After many years of a massive refugee influx into Europe from Middle East wars, especially going to back to the height of the 2015 migrant crisis, several European countries have ordered a halt to processing asylum applications from Syrians. This comes after the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s government in Syria.

The UK, German, and Austria have confirmed they are freezing their applications. Germany alone has taken in some one million Syrians. Other countries halting their process includes Italy, Norway, Greece, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Finland.

Austria has gone the furthest, with country’s interior minister, Gerhard Karner, saying, “I have instructed the ministry to prepare a program of orderly repatriation and deportation to Syria.”

London’s Home Office also confirmed it has “temporarily paused decisions on Syrian asylum claims whilst we assess the current situation.”

“We keep all country guidance relating to asylum claims under constant review so we can respond to emerging issues,” a spokesperson said.

German officials have also begun signaling that Syrians should make arrangements to return home. Germany’s interior minister, Nancy Faeser, said on Monday that “Many refugees who have found protection in Germany now finally have hope of returning to their Syrian homeland and rebuilding their country.”

However, many Syrians would have greater fear of the new jihadist groups which took over Damascus, and might seek asylum given an al-Qaeda offshoot (HTS) now controls the country. This is especially true of Syrian Christians, Alawites, and Druze.

There’s no assurance that the situation will get any better in Syria under HTS rule, after the basically overnight collapse of an entire state system and its services. One NGO is speaking sense in terms of the realities on the ground:

“Chaos and violence continue to reign in Syria. Armed groups control large parts of the country and there is neither a stable government nor functioning state structures,” its spokesperson Tareq Alaows said in an email. “Much of the infrastructure has been destroyed and millions of people inside Syria are still displaced. Many cities are considered unsafe and there is no sign of a normalization of living conditions.”

Still, the presence of such large numbers of Syrian and other Middle East refugees has long unleashed a political firestorm in European politics. This is whey European officials are relieved that these massive changes in Syria provide an opportunity to send people back to their homeland.

Authored by Ian Proud,

Europe is falling apart at the seams and sowing the seeds of its own implosion…

In Georgia, the Americans and Europeans are actively sponsoring an attempt to unseat the democratically elected Georgia Dream government, in circumstances that are genuinely baffling. Having frozen indefinitely the EU accession process for Georgia in July of this year, Europeans are up in arms at the Georgian government’s decision to confirm a freezing of talks until 2028 (which is much sooner than indefinite). Georgia’s ruling President, in fact a French Diplomat, seems determined to stay in office to see through the regime change, despite her constitutionally allotted term coming to an end. She is roundly applauded in EU capitals and in Washington as a modern-day Joan of Arc.

From the very start of the war, it has always been clear that, absent direct NATO involvement in the fight, Ukraine could never win. Setting aside the immense human cost in lives lost, injuries suffered, and cities destroyed since the war started in 2022, Ukraine’s economy has suffered immense damage as the U.S. and Europeans leaders nonetheless encouraged Zelensky to fight to the last Ukrainian. Past his constitutionally allotted time as President, Zelensky clings to power, lauded a hero by his many admiring, so-called democratic fans in the west.

In France, the government of Prime Minister Michel Barnier is falling apart because he is trying to steer a deeply unpopular budget, that would require a painful mix of tax increases and spending cuts, through parliament without a vote. In one of the great ironies, his imminent failure is rooted in the anti-democratic tendencies of his previous employer, the European Commission. But it also talks to the rising popularity of the far-right National Front on Marine Le Pen, and a pan-European rise in populist parties fed-up with the failure of the moralising, yet mendacious, mainstream.

In Germany, the Rainbow Coalition of Olaf Scholz has turned a dirty brown, as irreconcilable tensions about spending and huge financial and military support for Ukraine have erupted. The tough fiscal backdrop that Germany faces is linked to its underperforming economy, which is less competitive than the U.S. and the Eurozone average. A huge increase in energy prices in Germany hasn’t helped; it’s an article of economic insanity to buy American Liquefied Natural Gas at a 30-40% markup on piped Russian gas. Car giant Volkswagen has announced plans to close at least three factories in Germany and lay off ten thousand staff. It’s all Russia’s fault, apparently, although the considered view is that a combination of U.S. and Ukrainian actors blew up the NordStream gas pipeline.

Inevitably, Russia is the common denominator in all of these situations.

