Iran has finally issued a formal response to US President Donald Trump’s letter unveiled early this month which was addressed to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. The Trump letter had urged fresh nuclear negotiations, but was coupled with statements from the White House threatening attack if Tehran pursues atomic weapons.

The Islamic Republic in a formal letter issued to the White House in response says it is willing to enter “indirect” negotiations with Washington.

“Iran’s formal response to the letter from US President Donald Trump has been duly sent via Oman,” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told IRNA on Thursday. “The official response comprises a letter wherein our viewpoints regarding the status quo and Mr. Trump’s letter have been fully laid out and relayed to the other side.”

The FM said that while no direct official talks can be held so long as Trump keeps his “maximum pressure” sanctions regimen in place, it remains that “Indirect negotiations, though, can continue, as they existed in the past.” 

“In circumstances where there is ‘maximum pressure,’ no one in their sound mind would enter into direct talks. The format of negotiations is always relevant in diplomatic relations … For now, our tactic is to have indirect negotiations,” Araghchi explained.

In early March, Trump had unveiled before reporters that he had written Iran a letter, saying “I hope you’re going to negotiate because if we have to go in militarily, it’s going to be a terrible thing for them. There are two ways in which Iran can be handled – militarily, or you make a deal.”

According to Axios, the US has lately built up military assets in the Mideast region with an eye toward Iran:

• In recent days, the U.S. military sent several B-2 stealth bombers to the Diego Garcia military base in the Indian Ocean in a deployment a U.S. official said was “not disconnected” from Trump’s two-month deadline.
• The B-2 bombers can carry huge bunker buster bombs that would be a key element in any possible military action against Iran’s underground nuclear facilities.
• A spokesperson for U.S. Strategic Command confirmed the deployment to Axios and said Stratcom “routinely conducts global operations in coordination with other combatant commands, services, and participating U.S. government agencies to deter, detect and, if necessary, defeat strategic attacks against the United States and its allies.”

Just last week Ayatollah Khamenei warned that the US would “a severe slap” and “crushing blow” if it dared carry out any attacks against the Iran.

Iran has long complained that it can’t take US commitments seriously anymore, after the prior Trump White House unilaterally pulled the US out of the 2015 JCPOA nuclear deal.

Authored by Gordon Chang via The Gatestone Institute,

“With our commercial assets, we have observed five different objects in space maneuvering in and out and around each other in synchronicity and in control,” the U.S. Space Force’s Vice Chief of Space Operations Gen. Michael Guetlein told the 16th annual McAleese Defense Programs conference in Arlington, Virginia on March 18. 

“That’s what we call dogfighting in space. They are practicing tactics, techniques and procedures to do on-orbit space operations from one satellite to another.”

Guetlein’s stark comment about China signals a break with the past. “This marks the end of the Western-American-liberal dream of nations leaving wars on Earth so they can cooperate in space to advance humanity,” Richard Fisher of the International Assessment and Strategy Center told Gatestone after the general’s widely publicized remarks. “Communist China has now taken war to the heavens, to low earth orbit, and very likely, will take war to the moon, Mars, and beyond. The heavens are no longer safe for the democracies.”

Space is now a highly contested domain, but it wasn’t always this way. “We told ourselves we would be the dominant power forever,” Brandon Weichert, author of Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower, said to Gatestone. “We coasted on that notion for far too long. Rising powers, notably China and Russia, saw how reliant we were on space—and how poorly defended our systems were. Our access to the strategic high ground is now more threatened than ever before.”

As Weichert points out, “bureaucratic inertia and a lack of visionary leadership from both political parties” allowed China and Russia to develop the capabilities to threaten America in space.

There was another party at fault: The U.S. military failed to protest when it could see there was an obvious threat. “There was a gentlemen’s agreement until recent that we didn’t mess with each other’s space systems,” Guetlein said. “We didn’t jam them, we didn’t spoof them, we didn’t lase them, we just kept them safe.”

Why was the U.S. so gentlemanly? Presidents believed that because the U.S. had more space assets than others, it was not in America’s interest to trigger a race to build weapons to destroy those assets. Yet this view, appearing commonsense at first glance, was naïve: It was apparent even then that neither China nor Russia could be enticed into good behavior. Generals and admirals should have sounded the warning.

