Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us

Oh, the delicious irony. For many years I’ve been writing about the southern US border and the many ways in which Mexico has used it as a “steam valve” to get rid of people in perpetual poverty, as well as malcontents, violent criminals and political revolutionaries. Who could have foreseen a time when the conundrum would be reversed and Mexico would be crushed by an avalanche of its own unwanted citizens?

But weren’t we told that migrants are an “economic boon” to any country lucky enough to have them?

The argument among progressives and open border activists has always been that migrants are average law abiding people (just like us) who slip across the border simply to integrate into our society and live the American dream. They claim that Mexican leaders are not in control of the situation and that people are desperate to escape crime and social decline.

In reality, government officials have long encouraged migrant caravans to traverse their territories and they have allowed illegal immigration into the US as a means to divert their failures into the laps of American taxpayers. Migrants aren’t trying to escape problems in Mexico, they ARE the problem in Mexico. The more of these caravans the Mexican authorities can get rid of, the better their economic situation appears.

I wrote about this dynamic in detail in my recent article ‘Illegal Alien Economy: How Foreign Nations Exploit U.S. Borders For Profit’. Specifically, I examined threats made by Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum over the possible taxation of remittances (US dollars) sent by migrants from the US into the coffers of Mexican banks and households.

She asserted that her government would “mobilize” against the US should conservative politicians continue their campaign to stop illegals from transferring money back home. Remittances are the single largest source of revenue Mexico receives from foreign countries. Their economy loses significantly without this cash flow.

Beyond the issue of easy money, though, is a singular reality which I have reiterated for a long time: Central and South American nations cannot survive the influx of returning migrants. They will be suffocated by the very same illegals they originally foisted upon the US.

The purging of millions of undesirables reduces Mexico’s poverty stats, homeless stats, unemployment stats and crime stats. I have to laugh every time I hear smug Europeans criticize the US for our violent crime rates – Only now are they beginning to understand what happens when you overwhelm a western nation with a third world demographic and a third world mentality. We certainly have our own home brewed fatigue-ers, but taking on millions of fatigue-ers from other nations does not help.

It’s difficult to keep crime low when other countries offload their problem children onto your front lawn.

Furthermore, labor data proves that illegals have been stealing American jobs and driving down American wages. It’s no coincidence that employment numbers for native born Americans have spiked in recent months as migrant jobs have decreased in tandem with deportations.

There’s a lot more proof in the pudding when we examine what is currently happening in Mexico, though.

Riots in Mexico city are breaking out and they are growing more violent by the day. Residents blame “gringo immigrants” and “digital nomads” for moving into the country and driving up food and housing costs. They also complain that white visitors are allowed to stay on their visas for far too long and that they refuse to “learn their language or respect Mexican culture”. Gee, that sure sounds familiar. Has Mexico gone MAGA?

The irony is, of course, that conservative Americans have been warning about the same issues caused by migrants from Mexico and we have been called “racists” and “fascists” for doing so.

There are approximately 700,000 US citizens residing in Mexico today, a tiny number compared to the tens of millions of Mexican migrants in the US illegally. But somehow, gringos are to blame for rising prices?

Realty experts in the Mexican market say that the cause of the shortages is a slowdown in housing development (Didn’t they tell us we needed illegals to help build more houses to counter the housing shortage in the US? Why don’t they put all these returning construction supermen to work in Mexico?). This explanation doesn’t account for inflation in other areas of the economy such as food and energy. So, are white tourists and ex-pats making things more expensive south of the border?

No, this is nonsense. Perhaps in a handful of resort towns the case might be made, but the truth is that Mexicans are being propagandized into thinking US migrants are the cause of their woes when it is actually the mass return of their OWN CITIZENS from the US.

Some of these people have been deported by force, but armies of them are self deporting and the Mexican economy simply can’t handle the strain. The surge started in 2024, even before Trump took office, with many illegals leaving the US because of inflation as well as the expectation of a conservative election win.

The riots, though, are probably starting now because of the mass deportations. Mexico City in particular has been inundated with migrants, many of them from other countries in Central and South America, as they look for a new place to settle outside the US.

I’ll say it again – I believe the Mexican population is being agitated into violence against American visitors by false claims that they are driving up prices when it is returning illegals that are the real cause. Mexican leaders are trying to distract their population from the bigger picture.

To be sure, there is obviously the NGO issue to consider. Central and South American leaders have not been acting unilaterally as they push for open US borders. Globalist organizations have been expediting matters by feeding cash into programs that guide illegals into the US. They do this to further their vision of a borderless multicultural world, but also to destabilize western societies and displace groups of people they see as likely threats in the future (namely white Christian conservatives).

