 comprised temporary migrant workers brought in under the H-2A visa program.

There are also millions of illegal immigrant workers, who, according to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) made up 42 percent of farm workers from 2020 to 2022.

Roman Rylko, chief technology officer  of Pynest, said his company has worked with vegetable growers in the Midwest to deploy AI systems.

“We built the onboard model that lets an autonomous weeder separate spinach seedlings from pigweed in real time. A single rig now clears a 50-acre block in about eight hours. Before, that job meant a crew of 10 walking the rows for two days,” he told The Epoch Times.

Rylko’s firm works with growers to implement machine-learning models into field-deployable robotics.

“Autonomous tractors won’t kill field labor; they’ll move it up the stack, from stoop work to sensor maintenance and fleet orchestration,” he said.

“Our growers cut seasonal hand-weeding hours by roughly 70 percent, yet hired two techs to keep cameras clean, retrain the model on new cultivars and swap battery packs.”

Migrant farmworkers harvest lettuce in Brawley, Calif., on Dec. 10, 2024. U.S. agriculture has long relied on migrant labor, but advances in robotics and AI could significantly reduce the farm workforce. Sandy Huffaker/AFP via Getty Images

Rylko cited data from a recent AI-powered machine trial.

“Our last trial logged 1.6 million weeds pulled per day—equivalent to 12 workers—at 32 percent lower total cost per acre,” Rylko said.

“The grower’s biggest surprise wasn’t speed, it was consistency. Robots don’t call in sick during peak weed flush.”

Among the producers paving the way for AI in the fields is Wish Farms, a Florida-based berry grower that has been experimenting with robotic harvesters in response to persistent labor shortages.

Wish Farms grows strawberries, one of the most labor-intensive commercial row crops. In collaboration with Harvest CROO Robotics, Wish Farms has test-piloted an all-in-one crop solution with an AI-powered machine.

Joe McGee, the CEO of Harvest CROO Robotics, told The Epoch Times that strawberries are an ideal place for AI to step into the farm labor scene.

“Strawberries need to be picked every three days. It’s one of the most dense labor crops you could pick,” he said.

This is where automated crop management can offer what McGee called a “pick to pack” solution.

“The company completed its first commercial runs of fully autonomous strawberry harvesting earlier this year and in the 2024–2025 Florida season,” McGee said.

“Our harvester, robotics system, and AI have been autonomously harvesting strawberries in production fields, and we’ve shipped revenue-generating berries.”

Roughly the size of a shipping container, the AI-powered, camera-guided machine McGee described crawls between rows of berries, its robotic arms rapidly identifying and yanking the delicate produce for weighing and packing. Normally, this work could take a stooped labor force days to complete, depending on the weather, heat index, and amount of daylight hours available.

It takes about 16 hours for the AI harvester to complete the same work. The machine can perform the equivalent work of 25 human laborers, according to McGee.

An attendee watches the smart farming Doosan Robotics M1013 (L) robot demonstrate its capabilities at CES 2022 at the Las Vegas Convention Center on Jan. 6, 2022. The M1013 can measure the sweetness of fruit and harvest them without bruising. It can also be used for seeding, watering, planting, and pesticide spraying. Ethan Miller/Getty Images

The AI-powered harvester also does more than just pick strawberries. It performs the complete sequence of tasks from transitioning between rows to scanning, identifying, and picking ripe berries. They are then sanitized and chilled to prepare for immediate packaging.

This is a more critical part of the process than most realize. If a strawberry is picked, weighed, and packaged, but not up to grade for retail selling, it will get rejected. This can cost a producer a lot of money. Three percent of a crop can be lost in packaging alone, while retail distribution accounts for another 18 percent of produce losses, according to the USDA.

“Food may be left unharvested in a field or not sold by a distributor for a variety of economic reasons, including price volatility, labor cost, lack of refrigeration infrastructure, consumer preferences, quality-based contracts, and various policies related to produce,” the USDA stated.

According to McGee, seasonal workers have monetary incentives to harvest the largest possible volume, so their judgment on quality isn’t always aligned with retail sale requirements. This is where AI-harvesters can step in and make a no-stakes decision based on programming.

McGee said after the initial cosmetic analysis, the strawberries go to the upper deck of the AI harvester, where it has to pass the weight test. If the product is underweight by retail standards, it won’t be packaged.

“The error rate of human pickers is around 10 percent, but with AI, we can get that down to zero,” McGee said.

Rylko and McGee aren’t the only ones who see a promising partnership between AI and agriculture. University studies and field tests are being conducted with AI robotics in North Carolina, Georgia, and Iowa for yield monitoring, weeding, pest control, and harvesting. All of these jobs currently require a substantial amount of manual labor.

A solar-powered Aigen Element autonomous AI robot demonstrates how it hammers down on targets at Bowles Farm in Los Banos, Calif., on June 26, 2025. The robot eliminates herbicide-resistant weeds with precise ground strikes, reducing chemical use and saving labor. Josh Edelson/AFP via Getty Images

“We’re living in very exciting times for AI and agriculture,” said Baskar Ganapathysubramanian, director of the AI Institute for Resilient Agriculture at Iowa State University.

“We’re going to see significant progress in the next decade.”

Meanwhile, heavy equipment manufacturers such as John Deere have also entered the AI farming race with fully autonomous tractors that can plow and plant without a driver in the cab.

Beyond picking and packing, a 2023 study published in AI & Society supports the position that AI may be able to resolve the long-standing issue of farm labor shortages. Last year, there were an estimated 2.4 million agricultural job openings in the United States, and 56 percent of farmers reported worker shortages.

Changing Seasons

For decades, the U.S. agricultural sector has depended heavily on migrant workers, particularly acquired through the H-2A visa program, which allows foreign workers to take temporary agricultural jobs. As more farms turn to AI for solutions, the long-term role of these seasonal workers is uncertain.

In a Baker Institute for Public Policy report, researchers found that foreign workers—legal and illegal—play a “disproportionate role in ensuring a reliable supply of food for American households.”