Eastern European countries shifting to nationalist mavericks, that must be Russia’s fault too. Even President Yoon Suk Yeol’s bizarre failed attempt to impose martial law on an open, democratic and modern South Korea was blamed tangentially on Russia, given its strategic cosying up to North Korea. President Putin’s influence is everywhere!

A relentless avalanche of state propaganda casts President Putin, as the baddest baddies of all time. The British Foreign Office set up its own propaganda unit in 2014 specifically to fill the airwaves with stories about how Putin was wrong, and we were right. Every propaganda campaign needs a clearly defined enemy, after all. Hard-pressed European citizens must therefore accept economic hardship, democratic backsliding (a western liberal term) and an increased risk of nuclear immolation at the alter of defeating Vlad the Terrible.

And yet, Europe feels less safe now than it has since the Cold War, not because of what is happening in Russia, but because of what is happening in Europe itself. Anyone who thinks Germany in industrial decline, facing a growth in far-right sentiment, and with a lack of clear political leadership is basically fine, should cast their minds back to the Thirties. The fundamental, intellectual flaw in Macron’s internationalism, is that he only wants to engage with foreigners who act like coiffured Brussels bureaucrats. European leaders have lost the ability to look at the strategic landscape in a clear and dispassionate way that put’s Europe’s interests first.

Ever since 2014, European elites have tethered themselves inescapably to a U.S. democratic party obsession with defeating Russia because they don’t like dealing with Putin. That has led to an almost complete, and self-destructive severing of economic ties between Europe and Russia. That split in economic relations has undoubtedly contributed to the rise in nationalism and political tension across Europe as citizens struggle to pay their bills and ask why they are being sucked into an unnecessary war. As I have said many times before, peace in mainland Europe after World War II emerged in large part as previously warring counties sought to deepen economic ties, to create reasons to live in harmony. We are progressively, and dangerously, throwing away that legacy of hard-earned peace.

The greatest irony, although, perhaps, not the biggest surprise, is that European discord and war has only benefitted the U.S. economy. I remember well the efforts by the U.S. as far back as 2014, to prevent Russia from building new gas pipelines into Europe as the American fracking revolution was taking off. U.S. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham has recently made it clear that America wants to benefit through access to trillions of dollars of rare and precious minerals in Ukraine, as a deluded justification to pump billions of dollars of weapons into a losing war. Graham also vowed to ‘crush’ European economies that sought to enforce the International Criminal Court arrest warrant against Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

The only reason I think Trump may be a marginally better U.S. president than the disastrous Biden, is that he might finally make Zelensky agree a peace deal. However, it is also clear that Trump has no deeper sympathy towards Europe beyond stopping the needless injection of U.S. billions into Ukraine. He has, after all, promised across the board tariffs of 10-20% on goods from Europe and to ‘crush’ (a popular term of U.S. statecraft these days) any country that supports development of a BRICS currency.

Europe is falling apart at the seams and sowing the seeds of its own implosion.

Too many Europeans have bought into the lie that if we cut off all relations with Russia it would make us safe. In fact, it drags us ever closer to World War III. And for that, I blame the U.S. far more than I blame Russia.

Humans have always sought to create and implement tools that reduce meticulous tasks and enhance productivity–and AI is the newest tool people are adding to their toolbox.

In the past couple of years, AI tools like ChatGPT and Gemini have cemented themselves as staples in our modern work processes. Using large language models to do tasks like brainstorm ideas, summarize reports, or conduct research, have become increasingly common time-saving measures for knowledge workers.

In this chart, Visual Capitalist’s Kayla Zhu visualizes the share of knowledge workers who use their own AI tools at work, broken down by generation. The figures come from Microsoft’s 2024 Work Trend Index Report, which surveyed 31,000 knowledge workers across 31 countries.

AI at Work Cuts Across Generations

While companies are still figuring out how to best incorporate AI into their formal systems, a majority of knowledge workers across generations are already using their own AI tools at work.

Across all four generations, the proportion of workers using personal AI tools at work ranges from 73% to 85%.

Unsurprisingly, the generation with the greatest share of workers bringing their own AI tools to work is Gen Z at 85%.

Gen Z, having navigated school and their early career stages during the rise of generative AI, has found it increasingly necessary to acquire AI skills to meet the growing demands of employers.

However, using AI at work isn’t as straightforward as it seems.

According to Microsoft’s report, 52% of people who use AI at work are hesitant to admit using it for more important tasks, and 53% worry that using it on important work tasks makes them look replaceable.

