Authored by George Citroner via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A daily cup of coffee or tea may do more than wake you up – it could also help keep your brain sharp as you age.

Coffee, like this?

New research tracking hundreds of thousands of people over decades suggests that moderate caffeine consumption is linked to a lower risk of developing dementia.

Wang and his team tracked participants from two long-term studies of medical professionals, the Nurses’ Health Study and Health Professionals Follow-Up Study, with starting ages typically in their mid-40s to early 50s.

They found that people who drank between one and five eight-ounce cups of caffeinated coffee had an 18 percent reduced risk of dementia. However, those who drank caffeinated tea daily had a roughly 15 percent reduced risk.

Interestingly, the benefits plateaued beyond two and a half cups of coffee daily, possibly because the body cannot process higher amounts of the beneficial compounds in these beverages. Caffeine can mimic adenosine and bind to receptors in the brain, blocking the molecule that promotes sleepiness, and keeping us alert, Knight said. By doing so, it increases neuron activity, which may reduce inflammation.

“Inflammation is being studied as a cause of cognitive impairment,” she said. “Caffeine has the potential to reduce oxidative stress and neuroinflammation, which helps to decrease brain aging.”

The study also looked at subjective cognitive decline—people’s perceptions that their memory and thinking skills are slipping. Those who drank more caffeine were less likely to report such issues. Among women over 70, those who drank more caffeine scored better on cognitive tests, indicating slower cognitive decline by about seven months.

Cognitive decline was assessed using cohort-specific questionnaires with yes-or-no responses covering general memory, executive function, attention, and visuospatial skills.

The better cognition among tea and coffee drinkers may come from caffeine’s ability to increase dopamine and acetylcholine in the brain, which are important for memory and cognition, Knight said. “Dopamine is the reward center in the brain and leads to feeling alert, focused, and pleasure. Acetylcholine is the memory neurotransmitter.”

Researchers caution that they cannot determine causation and that other factors may influence the results. For example, some participants might have been drinking decaffeinated coffee for health reasons, which could affect outcomes.

Coffee acts as a diuretic, which can lead to dehydration—a concern given that most adults already fall short of the recommended eight glasses of water a day.

“I always tell my patients for each cup of coffee you should drink a glass of water.” She added that dehydration can lead to altered mental status, confusion, and kidney damage.

Finally, Knight cautioned that older people should be careful about caffeine intake, because it can disrupt sleep, which itself is a risk factor for cognitive decline.

“Caffeine can lead to increased difficulty with sleep,” she said. “Poor sleep can impair cognition, causing increased confusion or brain fog, and increase dementia risk over time.”

Attorney General Pam Bondi has reportedly moved into heavily guarded housing at a military base in the Washington area after receiving multiple threats.

Several sources familiar with the situation say the threats came from drug cartels as well as political critics, prompting the relocation. Bondi joins a growing list of Donald Trump administration officials who now live at secure military facilities in and around the nation’s capital due to heightened security concerns. 

“Ms. Bondi moved from an apartment in the city within the past month in response to an array of threats flagged to her staff by federal law enforcement, these people said, including an uptick in criticism of Ms. Bondi, and threats relayed by investigators,” the New York Times reports.

“One catalyst was an increase in threats following the capture and prosecution of President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela in January, according to a senior official with direct knowledge of the situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss security matters.”

The threats against Trump administration officials are very real. For example, Trump advisor Stephen Miller and his family were subjected to repeated protests outside their Arlington, Virginia home, including activists posting fliers in their neighborhood with their home address, branding him a “Nazi” and accusing him of “crimes against humanity.” Protesters with Arlington Neighbors United for Humanity also chalked messages on the sidewalk accusing him of “destroying democracy,” “kidnapping,” and “White nationalism,” and the group warned the couple on Instagram that their efforts to “dismantle our democracy” would not be tolerated. His wife, Katie Miller, also recounted that a protester told her, “I’m watching you,” as she left their house. Other officials living on a military base include Sec. of State Marco Rubio, Sec. of Defense Pete Hegseth, and outgoing DHS Sec. Kristi Noem. 

