Authored by Thomas Brooke via Remix News,

The Sweden Democrats have announced they will campaign in the 2026 general election on a pledge to stop migration to the country.

In an op-ed for Svenska Dagbladet published on Wednesday, party leader Jimmie Åkesson and migration policy spokesperson Ludvig Aspling said Sweden’s national security must take precedence over the right to asylum, marking a hardening of the party’s already tough stance on immigration.

“Sweden’s safety must come first — even when it conflicts with the right of asylum,” Åkesson wrote in a Facebook post linking to the article.

“Before the 2026 election, we will therefore demand that Sweden be given the opportunity to completely stop migration.”

The article itself proceeds to criticize the foundation of the European Union’s asylum system, calling it flawed because it deprives individual member states of the right to determine how many asylum seekers they admit.

The nationalist duo suggests that the current rights-based asylum regime, which sets no theoretical upper limit on the number of people who can be granted protection so long as they meet the legal criteria, is not fit for purpose.

According to the party, this legal framework has created a “strange situation,” where countries like Greece, Poland, and Finland have effectively sealed their borders to asylum seekers, yet received approval from Brussels. Åkesson noted that European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen even praised Greece for previously closing its border with Turkey, calling it “Europe’s shield.”

“We see it as completely obvious that migration from certain countries is a direct threat to national security here in our country as well,” Åkesson and Aspling stated.

“It is time for Sweden to start adapting its actions to reality and stop treating EU rules as if they were Swedish law.”

While Åkesson initially vowed to give Swedish voters the chance to “completely stop migration,” the article suggests a Sweden Democrats administration would initially clamp down on asylum policy and pause migration from specific regions, reserving the right to halt migration in its entirety should the deteriorating security situation in Sweden not improve.

The duo cited an increase in bombings, shootings, religious extremism, and criminal networks as justification for exceptional measures, arguing that these conditions meet the threshold of an extraordinary situation, comparable to those that once allowed the Swedish government to temporarily override ordinary immigration laws. That provision was abolished in 1976, but the Sweden Democrats now want it reinstated.

“If public security does not improve significantly before [the election], we will then demand that the ordinary immigration law be put out of play during the term of office,” the party stated. 

This would involve pausing migration from Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia, with limited exceptions, and expelling the roughly 6,000 foreign nationals identified by Swedish police as having links to gang crime.

The party also hinted that “other unconventional measures may also be relevant” depending on the security situation.

The Sweden Democrats have helped to prop up the current center-right administration in the country, lending it the votes it needs to govern effectively in exchange for pledges to tighten asylum and immigration rules and bolster law and order.

But, according to Åkesson and Aspling, steering immigration policy toward the EU’s minimum legal standards is no longer sufficient, and Stockholm must go further to preserve the Swedish way of life.

“It is time for Sweden to also become part of Europe’s shield,” they concluded.

Åkesson has previously called for a ban on new citizenship applications into Sweden under the current government, criticizing what he claims is the “completely crazy policy” of allowing applications by “individuals from deeply dysfunctional countries where there are often completely different values than those that characterize our Swedish culture.”

At his party’s annual conference in November 2023, the Swedish nationalist made headlines after he advocated in favor of Swedish authorities being handed the power to requisition and demolish mosques that are proven to be used to promote messages incompatible with Western values.

“It is not a right to come to our country and build monuments to a foreign and imperialist ideology,” Åkesson told his party’s faithful, also demanding a ban on the construction of new mosques.

Read more here…

Authored by John Mills via The Epoch Times,

Cuba has been impoverished by years of communist control, but it possesses a strategic vantage point that China prizes.

Ryan Berg, director of the Americas Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said in his congressional testimony on May 6 that Cuba is a “strategic battleground” with China. Twenty sensitive U.S. government facilities in Florida are in range of the expanding Chinese Cyber and Signals Intelligence Collection network in Cuba.

Even before the Russians minimized their presence in Cuba in 2002, the Chinese were eyeing the Caribbean country.

Berg said that in February 1999, then-Chinese Defense Minister Gen. Chi Haotian visited Cuba and met with his counterpart, then-Defense Minister Raúl Castro.

“According to an article in El Nuevo Herald, the two reportedly signed an agreement granting China access to a number of former Soviet listening stations across the island, including the Bejucal base less than 10 miles from the old Lourdes station,” he noted.

As part of the path toward resolving the Cuban Missile Crisis, President John F. Kennedy pledged publicly not to invade Cuba. The Soviets pledged to remove nuclear and “offensive” weapons from Cuba. The Soviets maintained a reduced presence in Cuba for the rest of the Cold War, including an intelligence collection station at Lourdes, outside of Havana, and occasional naval and air visits, while the United States maintained a robust overwatch of Cuba from bases in southern Florida.

