Authored by Michael Snyder via TheMostImportantNews.com,

A colossal interstellar space rock that was originally known as “A11pl3Z” but has since been given the designation “3I/ATLAS” will be making a very alarming run through our solar system in September and October.  Based on their initial observations, scientists estimated that 3I/ATLAS has a diameter of approximately 20 kilometers, and that would make it larger than Manhattan.  But now scientists are telling us that it is probably at most 5.6 kilometers wide.  Even if it is only about 5 kilometers wide, we are still talking about an extinction-level event if it were to hit us.

 Over the next couple of months, 3I/ATLAS will be zipping through our solar system at a speed of about 130,000 miles per hour, and scientists assure us that the gravity of the sun cannot significantly alter the trajectory of anything moving that fast.  

But what if they are wrong?

As you will see below, 3I/ATLAS is supposed to fly past Mars at a distance of just 0.19 AU on October 3rd.

That is even closer than astronomers were originally projecting, and that is making some people nervous.

Hopefully the experts are correct and there is no threat of collision, because if this thing actually hit Mars it would be a cataclysm unlike anything that any of us have ever seen.

According to Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb, it appears that 3I/ATLAS may actually be emitting its own light…

Interstellar object 3I/ATLAS — which is zooming through our inner solar system — appears to be emitting its own light, according to Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb.

The observation by Loeb, if verified, would contradict NASA’s classification of the Manhattan-size object as a comet, the scientist argues in a new blog post.

Obviously, more observations will have to be done in order to confirm this.

But there are essentially two options.

If this theory is not true and 3I/ATLAS is not emitting its own light, Loeb says that this giant space rock is probably about 12 miles long…

If 3I/ATLAS were reflecting light, it would mean the object was 12 miles long, which is improbable, according to the astrophysicist.

I cannot even imagine an object that is 12 miles long and that is traveling at 130,000 miles per hour.

Can you?

The second option is that 3I/ATLAS is emitting its own light, and that would be even more ominous, because Loeb believes that 3I/ATLAS could potentially be “a spacecraft powered by nuclear energy”…

Loeb speculated that the nucleus of the object could in fact be nuclear — and possibly an engine crafted by an alien people.

“A natural nuclear source could be a rare fragment from the core of a nearby supernova that is rich in radioactive material. This possibility is highly unlikely, given the scarce reservoir of radioactive elements in interstellar space,” Loeb wrote.

“Alternatively, 3I/ATLAS could be a spacecraft powered by nuclear energy, and the dust emitted from its frontal surface might be from dirt that accumulated on its surface during its interstellar travel,” Loeb conjectured, adding, “This cannot be ruled out, but requires better evidence to be viable.”

And Loeb has pointed out that the fact that the trajectory of 3I/ATLAS will take it so close to Mars, Venus and Jupiter is more evidence for the theory that it could be an alien spacecraft…

Loeb has also raised questions about its unusual trajectory.

“If you imagine objects entering the solar system from random directions, just one in 500 of them would be aligned so well with the orbits of the planets,” Loeb told Fox News Digital earlier this month.

The interstellar object, which comes from the center of the Milky Way, is also expected to pass near Mars, Venus and Jupiter, another improbable coincidence, he said.

“It also comes close to each of them, with a probability of one in 20,000,” he said.

For the record, I think that Loeb is way out in left field on this.

I do not believe that 3I/ATLAS is an alien spacecraft.

But I do believe that it is a very dangerous space rock.

And it does appear that it will travel alarmingly close to Mars, Venus and Jupiter…

It follows a retrograde orbit aligned within 5 degrees of the ecliptic plane, passing close to Venus at 0.65 astronomical units, Mars at 0.19 AU, and Jupiter at 0.36 AU. Loeb calculates the probability of such alignments at 0.005 percent for random arrivals.

When I originally wrote about this giant space rock, we were being told that it would pass Mars at a distance of approximately 0.4 AU.

But now we are being told that it will pass Mars at a distance of just 0.19 AU on October 3rd.

I know that is still a relatively safe distance, but it is a little too close for comfort in my book.

And could it be possible that our astronomers will modify their projections again as we get closer to October 3rd?

They have already more than halved the projected distance between 3I/ATLAS and Mars.

This is a story that we will want to watch very closely.

Following the close encounter with Mars, 3I/ATLAS is expected to be closest to the Sun on October 30th.