Pew Research Center found that in 2022, 19% of American workers were employed in jobs that are the most exposed to AI, in which the most important tasks may be replaced or assisted by AI.

Information technology and finance workers specifically have the highest share of tasks expected to be impacted by AI.

To learn more about which artificial intelligence tools workers use the most, check out this graphic that shows the most popular AI tools by web visits.

Authored by Sam Bidwell via The Critic,

As Keir Starmer lambasts the “open borders experiment” of the past few years, are Britain’s politicians finally waking up to the scale of our immigration crisis?

With the latest figures from the ONS showing that net migration to Britain stood at more than 700,000 in 2024, with total incoming migration standing at more than 1.2 million, it’s long past time that substantive action was taken. If, as the Prime Minister said last week, our experiment with mass migration has been a mistake, then politicians have a duty to atone for their wrongdoing. Naturally, that means revising our visa rules in the first place, making it more difficult for new immigrants to come to this country — but even if we change those rules, we are still left with an almighty conundrum.

Under the current immigration rules, most migrants on work and family visas will be eligible for Indefinite Leave To Remain (ILR) status after just five years. ILR status holders have a right to live and work indefinitely in the UK — and gain access to additional support from the state, in the form of services like universal credit. ILR status is also tricky to remove, without amending the Nationality, Immigration, and Asylum Act 2002.

Combine this legal mechanism with a migration wave of several million people, and the result is a slow-motion fiscal car crash. Fail to act now, and in less than five years, millions of low-wage, low-skilled workers will be eligible for a lifetime of support from the British state. After just a few short years in the workforce, the British taxpayer could be left on the hook for a migrant’s benefits, social housing costs, healthcare, state pension — and the cost of any dependents that they choose to bring to the UK. This would, effectively, lock in this migration wave — deepening the fiscal impact of migration, and making it more legally challenging to remove those who came here over the past few years.

At a time when the UK already has limited fiscal headroom thanks to years of sluggish growth, is it fair to add billions of pounds in additional costs to the burden carried by the British taxpayer?

As research from the excellent Karl Williams at the Centre for Policy Studies shows, just 5 percent of work visas handed out in 2022-23 were given to migrants likely to be net contributors — with 72 percent of “skilled work visa” holders earning less than the UK average salary.

The OBR’s analysis admits that the average low-wage migrant worker costs the taxpayer £465,000 by the time they reach the age of 81.

Now, imagine millions of these low-wage migrant workers, all gaining eligibility for a lifetime of support from the state — clearly, our current ILR rules are not fit for purpose. 

Fortunately, revision of those rules is actually relatively easy.

As I argue in my recent research for the Adam Smith Institute, the Home Secretary has the power to change the conditions for ILR by issuing a Statement Of Changes In Immigration Rules, using their powers under the Immigration Act 1971 to change rules around entry and settlement. Unless Parliament passes a resolution within forty days condemning the changes, then those new rules pass into law — it really is as simple as that.

The Home Secretary could change the standard eligibility criteria for ILR from five years to fifteen, while leaving the five-year rule in place for migrants from the United States, the European Union, the Anglosphere, and the Asian Tiger economies. This distinction would help to ensure that Britain remains a competitive destination for high-value, high-skilled migrants, while addressing the bulk of migrants, from countries like India, Nigeria, and Pakistan. As my oven-ready legislative framework makes clear, Parliament might also choose to signal its support for the Home Secretary by passing a bespoke ouster clause, shielding these changes from pernicious judicial review. In our increasingly litigious culture, one can never be too careful.

This wouldn’t be the first revision of ILR rules, either — in 2006, then-Home Secretary Charles Clarke changed the eligibility time from four years to five. Nor would it leave Britain as a European outlier; in recent years, the Netherlands has extended its own settlement eligibility period from five years to ten, and Sweden has created new rules to allow the Government to revoke settled status from migrants.

For those of us concerned about the long-term social and fiscal impact of migration, a revision of the ILR rules is the best short-term use of our energy; the savings to the taxpayer speak for themselves. It would also give the Government time and space to think about whether or not it wants to reissue visas to those who arrived over the last few years. After all, a five year visa grant does not entitle an individual to a lifetime of residence in the UK — access to this country is time-limited by design. If the Government feels that mass migration has been a mistake, then it would be well-within its rights to refuse to reissue visas to low-skilled workers who arrived since 2021. This becomes much easier if our ILR rules are revised, preventing long-term settlement in the first instance.

