That would be a nightmare scenario from the perspective of Israeli interests…
A report circulated last week alleging that Trump cut off all direct contact with Bibi after feeling manipulated by him. For as sensational as it sounds, the larger context suggests that it might be true. For starters, there was bad blood between them since late 2020 after Trump reportedly felt betrayed by Bibi recognizing Biden’s electoral victory while Trump was still challenging it in the courts.
This is a very personal issue for him seeing as how he continues to insist that he won so it wouldn’t be surprising.
More recently, Bibi has been pressuring Trump to bomb Iran, which Trump doesn’t want to do since a large-scale war in West Asia would offset his planned “Pivot (back) to Asia” for containing China. In connection with that, Trump reportedly dismissed former National Security Advisor Mike Waltz due to him supposedly coordinating too closely with Israel. Also of relevance are the rumors that Israel was caught off guard by the US’ resumption of talks with Iran and is against any agreement between them.
Then there’s the US’ recent deal with the Houthis that excludes Israel, reports that the US will delink Saudi recognition of Israel from their civil nuclear talks, and even speculation that Trump might recognize Palestine during his attendance at next week’s Gulf-US Summit in Riyadh. Altogether, it’s self-evident that US-Israeli ties are newly beset with a host of problems, thus lending credence to the earlier cited report about Trump cutting off all direct contact with Bibi.
Their rift might even be irreconcilable depending on Trump’s next steps. It was already bad enough from Israel’s perspective that the US reached its own deal with the Houthis right after they announced their plans to impose an air blockade on Israel but delinking Saudi recognition of Israel from their civil nuclear talks, let alone recognizing Palestine, could cross the Rubicon. In that scenario, Israel and the US would remain at odds during the rest of Trump’s term, and perhaps even afterwards if Vance succeeds him.
The consequences of that happening would widely reverberate throughout the region. Without the continued support of its oldest and most reliable ally, which is still the strongest and most influential country in the world despite the global systemic transition to multipolarity, Israel would be left alone to deal with threats from Iran and Turkiye. To make matters worse, it can’t be ruled out that the US might curtail or even suspend its military aid to Israel on whatever pretext, thus weakening its armed forces.
This combination of factors could lead to Israel wildly lashing out against its regional adversaries in desperation before it loses its military-strategic advantages, which could spark a large-scale war, or being coerced into a series of compromises that accelerates the loss of these selfsame advantages. From the viewpoint of Israeli interests, this a zero-sum dilemma that it must avoid at all costs, yet Trump’s potentially irreconcilable rift with Bibi could turn this nightmare scenario into a fait accompli.
Nevertheless, as Trump’s unexpected reconciliation with Zelensky shows, there’s always the chance that their tensions could be overcome. For that to happen, however, Bibi would likely have to give Trump something of equivalent strategic value to Zelensky’s minerals deal. It’s unclear what that might be, and it could come too late to stop the US from delinking Saudi recognition of Israel from their civil nuclear talks and/or recognizing Palestine, but Bibi would do well to make Trump a peace offering pronto.
Marine Le Pen used a visit to Rome on Saturday to denounce what she called a growing “democratic scandal” within the European Union, following her recent conviction that has barred her from running in France’s next presidential election.
Speaking alongside Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, the French nationalist leader warned that her case was part of a wider pattern of political suppression aimed at silencing sovereignist movements across Europe.
“I have an African friend who told me that there are countries where there are no elections, and countries where candidates are prevented from running,” Le Pen said in an interview with Corriere Della Sera during the visit.
“I believe that my conviction is really a democratic scandal: I was prevented from running for election, despite having appealed and am therefore still presumed innocent.”
Le Pen drew a direct comparison between her own legal troubles and what she described as systematic efforts by the European establishment to neutralize opposition voices.
“I can’t help but think of what happened to Salvini, what happened in Romania with Călin Georgescu, and what the European Union wants to do with Orbán,” she said.
“The EU does not like defeats, but it is ready to go against the people to crush those who bother it.”
Her remarks came during a joint appearance with Salvini at the League’s School of Political Formation following a religious observance in honor of Pope Leo XIV. The two leaders, longtime allies in the European nationalist movement, presented a united front against what they view as Brussels’ overreach and ideological rigidity.
“His political ideas are practically the same as mine,” Le Pen said of Salvini.
“And I want to add that he is a brave, faithful man with great willpower. He really is a friend.”
Le Pen also used her Rome trip to criticize ongoing EU defense integration efforts, particularly the Readiness 2030 initiative, which she claimed is another vehicle for centralizing power in Brussels. “Whenever there is a crisis, the EU takes advantage to push integrated policies that override national sovereignty,” she said. “Today, it does so with Ukraine and tries to build a European army. It does so in an absolutely cynical way, to impose its ideological agenda on the European people.”