Even though legitimate threats have forced these officials to move to military bases, the liberal media outlets have been criticizing the relocations for months. Fox News Digital reported last year that left-leaning outlets like The New Republic and The Daily Beast claimed the officials were merely trying to avoid public backlash.

The New Republic called Stephen Miller “one of a handful of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet members who are hiding out on military bases so they don’t have to be exposed to the public that hates them,” while The Daily Beast said he had secured “a taxpayer-subsidized military home, shielding him from the type of people he hates the most: left-wing agitators.”

The New York Times similarly questioned the legitimacy of the arrangements and the costs to taxpayers.

“It is not clear how much, if anything, officials are paying to stay at some of the most historic properties in the government’s possession,” the paper wrote, and noted that “this appears to be the first administration to take such widespread advantage of taxpayer-funded military housing to accommodate political appointees who do not have a direct connection to the military, according to former officials and historians.”

Last year, the Network Contagion Research Institute published research warning that what it calls “assassination culture” is taking root in American political life. Lead researcher Joel Finkelstein traced the inflection point to December 2024, when Luigi Mangione shot UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in broad daylight in Manhattan. Rather than near-universal condemnation, Mangione became a folk hero among the political left. 

“What was formerly taboo culturally has become acceptable,” Finkelstein told Fox News Digital. “We are seeing a clear shift — glorification, increased attempts and changing norms — all converging into what we define as ‘assassination culture.'”

Five months after the study was published, Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk was assassinated in Utah.

The left may not like the fact that Trump administration officials are living on military bases, but they are the reason they have to.

Authored by David Youngberg via TheDailyEconomy.org,

Last month, Congress sparred with the president over a partial budget, but with few real cuts, America’s slow march toward an epic debt crisis went on undeterred. With over $38 trillion in debt and interest payments exceeding defense or Medicare spending, one would expect lawmakers to confront reality and do the difficult work needed to restore fiscal sanity. But why would they? Cutting entitlements and increasing middle-class taxes rarely make for winning campaign slogans.

It’s no surprise, then, that some prefer to pin their hopes on AI as America’s fiscal savior. Vanguard’s chief economist Joe Davis argued there’s as high as a 50 percent chance AI will prevent a debt-driven economic malaise. Elon Musk voiced a similar conclusion late last year, claiming AI and robotics are “the only thing that’s going to solve the US debt crisis.”

The argument goes like this: an AI boom drives explosive economic growth and tax revenue, while, at the same time, productivity gains impressively offset any upward pressure on interest rates. The deficit becomes a surplus and the overall debt shrinks, possibly disappearing entirely.

If that sounds less like a policy plan and more like a retirement strategy built around winning the lottery, you’re not wrong. The entire scenario hinges on a massive if: that AI generates extraordinary revenue and does it quickly enough to outrun rising interest costs.

But even if the government hits the tax revenue jackpot before Congress drives us off a fiscal cliff, it would be naïve to assume lawmakers would pay down the debt. 

The More the Government Gets, the More the Government Spends

For the sake of argument, suppose the tech optimists are right, and the federal government enjoys a massive AI-driven revenue windfall. Understanding what happens next requires understanding the incentives of politicians and their voters.

This is where public choice shines. Rather than assuming politicians and voters act in everyone’s best interest, this branch of economics recognizes that people don’t become angels once they interface with the government. Incentives matter, especially for politicians.

Incentives are why we have a deficit in the first place. The public isn’t particularly interested in financial restraint because high spending and low taxes benefit them now, and the resulting debt is some future generation’s problem. Politicians surely see the crisis brewing, but solving it is a sure way to get voted out of office. And so the incentive is to run constant deficits and grow the debt year after year, decade after decade.

Without changing incentives, it will be hard to avoid spending new revenue. Ballooning coffers mean voters will demand that the government dole out more goodies (especially if AI displaces workers along the way). Washington already excels at entertaining expensive ideas: healthcare subsidies for well-off families, a universal basic income, generous tax cuts, a fifty-percent increase in military spending, all despite the pushback the current deficit’s able to muster. Imagine the wish list after it drops even a little.

