Authored by Vince Bielski via RealClearInvestigations,

After nasty clashes involving character assassinations and a mass resignation, a showdown is drawing closer in Chicago between the most powerful local teachers’ union in the country and the most financially distressed school district. 

The growing possibility of a teachers’ strike in a city with a long history of labor upheavals highlights the troubles rocking public schools nationwide. First came drops in academic performance and enrollment from lower birth rates and the pull of charter and home schools promising a better education and sometimes delivering it. Enrollment has plunged 20% in Chicago since 2012, a bigger decline than in many large cities.

After the pandemic hit, a windfall of $190 billion in federal emergency funding helped districts like Chicago paper over years of deficit spending and significantly expand the ranks of teachers, social workers, and counselors. Now that the federal aid has ended, students have only partly recovered from their devastating learning loss while budget deficits have ballooned, prompting widespread education cuts in Houston and upcoming reductions in San Francisco, to name just a few districts facing fiscal woes.

Chicago may be the most financially dysfunctional of them all, says Marguerite Roza, head of Georgetown’s Edunomics Lab. At the center of the drama is the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU), which has become a dominant force in city politics after playing a pivotal role in the election of one of its own, Brandon Johnson, as mayor two years ago. 

Emboldened by the victory, CTU President Stacy Davis Gates and other militant leaders are not entertaining proposals for cutbacks in current contract negotiations. Instead, they are demanding significant increases in compensation and staffing and other changes to advance their social justice and anti-testing agenda. But CTU’s leverage may be weakened by the fraying of union solidarity.

CTU’s chief nemesis is Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez, an immigrant from Mexico who was raised in a poor family in the Windy City before getting his MBA. An advocate of rigorous academics and accountability for teachers, Martinez says he offered the union only part of what it wants to avoid more financial turmoil and instability. 

In many ways, this is a story about the hazards of running a district deeply into debt. With a projected $500 million annual deficit and holding a whopping $9.3 billion in long-term debt, the district depends on the city of Chicago, which also runs in the red, to provide most of its $9.9 billion in funding. Making matters more precarious, the district has to rely on short-term loans at high interest rates to make payroll. It is also the largest issuer of junk bonds in the U.S. 

The labor negotiations took an ugly turn in December over the matter of a loan. Martinez flatly refused Mayor Johnson’s request to take on more debt to fund CTU’s salary demands. The union protested with a vote of no confidence in the CEO, and then a school board appointed by Johnson fired him. 

Adding insult to injury, Davis Gates disparaged Martinez, whose contract allows him to stay on his job until June. The union president compared Martinez to a special education student who can’t be suspended and later apologized for the offensive remark, according to media reports. 

The costly issues in the negotiations are compensation and staffing. The district says it offered a 16% cost of living pay hike over four years, on top of baked-in increases that bring the total to about 30% for most teachers with a master’s degree. The average teacher salary would jump to $110,000, with the most experienced instructors earning $140,000 – compensation that’s competitive with other large urban districts. 

The union says it wants a bigger cost of living increase of 18% over four years. It’s also demanding the hiring of more than 1,200 teaching assistants, librarians, nurses, art teachers, social workers, and more – on top of 7,000 new hires since 2019. 

With tensions running high, an arbitrator has been called in to recommend a nonbinding resolution. But arbitration hasn’t stopped the union from striking in the past. 

If CTU and the district don’t agree to a financially sound deal, a state takeover is possible, and the 325,000 predominately black and Latino students would pay the price, says Roza of Georgetown.

“Historically, when districts can’t pay their bills, what happens isn’t pretty,” said Roza. “Bean counters come in and make widespread cuts, and parents get really mad because they don’t have any representation.”

Strife Within CTU

Although CTU projects a united front in its frequent press conferences criticizing Martinez as unwilling to fight for more funding, there’s unrest inside the union over the leadership of Davis Gates, two longtime CTU members who insisted on anonymity told RealClearInvestigations. Both say they doubt that she could get enough members to approve a strike. 

The internal critics say the leadership’s political demands for green schools and affordable housing are given more priority than the primary mission of educating students, most of whom aren’t proficient in reading and math. They also object to what they call the divisive leadership of Davis Gates, who earns more than $269,000 a year, according to an estimate by Illinois Policy, a nonpartisan group that advocates for government accountability. 

CTU has three caucuses, with Davis Gates leading the left-leaning CORE caucus. Members of the other caucuses who challenge CORE are punished by losing their committee assignments and other responsibilities, the union members said.

“If you don’t drink the CORE Kool-Aid, they will make your life miserable. I’ve watched them do it,” one member said. “The other caucuses are now joining together to defeat CORE.”

In the latest example of internal strife, members are suing CTU and Davis Gates for failing to publish annual audits of the union’s books for four years as required by its own rules. Concerned that the union may have acted improperly in funding Johnson’s mayoral campaign, CTU member Philip Weiss says he requested in writing to see the audits three times. Getting no response from CTU, Weiss and four other members sued in October to force publication of the audits.

At the time, Weiss was also running for re-election as a trustee at the Chicago Teachers’ Pension Fund. At a gathering of union delegates to meet the trustee candidates, Weiss says, Davis Gates mispresented his political background to cast him as a danger to CTU.  

“She declared to the delegates that I was right wing and part of Project 2025,” Weiss said, referring to the conservative policy manifesto. “These are factually false statements. She ambushed me before she introduced me as a candidate.”

Weiss, a lifelong Democrat who’s not a member of CORE, wasn’t reelected. CORE candidates won the two trustee seats. 

CTU and the union’s lawyer didn’t respond to requests for interviews. The CTU lawyer called the lawsuit “harassing and frivolous,” according to a letter to Weiss’s lawyer at the Liberty Justice Center, who posted it on X.

CTU’s Social Justice Agenda

CTU became “Chicago’s most powerful political machine” after CORE leaders took the reins more than a decade ago, says Mailee Smith, a labor expert at Illinois Policy. They rode a backlash against reforms that sought to bring accountability to districts through testing and close severely under-enrolled and poorly performing schools.

