Authored by John & Nisha Whitehead,

“When the states legalize the deliberate ending of certain lives… it will eventually broaden the categories of those who can be put to death with impunity.”

– Nat Hentoff, The Washington Post, 1992

Bodily autonomy—the right to privacy and integrity over our own bodies—is rapidly vanishing.

The debate now extends beyond forced vaccinations or invasive searches to include biometric surveillance, wearable tracking, and predictive health profiling.

We are entering a new age of algorithmic, authoritarian control, where our thoughts, moods, and biology are monitored and judged by the state.

This is the dark promise behind the newest campaign by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President Trump’s Secretary of Health and Human Services, to push for a future in which all Americans wear biometric health-tracking devices.

Under the guise of public health and personal empowerment, this initiative is nothing less than the normalization of 24/7 bodily surveillance—ushering in a world where every step, heartbeat, and biological fluctuation is monitored not only by private companies but also by the government.

In this emerging surveillance-industrial complex, health data becomes currency. Tech firms profit from hardware and app subscriptions, insurers profit from risk scoring, and government agencies profit from increased compliance and behavioral insight.

This convergence of health, technology, and surveillance is not a new strategy—it’s just the next step in a long, familiar pattern of control.

Surveillance has always arrived dressed as progress.

Every new wave of surveillance technology—GPS trackers, red light cameras, facial recognition, Ring doorbells, Alexa smart speakers—has been sold to us as a tool of convenience, safety, or connection. But in time, each became a mechanism for tracking, monitoring, or controlling the public.

What began as voluntary has become inescapable and mandatory.

The moment we accepted the premise that privacy must be traded for convenience, we laid the groundwork for a society in which nowhere is beyond the government’s reach—not our homes, not our cars, not even our bodies.

RFK Jr.’s wearable plan is just the latest iteration of this bait-and-switch: marketed as freedom, built as a cage.

According to Kennedy’s plan, which has been promoted as part of a national campaign to “Make America Healthy Again,” wearable devices would track glucose levels, heart rate, activity, sleep, and more for every American.

Participation may not be officially mandatory at the outset, but the implications are clear: get on board, or risk becoming a second-class citizen in a society driven by data compliance.

What began as optional self-monitoring tools marketed by Big Tech is poised to become the newest tool in the surveillance arsenal of the police state.

Devices like Fitbits, Apple Watches, glucose trackers, and smart rings collect astonishing amounts of intimate data—from stress and depression to heart irregularities and early signs of illness. When this data is shared across government databases, insurers, and health platforms, it becomes a potent tool not only for health analysis—but for control.

Once symbols of personal wellness, these wearables are becoming digital cattle tags—badges of compliance tracked in real time and regulated by algorithm.

And it won’t stop there.

The body is fast becoming a battleground in the government’s expanding war on the inner realms.

The infrastructure is already in place to profile and detain individuals based on perceived psychological “risks.” Now imagine a future in which your wearable data triggers a mental health flag. Elevated stress levels. Erratic sleep. A skipped appointment. A sudden drop in heart rate variability.

In the eyes of the surveillance state, these could be red flags—justification for intervention, inquiry, or worse.

RFK Jr.’s embrace of wearable tech is not a neutral innovation. It is an invitation to expand the government’s war on thought crimes, health noncompliance, and individual deviation.

It shifts the presumption of innocence to a presumption of diagnosis. You are not well until the algorithm says you are.

The government has already weaponized surveillance tools to silence dissent, flag political critics, and track behavior in real time. Now, with wearables, they gain a new weapon: access to the human body as a site of suspicion, deviance, and control.

While government agencies pave the way for biometric control, it will be corporations—insurance companies, tech giants, employers—who act as enforcers for the surveillance state.

Wearables don’t just collect data. They sort it, interpret it, and feed it into systems that make high-stakes decisions about your life: whether you get insurance coverage, whether your rates go up, whether you qualify for employment or financial aid.

As reported by ABC News, a JAMA article warns that wearables could easily be used by insurers to deny coverage or hike premiums based on personal health metrics like calorie intake, weight fluctuations, and blood pressure.

It’s not a stretch to imagine this bleeding into workplace assessments, credit scores, or even social media rankings.

Employers already offer discounts for “voluntary” wellness tracking—and penalize nonparticipants. Insurers give incentives for healthy behavior—until they decide unhealthy behavior warrants punishment. Apps track not just steps, but mood, substance use, fertility, and sexual activity—feeding the ever-hungry data economy.

This dystopian trajectory has been long foreseen and forewarned.

In Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (1932), compliance is maintained not through violence but by way of pleasure, stimulation, and chemical sedation. The populace is conditioned to accept surveillance in exchange for ease, comfort, and distraction.

In THX 1138 (1971), George Lucas envisions a corporate-state regime where biometric monitoring, mood-regulating drugs, and psychological manipulation reduce people to emotionless, compliant biological units.

Gattaca (1997) imagines a world in which genetic and biometric profiling predetermines one’s fate, eliminating privacy and free will in the name of public health and societal efficiency.