There was a lot to warn about. On January 11, 2007, for instance, China demonstrated its intentions by launching a modified ground-based DF-21 missile to destroy an old Chinese weather satellite.

In 2022, a Chinese satellite “grappled” a defunct Chinese satellite and towed it to a “graveyard orbit.”

Moreover, as Fisher notes, China had already configured its one large orbiting platform, the Tiangong Space Station, for military missions as well as civilian ones. One of its modules can launch either very small satellites that can perform interception missions or satellites carrying powerful laser and microwave weapons that can destroy satellites in multiple orbits.

What was the American response to the obvious Chinese advances in space-warfare capabilities? Vice President Kamala Harris in April 2022 announced a unilateral moratorium on ground-launched anti-satellite missile tests, in the hopes that other nations would follow suit.

With this posture, it is no wonder why America’s lead in space warfare—if it exists—is narrowing.

Now, China is making fast progress in building space weapons. “The Chinese ISR”—intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance—”capabilities are become very capable,” said Guetlein. “They have gone from what we used to call a ‘Kill Chain’ to a ‘Kill Mesh.'” A Kill Mesh combines ISR satellites with an array of weapons systems.

The Chinese array appears impressive. As Fisher points out, the People’s Liberation Army has developed ground-based ASAT—anti-satellite—interceptors to destroy satellites in both low earth orbit and much higher medium earth orbits. At the same time, China, as Guetlein’s comments make clear, is working on “co-orbital” interceptors, satellites that can follow, approach, dock with, or use robotic arms to grapple other satellites into useless orbits.

For the future, Fisher reports, China is developing large, unmanned space planes that can re-enter the atmosphere to maneuver toward a new orbit and then relaunch into space to deploy energy and missile weapons. The PLA also appears to be working on large combat platforms that can attack satellite targets in multiple orbits. Expect the Chinese military also to deploy clusters of combat satellites to attack the Lunar and Martian satellite networks of the future.

“The recent demonstration of Chinese ‘dogfighting’ capabilities in space is an indicator that Beijing means to use force on earth,” says Weichert. “By targeting sensitive U.S. military satellites, the People’s Liberation Army can render us deaf, dumb, and blind, long before it strikes.”

The Chinese are evidently planning to blind not only America’s military but also America’s civilian society, which is heavily dependent on space assets. Almost nothing modern in America will work when the Chinese are finished attacking in the heavens.

As Weichert said, “A space Pearl Harbor is at hand.”

Another Israeli soldier and veteran of Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza has admitted that he was a party to war crimes — and says his commander ordered him and other soldiers to continue perpetrating those crimes even after they’d raised objections. This latest of many such accounts was given to CBS News by an Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) soldier who agreed to speak on the condition that his identity wouldn’t be revealed. The experience that troubled him the most was his unit’s practice of forcing Palestinian civilians to probe buildings for improvised explosive devices.  

“They were Palestinian,” he said. “We sent them in first to see if the building was clear and check for booby traps…They were trembling and shaking.” So apparently common is the practice of using Palestinians in such a manner that it has a name of its own: the “Mosquito Protocol,” where Palestinians civilians are equated with the hated insects.  

The soldier told CBS that he objected to that abusive treatment of civilians, to the point that he took his concern to the chain of command — where it fell on deaf ears. “We talked to our commander, and we asked him to stop doing it,” he said, but said the unconscionable orders continued to be issued.  

The whistleblowing soldier who spoke to CBS says he continues to be troubled by what he personally did in Gaza. “I’m morally wounded. It’s fucked up, you know, to use citizens as your human shield like a dog.” The term “moral injury” describes psychological problems that spring from having observed, perpetrated, or failed to prevent actions that violate one’s sense of right and wrong. 

Of course, the people on the other end of the depraved practice battle their own psychological demons. CBS spoke to a 14-year-old Palestinian in the West Bank, where the IDF is accused of the same form of abuse. He claims he and his nine-year-old cousin were forced at gunpoint to search a four-story apartment building. “I was so scared. Then they started beating us,” he said. The IDF told CBS it prohibits this behavior.  

