Chinese tech giant Huawei Technologies is preparing to break free from Western technology with its new flagship smartphone, which features domestic chips and homegrown software.

During the Tuesday launch event of the Mate 70 series, Richard Yu, the chairman of Huawei’s consumer business, told the audience, “This is our most powerful phone (in the Mate series),” adding, “We have always been copied but never surpassed.”

The release of the Mate 60 in 2023 sent shockwaves through Washington, D.C. political elites who had attempted to hinder Huawei’s smartphone advancement through sanction warfare. However, the Mate 60 was found to feature cutting-edge domestic chips. 

Yu explained that all new Huawei smartphones and tablets will be equipped with domestic chips in 2025 and beyond. He also said these devices will no longer feature Google’s Android operating system but will instead be powered by Huawei’s own operating system called “HarmonyOS Next.”

“HarmonyOS Next has good potential as an alternative in China,” Will Wong, senior research manager at IDC, told CNBC. 

Lucas Zhong, a research analyst at Canalys, told CNN that the Mate 70 represents a “critical step” in Huawei’s software evolution. He said pivoting away from the Android ecosystem “will be essential for Huawei to maintain momentum in the premium segment, solidify consumer loyalty, and attract potential platform switchers.” 

The Mate 70 signifies that Chinese companies can circumnavigate White House chip sanctions and achieve a complete disconnect from the West with their own operating system. It also symbolizes that the tech war between the US and China may only accelerate with President-elect Donald Trump’s return to the White House in mid-January.

Mengmeng Zhang, a senior analyst at Counterpoint Research, estimated that Mate 70 series production should achieve about 10 million shipments over its lifetime, adding: “It will take time for Huawei to expand the developer community and establish a competitive … ecosystem.”

Authored by Parker Thayer via RealClearPolitics,

It’s not your imagination; get-out-the-vote ads were more obnoxious this year. Thousands of people were shocked to receive intimidating letters claiming their voting history was being monitored, “nonpartisan” mail-in ballot request forms bearing Michelle Obama’s face, misleading text messages telling them they had already voted, and remember-to-vote postcards designed to look like lottery tickets. Most people had never seen tactics like these before, but they were everywhere in 2024.

Why?

The short answer is that sagging polls made the left’s get-out-the-vote (GOTV) machine desperate, and it dug deep in its bag of tricks to find ways to win. The full answer requires a peek under the hood of the left’s vote machine to discover the hubris of identity politics and Democratic donors.

Most of the obnoxious ads came from voter registration “charities” legally required to be nonpartisan. Despite the law, it’s been an open secret for years – decades – that groups like Voter Participation Center, Everybody Votes Campaign, and State Voices exist almost exclusively to help Democrats win by “organizing” the “New American Majority,” a made-up cocktail of all demographic groups that just so happen to favor Democrats. Hundreds of groups use this model, and a $1 billion industry thrived in the shadows, thanks to the neglect of the IRS and the media.

The industry enjoyed tremendous success in 2020, registering millions of swing-state voters to defeat Trump while attracting more donors than ever before, but after 2020, everything began to collapse. The industry’s success led to unprecedented scrutiny from journalists, Republican legislators, think-tank leaders, and even law enforcement. For the first time, voter registration groups were hiring PR staff. Meanwhile, actual members of the “New American Majority” were leaving the Democratic Party.

It started as a trickle.

In November 2023, George Soros canceled a $67 million pledge to Latino get-out-the-vote groups after “Democrats [saw] Latinos peel away from the party.” In January 2024, an interview with the leader of the Everybody Votes Campaign, the industry’s biggest player, revealed that Everybody Votes, which had registered around 850,000 voters annually and 5.1 million total from 2017-22, had only registered 400,000 more by the start of 2024. The interview also showed EVC was struggling to circumvent newly passed election integrity laws because “keeping up with those laws is time-consuming, it’s expensive … partners, and even funders, are getting worried that this work is too risky.”