In The Matrix (1999), written and directed by the Wachowskis, human beings are harvested as energy sources while trapped inside a simulated reality—an unsettling parallel to our increasing entrapment in systems that monitor, monetize, and manipulate our physical selves.

Minority Report (2002), directed by Steven Spielberg, depicts a pre-crime surveillance regime driven by biometric data. Citizens are tracked via retinal scans in public spaces and targeted with personalized ads—turning the body itself into a surveillance passport.

The anthology series Black Mirror, inspired by The Twilight Zone, brings these warnings into the digital age, dramatizing how constant monitoring of behavior, emotion, and identity breeds conformity, judgment, and fear.

Taken collectively, these cultural touchstones deliver a stark message: dystopia doesn’t arrive overnight.

As Margaret Atwood warned in The Handmaid’s Tale,  “Nothing changes instantaneously: in a gradually heating bathtub, you’d be boiled to death before you knew it.” Though Atwood’s novel focuses on reproductive control, its larger warning is deeply relevant: when the state presumes authority over the body—whether through pregnancy registries or biometric monitors—bodily autonomy becomes conditional, fragile, and easily revoked.

The tools may differ, but the logic of domination is the same.

What Atwood portrayed as reproductive control, we now face in a broader, digitized form: the quiet erosion of autonomy through the normalization of constant monitoring.

When both government and corporations gain access to our inner lives, what’s left of the individual?

We must ask: when surveillance becomes a condition of participation in modern life—employment, education, health care—are we still free? Or have we become, as in every great dystopian warning, conditioned not to resist, but to comply?

That’s the hidden cost of these technological conveniences: today’s wellness tracker is tomorrow’s corporate leash.

In a society where bodily data is harvested and analyzed, the body itself becomes government and corporate property. Your body becomes a form of testimony, and your biometric outputs are treated as evidence. The list of bodily intrusions we’ve documented—forced colonoscopies, blood draws, DNA swabs, cavity searches, breathalyzer tests—is growing.

To this list we now add a subtler, but more insidious, form of intrusion: forced biometric consent.

Once health tracking becomes a de facto requirement for employment, insurance, or social participation, it will be impossible to “opt out” without penalty. Those who resist may be painted as irresponsible, unhealthy, or even dangerous.

We’ve already seen chilling previews of where this could lead. In states with abortion restrictions, digital surveillance has been weaponized to track and prosecute individuals for seeking abortions—using period-tracking apps, search histories, and geolocation data.

When bodily autonomy becomes criminalized, the data trails we leave behind become evidence in a case the state has already decided to make.

This is not merely the expansion of health care. It is the transformation of health into a mechanism of control—a Trojan horse for the surveillance state to claim ownership over the last private frontier: the human body.

Because ultimately, this isn’t just about surveillance—it’s about who gets to live.

Too often, these debates are falsely framed as having only two possible outcomes: safety vs. freedom, health vs. privacy, compliance vs. chaos. But these are illusions. A truly free and just society can protect public health without sacrificing bodily autonomy or human dignity.

We must resist the narrative that demands our total surrender in exchange for security.

Once biometric data becomes currency in a health-driven surveillance economy, it’s only a matter of time before that data is used to determine whose lives are worth investing in—and whose are not.

We’ve seen this dystopia before.

In the 1973 film Soylent Green, the elderly become expendable when resources grow scarce. My good friend Nat Hentoff—an early and principled voice warning against the devaluation of human life—sounded this alarm decades ago. Once pro-choice, Hentoff came to believe that the erosion of medical ethics—particularly the growing acceptance of abortion, euthanasia, and selective care—was laying the groundwork for institutionalized dehumanization.

As Hentoff warned, once the government sanctions the deliberate ending of certain lives, it can become a slippery slope: broader swaths of the population would eventually be deemed expendable.

Hentoff referred to this as “naked utilitarianism—the greatest good for the greatest number. And individuals who are in the way—in this case, the elderly poor—have to be gotten out of the way. Not murdered, heaven forbid. Just made comfortable until they die with all deliberate speed.”

That concern is no longer theoretical.

In 1996, writing about the Supreme Court’s consideration of physician-assisted suicide, Hentoff warned that once a state decides who shall die “for their own good,” there are “no absolute limits.” He cited medical leaders and disability advocates who feared that the poor, elderly, disabled, and chronically ill would become targets of a system that valued efficiency over longevity.

Today, data collected through wearables—heart rate, mood, mobility, compliance—can shape decisions about insurance, treatment, and life expectancy. How long before an algorithm quietly decided whose suffering is too expensive, whose needs are too inconvenient, or whose body no longer qualifies as worth saving?

This isn’t a left or right issue.

Dehumanization—the process of stripping individuals or groups of their dignity, autonomy, or moral worth—cuts across the political spectrum.

Today, dehumanizing language and policies aren’t confined to one ideology—they’re weaponized across the political divide. Prominent figures have begun referring to political opponents, immigrants, and other marginalized groups as “unhuman”—a disturbing echo of the labels that have justified atrocities throughout history.

As reported by Mother Jones, J.D. Vance endorsed a book by influencer Jack Posobiec and Joshua Lisec that advocates crushing “unhumans” like vermin.

This kind of rhetoric isn’t abstract—it matters.