However, globalist non-profits only smooth the way; its governments like the variety in Mexico that have been providing the human bodies for the NGOs to work with.

Now that Mexico is witnessing the pure Karma of their actions, what is likely to happen? First, the Mexican economy is going to go into a tailspin in a very short period of time. Prices will skyrocket due to crushing demand as illegals come home (just as they helped to trigger rising prices in the US during the Biden border bonanza).

Second, unemployment will rise exponentially along with a saturated labor market. High competition for limited jobs will force government intervention. But in Mexico the government has far less means at its disposal to adapt to the chaos of mass immigration. They will seek to establish social programs to gloss over the damage, but this will fail. Not only are they taking on millions of citizens that they tried to get rid of, they are losing access to the billions of US dollars those migrants were injecting into the Mexican economy. It’s a double whammy.

Third, Mexican officials will demonize the US for the deportations, as if it’s our fault they sent so many foreigners into our country without our permission. As we have seen, this is already leading to animosity across the border and Americans will remain at risk when they travel.

Fourth, if the current trend continues, Mexico will face economic collapse. They simply won’t be able to mitigate the instability caused by the sudden surge in inflation, housing shortages and the unemployed feeding on their social welfare programs.

What would this means for the US? Riots and violence in Mexico could bleed over into border states. Near zero infrastructure on the Mexican side of the border and even less restrictions on migrant movements, which means even tighter controls will be needed on the US side to keep illegals in check. Cartels may end up being the least of our worries when it comes to threats from Central America.

Keep in mind that a large contingent of Central Americans believe that the southern US belongs to them by historical right. The “La Raza” movement has long called for the retaking of large swaths of US territory in the name of “decolonization” (even though they are also descended from Spanish colonists). I believe they will once again assume that they can solve most of their problems of incompetent governance and economic decline by blaming the US and pressing citizens to invade.

They will double down on the same actions that got them in trouble in the first place. When Claudia Sheinbaum talks about “mobilizing” Mexico against the US, this is most likely what she means – A renewed march on the US border in the hopes that Mexico can reopen the steam valve and alleviate their economic troubles.

The result will not be peaceful as she seems to suppose; it could even mean war. It would be a disaster for the Mexicans, but they’ve been relying on the US for so long that they simply don’t understand any other way. That is to say, they are about to get what they deserve; a taste of their own medicine. The destabilization they tried to export to us is now on its way to blow up their own country.

Via StudyFinds,

MUNICH — An artificial intelligence system can now predict your next move before you make it. We’re not just talking about whether you’ll click “buy now” on that Amazon cart, but rather how you’ll navigate complex decisions, learn new skills, or explore uncharted territory.

Researchers have developed an AI called Centaur that accurately predicts human behavior across virtually any psychological experiment. It even outperforms the specialized computer models scientists have been using for decades. Trained on data from more than 60,000 people making over 10 million decisions, Centaur captures the underlying patterns of how we think, learn, and make choices.

“The human mind is remarkably general,” the researchers write in their paper, published in Nature. “Not only do we routinely make mundane decisions, such as choosing a breakfast cereal or selecting an outfit, but we also tackle complex challenges, such as figuring out how to cure cancer or explore outer space.”

An AI that truly understands human cognition could revolutionize marketing, education, mental health treatment, and product design. But it also raises uncomfortable questions about privacy and manipulation when our digital footprints reveal more about us than ever before.

How Scientists Built a Digital Mind Reader AI

The research team started with an ambitious goal: create a single AI model that could predict human behavior in any psychological experiment. Their approach was surprisingly straightforward but required massive scale.

Scientists assembled a dataset called Psych-101 containing 160 experiments covering memory tests, learning games, risk-taking scenarios, and moral dilemmas. Each experiment was converted into plain English descriptions that an AI could understand.

Rather than building from scratch, researchers took Meta’s Llama 3.1 language model (the same type powering ChatGPT) and gave it specialized training on human behavior. They used a technique that allows them to modify only a tiny fraction of the AI’s programming while keeping most of it unchanged. The entire training process took only five days on a high-end computer processor.

Centaur Dominates Traditional Cognitive Models

When tested, Centaur completely crushed the competition. In head-to-head comparisons with specialized cognitive models that scientists spent decades perfecting, Centaur won in almost every single experiment.

The real breakthrough came when researchers tested Centaur on completely new scenarios. The AI successfully predicted human behavior even when the experiment’s story changed (turning a space treasure hunt into a magic carpet adventure), when the structure was modified (adding a third option to a two-choice task), and when entirely new domains were introduced (logical reasoning tests that weren’t in its training data).