The new leaders revived CTU’s long tradition of striking in 2012, taking advantage of a right to strike that’s not shared by teachers in many other nearby states. In that decade, the union held two more strikes, which proved effective in winning a contract in 2019 with a 16% raise over five years and a significant increase in staffing. It turned out that the district had agreed to a contract it couldn’t pay for and was later saved by $2.8 billion in federal pandemic funding, a former senior district official told RCI.

CORE’s leaders also changed CTU’s political strategy by focusing on social justice issues to extend its influence, a shift embraced by teachers’ unions in Los Angeles and other cities. The strategy found support at the State Capitol in 2022 when lawmakers enacted a CTU-backed amendment to the constitution that allows government unions to bargain over a wide range of issues, such as climate change and immigration, that go beyond bread-and-butter negotiations for wages and benefits. 

CTU’s biggest triumph was the mayoral election of Johnson, a former middle-school teacher. CTU and other teachers’ unions provided Johnson with more than 60% of his campaign money and a robust door-to-door ground game, says Smith. 

“CTU hand-picked Johnson to run, and the union is the reason he won,” Smith said. 

As mayor, Johnson has unabashedly embraced the union’s agenda, calling himself an “advocate” for schools to make sure they get more funding and don’t suffer any cuts or closures. The mayor’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Johnson’s advocacy stirred a remarkable round of political turmoil. In July, the mayor demanded that the district take out a $300 million loan to pay for the teachers’ pay hike proposal that began at 9% a year, according to a letter from the CEO’s attorney. 

Martinez, who served as chief financial officer before becoming CEO, refused to take on more debt, fearing it would harm the district’s already low credit rating and boost the cost of borrowing. Martinez’s concerns were later affirmed in a warning from an S&P analyst. 

In September, Johnson told his appointed school board to fire Martinez, the letter said. But instead of ousting the CEO, the entire board resigned, prompting city council members to issue a statement decrying the “instability to our school district.” Johnson then appointed a new board that, in December, fired the CEO without cause.

An Impasse

The union’s initial long list of demands was breathtaking. It included social justice priorities – gender support and restorative justice coordinators, climate champions, social workers, sanctuary protections for migrants, housing for homeless students, and solar panels – as well as more typical requests for librarians, art and bilingual teachers, and sports programs. 

Instead of lifting achievement, a priority associated with conservative educators, CTU leaders frequently say their goal is to bring “joy” to education. “Robust enrichment programs are what kids get excited about and what makes them fall in love with school,” said CTU attorney Latoyia Kimbrough at a press conference in January. “They shouldn’t have countless hours of standardized testing.”

Although the two sides have agreed on many areas of expansion, negotiations have reached an impasse, partly over CTU’s approach to education. Among its demands: teachers should be able to pick their own curricula, including antiracist and social justice-focused materials, rather than use those supplied by the district; teachers should have control over diagnostic assessments that identify students who need extra help rather than use a universal district test that allows it compare results; and the district should push lawmakers to scrap the current evaluation process partly because black and Latino instructors receive less favorable ratings, and in the meantime, evaluations for most tenured teachers should occur less frequently, or once every three years. 

Chicago’s sustainable community schools are the apotheosis of CTU’s vision for education. They get an extra $500,000 a year in funding to provide culturally responsive instruction, social services, and restorative justice counseling to address the needs of low-income students. The results of community schools in Chicago and nationwide have been mixed, with some studies showing they boost attendance and academic performance and others demonstrating no improvements. 

District leaders are skeptical about the value of community schools and consider them as a way for CTU to hire its allies to provide the extra services, said the former senior district official. But the district agreed to increase the number of community schools to 70 from 20 because it can’t say no to every union demand.

“We can’t assume that wraparound services in these schools automatically will result in better academic performance,” said William Corrin, who has evaluated community schools as a deputy director at MDRC, a policy group focusing on low-income communities. “It depends on the intensity and quality of the implementation. This is hard stuff.” 

Martinez is pushing against much of CTU’s educational agenda. His view on the importance of high standards with curricula, testing, and teacher evaluations was partly shaped by his years as a student in the Chicago district. 

The CEO has overseen a notable improvement in student test scores after a decade of decline in Chicago and many urban districts. During the pandemic, he spearheaded the effort to hire academic coaches for teachers and tutors for students to reverse learning loss. Between 2019 and 2023, Chicago posted the greatest growth in reading among big districts, according to a study from Harvard and Stanford. Still, fewer than a third of students in grades three through eight are proficient in reading. 

“It’s very satisfying to see yet another sign that our investments in the classroom are yielding positive results, and that students are moving in the right direction,” Martinez said in June. 

A Strike Looms

Martinez said at a press conference in January that these academic gains would be jeopardized if he capitulates to CTU’s wage and staffing demands, which would prompt a wave of destabilizing layoffs. 

The union proposal would cost an additional $2.4 billion, the district says, or about $800,000 more than it can cover. The city and state are both running large deficits, and there’s no indication that they will be sending more money to the district anytime soon to cover the difference. 

CTU says the district is understating the available resources to pay for its demands. Leaders say the district could draw from its fund reserves set aside for emergencies and borrow more money since it hasn’t hit its debt limit of $13.6 billion. More local property tax revenue for the district is also expected in coming years. 

The Civic Federation, a nonpartisan governmental financial research group, recently warned the district against using more debt or cash reserves to cover the contract, which could lead to credit downgrades and ruin.  

“The current situation is so serious that a state financial takeover is not and should not be out of the question,” the federation’s report said.  

It’s now up to the arbitrator, who is expected to propose a resolution in early February. 

But CTU doesn’t have much faith in the arbitrator’s fact-finding process, which it says is biased in favor of the district since it stresses the importance of its financial condition rather than the needs of students. 

The union has a few options. It could wait until the mayor appoints a new CEO in five months and hope for a better deal. Or it could strike. 

“CEO Martinez has decided to put his personal politics above the interests of CPS students, families, and educators,” CTU attorney Thad Goodchild said at a press conference in January.  “We are headed into a fact-finding process that has twice been a precursor to a strike.”

Update: On Feb. 6, the Chicago Teachers Union rejected the neutral arbitrator’s recommendations for ending the contract dispute with the school district and can give notice to strike after a brief period. 