How can any party credibly claim to be “pro‑life” when it devalues the humanity of entire groups, stripping them of the moral worth that should be fundamental to civil society?

When the state and its corporate allies treat people as data, as compliance issues, or as “unworthy,” they dismantle the very notion of equal human dignity.

In such a world, rights—including the right to bodily autonomy, health care, or even life itself—become privileges doled out only to the “worthy.”

This is why our struggle must be both political and moral. We can’t defend bodily sovereignty without defending every human being’s equal humanity.

The dehumanization of the vulnerable crosses political lines. It manifests differently—through budget cuts here, through mandates and metrics there—but the outcome is the same: a society that no longer sees human beings, only data points.

The conquest of physical space—our homes, cars, public squares—is nearly complete.

What remains is the conquest of inner space: our biology, our genetics, our psychology, our emotions. As predictive algorithms grow more sophisticated, the government and its corporate partners will use them to assess risk, flag threats, and enforce compliance in real time.

The goal is no longer simply to monitor behavior but to reshape it—to preempt dissent, deviance, or disease before it arises. This is the same logic that drives Minority Report-style policing, pre-crime mental health interventions, and AI-based threat assessments.

If this is the future of “health freedom,” then freedom has already been redefined as obedience to the algorithm.

We must resist the surveillance of our inner and outer selves.

We must reject the idea that safety requires total transparency, or that health requires constant monitoring. We must reclaim the sanctity of the human body as a space of freedom—not as a data point.

The push for mass adoption of wearables is not about health. It is about habituation.

The goal is to train us—subtly, systematically—to accept government and corporate ownership of our bodies.

We must not forget that our nation was founded on the radical idea that all human beings are created equal, “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,” among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

These rights are not granted by the government, the algorithm, or the market. They are inherent. They are indivisible. And they apply to all of us—or they will soon apply to none of us.

The Founders got this part right: their affirmation of our shared humanity is more vital than ever before.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, the task before us is whether we will defend that humanity—or surrender it, one wearable at a time. Now is the time to draw the line—before the body becomes just another piece of state property.

*  *  *

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

Authored by Bill Pan via The Epoch Times,

The U.S. Department of Education has launched an investigation into the University of Michigan (UM) over concerns about undisclosed or improperly disclosed foreign funding.

In a letter sent on July 15, the Education Department’s legal wing gave the university 30 days to hand over more than five years’ worth of records related to foreign donations, foreign research collaboration, international students and scholars, as well as the names and contact details of university officials overseeing those areas.

The letter states that since January 2021, UM has submitted foreign funding disclosures totaling approximately $375 million, but with about $86 million of that money reported late, in “possible violation” of federal law mandating institutions to disclose foreign gifts and contracts valued at $250,000 or more each year.

“As the recipient of federal research funding, UM has both a moral and legal obligation to be completely transparent about its foreign partnerships,” Chief Investigative Counsel Paul Moore said in a statement on Tuesday.

“Unfortunately, tens of millions of dollars in foreign funding in UM’s disclosure reports have been reported in an untimely manner and appear to erroneously identify some of UM’s foreign funders as ‘non-governmental entities’ even though the foreign funders seem to be directly affiliated with foreign governments.”

Moore’s letter also cited two recent federal criminal cases involving Chinese nationals affiliated with UM.

In one case, a doctoral candidate from Huazhong University of Science and Technology was arrested on June 8 and was charged with smuggling roundworm-related materials into the United States.

In a separate case that same month, a doctoral student from Zhejiang University and her boyfriend were accused of smuggling restricted biological materials into the United States. A criminal complaint filed on June 2 alleged that she received funding from the Chinese communist regime to study Fusarium graminearum, a fungus that can cause head blight in crops such as wheat and maize, and is considered a potential agroterrorism agent.

The letter points out that UM continues to engage in significant research collaborations with Chinese institutions, such as Tsinghua University, Peking University, Fudan University, and Zhejiang University, noting that they are all “deeply involved in China’s emerging science and technology research efforts directly linked to military programs.”

The university did not respond to a request for comment by the time of publication.

In response to the initial charges, the University of Michigan issued a statement reaffirming its commitment to fostering research that benefits society while upholding national security.

“We strongly condemn any actions that seek to cause harm, threaten national security or undermine the university’s critical public mission,” the university said on June 3.

“It is important to note that the university has received no funding from the Chinese government in relation to research conducted by the accused individuals.

“We have and will continue to cooperate with federal law enforcement in its ongoing investigation and prosecution.”

Earlier this month, UM launched what it calls a “centralized webpage” to share information on research security policies, compliance training, and lab safety protocols. University leadership also pledged to “fully comply with all applicable laws and regulations and take all necessary actions” to safeguard research integrity.

In a separate development, UM terminated a 20-year joint research partnership with Shanghai Jiao Tong University in January, following federal charges against five UM students affiliated with the Chinese institution. The students were allegedly caught photographing Northern Strike, a 2023 military training exercise at Camp Grayling in northern Michigan.

This decision also came after Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.), who chairs the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, raised national security concerns about Shanghai Jiao Tong’s close ties to the Chinese military.

