About a month ago, HSBC Global Research noted a forecast for a “weak” bull market in commodities. New data shows that the US Consumer Price Index (CPI) for April rose by .3% from the previous month and by 3.4% year-over-year. Although inflation is still increasing, it is doing so at a slower pace. Meanwhile, in Asia, Beijing is working to stabilize its economy. Amid these developments, commodity prices, tracked by Bloomberg, have reached their highest level in a year. This poses a serious threat for Fed Chair Powell’s efforts to combat the inflation monster. The persistent elevated inflation is due to the US Treasury spending like it’s in a ‘Great Depression’, which amounts to approximately $1 trillion every 100 days. 

Given all of this, the Bloomberg Commodity Spot Index — which tracks 24 energy, metal and agricultural contracts — moved higher by nearly one percent on Wednesday, tagging the highest level since April 2023. 

On a much larger timeframe, the BCOM index has retraced 50% of its total move from early 2020 lows during the onset of government enforced lockdowns spurred by Covid, and the blowoff top in the first half of 2022. 

Now BCOM is pushing higher, and this comes as Brent crude, one of the largest components of the index, has moved higher in recent months on a combination of stronger demand, tighter supplies, and disruptions in the Middle East due to multiple ongoing conflicts. There’s also copper prices squeezing to new highs, as well as cocoa and coffee that have recently surged. 

“Overall, the commodities rally reflects a late-cycle economic environment where demand remains robust but supply constraints are evident,” Sam Vogel, chief operations officer of Cayler Capital, recently noted. He said in oil markets, commodity trading advisers expect a “very strong supply-demand balance in the second half of the year.” 

HSBC’s Paul Bloxham and Jamie Culling asked clients last month: “Have commodity prices past the trough?” 

Their very simple answer: “It seems likely.”

BCOM remains 24% below the all-time-high set in May of 2022. However, with stealth stimulus in the US, otherwise the $1 trillion the federal government is spending every 100 days, this will likely keep inflation and commodity prices elevated. 

Woke activists today often like to hearken back to nostalgic media from the 1960s; what they consider the golden era or genesis moment of far-left movements in British and US history.  These were the days when being a progressive was considered “counter-culture” and cool, with every major rock star and celebrity tapping into youth angst and hippie philosophy.  The progressive shift led to considerable social instability in the 1970s.

It is common these days to hear leftists in popular media argue that TV shows like Star Trek or Doctor Who were “always woke” and that they are simply carrying on the tradition.  This is simply not true.  While many productions in the US and in Europe displayed liberal sensibilities, woke activists are not liberal and do not hold liberal values.  They are, rather, a hybrid ideology combining elements of Marxism/communism/fascism, collectivism, moral relativism and narcissism.

One could argue that the woke cult is the natural end state, the unavoidable final evolution of liberal thinking.  That may be true, but that’s a debate for another day.  The point is, the woke activism of today has very little in common with the political movements of the 1960s.  In fact, if you were to go back in time only 15 years ago and tried to explain to a typical Democrat in the US or Labour member in the UK what leftists are trying to get away with in 2024, they would laugh in your face and call you crazy.

In our decade nearly every major television and film franchise of the past has received the woke treatment; what leftists call “updating for modern audiences.”  As a consequence, nearly every franchise has suffered an extreme collapse in audience number, ad revenues and box office receipts.  Why?  Because woke ideology is a fringe movement making up a tiny percentage of the population.  Almost no one likes it, hence the reason why “Get Woke, Go Broke” has become a rule rather than a theory.

Doctor Who has not been able to escape this rule despite being considered an open sci-fi world where almost anything goes.  The problem is, it doesn’t matter what the canon technically allows or what the writers want – In the end the fans always dictate what succeeds and what fails.  When a show starts preaching at people about respecting gender pronouns, they aren’t going to stick around to see what happens next.

The BBC show (working hand-in-hand with Disney) has been on an unstoppable decline for the past few years as it becomes increasingly woke.  The real collapse started with the introduction of a female and decidedly feminist Doctor (played by Jodie Whitaker) for three seasons.  The series ratings fell exponentially and Whitaker became one of the most hated iterations of the main character in the history of the show.    

You would think the BBC would have learned not to be confrontational with the fans, but as we all know leftists never admit failure, they only double down.  The newest version of the character is being applauded as the first “black queer” Doctor Who, played by Rwandan-Scottish actor Ncuti Gatwa.  The show also features a villain played by Drag Queen and trans activist Jinkx Monsoon.