This map, via Visual Capitalist’s Pallavi Rao, locates Google’s data centers that consume the most water in America.

Why do data centers need water? It’s because computer servers generate significant heat that must be dissipated to maintain performance.

As a result, water is used in chiller plants, evaporative cooling systems, and humidification to manage temperature levels.

Data is sourced from Google’s 2024 Environment Report.

Ranked: Google’s Thirstiest Data Centers

Google’s data center in Council Bluffs, Iowa consumed nearly 1 billion gallons of water in 2023, by far the most by any single complex listed in their report.

All of that water was potable, i.e., safe for drinking.

The data center complexes in Mayes County, Oklahoma and Berkeley County, South Carolina are the next “thirstiest,” using 750–800 million gallons of water a year.

These top three locations are well-above their counterparts across the U.S., and the rest of the world in water usage.

ℹ️ Fun fact: the U.S. has nearly half of the world’s 12,000 data centers. Germany and the UK are distant runners-up.

Together all of Google’s data centers used nearly more than 6 billion gallons of water in 2023, the equivalent of 41 golf courses.

Do Google’s Data Centers Drink Water?

Technically, data centers don’t actually “consume” all the water they use. Most of it is circulated in a closed-loop cooling system, with some loss.

However these numbers are from Google’s Sustainability Report, which specifies the water it’s withdrawn from the supply, discharged, and “consumed,” with the latter visualized here.

Also in drier areas, water is actively used to control humidity by evaporation which means it is being lost to the surroundings.

Finally, heated water returned to the ecosystem can have an adverse environmental impact.

The other thing data centers need a lot of: electricity. Check out Data Center Electricity Consumption by State for a breakdown.

Authored by Charlie Doughtry, Jackie Benson, and Ali Hajibeigi via Wells Fargo,

Summary 

Eagles vs. Chiefs in SBLVII Redux 

The Philadelphia Eagles will take on the Kansas City Chiefs in the Super Bowl this Sunday. You aren’t experiencing déjà vu; the two teams last met in the league championship game two years ago in 2023. The Eagles will seek to avenge the loss with a new offensive weapon and a revamped defense loaded with young talent. The Philadelphia economy has also been flying high as of late, with the metro economy boasting low unemployment and solid job growth. Meanwhile, the Chiefs are aiming for their third straight championship, which would make them the first NFL team to achieve such a feat. The Chiefs franchise turnaround over the past decade echoes an economic renaissance in the Kansas City economy, which is now outperforming many of its Midwestern peers.

Eagles and Chiefs Down in New Orleans 

Super Bowl LIX kicks off on Sunday at Caesars Superdome in New Orleans in a matchup that will feature the Philadelphia Eagles and Kansas City Chiefs. The final game of the year is certain to be an entertaining showdown between two of the top teams in the NFL. The Kansas City Chiefs will have competed in five of the past six Super Bowls and look to be the first team in league history to win three consecutive Lombardi Trophies. Meanwhile, the Eagles have will seek to dethrone the defending champs in what will be their fourth Super Bowl appearance since 2005. 

Millions of viewers are expected to tune in to catch the 59th installment of the Super Bowl. In 2024’s version, over 120 million viewers watched the big game, marking the highest total ever and a turnaround from a recent slump. 

Between 2015 and 2021, both the total number of viewers and Nielson household rating for the Super Bowl trended lower, consistent with reduced viewership numbers across professional and college sports. 

The recent turnaround has coincided with higher advertising costs during the big game.

In 2024, the average cost of a 30-second ad was $7 million, similar to 2023’s total but 13% above the recent low of $6.2 million in 2021. Zooming out, advertising space during the Super Bowl has become increasingly valuable since the first championship game in 1967. While the total number of viewers have tripled, the average inflation-adjusted cost of a 30 second-ad is now almost 15 times higher. 

The recent turnaround in ratings can be owed to a number of factors ranging from offense-friendly rule changes to the presence of beloved international megastar Taylor Swift. However, the emergence of the Kansas City Chiefs dynasty led by quarterback Patrick Mahomes is likely the driving force. There is little left to be said about Mahomes except that he is only 29 years old and already trending toward “GOAT” status. Currently, Mahomes is without peer, however his reign is by no means secure thanks to a growing stock of elite young quarterbacks across the league. Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts is just 26 years old but will be playing in his second championship. Meanwhile, the Buffalo Bills’ Josh Allen and Baltimore Ravens’ Lamar Jackson are both under 30 and currently lead as candidates for MVP. Over in the NFC, the Washington Commanders’ storybook upset of the top-seeded Detroit Lions was led by rookie Jayden Daniels. Elsewhere, Jordan Love of the Green Bay Packers and Sam Darnold of the Minnesota Vikings had their teams in the playoffs despite playing in NFC North division, which ended the season with the highest overall win percentage.

Fly Eagles Fly 

The Eagles will seek to avenge 2023’s loss with a similar cast of characters and a major new offensive weapon. Philadelphia acquired Saquon Barkley this offseason from the New York Giants. Barkley posted historic levels of offensive production for a running back this year, coming close to setting the all-time regular-season rushing record. The power-house running back joined Jalen Hurts, all-pro wide receiver A.J. Brown and the top-ranked offensive line in football. Since Super Bowl LVII, the Eagles have made significant changes the defensive side of the ball. Veteran cornerback Darius “Big Play” Slay will once again take the field, however most other positions will be filled with younger talent. In addition to a pack of former Georgia Bulldogs in Jalen Carter, Jordan Davis and Nolan Smith, the Chiefs will line up against defensive rookie of the year candidates Quinyon Mitchell and Cooper DeJean. 

The Philadelphia economy has also been flying high as of late. When the Bird’s last played in the Super Bowl in early 2023, employment in the Philadelphia metro had yet to recoup all the jobs lost during the pandemic. A strong pace of employment growth has generated a full recovery ever since, with the employment level at the end of 2024 over 4% above the peak set in February 2020. In addition to an increase in public sector headcounts, hiring in Philly’s influential “eds and meds” sector has been the driving force behind the overall pick-up in job growth in recent years, notably in the metro’s burgeoning healthcare, biotech and life sciences clusters. Job growth has moderated somewhat more recently, yet remains strong enough to keep unemployment low. The metro unemployment rate stood at 3.8% in November, not far from the 3.4% record low posted in the summer of 2023. Although cooler, Philadelphia’s labor market is currently outperforming. The metro unemployment rate has held steady below the national rate, which has drifted up over the past year. What’s more, the metro labor force has expanded strongly over the past few years and currently sits near an all-time high of 3.3 million workers. 