A recent Kaiser Family Foundation analysis found that 47 percent of all U.S. agricultural workers are illegal immigrants without proper work authorization, while 18 percent are noncitizens, with legal working status.

Around 400,000 certified H-2A workers arrive in the United States annually, according to the USDA.

Migrant farmworkers harvest spinach near Coachella, Calif., on Feb. 24, 2017. H-2A visa workers constituted about 17 percent of U.S. farm labor in fiscal 2024, according to American Farm Bureau Federation estimates. David McNew/AFP via Getty Images

But McGee has seen how even legal workers can be expensive, complicated, and unreliable for producers.

A farmer pays thousands of dollars to bring the seasonal workers in, transport and house them, then McGee said many simply “abscond” before or near the end of their work contract.

“So the issue is getting the people, the cost of the people, and the reliability of having them for the whole season,” he said.

Rylko said his company’s early testing supports the idea of a reduced need for human labor.

“Relative gains and the shift in labor profile are representative of what we’re seeing across several [AI-machine] deployments,” he said.

Nonetheless, it will take time and a lot of investment to meet the existing demand from American farms. Machine labor or otherwise.

Like all new technologies, AI-driven farm equipment comes with hefty upfront costs into the tens of thousands. This could deter smaller agricultural producers. Base prices for autonomous tractors are around $500,000, without including maintenance and electricity needs.

McGee said his company validated their AI-powered harvester this year, but is currently facing funding hurdles to reach the next stage because this emerging technology is still an “unstructured market.”

“Right now, we have one harvester, but the demand [from other farms] is 1,500. We have a grower in Florida that placed an order for 165 machines,” he said.

Investment in the AI-agriculture market was valued at just under $2 billion in 2023, according to Grand View Research, and it is expected to surge at a compound annual growth rate of more than 25 percent per year through 2030.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) reported the first human case of travel-associated New World screwworm in Maryland after a “patient” returned from El Salvador, according to Reuters, citing HHS spokesman Andrew G. Nixon. Details about the patient’s immigration status were not released, though it’s worth noting that Maryland is a far-left Democratic Party stronghold and a sanctuary state.

Screwworms have been moving north from Central America through Mexico since 2023, with a new case identified in July about 400 miles south of the U.S. border in Veracruz. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) response was to shut down cross-border activity of cattle ports of entry into the U.S. to mitigate the biosecurity threat.  

More details from the Reuters report:

• HHS reported the first human case of travel-associated New World screwworm in the U.S. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed the parasite on August 4 in a patient returning from El Salvador.

• Industry sources earlier told Reuters the patient had traveled from Guatemala, and Beef Alliance emails circulated this version to livestock stakeholders. HHS did not clarify the discrepancy.

• HHS says the risk to U.S. public health is very low. No U.S. animal cases have been reported this year.

For humans, screwworm infestations are survivable with treatment, but this is the first U.S. case that has sent alarm bells across public health officials and the cattle industry. Left untreated, these parasites can kill hosts, such as cattle, wildlife, and pets. 

Here is USDA’s response so far:

• Sterile fly facility: USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins recently announced plans for a new sterile fly facility in Texas (Moore Air Force Base), modeled on past eradication campaigns. The facility will take 2–3 years to build.

• Mexico is also building a $51 million sterile fly plant in the south. Currently, only one plant exists (Panama City), producing 100 million sterile flies weekly – but 500 million are needed to push infestations back to the Darien Gap.

USDA estimates that a Texas screwworm outbreak could devastate the cattle industry, inflicting $1.8 billion in losses from livestock deaths, labor, and treatment costs. The biothreat comes at a time when the nation’s cattle herd is the smallest in 70 years, beef prices are at record highs, and feedlot margins remain extremely tight.

A confluence of factors – including shrinking herds, droughts, tariffs – is pushing up beef prices at the supermarket to record levels… 

The good news:

• 12-Year Cattle Cycle Bottoms: Tyson CEO Predicts Rebuild Phase Beginning Next Year

USDA officially classifies screwworms as an “agricultural biosecurity threat,” and one has to wonder, given recent cases of Chinese nationals caught smuggling “agroterrorism” fungi into the country, whether these parasites could be weaponized as part of hybrid warfare by foreign adversaries.

Promises made… promises kept…

On Friday, President Trump warned that he would fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook who allegedly “falsified bank documents and property records to acquire more favorable loan terms” if she didn’t resign…

.@POTUS on Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook: “I’ll fire her if she doesn’t resign. What she did was bad, so I’ll fire her if she doesn’t resign.” pic.twitter.com/1vEv7k7ar8

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) August 22, 2025

She immediately played the victim card, claiming she “would not be bullied”.

But now that is moot as President Trump has fired her, effective immediately:

” I have determined that there is sufficient cause to remove you from your position…

…

The Federal Reserve has tremendous responsibility for setting interest rates and regulating reserve and member banks. The American people must be able to have full confidence in the honesty of the members entrusted with setting policy and overseeing the Federal Reserve.

In light of your deceitful and potentially criminal conduct in a financial matter, they cannot and I do not have such confidence in your integrity.

At a minimum, the conduct at issue exhibits the sort of gross negligence in financial transactions that calls into question your competence and trustworthiness as a financial regulator.”

Full letter below: 

Trump will now have a majority on the Fed Board…

If/when Cook leaves/is fired, Trump will have a majority on the Fed board pic.twitter.com/6Hxn8f2PPw

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) August 21, 2025

Trump was quick to make note of her dismissal on Truth Social:

Reminder, The Fed is not political… etc, etc…

Exactly 6 years later, Trump has an answer to Dudley’s op-ed https://t.co/sHwvmxAKhp

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) August 26, 2025

There is a silver lining for her…

The good news is Cook will soon be able to refinance at a much lower rate. https://t.co/5Coxyp8iDd

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) August 26, 2025

How long before Democrats decry this racist act and demand it be appealed all the way to SCOTUS?

Or will she skulk away sheepishly admitting she broke the law rather than face the discovery that Bill Pulte has already exposed?

There was a notable market reaction to this move with gold rallying as the dollar dropped and short-end bonds are bid (stocks lower)…

With rate-cut odds rising for Sept and more for December.

Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via American Greatness,

The answer was not Trump alone.

Indeed, irony abounds when Democrats resonate with the claims of the vestigial Never Trumpers that the MAGA movement “hijacked” the Republican Party.

In characteristic projectionist fashion, the left is simply falsely attributing to their opposition the very hijacking that hit the Democratic Party.

The Republicans are still the party of conservatism and traditionalism. But in the last decade, it adopted an expansionary middle-class agenda that has led to record party registration, its first popular presidential vote victory since 2004, and control of all three branches of government.

The MAGA emphases also have accomplished what prior “moderate” Republican presidents and presidential candidates had sought but largely failed to achieve: making inroads with minorities and youth and substituting class commonalities for racial chauvinism.

Thus, in 2024, 55 percent of Hispanic men and somewhere around 25 percent of black males voted for Trump—along with a +2 advantage for Trump among young men in general (18-29).

In contrast, Joe Biden left office with below 40 percent popularity in many polls. His replacement, 2024 Democratic nominee Kamala Harris, despite a substantial advantage in funding and overwhelmingly biased, favorable media coverage, lost both the popular and Electoral College vote.

Since the election, a variety of data points show a steady erosion in Democrat Party favorability (24 percent positive polling) and voter registration (for the first time in memory, Republicans are out-registering hemorrhaging Democrats in new voter affiliations).

They are also on the losing end of a 40/60 split among voters on most issues—especially the border, energy, crime, transgenderism, and foreign policy—a truth that even the legacy media cannot disguise.

The Democratic implosion does not necessarily mean they will not win back the House in the next election. Historically, it is difficult for even an unpopular out-party not to pick up lots of House and Senate seats in an administration’s first midterm. But if Democrats capture at least the House, the vote will not be for their party’s policies or politicians as much as a reflection of their ginned-up opposition to Trump, the messenger of a radical and controversial counterrevolutionary message.

The Democratic project is bleeding out because it either does not address what the middle class is worried about, or it offers no solution to popular anger—namely over inflation, the out-of-control DEI commissariat, illegal immigration, crime, high energy prices and tyrannical Green New Deal policies, steep interest rates, unaffordable housing costs, and anemic foreign policies.

Instead of winning on issues, the left resorts to melodramas that no one believes in anymore:

The planet is about to boil, requiring net-zero elimination of affordable fossil fuels!

Institutionalized DEI bias is necessary to make up for past and present “toxic” white supremacy/privilege/rage!

Illegal aliens are the oppressed who have a perfect right to enter and reside in the U.S. without legal permission!

The plight of a large and victimized transgender community is the new civil rights cause célèbre!

“Words matter” correctness seeks to coin strange vocabulary and usage—Latinx, “preferred pronouns,” “undocumented migrant,” “trigger warnings,” “safe spaces”—along with toppled statues, changed names, and a rebranded U.S. founded in 1619.

But while the public knows how the left/Democratic agenda is imploding, they are confused over why the Democratic Party is hellbent on such nihilist missions.

Why did Democrats become unrecognizable to the middle class, and who is responsible for their collective self-destruction?

There are four root causes of the wreckage of the Democrat Party.

Globalization

Globalization asymmetrically enriched the bicoastal, liberal elite—in big tech, international corporations, the media, academia, law, government, etc.—with new worldwide markets and audiences.

In contrast, muscular labor and resource extraction involved in assembly, manufacturing, farming, construction, mining, timber, oil, etc., were sometimes offshored, outsourced, or ossified due to “free” but not fair trade.

So Democrats went giddy at the millennium when both billionaires and affluent professionals—often from the new trillions of dollars in market capitalization in Silicon Valley and Wall Street—trended left-wing.

Who then needed the middle class when Democrats now had huge financial and political resources in government, foundations, NGOs, the media, and higher education to affect public opinion, change voting laws, and outspend Republicans?

So Democrats became a utopian elite cadre of the very wealthy who would patronize and take care of the subsidized poor, both as psychological penance to assuage their guilt over their own newfound global riches and to solidify poorer voters with expansionary entitlements.

Illegal Immigration

The left knew its issues were not winners, so they began at the millennium redefining “illegal immigration” as “legal immigration” or just “immigration” and even “migrant.” The result was that by 2025, 55 million residents and citizens of various statuses were not American-born—a record 16 percent of the U.S. population.

From 2021 to 2025, 10 to 12 million illegal aliens had been added to the pool of some 20 million existing resident illegal aliens. The left sought to mainstream these immigrants—from mostly poor countries in Latin America, Africa, and Asia—into Democratic constituents, either in the first or by the second generation.

The left’s appeal was twofold: both generous welfare and support subsidies, and a DEI message that as the supposed “non-white,” new immigrants became “victims” the second they set foot onto U.S. soil.

As the instantaneously oppressed, new immigrants had concocted grievances of “racism” against the majority culture—to be redressed by progressive-provided DEI/affirmative action in appointments, hiring, and admissions.

New mail-in and early ballot Covid-era rules were designed to end the audit and authentication of ballots and tailored to accommodate those who might vote without the bother of citizenship.

The new immigrants understood that Democrats gave them an instant pathway to the middle class through racial and ethnic preferences, after the Obama-era new concepts of “diversity.” It had redefined the old affirmative action black/white binary of 12/88 percentages into a huge, victimized class of 30 percent of the population, who were now portrayed as oppressed by the 70 percent majority and thus deserving of special treatment. Class and wealth no longer mattered and were thus replaced by superficial appearance and race, and gender.

Ironically, however, the Frankenstein monster of massive illegal immigration and DEI pandering proved fatal to the old liberal Dr. Frankenstein.

The new radical first and second generations—e.g., an AOC, an Ilhan Omar, a Zohran Mamdani—demanded from the party of their condescending fossilized benefactors (a Nancy Pelosi, a Chuck Schumer, the Clintons, etc.) radical redirections on the issues. Suddenly, there were venomous anti-Israeli and unapologetic pro-Hamas protests on campuses, as over 1 million foreign students swarmed into higher education.