Long considered a family show, parents are turning away from Doctor Who because they don’t want their children constantly exposed to gender propaganda.  Not surprisingly, the show’s audience numbers have imploded by roughly 50% compared to the previous two seasons.  The mainstream entertainment media blamed “warm weather” in the UK for the ratings disaster, but numerous representatives from the production openly attacked fans for their opposition to its woke direction and told them not to watch. 

As Ncuti Gatwa told Variety when discussing fan criticism:

“Don’t watch. Turn off the TV. Go and touch grass, please, for God’s sake…As the world darkens – and I do think the world is darkening around queer rights – there is a joy and a celebration, and there’s a community…”

It would seem the audience took Gatwa’s advice to heart.  They aren’t watching and his show is now facing an embarrassing collapse into obscurity.

Via The Cradle

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned on 15 May that Israel would “target” Turkey if victorious against the Hamas and other Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip.

“Israel will not stop in Gaza, and if not stopped, this rogue state will eventually target Anatolia with its delusions of a promised land,” Erdogan said during a parliamentary group meeting in Ankara. “We will continue to stand by Hamas, which fights for the independence of its own land and which defends Anatolia,” the Turkish president stressed.

“On Nakba, the Day of Catastrophe, we once again declare with all our being and resources that we stand by Palestine and the Palestinian cause … We will also ensure that the perpetrators of genocide face justice,” Erdogan added.

For the past several months, the Turkish president has harshly criticized Israeli authorities, accusing them of overseeing ongoing genocide in Gaza. However, his actions trailed far behind his words, as it took over six months for Ankara to end its highly lucrative trade ties with Israel.

Days after announcing a trade freeze, the Turkish government partially walked back its decision by issuing temporary approval for the supply of construction materials to Israel. Ankara has also refrained from obstructing the flow of oil from neighboring Azerbaijan to Israel.

For its part, Tel Aviv has been quietly returning diplomats to Turkey in recent weeks after withdrawing them months ago over “security concerns.”

Nevertheless, Turkish officials continue to send mixed signals, as earlier this week, Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said his country decided to submit its declaration of official intervention in South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

“Israel systematically killing thousands of innocent Palestinians and rendering a whole residential area uninhabitable is a crime against humanity, attempted genocide, and the manifestation of genocide,” Fidan told reporters.

Authored by Pepe Escobar,

Get ready for what may well be the geoeconomic bombshell of 2024: the coming of a decentralized monetary ecosystem.

Welcome to The Unit  – a concept that has already been discussed by the financial services and investments working group set up by the BRICS+ Business Council and has a serious shot at becoming official BRICS+ policy as early as in 2025.

According to Alexey Subbotin, founder of Arkhangelsk Capital Management and one of the Unit’s conceptualizers, this is a new problem-solving system that addresses the key geoeconomic issue of these troubled times: a global crisis of trust.

He knows all about it first-hand: a seasoned financial professional with experience in investment banking, asset management and corporate matters, Subbotin leads the Unit project under the auspices of IRIAS, an international intergovernmental organization set up in 1976 in accordance with the UN statute.

The Global Majority has had enough of the centrally controlled monetary framework put in place 80 years ago in Bretton Woods and its endemic flaws: chronic deficits fueling irresponsible military spending; speculative bubbles; politically motivated sanctions and secondary sanctions; abuse of settlement and payment infrastructure; protectionism; and the lack of fair arbitration.

In contrast, the Unit proposes a reliable, quick and economically efficient solution for cross-border payments. The – transactional – Unit is a game-changer as a new form of international currency that can be issued in a de-centralized way, and then recognized and regulated at national level.

The Unit offers a unique solution for bottlenecks in global financial infrastructure: it is eligible for traditional banking operations as well as for the newest forms of digital banking.

The Unit can also help to upend unfair pricing in commodity trading, by means of setting up a new – fair and efficient – Eurasian Mercantile Exchange where trading and settlement can be done in a new currency bridging trade flows and capital, thus paving the way to the development of new financial products for foreign direct investment (FDI).

The strength of the Unit, conceptually, is to remove direct dependency on the currency of other nations, and to offer especially to the Global Majority a new form of apolitical money – with huge potential for anchoring fair trade and investments.

It is indeed a new concept in terms of an international currency – anchored in gold (40%) and BRICS+ currencies (60%). It is neither crypto nor stablecoin – as it’s shown here.

The Beauty of Going Fractal

The Global Majority will instantly grasp the primary purpose of the Unit: to harmonize trade and financial flows by keeping them outside of political pressure or “rules” that can be twisted at will. The inevitable consequence translates as financial sovereignty. What matters in the whole process are independent monetary policies focused on economic growth.

That’s the key appeal for the Global Majority: a full ecosystem offering independent, complementary monetary infrastructure. And that surely can be extended to willing Unit partners in the collective West.