In April 2024, the trickle of desertions from the would-be “Majority” became a flood when a memo from Democratic strategist Aaron Strauss “sparked a furious debate in Democratic circles about whether to narrow the focus of voter registration efforts to avoid signing up likely Republicans.” The memo advised Democratic megadonors to abandon “nonpartisan” voter registration because most unregistered voters were now Republicans. “Indeed, if we were to blindly register nonvoters and get them on the rolls, we would be distinctly aiding Trump’s quest for a personal dictatorship,” Strauss declared.

The memo was poorly received. Partisan donors were loath to give up their favorite tax-exempt toy, and the registration industrial complex wanted the money, so the grift continued. In 2024, AllByApril, a donor coalition led by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, doubled down, ensuring checks to voter registration groups were delivered by April to maximize election impact. The campaign raised $150+ million and was joined by 174 donors. Perhaps some donors quietly cut back, but it seems like Strauss’ warning was ignored.

As registrations became harder to collect, desperation mounted. Multiple vendors to Everybody Votes were caught fraudulently inflating their numbers. Voter Participation Center was caught filtering its Facebook ads to avoid Republicans. Finally, the creepy “we’ll know if you voted” ads were deployed, alienating the “charitable” GOTV industry’s possible allies. Now the industry finds itself alone against hundreds of disgruntled donors and a Republican trifecta that it accidentally helped create, while legislation to revoke the tax-exempt status of partisan “charities” is in vogue like never before.

It’s poetic justice.

Parker Thayer is an investigative researcher at the Capital Research Center.

Americans have high expectations of what it means to be financially successful, but many of them do not expect to meet their desired level of success, according to a survey by financial planning company Empower.

An annual salary in excess of $270,000 is needed for a person to be considered successful in the United States, the Nov. 22 survey found.

In terms of net worth, the threshold is at $5.3 million.

As The Epoch Times’ Naveen Athrappully reports, according to the Social Security Administration, the national average wage last year was $66,621. Meanwhile, the average net worth of a family in 2022 was $1.06 million, according to data from the U.S. Federal Reserve.

Amid high expectations, almost half of the respondents said they will never achieve the success level set for themselves. Currently, just above one-third consider themselves to be financially successful. Half the respondents said they are not better off than their parents, and will never be.

The state of the economy and insufficient or irregular incomes were cited by respondents as major challenges to achieving their desired level of success.

Other factors include not knowing how to manage finances, not having clear financial goals, overspending, debts, and delaying financial planning.

In May a report from the U.S. Federal Reserve revealed that the share of Americans doing “at least okay financially” fell from 78 percent in 2021 to 72 percent last year. Even though inflation declined in 2023, it continued to be cited as a key financial concern.

The financial situation for a majority of adults worsened compared to the previous year because of changes in the prices of goods and services, the report said.

A Gallup survey from earlier this year found that inflation was cited by all income groups as a key financial problem, with more than 40 percent of households on annual incomes of more than $100,000 worried about the issue.

Inflation Weighing on Lifestyle

An October report from Bank of America found that around 20 percent of households with annual incomes higher than $150,000 appear to be living paycheck to paycheck. Bank of America speculated that the reason could be tied to home purchases.

“Higher-income households may have bought larger, more expensive, homes and consequently have bigger mortgages. And often along with bigger homes come bigger insurance costs, property taxes, and utility bills,” the report said.

According to an April report from financial service company PYMNTS, one-third of high earners were living paycheck to paycheck. Among those earning $100,000, this figure was 48 percent.

More than 20 percent of individuals making over $200,000 and fully dependent on monthly salaries to make ends meet said they were living with tight budgets because of insufficient income.

During his election campaign, former President Donald Trump vowed to tackle inflation.

The Republican Party has proposed broad measures to lower inflation, one of which involves boosting American energy production.

“Republicans will unleash energy production from all sources, including nuclear, to immediately slash Inflation and power American homes, cars, and factories with reliable, abundant, and affordable energy,” states the GOP 2024 platform document.

Other proposals include reining in wasteful federal spending and cutting down costly and burdensome regulations. Republicans also aim to stop illegal border crossings into the United States and deport illegal immigrants.

Open border policies have resulted in driving up the cost of housing, health care, and education for Americans, the document states, suggesting that tackling the immigration crisis would contribute to lowering inflation as well.