With French President Emmanuel Macron and other EU leaders visiting Kyiv for meetings with his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky, and the so-called “Coalition of the Willing,” Le Pen questioned the coalition’s true aim. “Does it want to reach an agreement for peace, or will it end up fomenting war?” she asked. “Macron has put himself in the shoes of the warrior. France should do the opposite: devote all its efforts to acting as a mediator in the direction of peace.”
Though Patriots for Europe, the nationalist parliamentary group Le Pen co-founded, is now the third-largest bloc in the European Parliament, she acknowledged that uniting with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) could elevate their influence further. “I do not lose hope that the sovereigntists can evolve into a single formation,” she said. “After all, we already vote together on many amendments. Certainly, there is more that unites us than separates us.”
On Meloni herself, Le Pen insisted she has “an important diplomatic role, and that’s no surprise. We have differences — especially her support for the election of Ursula von der Leyen — but she’s achieved results, both externally and for Italy’s economy.”
Despite tensions between the French and Italian governments, Le Pen advocated for a revival of the bilateral relationship. “France and Italy are the two most similar countries in Europe,” she said. “I support a true Renaissance in relations between them.”
In contrast, she dismissed the longstanding Franco-German axis.
“That axis is a choice of the current French government,” she said.
“Germany has always pursued its own policies. I believe Europe needs rules that apply equally to all.”
The Department of Homeland Security has issued a subpoena to Los Angeles County for records tied to a state-run assistance program, which the department alleges might have been used to unlawfully provide federal benefits to illegal immigrants.
Homeland Security Investigations served a Title 8 subpoena to the Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services, which administers California’s Cash Assistance Program for Immigrants.
While the cash assistance program is a state-funded initiative, the federal subpoena seeks records from January 2021 to the present to determine whether any recipients received Supplemental Security Income benefits but who were ineligible, based on their immigration status.
The requested documents include applications, immigration status records, proof of Supplemental Security Income ineligibility, and supporting affidavits, DHS said in an announcement.
“Radical left politicians in California prioritize illegal aliens over our own citizens, including by giving illegal aliens access to cash benefits,” said Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
“If you are an illegal immigrant, you should leave now. The gravy train is over. While this subpoena focuses only on Los Angeles County—it is just the beginning.”
The move comes less than a month after President Donald Trump signed a memorandum directing federal agencies to crack down on misuse of Social Security Act funds. The April 15 directive, aimed at enforcing Executive Order 14218, calls on federal officials to identify and prevent payments to ineligible recipients, including those without lawful immigration status.
Trump’s memorandum directs federal agencies to investigate fraud and prioritize enforcement in areas with high numbers of illegal immigrants. It also calls for expanding fraud prosecution programs through special assistant U.S. attorneys, particularly targeting identity theft and improper benefit payments.
According to DHS, more than 2 million illegal immigrants were issued Social Security numbers in fiscal year 2024 under prior policies. The department said it is now working with other agencies to prevent any further disbursement of benefits to ineligible recipients.
The Social Security Administration previously expressed support for the White House memo and outlined steps it is taking to prevent future benefit fraud. In an April 16 statement, acting Commissioner Leland Dudek said the agency is committed to ensuring that benefits are “paid only to those who should receive them.”
The Social Security Administration said it is reviewing questionable earnings reports and considering whether to resume civil monetary penalties in cases of fraud. The agency also confirmed that it recently reclassified more than 6,300 Social Security numbers as ineligible after identifying recipients who had been paroled into the U.S. despite criminal records or national security concerns.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services, and the California Department of Social Services did not respond to a request for comment from The Epoch Times before publication.
US Treasury Shocks With Second Biggest Budget Surplus In History
Two weeks ago, as part of its quarterly refunding announcement, the Treasury surprised the market when it unveiled a funding need for the current quarter that was $53 billion lower than it had initially forecast in February, and which we said “indicates that DOGE is indeed working and the US funding needs are actually declining.”
Needless to say, for a market that was habituated to Joe Biden’s debt-funded drunken sailor spending ways, the news that the US would needs less – not more – spending than previously expected, came as a shock, and yields slumped as less debt than expected would be required to fund the world’s most indebted government.
Today we got the reason why the borrowing need of the US was surprisingly lower than previously expected, and it was revealed in the latest Treasury Monthly Statement laying out the US government’s monthly deficit… or rather surplus. Yes, we are so used to describing the sum-total of the US government’s monthly income statement as a deficit (i.e., more spending than revenue) that it has become automatic to assume that every month the US will spend more than it brings in. Only this time that wasn’t the case.
Presenting Exhibit A: in April, the US Treasury generated a $258.4 billion surplus after last month’s $160.5 billion deficit; this the second biggest surplus on record, with just the $308 billion bumper surplus in 2021 bigger.
