U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has ordered a sharp increase in the use of GPS-enabled ankle monitors for migrants in its Alternatives to Detention (ATD) program, according to a June 9 internal memo reviewed by The Washington Post. The memo directs officers to fit ankle monitors on ATD participants “whenever possible,” expanding surveillance under the Trump administration.

Roughly 183,000 migrants are currently enrolled in ATD, a program that allows them to remain out of detention while awaiting immigration hearings, according to the Washington Post. Until now, only about 24,000 wore ankle monitors. Most others used a mobile app or checked in with case managers. The memo exempts pregnant women from ankle bracelets, requiring wrist-worn devices instead.

“If the alien is not being arrested at the time of reporting, escalate their supervision level to GPS ankle monitors whenever possible and increase reporting requirements,” wrote acting assistant director Dawnisha M. Helland.

The change significantly broadens a surveillance practice ICE has used for two decades. While cheaper than detention, ankle monitors have long been criticized as stigmatizing, invasive, and physically painful.

“This will be a tool used to extend the reach of the government from just the folks it can manage to put in physical detention to an additional hundreds of thousands more that it can surveil,” said Laura Rivera of Just Futures. “It’s designed to turn their own communities and homes into digital cages.”

ICE spokeswoman Emily Covington defended ankle monitors as an “enforcement tool” to ensure compliance, adding, “More accountability shouldn’t come as a surprise.” She said decisions are still made case by case.

In practice, however, compliant migrants are increasingly being subjected to stricter monitoring without explanation. “Why are people any more of a flight risk now?” asked immigration attorney Annelise Araujo. “People who have lived in the same community, in the same home, in the same job for 20 years?”

WaPo reports that the expansion benefits private prison giant Geo Group, whose subsidiary BI Inc. runs the ATD program. Geo, which donated over $1.5 million to Trump’s campaign and inaugural committee, manufactures the monitors and employs case managers.

Geo CEO David Donahue told investors in May, “We are very well positioned” to scale up monitoring. Each monitored migrant generates $3.70 in revenue per day—potentially hundreds of millions annually.

Although ICE recently extended BI’s contract without competitive bidding, internal sources say the agency is now looking for additional vendors amid concerns BI cannot meet demand. Many monitors are old or recycled, and case managers are already stretched, with some overseeing up to 300 individuals.

Tom Homan, Trump’s former border czar and one-time consultant to Geo, is one of several officials with ties to both ICE and its contractors. A White House spokesperson said Homan recuses himself from contract discussions.

In Virginia, dozens of migrants recently waited in ICE offices to be fitted with monitors. “Everybody in here needs to either wear hardware or be detained,” one ICE official told immigration lawyer Megan Brody.

According to the American Immigration Council, 83% of non-detained migrants attended all court hearings from 2008 to 2018. Yet the ankle monitor is the only ATD tracking method that’s increased under Trump, with 4,165 added since January.

ICE says it considers factors like criminal record, compliance history, and caregiving responsibilities in assigning tracking methods. However, many say they are placed under surveillance without justification and not moved to less restrictive options even after proving reliability.

ICE may soon broaden ATD to include more types of devices and tech, depending on what it can purchase quickly. Covington declined to comment on those plans.

Authored by Andrew Korybko via Substack,

Demilitarization and regime change might be in the cards…

The latest clashes between Cambodia and Thailand over their decades-long border dispute, which were arguably initiated by the Thai military to restore its damaged prestige amidst a recent political scandal as explained here, could “move towards war” according to its acting Prime Minister. Thailand doesn’t recognize the International Court of Justice’s 1962 ruling in favor of Cambodia and rejects third-party mediation in the current conflict so the fighting will likely continue until it achieves some tangible goal.

That scenario would naturally raise the question of Thailand’s endgame. It’s officially only defending itself from what it claims to be Cambodia’s unprovoked aggression and cross-border incursions, but the longer that the conflict goes on for, the more likely it is that mission creep could change its stated goals. After all, the perceived security threat posed by Cambodia is intensifying, so Thailand’s goals could evolve to “demilitarizing” its neighbor and possibly even carrying out regime change to ensure that.