However, Ralph McLaughlin, senior economist at real estate listings website Realtor, says president-elect Trump’s proposed crackdown on illegal immigration could end up having “large and negative consequences on the U.S. housing market in both the short and long run.”

McLaughlin said deporting illegal immigrants could “severely hurt the labor supply needed for new homebuilding since up to a third of residential construction employment consists of foreign-born workers.”

In the long run, the “broader economy” could end up being negatively affected, he said.

Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

The US military will set up temporary bases to deploy missile units along Japan’s southern islands in the event of a Taiwan contingency, Japan’s Kyodo News reported on Sunday.

The report said that under the first part of a joint US-Japan operation plan, a new Marine Corps unit designed for island hopping in the Western Pacific, known as the Marine Littoral Regiment, will be deployed with HIMARS rocket systems along the Ryukyu Islands.

The Ryukyu Islands, known as the Nansei Islands in Japan, include Okinawa and stretch south toward Taiwan. Japan’s military will support the US Marine deployment along the island chain by providing logistical support, including the supply of fuel and ammunition.

The Kyodo report also said the US would “deploy the Multi-Domain Task Force’s long-range fire units in the Philippines.”

Earlier this year, the US deployed a new intermediate-range land-based missile system to the Philippines, known as the Typhon, which is capable of firing nuclear-capable Tomahawk missiles.

The report said the four new bases the US is establishing in the Philippines as part of a military deal signed last year are expected to be used to respond to a Chinese attack on Taiwan.

Map showing the location of the Ryukyu Islands:

The US is openly planning for a future war with China over Taiwan despite the obvious risk of nuclear war, and strengthening military ties with the Philippines and Japan is key to those plans.

Authored by Yohan Yun via CoinTelegraph.com,

Ethereum’s rollup-centric layer-2 roadmap has successfully tamed the congestion and ludicrous gas fees on the base layer – but at the cost of creating a fragmented ecosystem.

Designed to scale the network, L2s have become little islands on their own, each with its own rules, systems and barriers.

Liquidity is siloed, users are stuck navigating bridges between L2s, and developers are forced to choose whether they want to build on Base, Arbitrum or Starknet.

But in the past year or so, the community has begun to talk more and more about based rollups as a potential answer to the problem. According to reputation, based rollups will bring back interoperability and composability and enable DeFi Summer’s “Money Legos” concept to be resurrected on L2s (this refers to DeFi protocols that can seamlessly interact with one another). In short, if they achieve everything they promise, based rollups will make the Ethereum ecosystem feel like Ethereum again.

The essential problem that based rollups try to address is the use of individual sequencers on L2s — sequencers are the engines that order transactions on blockchains.

“When I first learned about the L2 scaling roadmap from Vitalik [Buterin’s] blog post, it was somewhat difficult for me to accept because it came with trade-offs,” blockchain engineer Teddy Knox tells Magazine.

“Unlike an L1, where you have a very large committee of nodes that are validating Ethereum, L2s in their original form have centralized sequencers that have special permission to sequence L2 blocks.”

Ethereum’s The Surge roadmap to achieve 100,000 TPS. (Vitalik Buterin)

Centralized sequencers fragment Ethereum’s L2s

While centralized sequencers can run very fast and make their operators a lot of money, they contribute to the isolation of different L2s. Transactions processed by one of the L2’s sequencers can’t easily be matched to interact with other L2s, and this lack of interoperability has been a major factor in the Ethereum roadmap FUD this year. (Interoperability between L2s can still be achieved via other methods without shared sequencers, but this would be “asynchronous,” meaning not real-time).

Based rollups (not to be confused with Coinbase’s L2 Base), proposed by Ethereum researcher Justin Drake, promise a solution to this fragmentation issue.

Unlike traditional rollups, based rollups push transaction sequencing back to the Ethereum L1, which was the case before L2s propped up.

“The based sequencing approach not only leverages Ethereum’s security but also contributes to its revenue and ecosystem cohesion, ensuring deeper alignment with Ethereum’s mainnet and fostering cheaper, faster transactions while directly supporting the network’s sustainability,” says Daniel Wang, co-founder of Taiko Labs, which has the first based rollup in production.

Taiko is returning about five times as much revenue to Ethereum as other rollups with centralized sequencers.