To be sure, while US surpluses are few and far between, the one time of the year when they can (occasionally) be seen, is in April, when a surge in tax income offsets the now chronic government bloat and spending. This April was just that, and while the US did spend a hefty $592 billion in April (slightly more than the $528 billion in March, and more than the $567 billion spent a year ago) of which very ominously more than $100 billion was gross interest on the record US debt (which at this moment is about $37 trillion) for the second month in a row…
… the revenue collected by the US treasury managed to more than offset this massive spend, and surged by a whopping $850 billion, just shy of the record $864 billion record in April 2022.
The unexpected surge in revenue, and the resulting budget surplus means that the cumulative deficit for fiscal 2025 suddenly doesn’t look catastrophic: recall that just four months ago, back in January, in the last month of Biden’s reign, the US had already spent a record $840 billion for the first 4 months of the year, on pace to blow away all previous records. But then something changed, and first March saw a big slowdown in spending which resulted in a much more tame cumulative deficit through March, and then the April data meant that the cumulative deficit in the first seven months of the year, was actually an improvement, and dropped to just $1049 billion, down from a peak of $1037 billion in March, and below the run-rate of both 2021 and 2024.
And while the primary reason for the unexpected budget surplus was a far bigger tax haul than expected, mostly thanks to a burst in capital gains tax which is unlikely to be repeated this year (unless we see the S&P rise another 20% from here by year end), there was another big reason for the April revenue surge, a reason we profiled previously in “Trump Trade War Results In Record $12 Billion Surge In Customs Revenues.” As shown in the chart below, Customs Duties in April doubled from $8.2 billion in March to a record $15.6 billion in April, thanks to surge in Trump tariffs.
And while all of that is a good start, and certainly a big improvement in the US fiscal picture in the first three months of Trump’s regime, the big picture sadly remains a dismal one, largely because the US debt picture remains completely unsustainable and manifests itself in $1.2 trillion in gross interest expense per year, just $300 billion shy of the biggest spending category of them all: Social Security Spending.
That said, April’s bumper revenue aside, all five main spending categories are growing much faster than revenue, and something drastically has to change for this big picture to become viable. Unfortunately, we have now seen the wholsesale pushback Trump has faced when doing just that – trying to restructure a broken status quo – which is why unless Trump magically succeeds in this undertaking, the US is pretty much doomed (while DOGE’s achievements have been admirable, they are a drop in the bucket in the context of Congresionally appropriate spending) as nobody else will ever come close to Trump’s intended overhaul of the US fiscal picture.
We just made it through another tax season. Congress has begun debating whether and how to extend the Trump tax cuts from the 2018 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. While many elements of that tax debate are worth commenting on, I want to highlight the standard deduction because it sheds light on an underappreciated part of American philanthropy.
Prior to the introduction of the federal income tax in 1913, charitable donations did not have meaningful tax deduction benefits. Yet Americans gave generously. In fact, if anything, American philanthropy has declined because of the Scrooge effect of the welfare state.
“Are there no [state-funded] prisons [or work-houses]?” Ebenezer Scrooge asks in Charles Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol.”
The questions reveal that Scrooge (and others) feel that their higher taxes to fund a variety of social and “poverty-reduction” programs take the place of direct philanthropic giving.
Americans also keep a lot less of what they earn today than they did 100 or 150 years ago—as most of us know from recent personal experience.
The case of welfare programs crowding out charity has been made eloquently by Marvin Olasky in “The Tragedy of American Compassion.” Various religious and fraternal orders provided health insurance, old-age insurance, and other social services to their members throughout the 19th and into the 20th century. These services were later replaced by state unemployment benefit schemes, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
These government programs “crowded out” charitable, philanthropic civil society—contributing to problems of declining social capital elaborated by Robert Nisbet (“Quest for Community”) and Robert Putnam (“Bowling Alone”). Government agencies and government checks replaced civic networks and systems of support. Yet American philanthropy is still alive and kicking in the United States.
The Lilly Family School of Philanthropy at Indiana University estimated that Americans gave $557.16 billion to charity in 2023. That’s about $1,600 per capita. By comparison, Canadians gave about $400 per capita to charity and Brits gave about $250 per capita. Even as a percentage of gross domestic product, the United States ranks well above European countries. According to one source, the United States is one of the most charitable countries in the world.
What’s remarkable is that the vast majority of Americans who give to charity receive no federal tax benefit from doing so. Returning to the individual exemption, when you file your taxes, you can either claim the standard deduction ($14,600 for an individual, or $29,200 for a couple) or you can itemize your deductions. A few expenses can count toward the itemized deductions, but these expenses are highly qualified and don’t add up to much for the average person.