Now to the practical level: as Subbotin explains, the Unit ecosystem may be easily scalable because it comes from a fractal architecture supported by simple rules. New Unit nodes can be set up by either sovereign or private agents, following a detailed rule-book in custody of the UN-chartered IRIAS.

The Unit organizers employ a distributed ledger: a technology that ensures transparency, precluding capital controls or any exchange rate manipulation.

This means that connection is available to all open DEX and digital platforms operated by both commercial and Central Banks around the world.

The endgame is that everyone, essentially, may use the Unit for accounting, bookkeeping, pricing, settling, paying, saving and investing.

No wonder the institutional possibilities are quite enticing – as the Unit can be used for accounting and settlement for BRICS+; payment and pricing for the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU); or as a reserve currency for Sub-Saharan Africa.

And now comes the clincher: the Unit has already received backing by the BRICS Business Council and is on the agenda at the crucial ministerial meeting in Russia next month, which will work out the road map for the summit next October in Kazan.

That means the Unit has all it takes to be on the table as a serious subject discussed by BRICS+ and eventually be adopted as early as in 2025.

Will Musk and the NDB Be on Board?

As it stands, the priority for the Unit conceptualizers – whom I followed for over a year during several, detailed meetings in Moscow – is to inform the general public about the new system.

The Unit team is not interested at all in getting straight into political hot waters or to be cornered by ideologically-laden arguments. Direct references to inspiring but sometimes controversial concepts or authors like Zoltan Pozsar may bury the Unit concept into pigeon holes, thus limiting its potential impact.

What may lie ahead could be extraordinarily exciting, as the Unit appeal could extend all the way from Elon Musk to the BRICS’s New Development Bank (NDB), hopefully engaging an array of crucial actors. After a positive evaluation by Finance Minister Anton Siluanov – who remains on the post in the new Russian government – it’s not far-fetched to imagine Putin and Xi discussing it face to face this week in Beijing.

As it stands, the major takeaway is that the Unit should be seen as a feasible, technical solution for the theoretically Unsolvable: a globally-recognized payment/trade system, immune to political pressure. It’s the only game in town – there are no others.

Meanwhile, the Unit conceptualizers are open for constructive criticism and all manners of collaboration. Yet sooner or later the battle ranks will be lined up – and then it will be a matter of seriously upping the game.

“Academically Sound, Technologically Innovative”

Vasily Zhabykin, co-author of the Unit white paper and founder of CFA.Center, Unit’s technological partner at Skolkovo Innovation Hub in Moscow, crucially stresses: the Unit “represents apolitical money and can be the connector between the Global South and the West.”

He’s keen to point out that “the Unit can keep all the wheels turning unlike most of the other concepts that feature ‘dollar killers’, etc. We do not want to harm anybody. Our goal is to improve efficiency of currently broken capital and money flows. The Unit is rather the ‘cure for centralized cancer’’’.

Subbotin and the Unit team “are keen to meet new partners who share our approach and are ready to bring additional value to our project.” If that’s the case, they should “send us 3 bullet points on how can they help and improve the Unit.”

A bold follow-up step should be, for instance, a virtual conference on the Unit, featuring leading Russian economist Sergey Glazyev, Yannis Varoufakis, Jeffrey Sachs and Michael Hudson, among others.

By email, Glazyev, a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Minister of Integration and Macroeconomics of the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) , summed up the Unit’s potential:

“I have been following the development of Unit for more than a year and can confirm that Unit offers a very timely, feasible solution. It is academically sound, technologically innovative and at the same time complementary to the existing banking infrastructure.

Launching it under the auspices of an UN institution gives Unit legitimacy, which the current Bretton Woods framework is clearly lacking. Recent actions by the US administration and loud silence from IMF clearly indicate the need for change.

A decentralized approach to emission of potential global trade currency, whose intrinsic value is anchored in physical gold and BRICS+ currencies, makes Unit the most promising of several approaches being considered. It balances political priorities of all participants, while helping each sovereign economy develop along its optimal path.

The New Development Bank (NDB) and BRICS+ shall embrace the concept of Unit and help it to become the pinnacle of the new emerging global financial infrastructure, free from malign political interferences while focused instead on fair trade and sustainable economic growth.”

A clear, practical example of possible Unit problem-solving concerns Russia-Iran trade relations. These are two top BRICS members. Russian trade with Iran is unprofitable due to sanctions – and both cannot make payments in US dollars or euros.

Russian companies suffer significant losses after switching to payments in national currencies. With each transfer, Russian businesses on average lose as much as 25% due to the discrepancy between the market rate in Iran and the state rate.

