A trade group representing 3,500 chemical, manufacturing, agriculture, and energy companies warned that past history shows that a proposed merger of Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern will push up shipping costs without improving service.
“The Freight Rail Customer Alliance (FRCA) has long been opposed to continued consolidation in the rail industry based on past experiences resulting in increased rates, higher fees and unreliable service,” said FRCA President Emily Regis, in a release.
UP and NS on July 29 announced the $85 billion stock-and-cash deal to create a transcontinental system with more than 50,000 route-miles of track in 43 states. The carriers said the acquisition would improve service by cutting up to 48 hours from a loaded railcar’s total travel time from departure to arrival, know as dwell, while simplifying paperwork and creating a seamless journey for trains moving from coast to coast.
The FRCA pointed out that since the Staggers Rail Act of 1980 deregulated freight railroads, the industry has shrunk from 40 Class I carriers to six, with four handling 90% of U.S. rail freight.
“This demonstrated market power is a continuing concern as the railroads have lost market share to trucks over the past 20-plus years due to their dismal service and high rates, but the railroads keep increasing their profits and reducing their operating ratios,” said FRCA spokesperson Ann Warner, in the release. “This growth in and exploitation of railroad market power has also included forcing shippers into contracts that not only fall outside the Surface Transportation Board’s (STB) regulatory jurisdiction but also lack protection from poor service and increased fees. Any efficiencies achieved under so-called Precision Scheduled Railroading (PSR) have NOT been passed through to shippers – only retained by the railroads and their shareholders to Wall Street’s applause.”
The adjudicatory authority of the STB, which will either accept or reject the UP-NS deal, covers published tariff rates and not confidential contracts between railroads and shippers.
As far as service is concerned, unlike shippers who move goods by the carload, the FRCA observed that it is unclear how the STB’s tougher merger rules would benefit its larger shippers who move bulk freight such as coal or grain in trains dedicated to a single commodity, known as unit trains.
Regis stated that “particularly important to FRCA members is that a transcontinental merger provides enhanced competition for those who ship via unit train, typically point-to-point, and can utilize only a single rail carrier.”
About half of the 1.5 billion tons of freight shipped annually on U.S. rail are bulk commodities.
“In the end, shippers, particularly captive shippers, need guaranteed competitive solutions that are workable, effective, and enforced by the STB. Even if this imperative can be achieved in a transcontinental merger, there are concerns about how long it would take for the improvements to be successfully implemented and whether the integration problems and service meltdowns of past mergers can be avoided,” Regis said.
Werner said that the “FRCA looks forward to participating in the review and comment period once a formal merger application(s) has been filed.”
China’s Solar Industry Quietly Fired A Third Of Its Workers
China’s biggest solar firms fired nearly one-third of their workforces last year, a Reuters analysis of company filings shows, as one of the industries hand-picked by Beijing to drive economic growth grapples with falling prices and steep losses. Longi Green Energy, Trina Solar, Jinko Solar, JA Solar, and Tongwei collectively shed some 87,000 staff, or 31% of their workforces on average last year, according to a Reuters review of employment figures in public filings.
The job cuts illustrate the pain from the vicious price wars being fought across Chinese industries, including solar and electric vehicles, as China grapples with massive overcapacity and dismal demand (which has prompted China to dump its exports into any country that will accept them). As a frame of reference, the world produces twice as many solar panels each year as it uses, with most of them manufactured in China.
Analysts say the previously unreported job losses are likely a mix of layoffs and attrition due to cuts to pay and hours as companies sought to stem losses. More importantly, nobody is allowed to mention them: layoffs are politically sensitive in China, where Beijing views employment as key to social stability.
Remarkably, other than a 5% cut acknowledged by Longi last year, none of the firms mentioned above have announced any job cuts or responded to questions from Reuters. Meanwhile, amid tens of millions of wholesale layoffs which are not logged in any official statistics, China continues to pretend that its unemployment rate is 5%, and hasn’t budged in 5 years.
“The industry has been facing a downturn since the end of 2023,” said Cheng Wang, an analyst at Morningstar. “In 2024, it actually got worse. In 2025, it looks like it’s getting even worse.” Just wait until 2026 though…
Since 2024, more than 40 solar firms have delisted, gone bankrupt or been acquired, according to a presentation by the photovoltaic industry association in July.
In a clear example of the catastrophic consequences of central planning, China’s solar manufacturers built new factories at a fever pitch between 2020 and 2023 as the state redirected resources from the sinking property sector to what it used to call the “new three” growth industries: solar panels, electric cars and batteries.
There was just one problem: that building spree led to a collapse in prices, a deflationary tide and a brutal price war made worse by US tariffs thrown up against exports from the many Chinese-owned factories in Southeast Asia. The industry lost $60 billion last year.
While analysts say it is unclear whether job cuts continued this year (narrator: they did), Beijing is increasingly signalling it intends to intervene to cut capacity, sending polysilicon prices soaring nearly 70% in July while solar panel prices have increased more modestly. Still, outside of government stimmies, the domestic demand for all that solar just isn’t there. Come to think of it, the international demand also isn’t there.
Major polysilicon producer GCL told Reuters on Thursday that top producers plan to set up an OPEC-like entity to control prices and supply. The group is also setting up a 50-billion yuan vehicle to buy and shut around a third of the industry’s lower-quality production capacity.