The soldier said he was witness to other IDF evils: “We’ve burned down buildings for no reasons, which is violating the international law, of course.” That confession should come as little surprise to even the most casual observer of the war, given the IDF’s astonishingly thorough and plainly visible destruction of neighborhoods, towns and cities throughout Gaza — and IDF soldiers’ enthusiastic use of personal social media accounts to share videos of themselves joyfully demolishing entire housing complexes. A January before-and-after analysis of Gaza using satellite imagery concluded that between 50% and 61% of buildings in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed. 

The IDF loves to film themselves blowing up Palestinian homes. pic.twitter.com/poiYVpf9C2

— White Rabbit (@Dark_RabbitHole) January 7, 2025

A 2024 investigation by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, which interviewed soldiers, concluded the IDF has indeed used Palestinian civilians to probe Gaza tunnels which were feared to have been booby-trapped, with soldiers told, “Our lives are more important than their lives.” The soldiers ridiculed the Israel government’s official denials of the practice:

“I saw the IDF’s response [to posted videos said to show human shields at work], which totally doesn’t reflect reality. It’s done with the knowledge of the brigade commander, at the least... [Soldiers] know it’s not a one-time incident of a young and stupid company commander who decides on his own to take somebody.”

According to accounts from soldiers and those who claim to have been their victims, Palestinians are often detained, dressed in uniforms and flak jackets, mounted with cameras, and sent into buildings with their hands zip-tied behind them. Sometimes, they’re said to be simply stripped to their underwear and their hands tied before being coerced into the potentially lethal situation.    

As ugly as the Mosquito Protocol allegations are, they’re far from the worst claims about the IDF’s conduct. As we covered last summer, a team of 20 humanitarian US doctors who volunteered to work Gaza hospitals were stunned by the volume of civilian harm, and particularly by how frequently they had to treat children with headshot wounds. A doctor who normally works in gunfire-heavy Chicago described the horrific conclusion he reached as the pattern emerged on the treatment tables in front of him: 

“I thought these kids were in the wrong place at the wrong time, like sadly, some of the kids we treat in Chicago. But after the third or fourth time, I realized it was intentional; bullets were being put in these kids on purpose.”

On the other hand, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly said the IDF is “the most moral army in the world.” We’ll give Netanyahu the last word…while President Trump gives the IDF another $4 billion in weapons and ammunition.  

Authored by Melanie Israel via The Daily Signal, a publication of The Heritage Foundation,

A new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about birth data for 2023 is out. For everyone concerned about the long-term decline in America’s birth rate, the report doesn’t show strong signs that much has changed.

Why should we care about declining birth rates, and what’s driving the trend? As a recent Heritage Foundation report warns, U.S. fertility is now below replacement. Fewer births and our historic low fertility rate will affect the future economy. It will affect programs like Social Security. Don’t forget the military. What about caregiving as the elderly age? A declining population will affect our nation’s future in more ways than we can count.

If you ask 10 people why the number of births keeps going down, you’ll probably get 10 different answers, from housing and child care costs to economic anxiety to student loan debt. While there’s not one sole reason (and therefore not one single policy solution,) at the heart of the issue is marriage—fewer marriages, specifically.

Fewer Americans are getting married, and those who do are getting married later, which in turn delays having kids (and how many they eventually have). My colleagues recently published a Special Report analyzing trends in marriage, childbearing, and other important factors of American family life. In it, they note:

“Today, married couples make up less than half (47 percent) of U.S. households, 40 percent of children are born outside marriage, and the birth rate has reached its lowest recorded level. 

The age of first marriage has increased by about seven years for both sexes. 

More adults ages 18 to 44 have cohabited (59 percent) than have been married (50 percent). 

Marriage itself has been legally redefined nationwide with the Supreme Court’s Obergefell v. Hodges decision in a way that rejects the fundamental link between marriage and childbearing.

