Anti-immigration movements in the US and Europe have been saying it for years:  The Islamic world is barbaric and backwards, built on archaic ideas that are completely antithetical to western values.  Yet, progressive governments and their media allies continue in their attempts to portray these cultures as “the same”, or, as sympathetic. 

The historical Islamic justification for child marriage comes from the story in the Hadith of Muhammad’s marriage to a 6-year-old girl named Aisha, which he consummated when she turned age 9.  Apologists often claim this is limited to the poor rural backwaters of places like Afghanistan, but it is common in Iran, Pakistan, Yemen, Iraq and even Egypt.  And, in many cases these children are sold into marriage in exchange for monetary compensation or property.

In a recent BBC report from journalists in Afghanistan child marriages are examined in dark detail, yet, the BBC seems to place more sympathy on the parents (fathers) selling their daughters for coin while ignoring the grotesque nature of the tradition.  In other words, blame the economic circumstances, not the parents doing the selling. 

However, this narrative glosses over the fact that child sex slavery is a longstanding problem in Muslim culture, not a new trend spurred on by recent economic distress.  The outlet presents the families selling children as sympathetic, suggesting that the children will be sold, likely into a life of sexual abuse, but at least they will still be alive.

No blame is places on the fathers who are either too incompetent or too lazy to secure the basic needs of their own children.  And no blame is placed on the culture which normalizes the practice.  In fact, the BBC diverts blame to the loss of foreign funding from outside governments and NGOs.  

This is a thinly veiled propaganda hit by the BBC.  Afghanistan received substantial funding from the US through the now defunct USAID institution under the Biden Administration.  USAID dispersed nearly $4 billion to Afghanistan from 2021 to 2025 until it was shut down by Trump and DOGE.  The message seems to be “This is Trump’s fault”.  

Keep in mind, Biden abruptly pulled all troops and private contractors out of Afghanistan in 2021, allowing the Taliban to retake government power and inflict the oppressive theocratic authoritarianism that leads to the conditions the BBC dramatically outlines.  Little girls not being allowed to go to school is a direct result of Sharia Law, which is a direct result of Biden leaving Afghanistan in Taliban hands (along with billions of dollars in US military equipment).  

Thus, the only value of girls in the Afghan economy is as slaves for sale.  The worst part is that, in many cases, these girls are sold for marriage to relatives.  Meaning, they will eventually be forced to bear children through inbreeding.

Only 15 years ago this behavior was widely admonished in the western media.  Today, it is shielded with spin in the name of protecting the multicultural agenda.

The most interesting aspect of the BBC report is the way in which they build a narrative of distraction rather than addressing the cultural elephant in the room.  Their goal was apparently to showcase the dire effects of foreign funding cuts, but they ended up proving once again why the west should have nothing to do with the third world.

Authored by Jill McLaughlin via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced May 19 that its agents have launched an investigation into Washington State’s practice of housing male inmates in women’s prisons.

Gov. Bob Ferguson was notified in writing of the federal probe into an alleged pattern of “violating the constitutional rights of female prisoners incarcerated at the Washington Corrections Center for Women in Gig Harbor, Washington,” the DOJ stated.

The investigation is based on allegations that the prison has failed to protect female prisoners from sexual assaults, rape, voyeurism, and sexual intimidation by males who identify as females housed with them at the facility.

Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division said the practice would be a violation of the prisoners’ Eighth Amendment protections from cruel and unusual punishment.

“Under my leadership, the Civil Rights Division will not allow women incarcerated in jails or prisons to be subject to unconstitutional risks of harm from male inmates,” Dhillon said in a statement. “The constitutional rights of women cannot be sacrificed at the altar of appeasing unsupported and dangerous ideologies.”

The Washington State Department of Corrections adopted a policy in 2020 to allow men who identify as transgender to request a transfer to women’s facilities. The policy requires housing accommodations for inmates who are transgender, intersex, and gender-neutral to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.