Former Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, who remains influential as the President of the Senate and the father of incumbent Prime Minister Hun Manet, has recently been portrayed as a bogeyman in Thailand. The narrative might thus soon be spun that he and his son’s continued rule over the country poses an enduring threat to Thailand’s security, ergo the possibly proposed solution of replacing them with a puppet regime that’ll demilitarize Cambodia and cede the disputed territories.

Hun Sen was previously demonized by the West, which he strongly implied in 2019 wanted to overthrow him at the possible cost of plunging Cambodia back into civil war, and they also claimed that he cut a secret deal with Beijing to host a Chinese naval base. It therefore wouldn’t be too difficult for Thailand to rally Western governments around a potential regime change campaign in Cambodia. In exchange for their political support, Thailand might promise to have its puppet regime distance Cambodia from China.

To be clear, this speculation about its endgame doesn’t mean that Thailand initiated the latest conflict at the West’s behest, just that the bloc’s US leader might see an opportunity if Thailand’s goals shift to regime change in the event that the conflict escalates into war. Even if this objective becomes obvious to most observers, those multipolar-friendly ones with ties to Thailand might still deny it due to fear of falling afoul of its strict lese-majeste law, which some believe is abused to stifle criticism of the military.

Similarly, due to Thailand’s much larger economy and geostrategic location at the center of the Greater Mekong Subregion, China and Russia might be reluctant to condemn this potential regime change campaign, let alone propose UNSC sanctions. Their global media ecosystems, which include independent influencers who support their worldview and rarely contradict their officials (even usually shying away from constructive critiques of their policies), might take the cue to eschew criticism of Thailand.

Thailand’s military dwarfs Cambodia’s by all metrics so it could easily sweep into Phnom Penh to depose Hun Sen and his son unless something goes wrong or Vietnam intervenes (though it too has problems with them). Public opinion in Thailand also seems to favor regime change in Cambodia, but it’s ultimately the military’s call whether or not to pursue this. They might think that now’s the perfect moment to end Cambodian-emanating threats once and for all, however, so they might very well make a push for this.

The Trump administration is taking steps to repeal a key climate policy from the Obama era, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin confirmed Wednesday, according to The Hill.

“EPA has sent to the Office of Management and Budget a proposed rule to repeal the 2009 endangerment finding from the Obama EPA,” Zeldin told Newsmax this week.

That 2009 determination, made under President Obama, found that greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane posed a threat to public health. It provided the legal foundation for regulating emissions from vehicles and other sources under the Clean Air Act.

“Through the endangerment finding, there has been into the trillions worth of regulations, including tailpipe emissions and including electric vehicle mandates,” Zeldin said.

While Biden-era vehicle emissions standards didn’t explicitly mandate electric cars, they were expected to significantly shift the market toward them. The repeal of the endangerment finding could undercut such climate rules entirely.

The move, first reported by The New York Times, signals a major escalation in Trump’s rollback of environmental regulations. Although his first term saw the weakening of emissions limits, the endangerment finding itself remained intact—until now.

Critics warn repealing it would gut the EPA’s authority to address climate change. “We are right back to full-throated climate denialism of the early 2000s,” said Zealan Hoover, a former senior EPA advisor under Biden. He called it “insane” to deny climate change’s impacts on public health.

“Climate change impacts public health because it changes the Earth’s climate patterns in ways that are beyond both what the human body and our built systems, evolved to have been designed to adapt [to]… that looks like extreme heat… sea level rise… more damaging storm surges and even flooding on non-storm days,” Hoover added.

The 2009 endangerment finding followed a 2007 Supreme Court ruling requiring the EPA to determine whether greenhouse gases threaten public health. That ruling authorized the agency to regulate them if they did.

The Hill writes that although the agency has floated the idea of repealing the finding before, this is the first concrete proposal. In March, the EPA said it would “reconsider” the finding without specifying a direction.

The current proposal is not yet final. Formal revocation could take months or years, and the agency appears to still be developing its case. A similar recent EPA move argued that power plants’ emissions should not be considered “significant” contributors to dangerous air pollution—signaling a broader strategy to eliminate climate-based regulations.

Zeldin, during his confirmation hearing, declined to say whether he believes the EPA has a duty to regulate climate change.