The question is not one of possibility — as my research lays out, this change is both practically possible and politically defensible. It would probably also be enormously popular with the public — at a time when trust in politicians is already low, this would represent the most substantive policy intervention on migration for decades.

The question is one of political will, and sincerity of conviction. If Keir Starmer and his colleagues are serious about addressing uncontrolled mass migration, then they have a duty to lay these changes before Parliament. If this experiment really has been a mistake, then why should the British people live with the impacts for decades to come? If they fail to do so, then we can only assume that their platitudes about addressing this issue were just that — platitudes, empty words designed to comfort a frustrated electorate.

As a country, we deserve better than that — we deserve real action. It’s time to address Britain’s impending ILR crisis.

Today, approximately half of the world’s service exports are made on digital platforms.

While the top exporting countries of digital services are largely concentrated in developed countries, export markets in India and China are rising significantly. In 2023, India’s digital service exports topped $257 billion, rising by 17% annually. Meanwhile, the value of China’s digital service exports grew by almost twofold between 2019 and 2023 to reach $207 billion.

This graphic, via Visual Capitalist’s Dorothy Neufeld, shows the top 20 largest exporters of digital services in the world, based on data from the World Trade Organization.

Ranked: The Top Exporting Countries of Digital Services

To start, digital services are defined as those that are traded through electronic networks, such as apps or digital platforms.

They can encompass a broad range of activities including IT support, media streaming, R&D, and financial services. Given that a higher volume of business and consumer transactions are made online, digital services are making up a growing share of the global economy.

Here are the top exporting countries of digitally-delivered services in 2023:

With $649 billion in exports, the U.S. is the leading country for digitally-delivered services, at 15.3% of the world total in 2023.

Roughly two-thirds of service exports from America are conducted digitally. Financial services stands as the leading sector, while cloud services is among the fastest-growing overall. Moreover, advancements in AI are projected to boost digital exports looking ahead amid strong demand, cost savings, and increased innovation potential.

Ranking in second is the UK, where more than 80% of services exports are delivered through digital channels.

Following next in line is Ireland, one of the top exporting countries of computer services. Thanks to the country’s favorable tax policies, many big tech firms such as Google, Facebook, and Apple have their European headquarters in the country.

To learn more about this topic from a sector-based perspective, check out this graphic that breaks down different types of global digital service exports.

Authored by Andrew Korybko via substack,

The epic collapse of the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) over the past ten days and Assad’s cowardly flight from Damascus early Sunday morning herald the dawn of a new Syria.

The most immediate risk is that the entire country collapses just like Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya before it.

That could create a black hole of instability from which innumerable global terrorist threats could emerge. Here’s what has to happen to prevent post-Assad Syria from experiencing that dark future:

1. The Army & The Security Services Must Remain Intact

The three preceding cases of state collapse were characterized by the army and the security services dissolving shortly after their foreign-backed regime change plots succeeded. In Syria’s case, the SAA still exists as an institution even though it’s on the retreat to who knows where, perhaps to the Alawite-majority coast. It’s therefore imperative that it doesn’t fall apart and cooperates with the non-terrorist anti-government opposition (NTAGO) to ensure that everything doesn’t spiral out of control.

2. Political Reform Must Begin Without Delay

Lavrov repeatedly emphasized during his interview at Saturday’s Doha Forum that that the Syrian government and the NTAGO must immediately implement UNSC Resolution 2254 from late 2015, which calls for drastic political reforms such as a new constitution and UN-supervised elections. It was Assad’s refusal to compromise with the NTAGO that ultimately led to this disaster. Prime Minister Jalali will reportedly serve as caretaker leader during the political transition, however, which is a positive sign.

3. The Russian-Written Draft Constitution Must Be Revived

It was assessed late last month that one of “The Five Reasons Why Syria Was Caught By Surprise” is because Assad rejected the Russian-written draft constitution from January 2017’s first Astana Summit, which was constructively critiqued in detail here at the time. With him out of the way, the multiple concessions that this document called for Damascus to make might finally become a reality, and they might even be taken further than its authors initially envisaged given the new circumstances.

4. The Alawite & Kurdish Minorities Must Be Protected

The Alawite coast remains outside the control of Turkish-backed Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) terrorists for now as does the US-backed Kurdish-controlled northeast, both minorities of which must be protected from the jihadists. To that end, the aforesaid document could lay the basis for broad Bosnian-like federalized autonomy that could result in the coast falling under Russia’s “sphere of influence”, as could the northeast if Trump withdraws US forces from there like RFJ Jr. claimed that he plans to do.