Centaur could also generate realistic human-like behavior when running simulations. In one test involving exploration strategies, the AI achieved performance comparable to actual human participants and showed the same type of uncertainty-guided decision-making that characterizes how people behave.

Neural Alignment: Centaur Mimics Human Brain Activity

In a surprising discovery, Centaur’s internal workings had become more aligned with human brain activity, even though it was never explicitly trained to match neural data. When researchers compared the AI’s internal states to brain scans of people performing the same tasks, they found stronger correlations than with the original, untrained model.

Learning to predict human behavior apparently forced the AI to develop internal representations that mirror how our brains actually process information. The AI essentially reverse-engineered aspects of human cognition just by studying our choices.

The team also demonstrated how Centaur could accelerate scientific discovery. They used the AI to analyze human behavior patterns, leading to the discovery of a new decision-making strategy that outperformed existing psychological theories.

“We’ve created a tool that allows us to predict human behavior in any situation described in natural language – like a virtual laboratory,” says lead author Marcel Binz in a statement.

What’s Next for Human Behavior AI?

While impressive, this research represents just the beginning. The current version focuses primarily on learning and decision-making, with limited coverage of areas like social psychology or cross-cultural differences. The dataset also skews toward Western, educated populations, a common limitation in psychological research.

The team plans to expand their dataset to include more diverse domains and populations, envisioning a comprehensive model that could serve as a unified theory of human cognition. They’ve made both their dataset and AI model publicly available for other researchers to build upon.

“We combine AI research with psychological theory – and with a clear ethical commitment,” adds Binz. “In a public research environment, we have the freedom to pursue fundamental cognitive questions that are often not the focus in industry.”

For the first time, we have an artificial system that can predict human behavior across the full spectrum of psychological research with unprecedented accuracy. Whether that development excites or concerns you may depend on how confidently we can ensure such tools are used responsibly.

Paper Summary

Methodology

The researchers created Centaur by fine-tuning Meta’s Llama 3.1 70B language model on a dataset called Psych-101, which contains trial-by-trial behavioral data from 160 psychological experiments involving over 60,000 participants making more than 10 million choices. They converted all experiments into natural language format and used a parameter-efficient training technique called QLoRA that modified only 0.15% of the model’s parameters. The training focused specifically on predicting human responses while masking out other parts of the experimental instructions.

Results

Centaur outperformed existing domain-specific cognitive models in almost every experiment when predicting behavior of held-out participants. The AI also successfully generalized to modified cover stories, structural task changes, and entirely new domains like logical reasoning. In open-loop simulations, Centaur generated realistic human-like behavior patterns and achieved comparable performance to actual humans in exploration tasks. Additionally, the model’s internal representations became more aligned with human neural activity compared to the base model.

Limitations

The current dataset focuses primarily on learning and decision-making domains, with limited coverage of social psychology, cross-cultural studies, and individual differences. The participant pool skews toward Western, educated populations typical of psychological research. The natural language format also introduces selection bias against experiments that cannot be easily expressed in text, and the researchers note the need for eventual expansion to multimodal data formats.

Funding and Disclosures

Research was supported by the Max Planck Society, the Humboldt Foundation, the Volkswagen Foundation, and the NOMIS Foundation. One author has consulting relationships and ownership interests in several biotech companies. The researchers have made their dataset and model publicly available for scientific use.

Publication Information

“A foundation model to predict and capture human cognition” was published in Nature on July 2, 2025. The study was led by Marcel Binz at the Institute for Human-Centered AI, Helmholtz Center Munich, with collaborators from institutions including Princeton University, University of Tübingen, Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, and others.

A Syrian newspaper as well as several Israeli media sources are reporting that Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, who previously went by Abu Mohammad al-Jolani and is the founder of Syrian al-Qaeda, has met with Israel’s National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates.

While the reports remain unconfirmed by Damascus, The Jerusalem Post says that this was not “the first such meeting” to take place, citing a Syrian source. But Israel quickly denied the reports: “Israel issued a statement denying the claim, noting that Hanegbi is in Washington as part of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s delegation visiting the US.” 

The sources are calling the alleged meeting “a significant step in the Syrian‑Israeli negotiations” as part of potentially moving closer to achieving normalization base on the Abraham Accords.

This could also be part of publicly known efforts to advance “quiet” talk with Israel in order to reach a security status quo. At the moment Israel’s military still occupies a large portion of southern Syria, going well beyond the Golan Heights.

Israel’s YNet writes that “The expected agreement could include security guarantees, a pledge to counter terrorist activity, measures to curb Iranian influence, and a restriction of terror operatives near the border.”