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Brain aging appears to have accelerated by several months during the COVID-19 pandemic, even in people who did not get sick from the virus, according to a new study.

The study, published in the journal Nature Communications on July 22, found that in 2021 and 2022, brain scans from a large UK database showed signs of aging, including brain shrinkage, even in individuals who were never infected.

Although people who had a COVID-19 infection showed some declines in overall cognitive performance, the authors said that structural brain changes were seen across a larger population.

They highlighted pandemic-related stressors, such as anxiety, social isolation, and economic and health insecurity, as possible reasons for the increase in brain aging.

The research suggested that the pandemic may have also prematurely aged some individuals’ brains by an average of 5.5 months, even among those who never contracted the virus. The impacts of the pandemic on the brain were most pronounced in men and people from “deprived socio-demographic backgrounds,” the study said.

The team analyzed brain scans collected from 15,334 healthy adults, with an average age of 63, in the UK Biobank—a long-term monitoring program—and then used machine-learning models to examine “hundreds of structural features of the participants’ brains, which taught the model how the brain looks at various ages,” the study’s lead author, Ali-Reza Mohammadi-Nejad, a researcher at the University of Nottingham, stated in a paper released alongside the study.

After that, they applied the model to a group of 996 healthy UK Biobank participants who had two brain scans at least “a couple of years apart,” he added. Some participants had one scan done before the pandemic and another following the onset of the pandemic, in early 2020, the study stated.

“What surprised me most was that even people who hadn’t had Covid showed significant increases in brain ageing rates,” Mohammadi-Nejad said in a statement. “It really shows how much the experience of the pandemic itself, everything from isolation to uncertainty, may have affected our brain health.”

The long-term impacts of the brain changes aren’t clear, the team of researchers said, but they concluded that there is a need to “address health and socio-economic inequalities in addition to lifestyle factors to mitigate accelerated brain ageing.” More research is also crucial to “improve brain health outcomes in future public health crises,” they added.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in an update several days ago that COVID-19 cases are rising in some parts of the United States, although the overall levels for the virus remain low.

COVID-19 activity, the CDC said on July 18, is now increasing in some Southeast, Southern, and West Coast states. Citing wastewater data for COVID-19, the agency said that positive tests are increasing around the United States, while emergency department visits appear to be increasing among children aged 0 to 4.

Wastewater detections for COVID-19 updated by the CDC suggest that high levels of the virus are being reported in California, Florida, Hawaii, Louisiana, Nevada, South Carolina, and Texas. No states were experiencing very high levels, according to a map from the agency.

President Donald Trump on Friday responded to a question posed by a reporter for the Russian TASS agency during a press conference on the White House lawn regarding nuclear weapons.

The US expects to formally engage with Russia soon on prospects for nuclear disarmament, Trump indicated, as the last remaining landmark nuclear arms control treaty between Washington and Moscow, known as New START, is in its last year. The full name is Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms.

“That’s not an agreement you want expiring. We’re starting to work on that,” he told reporters outside the White House. It’s expiring “in about six months,” the TASS reporter had reminded Trump.

“It’s a problem for the world,” the president said continued in reference to its upcoming expiration of early 2026. “When you take off nuclear restrictions, that’s a big problem.”

He reiterated that he would like to see the US and Russia to cut their nuclear weapons stockpiles. Trump has since entering into office for his second term signaled repeatedly that this is an aim of his which would be good for the world and for humanity.

In March 2021 the two sides renewed New START for a period of five years, and it will expire in February 2026 if it is not continued – an increasing possibility given US-Russia relations have deteriorated so fast over the Ukraine war that they hover near complete breaking point.

Trump has made clear he wants to improve bilateral relations, despite also expressing frustration that peace talks haven’t produced fruit thus far. There could even possibly be a future face-to-face meeting with President Putin.

The New START treaty is intended to limit and reduce nuclear arms on either side, setting a limit of no more than 1,550 deployed warheads and 700 missiles.

START I began in 1991, with New START signed under the prior Obama and Medvedev administrations in 2010 as a successor agreement.

Trump’s Friday remarks in response to a question on New START:

Donald Trump: The imminent expiration of the New START treaty is a problem for the entire world.