5. The Interim Government Must Maintain Russia’s Bases

And finally, Russia can help the interim Syrian government fight against terrorists just like it helped Assad do from 2015 onward, so they must allow it to maintain its bases for that purpose. Their withdrawal would leave the Syrian state defenseless and the Alawite-majority coast at HTS’ mercy. In fact, since Russia’s intervention in Syria was driven by anti-terrorist motives, it might refuse to withdraw on national security pretexts and possibly midwife an independent coastal state to legitimize its continued presence.

Post-Assad Syria is on the brink of all-out collapse that could turn it into the world’s largest hotbed of terrorism if this process isn’t soon averted.

The most effective way to prevent this from happening is following the five pieces of advice from this analysis.

Anything less would greatly raise the chances of the worst-case scenario transpiring, but even in that event, Russia could still mitigate some of the damage if it continues bombing terrorists in Syria and supports the creation of an independent coastal state.

Authored by Jonathan Miltimore via the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER),

Discover more about the policies that shaped a decade of hardship… and the lessons they hold for today…

In 1940, Victor Records released the Dust Bowl Ballads, an album of songs written and performed by American folk singer Woody Guthrie. In two volumes and a dozen songs, the folk legend sang about the droughts that plagued North America in waves beginning in 1934 and ending in 1940.

“On the 14th day of April of 1935, There struck the worst of dust storms that ever filled the sky. You could see that dust storm comin’, the cloud looked deathlike black, And through our mighty nation, it left a dreadful track. From Oklahoma City to the Arizona line, Dakota and Nebraska to the lazy Rio Grande, It fell across our city like a curtain of black rolled down. We thought it was our judgment, we thought it was our doom.”

The lyrics of these tunes—those above come from “The Great Dust Storm Disaster”—reveal the psychological impact the Dust Bowl had on Americans, in no small part because it corresponded with another historical event: the Great Depression.

In her new explainer “The Economic Consequences of Populism,” historian Amity Shlaes points out that as the Great Depression dragged on, more and more Americans began to feel as if God had abandoned America. At the pulpit, pastors compared Americans to Job and to the Hebrews in the Book of Exodus confronted by locusts and plagues.

Shlaes touches on why so Americans felt as they did, noting that throughout the 1930s joblessness remained above 10 percent, while the stock market saw a 90 percent drop from its 1929 high, a peak it would not reach again until the 1950s.

As Americans endured extended economic plight, many came to believe they were experiencing the wrath of God.

One needn’t be a religious skeptic to doubt that Americans’ suffering was biblical retribution.

Today we know that even the Dust Bowl was a man-made ecological disaster, triggered by government wheat subsidies that encouraged unsustainable plowing under of erosion-resistant native plants.

And historians and economists have written extensively about what triggered the Great Depression: chief among them a lack of liquidity and the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act that restricted free trade.

Shlaes points out that far less attention has been paid to the question that should follow.

“What about the years that followed?

Why did recovery not return after five years, or after seven?

It is not, after all, a deflation shock, however sharp, that converted the initial depression, lower case, into a Great Depression, with capital letters.

It was the duration that made the Depression great.

Whether monetarist or Keynesian, economists respond to commonsense queries about the later years with a single line:

‘That is complicated.’ It is as if a sign has been placed over the period to intimidate the curious: ‘Here Be Dragons.’”

A decade of misery Americans experienced did not stem from an angry God. A careful reading of the facts of the period suggests they stemmed from bad economic policies, ones initially passed by President Hoover that grew worse under President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

In a highly readable Explainer, Shlaes illustrates the economic mistakes of the Great Depression – which famously included government slaughtering and burying 6.5 million pigs to keep prices high while millions of Americans were going hungry – were even more nonsensical than you realized.

Discover more about the policies that shaped a decade of hardship—and the lessons they hold for today.

In her explainer “The Economic Consequences of Populism,” historian Amity Shlaes delves into the Great Depression’s blundering economic policies, illuminating how misguided decisions led to prolonged suffering.

Yet a final thought, especially relevant now, involves the cost of politicizing economics. Any of us can understand that politicians must back silly or profoundly perverse policies to win an election. Many advocates of free markets will vote for candidates who emphasize anti-market concessions during campaign season, consoling themselves with the fact that the same campaigners, in a kind of aside, occasionally pay lip service to the power of markets. The voter, sometimes naively, hopes that once secure in office, the politicians will deliver the free-market policy. Sometimes, they do.