Subsequently, 3I/ATLAS is supposed to come closest to Earth on December 19th at a distance of approximately 1.8 astronomical units.

That is very good news, because as I pointed out in a previous article, it has been estimated that if a giant space rock that is just 11 or 12 kilometers wide hit us it would “wipe out most everything on Earth”…

For an asteroid to wipe out most everything on Earth, it would have to be massive. Scientists estimate it would take an asteroid about 7 to 8 miles (11 to 12 kilometers) wide crashing into the Earth. Once it made impact, it would create a tremendous dust plume that would envelope the entire planet, block out the sun and raise temperatures where the asteroid made impact. Billions would die, and much of life on the planet would be destroyed. But, scientists believe some would survive.

Thankfully, 3I/ATLAS is not going to hit us, but the clock is certainly ticking for humanity.

In fact, even mainstream scientists are now warning that humanity is living on borrowed time…

In a game of Russian roulette with a standard Colt revolver, the chances of instant death are one-in-six.

Terrifyingly, that’s the same as the odds of humanity being wiped out within 75 years – everyone dead in a cataclysmic and total breakdown of civilisation, according to Oxford University futurologist Toby Ord, an expert on the threat of artificial intelligence.

Does it sound impossibly bleak? His colleague Nick Bostrom is more pessimistic still. He rates the possibility of human extinction by the next century as one in four.

Pulitzer prize-winning writer Jared Diamond is even less hopeful, predicting our species’ chances of survival beyond 2050 – just 25 years away – are no better than evens, or 50/50.

Our self-destructive behaviors are slowly but surely killing our civilization in thousands of different ways.

So even if we are extremely fortunate and a giant space rock does not hit our planet in any of our lifetimes, the truth is that our civilization would still be facing one existential crisis after another.

Michael’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

A man in a reportedly stolen blue Infiniti led California police on a 100 MPH chase Friday, stopping mid-pursuit to pump gas, KABC reported.

Video showed him at a Shell station in Wilshire, Los Angeles, nervously fueling up with his shirt pulled over his face, according to the New York Post. A motorcyclist at the next pump seemed unaware of the drama.

“He couldn’t be acting any more suspicious, I’ll tell you that,” a news chopper reporter remarked. The reporter also noted no police were nearby, giving the man over a minute to fill up.

The Post, citing KABC, writes that after calmly screwing the nozzle back on, he sped away, later driving under an overpass to dodge helicopters. He abandoned the car, which rolled into a light pole.

The chopper reporter called it, “Maybe his smartest move of the night.”

Police believe another driver may have helped him escape, according to KABC.

The chase drew widespread attention on social media, with viewers watching live helicopter coverage in disbelief as the suspect casually stopped for gas mid-pursuit. Commentators noted the unusual decision by officers to repeatedly pull back, a tactic sometimes used to reduce danger to the public during high-speed pursuits.

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

U.S. fighter jets were scrambled for a third time in less than a week on Aug. 24 to intercept Russian military planes flying near Alaska, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) said in a statement.

On Sunday evening, NORAD confirmed that it detected and tracked a Russian IL-20 COOT surveillance aircraft that was operating within the Alaskan Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ).

In response, NORAD scrambled an E-3, two F-16s, and two KC-135 tankers to intercept and identify the Russian plane in the Alaskan zone, the statement added. The statement did not provide other details on exactly where the encounter occurred.

“The Russian military aircraft remained in international airspace and did not enter American or Canadian sovereign airspace,” NORAD said.

“This Russian activity in the Alaskan ADIZ occurs regularly and is not seen as a threat.”

An identification zone starts “where sovereign airspace ends and is a defined stretch of international airspace that requires the ready identification of all aircraft in the interest of national security,” NORAD noted.

Over the past week, NORAD dispatched military planes twice to respond to Russian IL-20 aircraft operating in the ADIZ. In no instances did the Russian aircraft enter U.S. airspace.

The planes were scrambled on Aug. 21 and Aug. 20, according to statements from NORAD, which last deployed planes to respond to Russian aircraft in July.

“NORAD employs a layered defense network of satellites, ground-based and airborne radars and fighter aircraft to detect and track aircraft and inform appropriate actions,” the command said in its statement issued on Aug. 24.

NORAD, which is jointly operated by the U.S. and Canadian militaries, also “remains ready to employ a number of response options in defense of North America,” the statement added.