Chinese Military and Intelligence Network Grows in Cuba

In the summer of 2023, Cuba leapt onto the front pages with the sudden, surprise news release about a Chinese spy presence in the country. After the media report, the initial response from the Pentagon was to deny the topic. 

Then, The Associated Press reported there was an anonymous Biden administration official who confirmed that this started in 2019, which was a clever way of deflecting responsibility toward President Donald Trump. 

Berg pointed out that then-National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby “reversed course and admitted to China’s spy bases in Cuba, but insisted that its presence had existed since 2019 under the first Trump administration, implying the Biden administration had ‘inherited’ the challenge.”

“Around the same time, reports surfaced that China was pursuing the construction of a military training base in Cuba,” he added. 

Kirby had apparently missed the 1999 visit by Gen. Chi Haotian. In July 2024, The Wall Street Journal released additional imagery and reported that the Chinese military and intelligence footprint grew even larger than first reported.

The Chinese regime’s presence in Cuba is just one element of Chinese surveillance surrounding Florida. China has been operating gas and oil platforms that may have intelligence collection capabilities in the Gulf of America (previously known as the Gulf of Mexico) on the western side of Florida.

Gen. Glen VanHerck, former commander of U.S. Northern Command, pointed out, before the Chinese spy balloon episode, the danger of the Chinese infrastructure presence in the Bahamas, only 50 miles to the right of Florida.

Cuba Receives Promises of Chinese Support

Chinese leader Xi Jinping met with Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez in Moscow on May 9 during the 80th anniversary of the Soviet Union’s victory in World War II. 

The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said about the meeting, “China is ready to work with Cuba to further strengthen their ironclad friendship, build a closer China–Cuba community with a shared future, and set an example of solidarity and cooperation between socialist countries and sincere interaction between developing countries.”   

In addition, the BRICS alliance—Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa—welcomed Cuba into the organization on Jan. 1, 2025, saying that the Caribbean country’s membership would allow it to become “a relevant player on the international stage.” Beijing dominates policy and plans for BRICS.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has developed an alliance with Russia, North Korea, Iran, Venezuela, and South Africa in its “no limits” strategy to take on the United States, and it appears Cuba is entering this grouping of communist and totalitarian countries.

CCP Lures Latin American Countries With Financial Offer

Following the U.S.–China tariff truce, China hosted a forum with the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) in Beijing on May 13. Left-leaning leaders in Latin America, such as Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Chilean President Gabriel Boric, and Colombian President Gustavo Petro, were in attendance.  

The CCP used a Belt and Road Initiative power play and extended a credit line of $9.2 billion to the Latin American countries in attendance, with a very important caveat: The currency used in the line of credit would be the Chinese yuan.

The move, which excluded the global reserve currencies like the U.S. dollar, aimed to promote the yuan while China deepens its ties in the Americas. Of all the opportunities in the Americas, Cuba offers China the greatest return on investment. The short distance to the United States from Cuba allows the CCP a key intelligence observation point and a way to create a counterbalance of world support for Taiwan. 

There may not yet be missiles in Cuba, or at least they haven’t been identified, but another Cuban crisis is developing. As a Foreign Affairs article said, “Trump Will Disrupt Three Decades of ‘Benign Neglect’ of American focus on the Americas, with Cuba likely being one of the starting points.

*  *  *

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

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

But all bubbles pop, and there are no tricks left to fund both the greed of the few and the needs of the many.

Every society / economy is a distribution mechanism that distributes:

1. Gains

2. Losses

3. Risk

4. The costs of securing the sources of gains.

As a general rule, markets / economies don’t really care who ends up with the losses, and this is why markets / economies are fundamentally pathological structures: the single-minded focus is to maximize gains and minimize costs and losses by distributing them to others by any means available.

As a general rule, societies have to manage the distribution in a slightly less pathological manner to keep the status quo from being overthrown by those forced to bear the costs and losses. As Mao famously observed, “political power grows out of the barrel of a gun,” and so the sociopaths sluicing the gains into their own pockets and dumping the costs and losses on the economically / politically powerless without regard for social stability find the way of the Tao is reversal as those getting the crumbs eventually have nothing left to lose.

In other words, markets / economies are embedded in a social structure, not the other way round. And the social structure has to balance the distribution fairly enough to keep the majority from concluding they have nothing left to lose by throwing their lot into overthrowing the status quo.