From a benefit standpoint, your qualified expenses, including your charitable giving, must add up to more than the standard deduction before you receive any tax advantage. Suppose someone takes the entire $10,000 state and local tax deduction (SALT) and comes up with $5,000 more in other qualified expenses. They would still be $14,200 short of the $29,200 standard deduction for a couple. This means that any of their charitable giving, up to $14,200, does not render them any benefits on their federal taxes.
Seventy percent of American households earn less than $127,000 before taxes. So $14,200 would mean donating more than 10 percent of their pre-tax earnings before they saw any advantage from the giving being “tax-deductible.” For most Americans, the “tax-deductible” element of charitable giving is practically irrelevant. Yet they give anyway.
Most Americans donate money even though they receive no federal tax benefit. Americans gave generously long before the income tax and the charitable tax deduction existed. A large industry of lawyers and accountants has cropped up to help wealthy people lower their tax liabilities through various forms of charitable giving. Sometimes these methods lead to creative accounting and legal gymnastics that can distort or divert people’s choices of how to use their wealth.
These observations provide a few reasons to want an alternative to our federal tax code 501(c)(3) structure. We should ask whether society would be freer in a world without tax exemptions for charitable giving—a world without the stark for-profit/nonprofit legal divide with all its attendant reporting and hoops. Tax code rules that put their thumb on the scale represent social engineering of the kind free people should reject.
Most Americans give generously without thought of return—even with a large welfare state and high taxes.
There is something deeply admirable about this kind of generosity that gives without expecting any material benefit in return. Imagine how they would give if the welfare state were trimmed down and their taxes were lower.
That’s what George W. Bush’s “compassionate conservatism” should have meant.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ZeroHedge.
In high school in West Texas in the late 1970s, psych meds were Veblen goods; that is, products desired as markers of status. They were conspicuously consumed by the children of the well-to-do with profound awareness that their schoolmates could afford neither the treatment nor the supposed cure.
So the kids—I knew many of them and they would tolerate me in their circles from time to time—would brag about their diagnosis, their prescriptions, the mix, and how it made them feel.
They would carry their pills and show them off, rattling off names of this or that drug and laughing mischievously about it all. There was nothing particularly maudlin about them except as performance. They were genuinely proud, the way one might be when wearing an overpriced luxury coat or shoes. The pills were just part of the mix. So too, they paraded their supposed maladies as badges of honor.
There was always a sniffy air of detachment culture of these kids, a nonchalant disregard for all systems, whether school or family or church, even society at large. They were above it all, and the meds and the condition they were addressing were part of that. It was a class marker. There was even a hint of politics about it, an underscoring and display of alienation. They were at once the top of the social heap but disdainful of it.
Most of these kids excelled in their grades and set their sights high in college applications, with no doubt that they would succeed. They would do so despite their profound mental condition, which they blamed on parents, social structures, teachers, protocols, and the machine generally. Society had made them sick, but the meds gave them freedom to float above it all.
I’ve not followed their lives since then. Maybe they dropped them after college and lived normally. Maybe not. None will likely write memoirs, so we’ll never know. Regardless, in the decades since, this Veblen good went the way of all luxury purchases over time. It became mainstream. Psych meds are now common among adults and children. It’s a massive industry: like cell phones and TVs generations ago, they migrated through the class structure year by year.
Now comes “Unshrunk” by Laura Delano, a book that could change everything. If it were not an autobiography, it would make great fiction of the gothic sort popular in the Victorian period. If it stripped out all commentary on the dubious merit of all these supposed sicknesses and cures, it would still be fantastic drama from first to last.
Nothing I say can possibly prepare you for the adventure this book brings. It is perfectly crafted almost in a poetic way to bring to the reader the actual feeling of going through each stage over a decade and a half of drug cocktails, mental institutions, hospitals, and much more, and finally to her self-motivated emancipation from the whole industry.
I worry that the topic alone will deter readers. It should not. Read it the way you might a great work of fiction. It makes it all the more riveting to realize it is the real thing—an actual person—with all the attendant pain required for any author to pour out his or her soul this way. It’s a rare experience, one of a kind in our time.
In addition, even if you extracted all the detailed medical critiques about drug trials, side effects, market flimflam from these drugs, and turned that into a monograph on its own, it would be of enormous value.
So we really have here three books in one: a brilliant drama with a fantastic story arc, an autobiography of a young woman in a world set apart that most of us will never know, and a technical medical treatise on an entire industry.
Looming rather large in the narrative is the issue of social class. The author was born into a world unknown to most, the social-register set in Greenwich, Connecticut, descendent of a three-term president, a prep-school educated and Harvard-bound beneficiary of every financial and social privilege, one afforded the best psychiatric care available anywhere.