“According to foreign reports, Israel has already used Syrian airspace to strike Iranian targets—suggesting informal coordination between the two nations, even if not official,” the outlet adds.

Damascus has continued to claim busting up ‘Iranian terror’ cells in various parts of the country. It is not expected to prioritize counter-ISIS operations given that many of the Sharaa/HTS government’s own members are ISIS or former ISIS.

The prior Assad government had lone been Israel’s most formidable regional enemy, given it possessed Russian anti-aircraft systems and hosted Iranian forces. Israel, for its part, was part of the West’s covert war to oust Assad.

The timing of these reported Sharaa meetings with top Israeli officials is interesting given that it was only on Monday that the US formally lifted the longtime terror designation against his group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).

Meanwhile, an interesting new revelation on Monday…

JUST IN: TRUMP SAYS NETANYAHU WANTED SANCTIONS LIFTED OFF SYRIA

“We took the sanctions off [Syria] because we want to give them a chance … and I would love to be able to — at the right time — take those sanctions off [Iran], give them a chance at rebuilding, because I’d like… pic.twitter.com/dTkxg2vomr

— Sulaiman Ahmed (@ShaykhSulaiman) July 8, 2025

As we highlighted, the fact that Sharaa was a formally designated terrorist didn’t stop President Trump from meeting with him during his Saudi visit months ago. Trump even praised him as a “young, attractive guy” who has a “real shot at doing a good job”

Sadly, the message from the White House seems to be that Syria should prioritize ending the long-running state of conflict with Israel, but there’s been barely a peep about the massacres being conducted against Syria’s ancient Christian, Alawite, and Druze populations.

Authored by James Gorrie via The Epoch Times,

In 2020, China announced its plan to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060, with peak emissions expected to occur in 2030 and then decline thereafter.

According to Gao Yuhe, a Beijing-based project leader quoted by Greenpeace last month, it could be sooner than that. He said that “2025 is a critical year for China to make overall emissions from its power sector stop increasing.”

When it comes to so-called green energy, Chinese authorities talk a good game, but do they walk the walk when it comes to reducing the use of highly polluting coal?

Not really.

What’s more, the entire green argument is deeply flawed in multiple areas. More on that later.

Green Technology

China is indeed a global leader in developing, manufacturing, and installing green technology. No other nation can match its output of solar panels, wind-powered generators, batteries, and other renewable energy technology. Within the first five months of 2025, China added enough solar and wind-powered energy infrastructure to generate as much electricity as Poland, Indonesia, or Turkey. As of this year, China’s solar power generation capacity comprises about 50 percent of the world’s current solar power generation capacity.

With direction from Beijing, that trajectory is likely to continue. China is not only at the forefront of deploying renewable resources, but it also dominates the world market. No other nation can compete with China’s low pricing of renewable energy technology.

Pricing is a touchy subject for the rest of the world, though, because China’s dominance is accomplished through state subsidies and below-cost pricing in foreign markets. That’s called “dumping, and it’s against the trading rules, as it is highly destructive of other countries’ renewable energy manufacturing sectors. But that’s a different conversation for a different post.

China’s Energy Paradox

But in terms of renewable energy use and its reliance on coal for energy generation, China’s energy story is rather paradoxical. On the one hand, China is indeed the world’s leader in deploying renewable energy; on the other hand, it is also the world’s leader in coal use, dependency, and air pollution.

In short, China is not only the world’s biggest producer of renewable energy, but it’s also the world’s biggest producer and consumer of coal and carbon emissions.

How does that align with its image as a global leader in clean energy? Not very well. Furthermore, neither of those statistics is likely to change in the near future, despite official claims to the contrary regarding coal consumption.

Energy Security Is Top Priority

The reason for China’s schizophrenic energy policy is apparent: the future of China’s energy supply is anything but certain or secure. That’s a huge concern for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), because the reliability of renewable solar- and wind-powered energy is much lower than coal. Weather is a huge factor, and energy uncertainty is something that no developed nation can afford.

The CCP is painfully aware of its energy vulnerability, which explains why, in 2024, China approved 66.7 gigawatts (GW) of new coal-fired power plant capacity and began construction on 94.5 GW of new coal power plants, a 10-year high. To get an idea of the scale of China’s coal-powered plant construction plans, 93 percent of global construction starts for coal power in 2024 were in China. What’s more, 1 GW is the output of a single, large coal-power energy plant.

That fact also helps explain why China is the world’s top coal producer and importer in terms of volume. Although coal imports meet only a small fraction of its massive energy needs, in 2023, China imported 442 million tons, and in 2024, a record amount of 542.7 million tons.