Taiko becomes the first based rollup Ethereum scaler. (Justin Drake)

Composability and based rollups

This sounds very promising, but as with anything, there are a bunch of problems.

For users to enjoy the benefits of based rollups, other L2s must adopt them, too. In Taiko’s case, they are working with Nethermind’s rollup Surge chain, which will be specifically designed to allow users to bridge back and forth with Taiko without having to go through Ethereum.

But despite being based on the same tech, the two rollups will still not be synchronously composable, Wang told Cointelegraph at Devcon.

“You need to have almost real-time validity proofs to prove both change at the same time,” he said. “I think we’re just not there yet, and we, as a project, we cannot afford to wait for that to happen before we launch.”

The pros and cons of centralized sequencers

When operated by a single entity or a small group, sequencers can order transactions without the delays associated with decentralized consensus or Ethereum’s 12-second block times.

The blockchain trilemma illustrates the challenge of optimizing decentralization, scalability and security simultaneously.

For many L2 networks, sacrificing decentralization was worth it to offer throughput that the Ethereum L1 cannot match, though it raises risks of its own.

“If the sequencer has to go down … there would be an impact to performance, or they could very much succeed in censoring your transaction absent any other feature,” Knox explains.

Using a centralized sequencer brings back many of the issues decentralization and blockchain attempted to fix in the first place, such as censorship and single points of failure — with MEV (maximal extractable value) exploitation being a big issue.

But while those sorts of concerns only keep Ethereum idealists up at night, for ordinary users, the big problem is switching between L2s.

Duncan Townsend, smart contract engineer at 0x, says the current process of bridging funds from one Ethereum L2 to another “is not a great experience.”

“Unless you’re using a chain abstraction protocol, the crosschain user experience in DeFi is bad,” he explains. “If you have basedness, you have composability. It doesn’t really matter what chain your tokens are on; you can get them on whatever chain you need cheaply and on demand.”

If rollups share this based sequencing framework, tokens and assets should be able to directly interact with one another without relying on a separate bridging mechanism, enabling native interoperability between rollups.

Challenges with adopting based rollups

Based rollups bring back decentralized transaction sequencing by leveraging Ethereum’s validator network to sequence transactions across multiple L2s, creating a more unified and efficient ecosystem. Developers can develop DApps that operate across all participating L2s. 

Ethereum has over 1 million validators as of Nov. 20. (Dune Analytics)

However, getting existing L2s to agree to give up sequencer revenue will not be simple.

“The move to based sequencing has a major hurdle to overcome, which is that all of these L2 sequencers are making a ton of money,” Townsend says.

Sequencer revenue in ETH for some of Ethereum’s top L2 networks.

According to Dune Analytics data, ZKsync, a ZK-rollup, has earned a cumulative sequencer fee of almost 40,500 ETH ($125.5 million) as of Nov. 20. Optimistic rollup competitor Base has earned 20,904 ETH ($64.7 million), Arbitrum has 62,001 ETH ($192 million), while Optimism has earned 6,916 ETH ($21.5 million).

Are they really going to want to give up that revenue out of idealism?

Based rollups are good for Ethereum

Although Wang is certainly idealistic, he says that based rollups help contribute toward securing Ethereum’s base layer because L2 activity reduces L1 activity, in turn reducing revenue for validators.

“Based rollups do offer additional fees, tips and MEV opportunities to L1 validators, which will encourage more validators to secure the Ethereum chain. This will eventually make all based rollups more secure,” Wang of Taiko says.

Taiko is the top fee payer to the Ethereum chain among rollups, according to Growthepie data. In the 30 days leading up to Nov. 21, Taiko paid $1.29 million in gas fees, almost five times more than Arbitrum One, which is in second place.

Taiko is Ethereum’s rent payer among rollups. (Growthepie)

This makes being a validator more lucrative and encourages staking, which reduces the circulating ETH supply and could help the price long term. 

The future of Ethereum: Based rollups or fragmentation?

Based rollups present a possible solution to unify the Ethereum ecosystem, but returning to the mainchain for sequencing can bring back old problems as well. 

The key tradeoff for based rollups is they are limited by Ethereum’s current 12-second block time, Wang says. Arbitrum operates at less than one second.