According to Moolenaar, the joint UM–Shanghai Jiao Tong institute has contributed to Chinese military technological breakthroughs, including projects on propellant combustion modeling, solid rocket fuel, anti-corrosion technology for military aircraft, and CT imaging to detect flaws in advanced weapons systems.

Some of this work, the congressman said, appeared to have leveraged Pentagon-funded research conducted by UM faculty.

In a departure from his usual role as a de facto PR agent for the State of Israel, US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee has condemned West Bank settlers’ “terrorist” murder of a Florida-born-and-raised American citizen, and called on Israel to “aggressively investigate.” 

Last week, 20-year-old Sayfollah “Saif” Musallet was visiting relatives on their farms in the town of Sinjil, where residents say they’ve been enduring a settler violence campaign for two months. After Friday prayers, Musallet was among dozens of Palestinians driving back to their land in Sinjil when settlers surrounded them for three hours and attacked with guns, clubs and rocks, witnesses say.

Musallet was viciously beaten with sticks or clubs. For two hours after he was beaten, ambulances couldn’t reach Musallet, as settlers roamed the area and the IDF refused to allow an ambulance to pass their roadblock, according to witnesses. Adhering to a typical pattern, the IDF focused its aggression on the Palestinians, firing tear gas at them. 

“They prevented the ambulance and allowed the settlers to do what they do anytime they want to,” Musallet’s father Kamel Musallet told CNN. “I hold the Israeli military just as responsible as the settlers, and the American government for not doing anything about this. You know, why are you not telling the IDF? Why are you not preventing settler terrorism?” 

Settler violence and harassment against West Bank Muslims and Christians has been a problem for decades, but it has ramped up since the Oct 7 2023 invasion of Israel by Gaza’s Hamas militants. According to a UN tally, almost 1,000 Palestinians have been killed by settlers or the IDF over that time span. 

In an opinion piece published earlier this month, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert condemned settler violence, saying “Israel’s real enemies are the violent, murderous terrorist militias that are…responsible for the murder of at least 140 West Bank Palestinians this year. Many of the dead were children.” After the killing of Musallet, American Muslims for Palestine called for President Trump to intervene:

“Will he uphold his ‘America First’ promise when it’s a Palestinian-American whose life was taken? Or will he once again bow his head to Israel, no matter the cost in blood?”

According to his family, both of Musallet’s grandfather’s immigrated to the United States in the early 1900s. Teaming up with cousins, Musallet bought a Tampa ice cream shop where locals appreciated his generous scoops and readiness to replace dropped cones. “Everyone who met him fell in love with him,” his uncle told the Tampa Bay Times.

I have asked @Israel to aggressively investigate the murder of Saif Mussallet, an American citizen who was visiting family in Sinjil when he was beaten to death. There must be accountability for this criminal and terrorist act. Saif was just 20 yrs old.

— Ambassador Mike Huckabee (@GovMikeHuckabee) July 15, 2025

According to Middle East Eye, Huckabee’s statement seemingly represented his first-ever condemnation of settler violence. Before Musallet’s killing, Christians had been demanding that the demonstratively-religious Huckabee take action on behalf of his fellow Christians besieged by settlers in Taybeh, the last 100% Christian village in the West Bank.

More horrific footage from the Israeli settler pogrom against the Christian village of Taybeh, Ramallah, in the West Bank, where settlers set houses and vehicles on fire. pic.twitter.com/97xW3epLEf

— Ihab Hassan (@IhabHassane) June 25, 2025

Church leaders there have repeatedly called out to the world for help, saying, “We do not live in peace but in daily fear and siege...Since last October, more than 10 families have left Taybeh due to fear from ongoing violence and harassment.” In addition to setting fire to houses and vehicles, settlers are also accused of stealing farm equipment, and destroying crops with fire or by releasing settlers’ cattle to devour them, Catholic News Agency reports. Last week, they started a fire next to the cherished, 1,500-year-old Byzantine church of St. George al Khader, and burned a cemetery.

Huckabee, a self-described “unreformed Zionist,” has long taken zealously pro-Israel stances, to include endorsing Israelis’ expansionist claims to the West Bank. For example, in one of his many trips to Israel over the years, Huckabee in 2017 said: 

“There is no such thing as a ‘West Bank,’ it’s Judea and Samaria. There’s no such thing as a settlement. They’re communities, they’re neighborhoods, they’re cities. There’s no such thing as an occupation.”   

His spotlight on Musallet’s murder may boost the odds of justice being served. However, if history is any guide, there’s very little chance of that happening. According to a database maintained by human rights group Yesh Din, out of 1,700 investigations into violence directed against West Bank Palestinians between 2005 and 2024, 93% of the cases were closed with no charges filed.  

In the Christian village of Taybeh, Israeli settlers set fire to St. George Church and the Christian cemetery again today. This time, they brought a leaf blower with them—intentionally using it to fan the flames and ensure the fire would spread. pic.twitter.com/vKHbsR4HBd

— Ihab Hassan (@IhabHassane) July 11, 2025

Via Headline USA,

For decades, proponents of psychedelic drugs have come to Washington with a provocative message: Illegal, mind-altering substances like LSD and ecstasy should be approved for Americans grappling with depression, trauma and other hard-to-treat conditions.