The state is one of a small number of states to adopt similar policies. Maine, California, New York, Minnesota, and New Jersey also allow people who identify as transgender to be housed in a prison that matches their choice in gender. California and Maine were notified in March that their policies were also under investigation.

The DOJ said it was also collecting information from the public on men housed in women’s jails and prisons anywhere in the country as part of a wider investigation.

Investigating transgender prison policies is part of the Trump administration’s program to eliminate “gender ideology extremism and restore biological truth to the federal government,” which was an executive order signed by President Donald Trump in 2025.

The DOJ plans to review policies at the Washington prison and the Department of Corrections, and any evidence that has been reported. Federal investigators will work with the state to remedy any violations, according to the letter.

The investigation comes weeks after the America First Policy Institute, a right-leaning nonprofit think tank, filed a lawsuit challenging the state’s corrections policy, alleging it has led to violence, sexual abuse, intimidation, and fear among female inmates.

The complaint was filed on behalf of the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism, Fair for All, Inc., and Faith Booher-Smith, an inmate who was allegedly violently attacked by a transgender inmate at the prison in 2025.

In the lawsuit, the plaintiffs claim female inmates have been forced to share cells, showers, bathrooms, and other intimate living spaces with male inmates, stripping them of the sex-based protections of a women’s prison.

“A women’s prison is supposed to protect women,” said Leigh Ann O’Neill, chief legal affairs officer at the institute. “Washington’s policy turned that basic duty on its head.”

The Washington governor’s office did not return a request for comment about the investigation.

Authored by Brad Jones via The Epoch Times,

As tensions mount in the high stakes race for California governor, early results show Republicans have returned more than 905,000 ballots ahead of the June 2 primary election—a massive surge compared with the last governor’s race during the 2022 midterms.

Ballots from Republicans made up 37 percent of the early ballot returns—up 11 percent from four years ago at this point in the primary process, while those from Democratic voters have dropped by 13 percent, according to a Political Data (PDI) poll released on May 16.

Most of the ballots submitted so far—54 percent—were cast by voters 65 and older, while about 10 percent of voters ages 18-34 have returned early ballots.

The Real Clear Politics polling average shows Republican Steve Hilton, a political commentator, and Democrat Xavier Becerra, former Health and Human Services secretary, essentially tied, each with about 20 percent of the vote, followed by Democratic billionaire and environmental activist Tom Steyer at 14 percent and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco with 13 percent. The rest of the candidates show less than 10 percent support.

Hilton has publicly pressured Bianco to drop out of the race to avoid splitting the Republican vote, ensuring that at least one GOP candidate—himself—advances to the general election. But at the CBS-hosted televised debate on April 28, Bianco rejected the notion, saying he and Hilton will both be on the Nov. 3 ballot.

‘Break the Glass’ Strategy

Meanwhile, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who is terming out, told reporters at his recent state budget presentation he’s confident a Democrat will be on the Nov. 3 ballot.

Newsom alluded to a “break the glass” strategy to prevent a Democrat lockout in the nonpartisan, jungle primary, which allows the possibility of two Republicans—no Democrats—on the general election ballot.

“I don’t anticipate this need to be the case, but there’s a like break-the-glass scenario,” he said. “There’s many people that have a deep understanding of what it would look like if Democrats were locked out, and we’re going to do everything to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

The Democratic Governors Association has recently sent out mailers positioning Hilton as the top GOP threat, which could drive Bianco supporters to Hilton, making it more likely for a Democrat to finish in the top two.

“The Democrats wouldn’t be spending money trying to help Steve if they weren’t scared of me,” Bianco posted on X.

Steve Hilton speaks during a gubernatorial candidate forum in Sacramento on April 14, 2026. Godofredo A. Vásquez/AP Photo

Democratic Strategy Favors Hilton

Rob Pyers, a nonpartisan political analyst and research director for California Target Book, suggested the Democrats prefer to run against Hilton.