DEI took on an overtly and radically racist tone as evidenced most recently by Joy Reid’s vile pseudo-scientific rants about “mediocre white men,” the sick racist prior mutterings of New Yorker writer Doreen St. Feliz about dirty white and plague-ridden people in history, or the past craziness of Sacramento State President Luke Wood and his half-educated agenda of “eliminating whiteness.”

The Rise of the Guilt-Ridden Professional

Globalization did not just launch. the Google creators, Jeff and Mackenzie Bezos, Mike Bloomberg, Reid Hoffman, Lisa Jobs, George Soros, Mark Zuckerberg, and a host of other billionaires, but also a secondary class of millions of wealthy and privileged bicoastal professional underlings. From La Jolla to Seattle and from New England to Washington, DC, these credentialed and titled experts saw themselves at the end of history.

As the new degreed aristocracy, no longer was their time and money needed to address adequate housing, fuel, food prices, transportation, or health care. Instead, they were freed to worry globally, especially about whether red-state hoi polloi’s ignorance might endanger their own beatific lives.

Thus were born radical climate change psychodramas, the transmogrification of civil rights into racial bias and prejudice, and radical cosmopolitanism that saw the EU, the UN, Davos, and all their appendages as enlightened models to nullify the global losers in the interior of America, who were now dubbed clingers, irredeemables, deplorables, chumps, dregs, and garbage.

Higher Education

Elite universities have become fabulously rich and globalized. The bicoastal elite prized gilded letters after their names—BA, MA, MBA, JD, MA, PhD, MD—from the ‘right’ places: the Ivy League, Stanford, Berkeley, or the tony four-year colleges like Amherst, Brown, Pomona, Williams, etc. Alumni gave liberally to elite campuses and advocated that others, like-minded but even richer, top their donations.

Over a million foreign students flocked to higher education, paying 110 percent tuition, room, and board premiums—without background audits. Student loans surged to $1.7 trillion, delighting universities that jacked up their charges accordingly. To suggest that even a small percentage of 300,000 Chinese students were actively engaged in espionage, or that 50-60,000 students from illiberal regimes in the Middle East were at the forefront of the new anti-Semitism, was considered “nativist,” “xenophobic,” or “racist.”

Universities with new multibillion-dollar endowments opened global campuses abroad, without worry over the anti-American or anti-liberal values of their overseas partners. They sought billions of dollars in foreign contributions.

Endowments soared to 30, 40, and 50 billion in the Ivy League and elite campuses. Administrators and their staff grew exponentially to rival the number of students, all to handle the new all-purpose university (“Center for…[fill in the blanks of the oppressed or climate change brand]) that was therapeutic, left-wing, and indoctrinating.

The goal was no longer impartial education but overt ideological bias. Unquestioned was the campus orthodoxy that the U.S. was hopelessly traditional and conservative, so left-wing higher education was not so much prejudicial but a needed “balance” to a clueless American public.

No longer were crackpot ideas of the faculty lounge—the world would boil over in a decade, biological men could compete against and dress with women, and the most affluent and privileged nonwhite immigrants were victimized and eligible for DEI preferences—just esoteric. Now they were mainstreamed into the policies of the Democratic Party, as well as the administrative state, from the Department of Education and DOJ to the Pentagon, FBI, and CIA.

Add it all up, and there is no more Democratic Party as America once knew it.

The Democrats abandoned the middle class because they saw it as a global loser and themselves as worldwide winners. They now had the institutions and the big money, along with the leverage of millions of high-paid coastal professionals in law, the media, the university, and the administrative state to win elections by outspending, out-broadcasting, and out-regulating their clueless opponents.

Only the Neanderthals worried about how to buy a small house. The real winners worried about what the latest fad was in natural kitchen counters, cabinets, and flooring. Only the deplorables fretted about electricity costs and gas prices rather than their far more important carbon footprint. Only the blinkered thought about crime, because they lacked the intelligence or savvy to live safely and securely in the right zip code.

The elite university became the farm team for the new elite. Its position papers, grant-funded “research,” and the latest “studies” would supposedly provide the expertise, the “authorities,” and the “experts” to provide the necessarily “correct” analysis of climate change, race, crime, immigration, and foreign policy.

Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were the last Democrats to go through the motions of appealing to the middle class. But in retirement, they both cashed in, went global, and became multimillionaires by selling their name and brand—and so joined the madness.

Federal regulators on Aug. 25 said they’ve suspended approval for a vaccine against chikungunya, a mosquito-borne virus.

Due to reports of serious adverse events following administration of the vaccine, the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER) “believes this vaccine is not safe and that continued administration to the public would pose a danger to health,” the FDA said in a statement.

France-based Valneva makes the vaccine, known as Ixchiq.

“As we determine potential next steps, and as the clear threat of chikungunya continues to escalate globally, Valneva remains fully committed to maintaining access to our vaccine as a global health tool for addressing and preventing outbreaks of this devastating illness,” Thomas Lingelbach, Valneva’s CEO, said in a statement.

Zachart Stieber reports for The Epoch Times that the FDA originally approved Ixchiq in 2023 to prevent disease caused by the chikungunya virus in adults deemed to have an increased risk of exposure. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2024 recommended the vaccine for people traveling to certain countries.

Health officials said in an alert in May that they were advising a pause in administering the vaccine to elderly adults due to reports that some of those vaccinated had been experiencing serious adverse events (SAEs), including neurologic and cardiac problems.

This included 38 SAE reports for 32 unique cases (7 U.S., 25 foreign), including 21 hospitalizations and three deaths.

After CBER Director Dr. Vinay Prasad resigned, the FDA, in early August, ended the recommended suspension, stating that an updated assessment of risks and benefits for Ixchiq showed the benefits still outweighed the risks for some people.

In the new announcement, regulators said that is no longer the case.

The latest risk-benefit assessment includes four new foreign reports that came to light since the FDA lifted the recommended pause, including a report of problems following vaccination in a 55-year-old male.

Prasad said in a memorandum dated Aug. 22 that of the 32 cases, five tested positive for the vaccine strain of the virus, making it nearly certain that the vaccine caused the problem.