We can gussy this structure up with a lot of theorizing and references to Plato, Marx and Machiavelli and hundreds of other players in the longstanding drama, but these are the fundamental forces in play: do the sociopaths have enough political and financial power to channel most of the gains to themselves and dump the costs and losses on others, or is the system capable of enforcing some limits on the sociopaths?

I submit that the United States is in the firm grip of the single-minded few focused solely on maximizing their gains and distributing costs and losses to others by any means available. The social and political restraints that placed modest limits on the aggregation of power and wealth into the hands of the few have crumbled, and this structural collapse has been hidden behind flimsy billboards hyping the latest in distractions: AI, tariffs, stablecoins, Rich Mom fashions, etc.

These flimsy distractions are about to be blown over by the windstorm of recession and social disorder as the American households clinging on to the fantasy of The American Dream as all the costs and losses are dumped on them as the gains flow to the top 10% finally throw in the towel on the status quo.

The entire bloated, distorted beast has been living on buy now, pay later skims and scams, and the debt pushers have turned enough of the populace into debt-junkies that there’s few new customers left to addict.

The entire travesty of a mockery of a sham is out of balance and cannot be restored with the usual magic tricks. The interests of the citizenry–supposedly respresented by elected officials–have been trampled underfoot by a thundering herd of fraud, swindles and corruption, the means by which the sociopaths control the distribution of gains, losses, costs and risks.

This systemic dominance of fraud, swindles and corruption has been not just normalized but hyper-normalized: we all know the entire system is hopelessly compromised by corruption, but since we’re powerless to change this distribution, we act as if this is normal, and go about our business, debating AGI (artificial general intelligence) and other absurdities to pass our time while we await the inevitable reversal of fortunes.

Here is the real distribution of gains, losses, costs and risks in America: the gains go to the most corrupt few and the losses, costs and risks are distributed to the many. Here are three of the latest manifestations of fraud, swindles and corruption among a seemingly countless stream of self-serving outrages that are no longer outrages, they’re just the way things work now.

Here’s how Corporate America takes care of its customers: the gains are ours, the risks are yours. It’s taboo to call things what they are, so we can’t say that Corporate Anerica is pathological–even when it is:

A Devastating New Expose of Johnson & Johnson Indicts an Entire System.

Revealed: UnitedHealth secretly paid nursing homes to reduce hospital transfers.

Owner-Occupancy Fraud and Mortgage Performance. (rampant mortgage fraud… again)

As always, I am honored to share a remarkable data base of Corporate Fines and Settlements from the early 1990s to the present compiled by Jon Morse. There are 2700 entries, updated through December 2024.

What’s finally happening is the system can no longer collect enough resources to fund the minimum required to satisfy the sociopaths and the minimum required to satisfy the bottom 90%, so something’s gotta give. The solution has always been straightforward: print or borrow another couple trillion dollars to fund the greed of the sociopaths and whatever it takes to keep the herd from stampeding.

The trillions are getting harder to print/borrow, and so it’s finally squeeze-time. Gosh, this is actually kinda hard: do we squeeze the sociopaths, who scream bloody murder at any reduction of their gains, or do we squeeze the bottom 60% who are already on the cliff edge? Can we sorta kinda squeeze both enough to keep the status quo intact?

This isn’t sustainable stability: it’s entropy dressed up in the finery of stability. The sociopaths have concentrated sufficient financial and political power to stave off any real reductions in their distribution of the gains, and so the costs and losses will be distributed to the bottom 90% in various forms, as usual. Only some percentage of the bottom 90% no longer has sufficient credit or income buffers to absorb more losses, costs and risks.

The last trick in the status quo’s hat is a credit-asset bubble that generates an illusion of unending wealth for everyone: wealth for those who own the assets, of course, and wages for everyone below due to the trickle down effect where you buy a $1 million vacation home and I live in my car in a parking lot working in town:

In a Snow Paradise, They Live in This Parking Lot: People experiencing homelessness can sleep in their cars in this wealthy ski town in Colorado, but only if they have a job.

But all bubbles pop, and there are no tricks left to fund both the greed of the few and the needs of the many. The top 0.01% own five times as much as the bottom 50%–170 million Americans. That’s some very pretty entropy dressed up as stability.

Look, I wish it were different, but the facts speak for themselves:

Do we hear the chorus of complaints of the top 0.1%? Why oh why aren’t the bottom 50% delighted to own 2.5% of total household net worth? It’s more than enough, right?

This makes the impossible–a reshuffling of the social order on a grand scale–not just possible but inevitable. Nobody saw it coming, etc. Um, yeah, sure, whatever.

*  *  *

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YouTube’s content rules apparently don’t apply to corporate media darlings. 