New START is the Treaty on the Reduction of Strategic Offensive Arms. It is a bilateral agreement between Russia and the United States aimed at limiting and reducing strategic… pic.twitter.com/cIy5UI9NJp

— Webuildhome (@webuildhome_org) July 25, 2025

The past couple years have seen the terms of the treaty essentially become inactive or de facto suspended, given each side has accused the other of violating its terms over not allowing inspectors to properly investigate stockpiles on their respective soils.

Authored by Michael Clements via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled July 24 that a California law requiring background checks to buy ammunition violated the Second Amendment.

A three-judge panel ruled 2–1 that the background check requirement failed to meet the standard set by the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen.

According to Bruen, a law must comply with the plain language of the Constitution and be analogous to laws at the time the Second Amendment was ratified.

Appeals Court Judges Sandra S. Ikuta and Bridget S. Bade upheld a permanent injunction issued by District Court Judge Roger T. Benetiz of the Southern District Court of California in 2020.

Judge Jay S. Bybee dissented.

The court ruled that the law regulates activity protected by the text of the Second Amendment because ammunition is necessary for the use of firearms.

“California’s ammunition background check regime implicates the plain text of the Second Amendment because the regime meaningfully constrains the right to keep operable arms,” Ikuta wrote.

The court also held that “the government failed to carry its burden of showing that California’s ammunition background check regime is consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”

While the Supreme Court stated in Bruen that some regulation in shall-issue carry regimes may be constitutional, the Ninth Circuit ruled that this did not cover ammunition purchases.

The Appeals Court ruled that ammunition purchases are distinct from concealed carry permits for firearms. The court stated that the California law was especially burdensome because it required a background check for each ammunition purchase, regardless of when the last purchase was made.

“Because California’s ammunition background check regime violates the Second Amendment, the panel held that the district court did not abuse its discretion in granting a permanent injunction,” the ruling reads.

In his dissent, Bybee wrote that the delay and expense imposed by the background check did not impede the exercise of the Second Amendment right enough to be considered an infringement.

He added that the law’s requirement of face-to-face ammunition transactions, combined with the state’s prohibition on individuals carrying ammunition across state lines, did not violate the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution.

“In addition, the Supreme Court has repeatedly recognized that objective, ‘shall-issue’ licensing regimes—like California’s—are presumptively lawful, and plaintiffs have failed to rebut that presumption,” the dissent reads.

Plaintiffs celebrated the victory, but said they are not done.

“Today’s ruling represents continued affirmation that the Bruen decision, and Heller before represent a sea change in the way courts must look at these absurdly restrictive laws,” California Rifle and Pistol Association President and General Counsel Chuck Michel said in an email to The Epoch Times.

“The state of California continues to try to strip our rights, and we continue to prove their actions are unconstitutional.”

Lead plaintiff Kim Rhode—a member of the U.S. Olympic skeet and trap shooting team and six-time medalist—touted the ruling on X.

“As lead plaintiff in Rhode v. Bonta, I just defeated @CAgovernor Newsom’s ammo law… again … at the 9th Circuit. I’ve represented this country for 30 years,” she wrote.

Other plaintiffs were individuals Gary Brennan, Cory Henry, Edward Johnson, Scott Lindemuth, Richard Ricks, Denise Welvang, and businesses Able’s Sporting Inc. of Texas, AmDep Holdings LLC of Florida, and R&S Firearms Inc. of Arizona.

Attorney General Rob Bonta, in his official capacity, was the only defendant. His office did not respond to a request for comment by publication time.

In 2016, California voters approved Proposition 63. That law required a point-of-sale background check for every ammunition purchase. Buyers already in California’s firearms database paid $5 for each check; those not in the system paid $19 for a more comprehensive, one-time background check.

The law also banned individuals from buying ammunition in other states. It required all such transfers to be handled by a licensed dealer.

Benetiz found the law unconstitutional in 2020 and issued an injunction to block its enforcement. Bonta was granted a stay from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, pausing the injunction during the appeal.

The U.S. Supreme Court vacated that decision, sending the case back to the lower courts for reconsideration under the Bruen standard.