“We are working with partners on preconfirmation (of transactions), which will no longer depend on short L1 block time to provide users the best transacting experience. Users will see their transactions are included in a block in almost real-time,” Wang says.

The Ethereum network is bound to remain fragmented without proposals to enhance interoperability, like based rollups, while DeFi challengers like Solana continue to make strides as one unified layer-1, providing a more seamless experience for users.

Solana has returned to the DeFi scene in 2024.

“It’s essentially ‘How big can we make individual chains and individual rollups in terms of transaction throughput, and how quickly can we have them settle so that when liquidity needs to move from A to B?’ It can get there really fast, and the user doesn’t have to wait,” Knox states.

Based rollups need to be adopted to succeed, but not everyone’s sold. (Charlie Noyes)

Townsend says that based rollups are “certainly” a solution to unifying the ecosystem, but it’s still a novel concept, and an active ecosystem doesn’t exist yet.

“You have this hurdle of convincing these L2 sequencers to give up part of their revenue stream to become based and to participate in this interoperability ecosystem,” Townsend says.

Authored by Charles Kennedy via OilPrice.com,

• The UK has sanctioned 30 ships involved in Russia’s shadow fleet to disrupt its oil trade.

• This move aims to limit Russia’s ability to fund its war in Ukraine by reducing its oil revenue.

• The UK has taken a leading role in targeting Russia’s shadow fleet, imposing more sanctions than any other country.

The UK on Monday sanctioned as many as 30 tankers identified as belonging to Russia’s shadow fleet that circumvents the Western oil sanctions, in the single largest sanctions package aimed at Russia’s dark fleet and at stifling Putin’s oil revenues.

The UK imposed sanctions on 30 ships in Russia’s shadow fleet today. These vessels have been responsible for transporting billions of UK pounds worth of oil and oil products in the last year alone.

With half of the ships targeted today transporting more than $4.3 billion worth of oil and oil products like gasoline in the last year alone, today is the largest UK package of its kind, the UK government said.

The UK hopes that the latest sanctions package “will further constrain the Kremlin’s ability to fund their illegal war in Ukraine and their malign activity worldwide,” the government noted.

The sanctions announced today bring the total number of oil tankers sanctioned by the UK to 73, more than any other nation, demonstrating the UK’s leadership in tackling the shadow fleet, according to the cabinet.

To date, the UK has sanctioned 73 oil tankers in the shadow fleet, compared to 39 sanctioned by the United States and 19 by the European Union (EU).

Alongside the 30 oil tankers of the shadow fleet used by Russia, the UK is also sanctioning two Russian insurance companies, AlfaStrakhovanie and VSK, “for enabling the shadow fleet.”

The UK’s announcement comes as Foreign Secretary David Lammy is at the G7 Foreign Ministers meeting in Italy, where he is pushing other countries “to maintain pressure on Russia’s war machine, in parallel with efforts to step up military and financial support for Ukraine.”

Last month, Russia appeared to continue to find ways to circumvent Western sanctions and was defying one of the latest measures, the blacklisting of dozens of oil tankers for carrying Russian oil, by putting around one-third of these back to work to deliver its oil.

It’s been no secret that in Ukraine there will be escalation before any potential ceasefire deal is worked out. The Biden administration is scrambling to try and build Kiev’s leverage on the battlefield prior to the Trump administration taking office. This includes the huge provocation of greenlighting long-range missile strikes on Russian territory.

France followed this weekend by approving Ukraine’s use of French long-range missiles against Russia, specifically the Scalp missiles. French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot declared that this move is in the “logic of self-defense”. 

The top French diplomat continued, “We will support Ukraine as intensely and as long as necessary. Why? Because it is our security that is at stake. Each time the Russian army progresses by one square kilometer, the threat gets one square kilometer closer to Europe.”

BBC interviewer Laura Kuenssberg questioned Barrot on if that could even mean sending French troops into the war. He responded: “We do not discard any option.”