A presidential administration finally seems to agree.

“This line of therapeutics has tremendous advantage if given in a clinical setting and we are working very hard to make sure that happens within 12 months,” Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recently told members of Congress.

His suggested timeline for green-lighting psychedelic therapy surprised even the most bullish supporters of the drugs. And it comes as psychedelics are making inroads in deep red states like Texas, where former Trump cabinet secretary and ex-governor Rick Perry has thrown his full support behind the effort.

The administration’s embrace of psychedelics has sparked both excitement as well as concern from those in the field, who worry the drugs might be discredited if they appear to be rushed onto the market.

“I’m quite optimistic,” says Rick Doblin, whose organization has pursued the medical use of MDMA (or ecstasy) since the 1980s. “But I’m also worried that the message the public might get is ‘Well, RFK likes psychedelics and now it’s approved.’”

FDA may reconsider MDMA

Under President Joe Biden, the FDA rejected MDMA as a treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder, citing flawed data and questionable research. Regulators called for a new study, likely taking several years. It was a major setback for Doblin and other advocates hoping to see the first U.S. approval of a psychedelic for medical use.

But the agency appears ready to reconsider. FDA chief Marty Makary, who reports to Kennedy, has called the evaluation of MDMA and other psychedelics “a top priority,” announcing a slate of initiatives that could be used to accelerate their approval.

One new program promises to expedite drugs that serve “the health interests of Americans,” by slashing their review time from six months or more to as little as one month. Makary has also suggested greater flexibility on requirements for certain drugs, potentially waiving rigorous controlled studies that compare patients to a placebo group.

That approach, considered essential for high-quality research, has long been a stumbling point for psychedelic studies, in which patients can almost always correctly guess whether they’ve received the drug or a dummy pill.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and FDA also recently hired several new staffers with ties to the psychedelic movement.

“These are all very promising signs that the administration is aware of the potential of psychedelics and is trying to make overtures that they’re ready to approve them,” said Greg Ferenstein, a fellow at the libertarian Reason Foundation, who also consults for psychedelic companies. “We didn’t hear anything about that in the Biden administration”

A spokesperson for HHS did not respond to a request for comment.

As a presidential candidate, Kennedy discussed how his son and several close friends benefited from using psychedelics to deal with grief and other issues.

A number of veterans lobbying for psychedelic access have already met with Trump’s Secretary of Veterans Affairs, Doug Collins.

“What we’re seeing so far is positive,” Collins told House lawmakers in May.

But some experts worry the hope and hype surrounding psychedelics has gotten ahead of the science.

Philip Corlett, a psychiatric researcher at Yale University, says bypassing rigorous clinical trials could set back the field and jeopardize patients.

“If RFK and the new administration are serious about this work, there are things they could do to shepherd it into reality by meeting the benchmarks of medical science,” Corlett said. “I just don’t think that’s going to happen.”

Texas goes all-in on ibogaine research

As officials in Washington weigh the future of psychedelics, some states are moving ahead with their own projects in hopes of nudging the federal government. Oregon and Colorado have legalized psychedelic therapy.

And last month, Texas approved $50 million to study ibogaine, a potent psychedelic made from a shrub that’s native to West Africa, as a treatment for opioid addiction, PTSD and other conditions. The research grant — the largest of its kind by any government — passed with support from the state’s former GOP governor, Perry, and combat veterans, some who have traveled to clinics in Mexico that offer ibogaine.

Ibogaine is on the U.S. government’s ultra-restrictive list of illegal, Schedule 1 drugs, which also includes heroin. So advocates in Texas are hoping to build a national movement to ease restrictions on researching its use.

“Governmental systems move slowly and inefficiently,” said Bryan Hubbard of Americans for Ibogaine, a group formed with Perry. “Sometimes you find yourself constrained in terms of the progress you can make from within.”

Ibogaine is unique among psychedelics in both its purported benefits and risks. Small studies and anecdotal reports suggest the drug may be able to dramatically ease addiction and trauma. It was sold for medical use in France for several decades starting in the 1930s, but the drug can also cause dangerous irregular heart rhythms, which can be fatal if left untreated.

Some veterans who have taken the drug say the risks can be managed and ibogaine’s healing properties go far beyond antidepressants, mood stabilizers, counseling and other standard treatments.

Marcus Capone struggled with anger, insomnia and mood swings after 13 years as a Navy Seal. In 2017, at the urging of his wife Amber, he agreed to try ibogaine as a last resort. He described his first ibogaine session as “a complete purge of everything.”

“But afterward I felt the weight just completely off my shoulders,” he said. “No more anxiety, no more depression, life made sense all of a sudden.”

A nonprofit founded by the Capones, Veterans Exploring Treatment Solutions, or VETS, has helped over 1,000 veterans travel abroad to receive ibogaine and other psychedelics.

But federal scientists have looked at the drug before — three decades ago, when the National Institute on Drug Abuse funded preliminary studies on using it as an addiction treatment. The research was discontinued after it identified “cardiovascular toxicity.”