And here’s the key takeaway: BRICS+ as well as the Global Majority can only be strengthened by developing closer geoeconomics ties. The removal of Western speculative capital shall free up local commodity trading, and enable the pooling of investable capital for sustainable development. To unlock such a vast potential, the Unit may well be the key.

In what must be the first time California’s 9th circuit has ruled in favor of the 2nd Amendment, non-violent convicted felons can now own guns.

The decision stems from a 2020 case, in which California resident Steven Duarte was arrested after tossing a handgun out of a moving car during a traffic stop. He was indicted by a federal grand jury for possessing said firearm while being previously convicted of “a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year” in violation of the federal “felon-in-possession” law.

Duarte had five prior non-violent criminal convictions in California; vandalism, felon in possession of a firearm, drug possession, and two convictions for fleeing a police officer – each of which is punishable by one year or more in prison. After pleading not guilty, Duarte’s case proceeded to trial, where he was found guilty and sentenced to 51 months in prison.

Not so fast!

As the Epoch Times notes further, in a 2-1 decision handed down on May 9, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Mr. Duarte’s conviction violated the Second Amendment as applied to him.

Specifically, the court’s majority found that the federal government failed to prove that its felon-in-possession law supports disarming convicted felons for life under a two-step framework established by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 2022 “New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen” case.

The two-step process, put forth by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, first requires the court to determine whether the Second Amendment’s “plain text” covers an individual’s conduct. If so, then that conduct is presumptively protected, and the government must prove that its law is “consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”

“Because Duarte is an American citizen, he is part of the people whom the Second Amendment protects,” Senior Circuit Judge Carlos Bea wrote for the majority.

“The Government argues only that ’the people‘ in the Second Amendment excludes felons like Duarte because they are not members of the ’virtuous’ citizenry,” he wrote. “We do not share that view.”

The burden then fell back to the federal government to show that its gun possession policy aligns with the “historical tradition” of the United States.

However, during the Early Republic era, Mr. Duarte’s past convictions either would have been considered misdemeanors, didn’t exist as a crime, or may have had predecessors for which the government failed to provide evidence of their existence, Judge Bea noted.

‘Historically Understood Meaning’

“Based on this record, we cannot say that Duarte’s predicate offenses were, by Founding-era standards, of a nature serious enough to justify permanently depriving him of his fundamental Second Amendment rights,” the majority opinion read.

“The Second Amendment’s plain text and historically understood meaning therefore presumptively graduate his individual right to possess a firearm for self-defense.”

Judge Bea, a George W. Bush appointee, was joined by Circuit Judge Lawrence VanDyke, a Donald Trump appointee. The majority opinion overturned a 2010 Ninth Circuit precedent, “U.S. v. Vongxay”, which upheld the federal prohibition on possession of firearms by felons.

Circuit Judge Milan Smith, a George W. Bush appointee who penned the Vongxay opinion, dissented and urged the appeals court to order a new hearing of Mr. Duarte’s case before a full, 11-judge panel.

He argued that Buren does not override Vongxay, at least not before the U.S. Supreme Court further clarifies the constitutionality of the federal felon-in-possession law.

“One day—likely sooner, rather than later—the Supreme Court will address the constitutionality of [the federal felon firearm ban] or otherwise provide clearer guidance on whether felons are protected by the Second Amendment,” Judge Smith wrote in his dissenting opinion.

“But it is not our role as circuit judges to anticipate how the Supreme Court will decide future cases.”

The Ninth Circuit’s vacation of Mr. Duarte’s conviction added to the post-Bruen “Circuit Split” over the scope of the Second Amendment.

The Ninth Circuit joins, at least for now, the Third Circuit to rule in favor of Americans permanently stripped of Second Amendment rights because of past non-violent offenses, while the Tenth Circuit has reaffirmed its precedent upholding the restriction on those individuals.

In a 2-1 ruling last October, the Tenth Circuit observed that the Bruen Court “didn’t appear to question the constitutionality of longstanding prohibitions on possession of firearms by convicted felons.”

Instead, it argued, “Bruen apparently approved the constitutionality of regulations requiring criminal background checks … to ensure that the applicant is a ‘law-abiding, responsible citizen.’”

Authored by Philip Wegmann via RealClearPolitics,

The White House did not offer their full faith and credit to the FDIC chairman when asked by RealClearPolitics about a bombshell 234-page investigation that detailed a toxic environment within the agency.

Other than noting that Martin Gruenberg, the official in question, had already “apologized and spoke[n] to” allegations that he presided over a culture of bullying, harassment, and mismanagement, Karine Jean-Pierre, the president’s spokeswoman, mostly demurred.

Gruenberg will not skate by so easily when he testifies before Congress this week. Republicans in both the House and Senate are hell-bent for leather. And his scalp.