She was not mistreated. She was treated. She says this herself:
“I was once mentally ill, and now I’m not, and it wasn’t because I was misdiagnosed. I wasn’t improperly medicated or overmedicated. I haven’t miraculously recovered from supposed brain diseases that some of the country’s top psychiatrists told me I’d have for the rest of my life. In fact, I was properly diagnosed and medicated according to the American Psychiatric Association’s standard of care. The reason I’m no longer mentally ill is that I made a decision to question the ideas about myself that I’d assumed were fact and discard what I learned was actually fiction.”
The best of care. The best physicians. The best institutions. The best consultations. The best meds, constantly tweaked by experts: a bit more of this, a bit less of that, and here’s a new one. When Laura’s diagnosis was switched from Bipolar to Borderline, it was under the care of the very father of the supposed disease itself: Dr. John G. Gunderson at McLean Hospital at Harvard (which had also seen Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and Susanna Kaysen).
She had every reason to trust the experts except for one telling fact: she never got better, only worse. She gradually concluded over time that her real trouble was iatrogenic; that is, induced by the very drugs that were said to be the solution.
The first hints of real recovery hit the reader once Laura starts attending Alcoholics Anonymous, where everyone cheered as people there revealed how long they had been sober. It struck me while reading, though the author doesn’t say this, that pretty much everyone gets that alcoholism is a huge issue and that the safest path for everyone is sobriety. No physician really recommends more drinking, more liquor, different kinds of liquor, more regular cocktails, as a solution to anything.
And yet a completely different standard applies to more powerful pharmaceutical cocktails. They are carefully dispensed on millions of patients, with warnings never to skip. That’s what bad patients do.
People who unwisely attempt to do without are rediagnosed with “discontinuation syndrome”—as if dropping toxins created a new disease—which of course calls forth new prescriptions.
The entire system is built to keep people on meds. And when one tries to dispense with them, the adapted body fights back with symptoms that seem to reinforce the diagnosis and the solution. We hope you see why we put you on these drugs in the first place!
Why the gigantic and upside-down judgment against one toxin (alcohol) and for all the others? Here is the core of the real scandal. It’s about the enormous power of industry, the mystique of science, the prestige of academia, and the class associations connected with high-status diagnosis and purported solutions.
This line of thinking opens up even broader critiques of the entire medical system and pharmaceuticals more generally. This book thoroughly explodes the popular understanding of mental illness and the capacity of the expert class to deal with it. The lessons are rattling to the point that no reader will look at commoditized pharmaceuticals in the same way.
In the COVID period, you recall, compliance with protocols was a class marker too. Only tacky people demanded their freedom, dared walk around stores without masks, or failed to social distance in elevators. Trashy types protested the lockdowns. Canadian truckers, indeed! What else do you need to know? The good people, the successful and high-earning professionals on laptops, stayed home, streamed movies, and stayed away from others.
I recall being shouted at while walking outdoors without a mask.
“Masks are socially recommended,” yelled a man, mangling a few phrases into a new coinage. There was fury in his voice that someone as lowlife as I would dare to be in his neighborhood, no doubt spreading COVID. I had otherized myself simply by my refusal to cover my face as if I revealed myself to be a vector of disease spread.
The moral landscape became crystal clear with the shot rollouts. Clean people get them. Dirty people refuse them. The model was primitive in the extreme but with a class bias that bled over to a kind of regional bigotry: the unvaccinated states went for Trump. Whole cities became segregated, as the culmination of an entire class-based outlook that split us from them. (See my big theory of clean vs dirty as a lens through which to understand the whole period.)
I never had much of an awareness of social class and its meaning in politics before this period. Suddenly, it was all that mattered, with government agencies delineating who was essential and who was not. Nor had I considered that medical protocols and products had emerged as a Veblen good, something to consume with pride in one’s high place in the social strata, like modern art and postmodern philosophy.
How brilliant of the psych med industry to market itself—beginning long ago—as a luxury good, a class marker, a product to be consumed by the privileged. There is something wrong in every life. Successful people fix it with pills. Take your meds: you are not a substance abuser but a highly responsible patient who can afford the best care. As the song says, the devil wore a lab coat.
Laura Delano’s book weaves together these pieces into an alarming tale of tragedy followed by final hope. From the first chapter in which the supposed problems begin, through the wild ups and downs and tales of 21 different meds (my count), I could not wait to see how the author would handle the ending.
The last chapters are perfect in ways I won’t reveal for fear of spoilers. My further hope is that this brief review will inspire many more people to travel this journey with the author and draw deep and broad lessons from it.
A Six-Figure Income Is Considered Low In Some Bay Area Counties
An income of more than $100,000 a year for a single person is now listed as low income in four San Francisco Bay Area counties, according to the 2025 State Income Limits set by the California Department of Housing and Community Development.
The four counties are San Mateo, San Francisco, Marin, and Santa Clara. Nearby Santa Cruz County also lists six figures as low income, though it’s not adjacent to the Bay.