“The Democratic Governors Association really wants GOP voters to know that Steve Hilton is ‘Endorsed by Trump’ and ‘Pro MAGA’, and that they would be devastated if he advanced out of California’s top two primary alongside a Democrat,” Rob Pyers wrote on X.

When Amy Reichert, a San Diego based conservative activist, asked if the mailer from the Democrats was only mailed to Republicans to bump Hilton to the top two spot, Pyers said that “appears to be the case.”

Pyers replied that the “attack ads” contain “language tailored to appeal to conservative primary voters and to highlight Hilton’s Trump endorsement.

He noted that a Democrat versus Democrat race “would suck up hundreds of millions of dollars” that could be spent elsewhere.

“A D vs R race, not so much,” he wrote.

Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco fields questions from reporters and students following the California Governor’s Debate hosted by CBS at Pomona College in Claremont, Calif., on April 28, 2026. Brad Jones/The Epoch Times

Bianco’s Response

Bianco said in a text message to The Epoch Times on May 18 that Californians are voting differently in this election because they’re tired of dishonesty and corruption and “are absolutely sick of politicians rigging the system for their own benefit.”

“Newsom has never said one word in the past when two Democrats have moved on to the general elections,” he said.

“Saying the corrupt part out loud, exposing their plans to again rig the system, is exactly why people are voting different,” he said.

Corruption Scandal

As Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary during the Biden administration, Becerra has come under fire from critics who blamed him for putting migrant children at risk of trafficking when the agency lost track of 85,000 migrant children.

During his tenure at HHS from March 19, 2021, to Jan. 20, 2025, Becerra also faced scrutiny over tenuous ties to a corruption scandal involving his former aide Sean McCluskie, who pleaded guilty to his role in an alleged scheme to skim funds from a dormant campaign account for a “no-show” job for his wife.

A Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC) complaint against Becerra over the alleged violation of state campaign finance laws remains open and unresolved. The complaint hinges on Becerra’s dormant state Attorney General campaign funds, which were allegedly used to pay out tens of thousands of dollars to his former adviser’s firm months after Becerra was appointed HHS secretary.

Political consultant Dana Williamson, Newsom’s former chief of staff, has also pleaded guilty in the case, admitting to conspiracy to commit bank fraud and wire fraud, subscribing to a false tax return, and making false statements to a federal agent.

California gubernatorial candidate Xavier Becerra at a campaign event in Los Angeles on April 18, 2026. Jae C. Hong/AP Photo

Becerra has not been charged with any crimes or been accused of any wrongdoing related to the federal investigation, and has repeatedly denied any knowledge of illegal campaign fund transfers.

He also faced scorn over his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Some recent polls, including an Emerson poll, show Becerra with a slight lead while others show Hilton is the frontrunner.

Becerra surged into the lead among Democratic voters when disgraced then-congressman Eric Swalwell dropped out of the governor’s race in April amid sexual assault allegations. Swalwell resigned from Congress about a week later. Swalwell is under investigation but no criminal charges have been filed to date.

Official primary ballots list 61 candidates for governor, including Swalwell and former state controller Betty Yee, who has also dropped out of the race.

Political Predictions

According to Polymarket, an online betting house which claims 90-percent accuracy in predicting event outcomes one month ahead and 94 percent four hours before an event, the odds favor Becerra with a 58 percent chance of winning the election in a Democrat versus Democrat race in the Nov. 3 election followed by Steyer with a 28 percent chance. Hilton is ranked with a 10 percent chance and Bianco at 3 percent as of May 18.

Source: Polymarket

The Cook Political Report shows the California governor race as “Solid D” with partisan voter index score of “D +12,” which means the state, on average , is 12 percentage points more Democratic than the rest of the nation and indicates that statewide Democratic candidates have an entrenched advantage.

Sabato’s Crystal Ball also shows the California governorship as “Safe D.”