The report was published by law firm Cleary Gottlieb last week and followed a Wall Street Journal investigation last November that documented a federal agency akin to “a good ol’ boys club” where female employees were subjected to stalking, unwelcome illicit messages, and sexual harassment.

The episode is an embarrassment to President Biden, who promised on the first day of his administration to fire “on the spot” anyone who engaged in such behavior.

It is also a political liability. If Gruenberg, a Biden nominee who served in both the Obama and Trump administrations and the Senate confirmed by voice vote, exits under pressure, it would leave the FDIC board deadlocked during an election year. “A 2-2 vote would stall and probably doom politically sensitive banking policy,” observed Renaissance Macro Research. The regulatory policy of the administration would then hang in limbo.

These realities are not lost on many in the FDIC workforce who want reform. In a statement obtained by RCP, current employees expressed their concern that “the egregious issues documented in the Cleary report by over 500 employees have become partisan.”

Working at an agency now under scrutiny for a history of reprisals against whistleblowers, the statement was left unsigned, though the drafters noted that they “have a wide range of political views, ranging from far left to far right.”

“The FDIC employees behind this statement do not have confidence that the chairman and executive management have the willingness to truly make the cultural and structural changes necessary to fully address the [matters] identified in the report,” they write.

For his part, Gruenberg has already offered an apology.

“I want to also thank everyone who shared their experiences throughout this process. I know that doing so was difficult. To anyone who experienced sexual harassment or other misconduct at the FDIC, I again want to express how very sorry I am. I also want to apologize for any shortcomings on my part,” he said in a statement when the Cleary Gottlieb report was published.

“As chairman, I am ultimately responsible for everything that happens at our agency, including our workplace culture,” Gruenberg added.

The chairman, whom the report found has a history of anger and belittling staff, plans to announce a new, independent office devoted to professional conduct at the agency, according to prepared testimony before the House Financial Services Committee Wednesday. But the head of that committee, Republican Chairman Patrick McHenry, has already called for his resignation. And some FDIC employees are already registering their dissatisfaction.

“The Chairman has communicated the action plan that he oversaw the creation of as proof of his commitment to improving conditions at the FDIC. We, however, do not have confidence that this action plan is meaningful,” they wrote.

More than a dozen Republicans now oppose Gruenberg. South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, the ranking member on the Senate Banking Committee, has called for his resignation. Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst has called on the Department of Justice to open an investigation. Only one Democrat, however, Illinois Rep. Bill Foster, has followed suit, calling for the FDIC chairman to step down.

Rep. Maxine Waters, the top Democrat on Financial Services, blasted the report, not the FDIC chairman, for focusing too much on current leadership. Democrats are expected to circle the wagons to protect Gruenberg during his testimony – an irony given the propensity of Democrats, not Republicans, to rail against toxic workplace environments.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen signaled her displeasure, telling reporters Tuesday that “the kind of abuses that were documented in the report are a totally unacceptable way to treat employees at the FDIC and not in line with the core values of the Biden administration.” She stopped short, however, of joining Republican calls for his resignation.

Authored by Russ Jones via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

“Make innocence great again.”

It’s a mantra that Juliana Ormond feels strongly about. The suburban mom of three children seeks to call attention to the importance of preserving the purity and innocence of childhood. She said she desires a return to a time when she contends innocence was valued and protected, which conflicts with the complexities and challenges of the current culture.

“The only way to bring back innocence is to keep our children away from those who want to make everything about sexual identity,” Ms. Ormond said. “I look for political candidates who support policies that align with the Bible.”

She said she has watched the culture become more progressive since she was young. From her home in suburban Orlando, Ms. Ormond told The Epoch Times that two of her children are 10 years apart. Her younger daughter had a radically different school experience from her older sister.

“One day, my younger daughter brought a girlfriend home after school,” she said. “The friend proudly proclaimed that she was nonbinary. I was shocked. That ideology wasn’t pushed when my older daughter went to school.”

Mothers such as Ms. Ormond represent a significant demographic segment of the population and make up a sizable portion of the electorate. Candidates recognize the importance of appealing to this demographic group to secure their votes. Their motivations are deeply personal, rooted in parenthood’s daily struggles and triumphs. From grassroots activism to high-profile political campaigns, mothers harness their perspectives and experiences to advocate for change on issues ranging from abortion, health care, and education to the environment and social justice.

“I believe both the Democrat and Republican parties have left the people,” Ms. Ormond said. “I am dissatisfied with our government and think they are all in cahoots with one another.”

Moms of various social and political stripes are welcomed in the corridors of strategic planning, and mothers are stepping out and striding onto the political stage with vigor and determination, reshaping the political landscape. These women assert their influence in the public arena, driven by a deep-seated desire to create a better world for their children.