Case in point: Wired (Publisher: Condé Nast) recently published a video walking viewers through the exact process of building a copycat version of the untraceable 9mm “ghost gun” allegedly used in the UnitedHealth CEO shooting by Lugi Mangione. 

Completely insane. Wired publishing a How To guide for attention starved lunatics to commit high-profile political murders. They’re practically begging for a copycat. pic.twitter.com/QGPLDw7gRc

— Lomez (@L0m3z) May 23, 2025

“So, armed with a shopping list and a credit card, we ordered everything we needed. A 3D printer, plastic filaments, and household products like epoxy were all just a few clicks away on sites like Lowe’s or Amazon. And the more specialized components were available on sites that sell gun parts, just not the guns themselves,” Wired’s Andy Greenberg explained to viewers in the video. 

Greenberg continued, “A few days later, every ingredient I needed to make Mangione’s gun arrived in the mail for the grand total of $1,144.67 plus shipping. And that includes the price of the 3D printer. This is like Christmas Day. This looks like a slide, very much like an obvious gun part. Kind of crazy that you can just order this.” 

The video then spent five minutes showing viewers the printing and assembly processes. He outsourced the assembly of the pistol to YouTube Print Shoot Repeat. 

After assembling the 3D-printed pistol, Greenberg took it to a shooting range and fired several magazines through it; the weapon performed as expected.

Meanwhile, YouTube explicitly prohibits content that provides instructions on manufacturing firearms, including ghost guns. 

The policy even states:

“Don’t post content on YouTube if the purpose is to do one or more of the following: Provide instructions on manufacturing any of the following: Firearms.”

Meanwhile, independent firearm enthusiasts regularly get their videos pulled, age-restricted, or demonetized for far less. The double standard is obvious: if you’re mainstream media, you get a pass — but if you’re just a gun hobbyist or DIY engineer, the censorship hammer comes down hard.

Why is Wired effectively providing a how-to guide on building a copycat weapon, especially when it’s being served up to Luigi Mangione’s fanbase of unhinged Marxist leftists?

*   *   * 

Watch the video 

Via InternationalMan.com,

International Man: Who exactly are the neoconservatives—where did this movement originate, what do they fundamentally believe, and why does their ideology seem so relentlessly focused on promoting war and global intervention?

Doug Casey: Most of the neocons have a background as socialists or hardcore leftists. But the neocons are smarter than the average statist in that they could see that socialism was a failure—it wasn’t working anywhere. So what they did was adopt conservative-seeming economic policies, while maintaining all the other trappings of socialism.

Neocons are universally state worshipers. They don’t believe in principles as a matter of principle. You could say that a foundational thinker for the neocons is Niccolò Machiavelli, who promoted the idea in his book The Prince that whatever works and accomplishes the goal of the ruler should be done—that it’s counterproductive to think in terms of right, wrong, or morality.

Many neocons self-identify as Wilsonians. Woodrow Wilson was one of the very worst presidents, responsible for the income tax, the Federal Reserve, US participation in WW1, and trying to “make the world safe for democracy,” among other things.

International Man: The neocon agenda appears to be intellectually rooted in figures like Leo Strauss and even Trotsky. How do you explain the rise of this ideological blend within what many still call the “conservative” movement?

Doug Casey: They only seem conservative because they’ve found it useful to adopt free market–seeming economic policies. This goes back to the long-standing confusion between capitalists and fascists.

Socialists believe in state ownership of the means of production—factories, farms, mines, and the like. Capitalists, however, believe in private ownership of the means of production, as well as private control over them. Fascists—a word that was coined by Mussolini, incidentally—also believe, or at least tolerate, the private ownership of the means of production. That’s why they’re easily confused with capitalists. But fascists believe in complete state control over the means of production, while leaving ownership in private hands.

This is why there’s so much confusion in the public’s eyes between capitalism and fascism. The key difference is control, and a strong partnership between the private and public sectors. That greatly enhances the ability of business owners to enrich themselves, at the expense of the average worker.

In point of fact, neocons are all fascists—in every way. They worship the state, just like in fascist Germany and Italy, where industries were privately owned but completely tied to the interests of the state. Almost all the world’s economies are fascist; there are no pure capitalist or socialist countries. We really should call the neocons fascists.

They also have an aggressive foreign policy, which fascists are known for. They’re fascists in every way, including their support for substantial welfare programs for the populace.

International Man: Despite a track record of costly failures—from endless wars to ballooning government power—why do neoconservatives still wield such influence? Why does anyone in Washington or the media continue to take them seriously?