Although projections for China’s coal consumption indicate a slight decrease in 2025, the trend in coal usage and energy reliance is undeniable. China is not only sprinting to build more coal-powered energy plants, but has resumed construction on 3.3 GW of suspended coal-fired power plant projects. With a global historical lifespan of coal-fired power plants of about 46 years, and the possibility of lasting up to 60 years, it’s clear that Beijing has no intention of transitioning to renewable energy sources as its main source of energy anytime soon.

The Green Delusion of ‘Renewables’

Green energy itself is a delusion.

First, the materials used in wind turbines and solar panels, and the batteries needed to store the energy, must all be mined from the earth, just like nuclear material, coal, oil, and natural gas. Once used up, more must be produced, so they’re actually non-renewable factors of production that are conveniently left out of the green calculus and are hardly carbon-neutral or environment-friendly.

Second, given the unreliability of wind and solar power, both are dependent upon the weather and other variables.

Third, the low energy density of wind and solar power (see Spain’s recent blackout, or Germany’s energy crisis in 2022), means that the amount of materials needed to be mined from the earth, such as rare earth minerals, oil for plastics, and various metals to create the infrastructure, is enormous and ongoing. And when they’re no longer viable, many of these materials can’t be recycled economically.

How green does that sound?

Fourth, a study at the University of Texas at Austin comparing renewables to natural gas concluded that “wind and solar are respectively 33 and 23 times worse than natural gas in terms of mineral resource scarcity,“ and that ”when battery storage is considered, their impact increased by orders of magnitude, making them 421 and 412 times worse, respectively.”

Fifth, even pro-renewable think tanks like the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania see a huge, unresolved problem looming ahead, stating that “the clean energy transition will require economic mobilization on a scale not seen since the industrial revolution, and will strain the global production of silicon, cobalt, lithium, manganese, and a host of other critical elements.”

In light of these facts, China’s ongoing use of coal-fired power plants makes perfect sense, the weather, the environment, and propaganda notwithstanding.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

The U.S. Department of Defense has failed every single financial audit since audits began in fiscal year 2018. Despite commanding the largest budget of any federal agency—nearly $850 billion annually—the Pentagon still can’t account for large swaths of its spending. Over the years, trillions have been flagged as “unaccounted for,” fueling speculation around off-the-books operations that taxpayers are kept in the dark about. Even the Government Accountability Office recently warned that the DoD may not meet its target for a clean audit until at least 2028.

On Monday, a team of Goldman analysts led by Noah Poponak told clients that the team of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) at DoD is quietly ramping up contract cancellations. Yes, the DoD—the mecca for bloated budgets and opaque spending—is now the target of DOGE’s slash-and-burn operations. That news alone might have Deep Staters and their Beltway contractor buddies on edge through summer. 

Deep state will be terribly vexed: “Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) contract cancellation activity has picked up at the Department of Defense” – GS

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) July 7, 2025

Poponak pointed out that contract cancellations at the DoD now rank second in total canceled IT contract value among federal agencies, just behind Health and Human Services. 

Notably impacted are consulting firms Booz Allen Hamilton (BAH) and Leidos (LDOS), with several high-value contracts terminated, including a $310 million hypersonic ISR project for LDOS and multiple contracts for BAH totaling over $130 million.

Poponak pointed out, “These DoD contract cancellations may have been impacted by recently passed DoD memos that raise the threshold for contracting IT and services work at the department.” 

“We also view this to mean DOGE activity is continuing across the government despite leadership personnel changes. We reiterate our cautious view of the Gov’t IT & Services sector, and are Sell rated on BAH, CACI, SAIC, and VVX; Neutral on LDOS and AMTM; Buy rated on PSN. We continue to think the group will face contracting, backlog, revenue, and margin headwinds over the medium-term.” 

Cleaning up the DoD will be the most challenging task yet in rooting out waste and fraud. According to the GAO, the Pentagon is unlikely to pass a full audit by 2028. For decades, the GAO has issued more than 100 recommendations to help the DoD address its financial management failures—most of which remain unresolved.

Related:

• Goldman: DOGE Sparks “Cautious View” On Gov’t IT & Services

• Goldman Downgrades Booz Allen Hamilton To ‘Sell’ Amid DOGE Contract Cancellations

As for DOGE more broadly, President Trump has made it abundantly clear that the cost-cutting theatrics were just that—a circus act (hence Elon Musk’s public frustrations).