At Expo 2025 in Osaka, Japan is using an unexpected location—a bus terminal—to highlight its latest innovation: ultrathin “perovskite” solar panels, according to Nikkei.

More than 250 of these flexible, lightweight panels line the curved roof of the Yumeshima Transportation Terminal 1. Japan hopes this film-like solar tech will not only boost domestic renewable energy and reduce reliance on China, but also help it lead the next generation of solar innovation.

“It’s like killing three birds with one stone,” said Takayuki Taenaka of Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI).

Photos: Nikkei Asia

Perovskite solar cells, discovered in 2009, are made from layers of chemicals just millimeters thick. Though still in early development, they rival traditional silicon-based panels in efficiency while being 20 times thinner and 10 times lighter, allowing installation on walls, rooftops, and even windows—places unsuitable for heavy panels.

“We believe this technology has the potential to beat the conventional silicon-based solar panels in terms of power generation efficiency,” said Futoshi Kamiwaki, president of Sekisui Solarfilm, which developed the panels showcased at the Expo.

Japan, with limited flat land, leads major nations in solar capacity per km² but is running out of space. Installing perovskite cells on buildings could turn cities into vertical solar farms, helping Tokyo meet its 2040 goal: 29% of power from solar, up from under 10% today.

Sekisui plans to begin commercial shipments this year and start mass production by 2027. It’s investing ¥310 billion ($2.1 billion) in a new 1GW manufacturing facility—half subsidized by the government. A further ¥5 billion is allocated to help local governments adopt the tech.

Japan aims to generate 20GW from next-gen solar by 2040, equivalent to 20 nuclear reactors.

Japan once held a 50% global share in solar panels around 2000, but by 2023, that dropped to under 1%, largely due to China’s dominance. A METI report bluntly stated the government “lacked policies” to support industry growth and supply chains.

Today, China controls over 80% of all stages in the solar manufacturing process, thanks to its dominance in polysilicon.

“There is a risk in relying on one supplier,” said Taenaka. “The fact that the main ingredient for perovskite photovoltaic (PV) is iodine, which we are a major producer of, scratches an important itch for us.”

Nikkei writes that while Japanese firms focus on flexible perovskites, Chinese giants like Jinko Solar are developing tandem perovskite-silicon cells that reach up to 33.84% efficiency, compared to Sekisui’s 15% in practice and 30% in labs.

“It’s like cooking. Even if you have a frying pan and the right ingredients, the quality… depends on how good the chef is,” said Yukihiro Kaneko of Panasonic.

Analysts say Chinese manufacturers are sticking with tandem formats for now due to massive overcapacity in polysilicon production.

“The industry already struggles a lot from overcapacity… This transition to a different technology is not happening anytime soon,” said Yana Hryshko of Wood Mackenzie.

Still, Japan’s government is backing both film-type and tandem perovskites through its Green Innovation Fund, with subsidies expected as early as 2025.

Despite the promise, cost remains the biggest barrier. Japan’s target is 10 yen per kilowatt-hour by 2040. But the global average for silicon panels is 5–6 yen, with China producing at just 2 yen.

“If the costs of perovskite panels can fall to the level of Chinese made polysilicon panels, then this Japanese technology can take off,” said Yasushi Ninomiya of the Institute of Energy Economics Japan.

BCG estimates that at 10 yen/kWh, global demand could reach 1,196 GW—nearly two-thirds of today’s total installed solar capacity.

But Japanese firms face a classic chicken-and-egg dilemma: no mass market without low prices, and no low prices without mass production.

“This is an industry that will need government support to at least 2030,” said Toshiba’s Tomohiro Tobari.

“What we want to avoid policy-wise is that due to a lack of demand and a market, mass production does not happen and costs do not come down,” said Taenaka.

“We are focusing on the domestic market now, but we’ll also need to look at how to sell this technology abroad,” he added. “Many people have now witnessed this technology at the Osaka Expo. The next step is to translate those eyeballs into actual business.”

Authored by Arjun Singh via The Epoch Times,

The United States will begin charging a new “visa integrity fee” when issuing visas to foreign nationals for admission to the country.