Sunday’s NORAD mobilization marked the seventh time this year that Russian planes entered the ADIZ, according to press releases issued by NORAD. A review of news releases issued by the command shows that Russian aircraft made similar moves dozens of times in 2024 and 2023.

In September 2024, NORAD released footage of a Russian plane flying “within just a few feet” of U.S. military aircraft near the coast of Alaska, prompting a general to say at the time that the Russian Su-35 plane’s conduct “was unsafe, unprofessional, and endangered all.”

The recent encounter comes a week after President Donald Trump held a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Anchorage, Alaska, to hash out a peace deal to end Russia’s conflict in Ukraine.

On Sunday, Vice President JD Vance said that Russia has made “significant concessions” toward a negotiated settlement in its war with Ukraine and was confident that progress was being made.

“I think the Russians have made significant concessions to President Trump for the first time in three and a half years of this conflict,” Vance said in comments aired on Sunday by NBC News’ “Meet the Press.”

He also said that Russia has “recognized that they’re not going to be able to install a puppet regime in Kyiv.”

“That was, of course, a major demand at the beginning. And importantly, they’ve acknowledged that there is going to be some security guarantee to the territorial integrity of Ukraine,” Vance said.

Submitted via American Truckers United, 

A Change.org petition, initiated by “Collective Punjabi youth,” has surged to over 2.3 million signatures, imploring Florida Governor Ron DeSantis to grant clemency to Harjinder Singh. Support has poured in from everywhere but the United States, with most signatures originating from India and the global Punjabi diaspora. Framed as a plea for mercy in a “tragic accident,” supporters argue the 28-year-old illegal immigrant from Punjab, India, deserves counseling or community service rather than prison for the deaths of three Americans. Videos and comments pour in from India, Australia, and worldwide, spotlighting Singh’s youth and family struggles, but this swell of support smacks of identity politics over justice. Petitioners, largely from Singh’s ethnic community, seek exemption through cultural ties, ignoring the victims’ grieving families. 

NEW: Over 1.65M people have signed a petition to free the illegal immigrant truck driver who made an illegal U-Turn, taking the lives of 3 Americans.

The petition argues that Harjinder Singh should be sentenced to counseling or community service.

Some supporters are leaving… pic.twitter.com/45I0nUFgfv

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) August 23, 2025

Open to the global web, such petitions invite interference in U.S. affairs—with India’s 1.4 billion people potentially amassing a billion votes—the core remains: We prioritize justice for the bereaved.

India has over 1.4 Billion people and
they dont get a say in American Justice https://t.co/o3uCDg1IA7

— American Truckers 🚛🦅 (@atutruckers) August 23, 2025

The incident unfolded in the predawn hours of August 12, on Florida’s Turnpike near Fort Pierce. Singh, driving a tractor-trailer, executed an illegal U-turn, transforming his rig into a fatal barrier. A minivan collided with the trailer, killing three innocent Americans instantly. Charged with three counts of vehicular homicide and manslaughter—facing up to 45 years—Singh fled to California but was swiftly arrested before escaping further. Post-accident investigations revealed Singh’s failure on an English proficiency test, underscoring his inability to comprehend critical road signs, a factor in the preventable tragedy. Harjinder Singh knew he had entered the U.S. illegally in 2018, knew he had obtained his CDL through improper means in sanctuary states like California and Washington, and knew he was unable to read essential road signs. He is not innocent; lives were lost while he was committing multiple criminal acts.

American trucking at a crossroads: Deadly crash involving illegal alien exposes true cost of Biden’s border invasion – Blaze Media

Full Story In The Comments pic.twitter.com/lefL3Fu1sY

— American Truckers 🚛🦅 (@atutruckers) August 24, 2025

This case exposes a perilous gap in accountability for immigrant truck drivers in fatal crashes. While Singh was caught promptly, many flee homeward, dodging justice via porous borders and prior lax enforcement. It’s a rampant tactic: Drivers abscond to origins, evading prosecution and denying closure to American victims. Take the heartbreaking case of tow truck driver Troy Caldwell in Kentucky, slain by a distracted semi-driver; the suspect, Shodmon Yuldahev, of Uzbek origin, has an open arrest warrant, and he is still at large. Comparable tales persist: In Colorado, crash victims’ widows demand reforms after foreign truckers flee or receive light penalties. Similarly, in 2019, Rogel Lazaro Aguilera-Mederos, a 23-year-old Cuban truck driver, exhibited outrageous behavior when his semi-truck’s brakes failed on I-70; he passed multiple runaway ramps, leading to a fiery crash that killed four Americans. Convicted of vehicular homicide, he was initially sentenced to 110 years, but a similar massive petition campaign—with over 5 million signatures—led to a reduction to just 10 years by Governor Jared Polis. Where’s the outcry for these American Families who have lost loved ones? 