So to summarize: 5 years ago China unleashed a historic stimulus ramp to build up as much solar capacity as it could. Now, drowning in overcapacity, it is unleashing an even more historic ramp to reverse everything it did. Typical communist central planning.
President Xi Jinping in early July called for an end to “disorderly price competition,” the infamous “involution” plan, and three days later the industry ministry pledged to calm price wars and retire outdated production capacity during a meeting with solar industry executives.
While Beijing has not said when or how it will act, a source with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters it was determined to focus on the issue before the end of the current five-year plan this year. In other words, China will “deal with the problem” exactly the same way every other nation will: by punting and leaving it to the next guy to fix.
Officials in eastern China’s Anhui province, a manufacturing hub, told solar company executives in June to stop adding new manufacturing and shut production lines operating at under 30% capacity, according to two industry sources who declined to be identified due to the sensitivity of the matter.
A board member at a solar firm in the province said new capacity had already required verbal approval from powerful state planner the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) this year. They asked for their company’s name to be withheld because the discussions were private. But many provincial governments are likely to be reluctant to crack down hard on overcapacity, analysts say. These officials are scored on jobs and economic growth and are loathe to see local champions sacrificed to meet someone else’s target.
Hilariously, Trina Solar’s chairman told an industry conference in June that new projects had begun this year despite the NDRC calling for a halt in February. The foot-dragging reflects the scale of the cull required. Jefferies analyst Alan Lau estimated at least 20-30% of manufacturing capacity would have to be eliminated for companies to return to profitability.
“There’s a lot of overcapacity in China, like steel, like cement, but you don’t see any industry in the past having industry-wide cash loss for one and a half years already,” Lau said.
Company-level losses are on the same scale as in real estate, another crisis-hit sector, even though solar is only about one-tenth the size, he said. “This is highly unusual and highly abnormal.”
And if you think this is bad, just wait until you learn how absolutely devastating the losses are in China’s auto sector, which we will detail in an article tomorrow…
Moldova Jails Popular Pro-Russian Governor, Outraging The Kremlin
Just over two weeks ago Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) issued a statement accusing the West, under US leadership, of turning Moldova into a military outpost aimed at confronting Russia, akin to what has happened over several years with Ukraine. Moscow has also accused the West of long meddling in the Republic of Georgia with the same purpose in mind.
The SVR’s provocative statement, which came in mid-July said Washington wants to use the country as “cannon fodder” in future hostilities, which is allegedly being fast-tracked by Western foreign policy decision-makers. Now the tiny country with EU aspirations (having been granted candidate status in 2022) is front and center in regional headlines, after a main opposition figure was arrested for alleged Russian-ties related to corruption.
The Kremlin has accused Moldovan authorities of engaging in political persecution after a court sentenced the pro-Russian governor of Moldova’s autonomous Gagauzia region to seven years in prison on Tuesday. Gagauzia’s governor, Evghenia Gutul, is accused of channeling Russian funds to a banned political party.
The government alleges that she transferred Russian money to the outlawed Shor Party between 2019 and 2022, paving the way for deeper ‘Russian influence’ in Gagauzia, a southern Moldovan region made up primarily of Russian-speaking ethnic Turks.
Gutul, who has rejected the accusations, has appealed for international help – especially in messages to Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. She had been under arrest since March 2025, but prior to that reportedly traveled to Moscow to gain the support of Kremlin officials.
She has previously stated, “A fabricated criminal case has been brought against me. The Anti-corruption Prosecutor’s Office, under the influence of (Moldovan President Maia) Sandu, is targeting those who have improved lives in their country, worked for the benefit of the people, and opposed the government’s destructive actions, rather than tackling corruption.”
Today, another court hearing took place in the fabricated criminal case against me — a case that has been political, not legal, from the very beginning. pic.twitter.com/FMtqeeOZ1M
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov blasted the ruling as “clearly politically motivated” as it represents “open and arguably unlawful pressure on political opponents” ahead of Moldova’s parliamentary elections this September.
Peskov added, “We are seeing the systematic suppression of opposition forces in Moldova, essentially stripping voters of the chance to choose freely. It’s clear that democratic standards and principles are being continuously undermined.”
Tensions are soaring, with pro-Gutul protesters taking to the streets, also after Moldovan President Maia Sandu’s recent warning and allegation that Russia was preparing an “unprecedented” campaign to interfere in the small country’s fall elections.
The tiny Eastern European nation bordering Ukraine has experienced the same kind of internal political pro-EU vs. pro-Russia tug of war historically on display in other countries such as Ukraine or Georgia. One thing which has long alarmed the West is the presence of Russian ‘peacekeeping’ troops in Moldova’s breakaway Transnistria region.
As for Transnistria, although it has diverse ethnic demographics almost equally apportioned between Russians, Moldovans, Romanians and Ukrainians, the Russian demographic slightly ekes out its counterparts with a plurality of 29% of Transnistrians belonging to the group. NATO wants to bring Moldova directly into its orbit, and ultimately kick Russian troops out of the region.