Prominent French publication Le Monde on Monday followed by saying serious discussions over injecting Western troops into the war have intensified in the last days: 

As the conflict in Ukraine enters a new phase of escalation, discussions over sending Western troops and private defense companies to Ukraine have been revived, Le Monde has learned from corroborating sources. These are sensitive discussions, most of which are classified – relaunched in light of a potential American withdrawal of support for Kyiv once Donald Trump takes office on January 20, 2025.

Britain is once again at the forefront of urging NATO’s deeper involvement in the war, which threatens at any moment to explode into WW3 among nuclear-armed powers. Enter Keir Starmer… in the hawkish footsteps of Boris Johnson:

However, it was relaunched in recent weeks thanks to the visit to France of the UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, for the November 11th commemorations. “Discussions are underway between the UK and France on defense cooperation, particularly with a view to creating a hard core of allies in Europe, focused on Ukraine and wider European security,” confided a British military source to Le Monde.

Jean-Noël Barro’s aforementioned words about ‘no options’ ruled out appears to have been a reflection on these continued ‘sensitive’ conversations.

There have been more reports of US-supplied ATACMS launches on Russian territory since their initial use last week:

Looks like Khalino airbase in Kursk, where Russia launches drones to attack Ukraine, just got a taste of ATACMS. The guy in the video seems pretty impressed! pic.twitter.com/ui8r0je74p

— Maria Avdeeva (@maria_avdv) November 25, 2024

Meanwhile, NATO military committee chair, Dutch Admiral Rob Bauer, warned businesses to be prepared for a ‘wartime scenario.’

“If we can make sure that all crucial services and goods can be delivered no matter what, then that is a key part of our deterrence,” said Bauer, adding “We’re seeing that with the growing number of sabotage acts, and Europe has seen that with energy supply.”

“We thought we had a deal with Gazprom, but we actually had a deal with Mr Putin. And the same goes for Chinese-owned infrastructure and goods. We actually have a deal with (Chinese President) Xi (Jinping).”

Bauer noted western dependencies on supplies from China, with 60% of all rare earth materials produced and 90% processed there. He said chemical ingredients for sedatives, antibiotics, anti-inflammatories and low blood pressure medicines were also coming from China. -Reuters

Astoundingly, the dangerous prospect of Western boots on the ground is actually being mulled even as Russia has showcased the destruction force and long reach of its new hypersonic medium-range missile arsenal. 

In the hopefully unlikely scenario that NATO leaders pull the trigger on this, it would probably be before Trump takes office. He has vowed to rapidly wind down the nearly three-year conflict and achieve peace. This has hawks up in arms, worried that this will force Ukraine to cede territory, particularly in the east and south.

Authored by Rachel Roberts via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Non-crime hate incidents (NCHIs) “should be abolished” as they “distract police from the fight against crime” while having a “chilling effect” on freedom of expression, a think tank has argued.

Policy Exchange published a report on Monday authored by David Spencer, a former detective chief inspector in the Metropolitan Police who is now head of crime and justice at the think tank.

The report claims that as well as distracting police officers from their job of fighting crime, they can also cause prospective employees to lose job opportunities in the same way as a criminal record can.

“NCHIs can be devastating for individuals, as they may be disclosed in enhanced DBS [Disclosure and Barring Service] checks, potentially barring people who have committed no crimes from jobs in teaching and elsewhere, based on nothing more than the perceptions of someone they may have inadvertently offended,” Spencer wrote.

7,500 Working Days Lost

He estimates that nationally more than 60,000 police hours, or 7,500 full working days, are being spent on NCHIs annually.

The report comes after Essex Police closed an investigation into Telegraph columnist Allison Pearson for alleged incitement of racial hatred over an unidentified post online that has since been deleted.

An independent review will be launched into the force’s handling of the case after the story sparked a backlash about apparent police overreach.

The Policy Exchange paper claimed analysis of Essex Police’s NCHIs revealed the force has a “far higher rate” than other forces around the country.

It said that in 2023 Essex Police recorded NCHIs at a rate of 21.5 NCHIs per 100 officers per annum, a rate “twice that of the national rate, three times that of the Metropolitan Police, four times that of Greater Manchester Police and ten times that of West Yorkshire Police.”

Policy Exchange made nine recommendations as part of the paper, including the complete abolition of the NCHI regime “at the earliest possible opportunity.”