Tom Steyer speaks during a gubernatorial candidate forum on Latino and immigrant communities in Sacramento on April 14, 2026. Godofredo A. Vásquez/AP Photo

Campaign Finances

According to Transparency USA, as of May 19, Becerra was running a $3.3 million campaign deficit, taking in about $6.3 million in donations but spending more than $9.6 million. His campaign spending is mainly attributed to aggressive advertising.

A billionaire environmental activist, Steyer has raised about $134 million and spent about $255 million, He is on track to outspend Meg Whitman, a former eBay executive, who set a $159 million campaign spending record in her unsuccessful bid for governor in 2010.

Steyer’s wealth stems mainly from hedge fund investments in fossil fuels and private prisons, which his political opponents have used against him despite his progressive bent.

Steyer is facing an FPPC investigation over allegations his campaign paid social media influencers to post promotional videos without including legally required sponsored content disclosures.

Hilton has raised about $9.8 million and spent about $8.9 million, while Bianco has raised about $5.3 million and spent about $4.2 million.

The Issues

Several lively debates have drawn the national media spotlight on hot-button issues including the high cost of living in California—especially housing, tuition, and state taxes on gasoline—and ongoing problems with homelessness, the drug crisis, crime and public safety, and illegal immigration.

The U.S. is still at least a decade away from meaningfully reducing its dependence on China for the most critical rare earth minerals, despite billions of dollars in new investment and political pledges to move faster, according to a new report from Bloomberg.

While Washington has pushed to build domestic mining, refining, and manufacturing capacity, analysts say China is likely to retain its dominance over heavy rare earths—particularly dysprosium and terbium—until at least the mid-2030s. Those minerals are essential for the high-performance magnets used in fighter jets, submarines, missiles, electric vehicles, wind turbines, and other advanced technologies.

Forecasts from McKinsey & Company, CRU Group, and Benchmark Mineral Intelligence suggest producers outside China will meet less than 20% of global demand for dysprosium and terbium by 2035. The U.S. and its allies may make faster progress in reducing reliance on China for more abundant light rare earths, but the heavier materials remain far harder to replace.

The challenge is not simply digging more minerals out of the ground. Rare earth production involves mining ore, separating it into oxides, and then converting those materials into metals and magnets…a supply chain China dominates at nearly every step.

Heavy rare earths are especially difficult because they are less abundant and far more complex to refine. Producing ultra-pure material can require more than 1,000 chemical separation stages, and even small mistakes can affect magnet performance. Over decades, China built a deep advantage through refining infrastructure, technical expertise, and government-backed industrial policy. It also restricted exports of certain processing technologies, making it harder for competitors to catch up. The U.S., by comparison, has only a small pool of specialists with experience in rare earth separation and processing.

Bloomberg writes that Washington has begun investing heavily to rebuild domestic capacity, including Pentagon support for Lynas Rare Earths Ltd., currently the only commercial refiner of heavy rare earths outside China.

But production remains limited. Lynas produced just eight tons of dysprosium and terbium combined in the first quarter of 2026, while global demand is measured in thousands of tons each year. New projects in the United States, Australia, and Brazil could expand supply, but analysts still expect significant shortages in mining, refining, and magnet manufacturing by 2035.

China’s lower production costs have made the market even harder for rivals; past price swings wiped out many non-Chinese projects before they could scale. That leaves the U.S. facing a long and expensive effort to loosen China’s hold over a supply chain that has become increasingly important to both economic competitiveness and national security.

Authored by Kevin Stocklin via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Newly confirmed Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh, pledging new tactics to fight inflation, faces an uphill battle to keep rising prices in check.

At his April 21 Senate confirmation hearing, Warsh called for “a regime change in the conduct of policy” at the Fed under former chair Jerome Powell, whose tenure saw annual inflation exceed 8 percent during the Biden administration and has failed since 2021 to keep inflation below its target.