“There are reasonable grounds to believe the risks of the vaccine outweigh its benefits, and that it poses a danger to health. Therefore, CBER is suspending approval,” Prasad said.

Chikungunya causes symptoms in most people who are infected with the virus, according to the CDC. Symptoms can include fever, joint pain, and inflammation.

Another vaccine against chikungunya, Vimkunya, is still available in the United States. The FDA approved it in April for people 12 years of age and older, and the CDC recommends it for people traveling to areas with chikungunya outbreaks as well as laboratory workers who could become exposed to the virus in their work.

Vimkunya utilizes a molecule resembling the chikungunya virus to trigger an immune response. Ixchiq contains a weakened form of the virus.

Shares of Valneva dipped by about 21 percent after the FDA’s suspension.

Valneva described the move as sudden. The company said that the SAEs recorded following vaccination featured symptoms consistent with those reported during clinical trials, and that the labels accurately list warnings and precautions.

The label had warned that Ixchiq could cause “serious, severe, or prolonged chikungunya-like illness,” citing trial data and reports following approval.

“Valneva is continuing to investigate these cases in detail and if warranted will pursue further steps in connection with FDA’s decision in accordance with applicable statutory procedures,” it said.

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

“I just feel that I have a wonderful opportunity.”

Those words of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson came in a recent interview, wherein the justice explained how she felt liberated after becoming a member of the Supreme Court “to tell people in my opinions how I feel about the issues. And that’s what I try to do.”

Jackson’s sense of liberation has increasingly become the subject of consternation on the court itself, as she unloads on her colleagues in strikingly strident opinions.

Most recently, Jackson went ballistic after her colleagues reversed another district court judge who issued a sweeping injunction barring the Trump Administration from canceling roughly $783 million in grants in the National Institutes of Health.

Again writing alone, Jackson unleashed a tongue-lashing on her colleagues, who she suggested were unethical, unthinking cutouts for Trump. She denounced her fellow justices, stating, “This is Calvinball jurisprudence with a twist. Calvinball has only one rule: There are no fixed rules. We seem to have two: that one, and this administration always wins.”

For some of us who have followed Jackson’s interestingly controversial tenure on the court, it was crushingly ironic. Although Jackson accused her colleagues of following a new rule that they must always rule with Trump, she herself is widely viewed as the very embodiment of the actual rule of the made-up game based on the comic strip of Calvin and Hobbes. In Jacksonian jurisprudence, it often seems like there are no fixed rules, only fixed outcomes. She then attacks her colleagues for a lack of integrity or empathy.

To quote Calvin, Jackson proves that “there’s no problem so awful that you can’t add some guilt to it and make it even worse.”

Jackson has attacked her colleagues in opinions, shattering traditions of civility and restraint. Her colleagues have clearly had enough.

She now regularly writes diatribes that neither of her fellow liberals — Justices Sonia Sotomayor or Elena Kagan — are willing to sign on to.

Indeed, she has raged against opinions that her liberal colleagues have joined.

Take Stanley v. City of Sanford. Justices Jackson and Neil Gorsuch took some fierce swings at each other in a case concerning a retired firefighter who wants to sue her former employer. The majority, including Kagan, rejected a ridiculous claim from a Florida firefighter who sued for discrimination for a position that she had neither held nor sought. The court ruled that the language of the statute clearly required plaintiffs to be “qualified” for a given position before they could claim to have been denied it due to discrimination. (Stanley has Parkinson’s disease and had taken a disability retirement at age 47 due to the progress of the disease.)

Jackson, however, was irate that Stanley could not sue for the denial of a position that she never sought, held, or was qualified to perform. Jackson accused the majority of once again showing how “pure textualists can easily disguise their own preferences as ‘textual’ inevitabilities.” It was not only deeply insulting, but perfectly bizarre, given that Kagan had joined in the majority opinion. Kagan is about as pure a textualist judge as she is a pure taxidermist.

Gorsuch called Jackson out for once again ignoring the text of federal laws in order to secure the result she preferred in a given case. In other words, Jackson was playing Calvinball with the law.

Jackson, undeterred, has continued these diatribes, with escalating and insulting rhetoric. In Trump v. CASA, the court sought to rein in district courts issuing sweeping injunctions over the Executive Branch. Jackson went ballistic in her dissent, which neither Sotomayor nor Kagan would join.

Jackson accused her colleagues of blindly drifting toward “a rule-of-kings governing system.” She denounced the majority for “enabling our collective demise. At the very least, I lament that the majority is so caught up in minutiae of the government’s self-serving, finger-pointing arguments that it misses the plot.”

This is where Justice Amy Coney Barrett reached a breaking point, unleashing on Jackson in an opinion notably joined by her colleagues. Barrett noted that Jackson was describing “a vision of the judicial role that would make even the most ardent defender of judicial supremacy blush.” She added: “We will not dwell on Justice Jackson’s argument, which is at odds with more than two centuries’ worth of precedent, not to mention the Constitution itself. We observe only this: Justice Jackson decries an imperial executive while embracing an imperial judiciary.”

That is a slightly fancier way of describing Calvinball.

Jackson has also been criticized for making dubious or sensational claims, as in her opinion supporting affirmative action in higher education.

Jackson’s jurisprudence is the very model of a judiciary untethered from constitutional or institutional restraints. Not surprisingly, she is lionized in law schools for her rejection of judicial restraint and her pursuit of progressive outcomes. Yet, her approach is becoming increasingly lawless.

I truly believe that Jackson can leave a lasting legacy and bring an important voice to the court.

However, this is one “wonderful opportunity” that Justice Jackson may want to let pass more often.

Otherwise, she risks fulfilling that other lament from the cartoon Calvin: “I find my life is a lot easier the lower I keep everyone’s expectations.”

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. He is the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”

President Trump in remarks to reporters Monday predicted that the war in Gaza will come to a “conclusive ending” within the next two to three weeks. 

He said in the Oval Office that “I think within the next two to three weeks, you’re going to have a pretty good, conclusive – a conclusive ending.” But the entirely difficult question of how this might come about was not addressed.