The refundable fee was created by a new budget bill, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, that was signed into law by President Donald Trump on July 4. It specifies that a minimum fee of $250 must be charged to all foreigners seeking a nonimmigrant visa to enter the United States. The Secretary of Homeland Security has the authority to increase the fee and it is adjustable for inflation.

The fee will not come into effect immediately. The government will have to initiate a rulemaking process to issue a regulation regarding the fee, which will entail a public comment period per the Administrative Procedure Act, a process that can take more than a year and is subject to legal challenges.

The fee will raise the cost for visiting the United States but may be refunded subject to certain conditions.

More than 10.9 million nonimmigrant visas were issued by the United States in 2024, which means the fee could affect millions of people and generate billions of dollars in revenue.

Who Is Subject to the Fee?

The law specifies that all foreign nationals requesting a nonimmigrant visa must pay the fee. Nonimmigrant visas are a type of visa issued to most foreign nationals who visit the United States for temporary periods; the other type are immigrant visas, which eventually allow foreign nationals to permanently reside in the country.

Business travelers and tourists, who are usually admitted to the United States on B-1/B-2 status, will be required to pay the fee, in addition to the existing non-petition visa fee of $185. The new fee is likely to be payable during the application process—made at a U.S. diplomatic or consular mission abroad—before the visa foil sticker is placed in an applicant’s passport. The statute specifies that the fee must be paid “at the time of … issuance” of the visa, which occurs before travel to the country.

The same process may apply to nonimmigrant workers, who are usually admitted to the United States on a variety of statuses, including H-1B, H-2A, O-1, L-1, P-1, and others, in addition to the existing fee of $205. Likewise, international students who receive an F-1 or M-1 status, or exchange visitors and trainees admitted on J-1 status, will be required to pay the fee.

Just as the principal applicants for these statuses may be charged a fee, so will any dependents who accompany them on dependent statuses, such as H-3, O-3, or L-3. Each person visiting the United States must receive their own visa, which means that each applicant will need to pay the fee.

Who May Be Exempt From the Fee?

Though the fee will be required by almost all nonimmigrants to the United States, there are some notable exemptions. These are either foreigners who normally do not require nonimmigrant visas, or those who are special visitors.

The biggest exemption will be for Canadian citizens, who normally do not require nonimmigrant visas to enter the United States even as they are admitted on various nonimmigrant statuses. Unlike the nationals of all other countries, Canadians may seek admission as nonimmigrant with no visa in their passport—either without any prior approval entirely (in the case of B-1/B-2 visitors), or with USCIS paperwork such as notices of approval of status petitions for H-1B workers, F-1 students, and J-1 physicians, and more.

Additionally, most visitors to the United States from Europe and a few other countries that are part of the Visa Waiver Program will not be required to pay the fee. The Visa Waiver Program is a program that waives the requirement of a B-1/B-2 visa to visit the United States for certain non-Canadian foreign nationals, who may visit the United States for up to 90 days after obtaining an “Electronic System for Travel Authorization” approval of their waiver online, paying a $21 fee to do so.

Citizens of the United Kingdom, most countries in the European Union—except Bulgaria, Cyprus, and Romania—Switzerland, San Marino, Liechtenstein, Monaco, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Israel, Brunei, Qatar, and Singapore who are eligible for the Visa Waiver Program will be exempt from the fee.

Furthermore, visitors who are admitted for official purposes—such as diplomats and consular officials on A-status, international organization officials on G-status, and NATO military officials on NATO-status—may not be required to pay the fee.

Though the statute specifies that no waivers or reductions are permitted, diplomatic considerations may lead to their personal exemption from the fee. For such visitors, the foreign government or organization that sends them to the United States endorses their presence, meaning they are unlikely to overstay their status in the country and violate U.S. law.

Separately, all immigrants to the United States will be exempt from the fee. Those who receive immigrant visas are authorized to enter the United States to live and work. An immigrant visa is not necessarily a “green card” (or Lawful Permanent Resident status) but all typically lead to a green card.

Fiancées (and their dependents) of U.S. citizens who enter on K-status are may not be charged the fee, even though they receive a K-status nonimmigrant visa. This is because they are considered intending immigrants who will adjust status to permanent residency within the United States, an intention that is normally prohibited when a nonimmigrant seeks admission.