Expecting Congress to use a jolt of revenue to pay down debt is like expecting a compulsive gambler to save his winnings for retirement. There’s a reason nearly a third of lottery winners file for bankruptcy within five years of getting their windfall. Winners tend to be the ones who bought a lot of tickets, and people who buy a lot of tickets tend to be reckless with their money.

Not all lottery winners are reckless, and not all lawmakers are more interested in buying votes than paying off debts. The question is whether Congress is more likely to emulate the prudent winner or the reckless one.

This Has All Happened Before…

Public choice theory suggests we already know the answer, but maybe there’s some crucial detail we’re missing. Or maybe American politics is just different in some way. The good (or, depending on your position, bad) news is that we have a ready example from the last time a tech revolution balanced the government budget: the internet boom of the late 1990s.

Right before investors realized you couldn’t slap a ‘dot-com’ onto any English word and make a billion dollars selling pet food over what we laughingly called the information superhighway, a surge of investment handed the Treasury Department the biggest budget surplus since World War II demilitarization. It also arrived in time for a presidential election.

The 2000 election pitted Vice President Al Gore against Texas Governor George W. Bush, and the question of what to do with the surplus was a major campaign issue. Gore proposed using some of it to pay down the debt. Bush preferred spending it on tax cuts, Social Security, and “important projects.” Yes, the Democrat was more of a fiscal conservative than the Republican. Those were wild times.

Bush would go on to win that election.

It was incredibly close, and Gore could’ve easily won. And if not for something called a butterfly ballot, he would’ve won.

But he didn’t win, and all we knew at the time was that it was very, very close. It was so close that if Gore had promised some “important projects” in Florida instead of paying down a bill that wouldn’t have come due until some distant decade, the White House would’ve been his.

Losing by a hair’s breadth is every campaign’s nightmare. Mere oversights become colossal blunders, and every ill-fated gamble becomes a decisive mistake. The 2000 election made something crystal clear to anyone who hadn’t already gotten the memo: prudence is for losers.

The surplus proved to be transient anyway, vaporized in the aftermath of 9/11 and the bursting of the dot-com bubble. The US returned to familiar deficit territory two years later, and we never looked back.

…And It Will Happen Again.

The optimists might say that this time will be different. The looming deficit crisis is so bad that politicians will use any AI windfall to pay down the debt rather than spend it. This time they’ll do the responsible thing.

Be serious.

It’s of course possible that the political stars align and lawmakers will pay down the deficit instead of playing another round of “someone else’s problem.” It’s possible that the prudent thing will be done without a financial crisis to jar the public out of their “the future is never” fantasy.

But let’s get real. Though public concern about the debt is high, there’s so much disagreement about how to address the problem that politicians can safely ignore it. When President Trump threw his own eye-watering increase onto the debt last year, his approval rating didn’t budge. Voters say they care about the debt but they clearly care more about the things that have created it. The political incentives are the same as they ever were: if the government wins the AI lottery, lawmakers will behave as they always have. This time won’t be different.

The only surprise is that the move came so late. 

With New York City facing a historic fiscal crisis courtesy of its new mayor, late on Wednesday Moody’s lowered its outlook on New York City to negative, citing the “sizable and persistent” budget shortfalls it’s facing.

The move, which usually precedes a ratings cut in the subsequent several months, came as the ratings company also affirmed its Aa2 rating on the city’s debt, the third-highest level of investment-grade.

Moody’s said the change came after the city’s spending projections showed larger budget shortfalls than previously forecast.

“The negative outlook reflects the emergence of sizable and persistent projected budget gaps that signal underlying structural imbalance and reduced financial flexibility, despite New York City’s still favorable economic conditions,” Moody’s analysts said in a statement Wednesday, perhaps confused how to rate the former mecca of capitalism which was rapidly transforming into a socialist paradise.

Dora Pekec, a spokesperson for Mayor Zohran Mamdani, said the move was premature, citing the $5 billion in additional state funding the city stands to receive under proposed budgets being considered by the legislature.

“These proposals reflect a real commitment by Albany to investing in the services New Yorkers rely on, and the fiscal health of our city,” the statement said. Moody’s ignored the protest. 