But Trump also seemed to hedge his bet, chalking up the Gaza crisis to rampant and long-running instability in the region: “It’s a hard thing to say because they’ve been fighting for thousands of years. But I think we’re doing a very good job,” he claimed.

He again reiterated, “But people can’t forget October 7” – identifying the initial Hamas attack as the cause of the ongoing war since 2023. On the question of admin efforts to achieve a peace settlement, Trump described that “There has been… a very serious diplomatic push.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio then chimed in during the Oval presser, saying, “We want it to end” – but “it has to end with no Hamas.”

So clearly the White House is at this moment still fully backing a military solution, after earlier this month essentially giving a greenlight for the new Israeli military assault on Gaza City.

It appears that Trump is predicting it will take two to three weeks to completely conquer and pacify Gaza, but he downplayed or ignored the brutality of it, and daily soaring death toll:

“Right now, they’re talking about Gaza City. They’re always talking about something,” and added, “At some point, it’s going to get settled… You better get it settled soon.”

He did say he’s “not happy” when he hears news of civilians, journalists, and medical workers being killed.

Trump also seems to be signaling Netanyahu to wrap up these high death toll miliary operations ‘soon’ – but while not threatening anything serious like cutting off the US arms pipeline or billions of dollars sent to Tel Aviv.

Below: Trump’s similar hawkish comments on Gaza in late July…

Trump on Gaza: “Hamas didn’t really want to make a deal. I think they want to die … they’re gonna have to finish the job … they’re gonna have to fight and they’re gonna have to clean it up. You’re gonna have to get rid of it.” pic.twitter.com/P8RvwnE0DT

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 25, 2025

One eyewitness to Monday’s deadly attacks which killed at least 5 journalists among 20 total people slain at Nasser hospital described seeing “bodies everywhere”:

Saber al-Asmar, a doctor in the Intensive Care Unit at Nasser hospital who witnessed the attack this morning, says staff members were continuing to help wounded Palestinians with the few supplies they have when the air strikes shook the facility.

“Patients were freaked out, and everything looked dark…we called the civil defence [teams] to go to the place that was targeted and then another big airstrike happened,” al-Asmar told Al Jazeera.

“We still can’t comprehend what happened now or next. The situation is horrible. We have seen bodies everywhere…they [Israeli forces] targeted the floor where the operating rooms are,” he added.

Meanwhile, the US Ambassador to Israel…

“You are the chosen people … if someone is angry at God, he’ll be angry at the people who represent him.”

US Ambassador Mike Huckabee tells rabbi in Israel that people are only anti-Semitic because they’re “against God.” pic.twitter.com/Y9cgeUCYJu

— Chris Menahan 🇺🇸 (@infolibnews) August 24, 2025

Monday’s events could see European nations impose harsher, punishing measures on Israel. Some governments are actually talking sanctions on Israel for the first time – but most European capitals remain deeply divided on the matter of what’s next, other than purely symbolic actions like acknowledging a ‘state of Palestine’.

Authored by James Howard Kunstler,

“Well, I mean, I’m talking about the… the… I had had, there was a…” 

– Ghislaine Maxwell

Did you happen to bother reading the transcript of Ghislaine Maxwell’s interview?

It’s tough sledding at times — both Ms. Maxwell and Deputy AG Todd Blanche tend to speak in choppy, incomplete sentences (as does, you might have noticed, President Trump) — but altogether the confab reveals that just about everything you think you know about the scandal might not be so, and her story is full of shocking surprises, assuming you can believe her.

For instance, Ms. Maxwell had exactly one night of actual sex with Jeffrey Epstein back in the 1990s, a few months after they met, and that was it. He had problems with straight-up sex, she says. At first, he claimed to have a heart condition. She says he had erectile difficulty “. . . which meant that he didn’t have intercourse a lot, which suited me fine, because I actually do have a medical condition, which precludes me having a lot of intercourse,” she added. (We never learn what that condition was, exactly.) Anyway, she never had sex with him again.

Huh. . .? There goes one pillar of the public perception of the scandal: that Ghislaine Maxwell was a sort of nymphomaniac consort of Mr. Epstein, while supposedly acting as chief procurer of his masseuse “victims” and that the whole decades-long saga was a cavalcade of threesomes and orgies.

She even claims at one point of being “a prude.”

So, what was her role in JE’s complicated life? Basically, a property manager, she says. You know, all those houses and compounds: the mansion on East 71st Street, the Palm Beach place, the ranch in New Mexico, Little St. James Island, a flat in Paris. It was a lot to manage. She had to hire architects, construction crews, interior decorators, servants. There were horses to care for at the ranch. It was a lot. She didn’t even have a key to JE’s New York City townhouse and was there only twice, she told Mr. Blanche.

During that time, JE had other girlfriends while in the early 2000s, Ms. Maxwell hooked up with the billionaire founder of Gateway Computers, Ted Waitt. He bought a big boat for them to start-up an oceanic research venture. The relationship foundered when, she says, a sketchy lawyer named Scott Rothstein, working for a crooked Florida law firm that was under a RICO investigation at the time, attempted to extract $10-million from Waitt to keep Ms. Maxwell’s name out of lawsuits brought by women claiming to be “victims” of Epstein’s massage shenanigans. Ms. Maxwell claims that Epstein’s masseuses, underage or otherwise, were recruited by the original masseuses, not by her (Ms. Maxwell).

Ms. Maxwell was out of Epstein’s life after 2009, when he got out of jail on state of Florida charges of soliciting prostitution and procuring a minor for prostitution. This was preceded by a sketchy federal case brought in the Southern District of Florida that ended with a peculiar non-prosecution agreement — when US Attorney Alexander Acosta was told to lay off on account of Epstein being an “intel asset.” Ms. Maxwell states in the new deposition that JE was not associated with any intel agency, claiming it would have been in his nature to brag about it.

It would help if FBI chief Kash Patel or CIA head John Ratcliffe could clarify that.

They would surely know, one way or the other.