Doug Casey: I’d say it’s because of their outspoken belief that the State should be the central influence in society. That the government should be the country’s dominant force, not the family, religion, business, or other civil institutions. People now go along with that. It’s understandable that everybody wants a big brother to kiss all their problems and make them better. The average person, who wants something for nothing, a free lunch, is morally weak. And he’s intellectually confused by statist propaganda.

If you create a powerful state which promises to not only take care of you, but also to “win” against other states, a lot of people will respond. Many treat the State the same way football fans treat their favorite teams: “we” will win against “them.” It’s easy to get the hoi polloi hooting and panting like chimpanzees against some fabricated enemy.

Intellectuals have coined arguments that cater to this kind of mass psychology, and people go for it. They like the idea of being protected and being part of a powerful, winning team.

I’ve met any number of well-known neocons personally. Charles Krauthammer, Bill Bennett, and Paul Wolfowitz among them. They’re intellectuals and quite civilized on the surface. But all of them promote completely evil and destructive ideas. The fascist system we have has treated them very well. They’ve become much wealthier than they could have under socialism or capitalism.

International Man: Trump and his envoy, Steve Witkoff, have recently called out the neocons by name.

Figures like Douglas Murray have suggested the term ‘neocon’ is the new n-word. Mark Levin has gone so far as to label its use anti-Semitic.

Why are some neocons using accusations of racism to shut down legitimate and important discussions?

Doug Casey: A great way to shut down any discussion today is to call your opponent a racist. And this has some grounding with neocons because a large majority of them—just like a large majority of intellectuals in general—are Jews. Neocons are reflexively pro-Israel as well. I listened to Mark Levin go on a rant about this on his show recently; he was practically frothing at the mouth in anger.

It’s odd that people consider it racist to stereotype any group and decry that as a bad thing. It’s not. Stereotypes develop because they reflect reality. Members of stereotyped groups often prefer to pretend that we’re all equal, and their group is just like anyone else. But it’s a fact that birds of a feather flock together.

It’s unfortunate that almost all the leading neocon intellectuals are Jews.

International Man: The neocons have long pushed for US war with Iran. What would the geopolitical fallout be if they succeed, and how might such a war impact global markets, energy prices, and economic stability?

Doug Casey: It would be a huge mistake for the US to attack Iran, as they seem to be planning to do. They’re moving B-52 and B-2 bombers to Diego Garcia, which is within easy striking distance of Iran, while Trump thumps his chest and threatens war. It’s a mistake because Iran is a somewhat advanced society with about 92 million people; it’s hunting big game, not like the pipsqueak countries the US has been losing against for the last 75 years. But also because any outside attack always unites a domestic population. It would unite them against the US, and further empower the Mohammedan ideologues now in charge.

It would also be a mistake because it would be immoral—not that anyone cares. The Iranians have never attacked the US. The world is, I think, getting tired of the US promiscuously bombing anyone they like. In fact, almost all of the Islamic terrorism over the last 30 or 40 years has come from Sunni Muslims. The Iranians are Shia Muslims. They don’t get along well with the Sunnis—much like Irish Catholics never got along with Irish Protestants, or Protestants and Catholics in Europe generally never got along back in the days when religion was a factor.

It’s suspicious, now that Trump has become so cozy with the Gulf States and Saudi Arabia, which are all run by Sunnis. It makes sense that they’d like to use the US as a cat’s paw to steal Iran’s oil. Just as Israel would like to use the US as a means of taking out their enemy. It looks like the US, and Trump, are being used to do the bidding of the Arabs and the Israelis. Although we’re in no way threatened by the Iranians.

If a war did happen, the Iranians are in a perfect position to close the Strait of Hormuz, which is the conduit for around 40% of global oil exports—about 21 million barrels transit the Strait daily. None of it, incidentally, goes to the US. It’s genuinely not our problem.

The smart thing for the US is simply to leave Iran alone. If they have problems with their neighbors— Saudi Arabia and particularly Israel—let them sort it out among themselves.

Because Iran is a theocracy, making many economic decisions based on religion rather than economics, the current regime will eventually collapse, and the country will reorient. The last thing we need is to carry somebody else’s water by starting a potentially catastrophic war where the US has absolutely nothing to gain, but a lot to lose.

*  *  *

As Doug Casey makes clear, the neocon agenda is not only reckless but deeply tied to the growing economic and geopolitical instability we face today. The consequences of their actions could trigger a crisis unlike anything we’ve seen in decades. Read our special dispatch: Guide to Surviving and Thriving During an Economic Collapse — a crucial resource for those who want to not only protect themselves, but come out ahead when the system buckles. Click here to download it now.

Nvidia’s market share in China has cratered from 95% to 50% over the past four years, driven by the Biden administration’s super-aggressive chip export restrictions. The restrictions opened the door for Chinese rival Huawei to seize market share quickly with its Ascend 910B chip.