Mama Bears Bite Back

With almost 89 million women eligible to vote, they represent the largest and possibly most persuasive voting bloc in the United States. Among this constituency are those who identify as “mama bears.”

The Mama Bear movement is growing and altering the nation’s political climate. These mothers represent a diverse group of everyday women who are driven to shield their children from the agendas of special interest groups who think they know what’s best for kids.

Moms for Liberty co-founder Tina Descovich talked with The Epoch Times about parents’ growing concern about public education and parental rights. In 2021, three mothers from Florida founded Moms for Liberty to combat COVID-19 restrictions.

“Moms are troubled about the country’s future and education crisis in America,” she said. “Schools have been infiltrated with woke ideologies, so moms are looking closely at private schools or homeschooling their children.”

Ms. Descovich, a former Brevard School Board member in Florida, said Moms for Liberty focuses on the 2024 state school board elections nationwide, where progressive agendas thrive.

In April, the Biden administration reversed changes made under President Donald Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos that updated Title IX regulations governing schools’ responses to sexual misconduct. The revised rules, which go into effect in August, reinterpret what constitutes harassment and sex discrimination to prohibit actions driven by sexual orientation, gender identity, sex stereotypes, and pregnancy.

To date, 15 states have sued the administration over the new policy. Moms for Liberty has elevated its effort to inform moms about the changes.

“Many moms are deeply troubled with the rewriting of Title IX,” Ms. Descovich said. “We must stand up for the parental right to raise our children and support them as they navigate significant life lessons.”

For these reasons, she said, many parents seek alternative education options such as homeschooling or private schools.

Moms for Liberty is represented in 48 states, with 300 chapters and 330,000 members. Ms. Descovich said the organization recently discovered that more than half of its members have not voted more than once in the past eight years in a primary.

“Most moms are not historically politically active,” she said. “We’re working on getting them registered to vote on our issues.”

Progressive Moms Embrace Social Diversity

Alexandria White founded Student Affairs Moms, the largest online community for mothers in the student affairs profession. She is the mother of one daughter and a seasoned diversity, leadership, and inclusive communities trainer. The resident of Oxford, Mississippi, said she understands the desire to maintain innocence with children but also said that complex social issues must be addressed.

“I believe in preparing my children for complex topics,” Ms. White said.

Such topics include, for instance, a classmate who has two moms.

“This kind of preparation reduces bullying,” she said. “Our children are more likely to be more empathetic.”

Ms. White told The Epoch Times that moms seek candidates who identify with their family needs and align with their community and family values.

“There is no perfect candidate,” she said. “We must, however, have passion in our hearts and reason in our minds. What can a particular candidate do that connects with my heart but also reasoned with my mind regarding policies?”

Ms. White consults clients who work hard to meet the financial needs of their families and women who seek “work-life harmony.” She engages moms, who evaluate these issues and demands as they vote.

“The pulse is on what candidate can make the average person’s dollar go the farthest,” Ms. White said. “Most moms are worried about their children’s overall mental, spiritual, or physical health.”

According to a survey conducted by The Current Project, nearly 70 percent of black single mothers with school-age children think the nation is headed in the wrong direction. About 90 percent of respondents said they believe that the current public school system does not adequately serve students’ needs, and 56 percent have considered transferring their children to different schools in the past year. The Current Project, a New York City-based advocacy group, surveyed 504 middle-to-low-income black mothers who are single.

Six out of 10 respondents strongly agreed they would be more inclined to support a candidate who advocated granting parents greater flexibility in selecting the school for their children. The respondents emphasized after-school child care, gifted and talented programs, respect for their child’s gender identity, and class sizes.

“I’m concerned that some of the social wedge issues are being used to defund public education,” Merisa Bowers, a mom of a 7-year-old son and City Council president of Gahanna, Ohio, told The Epoch Times. “We need vital public education systems for workforce development and a system that creates an educated population.”

She acknowledged that following the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022, Ohio voters last year overwhelmingly approved a constitutional amendment that guarantees access to abortion and reproductive health care.

“All politics is local,” Ms. Bowers said. “While presidential cycles are important and do a lot of good, most politics at the state and local level affect individuals and families. It’s important that moms evaluate what’s happening politically in their local communities.”

Authored by Jacob Burg via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The U.S. Department of Justice determined on May 14 that Boeing violated a deferred prosecution agreement that allowed the aerospace company to evade criminal charges after two crashes of its 737 MAX jet that killed everyone on board.