Azerbaijan and Armenia are expected to sign a memorandum of understanding in Washington on Friday, committing to the pursuit of peace, according to regional sources familiar with the matter who spoke to Middle East Eye. The sources said that US President Donald Trump will host Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan at the White House for the signing ceremony.
Although Armenia and Azerbaijan reached consensus on a draft peace agreement in March, Baku continues to insist on several additional conditions before finalizing the deal. Chief among Azerbaijan’s demands is that Yerevan amend its constitution to remove references to Azerbaijani territory, a step that would require a national referendum in Armenia.
The anticipated White House summit follows a meeting between the two leaders in Abu Dhabi in July. Following the meeting, Aliyev said both countries could finalize the text of the agreement, or at least its main principles, within a few months and then initial them.
“Reaching an agreement on the basic principles, initialing them, and then working on the text can be an option,” Aliyev said, emphasising that such an approach hinges on Armenia amending its constitution.
Sources added that the two leaders are expected to sign a “letter of intent” rather than a draft peace agreement, providing Trump with a diplomatic achievement he has been seeking in the region since last month.
Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov called his Turkish counterpart Hakan Fidan on Monday to inform him about the summit, a third regional source told MEE. Turkish foreign ministry sources said that Fidan discussed bilateral and regional issues with Bayramov. MEE has reached out to both Armenian and Azerbaijani governments for comment.
One of the main sticking points remains the so-called Zangezur Corridor, which would link mainland Azerbaijan to its exclave, Nakhchivan, through Armenian territory. Armenia rejects the term Zangezur Corridor, arguing that it carries irredentist implications for its sovereign territory, known as Syunik.
Last month, US Ambassador Thomas Barrack officially proposed that an American company could lease and operate the corridor for 100 years, aiming to address the concerns of both sides over security and reliability of the transport route. However, Armenia rejected the proposal, stating it would not lease its sovereign territory to any third country.
A regional source familiar with the negotiations told MEE that Turkey initially suggested the idea of a private company, approved by both Armenia and Azerbaijan, managing the corridor. “However, the Armenian side demanded that the company also operate on the Nakhchivan side of the corridor, which was unacceptable to Baku,” the source explained.
I’m here in #Armenia, on the border with #Azerbaijan — with the Lachin Corridor behind me. This was the site or the ethnic cleansing of 120,000 Armenian Christians.
This corridor once connected Armenia proper to Nagorno-Karabakh, or #Artsakh — a part of ancient Armenia, the… pic.twitter.com/9pTqfbQRaC
The conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan dates back to the 1993 Nagorno-Karabakh war, when Armenian forces seized the disputed enclave – recognized by the United Nations as Azerbaijani territory, following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
After a bloody six-week war in late 2020, Azerbaijan launched a military operation in September 2023 to retake Nagorno-Karabakh, resulting in a ceasefire agreement. Most ethnic Armenians fled, and the breakaway region was officially dissolved on January 1, 2024.
Council debates rarely echo through international politics. But a failed motion in Cumberland, Sydney, has done just that—thanks to a group that claims to speak for Chinese Australians, but whose loyalties may lie farther afield.
The “Fuqing” Association—named after the relatively small Chinese city of Fuqing—has branches across multiple countries, and appears to be mostly active when it comes to showing support for the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) leadership overseas.
On July 30, the Sydney-based group, which claims to represent 10,000 Chinese-Australians, mobilised to oppose a motion being considered by Cumberland City Council in Sydney’s multicultural west.
The motion was aimed at officially recognising “World Falun Dafa Day” as part of the council’s annual cultural program.
Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual practice first taught in China in 1992 and based on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance.
With five sets of health-benefiting exercises and moral-guiding teachings, Falun Gong grew rapidly with an estimated 70 million to 100 million people taking it up by 1999.
Perceiving its popularity as a threat, the CCP started a sweeping persecution to eliminate the faith group on July 20, 1999, which continues to this day and has seen the CCP carry out severe human rights abuses, forced organ harvesting, and more recently, transnational repression.
The proposed motion (Item No: C07/25-155) before the Council recommended recognising May 13—the birthday of Li Hongzhi, founder of Falun Dafa—as World Falun Dafa Day, a designation already widely observed in Western democracies such as Canada and the United States to acknowledge the practice’s contributions to the community, including free meditation classes and cultural performances.
The motion did not garner enough support this time around, but The Epoch Times understands all councillors will continue to engage with the Falun Dafa community to understand more about the practice.
Some members of the council also commented that they had to handle several requests to recognise specific celebrations for different ethnic groups.
Who Are the Fuqing Association And What Are Their Motives?
After the vote, however, members of the Fuqing Association took photos in front of the council building to celebrate.
Fuqing is a county-level city in the coastal province of Fujian Province, and is home to 1.4 million people.
In its submission against the motion, it called itself the “largest Australian-Chinese community organisation within the Cumberland City Council area, with a membership of over 10,000.” A figure The Epoch Times could not independently verify.
The “hometown” association—voluntary organisations formed by immigrants who share a common place of origin— also claimed to be the “most representative voice of the local Chinese Australian community.”
The group claimed that recognising the motion would “create division.”
The Fuqing group is an active player in CCP politics.