Freedom of Expression

If the government retains the policy, then they should update the Code of Practice that would “lead to a substantial reduction in the number of NCHIs record[ed] – increasing ‘freedom of expression’ protections and reducing the distraction of police officers from their core mission of fighting crime,” the report said.

It added that this should include no longer recording any NCHIs that do not contain personal data.

The think tank argued that the government should raise the definition threshold to “genuinely meet the standard of hate” and pass legislation mandating police forces to follow the Code of Practice of non-crime hate incidents.

Spencer said: “The non-crime hate incident regime is having a devastating impact on the public and their perception of policing.

“Too often police chiefs have chosen to focus their attention on matters other than the fight against those crimes which most affects the public.

“By abolishing the entire NCHI regime the Government has an opportunity to keep the police’s attention on what really matters to the public, catching the burglars, drug dealers and violent thugs who cause misery to the lives of millions.”

NCHIs were created under the premiership of Sir Tony Blair following the Macpherson Report of 1999 into the investigation of the murder of Stephen Lawrence. The rationale behind NCHIs was to focus on the perception of the alleged victim that they had been subject to “hate” but where the criminal threshold had not been crossed. The characteristics for the purposes of NCHIs are race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, and transgender identity.

Lord Hogan-Howe QPM, former commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, endorsed the report, saying that the previous Labour government was “well intentioned” in introducing the NCHIs “to try and spot incidents that might lead to racist attacks and crime in the future.”

But he said, “Unfortunately, the rules on it have been developed by secondary rather than primary legislation, which has led to little debate about their efficacy.”

He said that although police “clearly” have a right to explore incidents to discover intelligence, they have no powers to investigate and interview “suspects” about those incidents as, by definition, they are not investigating a crime.

Hate Is ‘Subjective’

Hogan-Howe added: “⁠It is often the investigation of people who are ‘suspects’ in those incidents which is causing most public concern. ⁠

“Whether something is a crime is an objective statutory test. Whether something is a non-crime hate incident is a subjective test based on guidance, producing inconsistent outcomes.”

He added that Parliament rather than the College of Policing must decide whether the police should be investigating people for NCHIs and how they are recorded.

The police watchdog published a review in September of 120 sample cases of NCHIs and hate crimes and found that a quarter should not have been recorded by the police at all, concluding that much time was being wasted on investigating spurious allegations.

Although Essex Police said that Pearson was under investigation for the crime of inciting racial hatred, the debate over the incident led to a number of high-profile politicians and personalities to call for the abolition of NCHIs.

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said in a post on X: “Non-crime hate incident reports have increased exponentially as they appear to be used beyond the original intentions of the legislation created over 20 years ago.

“It’s time to look (yet again) at the guidelines and review whether the overall policy is still fit for purpose.”

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage said on X he was “delighted” the case against Pearson had been dropped, adding that his party would “repeal” laws around what is termed “hate speech.”

‘Common Sense’

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has said that the police should use “common sense” when investigating allegations of hatred, while Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said last week that “as a general principle the police should concentrate on what matters most to their communities.”

Cooper has said she wants to strengthen police recording of hate incidents amid concerns that the latest guidance, implemented by former Home Secretary Suella Braverman, is preventing police from identifying threats to Jewish and Muslim communities that may escalate into violence.

The law around the recording of NCHIs was amended last year following a Court of Appeal ruling in favour of Harry Miller, a former police officer, who successfully challenged the previous national policy that allowed forces to record so-called “gender critical” views as non-crime hate incidents.

Under the change, officers are now only allowed to record an NCHI if the incident is “clearly motivated by intentional hostility” and where there is a “real risk of escalation causing significant harm or a criminal offence.”

PA Media contributed to this report.

Authored by Ned Ryun and Mark Corallo via American Greatness,

The time has come to end the Administrative State once and for all.

This failed experiment launched a century ago by Progressive Statists like Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt is a deeply unconstitutional approach to government that is antithetical to the free, representative government founded by the American Republic. It is the polar opposite of what our founders envisioned with the unelected bureaucrats doing the governing of the country while not responsive to “We the People,” as the people didn’t elect them and, more importantly, don’t have any recourse to redress their grievances against the increasingly authoritarian tendencies of the Administrative State via its statutes and regulations that benefit the State and its allies.