The strength in Philadelphia’s labor force growth stands out compared to most other major metro areas in the Northeast, many of which have experienced a sluggish rebound following the pandemic.

Kansas City Chiefs Going for a Three-Peat

The Kansas City Chiefs will make their third straight Super Bowl appearance this Sunday. Although the Chiefs finished the year with a 15-2 record, one of the best records in franchise history, the team suffered a number of injuries over the course of the season which contributed to a noticeable lack of offensive pizzazz for the defending champs. Even still, the connection between Patrick Mahomes and tight-end Travis Kelce remained alive and well, and the arrival of speedster wide receiver Xavier Worthy helped bolster the team’s offense. Meanwhile, the Chiefs elite defense has been a potent mix of brains and brawn, with defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo setting impenetrable defensive fronts with the help of all-pro defensive tackle Chris Jones. 

The Kansas City metro spans across Eastern Kansas and Western Missouri. Downtown KC is located on the Missouri side of the border and is known for its fervent sports fans and world-class barbeque. The Kansas City economy also has been vibrant lately. Following a robust 5.0% expansion in 2022, the metro’s real GDP registered a solid 2.7% increase in 2023, lifting the economy 9.6% above its prepandemic size in 2019. Recent momentum has been driven by sectors associated with a growing population. The retail trade and real estate, rental and leasing industries are two noteworthy examples, propelling more than half of the metro’s economic expansion in 2023. Migration to the city is steadily climbing. Kansas City welcomed 3.2K new domestic residents in 2023 and 3.6K new foreign residents in 2023, pushing the annual rate of population growth up to 0.6%. Affordable housing costs are a notable draw, with KC apartment rents and home values well below the national average. 

A growing population has helped to fuel the local labor market. The Kansas City metro added 18.6K jobs in 2024, amounting to a 1.6% annual increase. Yet, most of these gains occurred in the first half of the year. Employment has essentially moved sideways since June, weighed down by recent losses in education and accommodation & food services. As job growth slows, KC employers have had a harder time absorbing new labor force entrants. Kansas City’s unemployment rate picked up from its cycle low of 2.4% in July 2022 to 3.6% as of November 2024, which is still comfortably below the U.S. rate of 4.1%. The health care industry has bucked the trend, becoming a more prominent feature of Kansas City’s labor market. Persistent job growth in recent years has lifted the share of KC payrolls in health care & social insurance to 13%, its highest level on record. 

Arrowhead Stadium may be the site of future development. The Chiefs have called the stadium home for 53 years, making it the third oldest stadium in the NFL. Last year, the team unveiled plans for an $800 million renovation to upgrade and repair the facility. Those plans are currently in flux after Jackson County residents voted down a tax increase to fund the project. Now, reports suggest that the Chiefs may be looking for a new stadium, possibly on the Kansas side of the city, once their lease expires in 2031. Whatever the case, Arrowhead field will remain a mecca for sports fans in the years ahead. The stadium is slated to host six FIFA World Cup games in 2026.

Who Will Hoist the Lombardi Trophy in New Orleans? 

The Eagles and Chiefs will once again face off on Super Bowl Sunday. The Chiefs enter the contest as slight favorites, though they are arguably up against their toughest competition of the year. The Eagles underperformed to start the season, but now appear to be hitting their stride at exactly the right moment. Although favored, Kansas City will need to continue to play mistake-free football and put on a defensive display for the ages in order to three-peat, a feat that other dynasties such as the 1970s Steelers, 1990s Cowboys and 2000s Patriots failed to accomplish. The Chiefs are well-accustomed to winning close games, with narrow margins of victory common throughout the regular season and playoffs. That said, the Eagles have continuously turned close games into wide margins of victory over the course of the season.

Overall, we expect the Eagles to defeat the Chiefs 31-17.

Flight tracking data from Flightradar24 shows a US Air Force RC-135V/W Rivet Joint reconnaissance aircraft conducted its second signals intelligence (SIGINT) operation near cartel-controlled territories within Mexico this past week. The SIGINT mission coincides with remarks from US Border Czar Tom Homan, who warned on Thursday that he “expects” a hot confrontation between the US military and drug cartels. 

Flightradar24 data shows the USAF RC-135V/W Rivet Joint taking off from Offutt Air Force Base in Omaha on Friday evening. The Spy plane arrived at the heavily fortified southern border hours later and flew a SIGINT mission in US airspace from El Paso, Texas, to the Big Bend Ranch State Park, located in west Texas. 

The spy plane flew the west Texas route twice, following a figure-8 pattern around the Big Bend Ranch State Park, before returning to Omaha. The SIGINT mission appeared focused on gathering intelligence on drug cartels in the Mexican state of Chihuahua, which borders Texas. 

Chihuahua is a major hub for narco activity, primarily because of its strategic location along the U.S.-Mexico border. The state has been a battleground between the Sinaloa Cartel and the Juárez Cartel, fighting over trafficking routes of drugs and migrants into the US. 

On Monday, the USAF spy plane flew a similar SIGINT mission over the southern half of Baja California, a region home to heavily armed Tijuana Cartel and Sinaloa Cartel members. 

USAF Spy Plane Runs SIGINT Operation Near Cabo As US Preps For Potential Cartel Fight https://t.co/H7ZT5oG57Y

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) February 4, 2025

Recall that President Trump recently designated Mexican cartels as “foreign terrorist organizations.” When reporters asked Trump whether he would consider deploying US special forces operators to Mexico, he responded, “Could happen” and added, “Stranger things have happened.” 

On Thursday, Border Czar Tom Homan told ABC News hosts…

Pres. Trump’s “border czar” Tom Homan says the U.S. military could get involved in a conflict with the Mexican cartels.