“Once you let inflation take hold in the economy, it’s more expensive and harder to bring it down, and so the fatal policy error going back four or five years is still a legacy that we’re dealing with,” Warsh stated. “Hard-working Americans are no doubt feeling it.”

Americans are suffering as price increases outpace wages. And as of April, the inflation rate of 3.8 percent remains persistently above the 2 percent target set by the Federal Reserve.

What is the new Fed chair’s plan to get inflation under control? Analysts predict that he will bring a different approach, which will include reducing the Fed’s massive $6.8 trillion bond holdings, prioritizing interest-rate actions over quantitative easing, and focusing on the money supply over other metrics.

“Warsh is likely going to pursue a smaller Fed balance sheet and try to use this ‘tightening’ as a bargaining chip to get the Federal Open Market Committee to lower short-term rates,” Chris Whalen, investment banker and former Fed staffer, told The Epoch Times. “His comments on the disaster of quantitative easing are quite clear.”

The Legacy of Cheap Dollars

Except for a brief interlude during President Donald Trump’s first term, the Fed has pursued a cheap-money strategy since the mortgage crisis of 2008–09, keeping its benchmark short-term interest rate—the federal funds rate—near zero, and only raising rates in 2022 when inflation was approaching double digits. Simultaneously, the Fed pursued an experimental policy called quantitative easing (QE), in which it created money to buy bonds from money-center banks, flooding the U.S. economy with dollars.

Between 2008 and 2022, the Fed accumulated $8 trillion in new financial assets on its balance sheet, effectively transforming it into one of the world’s largest asset managers and the largest single owner of U.S. Treasuries. Warsh has been an outspoken critic of quantitative easing, leading many economists to predict he will try to reverse this policy and shrink the Fed’s balance sheet.

During his confirmation hearing, he stated that “the Fed has an interest rate tool and a balance sheet tool … The balance sheet tool disproportionately helps those with financial assets; the interest rate tool hits the entire economy.”

While QE and low interest rates boosted demand in the wake of the mortgage collapse and pandemic lockdowns, they also drove up asset prices—notably stocks, bonds, and houses—to the benefit of wealthier Americans. Simultaneously, living standards fell for many Americans, whose dollars have lost more than 20 percent of their value over the past five years.

“The primary driver of inflation is the Fed’s expansion of the money supply, which the new Fed chair Kevin Warsh has addressed numerous times,” Julia Cartwright, economist with the American Institute for Economic Research, told The Epoch Times.

Between 2020 and 2022, the Fed injected approximately $6.4 trillion in new money into the economy to finance COVID stimulus payments, she said, and about 29 percent of America’s entire money supply today has been created since January 2020.

“Compounding this, the Iran conflict has choked off the Strait of Hormuz, disrupting roughly 20 million barrels of oil per day and a fifth of global LNG trade, driving up energy, fertilizer, plastics, food, and virtually every input price across the economy,” Cartwright said.

Follow the Money Supply

While the Iran war and tariffs have driven up prices, Steve Hanke, professor of economics at Johns Hopkins University who served on President Ronald Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers, maintained that inflation is fundamentally a monetary phenomenon, a matter of too much money chasing too few goods.

“To put the inflation genie back in the bottle, the Fed must dump the post-Keynesian economic models it relies on and start paying attention to the quantity theory of money and the money supply, broadly measured,” Hanke told The Epoch Times.

“The Fed should announce that it is going to target the growth rate in the money supply that is consistent with hitting its two-percent-per-year inflation target,” he said. “Based on the quantity theory of money, that would require the rate of growth in M2 to be around 6 percent per year.”

The M2 measurement of the money supply includes cash, bank deposits, and funds that are readily convertible to cash, such as certificates of deposit and money market funds. During America’s low-inflation period, between 2008 and 2020, the annual growth rate in the money supply (M2) was 6.11 percent, Hanke said, and inflation, measured by the Consumer Price Index (CPI), averaged 1.77 percent.

Indeed, Warsh has indicated that he will focus on different metrics to measure and control inflation, beyond short-term price fluctuations.