New York City Comptroller Mark Levine said on Wednesday that the change was “a sobering wake-up call about the fiscal challenges ahead for us.”

The Comptroller warned that New York City must close a deficit of at least $5.4 billion this year and next year even as Wall Street bonuses are at record highs, and every major source of revenue, apart from corporate taxes, is rising. “Unfortunately, our expenses are growing even faster,” he said in testimony to city council members on Wednesday. As we said: “socialist paradise”

Levine said that the city’s operating expenses are projected to be $4.53 billion higher than its revenue in fiscal 2026, and warned that a proposed property tax increase floated by Mamdani would put the levy near its limit.

The mayor’s $127 billion budget relies on drawing from the city’s rainy-day fund, which would limit the city’s ability to weather the next economic downturn.

Spending on the city’s schools total $36.9 billion, a 31.5% increase since 2020, even as enrollment has fallen by 100,000 students, according to the comptroller. Moreover, the city’s housing voucher program has been growing at 4% per month and is estimated to total $2.6 billion next year.

But the real gut punch would be if New York proceeds with the planned tax hike on the city’s wealthy, a move which will decimate the city’s revenue as the ultra wealthy will move to Florida (as their California peers have already done), as well as leading to an exodus of office tenants, something which the collapsing stock price of commercial real estate giant Vornado has already sniffed out.

Construction on the planned $16 billion rail tunnel under the Hudson River could halt again within two to three months unless federal funding resumes, the project’s developer warned last week, according to Bloomberg.

The project, led by the Gateway Development Commission, would build a new rail tunnel linking New Jersey and Manhattan for Amtrak and New Jersey Transit trains. It would also allow rehabilitation of the existing tunnel, which opened in 1910 and is in urgent need of repairs. Gateway says the broader project would expand rail capacity between the two states and generate about $19.6 billion in economic activity.

Funding for the project has been in dispute for months. The US Department of Transportation has withheld funds since October, prompting Gateway to sue last month to force the release of the money. New York and New Jersey filed a similar lawsuit.

Bloomberg writes that some payments resumed after a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to release reimbursement funds the agency had requested. Since the ruling last month, Gateway has received about $254 million. The federal government had suspended payments while reviewing whether the project complied with a new administration policy banning contracting requirements tied to race or gender.

Still, Gateway officials say the funding interruptions threaten construction progress. A previous stoppage between Feb. 6 and Feb. 22 temporarily laid off about 1,000 construction workers and added “million of dollars in additional costs,” Gateway chief financial officer Pat McCoy said in a court filing.

“We will have no choice but to stop work again if the federal government does not continue to disburse the funds that are committed to the project,” Gateway Chief Executive Officer Tom Prendergast said in a statement Tuesday. “This project is too important to delay. That’s why we’re doing everything possible to regain consistent and predictable access to all our federal funding so we can keep our workers on the job and deliver the reliable, modern rail transit Americans deserve.”

Congress has already approved funding for the project, including $11 billion in federal support and $4 billion in loans to be repaid by New York, New Jersey and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Amtrak is expected to contribute another $1 billion.

Authored by Anthony Watts via ClimateRealism.com,

In The New York Times (NYT) article “Is Climate Change Making Inflation Worse?,” writer Lydia DePillis suggests that extreme weather linked to global warming is quietly raising the price of everyday goods like food, electricity, and insurance.

The framing is, at best, misleading and, at worst, flat-out false. Inflation is a monetary phenomenon driven by fiscal policy, central banking decisions, supply-chain disruptions, and energy policy choices — there is no evidence climate change has altered in a way that impacts any of those factors. The NYT erroneously substitutes weather anecdotes and speculative projections for demonstrated economic causation. However, since instances of extreme weather haven’t become more frequent or severe in recent decades, climate change can’t be causing “inflationary” impacts.

The NYT opens by asserting that there is “mounting evidence that extreme weather is making some everyday stuff more expensive.” That claim is presented as a settled fact. It’s not. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) assigns low confidence to global increases in most types of extreme weather and emphasizes regional variability. The IPCC AR6 does not claim that extreme weather trends are uniformly intensifying in a way that would systematically impact global inflation.