“I think the cartels would be foolish to take on the military,” Homan said.https://t.co/2MHah30Ivj pic.twitter.com/Fi8ogjEfjM

— ABC News (@ABC) February 6, 2025

What’s important to note is that China’s “reverse opium wars” on America, think of it as hybrid warfare, is coming to an abrupt end under Trump. The drug death catastrophe of 100,00 Americans per year was unacceptable and somehow allowed to happen under the Biden-Haris regime and rogue Democrats who pushed open southern borders. 

Dismantling Mexican drug cartels could be a very messy operation, which is why the Trump administration fortified both borders. 

It is only a matter of time before the Trump administration properly targets China for flooding the world with subsidized fentanyl precursor chemicals.

Authored by John Waters & Adam Ellwanger via RealClearPolitics,

“I would support you to be spokesperson for the Pentagon,” Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal acidly told Pete Hegseth during his hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The insult was a poke in Pete’s eye for his career at Fox News. Blumenthal, who once fibbed that he had served in Vietnam as a Marine (he never left the States), thought Hegseth lacked the record of “leadership” to head an organization as large and complex as the Department of Defense. Evidently, it never crossed Blumenthal’s mind that this appointment was a first step toward making the department less large and complex.

On paper, former Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin had such “leadership” experience, as did Jim Mattis, Bob Gates, Leon Panetta, Donald Rumsfeld, and most other department secretaries over the last 25 years.

Pete, on the other hand, led a platoon in Iraq before smiling his way through Saturday morning news shows. Once, during a bit on “Fox and Friends,” Hegseth tossed an ax that sailed over its target and struck a man standing nearby. Pete grimaced, the man was unhurt, and the show went on.

Despite Blumenthal’s putdown, Hegseth’s nomination passed out of committee and cleared a floor vote on his way to becoming the youngest secretary of defense since Donald Rumsfeld was first confirmed 50 years ago.

Hegseth wasn’t the traditional nominee, and that’s the point. Blumenthal and others like him looked at Hegseth through distorted, outdated glasses. They fail to understand that Donald Trump is remaking the executive branch of the federal government, and it starts with choosing communicators.

Any effective network of strategic communication must be organized as a hierarchy – if there is no one “at the top” who determines the messaging, there will be as many messages as there are nodes in the network. The executive’s ability to achieve his goals is fundamentally dependent on high-fidelity, rapid information transferal, where the message is relayed broadly, quickly, and without significant distortion. That’s what effective communication is – and it explains why Trump’s first term was less effective than it could have been.

When Trump took office eight years ago, the left resisted him through the mainstream media, Hollywood, and corporate America, but the spearhead of “The Resistance” was his own government.

The bureaucrats of the vast “administrative state” did not see Trump as a legitimate occupant of his office. Thus, they didn’t merely distort the communication that came from the top. They tried to subordinate his agenda by refusing to transfer the information. More than that, they actively disseminated information that ran counter to the president’s stated aims. Accomplished people like Jim Mattis and Rex Tillerson were seasoned executives with deep managerial experience, but their priorities were misplaced: Rather than advance the president’s initiatives, they focused on protecting themselves and their legacies.

In his 1938 classic “The Functions of the Executive,” author Chester Barnard explains that an executive’s first task is to create a “definite system of communication.” Barnard wasn’t talking about the technical means of communication – whether that be telephone, memo, or computer – but the communicators themselves. These new modes of transferring information sometimes obscure the human interaction that remains the most effective form of information transfer.

“Communication,” Barnard writes, “will be accomplished only through the agency of persons,” meaning the appointment of the right people. Controlling an enterprise, he tells us, hinges on the executive’s choice of who will repeat and amplify the executive’s message. During the Biden interregnum, it seems that Trump absorbed these insights, almost as if by osmosis.

Consider the inauguration. There were Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg front and center. Yes, they are among the world’s wealthiest men, but they also happen to be the owners of national and global media organizations.

Trump spent the entire first day of his second term on camera, narrating his executive actions.

“Here, David, that’s for you,” Trump said, passing his trademark, Trump-embossed marker to an aide, then holding up an executive order before the cameras like a newborn baby.

Never before had a president so merrily occupied the stage of the Oval Office, hosting audiences of millions online and on television, as he signed documents, bantered with reporters and staff, and generally went about his business. Trump knew his daylong, unscripted availability would contrast sharply with his predecessor’s behavior. Joe Biden’s increasing withdrawal from the public and his inability to deliver spontaneous remarks hid his declining mental health, and the fact that he really wasn’t in charge.

All forms of communication either demand or simulate presence – and Biden hadn’t really been present for some time. This is so out of keeping with the long-established precedents for how to inhabit the Oval Office that it invites serious reconsideration of comments that former president Barack Obama made to Stephen Colbert, allegedly in jest:

People would ask me, “Knowing what you know now, do you wish you had a third term?” And I used to say, “You know what? If I could make an arrangement where I had a stand-in, a front man or front woman, and they had an earpiece in and I was just in my basement in my sweats looking through the stuff, and then I could sort of deliver the lines, but somebody else was doing all the talking and ceremony, I’d be fine with that.”

By the time Trump deposed Obama’s frontman and took the oath of office, he was activating many of the key nodes in his system of communication. Kash Patel, a charismatic attorney of ambiguous political origins, has a Truth Social following of 1.5 million people. Until recently, he sold children’s books, scarves, and other goods through his online merchandising site. Since leaving Congress in 2021, Tulsi Gabbard has been a successful talk show host, news commentator, and author. Her followers on X approach 3.5 million. 

Before the election, nobody anticipated Hegseth, Patel, or Gabbard would be selected to lead government bureaucracies. They lacked experience and pedigree, among other intangibles required under the Bush-Obama-Biden paradigm for leadership. The theme that binds them and others in Trump’s administration is their ability to think and speak on their feet, and to connect with large audiences. Via television and the Internet, they are able to go beyond rehearsed speech to win “followers,” in the parlance of social media.

In the attention economy, smart phones and computers continue to claim more and more of our time. And Trump’s nominees are some of that economy’s brightest entrepreneurs.

This matters because the old “leadership by committee” paradigm is dissolving before our eyes. The era of believing the group is the source of creativity – that leadership by committee is preferable to a strong, winning executive – is ending.