In fact, for a growing and influential segment of the country, even defining ‘man’ and ‘woman’ seems to be an impossible task.“

Healthy marriages help establish stable families and a thriving civil society. (And no, cohabitation does not provide the same stability and benefits for adults and children as marriage.) Separating marriage + having children has changed the structure of family formation for the worse.

For all the attention that solving the “birth dearth” gets, pronatalism is not enough. It is not enough to look for policies and technology (some with serious ethical concerns) that encourages or assists people to reproduce. Addressing healthy marriages has to be front and center of policy proposals.

There’s no one-size policy to help people enter a healthy marriage and keep it that way. One way to help is using (and building on) existing funding and programing at the state and federal level. But government programs can’t fix decades of cultural forces that have minimized or dismissed the importance of coupling sex, marriage, and childbearing together. The decline in marriage rates didn’t happen overnight just as the decline in births didn’t happen overnight.

Put frankly, it took a long time to make the mess we’re in and it’ll take time to clean it up, too. We can debate the merits of things like student loan “forgiveness,” housing benefits, child care subsidies, and tax credits. But the most meaningful, effective way to address declining births is to reorient society to value family formation within stable, healthy marriages. Want to address the birth dearth? Let’s show our fellow Americans that marriage matters.

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

It was a good run, but they had to know it was going to end at some point. Now that the federal government funding gravy train that began with COVID is finally starting to come to an end, suddenly Pennsylvania is crying poor. 

PA Governor Josh Shapiro’s administration has said it is bracing for some Pennsylvania towns to fall into financial distress as federal COVID stimulus money runs out, according to ABC 27.

During the pandemic, state and local governments leaned heavily on federal aid to stay afloat. But with that support ending, cracks are starting to show.

Now the Department of Community and Economic Development is asking for a $10 million boost to the state’s emergency fund for struggling municipalities in its 2025-26 budget—just 2.3% of Gov. Josh Shapiro’s $430 million request for the agency.

Some argue the funding is too little, while others say it would be smarter to help towns before they reach crisis levels. Under Act 47, distressed municipalities can access recovery support once they officially declare financial hardship.

As billions in federal COVID relief dollars run out, Pennsylvania is preparing for a wave of municipal financial distress. The Department of Community and Economic Development (DCED) wants to add $10 million to the Act 47 fund, which supports struggling local governments. As of March 18, the fund held $17.4 million, and current participants include Harrisburg, Chester, and Newville.

The ABC report notes that DCED Secretary Rick Siger called the proposal a proactive step to prepare for “any potential impact for the ARPA cliff,” referring to the end of American Rescue Plan Act funding. Passed in 2021, ARPA sent $350 billion to governments nationwide, including $7.29 billion for Pennsylvania, $4.95 billion for large counties and cities, and $1.21 billion for smaller municipalities.

Governments had until the end of 2024 to commit ARPA funds, and must spend them by Dec. 31, 2026. Most Pennsylvania municipalities used their share to replace lost revenue—an easy reporting route under Treasury rules. Nearly two-thirds of the state’s 2,140 smallest recipients (Tier 5 entities) did exactly that.

But the relief was temporary. “This money is not going to be replaced. It was designed for an emergency. The emergency is gone,” said William Glasgall of the Volcker Alliance. He warned that limiting expenses and raising taxes will soon be “very common” for local governments. Glasgall also dismissed DCED’s proposed boost: “I mean, [$10] million will last about three seconds.”

Some towns already feel the squeeze. State College avoided tax hikes for three of the last four years thanks to ARPA funds—but a property tax increase is coming in 2025.

Still, not all municipalities are panicking. David Sanko of the Pennsylvania State Association of Township Supervisors said many local governments are “not stressed at all” because they planned ahead. His group urged members not to rely on ARPA for ongoing costs and is now pushing the state to cut expenses—like repealing prevailing wage mandates—rather than only expand aid.

Sen. Patty Kim (D-Dauphin), who represents Harrisburg, agrees prevention is better than rescue. “More needs to be done to prevent communities from becoming financially distressed instead of offering help afterward,” she said. As for the $10 million increase, she’s uncertain it will make it through the legislature. With possible federal funding cuts ahead, Kim warned, “I am bracing myself for a very, very different budget in the next couple of months.”