The NYT then turns to food prices, citing drought in Eastern Europe and China, coffee impacts in Brazil, and ranchers culling cattle. Agricultural output, however, fluctuates every year due to natural variability. Long-term production data in the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization’s FAOSTAT database, shown in the figure below, illustrate that global grain production has generally trended upward, amid modest warming and the recent claims of the “three hottest years ever” from 2022 to 2025.

Commodity markets automatically adjust; when one region underperforms, trade reallocates supply. The NYT acknowledges that tariffs and export controls can amplify price spikes. That is policy-driven inflation, not climate-driven inflation.

When discussing energy, the article points to grid repairs and increased electricity demand during heat waves. U.S. electricity prices have risen sharply in recent years, but that’s not due to a changing climate but rather is primarily due to fuel mix changes, regulatory mandates, and grid reliability challenges tied to rapid renewables integration driven by climate policies. It’s not climate change, but climate policies that have driven higher energy prices. Historical pricing data available through the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) electricity database show that price increases correlate more closely with political decisions that cause fuel supply volatility and shifts to expensive, intermittent, wind, solar, and battery storage power rather than with long-term temperature trends.

The NYT also cites a study projecting that weather-related disruptions could raise electricity infrastructure costs by as much as 25 percent toward the end of the century. That is a modeling projection, not an observed cost trend. The United States has already experienced roughly 1°C of warming since the late nineteenth century, yet official inflation tracking in the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Consumer Price Index database attributes recent inflation primarily to pandemic-era stimulus, supply chain disruptions, and energy price shocks, not temperature changes.

The article presents insurance costs as the clearest climate-related inflation driver. But insurance markets respond more to litigation environments, construction costs, regulatory frameworks, and development patterns in high-risk areas. Long-term normalized hurricane damage trends discussed at Climate at a Glance Hurricanes  show no upward trajectory after population growth and coastal development are accounted for. The same is true for rising wildfire costs. They are due to shifting policies on public lands and increased development in areas historically prone to wildfires, not significant changes in the climate in those regions. Indeed, acreage lost to wildfires has declined significantly over the past two decades. Rising premiums reflect higher rebuilding costs and denser development in vulnerable zones, not necessarily stronger storms.

The article pegs global warming’s impact at “between $400 and $900 per person annually,” but concedes the wide range stems from difficulty separating weather variability from climate change. That uncertainty is not incidental, it is central. Without a clear attribution chain linking long-term warming trends to persistent price acceleration in specific sectors, the NYT claim remains purely speculative; it’s not just that there is no causal link, there isn’t even a correlation between experienced weather trends and inflation related price increases.

The NYT further notes that U.S. commodity crops like corn, soybeans, wheat, and rice “have been less affected by shifting weather patterns.” Those crops form the backbone of global calorie supply. If staple production remains broadly stable, sweeping claims about climate-driven food inflation collapse.

Finally, the article cites mitigation policies, such as emissions trading systems and regulatory mandates, as contributors to rising prices. That is not climate inflation. That is climate policy inflation. When governments impose carbon pricing, trade barriers, or compliance costs, consumers pay more by design. Conflating the cost of political decisions supposedly designed to fight climate change with the cost of climate change itself obscures the true driver.

Inflation over the past five years has been historically elevated across advanced economies, driven primarily by unprecedented fiscal stimulus, monetary expansion, pandemic supply disruptions, and geopolitical energy shocks. None of those are climate variables. Economic research consistently identifies monetary policy as the dominant long-term determinant of inflation.

Weather variability can affect specific commodity prices in specific years. That has always been true. Droughts affected grain markets in the 1930s. Hurricanes disrupted supply chains in the twentieth century, yet sustained inflation requires sustained monetary imbalance.

The New York Times frames climate change as an emerging inflationary force poised to accelerate, but observational economic record refutes any such economy-wide climate-driven inflation trend. Weather anecdotes, modeling projections, and policy cost provide no proof of climate-driven inflation. Inflation is fundamentally a monetary and policy phenomenon. Blaming it on the weather may make compelling click-bait copy, but it does not withstand economic scrutiny.