What is truly insidious however is when politicians advertise those subpar policies, from tariffs to, say, child credits or make-work jobs, as optimal economics, a guarantee of prosperity. For then, at least for a while, voters believe them. That is what happened in the 1930s. In such cases, the public, like the long-suffering 1930s electorate, becomes complicit in its own deception and disappointment.

In short, there is a price for placing faith in political leaders as one would in a church, a price for which voters are also responsible. “Have we found our happy valley?” Roosevelt asked when he called for a political license to continue his experimentation from on high in 1936. By reelecting him, even those many voters who did not have New Deal jobs agreed to continue to travel behind Roosevelt in his quest, and to tolerate policy that, at some level, they knew could not deliver. The consequence of this complicity was that second term of Depression.

The Americans who succumbed to political lures and failed to wind down, halt, block, or attenuate the New Deal were our great grandparents, or at the very least, our forerunners. Americans today owe it to them to forgive that error – and remember it. After all, they and we are one people.

It is possible therefore to extend the sage Anderson’s point.

The Great Depression did not endure because God struck America. It endured because our leaders played God. And because we let them.

Read her fascinating full analysis here: “The Economic Consequences of Populism”

*  *  *

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

On X, New York Attorney General Letitia James announced a new gun buyback event on Long Island for Saturday. The post was heavily ratio’d, with the usual X users in the reply section bashing the progressive politician and arguing how ineffective gun buybacks are at reducing crime. Meanwhile, it seems like James’ office has learned from previous gun buybacks how not to be exploited by the 3D-printed community.  

“On Saturday, December 14, we’re hosting a gun buyback event in Bohemia at the True North Community Church from 10AM-1PM,” James’ post read, adding, “No ID is needed, and no questions will be asked.” 

However, in small italicized font, James’ office wrote:

“Anyone bringing homemade or 3D-printed guns will be paid a total of $25, regardless of how many are turned in.” 

On Saturday, December 14, we’re hosting a gun buyback event in Bohemia at the True North Community Church from 10AM-1PM.

No ID is needed, and no questions will be asked. pic.twitter.com/PjFGsPD9XV

— NY AG James (@NewYorkStateAG) December 8, 2024

The reason: In 2022, New York’s attorney general had to revise the rules surrounding gun buybacks after an unidentified man from West Virginia exploited a loophole at an event in Utica, New York.

The man reportedly earned $21,000 in gift cards after turning in 60 printed auto sears, which likely cost him $50 in plastic filament. That’s a heck of a return. 

“Are you guys going to get scammed by the ppl bringing in those cheap 3d printed guns? It was like an unlimited money glitch for them,” one X user asked James. 

Someone found another “unlimited money glitch” … 

They have a disclaimer that you can only get $25 for 3D printed guns, and only $25 per person.

Now the glitch is to buy $350 AR’s or cheap used pistols. pic.twitter.com/ZEMaBmpTY6

— Elliott (Elijah) Hope ☦️🇺🇸👍🏿 (@RealElliottHope) December 8, 2024

The 3D printer community has woken up to “unlimited money glitch” over the years:

Man exchanges 62 3D printed guns that cost $186 to print for $3100 in gift cards.

When asked why he scammed the system, he said
“Pay fair prices [at gun buyback events], use private donations rather than tax dollars, and don’t destroy historic guns.” 1/2 pic.twitter.com/SdDiqa9McH

— Jo Jorgensen (@JoForLiberty) August 2, 2022

Turns out printed guns are just free money at buybacks.

Someone maxed out what they could collect in a South Carolina buyback yesterday and took in 750$ for between 25-50$ worth of Harlots. pic.twitter.com/5wkrfLtVFl

— chairmanwon (@chairmanwon) August 3, 2022

Someone turned in 62 3D printed “ghost guns” for $150/ea at a recent Houston “gun buy back” event 🇺🇸

This is the way 🇺🇸

$9300 will get you a lot of nice real guns 😎 pic.twitter.com/Ki00OsGRJM

— Mrgunsngear (@Mrgunsngear) July 31, 2022

James’ office appears to have learned from past mistakes. 

Authored by David Keltz via American Greatness,

“My fellow Americans, our long, national nightmare is over,” the soon-to-be President, Gerald R. Ford, declared on August 9, 1974, upon taking the Oath of Office – following President Nixon’s resignation in the aftermath of Watergate.