“It would be dead in the water,” in terms of winning FDA approval, longtime NIDA director Nora Volkow said.

But Volkow said her agency remains interested in psychedelics, including ibogaine, and is funding an American drugmaker that’s working to develop a safer, synthetic version of the drug.

“I am very intrigued by their pharmacological properties and how they are influencing the brain,” Volkow said. “But you also have to be very mindful not to fall into the hype and to be objective and rigorous in evaluating them.”

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

More changes could be coming to the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), including on whether more liquids can be taken through airport security, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem suggested on July 16.

“But I will tell you—I mean the liquids—I’m questioning. So that may be the next big announcement is what size your liquids need to be,” Noem told NewsNation in a live interview with The Hill published on July 16, referring to the amount of liquids people can transport through security in their carry-on bags. “We’re looking at our scanners.”

The TSA website says that you “are allowed to bring a quart-sized bag of liquids, aerosols, gels, creams and pastes in your carry-on bag and through the checkpoint,” but are “limited to travel-sized containers that are 3.4 ounces (100 milliliters) or less per item.”

Noem’s comment comes just days after she announced that the TSA has lifted its mandate for travelers to take off their shoes at security checkpoints.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) secretary said that her office is “working with several different companies with technologies to give us competitive bids on what they actually do.”

She added that DHS is “working to see what we can do to make the traveling experience much better and more hospitable for individuals, but also still keep safety standards.”

“It is still a process that is protecting people who are traveling on our airlines. But it has to make sense. It has to actually do something to make you safer,” Noem told the outlet.

Noem did not elaborate on when the TSA might change its rules on liquids in carry-on bags or how much travelers would be able to carry.

This past week, Noem said that travelers no longer have to remove their shoes, a policy that was put in place about 20 years ago. She also said that the TSA plans to review how airport screenings can be simplified and expedited.

“It will be a much more streamlined process,” the secretary said.

Some travelers still may be asked to take off their footwear “if we think additional layers of screening are necessary,” she added.

The TSA was created in 2001 under the administration of then-President George W. Bush following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Since then, the TSA has hired federal employees as agents to replace private companies that airlines had used to handle security.

The rule limiting liquids in carry-on bags has been in effect since 2006. It came after a foiled terrorist plot that year involving liquid explosives on an aircraft traveling from the United Kingdom to the United States and Canada.

The TSA imposed the shoes-off rule at checkpoints after a man tried and failed to detonate an explosive in his shoes in a December 2001 transatlantic flight.

All passengers between the ages of 12 and 75 were required to remove their shoes, which were scanned along with carry-on bags and other separated items such as outerwear. Travelers previously were able to skip the shoe requirement if they participated in the TSA PreCheck program, which costs around $80 for five years.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

US Africa Command has announced that it launched two separate airstrikes in Somalia on Sunday, as the Trump administration is continuing to bomb the country at a record pace, an air war that is receiving virtually no coverage in US media.

AFRICOM said that the strikes targeted the ISIS affiliate in Somalia’s northeastern Puntland region, to the southeast of the port city of Bossaso. The command offered no further details, as it has stopped sharing estimates of casualties or assessments of potential civilian harm.

AFRICOM confirmed to Antiwar.com in an email that the latest attack marked the 51st US airstrike in Somalia of the year, putting the Trump administration on track to easily break the annual record, which President Trump set at 63 in 2019. Antiwar.com is also seeking details on casualties from AFRICOM, but so far hasn’t received a figure.

The US has been backing local Puntland forces against ISIS in battles in the Cal Miskaad mountains in Puntland’s Bari region. Puntland Counter-Terrorism Operations announced on Sunday — the day the US launched two airstrikes — that it was conducting a “clearance operation” against ISIS remnants in the mountains and said the area being targeted was “last used by terrorists as a hideout with their foreign women and children.”

Puntland’s forces announced a new military operation on June 30 against ISIS-affiliated militants, and since then, the US has launched at least four airstrikes in the area. The ISIS affiliate in Somalia started in 2015 as an offshoot of al-Shabaab, a group the US has also been bombing in southern and central Somalia.

In the war against al-Shabaab, the US is backing the Mogadishu-based Federal Government, which controls little territory inside Somalia’s internationally recognized borders. Somali media reported on Tuesday that government forces killed 15 al-Shabaab fighters in the central Hiraan region, an operation that was supported by “international partners,” likely a reference to US AFRICOM.

Al-Shabaab has been making significant gains against the government and reportedly captured a town in the Hiraan region on Monday. Fighting has also been ongoing in the southern Jubaland region, where the US carried out multiple airstrikes from June 27 to June 30 to support a battle that the government claimed killed 50 al-Shabaab fighters.

Al-Shabaab’s offensive has been successful enough that US officials recently discussed the possibility of Mogadishu falling to the militant group.

The New York Times reported on April 10 that State Department officials suggested closing down the US embassy in Mogadishu and evacuating most US personnel due to the threat. But other officials, including Sebastian Gorka, the top counterterrorism official on the National Security Council, called for the US to escalate in Somalia and double down on its policy of propping up the government, and they appear to have won the internal debate.