That idea unraveled under Biden, who depended entirely on a group of self-interested aides and advisors who concealed his infirmities and nudged along his decision-making according to their plans. He couldn’t hold a meeting on national security with the speaker of the House. He didn’t remember an executive order he’d signed on a matter of international security and commerce. He tried, meekly, to assert himself as his party’s nominee for president, only to be brushed aside by George Clooney and Nancy Pelosi.

The leadership-by-committee approach didn’t begin with Biden.

Obama was young and inexperienced when he assumed office, which was one reason he selected the much older (and supposedly wiser) Biden as his running mate. Obama assembled the “team of rivals” with people like James Jones as national security advisor, Bob Gates as defense secretary, and Hillary Clinton as secretary of state. All had decades of managerial experience and credentials from elite institutions. Like their governing principles, their style of dress, manner of behavior, modes of speech, and private lives seemed to be in lockstep.

The press applauded Obama’s humility and judgment in selecting this cast of people, commending his willingness to work “collaboratively” in locating the solution and meeting in the middle when necessary to get a deal done. Obama saw this as a new approach – part of the “change” that his election brought to global diplomacy. Speaking in London three months into his first term, he announced that in a complex world, “it is very important for us to be able to forge partnerships as opposed to simply dictating solutions. … [I]f there’s just Roosevelt and Churchill sitting in a room with a brandy, that’s an easier negotiation. But that’s not the world we live in, and it shouldn’t be the world that we live in.”

Despite Obama’s conviction in the novelty of this approach, Bush did it, too.

Memorably, he claimed that he was “the decider,” but the running joke during his presidency was that everybody but Bush was in charge – people like Rumsfeld at Defense, Colin Powell at State, Paul O’Neill at Treasury, and, of course, Vice President Dick Cheney. All were older, supposedly wiser, and more experienced in government and business. The public accepted what the media served up, that all these “executive” personalities provided depth and expertise to President Bush’s ultimate decision-making, ensuring Americans received the best, most sophisticated solutions to all problems, domestic and international.

The results, however, were disastrous.

Rather than win the war on terror, Bush’s advisers and executives used war as a pretext to expand the size and scope of government. In the process of fighting Islamic extremism, he naively built a network of information-gathering and surveillance that would eventually be unleashed upon “domestic extremists” – the Obama-era epithet for Americans who resist the left-wing, top-down model of administrative government.

Rather than stop illegal border crossings and legislate a solution to our demographic challenges, multiple administrations used illegal immigration to engineer society toward multiculturalism, creating along the way a social credit system based on race and sexuality that divides the country and demeans our humanity.

These “expert” managers from Bush through Biden were proper figureheads of an unconstitutional counter-state comprising some 78 government agencies and 35,000 lawyers who seek to govern the full span of human existence through rules and regulations. And although the governance-by-committee approach presented it as a more “inclusive” and ethical form of leadership, the truth was that, in practice, administrative managerialism pushed the powers of the American people first to the margin of politics, then out of government completely.

Trump repudiates that paradigm.

There will be no administrative committee that jointly deliberates a course of action and then finds a “compromise” that always amounts to a half-measure with little buy-in. Trump knows exactly what he wants to do and to whom he is obligated. For ten years, Trump has put forward his beliefs and accepted the public’s judgment again and again, modifying some positions but holding firm on most. His election marks the end of an era that put the group over the individual, administration over execution.

Trump’s second term will be fundamentally different from his first. Through the appointments of Hegseth, Patel, Gabbard, and others, Trump is establishing a system of communication that will facilitate his command of the executive branch and the country. By replacing resistors with transistors – highly capable communicators of his energy, ideas, goals, and politics – Trump will project his vision and his achievements to the world. It’s what the American people voted for on November 5.

John Waters is a lawyer. He served as a deputy assistant secretary of Homeland Security from 2020-21.

Adam Ellwanger is a professor at University of Houston – Downtown, where he teaches rhetoric and writing. He is a Higher Education Fellow at The Leadership Institute’s Campus Reform and a 2023 Lincoln Fellow at the Claremont Institute for Statesmanship and Political Philosophy. Follow him at @1HereticalTruth on X.

Goldman Sachs analyst James McGeoch published a note on Friday, informing clients that commodity mining and trading giant Glencore could be one of the most straightforward plays on rising copper prices, driven by AI-related demand and tightening commodity markets. He noted that Glencore’s upside potential extends beyond being undervalued, with a potential catalyst for a stock buyback program announcement.

“Why I like Glencore and think the bottom could be in – Mkt has hammered Glencore for poor prodn profile, margin compression, pessimistic commodity outlook, high beta, tariffs proxy and has become a value trap,” McGeoch said. 

He continued, “To change the direction of travel they need to: Start buying back own stock. Take prodn offline to show “value” over “volume”. Improve the margin per unit by tightening the mkt (balances are tight enough for small changes to allow it). Reduce capex, spin that into higher long term capital returns.”

Glencore shares in London 

McGeoch provided more color on what Glencore management could do to reverse the multi-year sinking ship.  

1. Announce a buyback. I am more bullish than most, basis the fact you gotta draw a line in the sand and at these prices that line is a ravine. Consensus is $3bn of returns – $1.5bn DPS (basis the formula) and $1.5bn Buyback. Important the Buyback has long been hinged by the Viterra sale and $1bn cash received. Note last night they got the second last approval Link(EU approval of Louis Dreyfus purchases, BG.US said they expect it to close soon, China is last standing and they are back form holiday).  Cons is $1.5bn, thats a meagre $500m of own cashflow top up. I know the CFO and his style, hes a CFO through and through, so lets see if the CEO can twist his arm and look at a 18month facility thats double that amount, alternatively they guide to a top up in August.
2. They will in my opinion cut a decent amount of prodn. See Passar closure yesterday , they have prev cut hard in Zinc, they will to my mind take off NEWC high CV tonnes, Ferrochrome in SA, could trim Nickel prodn and Cobalt is just terrible with African Copper and Chile lkely to guide lower. 3) reduce the capex and recylce that. Anyone following SSAB knows what a change of strategy and reduction in capex can do for your equity.