Authored by Jon Fleetwood,

Texas administered 15,000 more measles vaccinations this year compared to 2024—and now there’s a growing measles outbreak that has surpassed the total number of cases reported across the entire United States last year.

The news follows this website’s February report that measles cases in Gaines County, Texas, had jumped 242% following a health district campaign to hand out free measles vaccines.

A measles outbreak after higher vaccination rates in Texas calls into question the shot’s claimed effectiveness and underlying design.

Timeline & Numbers

Between January 1 and March 16 last year, 158,000 measles vaccines were administered in the state, according to CBS News.

During the same time this year, 173,000 measles doses were given.

There are now more measles cases in Texas than there were across the United States in all of 2024.

On Friday, the Texas Department of State Health Services reported 309 cases have been identified in the state since late January.

That’s compared to only 285 cases nationwide last year, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data.

What’s worse, measles cases in West Texas are “still on the rise” and “local public health officials say they expect the virus to keep spreading for at least several more months and that the official case number is likely an undercount,” according to CBS.

The numbers don’t lie—Texas is witnessing a record-breaking measles outbreak in the wake of increased vaccination efforts.

Measles Vaccine Virus Is Product of Gain-of-Function & Can Shed Onto Unvaccinated

U.S. military biodefense experts confirm in a May 2016 publication in The Journal of Infectious Diseases that the live virus inside the measles (MMR) vaccine is engineered using “a technique that could be considered, by current definitions, GOF research.”

GOF (gain-of-function) experiments can cause viruses to become more infectious.

The wild-type measles virus (Montefiore 89 strain) purportedly found in nature mostly uses a receptor called CD150 to gain entry to and infect immune cells.

However, the vaccine strain (Edmonston strain) is manipulated in the laboratory to acquire the ability to bind another receptor called CD46, which is more abundant in the body and expressed on most human nucleated cells.

This means the measles virus injected into the MMR-vaccinated has the potential to enter many more cells compared to the wild-type virus, due to its acquired ability to use an additional cellular receptor.

The vaccine virus also sheds.

An August 2024 study in the peer-reviewed Journal of Clinical Virology confirms the measles vaccine virus sheds in recently vaccinated children for 29 days, meaning the vaccinated can spread the virus to the unvaccinated for about a month.

A 1995 CDC study found that 83% of vaccinated children had measles virus shed in their urine.

With a genetically modified vaccine virus capable of shedding for nearly a month and entering a broader range of human cells than the wild-type strain, the question becomes harder to ignore: Is the vaccine itself playing a role in the surge?

*  *  *

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

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said during a Friday press conference that he won’t recognize past US military aid as loans, after Washington sent a new draft of the minerals deal to Kiev.

“Ukraine received a new agreement project from the U.S. regarding mineral resources, which is an entirely different document from the previous framework agreement,” said Zelensky, adding “Ukraine will not recognize U.S. military aid as debt.“

“We are grateful for the support, but this is not a credit, and we will not allow it,” Zelensky continued.

The Ukrainian president also said that they are unwilling to negotiate with Russian President Vladimir Putin “or with someone who would represent Russia,” and instead said “I think that if there are people, I think there are businesses in Russia, and they have many different regions, including serious business areas. I think that we would communicate with them if they have a vision of how to end the war”

🇺🇸🇺🇦BREAKING! ZELENSKYY REJECTED TRUMP’S TREATY! He will NOT recognize U.S. military aid as debt.
Moreover, Zelensky refused to engage in direct dialogue with Putin.
Zelensky is once again confronting Trump and the U.S.

He stated:
“Ukraine received a new agreement project from… pic.twitter.com/CopihXojCx

— Myroslav Oleshko (@oleshkomyroslav) March 28, 2025

Via @oleshkomyroslav

One Ukrainian lawmaker said on Telegram that the revised mineral agreement is a “horror” that offers no security guarantees from Washington.

Lwwmaker Yaroslav Zheleznyak, a People’s Deputy from Ukraine’s Holos party, said he obtained a new draft of the mineral deal from the U.S., dated March 23 – which he says would grant the Untied States access to all existing and future mineral deposits across Ukraine, along with oil and gas throughout the country.