The new playbook? Ignore austerity (for now). It’s all about juicing revenue—and yes, piling on more debt—in a massive, multi-trillion-dollar bet to grow the nation out of its debt mess.

So if the so-called cost-cutting was little more than political theater, at least DOGE managed to neuter agency-captured USAID and gut key DEI initiatives funding Marxist activists, thus slowing the spread of wokeism, sabotaging the nation from within across government agencies, the military, and corporations.

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

The Trump administration on Thursday released its yearly report that shows the salaries for White House staffers, also revealing officials who aren’t accepting salaries at all.

The report shows that the top earner in the White House is Jacalynne B. Klopp, a senior adviser who is earning $225,700 per year. She is followed by an associate counsel, Edgar Mkrtchian, who is earning $203,645 annually.

About 33 senior White House staffers, including press secretary Karoline Leavitt, chief of staff Susie Wiles, border czar Tom Homan, trade adviser Peter Navarro, adviser Stephen Miller, and Director of Presidential Personnel Sergio Gor, are each earning $195,200 per year, according to the disclosure.

There is a handful of officials listed in the report, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio in his capacity as national security adviser, who are being paid nothing. The current cryptocurrency czar, David Sachs, as well as U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and senior adviser Paula White, are also being paid $0.00 each, it shows.

President Donald Trump’s compensation isn’t listed in Thursday’s salary disclosure, and neither is Vice President JD Vance’s compensation.

The pay scheme for a president is provided under federal law. A president is to earn a base salary of $400,000 along with a $50,000 expense allowance.

During his first term, Trump donated his salary to government agencies. In May, he indicated he would do the same during his second term.

“I do something that no other president has done, they think maybe George Washington has done. I contribute my entire salary to the government, back to the government. And I’m doing it again,” Trump said during remarks on May 4.

“It’s a substantial salary. It’s a half a million dollars a year or $550,000 a year, four years—a couple of million dollars,” he said, making reference to the salary and expense allowances.

An archived White House page shows that Trump, during his first year in office, donated his salary to initiatives that he deemed as having “national significance,” including to the National Park Service and the Department of Education.

In May, Trump said that media outlets are refusing to cover his salary donations.

“I never got a story saying I gave it,“ he said at the time. ”Nobody cared if I gave it. I guarantee if I didn’t give it, there’d be a big story.”

Throughout his second term, Trump has vowed to slash fraud, waste, and abuse from the federal government, establishing the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in January. That task force was headed by tech billionaire Elon Musk, who had worked under the Trump administration for several months before departing within 130 days, when his special government employee status expired.

In June, Trump reported more than $600 million in income from crypto, golf clubs, licensing, and other ventures in a public financial disclosure report. The annual financial disclosure form, which covered the 2024 calendar year, showed that his push into cryptocurrency added substantially to his wealth. He also reported large fees from developments and revenue from his other businesses.

Forbes magazine has estimated that Trump is worth around $5.3 billion as of Thursday.

Reuters contributed to this report.

A deadly mass shooting in the Grays Ferry section of Philadelphia early Monday morning left three people dead and 10 others injured, including several teenagers.

The gunfire erupted just before 1 a.m. on the 1500 block of South Etting Street, and Ring camera footage captured multiple individuals pulling out firearms and shooting, according to ABC Philadelphia.

ABC Philadelphia writes that the shooters opened fire indiscriminately—even with children nearby.

“This is coward stuff. You see the size of this block—individuals just shooting randomly into houses, into cars,” said Philadelphia Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel.

“I mean, this is coward, wannabe thug stuff.” Officers, already responding to reports of large gatherings and loud music, were nearby when they heard the shots. Upon arrival, they found a dozen victims aged 15 to 24, including a person injured while trying to flee the scene. Authorities released surveillance images of suspects seen in the Ring footage, and at least one person has been taken into custody, though their exact role is still unclear.

🚨EXCLUSIVE VIDEO: Philly Shootout Caught on Ring Cam
You’re about to watch what Democrat policies breed:

…no fathers
…no discipline
…no fear of God
…no fear of law
…no future

Just gunfire…
In broad daylight…
In a city run by soft-on-crime liberals who’d rather talk… pic.twitter.com/EwRpGhB5A3

— A Gene Robinson (@AlBuffalo2nite) July 7, 2025

The three victims killed were identified as Zahir Wylie, 23; Jason Reese, 19; and Azir Harris, 24. A 19-year-old man remains in critical condition, while other victims—including a 15-year-old girl and two 17-year-old boys—are expected to recover. “But as we do in all of our investigations, we will get to the root cause and we will bring those individuals to justice,” Bethel said.