The income figures are used to determine residents’ eligibility for certain programs, such as housing assistance.
As Connor Lee reports for The Epoch Times,low income is usually 80 percent of median family income, although the number may be adjusted based on other factors, the report states.
In Santa Clara County, the threshold listed for low income is $111,700 a year, the highest in the state.
This figure reflects its highest-in-the-state median income of nearly $200,000, up by more than $10,000 from 2024.
In Sacramento County, by contrast, $72,050 is considered low income.
The low-income figure is $84,850 in Los Angeles County and $54,500 in Shasta County.
“When a six-figure income qualifies as low income, it’s a clear sign that too many Californians are struggling to make ends meet,” said Chris Hoene, executive director of the California Budget & Policy Center, in an emailed statement to The Epoch Times.
According to the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, households that spend over 30 percent of their income on housing costs such as rent and mortgage are considered “cost-burdened.”
In the city of Santa Clara, more than 52 percent of renter households are cost-burdened, and so are over a quarter of homeowner households, according to housing organization Silicon Valley at Home.
Californians often face a heavier cost burden because the state’s rent and home prices are significantly higher than in most of the nation.
Hoene said that the state’s high cost of living is driven by “soaring housing costs and rising prices on basic needs.”
California currently has the highest regional price parity in the nation, at 12.6 percent higher than the national average, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.
Housing rent in the state is 57.8 percent above the national average, the bureau reported.
Mid-tier homes in California are more than twice as expensive as typical mid-tier U.S. homes,according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office.
A bottom-tier home in California is more expensive than a mid-tier home in the rest of the country.
The average home value in San Francisco was priced at more than $1.3 million as of February, according to Zillow.
US President Donald Trump is reportedly seeking $1 trillion in investments from Saudi Arabia in an upcoming visit to the energy-rich Gulf Kingdom. This comes amid reports that normalization between Riyadh and Tel Aviv has effectively “been delinked” from economic and security talks with Washington.
Trump has departed Monday on a four-day visit to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, with the trip expected to center on securing business deals and attracting new investments from the oil-rich Gulf states. The president will not visit Israel.
Reutersreported Sunday that Saudi Arabia is unlikely to normalize relations with Israel at this time due to Israel’s continuation of its war in Gaza and refusal to allow the establishment of a Palestinian state, according to US and Saudi officials. “Establishing ties has become especially toxic for Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam, since the start of Israel’s war in Gaza,” Reuters wrote.
US officials have failed to convince their Israeli counterparts to agree to an immediate ceasefire in Gaza – one of Saudi Arabia’s preconditions for any re-start of normalization talks, two Gulf sources and a US official stated. Instead, Israeli leaders have expressed their desire to continue the war, which has killed well over 60,000 Palestinians, in an effort to ethnically cleanse Gaza of Palestinians and prepare it for Jewish settlement.
The reports contradict the optimism expressed by Trump’s envoy to the region, Steve Witkoff, who told an audience at the Israeli embassy in Washington this week that he expected important progress on expanding the Abraham Accords, an agreement through which other Arab states, the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco, normalized relations with Israel.
“We think we will have some or a lot of announcements very, very shortly, which we hope will yield progress by next year,” Witkoff said in a video of his speech before accompanying Trump on his trip to the region that will not include a visit to Israel.
As a result, Saudi normalization with Israel has “effectively been delinked from economic and other security matters between Washington and the kingdom, Reuters wrote, citing two Saudi and two US officials, all of whom requested to remain anonymous.
As a result, Trump’s visit to the kingdom will focus on securing a trillion dollars’ worth of Saudi investments in US companies, “including major deals in arms, mega-projects and artificial intelligence,” Reuters wrote.
“The Trump administration wants this trip to be a big deal. That means lots of splashy deal announcements and collaborations that can be sold as being good for America,” said Robert Mogielnicki, senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute, a think tank in Washington.
“Normalizing ties with Israel is a much heavier lift than rolling out the red carpet for President Trump and announcing investment deals,” he said. The Saudi government communications office did not reply to a request for comment, Reuters added.
A flashback to 8 years ago—May 2017, when President Trump last visited Saudi Arabia…pic.twitter.com/26TSu8bYXT
In a related matter, an informed source told Palestinian newspaper Al-Quds on Sunday that the meeting between President Donald Trump and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) in Riyadh on Tuesday will also include Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Lebanese President Joseph Aoun, and Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa.
The source, who declined to be identified, said Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman submitted the proposal, which received Trump’s approval.
The source confirmed that MbS is looking forward to Trump’s acceptance of the Saudi condition for the establishment of a Palestinian state, noting that achieving this would constitute one of the greatest and most important achievements of Saudi Arabia’s active diplomacy.