Hawks who favor continued intervention in Somalia portray al-Shabaab as a major threat to the US due to its size and al-Qaeda affiliation, but it’s widely believed the group does not have ambitions outside of Somalia.

Al-Shabaab was born out of a US-backed Ethiopian invasion in 2006 that toppled the Islamic Courts Union, a coalition of Muslim groups that briefly held power in Mogadishu after ousting CIA-backed warlords. Al-Shabaab was the radical offshoot of the Islamic Courts Union. The group’s first recorded attack was in 2007, and it wasn’t until 2012 that al-Shabaab pledged loyalty to al-Qaeda.

AI and Crypto Czar David Sacks warned Tuesday that preventing U.S. semiconductor companies from exporting high-powered chips to allies will drive nations into the arms of China.

“If we don’t compete across the world, then we will hand the market to China,” Sacks told Bloomberg News ahead of President Donald Trump’s announcement of $92 billion in investments across Pennsylvania. “One of the reasons that the president went to the Gulf States on that trip is to encourage business relations between the U.S. and the Gulf state. He signed massive investment deals. One of the deals that we signed was this new exploration partnership where we want to create a pathway for the Gulf states like UAE, to buy American technology, to buy American ships, and to create data centers on the American tech stack.”

In May, President Donald Trump secured over $2 trillion in artificial intelligence and tech deals during his Middle East tour, including a landmark $1.4 trillion UAE commitment to U.S. AI infrastructure and a $600 billion Saudi investment. The agreements, which include Nvidia chip sales and a massive Abu Dhabi AI campus.

Sacks pushed back on the notion that China’s technological advancements are years away, citing reports that Chinese company Huawei is already attempting to sell and export wireless chips. “A lot of people said, well, China won’t be ready to sell for four years. But now we see that there are reports that Huawei is out there trying to sell and export the wireless chip,” the Trump official said.

Sacks said the way to think about the global tech market is as a “zero-sum game,” where market share will either belong to American companies, such as Nvidia, or to Chinese firms like Huawei. The Trump official proposed a straightforward metric for measuring success: market share. “If five years from now, we look across the world and we see that Nvidia or other American companies have an 80% market share, it means that we won the AI race,” Sacks explained. However, if Huawei commands an 80% market share in five years, it would signal a significant loss for the U.S. in the AI race.

Addressing concerns about the security of exporting advanced technologies, Sacks said that the chips in question are not small, easily concealed components but “really mainframe computers” that are eight feet tall and extremely heavy. “It’s very easy to send inspectors into datacenters and count the server racks to make sure that they’re where they’re supposed to be,” Sacks said, dismissing security concerns as manageable. “I understand that there are some security concerns, but I think they’re very easily handled.”

“What we need to be doing is making sure that we win the AI race globally by making American technology the global standard and not letting a Huawei belt and road,” he added.

Trump signed an executive order in April to expand domestic coal production and utilization, targeting the energy needs of the rapidly growing artificial intelligence industry and its power-hungry data centers. The directive seeks to revitalize the declining U.S. coal sector, which has been hit hard by market shifts and environmental regulations.

The order introduces incentives and executive actions to increase coal-fired power generation, including potential Energy Department mandates to keep coal plants operational, even if they are closed or scheduled for closure.

“We’re bringing back an industry that was abandoned,” Trump said at the signing ceremony, joined by coal workers. “With us today are some of the amazing workers who will benefit from these policies.”

The president added, “All those plants that have been closed are going to be opened. If they’re modern enough, or they’ll be ripped down and brand-new ones will be built.”

Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Foreign buyers purchased $56 billion worth of existing homes in the United States between April 2024 and March 2025, up by 33.2 percent from the previous 12 months, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) said in a July 14 statement.

In terms of the number of properties, they bought 78,100 units, a 44 percent increase from the prior year. This was also the first annual increase since 2017. The average purchase price was $494,400, a “record high,” NAR said.

“International interest in buying U.S. real estate increased following the global economic recovery from several years of pandemic-related disruptions,” NAR chief economist Lawrence Yun said in a statement.

“However, elevated home prices and interest rates continue to dampen overall potential sales activity and remain well below pre-pandemic levels.”

China was the top buyer nation of U.S. existing homes, making up 15 percent of all foreign purchases. Canada was a close second at 14 percent, followed by Mexico at 8 percent, India at 6 percent, and the United Kingdom at 4 percent.

The top housing market for international buyers was Florida, which accounted for 21 percent of all such deals. This was followed by California (15 percent), Texas (10 percent), New York (7 percent), and Arizona (5 percent).

“To some degree, due to stubbornly high mortgage rates, a greater share of international home buyers paid cash—47 percent compared to 28 percent among all buyers—and they were more likely to purchase homes priced in the upper end of the market,” Yun said.

“Foreign buyers are drawn to investing in American real estate, in part, by our country’s strong protection of private property rights.”

Among all foreign purchases, 56 percent were made by foreigners who live in the United States as recent immigrants or who have visas allowing them to reside in the country.

Interest in U.S. home purchases by Canadians dropped this year amid trade tensions, according to a July 4 statement from real estate brokerage Redfin.