Last year, members of the association mobilised thousands of local Chinese to welcome the CCP Premier Li Qiang during his official state visit to Australia. Supporters were supplied with red shirts and flags, and were encouraged to block banners from human rights demonstrators, including members of the Falun Gong community.
In the same year, the World Fuqing Hometown Association held its 35th anniversary celebration, attended by two members of the United Front Work Department, a party organ tasked with influencing overseas politicians and community groups.
The Fuqing group’s latest actions follow the release of an official condemnation against “transnational repression” from the G7 group of nations.
“[Transnational repression or TNR] is an aggressive form of foreign interference whereby states or their proxies attempt to intimidate, harass, harm or coerce individuals or communities outside their borders,” read the official statement.
“It has a chilling effect in our countries. TNR often impacts dissidents, journalists, human rights defenders, religious minorities, and those identified as part of diaspora communities.”
What Started as Benign, Became Co-Opted: Professor
Li Yuanhua, a former professor at Capital Normal University in Beijing who is now based in Sydney, said the CCP had taken advantage of Chinese people’s patriotism.
“They were originally genuine hometown associations, formed by people from the same region, but later, most were co-opted by the CCP,” he told The Epoch Times.
“Now, nearly all such associations—over 90 percent—while registered in Australia, are also required to register with the Chinese consulate.
“The leaders of these hometown associations must submit their detailed personal information to the CCP and follow its directives. Many of them are listed as ‘member organisations’ of the Australian Council for the Promotion of the Peaceful Reunification of China, which is widely regarded as one of the CCP’s key overseas front groups.”
He added that the leaders and core members of these organisations are all Australian citizens.
The Council made headlines years ago for its link to billionaire Huang Xiangmo, who was accused of influencing former Labor Senator Sam Dastyari, as well as Yang Dongdong, who heads the similarly named Australian Council for the Promotion of the Reunification of China.
Yang himself has been accused by China expert Clive Hamilton of nurturing “intimate and long-standing links to the Chinese consulate in Sydney” and has moved to “advance the objectives of the CCP.”
A friend of Yang, Councillor Cedric Spencer of Sydney’s Ku-ring-gai Council, recently tried to attribute the Liberal Party’s loss of the seat of Bradfield—among a host of other reasons—to former federal MP Paul Fletcher’s relationship with a member of the Falun Gong community.
CCP’s Overseas United Front Tactics
The Fuqing Association’s movements are not in isolation.
Another hometown association, the Hubei Association, is also under investigation for encouraging volunteers to hand out how-to-vote cards for Teal independent Monique Ryan in the Melbourne electorate of Kooyong ahead of the May election.
The Hubei Association has been accused of having ties to the United Front Work Department.
Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) warned of the dangers of the CCP’s United Front tactics in its 2020 report, “The party speaks for you.”
Authored by Alex Joske, the report reveals that the United Front system extends far beyond China’s borders in a complex, often covert effort to expand its influence among ethnic minorities, religious groups, and political, business, and scientific communities.
“Diplomats might see United Front work as ‘public diplomacy’ or ‘propaganda’ but fail to appreciate the extent of related covert activities. Security officials may be alert to criminal activity or espionage while underestimating the significance of open activities that facilitate it,” Joske wrote.
Councillor Helen Hughes, who voted for the proposed motion to recognise World Falun Dafa Day, said it also served to highlight that the persecution of Falun Dafa is still ongoing.
“This document [from Fuqing Association] doesn’t really give what I consider to be a real reason in any fact. This is not being conscientiously decent for people who are experiencing this—the persecutions, etc.,” she told The Epoch Times.
“It’s just heartbreaking.”
Hughes was moved when she heard a member of the Falun Dafa community tell the council about how she could not return to China after her parents died due to the persecution.
“To have that happen personally, that would be just so heartbreaking, and I really feel for them,” she said. “I genuinely was hurtful that they were not being supported in the level that they ought to be.”
The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) told The Epoch Times that, consistent with long-standing practice, it does not comment on specific groups or individuals.
Attempts to contact the Sydney branch of the Fuqing Association for comment were unsuccessful, as no official website or publicly listed contact details could be found.
Watch: Trump Learns Ukrainian Military Now Enlisting Elderly, Mentally Handicapped
As we covered last week, Ukrainian parliament has decided that “citizens aged 60+ can now enlist under contract during martial law.” ZeroHedge White House reporter Liam Cosgrove asked President Trump about this and other disturbing recruitment practices by our “Eastern Ally.”
Trump’s told for the FIRST time Ukraine’s forcing young men, disabled, even over-60s to fight
TRUMP: ‘This is BIDEN’S war… haven’t heard about 60yo men etc’
Cosgrove: “President Zelensky just signed a law allowing for citizens age 60 and above to serve in the military,” Cosgrove said. “We’ve seen dozens of videos of young men being hauled into vans and dragged to the front lines against their will… even a young man with Down syndrome serving on the front line.”
“You said you wanted ‘to see the people stop dying’… Now the people dying are elderly, mentally handicapped, and conscripts.”
These videos are very disturbing!
A man with Down syndrome is serving on the frontlines in Ukraine and is being abused by another squad member, who records it for entertainment. pic.twitter.com/gGiV3jORzz
Cosgrove: “Even if a ceasefire doesn’t work out, why should Americans continue to fund a foreign military that’s scraping the bottom of the barrel like this?”