According to Zheleznyak, the new agreement contains “not even a hint” of security guarantees – though he did note that the revised draft wasn’t final, “and I hope that the Ukrainian side will demand and achieve significant changes to it.”

“This is no longer a framework memorandum of intent, like the one discussed before the scandalous Oval Office meeting,” said Zheleznyak, adding “This is a full-fledged, very clear agreement. And it’s not in our favor.”

“It can and must be changed. Otherwise, I don’t see how it could be ratified by parliament.“

The response comes as Kiev and Washington continue to dance around a deal that would allow the US access to Ukraine’s mineral deposits, which was originally proposed by Zelensky as part of his five-point “Victory Plan” unveiled last October to secure US support. 

Trump, meanwhile, suggests that the mere presence of American contractors in Ukraine would act as a security guarantee – something Zelensky has rejected.

In a March 12 press release, the US State Department confirmed that Washington DC has provided $66.5 billion in military assistance to Ukraine during the war with Russia which began in 2022, adding that $69.2 billion in military assistance has been provided since 2014.

“We have now used the emergency Presidential Drawdown Authority on 55 occasions since August 2021 to provide Ukraine military assistance totaling approximately $31.7 billion from DoD stockpiles,” read the State Department memo.

Needless to say, this won’t be over anytime soon at this rate…

Unreasonable response. I saw something about Putin working with the UN to oust Z. Maybe this is why. Not saying what should happen but watching closely.

— Alexandria Irby (@Alexandria74733) March 28, 2025

This is what Zelensky does, he talks to Trump’s admin promises to do something. Goes home and tells his people the exact opposite will happen. You cannot work with this kind of person.

Putin said recently that no real talks can start with him pretending to be in power. That…

— Hank Rearden (@HankRearden_37) March 28, 2025

He backed himself in the corner and in loose loose situation. This is what happens when people put in power with zero experience and expertise in politics nether mind deplomacy. I suspect its downhill for Zelensky from now on and we will see some crazy statements in near future.…

— UserWithNoName (@NetiConfetti) March 28, 2025

Has Z said thank you lately?

Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,

The reasons why conservatives fight so adamantly for smaller government have never been more obvious than they are today. Even before the DOGE audits, the galactic cost of federal debt spending was clearly crushing our economy. The interest payments alone are costing the American taxpayer around $1 trillion annually. If nothing changes for the better the national debt will hit $54 trillion by 2034.

Of course, this is unsustainable. The system will completely collapse well before another decade ends; under the weight of rising interest rates or under the weight of exponential inflation. We are already seeing the results of the spending bonanza through ongoing stagflation. Prices on most goods are 30% higher (or more) in the past 5 years. Home prices and rent costs are up at least 50% on average. Americans are being financially suffocated.

The US public wants a reckoning for this theft – And yes, it is theft. Our government, like an MC Escher drawing, is an endless maze of dead ends and black holes. It’s a vampiric organism that siphons money from taxpayer pockets, infinitely churning and embezzling and feeding until there is nothing left. It will not stop, until we make it stop.

Part of this parasite’s defense is to pretend like it doesn’t exist. We know it exists because we can see our blood being drained; we can see the results. But proving that it exists is another matter and it was nearly impossible because the only entity that has been allowed to audit the government is the Government Accountability Office (GAO). In other words, the government audits itself.

Most of our government apparatus is NOT elected. The vast majority of it is created from thin air through bureaucracy. Each new tentacle, once created, grows without regulation and forms new tentacles until there is no way to tell what connects to what and where all the money is going.

The original source of this bureaucracy is a cabal of ultra rich elites backing unaccountable NGOs. They helped to create the system over decades so that they could slither back and forth from government to NGOs to corporations without being noticed. The revolving door became standard and the same wealthy moguls and social engineers heading up think tanks and non-profits and international conglomerates were now able to cycle into various government agencies and change policy to benefit them.

Without the bureaucracy the power of the elites is greatly diminished. That is to say, bureaucratic agencies ARE the true power in government – Not presidents, not congressmen, not senators, and certainly not the American people. Political parties can change, presidents can change, the US can go from red to blue and back again, and the system remains mostly the same.