Authored by Julio Rivera via American Greatness,

Washington has discovered a familiar political trick: wrap a flawed policy in the language of protecting children and hope nobody reads the fine print. The latest example is the App Store Accountability Act, a bill championed by lawmakers who appear eager to regulate the internet without understanding how it actually works.

Supporters insist the legislation will protect kids online. In reality, it risks undermining privacy, violating constitutional protections, and creating a cybersecurity disaster in the process.

And remarkably, Congress is pushing forward with this even though federal courts have already signaled that this exact regulatory model is unconstitutional.

The App Store Accountability Act would require app stores to verify the ages of every user and share age information with app developers. On paper, that sounds straightforward. In practice, it would force companies to collect massive amounts of sensitive personal data simply to download everyday apps.

Want to download a weather app? Verify your age.

Want to install a calculator? Verify your age.

Want to read the news? Verify your age.

The practical result is obvious: app stores would be compelled to gather highly sensitive identity data on tens of millions of Americans and then distribute that information to countless third-party developers.

This could be one of the largest digital identity honeypots ever conceived.

Security experts have been warning about this for months. In fact, 419 cybersecurity and privacy academics from 30 countries recently signed an open letter warning that large-scale age verification systems are “dangerous and socially unacceptable” because they create enormous new attack surfaces for hackers and data thieves.

The logic is simple. If every app download requires age verification, that means sensitive identity data must be stored, transmitted, and accessed across thousands of services. Instead of limiting the spread of personal information, the bill effectively multiplies it.

For cybercriminals, it would be a dream target.

Equally troubling is the bill’s blatant disregard for recent federal court rulings. Lawmakers promoting the legislation often claim that age-verification mandates have already received judicial approval.

That claim collapses under even basic scrutiny.

Just months ago, a federal judge blocked a nearly identical Texas law modeled on the same concept, ruling that it was “exceedingly overbroad” and failed strict constitutional scrutiny.

The court compared the requirement to a government mandate forcing bookstores to check the ID of every customer before allowing them inside. Such a system, the judge explained, would restrict minors from participating in the “democratic exchange of views online.”

In other words, it violates the First Amendment.

Despite that ruling, Congress now appears ready to repeat the same mistake on a national scale.

Supporters of the bill, including lawmakers like Representatives John James (R-MI), Gus Bilirakis (R-FL), and Erin Houchin (R-IN), argue that forcing app stores to verify the age of every user will protect children online. But critics warn the approach risks creating new privacy and security problems while doing little to address the real harms children face on the internet.

Additionally, the proposal ignores the practical realities of how the modern app ecosystem actually functions.

Most apps are not social media platforms. They are mundane tools: banking apps, airline apps, school apps, fitness trackers, weather alerts, home security dashboards, and so forth. The App Store Accountability Act would force age verification for all of them.

Even worse, the bill requires verification across four distinct age brackets: under 13, 13 to 15, 16 to 17, and adults. That may sound bureaucratically tidy, but in the real world, it creates a massive liability problem for app stores.

If a company guesses wrong about whether someone is 12 or 13, it could face penalties from federal regulators. The only way to avoid that risk is to demand hard identification, such as driver’s licenses, credit cards, or even birth certificates to prove parental relationships.

That is the inevitable outcome of the bill’s legal structure.

And millions of Americans do not even possess the required credentials. More than 45 million Americans are either credit unserved or underserved, meaning the law could effectively force them to hand over government IDs simply to download basic apps.

Ironically, many parents do not even support this approach. Surveys show parents overwhelmingly prefer tools that protect children while they use apps rather than a one-time age verification at the app store level.

In other words, the bill creates a massive bureaucracy that fails to solve the problem it claims to address.

More importantly, it distracts from real solutions that actually help protect kids online.

Digital literacy education, stronger parental control tools, and targeted enforcement against platforms that knowingly facilitate exploitation are all more effective approaches. These strategies address harmful behavior without building a nationwide surveillance system for internet users.

The App Store Accountability Act does the opposite. It places the burden on every user, every developer, and every app store while doing little to target the bad actors responsible for real harm.

That is why critics from across the technology and cybersecurity communities are raising alarms. The legislation threatens to create new privacy risks while inviting years of constitutional litigation that will likely end with the law being blocked in court.