Of course, the heart of all the salacious chatter about Epstein is the claim that he worked for Israel’s Mossad intel agency, and that many eminent global persons were recorded having sex with underage masseuses in order to blackmail them (and, supposedly, allow nefarious hidden parties to control world political affairs.)

Ms. Maxwell maintains that this is not so. She says there were no hidden cameras in bedrooms or elsewhere in the many Epstein properties or airplanes, and that she would know because she hired the electricians who installed everything else in them. There were only the usual security cameras on front entrances and gates. . . except for the Palm Beach house where local police installed a camera in JE’s office to catch a thief who was stealing cash stashed there. (Turned out to be JE’s butler, who was fired.)

Another thread at the center of the Epstein rumor mill is the notorious Epstein client list — supposedly of notables alleged to have cavorted with Epstein’s masseuses. Ms. Maxwell claims there was no such list, that a fake list was concocted by attorney Brad Edwards who represented women claiming to be Epstein “victims” in the lawsuit connected with the $10-million Ted Waitt blackmail caper. The list was composed from notes supposedly made off a computer by that same Epstein butler, one Alfredo Rodriguez. When interviewed in 2007, Rodriguez failed to produce the so-called “black book.” In 2009, he offered to sell it to attorney Brad Edwards (representing various “victims”) for $50,000. In 2010, Rodriguez was convicted of obstruction of justice and sentenced to 18 months in prison. He died in 2015.

A lot of monkey business in all this, wouldn’t you say?

Perhaps the most astounding point is Ms. Maxwell’s assertion that no government attorney (or any other official, including from the FBI) ever interviewed her, or even called her on the telephone, during all the years of legal wrangling that went on.

Say, what. . . ?

How could that possibly be?

Well, apparently it is so.

One has to wonder exactly how the case against Ghislaine Maxwell for “trafficking” girls back in the 1990s was finally brought in the notoriously corrupt Southern District of New York (federal court) on December 29, 2021. The lead prosecutor was Maurene Comey, daughter of you-know-who. Anything janky in this prosecution? You have seen enough jankiness in the New York courts, federal, state, and local, the past several years to destroy your confidence that they are in any way on-the-level.

Just sayin’. . . .

You are correct to observe that this hairball is a very complex, sometimes mystifying skein of stories, episodes, rumors, and, certainly, motives.

The big takeaway, of course, is Ms. Maxwell’s repeated statements that Donald Trump was not involved in any salacious activity around Jeffrey Epstein, his properties, his airplanes, or anywhere else. . . and that he “acted like a gentleman” at all times. She even states that she “admires” the president for winning back the White House. Ghislaine Maxwell is rumored to be seeking a pardon from the president. We’ll have to stand by on that. But you also might consider the possibility that, as Mr. Trump has said, in this whole fantastic alleged scandal there is a whole lot less there there than many of us have been led to believe. Except that GM does not believe that JE took his own life. Neither does Mr. Trump. I guess we’ll have to stand by on that, too. In the meantime, read the goshdarn thing yourself. It’s riveting.

Update(1615ET): Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has quickly offered confirmation that the Israeli military did indeed massacre at least 20 people at the Nasser Hospital complex in southern Gaza on Monday, which included the deaths of five journalists. He called it a “tragic mishap” and expressed deep “regret” – amid mounting international pressure and outrage.

Israeli media has since clarified that it was likely an attack by ground forces, as a tank fired on the group that was at the time responding to a prior strike (it’s widely being described as a double-tap).

Israel deeply regrets the tragic mishap that occurred today at the Nasser Hospital in Gaza.

Israel values the work of journalists, medical staff, and all civilians. The military authorities are conducting a thorough investigation.

Our war is with Hamas terrorists. Our just…

— Benjamin Netanyahu – בנימין נתניהו (@netanyahu) August 25, 2025

Israeli media details the following based on military sources:

Tank shelling carried out by the Israeli military on Nasser Hospital in the Khan Younis area of the southern Gaza Strip on Monday morning killed at least 20 people, including five journalists, according to media reports and the Hamas-run health ministry.

The Israel Defense Forces, some three hours after the reports of the attack emerged, confirmed that troops had carried out a strike in the area.

Footage showed rescue workers, who had arrived at the site of an initial attack, engulfed in smoke and debris when a second strike hit. Witnesses said journalists and other people had also rushed to the site of the first strike.

A military official told The Times of Israel that the attack was not conducted by the Israeli Air Force, indicating it was likely carried out by ground forces.

President Trump weighed in earlier from the Oval Office, but didn’t have a lot to say on the specific attack, with many details still uncertain…

US President Donald Trump said he does not know about, and does not want to see, the massacre committed by Israel at Nasser Hospital, Khan Yunis, southern Gaza, today.

Instead, he boasted about how he returned Israeli captives from Gaza, while contradicting Israel’s claim of… pic.twitter.com/txGCxarQAd

— The Cradle (@TheCradleMedia) August 25, 2025

The attack has been taking over headlines throughout the day, and could result in Europe taking punitive measures against Israel.

* * *

More journalists with Al Jazeera have been killed in the Gaza Strip, the Qatar-based outlet has reported, in an Israeli airstrike which killed a total of 20 people.

Al Jazeera photographer Mohammad Salama is among the dead after a large Israeli aerial attack on Nasser Medical Complex in southern Gaza on Monday, with local sources describing it as a double-tap strike.

Also among the dead are Mariam Dagga, a freelance journalist for The Associated Press, and a Reuters contractor cameraman identified as Hussam al-Masri. Another with Hamas’ Quds Feed Network succumbed of his wounds.

The Hamas media office in a statement said, “The journalist colleagues were martyred when the Israeli occupation committed a horrific crime by bombing a group of journalists who were on a press coverage mission at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis Governorate and many martyrs fell victim to this crime.”

“We hold the Israeli occupation, the American administration, and the countries participating in the genocide crime such as the United Kingdom, Germany, and France fully responsible for committing these heinous brutal crimes,” it added.