Trump responded that he had not heard about these actions by the Ukrainian military:
“I haven’t heard that,” referring to the specifics about Ukraine’s military draft, but reiterated that former President Biden was to blame for the bloodshed.
“This is Biden’s war. This is not my war. I’m here to get us out of it.”
He described the Ukraine war as “the one we’re working hardest on,” adding that he brokered five ceasefires in his second term and that he’d “like this to be the sixth.”
What makes an industrial complex is frontier technology, with feedback loops powerful enough to steer both markets and public policy.
Economists describe five telltale traits: mutual dependency between state and suppliers; capital costs so high that only a few firms can play; standards written by insiders; external costs shifted to the public; and a strategic framing (“national security,” “global competitiveness”) that evades scrutiny.
By that definition, we are witnessing the construction of an AI industrial complex, and its socioeconomic wake is already visible.
The early externalities: Power and water
The International Energy Agency projects that, by 2030, global data‑center electricity demand will double to roughly 945 TWh — a trillion watts used per hour. That is about the annual consumption of Japan. Much of that growth is traceable to AI inference and training workloads. The strain is leaking into household bills.
In Virginia, Dominion Energy has requested a $10.92/month fuel‑rate increase for the “typical” home customer, citing higher gas prices and PJM capacity charges driven in part by data‑center growth. The request is still pending.
Prices in PJM’s latest capacity auction cleared 22 % higher than last year; the East Coast grid operator estimates that will add between 1.5% and 5 % to retail bills beginning next summer.
Electricity is only half the story. Google’s environmental report shows its hyperscale facilities used nearly 6 billion gallons of fresh water in 2024, up 8 % year‑on‑year, a jump Google attributes largely to AI. The company says it “replenished” 64 % of that total, but the replenishment often happens far from the aquifers it drains. Out West, drought‑stressed cities respond by digging deeper municipal wells or raising water rates — expenses that never appear on a quarterly earnings call.
Labor and looming AI divide: Whither the middle class?
Generative AI in its first iteration targets the heart of the middle‑class office and clerical economy. Brookings finds more than 30 % of U.S. workers could see at least half of their tasks disrupted, with mid‑skill professional roles most exposed. Public anxiety is tracking the data: A 2024 Governance AI survey shows about half of Americans expect AI to widen income inequality, and two‑thirds want federal action to cushion job losses. The paradox: The same families paying higher utility bills may also face stagnant wages or displacement in the very sectors AI automates.
Access to front‑of‑the‑line models already carries a price tag — ChatGPT Plus costs $20 a month, and enterprise “Pro” tiers are tenfold higher. When homework help and job‑application prep migrate behind priority tokens, the complex threatens to hard‑code a two‑tier digital citizenship: seamless for those who can pay, throttled for those who cannot.
The new and irreparable digital divide will be between those who know how to work with AI and those who do not. Unlike the paternalistic and naive exhortations to learn to code, this is not about coding or even about software at all — this divide is about critical thinking, first-principles reasoning, and the ability to harness an emergent capability that can manifest both cloying sycophancy and Machiavellian deception.
The predictable response: UBI, with Big AI as the adjudicator
Inevitably, the drums will begin to beat across the nation for so-called universal basic income and its ilk; the state will have to devise economic mechanisms to address unemployment and the increasing replacement of both white and blue-collar jobs; but at what cost?
The social contract will have to be rewritten; AI will increasingly assume the roles of fact-checker, arbiter and judge; and Big AI will loom large in the enforcement and governance of this new contract, as the state is forced to reinvent itself. “Need more training data” is the cry, and intellectual property is collateral damage; we are witnessing the vestiges of the publishing industry attempting to make a quick buck as copyrights are being railroaded. History is written by winners, and it remains to be seen how the winning AI models and their trainers shape what will count as downstream history.
The American spirit owes its striking characteristic to the frontier — Americans have always shaped our environment and our tools, not the other way around. But we are at a critical juncture. Are we going to let AI shape our socioeconomic future? Are we about to voluntarily swap our frontier spirit for a gilded cage of our own making?
The first meaningful step in addressing this is the rolling back of the proposed moratorium on state and local AI laws in H.R.1 (aka the “Big Beautiful Bill”).
Considering the deep socio-economic impact of AI, it’s crucial that regulatory authority stays with local governments. A decentralized approach enables state-level experimentation, tailors oversight and risk management to local needs, and increases the likelihood of harnessing AI’s potential for the common good.
About the author: John deVadoss: is a former general manager at Microsoft Corp. in Redmond. He led architecture strategy for .NET, SOA and the early SaaS/Cloud initiatives at Microsoft.
One Of The World’s Oldest Asset Classes Just Hit Record Highs
Farmland is one of the oldest asset classes, rivaling precious metals in its ability to preserve generational wealth.
Unlike stocks or fiat currencies, farmland and cropland are tangible, finite, and highly productive. As the global population continues to grow and demand for healthier food intensifies, arable land per capita is shrinking due to urban sprawl and environmental degradation. This makes farmland not just a low-volatility store of value, but also a necessary hedge against rising global instability and inflationary pressures.