If lawmakers truly want to protect children online, they should start by listening to experts instead of rushing through legislation that ignores both legal precedent and technical reality.

Unfortunately, Washington often prefers symbolic victories to workable solutions.

The App Store Accountability Act is a perfect example of what happens when lawmakers regulate technology they clearly do not understand. It risks undermining privacy, weakening cybersecurity, and violating free speech rights all at the same time.

And if Congress insists on passing it anyway, the courts will almost certainly remind them why the Constitution still matters.

Yet another rich guy is fleeing their Democrat-controlled state over a new wealth tax. Former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, a huge liberal himself, announced that he’s moving from Washington state to Miami, Florida – hours after state lawmakers advanced a tax bill targeting residents earning over $1 million per year. 

Schultz, 72, who bought the company in 1987 and built it into the globally recognized chain it is today, made the announcement in a Tuesday LinkedIn post – writing that he and his wife Sheri were moving to Florida “for our next adventure together.” 

“We have moved to Miami for our next adventure together. We are enjoying the sunshine of South Florida and its allure to our kids on the East Coast as they raise families of their own,” he wrote. 

Under the new wealth tax, SB 6346, people making over $1 million per year would pay a $9.9% tax on income above that threshold starting in 2029. A final vote could come as early as today in the state Senate, after which it would go to Gov. Bob Ferguson’s desk where he says he plans to sign it. 

Schultz’s announcement came hours after the Washington state House passed the so-called Millionaire’s tax after more than a day of debate. The new wealth tax, which will raise an estimated $4 billion per year, will be used to cut other taxes and expand the Working Families Tax Credit to an estimated 460,000 households (until of course a flood of high-earners leave the state). The measure passed in the Democrat-controlled house by 51-46 after a debate which exceeded 24 hours. 

Schultz, whose net worth is estimated by Forbes a $4.3 billion, went on to praise Pacific Northwesterners who helped build Starbucks into a worldwide brand – saying that it is their “hope that Washington will remain a place for business and entrepreneurship to thrive.” 

Of course, he didn’t mention that Seattle has become a cesspool, with open-air drug markets and soft-on-crime leadership that’s done virtually nothing to stem the homeless crisis and fentanyl epidemic. 

Starbucks headquarters will remain in Seattle, however the company announced earlier this month that it will be expanding its corporate footprint to Nashville, Tennessee as the company moves to expand its presence in the Southeast. Like Florida, Tennessee taxes are far more favorable for rich people, and in many cases, corporations. 

“The Millionaires’ Tax passed by the House represents historic progress in rebalancing our unfair system. It sends significant dollars back to Washington families and small businesses,” Gov. Ferguson said on X. 

The Millionaires’ Tax passed by the House represents historic progress in rebalancing our unfair system.

It sends significant dollars back to Washington families and small businesses.

It expands the Working Families Tax Credit to 460,000 additional households – that’s money…

— Governor Bob Ferguson (@GovBobFerguson) March 11, 2026

Authored by Ron Paul,

President Trump’s unconstitutional and unjust war against Iran is setting back his “affordability” agenda. The war has caused a big rise in gasoline prices. Among the related concerns is the hindering of the movement of oil through the Strait of Hormuz, the only available passage for ships to transport oil from the Persian Gulf.

The increased costs will do more than raise prices at the pump. An increase in gas prices brings increased transportation costs that will be passed along to consumers. Prices of a variety of goods, including food, will increase.

No wonder Energy Secretary Chris Wright, White House Chief of Staff Susan Wiles, and other Trump administration officials are frantically working to develop policies to lower gas prices. One possibility under consideration is deploying US troops to try to ensure ships can pass through the Strait of Hormuz. This could turn into a permanent deployment of US troops.

According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the US government is spending about 891.4 million dollars a day on the Iran War. These costs are likely to increase as the war drags on and the US increases its military presence, possibly even putting boots on the ground in Iran.

According to numerous media reports, the Trump administration is preparing a 50 billion dollars “supplemental” funding request for the Iran War. This request will soon be sent to Congress. This funding would be added on top of the defense budget.