The Associated Press has been among international outlets to say it was “shocked and saddened” by Dagga’s death (its freelancer). And Reuters detailed:

Cameraman Hussam al-Masri, a Reuters contractor, was killed near a live broadcasting position operated by Reuters on an upper floor just below the roof of the hospital in Khan Younis in an initial strike, according to Palestinian health officials.

Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed the attack but said it did not intentionally target journalists. 

“The IDF regrets any harm to uninvolved individuals and does not target journalists as such,” the military said in a statement. “The IDF acts to mitigate harm to uninvolved individuals as much as possible while maintaining the safety of IDF troops.”

Israel’s military has routinely accused Arab media outlets like Al Jazeera of being ‘pro Hamas’ or even at times cooperating with terrorists. Previously Israel has raided Al Jazeera offices in the West Bank and Jerusalem. 

Widely-circulating disturbing video purporting to show a strike which killed journalists and paramedics: 

⚠️⚠️⚠️
UNPRECEDENTED
Targeting Civil Defence officers and paramedics by Israeli jets while evacuating casualties following Israeli bombing of Nasser Hospital! pic.twitter.com/jHDlFANZqG

— Motasem A Dalloul (@AbujomaaGaza) August 25, 2025

In 2024 Israeli authorities confiscated office equipment and shuttered Al Jazeera’s operations in Ramallah and inside Israel.

This latest mass casualty attack will serve to keep Israel under international scrutiny and pressure. Currently a growing list of European countries plan to formally recognize a state of Palestine at the UN in September. PM Netanyahu has meanwhile articulated that alongside a ground war in Gaza, and wars in nearby Yemen, Syria, and Lebanon – Israel is fighting a ‘media war’.

Authored by Sandra Block via Kiplinger’s Perosnal Finance,

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed by President Trump on July 4, includes tax breaks for an expansive range of taxpayers, while scrapping credits for energy-saving vehicles and home improvements.

More broadly, the legislation makes the tax cuts in the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act permanent, which means tax rates won’t increase after 2025. Here’s a look at how other provisions in the bill could affect your taxes.

Older Adults

Larger Standard Deduction

Starting in the 2025 tax year, those who are 65 or older will be eligible for an additional standard deduction of $6,000. The bonus deduction comes on top of an existing increase in the standard deduction of $2,000 for single filers who are 65 or older; for married couples who file jointly, it’s $1,600 for each spouse 65 or older.

The expanded deduction means an eligible taxpayer with a filing status of single will be able to deduct up to $23,750 from taxable income, while a married couple will qualify for a deduction of up to $46,700, assuming both are 65 or older.

The deduction starts to phase out for couples with modified adjusted gross income of more than $150,000 and is fully phased out at MAGI of $250,000 ($75,000 and $175,000 for single filers). This new deduction is available for 2025 through 2028.

The legislation won’t eliminate taxes on Social Security benefits. But by lowering taxable income, it will reduce the number of beneficiaries who pay the taxes from 36 percent to 12 percent, according to the White House Council of Economic Advisers.

Estate Tax Exemption

As a result of the legislation, the vast majority of taxpayers won’t have to worry about paying federal estate taxes. The law increases the estate tax exemption, which is $13.99 million per person in 2025, to $15 million per person, or $30 million for a married couple, in 2026. The exemption will then be adjusted annually for inflation. Without congressional action, the exemption would have dropped to about $7 million after 2025.

Homeowners

Property Tax Deduction

Homeowners will be able to deduct up to $40,000 in state and local taxes, up from a cap of $10,000. The higher cap takes effect for 2025 and lasts through 2029, and it will be increased by one percentage point each year until returning to the $10,000 cap in 2030. The higher cap phases out for homeowners with MAGI above $500,000 ($250,000 for a married individual filing separately). Taxpayers with MAGI of $600,000 or more will be ineligible for the increase. You must itemize to claim this deduction.

Credit for Energy-Efficient Home Improvements

Planning to install rooftop solar panels? Get busy, because a tax credit for these improvements will expire at the end of 2025. The Residential Clean Energy Credit, which provides a 30 percent tax credit toward the cost of buying and installing solar panels, solar water heaters, or other energy-saving measures, was previously scheduled to phase out in 2033. To claim the credit on your 2025 tax return, you’ll need to start work by the end of the year.

Families

Extension of the Child Tax Credit

The bill permanently extends the child tax credit and increases the amount of the credit to $2,200 per child, up from $2,000.

Savings Accounts for Kids

The law creates a new tax-advantaged savings account for children. Until the child turns 18, parents, grandparents and others can contribute up to $5,000 a year to the account, where the money is invested in a fund that tracks a stock index and grows tax-deferred. Parents of children born between January 1, 2025, and December 31, 2028, will be eligible to receive $1,000 in federal seed money to start the account.

Car Buyers

Deduction on Car Loan Interest

Taxpayers will be eligible to deduct up to $10,000 in interest on loans for cars purchased between 2025 and 2028. You don’t have to itemize to claim this deduction, but it’s available only for loans taken out to buy new cars assembled in the United States. The deduction phases out for individuals earning more than $100,000 or married couples making over $200,000.

Credit for Electric Vehicles (EVs) and Charging Stations

The $7,500 tax credit to buy or lease qualified EVs, along with the $4,000 credit for eligible used EVs, will end September 30, 2025.

Workers

Tip Income

Eligible tipped workers will be able to deduct up to $25,000 in tips a year from 2025 through 2028. The tax break will decrease by $100 for every $1,000 of MAGI over $150,000 for single filers and $300,000 for joint filers. You don’t need to itemize to claim this deduction.

Overtime Pay

From 2025 through 2028, workers will be allowed to deduct up to $12,500 a year in overtime pay, or $25,000 if they’re married and file jointly. This phases out for single filers with MAGI of more than $150,000 and joint filers with MAGI over $300,000.

©2025 The Kiplinger Washington Editors, Inc. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

The views and opinions expressed are those of the authors. They are meant for general informational purposes only and should not be construed or interpreted as a recommendation or solicitation. The Epoch Times does not provide investment, tax, legal, financial planning, estate planning, or any other personal finance advice. The Epoch Times holds no liability for the accuracy or timeliness of the information provided.