It is unclear whether asylum seekers or refugees will be subject to the fee. These people are considered nonimmigrant, but they do not ordinarily receive visas to enter the United States after being granted lawful status in the country.

When May the Fee Be Refunded?

The law specifies that the Visa Integrity Fee may be refunded under certain conditions. The word “may” indicates that the government is not required to refund the fee, though it is permitted to do so.

Two conditions are outlined for a refund: The first is that the foreigner must have “complied with all conditions of such nonimmigrant visa, including the condition that an alien shall not accept unauthorized employment.”

In order words, they must obey all the laws of the United States while in the country and cannot work for income without approval from USCIS. B-1/B-2 visa holders are prohibited from employment in the United States, while other nonimmigrant may be employed with restrictions.

The second condition is that a foreign national must depart from the United States within five days after their period of admission expires. A “period of admission” is different from the length of validity of a nonimmigrant visa, as some statuses only permit the foreigner to remain in the country for short periods of time—for example, 10-year B-1/B-2 visa holders may only remain in the United States for a maximum of 180 days on any given visit.

Hence, any foreign national who remains for five days after such a period expires will be ineligible for a refund of the fee, which acts as an incentive to leave the U.S. in a timely manner.

However, the law specifies an exemption for certain foreigners who change their nonimmigrant status—for example, F-1 students who receive H-1B status—or who adjust their status to that of permanent residents—such as O-1 workers receiving “green cards”—usually by petition to USCIS. Even though these people may remain in the United States beyond the duration of their admission period, such as when waiting for a petition’s approval, they may receive a refund of the fee.

There is no current timeline on when the fee will come into effect. A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security told The Epoch Times that “the visa integrity fee requires cross-agency coordination before implementation.”

The Democratic Party abandoned meritocracy long ago. Today, it’s fully aligned with the far-left obsession over ‘equity’ and ‘diversity,’ with party leaders openly championing socialism and even praising Marxism.

Democrats don’t realize they’re their own worst enemies. The push for a socialist reconstruction of America via their DEI warrior squad is just creating hurdle upon hurdle and slowing the momentum. 

The latest hurdle – this time credibility and trust – is that whoever runs the Democratic Party’s DEI social media team just revealed how incredibly uninformed they are. One would think that with an elite liberal education, the pronoun-wielding team would have a better grasp of basic economics. 

On Thursday, the Democratic Party’s official X account attempted to criticize President Trump over lingering food inflation. Yet the DEI warriors running the account showed zero understanding of when the inflation actually began – during the first term of the Biden-Harris regime.

What comes next is hilarious. The social media team likely got a nudge from higher-ups about their epic messaging mistake and deleted the post—probably after the White House responded to the X post with some much-needed common sense.

You know it’s bad, when all the @WhiteHouse has to do is repost @TheDemocrats, and add a label. 🤣 pic.twitter.com/fTKstKlsTr

— Emergent Perspective (@_emergent_) July 24, 2025

Now deleted post by Democrats. 

Hilarious. 

pic.twitter.com/t48vZQjkDM

— The Rubin Report (@RubinReportShow) July 24, 2025

This is the informational war. Trump’s social media team is actively engaged. 

Authored by James Howard Kunstler,

“If you can arrest a former president named Donald Trump, you can arrest a former president named Barack Obama.”

– Peachy Keenan on “X”

Don’t you think it’s time for The New York Times to stop using the cliché “baseless” when referring to allegations — now, actually, official accusations— of the seditious conspiracy to run President Trump out of office after the 2016 election? Of all the fake “journalistic” blurts emanating from this bastion of degenerate sell-outs, “baseless” is the fakest, as if the word printed in a headline were so magically potent, the sheer assertion of it can make all your problems just — poof! — go away.

It’s the thought process of wicked children who fail to develop a sense of true or false, right or wrong, who grow into adults specially licensed, by some new perversion of the social contract, to get away with anything.

And those wicked children have become America’s managerial class, the elite who are supposed to do your thinking for you op-ed style, the credentialed experts, such as Tony Fauci, “economist” Paul Krugman, DEI avatar and NPR honcho Katherine Maher, Harvard law prof Lawrence Tribe. . . the list is interminable, but you get the picture.