The number of Canadian users on the Redfin platform searching for homes in the United States decreased by 26.4 percent from a year earlier in May.

In February, President Donald Trump imposed a 25 percent tariff on imports from Canada, citing the “extraordinary threat posed by illegal aliens and drugs, including deadly fentanyl,” according to a Feb. 1 White House fact sheet. The tariffs would remain in effect “until the crisis is alleviated,” it said.

Trump also recently announced bumping up the tariffs on Canadian imports to 35 percent.

Canadians searching for American homes started “declining significantly” from February, Redfin said.

“Normally I work with about five Canadian buyers each spring, mostly older folks looking for a second home. This year, there were none,” Heather Mahmood-Corley, a Redfin Premier agent in Phoenix, said in a statement.

“People from Canada are retreating from owning real estate in the U.S. because of political tensions; some of them are worried it will no longer be practical to travel back and forth between the two countries, and some don’t want their money tied up in the U.S.”

International buyers purchasing residential properties in the United States can have both positive and negative effects. For one, it brings in capital and can stimulate economic growth. Some areas would benefit from foreigners buying property, as it could push up property values.

On the other hand, there may not be significant changes in prices, while foreign purchases create financial challenges for local residents seeking affordable housing.

Prospective buyers are already facing difficulties in finding an affordable home.

For instance, the average sales price of homes sold in the United States in the first quarter was $503,800, up from $417,400 in the first quarter of 2021, according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

Similarly, the average weekly rate of a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage has consistently remained above the 6 percent level since mid-September 2022.

Both of these factors make purchasing a home an expensive option for many households.

There is gruesome evidence emerging of mass atrocities in the southern Syrian province of Suwayda, where government soldiers under the Sharaa/Jolani regime have been conducing sectarian attacks on Druze and Christians, while seeking to get the etho-religions Druze community to lay down their weapons.

New disturbing images emerging Wednesday show dozens of dead civilians strewn about the floor at the National Hospital of Suwayda. The images seem authentic and verified, as Syria expert Joshua Landis of the University of Oklahoma has described that a regime soldier in the aftermath filmed the results of the massacre while proclaiming “God is Great” and that there has been ‘victory’ over the Druze there.

Massacre of Druze in #Syria at the National Hospital of Suwayda.

In the first video, a Druze nurse is pleading for help as regime soldiers are about to overrun the hospital.

In the second video, a regime soldier films the results of the capture and proclaims that “God is… pic.twitter.com/ibLzinnhiU

— Joshua Landis (@joshua_landis) July 16, 2025

Russia’s RT News has also picked up on the footage, captioning the “HORRIFIC images reportedly out of Suweida hospital in South Syria shows staff MASSACRED” for “Suspected of being Druze” — as the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) describes.

Exact number of dead and wounded are unknown at this early point, but the hospital was under siege by the government forces of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). London-based SOHR writes:

SOHR sources denied a statement issued by the Information and Communication Department of the Ministry of Defence, which accused “outlaw groups of taking the national hospital in Al-Suwaidaa as a starting point to launch their operations against the army and internal security forces.

SOHR warns of the continued siege of Al-Suwaidaa National hospital and targeting or storming it under flimsy pretexts.

Reliable SOHR sources confirmed that there are medical staff and patients only inside the national hospital in Al-Suwaidaa, without the presence of any armed manifestations.

The third floor of the hospital was also bombed by the Ministry of Defence forces, which besieged the hospital from all sides, putting it out of service. The hospital suffers from a blockade that prevents medical supplies from reaching it, further aggravating the situation.

It appears everyone in the hospital has been massacred. Sick and wounded patients were reportedly murdered in cold blood in their hospital beads.

Syrian government jihadists have massacred the entire Sweida National Hospital. Druze and Christian patients, doctors, nurses, women, children, and everyone taking shelter inside.

I’m speechless. This is genocide.

pic.twitter.com/n8r1sDyohU

— Dr. Maalouf ‏ (@realMaalouf) July 16, 2025

HTS has just taken off the US-designated terrorism list earlier this month, after Trump had posed with its leader Sharaa (Jolani, who had earlier been a member of ISIS) while visiting Riyadh, expressing hope that he’ll make for a good post-Assad ruler.

These US-backed jihadist thugs have also been attacking more churches in Syria’s south…

Syrian regime terrorists attacked Mar Mkhayel Church in Suwaida and set it on fire. Just weeks ago, they bombed another church and killed dozens. No one is safe in this new “free” Syria pic.twitter.com/m67NZWTqJZ

— Hadi (@HadiNasrallah) July 15, 2025

Recall that Trump had gone so far as to praise al-Sharaa as a “young, attractive guy” who has a “real shot at doing a good job”. There was no mention at the time of protecting some of the world’s most ancient churches and Syria’s sizeable Christian community.

The fruit of that ‘good job’ thus far has been a genocidal campaign launched against Alawites near Latakia, Druze in the south – as is happening currently, as well as attacks on churches, including last month’s suicide bombing of St. Elias Orthodox Church in Damascus, which left at least 25 people – including children – dead. A group affiliated with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham actually took responsibility.