Texas Gov. Abbott Halts Development Of Controversial ‘Epic City’ For Muslims
Texas Governor Greg Abbott wrote on X that his team has halted construction of a planned mixed-use development connected with East Plano Islamic Center (EPIC), one of North Texas’ largest mosques.
The 402-acre site is being transformed into a community for Muslims that includes 1,000 homes, a K-12 faith-based school, a mega mosque, elderly and assisted living, apartments, clinics, retail shops, a community college, and sports fields. It is located just 30 miles northeast of downtown Dallas.
“We’re going to demonstrate to the world what it means to be a Muslim in the West,” one of the heads of EPIC City said in a promotional video.
It seems that Texas is shutting down the “EPIC City” project which was designed as an islamic only city. This video was recently deleted from the main developer’s X account. @AmyMek is exposing many more islamist projects like this all across Texas.
In March, Abbott wrote, “Legislators are considering laws to restrict it, as well as laws to prevent foreign adversaries from buying land in Texas.”
Now, Gov. Abbott laid down the hammer:
Texas has halted any construction of EPIC City. There is no construction taking place. The state of Texas has launched about a half dozen investigations into this project. That includes criminal investigations. And, the U.S. Department of justice is also investigating. This matter, and similar matters, are taken very seriously, and actions are being taken to address all concerns.
Texas has halted any construction of EPIC City.
There is no construction taking place.
The state of Texas has launched about a half dozen investigations into this project.
Abbott’s decision comes just days after Texas Senator John Cornyn told the Department of Justice about potential “religious discrimination” in the proposed Muslim-centric city.
“A master-planned ‘community of thousands of Muslims’ could violate the constitutional rights of Jewish and Christian Texans, by preventing them from living in this new community and discriminating against them within the community. I further encourage the Department to investigate whether Christians, Jews, and other non-Muslim minorities would receive equal protection under the law in this new community. Religious discrimination, whether explicit or implicit, is unconstitutional under the First and Fourteenth Amendments. Religious freedom is a cornerstone of our nation’s values, and I am concerned this community potentially undermines this vital protection,” Senator Cornyn wrote in a letter to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon.
The senator concluded: “Religious-based discrimination is a constitutional violation as well as a federal rights violation. Appropriate steps should be taken to ensure that this community does not run afoul of these obligations. It may also be appropriate for an investigation to explore whether the proponents of the proposed development are abiding by existing federal and state prohibitions on the enforcement of sharia law”
In a recent podcast, supporters of the proposed EPIC City development discussed plans to name streets after historic Islamic conquerors and revealed that 75% of homeowner association fees would be funneled into the mosque.
WATCH Muslims discussing EPIC City in Texas where they’re building a Sharia City with streets named after “Islamic conquerors” and 75% of the association fees will go to the mosque.
They brag about using Americans to get what they want, calling us “John Smith.”
So, what laws does EPIC City support? The laws of Texas/the U.S. Constitution, or Sharia law?
Glenn Beck might have those answers…
The developers of EPIC City say the community will never hold Sharia law above Texas law. But one of their leaders once argued in favor of Sharia over US law: “No Supreme Court. No system of government. No democracy where they vote…who gave you this right?” pic.twitter.com/7Prsdvda8d
Founded 54 years ago, Amtrak set out on a bold adventure to see if passenger trains could be profitable.
Fast forward to today, this experiment has been unsuccessful. Politicians have often crafted routes to win votes rather than attract riders.
As a result, Amtrak has been squandering taxpayer money since its start in 1971.
Take, for instance, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021. It allocated a monumental $66 billion to bolster passenger rail. Yet, even with this backing, Amtrak’s losses soared from $1.12 billion in FY2019 to $2.12 billion in FY2024. This financial drain isn’t new; America’s passenger trains have lost money for 79 years.
Amtrak asserts that it is “on-track to reach operational profitability.”
Yet, this is a bald-faced lie.
While Amtrak reported a loss of $705.2 million for FY2024, it didn’t include:
$966.2 million in depreciation;
$447.3 million in “Project Related Expenses”;
$314.1 million in state subsidies, which it classified as “revenue”;
$26.9 million in Office of Inspector General funding
By omitting these costs, Amtrak paints an optimistic view of its financial health. In reality, Amtrak needs larger subsidies than ever before. In fact, Amtrak has been deceiving Congress with its “path to profitability” since 1990.
Although Amtrak touted a “ridership record” for FY2024, this figure is misleading too. Ridership numbers don’t reflect the average length of each passenger’s trip. A more insightful metric is passenger-miles, which measures how far people are traveling. In fact, Amtrak only transported 6.54 billion passenger-miles in FY2024. This is a decrease of 3.40 percent since FY2013.