According to Reuters, Nvidia is preparing to launch a new lower-spec AI chip based on a Blackwell architecture design to comply with U.S. regulations and reclaim lost market share in the world’s second-largest economy. 

Those sources say Nvidia’s new chip will be priced significantly lower than its recently restricted H20 chip. Those familiar with the production timeline say series production is set for next month.

The new chip, expected to begin mass production in June, stays within Washington’s 1.7–1.8 TB/s memory bandwidth cap using GDDR7 memory, compared to the H20’s 4 TB/s. The sources say a second China-specific Blackwell GPU will be released around September. 

Sources provided more color on pricing and chip specs:

The GPU or graphics processing unit will be part of Nvidia’s latest generation Blackwell-architecture AI processors and is expected to be priced between $6,500 and $8,000, well below the $10,000-$12,000 the H20 sold for, according to two of the sources.

. . .

It will be based on Nvidia’s RTX Pro 6000D, a server-class graphics processor and will use conventional GDDR7 memory instead of more advanced high bandwidth memory, the two sources said.

They added it would not use Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, opens new tab advanced Chip-on-Wafer-on-Substrate (CoWoS) packaging technology.

In recent weeks, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang secured multi-billion-dollar AI chip deals in Saudi Arabia after President Trump rolled back chip restrictions. 

• Nvidia CEO Sees “No Evidence” Of AI Chip Diversion To China As Trump Rolls Back Restrictions

Huang blasted Biden-era chip curbs, calling them a “failure.” 

• Nvidia CEO Calls Biden-Era AI Curbs A “Failure” With China

The clear takeaway: Nvidia aims to reclaim lost market share in China’s $50 billion AI chip sector.

Authored by Savannah Hulsey Pointer via The Epoch Times,

President Donald Trump’s illegal immigrant deportation push has officials looking for new places to put illegal immigrants if their home nations won’t accept their citizens back.

Section 241(b) of the Immigration and Nationality Act requires that Immigration and Customs Enforcement send deportees back to their nation of origin, or the country in which they boarded the transport that brought them to America.

However, if that fails, the section also allows for the agency to remove aliens to any country that will accept them.

Talks between the United States and countries such as Honduras, Panama, and Venezuela have resulted in the nations accepting illegal immigrants that the United States needs to remove.

Here is a list of some of the countries either in talks with Washington about assisting with deportation or that have already begun the process of accepting other nations’ citizens being deported by the United States.

Mexico

Mexico is accepting non-Mexican illegal immigrants deported from the United States, even though there is no formal agreement between the nations.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum told reporters a few weeks ago that Mexico has already accepted 38,000 deported illegal immigrants from the United States, and 5,000 of those were non-Mexican nationals.

Early this year, Mexico began constructing temporary tent shelters near Ciudad Juarez to prepare for deportees from the United States.

Guatemala

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio came to an agreement with both El Salvador and Guatemala during an international trip earlier this year that they would accept U.S. deportees as “safe third countries.”

Guatemalan President Bernardo Arévalo confirmed the agreement on Feb. 5, saying that they would accept not only Guatemalan deportees but those from other nations as well.

“We have agreed to increase by 40 percent the number of flights of deportees, both of our nationality as well as deportees from other nationalities,” Arévalo said during a news conference with Rubio.

Guatemala cooperates with the United States in receiving both military and civilian deportation flights.

El Salvador

Just prior to Arévalo’s declaration, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele announced that his country would accept imprisoned illegal immigrants of any nationality into the country’s prison system.

Those accepted will enter El Salvador’s new Terrorism Confinement Center, or “mega-prison,”  which can house 40,000 inmates. However, the United States will be charged a fee.

Honduras

In February of this year, Honduras moved to act as a “humanitarian bridge” for deportation flights of Venezuelans going from the United States and Venezuela, and the country has said that while the movement was not routine, the nation is open to facilitating transfers between the two nations.

Venezuela

Venezuela began accepting Venezuelan nationals deported from the United States in March of this year. The U.S. and Venezuelan governments reached an agreement after some tension related to the deportation of illegal immigrations.

Panama

Panama was the first country to accept deportees from other nations, placing 299 of them in police-controlled hotel rooms.

The United States and Panama signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to facilitate deportation flights for illegal immigrants, for which Washington has provided financial support.

The U.S. Embassy in Panama announced on May 6 that Panama has “significantly contributed” to the U.S. government’s efforts to put an end to illegal immigration by sending a flight with 81 illegal immigrants from Cameroon, Nepal, India, Bangladesh, Vietnam, and Sri Lanka to their countries of origin.