Justice Department prosecutors delivered the news to a federal judge on May 14 after hosting a closed-door meeting with the families of the victims of the 2018 and 2019 crashes on April 24. The agency now has until July 7 to decide whether it will file criminal charges against Boeing, during which time it will tell the court how it plans to proceed, the Justice Department said.

Glenn Leon, the head of the Justice Department’s fraud section, said in a letter that the aerospace company failed to implement measures to prevent it from running afoul of federal anti-fraud laws, which is a violation of its 2021 deferred prosecution agreement.

The Justice Department said it could prosecute the company “for any federal criminal violation of which the United States has knowledge,” including a fraud charge that Boeing hoped to sidestep with its $2.5 billion settlement with the U.S. government.

The government did not say whether it would move forward with prosecuting Boeing, one of its biggest aerospace contractors.

“The Government is determining how it will proceed in this matter,” the Justice Department said in a court document.

The 2018 and 2019 737 MAX crashes involved a new flight-control system that Boeing added to the jet without notifying airlines or their pilots, according to investigations. The aerospace company then discounted the system’s importance and failed to overhaul its application until after the second crash caused further casualties.

The Justice Department then investigated Boeing before settling the case with a deferred prosecution agreement on Jan. 7, 2021. The department agreed not to prosecute for the charge of defrauding the government in misleading the regulators who approved the 737 MAX after closed-door negotiations with Boeing.

Instead, Boeing paid a total of $2.5 billion in settlement fees. That included nearly $1.8 billion to airlines whose 737 MAX jets were grounded, a $500 million fund for compensating victims, and a $243.6 million fine to the U.S. Government.

“The tragic crashes of Lion Air Flight 610 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 exposed fraudulent and deceptive conduct by employees of one of the world’s leading commercial airplane manufacturers,” Acting Assistant Attorney General David P. Burns of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division said in 2021.

“Boeing’s employees chose the path of profit over candor by concealing material information from the FAA concerning the operation of its 737 Max airplane and engaging in an effort to cover up their deception.”

U.S. Attorney Erin Nealy Cox, for the Northern District of Texas, was also featured in the Justice Department’s 2021 statement on the Boeing agreement.

“The misleading statements, half-truths, and omissions communicated by Boeing employees to the FAA impeded the government’s ability to ensure the safety of the flying public,” she said.

The agreement between Boeing and the U.S. Government was set to expire on Jan. 7, two days after a mid-air blowout of a door panel on an Alaskan Airlines flight, also featuring a 737 MAX. That incident triggered the Justice Department’s 2024 investigation into whether Boeing violated the 2021 settlement.

As a result of the various crashes and incidents, Boeing has faced multiple civil lawsuits, Senate and House investigations, and increased public scrutiny of its business practices.

Paul Cassell, the attorney representing the 737 MAX crash victims’ families, said in late April that he was worried the Justice Department was giving Boeing “preferential treatment” after the April 24 closed-door meeting with the agency yielded no decisive updates on its investigation.

“We don’t understand how it could possibly be in the public interest to dismiss the charges and avoid a trial that could shed light on so many of the safety issues that continue to surface regarding the 737 Max that’s made by Boeing,” he told The Epoch Times.

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

It was Tuesday night that Secretary of State Antony Blinken was leading a bizarre rock anthem as the guitar and vocals front man at a Kiev bar, singing Neil Young’s “Rockin’ in the Free World” — and the internet collectively cringed. But only the next morning, on Wednesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky declared he was canceling all upcoming foreign trips at a moment his forces are getting hammered in the Kharkiv region.

“Volodymyr Zelenskyy has instructed that all international events scheduled for the coming days be postponed and new dates coordinated. We are grateful to partners for their understanding,” said Zelensky’s press secretary Sergii Nykyforov.

Just a quick reminder that you and your family can’t afford rent, gas, and groceries because inflation is out of control and your tax dollars are being spent on things like Secretary of State Tony Blinken playing guitar at a bar in Ukraine.

Please be more pissed off. pic.twitter.com/bbyXMuiG0p

— NotKennyRogers (@NotKennyRogers) May 14, 2024

Ukraine’s military leaders are “making all decisions based on comprehensive information. Additional forces are being deployed, reserves are available,” Nykyforov stated.

Among the foreign trips which have been postponed were expected visits of Zelensky to Spain and Portugal. Spain has just recently given up at least one of its Patriot missile batteries for Ukraine after considerable pressure from EU and NATO leaders.

Commenting on these developments, journalist Glenn Greenwald has made an important prediction and point…

By this time next year, there will be about 15 people still admitting they supported this bloodshed and debacle of the US blocking diplomatic solutions and instead fueling this futile war in Ukraine.