The analyst also highlighted rising copper prices, driven by factors such as AI-related demand (recall: ‘Next AI Trade’ theme), low global stocks, and inventory build in China, as key tailwinds for the miner: 

1. Whilst the numbers are debated, listen to the likes of Amazon “ambition constrained only by capacity” or META/Microsoft upgrading capex into the channel. None of it works without Copper. Note yday UAE to fund $30-50bn AI DC inv in France. 
2. Look to China post the Holiday. All the action out there is in this AI channel (GSXACAIT +4%) and the Buyer of Copper is China. Open Interest was +7%  today (+30k lots) on back of +6% yday (+24kt lots).
3. Global stocks are low, inventory build in China ahead of CNY were below the 5yr avg, supply disruptions are elevated post latest prodn guides for 2025. Demand line may be a question for construction, however in the green channel its strong.

McGeoch concluded: “Believe in AI, believe in Copper, believe in GLEN.” 

Authored by Ken Silva via Headline USA,

The Washington Post reported Friday that the United Kingdom’s deep state has demanded that Apple create a back door for them to retrieve all the content any Apple user worldwide has uploaded to the cloud—what would be an unprecedented erosion of online privacy and civil liberties.

Citing anonymous sources, the Post reported that the British government’s undisclosed order was issued last month. It reportedly requires Apple to give officials blanket capability to view fully encrypted material.

Typically, Apple has assisted authorities on a case-by-case basis—such as helping the FBI access a terrorist’s phone, for example. The Post noted that the access sought by the UK “has no known precedent in major democracies.”

🚨WaPo published an EXTREMELY important story today about a secret UK order for Apple to provide it w/ total access to all user data on the cloud — an order that would implicate Americans and the entire world.
The Post rightly notes that the UK’s order “has no known precedent in… pic.twitter.com/pA3uvpnekc

— Ken Silva (@JD_Cashless) February 7, 2025

According to the Post, the UK’s order was made pursuant to the sweeping U.K. Investigatory Powers Act of 2016, which authorizes law enforcement to compel assistance from companies to access user data.

“The law, known by critics as the Snoopers’ Charter, makes it a criminal offense to reveal that the government has even made such a demand,” the Post reported.

“Apple can appeal the U.K. capability notice to a secret technical panel, which would consider arguments about the expense of the requirement, and to a judge who would weigh whether the request was in proportion to the government’s needs. But the law does not permit Apple to delay complying during an appeal.”

An Apple spokesman reportedly declined to comment. The Post reported that Apple is likely to stop offering encrypted storage in the UK.

“Yet that concession would not fulfill the U.K. demand for backdoor access to the service in other countries, including the United States,” the newspaper added.

Western countries, including the U.S., have been pushing for total access to online user data for years.

In March 2021, for example, former FBI Director Chris Wray told the Senate Judiciary Committee that encryption was stifling his agents from investigating domestic extremism.

According to Wray and other law enforcers, tech companies should be able to build “backdoors” into their encryption that preserves privacy, while allowing for access when necessary. That, they say, strikes the proper balance between data security and national security.

However, numerous tech experts, civil libertarians, and others say that it’s impossible to build a backdoor that can’t be exploited by hackers. They also say that by banning encryption, the United States would be following in the footsteps of authoritarian countries such as China, which blocked the encrypted messaging app Signal.

“It is important to understand that any kind of back door (or front door) access for the ‘good guys’ can also be exploited by the ’bad guys,’” the pro-industry Information Technology & Innovation Foundation stated in a July 2020 report.

“For example, key escrow systems would introduce new attack vectors that could allow attackers to gain access to encrypted information, such as by compromising the system that maintains copies of the keys.”

Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/jd_cashless.

Russia’s Defense Ministry announced Friday that its forces had captured the coal mining town of Toretsk amid the slow but steady advance of its forces in Donetsk region. Russia calls the same town by the name of Dzerzhinsk, and state media is declaring its ‘liberation’ after Ukraine forces had long held it.

Journalist Guy Elster also wrote on X, “Russia said its forces had seized the key mining town of Toretsk in east Ukraine after months of fighting.”

Ukraine’s military had used Toretsk primarily as a staging ground from which to launch almost daily artillery, missile, and drone strikes on Russian front line positions in Donbass.

The Associated Press on Friday additionally detailed the ground situation as follows:

Alkhimov, the 28th Brigade officer, told AP his unit continued to hold its ground on Friday afternoon. He added: “Intense (Russian) assault operations are ongoing.”

DeepState, an open-source Ukrainian map widely used by the military and analysts, showed late Thursday that Ukrainian troops were on the northwest edge of Toretsk and still had some soldiers inside the town itself.

“The Russia’s claimed fall of Toretsk, if confirmed, would advance its sweep across the Donetsk, which has cost Moscow heavily in troops and armor but has paid dividends for the Kremlin,” AP continues.

“In the offensive, Russian forces crush settlements with the brute force of 3,000-pound (1,300-kilo) glide bombs, artillery, missiles and drones, then send in infantry units to attack the exposed defenders.”

Last year saw the area towns and cities of Avdiivka and Vuhledar fall to the Russian onslaught, with last month Velyka Novosilka as well as Kurakhove falling.

The Russian Defense Ministry has also announced that the two small villages of Druzhba and Krymskoye, which lie to the northeast of Toretsk, have been taken this week.

Aftermath video showing war-ravaged Toretsk:

Toretsk was once a typical European town, brimming with homes, parks, stores, and schools. Until russian turned it into ruins. pic.twitter.com/7tUhoOtiK6

— Kate from Kharkiv (@BohuslavskaKate) February 7, 2025

All of these had long generally formed a strategic belt of Ukrainian defenses in the east, which are fast crumbling, also as the key town of Pokrovsk is increasingly under threat. Military analysts say that once Pokrovsk falls, Russia will quickly be able to complete its hold over all of Donetsk.

Meanwhile, this week has seen a new offensive into Kursk by Ukraine forces, in a desperate effort to maintain some level of leverage before likely negotiations with Moscow commence.

Authored by Jason Ditz via AntiWar.com,

With Turkey focused on long-term goals in Syria that involve continuing to oppose Kurdish autonomy in the northeast, there are growing numbers of reports from Turkish officials that plans are being considered to establish new military bases inside Syrian territory.