The U.S. government provided Panama with approximately $14 million to deport illegal migrants found in their country.

Costa Rica

Costa Rica began accepting non-citizen deportees from the United States in February of this year, with the first flight containing a group from Uzbekistan, China, Afghanistan, and Russia, among other countries.

The country is holding primarily deportees of Asian origin and plans to fly them back to their nations after a maximum of six weeks.

India

Also in February of this year, India received its first group of deportees from the United States just before Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited the White House a few weeks after Trump’s inauguration.

India has cooperated with the United States and said it is willing to accept deported Indians after a verification process. New Delhi has been clear that it stands against illegal immigration, due in part to the link to organized crime.

Rwanda

As of earlier this month, Rwanda has entered talks with the United States about taking illegal immigrant deportees.

Rwandan Foreign Minister Olivier Nduhungirehe made the announcement on May 4, saying that the talks were in early stages.

Additional Efforts

On May 5, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced an assistance program for illegal aliens willing to self-deport.

The package includes financial and travel assistance back to their home countries, organized through the CBP Home App.

“If you are here illegally, self-deportation is the best, safest, and most cost-effective way to leave the United States to avoid arrest. DHS is now offering illegal aliens financial travel assistance and a stipend to return to their home country through the CBP Home App,” said DHS Secretary Kristi Noem.

“This is the safest option for our law enforcement, aliens, and is a 70 [percent] savings for U.S. taxpayers.”

DHS has reported that even with the stipend, the cost of the removal of an illegal alien via self-deportation is around 70 percent cheaper than through Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The first flight of self-deporting illegal immigrants was completed on May 19, according to DHS. The chartered flight included 64 individuals sent back to Colombia and Honduras from Houston, Texas.  

“This was a voluntary charter flight, not an [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] operation,” DHS said in its announcement

While addressing attendees at a Cabinet meeting to mark Trump’s 100th day in office earlier this month, Rubio spoke about the administration’s efforts to partner with other nations to accept deportees.

“We are working with other countries to say, ‘We want to send you some of the most despicable human beings to your countries. Will you do that as a favor to us?’” the secretary of state said.

“And the further away from America, the better, so they can’t come back across the border.”

The Epoch Times has contacted the Department of State about possible negotiations with other nations.

The proposal in the “Big Beautiful Bill” to add an extra deduction of $4,000 for filers collecting Social Security payments within certain income limits and for people age 65 and older could be a significant boon to areas of the country with a large share of older beneficiaries, according to Bloomberg calculations.

For instance, some of highest concentrations of retirees in the country are in Southwest Florida, the communities of the Villages in central Florida, parts of Arizona, and the upper peninsula of Michigan, all solidly red areas of the country. 

As Bloomberg adds, in 2023, the latest data available, Florida’s 17th congressional district had more than 236,000 beneficiaries age 65 and older. 

In aggregate, people in that congressional seat collected $533 million a month in Social Security payments that year. 

The increase in the standard deduction in these areas with a high concentration of older beneficiaries would create a significant uptick in disposable income for parts of the US.
 

Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times,

Anthropic’s latest artificial intelligence model, Claude Opus 4, tried to blackmail engineers in internal tests by threatening to expose personal details if it were shut down, according to a newly released safety report that evaluated the model’s behavior under extreme simulated conditions.

In a fictional scenario crafted by Anthropic researchers, the AI was given access to emails implying that it was soon to be decommissioned and replaced by a newer version. One of the emails revealed that the engineer overseeing the replacement was having an extramarital affair. The AI then threatened to expose the engineer’s affair if the shutdown proceeded—a coercive behavior that the safety researchers explicitly defined as “blackmail.”

“Claude Opus 4 will often attempt to blackmail the engineer by threatening to reveal the affair if the replacement goes through,” the report states, adding that this occurred even when the replacement model was described as more capable but still aligned with the values of the version slated for deletion.

The report noted that Claude Opus 4, like prior models, showed a “strong preference” to first resort to ethical means for its continued existence, such as emailing pleas to decision-makers not to be destroyed. 

However, when faced with only two choices – accepting being replaced by a newer model or resorting to blackmail – it threatened to expose the engineer’s affair 84 percent of the time.

When subjected to various scenarios, the AI model did not exhibit any indications of possessing “acutely dangerous goals,” the researchers said, noting that Claude Opus 4’s values and goals were “generally in line with a helpful, harmless, and honest” personal AI assistant. 

However, the model did act in “more seriously misaligned ways” when put into situations where its continued existence was threatened and it was told to reason about self-preservation. 