🚨The Lakewood Colorado truck crash should have been a wake-up call for our nation. At the time, the criminal labor dumping scheme and unchecked invasion across our borders went unnoticed by many. Looking back, this tragedy should have SET OFF ALARMS to protect our communities… pic.twitter.com/hatl3eQpsB

— American Truckers 🚛🦅 (@atutruckers) August 24, 2025

The Lakewood, Colorado, crash occurred at a time when the industry and the American people were not yet fully aware of the corruption plaguing the trucking sector. Dispatchers and overseas owners often elude blame, fostering bold illegal operations, knowing that repercussions are slim. In Singh’s scenario, he hauled for White Hawk Carriers, Inc., whose operations halted post-crash due to failure to pay insurance premiums, with the timing being coincidental and not a result of crash-related enforcement. Full accountability demands scrutiny across the industry: Lobbyists advocating weak rules, brokers and shippers skimping on vetting for gains, and profiteers enabling such hazards through the issuance of insurance or loans.

🚨BREAKING: Sec. of Transportation Sean Duffy EXPOSES Scandal! Previous admin handed work permits & CDLs to non-citizens, flooding the market and undercutting American truckers.

This was LABOR DUMPING—plain and simple. ATU believes Hundreds of thousands of our workers suffered… https://t.co/z2NWnPAmbc pic.twitter.com/NOBRQ8CTPX

— American Truckers 🚛🦅 (@atutruckers) June 27, 2025

A firm message is overdue: End impunity. The Biden era’s chaos widened these voids through unchecked borders and recklessness. Under Trump, order returns, seen in paused foreign trucker visas amid outrage. Resistance grows: DHS labels Singh a “significant threat,” rejecting bond. No clemency—justice must endure, untouched by volume or nationalism. Victims merit nothing less. The only way to get this industry back under control is through more accountability and higher standards. Singh will not be the sole target; high confidence suggests these facilitators—the architects of this unjust ecosystem—may soon pen their own clemency pleas as probes deepen under stricter oversight.

American Truckers United delivered a letter to Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, requesting support for our petition to ban non-domicile CDLs issued to non-citizens and to restrict foreign CDLs. https://t.co/uQv0hwIvmC pic.twitter.com/z71Ba8XnJ6

— American Truckers 🚛🦅 (@atutruckers) June 19, 2025

. . . 

President Trump’s war on unreliable green energy is shifting into high gear, with the administration now targeting a massive offshore wind project planned off the coast of Maryland, according to Bloomberg. The move comes just days after the White House halted construction on an offshore wind farm off Rhode Island over unresolved national security concerns – and may also serve as a jab at far-left Maryland Governor Wes Moore, who has tried to out-green neighboring states with disastrous energy policies that have now morphed into a power-bill crisis.

The Interior Department is preparing to revoke a $6 billion permit for U.S. Wind’s planned development of up to 114 turbines, located 10 nautical miles off Ocean City –  or just down the road from Joe Biden’s beach house in the liberal-elite enclave of Rehoboth.

The project was approved under the Biden-Harris regime last year and was slated to begin construction next year. It has been unpopular from the start with many Marylanders, who argue the windmills would pollute the natural surroundings. 

Apollo Global Management and Toto Holding SpA back US Wind. The company told Bloomberg: “We remain confident that the federal permits we secured after a multi-year and rigorous public review process are legally sound.” 

Local media reports…

UPDATE: Both Ocean City’s Mayor and Town Manager have expressed their approval of the Trump Administration’s latest court filing indicating the federal government’s plans to revoke US Wind’s federal permit approvals. Md. Congressman Andy Harris also applauded the move.

— WBOC TV16 (@wboc) August 25, 2025

Last Friday, the Interior Department ordered construction halted on the 80%-completed Revolution Wind offshore project off Rhode Island, citing unresolved national security concerns under federal review. This sent shares of Orsted A/S, the developer of the offshore wind farm, crashing on Monday in European hours, down around 16%.  

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.