Details are still emerging on what this might look like, and thousands of Turkish soldiers are already reported to be operating on Syrian soil, mostly targeting the Kurdish SDF.

Turkey has recently threatened invasion if the new Islamist government of Syria doesn’t eliminate the SDF.

The Islamists, the al-Qaeda-linked Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), has given multiple statements rejecting the idea of Kurdish autonomy. Turkish FM Hakan Fidan says the new HTS ruler of Syria is taking a firm stance against Kurdish “terrorists.”

That the HTS is largely giving Turkey whatever they want with respect to Kurdish territory doesn’t necessarily mean Turkey won’t seek to increase its presence in the country.

The Turkish Defense Ministry, however, has denied any specific plans for bases at this time, suggesting talk of new bases may be premature.

In the meantime, the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) continues to attack SDF territory, and Turkish warplanes and drones are attacking Kurdish towns and cities.

In the Raqqa Governorate, almost exclusively SDF territory, activists are increasingly critical of Turkish aggression.

Fighting on the ground with the SNA is still mostly further west than Raqqa, in the Aleppo Governorate. In recent weeks, the focus has been on trying to take the Tishreen Dam, and Kurdish protesters have been rally at the dam calling for international intervention to prevent the Turkish destruction of it. Tishreen Dam is a key source of fresh water and electricity for northeastern Syria.

Map of Syrian situation via Southfront.press:

Turkey has carried out multiple airstrikes against Tishreen Dam and targeted the protesters rallying there. It targeted those protesters again on Thursday, injuring an unknown number of them.

Authored by Lawrence Wilson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) was a little-noticed federal agency until it suddenly became the object of a fierce political battle over the limits of presidential power and the accountability of government bureaucracies.

When the Trump administration closed the agency’s offices on Feb. 3 and later placed most employees on administrative leave, USAID took center stage in a drama unfolding at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.

On one side is the Trump administration’s ongoing effort to make all parts of the executive branch comply with the president’s agenda. On the other side are congressional Democrats, who are warning that the action is a dangerous abuse of executive power and are vowing to fight it.

Meanwhile, many observers fear that USAID’s true purpose—to advance U.S. interests through the use of soft power—may be overlooked.

On Feb. 3, President Donald Trump appointed Secretary of State Marco Rubio as acting director of USAID. The next day, the president indicated that the agency may be shuttered and its functions permanently transferred to the State Department.

Here is why critics want to abolish or reform the agency, supporters want to save it, and what may happen next.

Influence as Power

USAID was established by an executive order of President John F. Kennedy in 1961 to advance U.S. foreign policy by offering developing nations technical assistance, help with education and health care, and disaster relief.

The idea was that turning poor countries into stable world citizens would benefit U.S. citizens, too. A stable, prosperous nation makes a good ally, the theory went.

Champions of USAID continue to see it as both an essential tool for foreign policy and a tangible expression of the goodness and generosity of the U.S. people.

Most observers agree that the agency does some good. Relatively small by Washington’s standards, USAID employs about 10,000 people and controls an annual budget of about $50 billion.

In 2023, USAID poured $10.5 billion into humanitarian aid and $10.5 billion into health programs in countries around the world, according to the Congressional Research Service.

One program that is often touted as a shining success story is the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, a USAID program that has provided more than $110 billion for controlling the spread of HIV/AIDS in more than 50 countries.

“Most estimates are that somewhere in the vicinity of 27 million people are alive today because President Bush initiated and Congress supported that program,” Scott Pegg, acting director of the Global and International Studies program and chair of political science at Indiana University–Indianapolis, told The Epoch Times.

President Donald Trump said in remarks to reporters on Feb. 4 that “some of the money is well spent.”

Yet the agency’s halo dims on closer inspection. Critics tell the story of an agency gone rogue, wasting millions of taxpayer dollars on inane programs, refusing to answer basic questions from congressional committees, and actively undermining the foreign policy goals of the United States.

Lost Purpose

The White House on Feb. 3. produced a list of projects funded by USAID that it characterized as examples of waste and abuse.

The projects include $1.5 million to “advance diversity equity and inclusion in Serbia’s workplaces and business communities,” another $47,000 for a “transgender opera” in Colombia, and $2.5 million for electric vehicles in Vietnam.

Rep. Wesley Hunt (R-Texas) listed further examples on social media platform X on Feb. 3, including $56 million to boost tourism in Egypt and Tunisia and $27 million for “reintegration gift bags” for deported Central Americans.

Hunt said the agency was behaving “like a child with YOUR credit card.”

Some USAID grant recipients include terrorist-controlled organizations, according to a study by the Middle East Forum released on Feb. 1.

The study found that $122 million has gone to groups aligned with designated terrorist organizations, including millions of dollars for organizations directly controlled by the Hamas terrorist group.

A July 2024 report from the U.S. Office of Inspector General noted deficiencies and vulnerabilities in USAID’s vetting process, which is supposed to prevent the diversion of U.S. funds to terrorist organizations.

In one case of apparent abuse, USAID partnered with Chemonics, an international consulting firm, to spend $9.5 billion to improve health supply chains. Chemonics allegedly overbilled the agency by up to $270 million and failed to meet its objectives, and the project led to 31 indictments for the illegal resale of USAID-funded materials, according to Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), who has called for an independent analysis of USAID grant recipients.

Ernst said USAID also provided nearly $1 million in funding to China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology, which the CIA has said was the most likely source of the virus that causes COVID-19.

USAID has resisted congressional oversight for decades, some lawmakers say, resulting in a culture of defiance.

“The agency has engaged in a demonstrated pattern of obstructionism,” Ernst wrote in a letter to Rubio on Feb. 4.

False claims were made that certain documents were classified to delay review by congressional staffers and to mislead Congress on the indirect cost of programs, Ernst wrote, adding that in some cases, this amounted to more than 25 percent of the grant total.

The agency refused to provide data on administrative costs, Ernst said. The agency later said that providing the data to Congress would violate federal law and that it had no obligation to respond because Ernst did not present a formal request from a “committee of jurisdiction.”

Read the rest here…