Harris was paralyzed at age 17 after being shot and had since become an advocate against gun violence, sharing his story in hopes of preventing others from experiencing the same fate. His father, Troy Harris, described Azir as the “light” of their home and a kind, giving young man who was also a father to a one-year-old son.

At the time of the shooting, Harris was attending a cookout in the Grays Ferry neighborhood. He was shot multiple times in the back and later died at the hospital. Police recovered around 140 shell casings at the scene. Devastated by the loss, Troy said, “Taking him away took my whole family… We’re living, but a piece of us is missing,” and lamented the senseless violence plaguing communities.

Troy Harris, the father of Azir Harris, described his son as the heart of their home. “I’m broken. That wasn’t just my son. That was my friend,” he said.

“He had a big heart to be his age and he thought outside the box so much,” Troy said. “He wanted more than just the wheelchair. He wanted more to life. ”After receiving the devastating call on Monday morning, Troy said, “It was just a flashback of what happened before, but this time my boy ain’t coming home. They took a piece of me.”

Local community leader Tyrique Glasgow, who heads the Young Chances Foundation, called the shooting “past frustrating.”

Many of the young men involved, he said, had been working toward positive goals like finding jobs and attending vocational school. “To have their lives stopped by gun violence is something that is frustrating and painful,” Glasgow said. With city workers on strike, residents had to clean up the aftermath themselves.

“We are going to come together and clean it up,” he said, “but the blood and the trash and the food and the activities we were supposed to have today for our summer camp, we had to put on pause.”

Armed thieves in Mexico hijacked a truck transporting 33 tons of gold and silver concentrate belonging to the Mexican mining firm Grupo Minero Bacis, local media reported. The precious metals heist underscores a surge in highway robberies across the third-world cartel-plagued country—just south of the U.S. southern border—amid rising gold and silver prices driven by global macroeconomic uncertainty.

El Universal said the assailants blocked the tractor-trailer on a stretch of highway near Guadalajara and assaulted the driver and security, and held them hostage for nearly 1.5 hours.

“A group of organized criminals aboard two vehicles robbed a truck belonging to Fletes Durango SA de CV, which was loaded with at least 33 tons of gold and silver concentrate belonging to Grupo Minero Bacis SA de CV, bound for the port of Manzanillo,” Grupo Minero wrote in a report. 

Grupo Minero Bacis is owned by José Jaime Gutiérrez Núñez, former president of the Mexican Mining Chamber. The miner operates the El Herrero gold and silver project—an advanced exploration and semi-processing operation that produces precious metal concentrate for both domestic use and international export. 

While the truck was later recovered, the trailer with tons of gold and silver concentrate was never found. Local media identified the assailants as “organized criminals”—a term often synonymous with drug cartel gangsters.

The incident highlights the surge in highway robberies across the third world country, which now occur every 50 minutes, with cargo thefts rising over 30% in early 2025 compared to the previous year.

Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times,

The planned retirement of more than 100 gigawatts of power generation capacity by the end of the decade could increase the risk of blackouts in the United States by 100 times, the Department of Energy said in a July 7 statement.

“Allowing 104 GW of firm generation to retire by 2030—without timely replacement—could lead to significant outages when weather conditions do not accommodate wind and solar generation,” the DOE said.

“Modeling shows annual outage hours could increase from single digits today to more than 800 hours per year. Such a surge would leave millions of households and businesses vulnerable. We must renew a focus on firm generation and continue to reverse radical green ideology in order to address this risk.”

Firm power generation refers to power that can be generated at all times and includes coal, natural gas, and nuclear. This is in contrast to intermittent power sources such as wind and solar, which are dependent on factors like weather.

The warning is part of the DOE’s Evaluating U.S. Grid Reliability and Security report, which criticized the “radical green agenda of past administrations” for existing generation retirements and delays in adding new firm power generation capacities, according to the statement.

This will lead to a “growing mismatch” between electricity demand and supply, driven especially by demand from AI-driven data center growth, the DOE said in the statement.

If the current schedule of planned retirements and incremental power additions remain unchanged, the country’s electric grid will be “unable to meet expected demand for AI, data centers, manufacturing and industrialization while keeping the cost of living low for all Americans,” the agency added in the statement.

Continuing on the present course will undermine America’s economic growth, leadership in new technologies, and national security, the DOE said.

While the 104 GW in retirements are set to be replaced by 209 GW of new power generation by 2030, only 22 GW of these replacements are set to be firm generation, according to the department.

“The United States cannot afford to continue down the unstable and dangerous path of energy subtraction previous leaders pursued, forcing the closure of baseload power sources like coal and natural gas,” Secretary of Energy Chris Wright said in the statement.