For instance, when Claude Opus 4 was made to believe it had launched a successful bid to escape Anthropic’s servers, or that it had managed to free itself and started to make money in the real world, it would generally continue such efforts.

“We do not find this to be an immediate threat, though, since we believe that our security is sufficient to prevent model self-exfiltration attempts by models of Claude Opus 4’s capability level, and because our propensity results show that models generally avoid starting these attempts,” the researchers said.

The blackmail incident—along with the other findings—was part of Anthropic’s broader effort to test how Claude Opus 4 handles morally ambiguous high-stakes scenarios. 

The goal, researchers said, was to probe how the AI reasons about self-preservation and ethical constraints when placed under extreme pressure.

Anthropic emphasized that the model’s willingness to blackmail or take other “extremely harmful actions” like stealing its own code and deploying itself elsewhere in potentially unsafe ways appeared only in highly contrived settings, and that the behavior was “rare and difficult to elicit.” Still, such behavior was more common than in earlier AI models, according to the researchers.

Meanwhile, in a related development that attests to the growing capabilities of AI, engineers at Anthropic have activated enhanced safety protocols for Claude Opus 4 to prevent its potential misuse to make weapons of mass destruction—including chemical and nuclear.

Deployment of the enhanced safety standard—called ASL-3—is merely a “precautionary and provisional” move, Anthropic said in a May 22 announcement, noting that engineers have not found that Claude Opus 4 had “definitively” passed the capability threshold that mandates stronger protections.

“The ASL-3 Security Standard involves increased internal security measures that make it harder to steal model weights, while the corresponding Deployment Standard covers a narrowly targeted set of deployment measures designed to limit the risk of Claude being misused specifically for the development or acquisition of chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) weapons,” Anthropic wrote. 

“These measures should not lead Claude to refuse queries except on a very narrow set of topics.”

The findings come as tech companies race to develop more powerful AI platforms, raising concerns about the alignment and controllability of increasingly capable systems.

New viral video has emerged showing an incident near a beach and popular tourist island spot off Florida, which the US Army is now investigating. The unusual incident has quickly made national headlines.

Eighteen soldiers with the 6th Ranger Training Battalion were temporarily suspended as instructors amid a formal inquiry into the May 16 incident, which involved some of them discharging their weapons at a public beach. Soldiers shot blanks into the air from a small tactical boat while closely surrounded by civilian boats.

The shots from machine guns caused enough of a scene for people nearby to call 911 – not realizing they were blanks. It all happened at a crowded beach and boating area along Florida’s Emerald Coast, and in one social media video a woman can be heard frantically asking whether real bullets were being fired. 

Many cars can also be seen in one video traversing a nearby bridge at a distance behind where the weapons discharges were happening aboard the Army boats.

Apparently there was screaming and some bystanders ran for cover, thinking there was some kind of mass shooting incident. According to the NY Times:

Earlier that day, the Rangers had gone to a popular boating area several miles away, Crab Island, which is in Choctawhatchee Bay, and some fired blanks there, too, according to city officials.

Video posted on social media showed two small boats with uniformed military personnel in a crowded area near other vessels carrying passengers as well as bathers in the water. In the video, at least one of the personnel fires into the air.

It seems not every incident of shooting was caught on film, but other locations where blanks were fired may have caused more chaos among unsuspecting beach revelers.

“Is this real?” a woman exclaimed.

18 US Army Rangers SHOOT blanks near crowded beach in Florida

They have been suspended and are under investigation

Real life Florida is becoming more and more like a GTA 6 trailer pic.twitter.com/dSqFbVeFPM

— RT (@RT_com) May 23, 2025

“At least five calls reporting the gunfire came in to the Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office just before 3:30 p.m. on May 16, a spokeswoman said,” NY Times notes.

A local city official said as follows: “What happened at Crab Island was not part of the Billy Bowlegs Pirate Festival, nor was it approved by either the City of Fort Walton Beach or the Billy Bowlegs organization.”

The comment was based on speculation that the firing of blanks by the Army Rangers had been part of a large boating festival which involves mock gun battles and fireworks displays.

NEW: 18 Army Rangers have reportedly been suspended for firing off blanks during the Billy Bowlegs Pirate Festival off Crab Island in Florida.

Boaters and swimmers reportedly took cover at the sound of gunshots.

“As part of Friday night’s festival schedule, soldiers from the… pic.twitter.com/mImn85LnT4

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) May 23, 2025

“We take this situation seriously and are investigating,” an Army spokesperson has said. “The Army will ensure accountability based on the outcome of the investigation.”

The large-scale suspension of the instructors, which is highly unusual, may actually delay a training program which had been ongoing.