Until the Trump Administration and DOGE, no one has even tried to audit the government and figure out what the majority of these agencies are doing. The same goes for the Federal Reserve Bank, which facilitates fiat cash beyond the limits of taxpayer funds. They make deficit spending possible and allow the bureaucracy to grow without restriction. The Fed has never faced a full audit either, and good luck trying to get Congress to institute one.

The bottom line is this: The government has been deliberately engineered in such a way that nothing can ever be fixed or reformed. The existence of “the bureaucracy” as we know it today was never intended by the Founding Fathers and it should not be allowed to remain. It is the “Shadow Government”, or at least, it is the primary mechanism by which the Shadow Government rules over the US. Get rid of the bureaucracy and the elites lose everything.

This is why the global geopolitical reaction to DOGE has been so insane and violent; the parasites are seeking to protect themselves and keep their blood supply flowing.

Why does the average American citizen need an agency like USAID? We don’t need it – It serves no purpose. It functions only as an embezzlement scheme for bureaucrats and NGOs.  So, we just get rid of it, right? Except it’s not that easy…

For now it appears that the bureaucracy is using the judicial apparatus in a bid to prevent DOGE and Trump from making necessary cuts. Trump is being told that as President, he’s not allowed to fire anyone in the Federal Government. Think about how insane that sounds.

The jurisdictional overreach and clear political bias is astonishing, but it makes sense. The US President is not supposed to have any real power, he’s only meant to act as a figurehead to make us peasants feel like our votes matter. He’s not supposed to actually follow through on his campaign promises and effect legitimate reform according to the will of the people. That’s crazy talk…

The bureaucrats are so used to running the country and controlling the cash behind the scenes that they are utterly shell-shocked by the notion of being independently audited. They think they are above scrutiny or accountability.

Democrats in particular are absolutely enraged, taking to social media and ranting about how “democracy is under threat” because employees within these agencies are being asked to justify their jobs. The reaction to DOGE is so unhinged I don’t think the public is processing it yet.

Again, the Shadow Government (the bureaucracy) is the real government. When leftists claim audits and cuts are a “danger to democracy” what they mean to say is, THEIR POWER is being threatened. The majority of American voters elected Donald Trump and by extension his administrative team based on his campaign platform of smaller government and balanced budgets. Democrats argue that the will of the voters is anti-democratic.

So what is the solution to this blatant obstruction of voter choice and government accountability?

I believe the situation may end up calling for public intervention by conservative citizens. Leftist activists are being organized by NGOs to thwart DOGE, but where are the conservative activists to help DOGE? Maybe unnecessary agencies need to be shut down by public mandate regardless of what woke Obama appointed judges say?

A mass of conservatives surrounding an agency building would shut operations down by default and send a message, wouldn’t it? Leftists had no problem picketing outside the houses of Supreme Court Judges when they overturned Roe V Wade; conservatives could do the same thing with leftist judges blocking deportations of illegal migrants. If leftists want to use political intimidation by setting fire to Tesla dealerships, conservatives could organize groups to watch over these businesses.

This is not necessarily an effort to protect some electric cars from being vandalized. The point is to send a message that conservatives are not going to sit at home doing nothing while leftists run rampant doing whatever they please. The political left has had a near monopoly on public action for far too long.

I get it – A lot of these people are being paid to do what they’re doing and the rest of us have real jobs and real lives to keep us busy. But frankly, this should galvanize people more. If so many of these activist groups are astroturf then there needs to be a grassroots response to confront them. If they need to be paid and we don’t, then we hold a more legitimate and powerful position in the long run.

In terms of judicial obstruction I see very little recourse other than citizen intervention.

The other option is for the Trump Administration to ignore the judges and continue forward, but even this strategy would require very public mass support from Americans. To be clear, I understand that this creates a slippery slope for presidential power. However, did any of us in the Liberty Movement really believe that the government would shrink itself or that the elites would release their hold over the system because of an election?