The supplemental bill is likely to pass with overwhelming bipartisan support. The Trump administration’s 50 billion dollars price tag is a floor, not a ceiling. Senators and Representatives will seek to add their spending priorities to this “must pass” legislation, while corporate lobbyists are no doubt already preparing “wish lists” to present to lawmakers.

The costs of the Iran War will further increase the already over 38 trillion dollars and rising national debt.

The rate of increases will be greater as long as the government is spending almost a billion dollars a day, or more, on a regime change war in Iran.

The costs of this war will put added pressure on the Federal Reserve to keep interest rates low and increase its purchase of Treasury bonds in order to monetize the federal debt. The pressure on the Fed will also increase as other countries reduce their purchase of US debt. These reductions will be motivated by concerns over the economic instability caused by the US government’s out of control spending and by resentment over the US government’s hyperinterventionist foreign policy. These factors could also accelerate the increasing rejection of the dollar’s world reserve currency status. A loss of the reserve currency status will cause a dollar crisis, leading to an economic crash worse than the Great Depression.

This crash will likely result in the end of the welfare-warfare-fiat money system. Whether this system is replaced by an even more authoritarian one or by a system of limited government and much more freedom depends on whether those of us who know the truth do our best to spread the message that the key to peace and prosperity is a system of free markets, limited government, individual liberty, and peaceful relations and free trade with all nations.

Saudi Arabia is in discussions with a Ukrainian counter-drone firm to acquire low-cost interceptor drones designed to counter inexpensive IRGC kamikaze drones. The cost-exchange ratio remains highly unfavorable for the U.S. and its Gulf partners, who are using multimillion-dollar interceptor missiles against $20,000 drones. If the conflict drags on for months, the risk of depleting critical interceptor missile stockpiles will become a major problem, not just in the Gulf area but also on the Ukrainian battlefront.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Saudi Arabia is preparing to purchase a “large order” of interceptor drones and electronic warfare equipment from Ukraine. This report is based on sources and has yet to be confirmed.

The unfavorable kill-exchange ratio for the Saudis – eliminating a $20,000 IRGC drone with a +$2 million missile – is quickly straining defense budgets and supplies. A cheaper approach is to use Ukrainian interceptors that have been battle-tested in Eastern Europe for several years.

Other Gulf countries, including Qatar, are also examining the use of cheap Ukrainian drones. The U.S. has already deployed Ukraine-tested Merops interceptors to U.S. forces in the Gulf region.

Last week, a Financial Times report stated that U.S. officials were negotiating a purchase of interceptors to counter IRGC drones. This comes as supplies are dwindling and costs are soaring after nearly 12 days of conflict.

“They have missiles for the Patriots, but hundreds or thousands of Shaheds cannot be intercepted with Patriot missiles. It is too costly,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in an interview last week.

Operation Epic Fury has heavily relied on Patriot PAC-3, SM-3 Block IIA, SM-6, and THAAD interceptors, with limited supplies. Lockheed Martin is the top manufacturer of PAC-3 and THAAD missiles, while RTX produces the SM series and Tomahawk cruise missiles.

Heads of U.S. defense firms recently met with President Trump at the White House. The CEOs agreed to quadruple bomb production.

One Ukrainian defense firm, SkyFall, said its P1-SUN interceptor drone has shot down 1,500 Shahed drones and an additional 1,000 unmanned aerial vehicles over the past four months in Eastern Europe. It stated it can produce up to 50,000 interceptor drones per month and export between 5,000 and 10,000 units to the Middle East.

Ukraine has spent the last four years in a hyperdevelopment phase of wartime tech that now appears ready to be exported to the highest bidder, as global conflict spreads to multiple fronts.

Our latest observations:

• AI’ Kill Chains’ And Rise Of Skynet-Like Weapons Offer Glimpse Of 2030s Battlefield

The Russia-Ukraine war has offered an early look at what 2030s warfare will likely resemble: drones, war bots, AI kill chains, etc. That future has clearly been pulled forward. The more important point now is that this wartime tech is no longer confined to Eastern Europe and is set to spread to Middle Eastern battlefields, where it will be sold to the highest bidder.