This class is also the owner / operator of America’s political Deep State, which by 2016 had grown into a colossal racketeering operation, money-laundering gazillions of taxpayer dollars into NGOs dedicated to the country’s cultural and political destruction while it processed campaign donations into fantastic fortunes for people officially earning less than $200-K a year. The racket also managed to pay for the support of multitudes allergic to working for living, as long as they were available for riots and ballot-harvesting drives.

It was working at such a high pitch by the end of Barack Obama’s two terms, with the most stupendously privileged creature in the Boomer bestiary ready to take her “turn” in the Oval Office — after amassing a $300-million-plus fortune serving as US senator (salary, $174-K / year) and Secretary of State (salary $199,700 / year, then) — that you must imagine the mighty freak-out at the prospect of one Donald John Trump, outsider vulgarian extraordinaire, promising to step in and drain the whole massive, putrid, necrotic, parasitical nepo-infested quagmire of predatory grifters, leaving them gasping for their lives on the stinking Potomac mudbanks like so many grunions dying on the beach at Redondo.

Barack Obama, apparently, Darth Vadar-ized himself and was handed a light-saber (Hillary’s Steele dossier) by John Brennan, Grand Duke of Planet Intel. . . and the rest should have been history — but instead festered in the US body politic for more than ten years like an inflamed tuberculoma and is now bursting out of the Beltway’s peritoneal cavity in a spectacular spray of ordure, sticking to everyone and everything like a thousand tails pinned on the everlasting Democratic donkey. Alas, Babylon-on-the-Potomac. . . .

Also: “baseless,” my ass… The basis for all this mischief is in the process of having proof supplied by the one figure, DNI Gabbard, in a position to retrieve the evidence, in writing, from the various heavily ring-fenced agencies over which she is the ultimate overseer, which has not been done before, especially back in the crucial weeks of late 2020 when John Ratcliffe was in that position. The reason Tulsi succeeded this time where Ratcliffe did not is probably due to newly available A-I systems which make collation of cross-searches much easier through the countless servers of the many intel agencies. And so, now it pours forth day by day.

That’s where things stand and the dust has not even begun to settle, with former President Obama seemingly hoisted on the petard of his own making back in December of 2016. Whether or not all the declassified info can be crafted into prosecutable cases is not yet determined, but you might imagine it will come together soon enough, if at all possible. It may not add up to treason per se, but there are plenty of other serious charges generally proceeding from deprivation of rights under color of law (18 U.S.C. § 242), to seditious conspiracy, i.e., overthrow of the president (18 U.S.C. § 2384) to stuff a number of former officials into orange jumpsuits behind bars.

I doubt, though that we have reckoned the worst damage done by the perpetrators of RussiaGate and the serial crimes it entailed, which is how it drove half the population of our country plumb batshit crazy. Once RussiaGate was put over, any absurdity was force-fed to the increasingly delusional opposition to Donald Trump largely aggregated under the “Democratic Party” banner. You were suffered to believe such patent nonsense as men can become women, that riots with arson were mostly peaceful protests, that the US/Mexico border could not be controlled without vast new legislation, and that a demonstrably corrupt and obviously senile Joe Biden was an able, functioning chief executive.

The Covid-19 op was the coup de grâce for the Left’s mental health — while it was also a silver bullet to get rid of Mr. Trump in the 2020 election. There is even reason to believe that the mRNA vaccines, with their spike protein payloads, delivered physical brain injury by way of induced vascular disorder. Millions who took them may never recover their senses — but so far that is just hypothesis.

If cases are brought against those who acted in the long-running coup, and are proven in court via an honest and upright process, we’ll find out whether half the country can recover enough rationality to accept the outcome. The signs for now are discouraging, as they seem to veer deeper into delusion, nominating outright jihadi communists for important offices and continuing their lawfare campaign to disable all and any actions by Mr. Trump’s executive branch.

The ultimate goal, for those interested in continuing the project of this American republic, will be to see if it’s possible to restore a workable consensus about a common culture and the common good on principles that are anything but baseless: equal protection under the law, fair play, the rights of property, and respect for verifiable truth.