The latest USDA Land Values 2025 Report from the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) reports a 4.3% increase in average farmland values, pushing prices to a record $4,350 per acre. This follows a 5% ($200) increase between 2023 and 2024 and marks the fifth straight year of gains in agricultural real estate. Cash rents for cropland also hit a new high, rising .60% to $161 per acre.
Average Farm Real Estate Value – United States: 2011-2025
2025 Farm Real Estate Value by State
Average Cropland Value – United States: 2011-2025
2025 Cropland Value by State
Average Pasture Value – United States: 2011-2025
2025 Pasture Value by State
There’s a reason billionaires like Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos are quietly buying up vast amounts of farmland: it’s low-volatility and an asset that preserves and grows generational wealth.
Letter to Bill Grueskin, former Dean of the Columbia Journalism School, on his recent article in the Columbia Journalism Review
Mr. Grueskin,
Regarding your August 1 article, “Knowing: Still Only Half the Battle,” which lauds Charlie Savage of the New York Times for having “dissected and eviscerated” Director of Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s claims about corruption of intelligence in the Trump-Russia investigation:
You praised Savage’s article, “New Reports on Russian Interference Don’t Show What Trump Says They Do,” as an example of the work of an “experienced beat reporter” who can distill complex stories into a “coherent, compelling whole.” Your sub-headline stressed the importance of “showing receipts” in journalism, where “most people don’t follow stories very closely,” but “they can learn a lot when an experienced beat reporter helps them sort out what’s important and what’s chaff.”
Chaff.
Except — and you should know this because the Columbia Journalism Review published over 20,000 words on the subject in January 2023 — Savage and his colleagues at the Times have badly miscovered this story for nearly a decade, and continue to do so. The 2018 Pulitzer Prize the paper won on the topic along with the Washington Post will go down as the same kind of “disgrace” as its 1932 Pulitzer for Walter Duranty’s breathless coverage of Stalin’s Russia. In this case, the Times drifted so far from its traditional mission that it became an animating motive for Gabbard and other investigators in Donald Trump’s administration.
Witness FBI Director Kash Patel throwing down a gauntlet this weekend, right after your piece ran. He challenged media figures who called him a “liar” in 2018, when as an investigator in the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) chaired by California’s Devin Nunes, he outed the Steele Dossier as “fictitious intelligence” used to deceive a federal judge and unlawfully spy on Trump’s campaign. Patel added, “Now I’m the FBI Director,” then hinted that he might release “more docs” so “we can see who is lying,” before ending with a reference to “bogus Pulitzers.
Is this normal FBI Director behavior? Would Louis Freeh or William Webster call out a newspaper in such a personal way? Probably not. Would most Times readers even know what Patel is talking about? Also probably not, because the paper has consistently responded to criticism by doing what you did in “Knowing: Still Only Half the Battle”: casually dismiss allegations as “false conspiracies” and “chaff,” things educated people may safely ignore, in favor of the wheat in papers like the Times.
That attitude only works if the facts are on your side. On this story, they aren’t, and it’s not close. About those “receipts” you praised:
As you note, Savage decried “overheated and attention-grabbing claims” made by Trump’s “top officials,” who “accused Mr. Obama of treason and “made criminal referrals” about national security officials under Mr. Obama. Savage may rightly call claims of “treason” overheated, since nothing released yet comes close to meeting the legal definition (though the Times and some of those same “national security officials” similarlyoverreached when they invoked the word at the beginning of Trump’s first term). There are reports today of the case going to a grand jury, but it’s true we don’t know yet how compelling any criminal evidence might be. Still, Savage added an unsupported line:
The administration is trying to distract supporters who are angry about its broken promise to release the Jeffrey Epstein files.
It’s a small detail, but characteristic of what the Times has become. An experienced beat reporter would know the administration has been investigating Russiagate since Trump’s inauguration, that Patel referenced a discovery in this investigation on the Joe Rogan Experience on June 6th, and that CIA Director John Ratcliffe kicked off the recent releases with a report on the Trump-Russia probe that came out on July 2, before the much-criticized Epstein announcement by Pam Bondi’s Justice Department on July 7th.
There is no fact anywhere to support the idea that recent Russiagate releases are an attempt to “distract supporters who are angry about its broken promise to release the Jeffrey Epstein files.” It’s merely something that sounds right to Times readers, probably because it’s been a talking point hammered by Democratic Party politicians like Arizona’s Mark Kelly (“I think they do not want to talk about Jeffrey Epstein”), Connecticut’s Jim Himes (“A transparent effort to distract from… refusal to release the Jeffrey Epstein files”), even a spokesperson for former President Barack Obama, Patrick Rodenbush (“These bizarre allegations are ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction”). Since when is it good practice for a paper like the Times to present partisan talking points as facts?
Savage went on to bristle at Tulsi Gabbard’s recent release of a report prepared by Patel’s team in 2017-2018, about the construction of a January 6, 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) concluding Russia and Vladimir Putin “aspired” to help Donald Trump, for whom he developed a “clear preference.” The HPSCI report dovetailed with Ratcliffe’s report in showing dissent within the team that put together this critical Assessment.