Amtrak often attributes its financial struggles to its long-haul routes. Yet, the outlook is even bleaker for its short-haul, state-supported routes. Amtrak reported a $251.5 million loss for these routes in FY2024. Yet, with $314.1 million in state subsidies included, the true loss hits $565.6 million. This represents a shocking 94 percent increase from the $291.7 million lost in FY2019.
Amtrak’s advocates often cite highway “subsidies” to explain its financial debacles. But Amtrak guzzles about 39 times more subsidies per passenger-mile than highways do.
Amtrak asserts that freight trains “interfere” with its passenger services. However, Amtrak often makes questionable route choices despite having legal priority over freight. Between Chicago and Los Angeles, the Desert Wind lost less money than the Southwest Chief. Despite this, Amtrak favored the Southwest Chief, which passed through more congressional districts. It discontinued the Desert Wind in 1997, leaving Las Vegas with no train service.
Despite its competitor’s demise, the Southwest Chief still loses money. Its operating losses grew from $56.1 million in FY2019 to $83.3 million by FY2024. It also uses a lower-quality track than freight trains from Chicago to Los Angeles. Since 2014, taxpayers have spent over $45 million on track repairs for the Southwest Chief.
Figure 1. Chicago to Los Angeles preliminary route alternatives, 1970.
Senators Jerry Moran (R-KS) and Martin Heinrich (D-NM) view Amtrak as an “essential service.”
But Amtrak accounts for a mere 0.001 percent of total passenger-miles traveled in the country. For every small town served by Amtrak, there are at least 40 others with no train service. In fact, Americans travel more miles by bicycle than they do via Amtrak.
If Amtrak were to vanish, travelers would still have many options. On many routes, it would cost less to give each passenger a free airline ticket than to subsidize Amtrak. To illustrate, the average airfare in 2024 was around $0.23 per passenger-mile. This is much lower than Amtrak’s subsidies of $0.91 per passenger-mile in FY2024.
It’s important to note that nothing restricts train riders to using unprofitable routes. Many might explore moving to states where train travel is more viable.
Amtrak’s website once touted the environmental advantages of train travel. The truth is Amtrak removed this webpage in January 2025. This action suggests that Amtrak exaggerated its claims about environmental benefits. Amtrak’s most popular routes—such as the Auto Train—could thrive without subsidies. Beyond them, cars, buses, or airplanes could be more efficient than Amtrak’s services.
Figure 2. Chicago to Los Angeles final route alternatives, 1971.
Despite experiencing huge losses, Amtrak awarded $5 million in bonuses in FY2023. Fourteen of its top leaders received over $200,000 each.
Over the past 54 years, Congress has exhausted ways to limit the growth of Amtrak’s subsidies. None of its efforts at “reform” have yielded meaningful results:
Clinging to existing routes is a classic example of the sunk cost fallacy. Amtrak’s routes have lost money for 54 years and the cost of operating them will only rise.
Investing in “high-speed rail” will only exacerbate Amtrak’s financial woes. With teleconferencing, the need for short-haul, time-sensitive business travel has diminished. In fact, high-speed Acela ridership has decreased by 9.5 percent since FY2019.
Changing Amtrak’s leadership isn’t the answer, either. All that would do is create a scapegoat for the pork barrel spending that has plagued Amtrak for 54 years.
Outsourcing existing routes to private operators such as Keolis won’t fix Amtrak. Taxpayers would still foot the bill because of the lack of economic viability in Amtrak’s routes.
Splitting up long-haul routes is likely to drive away riders and lead to even greater losses. To illustrate, Amtrak’s short-haul, state-supported routes operate at a mere 38 percent load factor. This is much lower than the 57 percent load factor of Amtrak’s long-haul routes.
In 2002, the Amtrak Reform Council even voted to dissolve Amtrak altogether. Despite this, Congress chose not to act.
Figure 3. Potential train routes that could operate without either capital or operating subsidies.
The only way to stop politicians from playing favorites with train routes is to cut subsidies to $0. Political control over subsidies means that ending them would also end that control. With a loss of $2.12 billion in FY2024, Amtrak has become a bottomless money pit. In contrast, Australia’s Ghan and Indian Pacific operate without subsidies. With capital and operating subsidies ended, some American trains could be profitable too.
Eliminating subsidies would not spell the end for passenger trains. Brightline Florida—a privately-owned train service—began operations in 2023. Under a zero-subsidy model, it might consider buying Amtrak. For Brightline, this move could reduce overhead and enhance efficiency. For example, it could sell certain routes to Rocky Mountaineer or Union Pacific. There is also the possibility of auctioning off surplus assets to the public. In the end, Brightline would only preserve the most sustainable routes.
Since Congress can’t predict which routes will be profitable, it only needs to cut subsidies to $0. The President should also take a firm stand by vetoing any budget that subsidizes Amtrak. Finally, Congress should repeal the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021. This act squandered $66 billion in capital and operating subsidies for passenger rail.