Did anyone really think that a reckoning would happen with the endorsement of the courts? The courts have never been the true counterbalance to tyranny, the American people are the counterbalance.

Make no mistake, this is a life or death struggle playing out in front of our eyes. If we continue down the current path of unrestricted government our economy will implode and the establishment elites are positioned to take full advantage of such a crisis. There will be nothing left of America when they are finished; our nation will be a dried up husk.

Now is the time to remove them and their institutions from our society. If we don’t accomplish this task soon our children and their children will live in a world controlled by a faceless bureaucratic mafia immune to all accountability; driving each new generation into perpetual poverty and oppression.

*  *  *

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

How much do you need to make to be considered middle class in the U.S.? According to research by SmartAsset, that can range from $36,000 to $200,000, depending on where you live.

This graphic, via Visual Capitalist’s Bruno Venditti, illustrates the income needed to be considered middle class in every U.S. state. Middle class in this graphic is defined as earning between two-thirds and double the median household income. SmartAsset compiled the data as of February 2025.

To Be Middle Class

The median household income in the U.S. is approximately $75,000, with half of Americans earning less. States with high urbanization and economic activity, like California and New York, tend to have much higher income requirements to count as middle class, while rural states with lower costs, like West Virginia and Arkansas, have lower thresholds.

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In Massachusetts, a household needs to earn between $67,000 and $200,000 to be considered middle class. The state has a high cost of living due to expensive housing, high taxes, and strong demand for services. Its economy is driven by industries like technology, healthcare, and education, attracting well-paid professionals and increasing competition for housing, especially in cities like Boston.

Meanwhile, in Mississippi, the minimum household income to be considered middle class is $36,162. Mississippi is one of the cheapest states to live in due to its low housing costs, lower-than-average wages, and relatively low taxes. The cost of goods and services, including groceries, healthcare, and transportation, is also lower than the national average. Additionally, Mississippi has a lower population density and is less of an economic hub compared to wealthier states.

If you enjoyed this post, be sure to check out this graphic, which ranks the income a family needs to live comfortably in every U.S. state.

Authored by Aaron Gifford via The Epoch Times,

A California policy that prevents schools from requiring staff to disclose a child’s gender identity or sexual orientation to his or her parents may be in violation of a federal law, the U.S. Department of Education announced Thursday.

The federal agency’s Student Privacy Policy Office, which oversees the Family Educational Rights Privacy Act (FERPA), is investigating instances in California where school personnel in various districts allegedly hid information from parents and assisted students with their gender “transition,” a March 27 news release notes.

The Department of Education alleged that AB 1955, which took effect on Jan. 1, conflicts with FERPA, which gives parents the right to review students’ records. The department’s news release said federal law supersedes any state law in this case.

“Teachers and school counselors should not be in the business of advising minors entrusted to their care on consequential decisions about their sexual identity and mental health. That responsibility and privilege lies with a parent or trusted loved one,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in the news release.

“It is not only immoral but also potentially in contradiction with federal law for California schools to hide crucial information about a student’s well-being from parents and guardians. The agency launched today’s investigation to vigorously protect parents’ rights and ensure that students do not fall victim to a radical transgender ideology that often leads to family alienation and irreversible medical interventions.”

In an email response to The Epoch Times, the California Department of Education said the federal law only requires schools to provide student records on request, not verbal disclosures.

“AB 1955 prohibits local educational agencies from mandating that staff disclose students’ gender identity to parents without student consent unless otherwise required by state or federal law,” the California agency wrote. 

“AB 1955 does not mandate nondisclosure. Based on the plain language of both laws, there is no conflict between AB 1955 and FERPA, which permits a parent access to their student’s written records upon request.”

Upon returning to the White House, President Donald Trump issued an executive order prohibiting schools from promoting the idea that there are more than two genders. School districts and states also face federal funding cuts for allowing males identifying as transgender to compete in girls’ or women’s sports.

Parents Defending Education, whose leaders in recent months have testified before legislative committees regarding educational issues, reports on its website that 1,214 districts across the country serving more than 12 million students in grades K-12 have policies openly stating that “district personnel can or should keep a student’s transgender status hidden from parents.”