While Ratcliffe showed that then-CIA Director John Brennan overrode the written objections of his own Deputy Director of Analysis and the judgments of two of his top Russia experts in using a piece of paid opposition research originating from the Clinton campaign, the Steele dossier, the HPSCI report showed “CIA officer judgments” objecting to the three other key pieces of evidence as containing “substandard information.” The HPSCI report also described how two senior CIA analysts confronted Brennan about the flaws of the Steele dossier, and he replied, “Yes, but doesn’t it ring true?”
Your experienced beat writer deigned to describe these and other damning details as “messy,” then dismissed them. One of the key pieces of “evidence” was a “scant, unclear, and unverifiable fragment of a sentence” Brennan himself was told by a supposedly well-placed Russian source eventually “exfiltrated” to Virginia. The fragmentary line, “whose victory Putin was counting on,” turned out to be the only evidence bolstering the notion that Putin specifically wanted to help Donald Trump.
Brennan’s own team objected to the fragment’s use because “five people read it five ways,” because the top source was passing on information of unknown origin, and because Brennan’s methods of conveying the intelligence were suspect. The report was not “formally disseminated” or put in writing; Brennan briefed the group and President Obama orally. The HPSCI investigators summarized complaints of the ICA’s authors:
By briefing the information orally, however, DCIA could have tailored his message to different officials, unconstrained by a consistent record copу.
Savage conveyed many of the details just related: that the intelligence faced objections from report authors, that the report failed to notice this key piece of evidence was “disputed,” that analysts didn’t know what the line meant or “who specifically the mole had heard that from,” and that Ratcliffe concluded the report incorrectly described the key judgment that Putin “aspired” to help Trump warranted “high confidence,” a designation that requires multiple sources, when “only one source explicitly and directly backed that finding.”
So yes, Savage agreed, the sole piece of evidence on which the judgment that Putin “aspired” to help Trump was thirdhand, rejected intelligence of disputed meaning that was also incorrectly labeled as warranting “high confidence.” There is a but passage coming, but it’s worth pausing to note what Savage conceded about the evidentiary basis for countless NewYorkTimesstories, including an A1 bombshell put together online on December 9th, 2016, hours after Barack Obama ordered the writing of the new Assessment. In the next day’s print edition, it was headlined: “Russian Hackers Acted to Aid Trump, U.S. Says.”
The lede from that piece:
WASHINGTON — American intelligence agencies have concluded with “high confidence” that Russia acted covertly in the latter stages of the presidential campaign to harm Hillary Clinton’s chances and promote Donald J. Trump, according to senior administration officials.
The Times trumpeted “high confidence” for years, only calling attention to the dissent by the NSA and other CIA analysts when Brennan himself wrote about it in his book, Undaunted, in October of 2020. (The CIA Director had time to write a book before the Times zeroed in on this key detail!) That years-too-late story was called, “Brennan Rebuffed Requests to Lower Confidence in Key Russia Finding.”
As for the use of the Steele dossier in the ICA, the salient fact for any editor attempting objectivity would be that this crude intelligence forgery — later demolished as “rumor,” “speculation,” and “hearsay” in a report by Obama-appointed Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz, who noted the FBI found “zero” corroboration for its claims — was employed at all in such an impactful report. Not according to Savage, who appeared laser-focused on setting up a legal defense against perjury charges for Brennan, writing about how the newly disclosed material “complicates” Brennan’s Congressional testimony:
Mr. Brennan has publicly said the Steele dossier material was not incorporated or used in the assessment itself because of the C.I.A.’s concerns. In 2017, he told Congress that the dossier “was not in any way used as a basis for the intelligence community assessment that was done.”
The newly disclosed material complicates that narrative. For one, it showed that Mr. Brennan internally defended appending a summary of the dossier to the assessment after C.I.A. analysts resisted the compromise, too… For another, the material has revealed that the classified version of the assessment alerted readers to the existence of the annex. It did so in a fourth bullet point under the judgment that Mr. Putin aspired to help Mr. Trump’s chances of winning.
“For additional reporting on Russian plans and intentions, please see Annex A: Additional Reporting from an F.B.I. Source on Russian Influence Efforts,” the bullet point said… Mr. Trump’s allies have argued that this sentence means the information from the Steele dossier was incorporated into the assessment itself.
The great New York Times is reduced to arguing an absurd semantic point, that material included in an “annex” to a report can properly be described as having not been used “in any way” as a “basis” for that same report.
Savage’s other effort in this article is to defend against charges that the CIA used discarded, unclear, unverifiable evidence to secure a “high confidence” judgment by conceding all of the above, but noting that the NSA properly ascribed to the claim “moderate confidence,” which in the intelligence world means something between “not really” and “definitely maybe.”
That is what you described as Savage having “dissected and eviscerated” allegations that Obama and his deputies ginned up “false conspiracies” around the 2016 election.
As a reminder, these “false conspiracies” are the same stories a hyperventilating Times rode all the way to a Pulitzer Prize. How shameful was that Pulitzer? Take one of the winning entries: “Unlikely Source Propelled Russian Meddling Inquiry,” from December 30, 2017. That bombshell report by Sharon LaFraniere, Mark Mazzetti and Matt Apuzzo, about the ostensible origin story of the Trump-Russia investigation, opened in dramatic fashion:
During a night of heavy drinking at an upscale London bar in May 2016, George Papadopoulos, a young foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign, made a startling revelation to Australia’s top diplomat in Britain: Russia had political dirt on Hillary Clinton.