Everyone else will pretend they opposed it. US war propaganda is always false. https://t.co/VOycKd5QLH

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) May 15, 2024

He wrote Wednesday, “By this time next year, there will be about 15 people still admitting they supported this bloodshed and debacle of the US blocking diplomatic solutions and instead fueling this futile war in Ukraine.”

“Everyone else will pretend they opposed it. US war propaganda is always false,” Greenwald concluded.

Indeed this is very similar with how the Iraq war turned out: “everyone” was on board, until they weren’t.  

And those who had it horribly wrong all along suddenly fell silent and ‘forgot’ their past gatekeeping and rabid denunciations of the minority ‘other side’ whose ‘unpopular’ predictions proved accurate.

Never forget pic.twitter.com/9PdsEwNwLy

— Mark Ames (@MarkAmesExiled) May 15, 2024

…Behold the predictable pattern of US Empire in a long, slow decline.

* * * 

A golden oldie…

This had to be one of the greatest Freudian slips in modern history pic.twitter.com/QslbvNMvG8

— An0maly (@LegendaryEnergy) May 15, 2024

According to the World Health Organization, air pollution is responsible for 7 million deaths annually, and could cost the global economy between $18–25 trillion by 2060 in annual welfare costs, or roughly 4–6% of world GDP.

And with predictions that 7 in 10 people will make their homes in urban centers by mid-century, cities are fast becoming one of the frontlines in the global effort to clear the air.

In this visualization, Visual Capitalist’s Chris Dickert uses 2024 data from the State of the Air report from the American Lung Association to show the most polluted cities in the United States.

What is Air Pollution?

Air pollution is a complex mixture of gases, particles, and liquid droplets and can have a variety of sources, including wildfires and cookstoves in rural areas, and road dust and diesel exhaust in cities. 

There are a few kinds of air pollution that are especially bad for human health, including ozone and carbon monoxide, but here we’re concerned with fine particulate matter that is smaller than 2.5 microns, or PM2.5 for short. 

The reason for the focus is because at that small size, particulate matter can penetrate the bloodstream and cause all manner of havoc, including cardiovascular disease, lung cancer, and chronic pulmonary disease. 

The American Lung Association has set an annual average guideline of 9 µg/m³ for PM2.5, however, the World Health Organization has set a much more stringent limit of 5 µg/m³.

The 21 Worst Polluted Cities in the U.S.

Here are the top 21 most polluted cities in the U.S., according to their annual average PM2.5 concentrations:

Note: The American Lung Association uses Core Based Statistical Areas in its city and county rankings, which have been shortened here to the area’s principal city, or metro area in the case of the Bay Area, CA.

Six of the top seven cities are in California, and four in the state’s Central Valley, a 450-mile flat valley that runs parallel to the Pacific coast, and bordered by the Coast and Sierra Nevada mountain ranges. As a result, when pollution from the big population centers on the coast is carried inland by the wind—cities #5 and #6 on the list—it tends to get trapped in the valley. 

Bakersfield (#1), Visalia (#2), and Fresno (#3) are located at the drier and hotter southern end of the valley, which is worse for air quality. The top three local sources of PM2.5 emissions in 2023 were farms (20%), forest management / agricultural waste burning (20%), and road dust (14%). 

Benefit to Economy

While the health impacts are generally well understood, less well known are the economic impacts.

Low air quality negatively affects worker productivity, increases absenteeism, and adds both direct and indirect health care costs. But the flip side of that equation is that improving air quality has measurable impacts to the wider economy. The EPA published a study that calculated the economic benefits of each metric ton of particulate matter that didn’t end up in the atmosphere, broken down by sector.

At the same time, the EPA recently updated a cost-benefit analysis of the Clean Air Act, the main piece of federal legislation governing air quality, and found that between 1990 and 2020 it cost the economy roughly $65 billion, but also provided $2 trillion in benefits. 

Benefit to Business

But that’s at the macroeconomic level, so what about for individual businesses?

For one, employees like to breathe clean air and will choose to work somewhere else, given a choice. A 2022 Deloitte case study revealed that nearly 70% of highly-skilled workers said air quality was a significant factor in choosing which city to live and work in.

At the same time, air quality can impact employer-sponsored health care premiums, by reducing the overall health of the risk pool. And since insurance premiums averaged $7,590 per year in 2022 for a single employee, and rose to $21,931 for a family, that can add up fast. 

Consumers are also putting their purchase decisions through a green lens, while ESG, triple-bottom-line, and impact investing are putting the environment front and center for many investors.

And if the carrot isn’t enough for some businesses, there is the stick. The EPA recently gave vehicle engine manufacturer Cummins nearly two billion reasons to help improve air quality, in a settlement the agency is calling “the largest civil penalty in the history of the Clean Air Act and the second largest environmental penalty ever.”