The good news is that President Trump has fully empowered Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which is a massive step in the right direction. The fundamental reason for this is: Trump rejects the premise that the Administrative State is legitimate or that its unelected bureaucrats should be the final decision makers on anything, whether foreign or domestic policy. But Trump and DOGE should not settle for reducing government spending and the regulatory burden. 

Its goal should be to shatter the Administrative State into a million pieces. 

Everything that is wrong with our government and country today in many ways stems from the Administrative State: out of control bureaucracy, insane spending, and really the Swamp writ large. Understand that the foundation of the Swamp is the State. If you want to drain the Swamp you must break the State. Not only will it fix many of the ills facing America today, it will put the country back on the path of restoring the free American Republic and balancing out the three branches of government once more, which will lead to greater freedom and a Golden Age for this country.

But for this to happen, several fundamental, practical things must take place.

First, on Day 1 of his second term, Trump must fire via his Reduction in Force authority 200,000 federal employees, preferably at the GS-12 and 13 levels. Of course the federal employee unions, which should cease to exist, will sue for a stay. That case will likely wind its way through the courts for 18 months or so (unless the Supreme Court fast tracks it). But once it reaches the SCOTUS, the fundamental question to be asked is: can the head of the Executive Branch, the duly elected President of the US, hire or fire whoever he pleases as per the Constitution? Or do the extra Constitutional statutes and regulations protecting the civil servants supersede the Constitution? With this SCOTUS, the odds are they will side with the originalism of the Constitution and give the President the right to hire and fire whoever he pleases inside the Executive Branch, where most of the Administrative State resides. 

Then Trump becomes the Demolition Man for at least the last two years of his Administration: firing large swaths of the federal government and shutting down departments and agencies. Most importantly in that process, removing those positions from the federal rolls and imploding the buildings he’s emptied and building a Freedom Park (or parks) over the top. Perhaps he even creates the monument he envisioned in July of 2020 and places the statues of our great American heroes over the remains of the Administrative State.

It’s imperative that the DOGE not be just be a cost cutting and regulatory slashing initiative, although that would be reason enough considering the massive bloat, waste, fraud and abuse in the system.  This is about reminding the career bureaucrats they answer to the people through their elected officials.  These bureaucrats have for too long usurped the power of the sovereign people and due to the government employee union contracts are not answerable to the elected officials from whom they derive their power.  They have become a de facto, independent, unaccountable, fourth branch of government that appears nowhere in the United States Constitution.  They are, in fact, the very top-down, authoritarian ruling elite our forefathers rejected in 1776 and replaced in the triumph of the American Revolution. 

Now as the entire process of answering the fundamental question of President Trump’s ability to hire and fire could take well over a year, what is to be done in the short term with the high level federal employees who plan on resisting Trump’s agenda? Trump should create the federal government equivalent of the New York City school system’s “rubber room.” 

On Day 1 of his Administration, the GS-15s and SES types, which by the way will likely include Biden political appointees who have “burrowed” into various departments and agencies as civil servants, will report to an empty government building dubbed the Department of Elimination, 30 minutes from Capitol Hill; far enough away to make it painful.

They will report there promptly every day to sit at empty desks for 8 hours until SCOTUS addresses the fundamental question. Then, as the Administration proceeds, any high level bureaucrat caught resisting will be immediately reassigned to the Department of Elimination “rubber room.” They won’t be fired. They just get to sit there and not have the ability to resist inside the various departments and agencies.

It’s time to use the political power given to Trump by the American people to restore the Republic. In 1911 Woodrow Wilson, shortly before taking the White House and erecting the Administrative State, declared, “We are not bound to adhere to the doctrines of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence. We are as free as they were to make or unmake governments.” Trump should have that exact same mentality: we are not bound to adhere to the doctrines of the founders of the Administrative State. We are as free as they were to unmake governments and by God, we must do it: we must break the shackles of the bureaucratic statism holding us down — the future happiness and freedom of generations yet to come depend on it.

Break the State. Drain the Swamp. Restore the Republic.