Those nine words could not be more appropriate to describe what President Donald J. Trump’s victory means for the United States and the world.

On January 20, 2025, our long national nightmare will indeed be over.

We will no longer have a president in serious cognitive decline—bordering on senility—who was never in charge of running the country and allowed his puppet masters to turn the greatest nation in the world into a Bernie Sandersesque socialist hellscape with our borders thrown wide open, our energy supply vastly diminished, our tax dollars spent on Ukraine and Green New Deal boondoggles, our once mighty military wokeified and weakened with recruitments dropping like flies (thanks Lloyd Austin)—our once mighty arsenal of aircraft and ships depleted—and our Justice Department corrupted and weaponized against the left’s political opponents.

On January 20, 2025, we will no longer have a president who enters his REM cycle soon after sundown while our enemies in Iran, China, Russia, and North Korea plot their next destructive moves—knowing full well that the Ivy League morons in charge of our national security (Blinken & Sullivan) won’t do a damn thing in the way of deterrence.

The stumbling, feet-shuffling, how-do-I-exit-the-stage, gibberish-speaking Manchurian president, who is somehow worth millions, despite working in government for half a century, will be replaced by a man who built luxury skyscrapers and golf courses all over the world and already presided over one of the most successful terms any president has ever had.

On January 20, 2025, we will no longer have a vice president who is as dumb as a doorknob and as incompetent as the New York Giants offense—but would otherwise make a fine president of the giggle club.

Replacing Mrs. Cackles in the second highest office in the land will be another successful businessman and well-respected senator who actually did grow up in poverty and showed us all his intellect, his charm, his cool demeanor, and sound judgment—during his masterful debate performance against one of the creepiest and phoniest individuals ever to seek the vice presidency.

On January 20, 2025, our adversaries will once again fear us and will be put on notice, should they fail to comply with the world’s greatest superpower—as Trump brilliantly laid out on Truth Social this week:

“Everybody is talking about the hostages who are being held so violently, inhumanely, and against the will of the entire world, in the Middle East—but it’s all talk and no action! Please let this TRUTH serve to represent that if the hostages are not released prior to January 20, 2025, the date that I proudly assume office as President of the United States, there will be ALL HELL TO PAY in the Middle East, and for those in charge who perpetrated these atrocities against humanity. Those responsible will be hit harder than anybody has been hit in the long and storied history of the United States of America. RELEASE THE HOSTAGES NOW!”

In other words, “F*** with us and find out.”

That is the kind of leadership that has desperately been lacking on the world stage for the past four years.

January 20, 2025, will also begin the start of a great U.S. economic boom and a cultural revival that has already begun.

Since Trump’s victory, the stock market has been soaring, with the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average recently closing at record highs and the value of Bitcoin surpassing $100,000.

Small businesses and large corporations will no longer be kneecapped by ridiculous regulations and excessive taxes and will not be penalized if, God forbid, they fail to show how woke they are.

In fact, the Wall Street Journal recently reported that Walmart, Starbucks, Boeing, and other corporations are already dismantling their DEI programs and will stop promoting anything having to do with “racial equity” or “LGBTQ.”

As the great economist Milton Friedman once said, “There is one and only one social responsibility of business—to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game.”

And thankfully, the era of woke sports also appears to be dead. Instead of athletes kneeling for the National Anthem, now NFL and college football players do the famous Trump YMCA dance after scoring a touchdown—or after defeating an opponent in the UFC ring.

These are all positive developments.

But some things will unfortunately remain the same.

Hollywood will continue to make anti-white, anti-male, and anti-Christian films that routinely mock middle America. They are free to do so, but their box-office numbers will likely suffer.

And the leftist media will continue its crusade against conservatives and spew its regular anti-Trump derangement pieces—full of falsehoods and unverified sources that bear little or no resemblance to reality.

But the good news is, very few people take The New York Times or The Washington Post seriously anymore—with Gallup reporting that just 31 percent of Americans have confidence in the media to fairly and accurately report the news—a new all-time low.

Thanks to Elon Musk, free speech is no longer an antiquated relic controlled by left-wing tyrants—X is where the masses go to get their news now.

And thanks to President Trump, there is a renewed sense of pride and love for the country.

The stars and stripes are back in vogue.

On January 20, 2025, our long national nightmare will finally be over—unburdened by what has been.