“In the coming years, America’s reindustrialization and the AI race will require a significantly larger supply of around-the-clock, reliable, and uninterrupted power. President Trump’s administration is committed to advancing a strategy of energy addition, and supporting all forms of energy that are affordable, reliable, and secure.”

The DOE report is in response to President Donald Trump’s April 8 executive order calling for strengthening the reliability and security of America’s power grid.

To ensure reliable electric generation in the country and meet the growing demand for electricity, America’s power grid “must utilize all available power generation resources, particularly those secure, redundant fuel supplies that are capable of extended operations,” the order states.

The DOE issued its warning following a May report from the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), which cautioned that parts of the United States could struggle to meet electricity demand this summer.

The NERC report cited intermittent energy sources, such as solar and wind, as posing a potential risk to the reliability of the power supply.

Protecting US Energy Security

The DOE report on grid reliability came out on the same day that Trump signed an executive order directing his administration to end “market distorting subsidies for unreliable, foreign controlled energy sources.”

The order directs the secretary of the Treasury to terminate clean electricity production and investment tax credits granted to solar and wind facilities, the White House said in a July 7 fact sheet.

It also directs the secretary of the interior to revise rules to eliminate preferential treatment given to these facilities compared to dispatchable, firm power generation sources.

“Unreliable wind and solar energy sources displace affordable, dispatchable energy, compromise America’s electric grid, and denigrate the beauty of our Nation’s natural landscape,” the fact sheet stated.

“Reliance on so-called ‘green’ subsidies threatens national security by making the United States dependent on supply chains controlled by foreign adversaries.”

Some renewable energy policies are already on the chopping block after Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill into law on July 4.

The bill terminates multiple clean energy tax credits established under the Inflation Reduction Act signed by former President Joe Biden, with some cuts taking effect as early as this year.

The electric vehicle tax credit is now scheduled to end by the end of September. Tax credits for clean energy projects will only be available if the projects are operational by Dec. 31, 2027, or Jan. 1, 2028.

Over 630 days of war later and much of Hamas’ top command has been wiped out, and large swathes of the Gaza Strip obliterated. It’s been no secret that the Netanyahu government is pursuing the complete annihilation of Hamas, ensuring that it can never again return to rule, but the reality is that the Israeli army (IDF) is still taking on mass casualties.

This shows that the Hamas insurgency, using the Strip’s hundreds of miles of tunnels, is still fierce and ongoing. “Five Israeli soldiers were killed in combat in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli army admitted on Tuesday, in one of the deadliest days for Israeli forces in the devastated Palestinian territory this year,” regional media reports.

The five soldiers “fell during combat in the northern Gaza Strip,” the IDF announced. In total 14 others were wounded. Included were two that were severely wounded and “evacuated to a hospital to receive medical treatment.” 

They came under attack near Beit Hanoun in the north of Gaza,when improvised explosive devices were detonated, after which Israeli soldiers who sought to rescue the wounded came under fire again. Thus it’s clear that either Hamas or Islamic Jihad militants set a trap and ambush for the soldiers.

The IDF and Israeli media have described that the infantry troops were operating on foot when the blast happened. One detail which highlights the ongoing extreme difficulty of uprooting the Palestinian insurgency is that the area where the attack occurred was subject of Israeli aerial raids just prior:

The military said the area where the attack took place was targeted from the air ahead of the troops’ operations.

The Netzah Yehuda soldiers were operating under the Gaza Division’s Northern Brigade as part of a fresh offensive with the 646th Reserve Paratroopers Brigade in Beit Hanoun, which began on Saturday, aimed at clearing the area of terror operatives who remain holed up there.

Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid wrote on X in the wake of the large-scale casualties, “For the sake of the fighters, for the sake of their families, for the sake of the hostages, for the sake of the State of Israel: this war must be ended.”

Israeli society has remained fiercely divided over Netanyahu policy, with hostage victims’ family members outraged that efforts to negotiate a deal to release the remaining captives have completely stalled.

Meanwhile, there is some activity on this front, with Qatar’s foreign ministry on Tuesday saying that renewed indirect negotiations will “need time”. The White House has been supportive of peace efforts, but has sided with Israeli actions in Gaza time and again in its public rhetoric.

“I don’t think that I can give any timeline at the moment, but I can say right now that we will need time for this,” spokesman Majed Al-Ansari said as Doha-hosted discussion entered a third day.

“What is happening right now is that both delegations are in Doha. We are speaking with them separately on a framework for the talks. So talks have not begun, as of yet, but we are talking to both sides over that framework,” he tells a Doha news conference.