About three weeks earlier, Mr. Papadopoulos had been told that Moscow had thousands of emails that would embarrass Mrs. Clinton, apparently stolen in an effort to try to damage her campaign.
Obviously, you’re a former Journalism School Dean and I’m not, but I wouldn’t have thought you could win a Pulitzer Prize writing a lede with no attributions in which all the new facts are wrong. The assertion that the young Trump aide Papadopoulos spoke of “dirt” or “thousands of emails” was eventually blown up by Alexander Downer, the Australian diplomat mentioned. From the report by Special Counsel John Durham, who noted that Downer said in interviews there was “no mention” of these headline details, and that Papadopoulos simply said “the Russians have information”:
No one deconstructed this story more thoroughly than Jeff Gerth in the same Columbia Journalism Review. Gerth noted that the Times omitted to include public denials by the ostensible source of the “dirt,” a mysterious Maltese professor named Josef Mifsud. Gerth also noted that the lead investigator of “Crossfire Hurricane,” Peter Strzok, told him “There never was a case opened on the Trump campaign—it was opened to identify whoever might have received the Russian offer.” The Russian offer in question was actually a Maltese offer, which the Maltese person denied offering (Mifsud told the FBI he “did not make any offers or proffer any information to Papadopoulos”), and which Downer denied hearing.
Incidentally, Savage in 2023 would link to this prizewinning story, which he described as being about “an Australian diplomat’s tip that a Trump campaign adviser had seemed to disclose advance knowledge that Russia would release hacked Democratic emails.” By then there was no one left still claiming to have said or heard anything about “advance knowledge” of releasing hacked emails. As noted in this space a few days ago, the Times in the piece you praised rewrote a passage about the Downer story without mentioning the name “Papadopoulos,” or “dirt,” or “emails,” or “advance knowledge,” saying only that the Trump campaign “had received outreach from Russia and knew what it would do.”
All the juicy headline details from this and other big Times Trump-Russia stories have been wiped away by time. Take the worst story the Times wrote about this topic, “Trump Campaign Aides Had Repeated Contacts With Russian Intelligence.” It wasn’t a Pulitzer entry, but it was “almost entirely wrong,” as Comey agreed in testimony that year. The Times was nonetheless so excited about its non-scoop that, as Gerth recounted, it hired a Showtime crew to film them faceplanting the editorial process for a documentary called The Fourth Estate. “Are we sure we’re not feeding a conspiracy,” reporter Mark Mazzetti asked, with “recurring themes of contacts?” No, and it was “the biggest story in years,” triumphant editor Dean Baquet chirped.
It was the biggest story in years, but because it was wrong and embarrassing, not the other reason. Still, your Columbia Journalism Review found the scene dazzling:
The film shows that the “daily miracle” of the Times is an enormous undertaking.
The “daily miracle.” That’s not at all a fatuous, self-congratulating or grandiose sentiment! Thank goodness it’s others who serve up “chaff” and “false conspiracies.” With respect, isn’t it time someone at the Times stepped outside the bubble, and took a hard look back?
Arson Attack Hits ICE Field Office In Washington State Amid Dangerous Rhetoric From Democrats
Over the weekend, a federal building housing an ICE field office in Yakima, Washington, was firebombed, yet another violent flashpoint amid the Democratic Party’s unrelenting and dangerous anti-ICE rhetoric. Assaults on ICE agents have skyrocketed by 830%, as Democrats and their dark-money billionaire-funded NGO networks shield criminal illegal aliens from deportations.
Homeland Security provided color of what exactly happened:
On Saturday, a cowardly rioter threw a rock through a window of a building that ICE has a sub-office in. Additionally, a small fire was set at the back of the building. Local authorities are investigating this has an act of arson. There have been no injuries reported at this time and the investigation is ongoing. It is unclear if our brave ICE law enforcement were the targets of these violent acts.
From comparisons to the modern-day Nazi gestapo to glorifying rioters, the violent rhetoric of sanctuary politicians is beyond the pale. Our ICE law enforcement is now facing an 830% increase in assaults against them. Secretary Noem has been clear: Anyone who seeks to harm law enforcement officers will be found and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
On Saturday, a cowardly rioter threw a rock through a window of a building that ICE has a sub-office in. Additionally, a small fire was set at the back of the building. Local authorities are investigating this has an act of arson. There have been no injuries reported at this time… pic.twitter.com/55MB6Y7idr
Ventura County, Calif. — Mexican nationalists and open border extremists have mobilized to attack federal agents to try to stop their raid on a drug farm suspected of being run by illegal foreign nationals. pic.twitter.com/sh699HbyPE
A 27-year-old man opened fire at a U.S. Border Patrol facility in McAllen, Texas, injuring two officers and a Border Patrol employee, authorities reported. Federal agents returned fire at the suspect, identified as Ryan Louis Mosqueda, who was armed with a rifle and wearing a… pic.twitter.com/lIjWdCZzw4
Suspects still on the loose. Officers responded with gunfire as a safety measure. Illegal suspects fled — massive response air & ground…still at large.
Assaults on Ice agents up 830% pic.twitter.com/G1y0ygSXVv