“What I’m most interested in is: What is the underlying inflation rate—not what is the one-time change in prices because of a change in geopolitics or change in beef,” Warsh told senators at his confirmation hearing.

The Power of the Supply Side

What can the Trump administration do to help the Fed fight inflation? Economists call for supply-side initiatives, such as continuing deregulation, lowering tariffs, and boosting energy supply, as well as cutting government spending.

“Deficit financing pressures the Fed to expand the money supply and keeps interest rates higher than necessary,” Cartwright said.

She also advocated for a hands-off approach to private industry, despite the recent stakes the Trump administration has taken in companies like Intel.

“In a functioning economy, business compete primarily by bringing prices down—the more competition, the lower the prices and the better off consumers are,” Cartwright said. “The most persistent and under-appreciated source of higher prices is government interference in that competition through subsidies, preferential corporate deals, tariffs, and industrial policy that substitutes Washington’s judgment for the market’s.”

Lastly, economists say, politicians should let the Fed focus on fighting inflation rather than pressuring Fed officials to cut interest rates before inflation is tamed.

“The best course of action for the Trump administration to take would be to go radio silent on monetary policy,” Hanke said. “Do what President Reagan did with [then-Fed chair] Paul Volcker: Reagan gave Volcker the monetary policy reins and left him alone.”

Authored by John Haughey via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A three-judge federal appeals panel is expected to issue a decision by year’s end on a lawsuit challenging Energy Secretary Chris Wright’s May 2025 emergency order that prevented a Michigan utility from closing a 64-year-old coal-fired power plant.

How the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia rules in Michigan v. DOE after hearing May 15 oral arguments could prove precedential in deciding three similar cases–including two before the same court. It could also resolve a May 9 lawsuit filed in Seattle’s U.S. District Court by 16 Democratic state attorneys general who claim the emergency that President Donald Trump declared in his January 2025 National Energy Emergency executive order doesn’t exist.

Wright has issued five 2025 emergency orders under Section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act mandating that decades-old coal-fired generators in Michigan, Washington, Indiana, and Colorado, slated to be shut down by utilities, must continue operating or, at least, remain operable. This would assure that regional transmission electrical grids have the baseload capacity to provide enough power during extreme winter and summer weather stresses, the orders say.

The secretary maintains he has the authority to do so under the president’s National Energy Emergency declaration and his April 2025 executive orders supporting the coal industry and strengthening the nation’s electrical grid.

Wright, in public comments and in Fiscal Year 2027 budget hearings, maintains that the orders—90-day emergency mandates he’s repeatedly reissued—have prevented the retirement of more than 17 gigawatts of coal-powered generation, enough electricity to power up to 17 million homes. He has said that renewable energies encouraged by the Biden administration and some Democrat-led states are weather-dependent, costly, and reliant on imported materials, including from China.

Had he not issued the emergency orders to keep the Michigan and two Indiana coal-fired plants open through this winter, “People would have died” during January and February storms, he said during an April 21 Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing.

“We pushed the grid to the edge. Coal kept things alive,” Wright said. “If we don’t extend the life of these coal plants, we will continue to have ruinous rises in our electricity prices [and] will not be able to meet the challenge of re-shored manufacturing and winning the AI race against China.”

Congressional Democrats say those orders have cost the nation’s electricity customers more than $500 million, noting the five aging plants are not operating at significant capacity. Among the claims made in lawsuits challenging the mandates—including by Michigan, Illinois, and Minnesota in the case heard May 15—is that the federal government is exceeding its authority by dictating to local utilities which energy source they choose.

While each plant and closure is different, they share similarities, and the fallout from the rulings could boost or derail the Trump administration’s campaign to revive the nation’s coal industry.

Michigan: J.H. Campbell

The J.H. Campbell power plant in West Olive, Michigan, operated by Consumers Energy, a subsidiary of CMS Energy, opened in 1962. It was scheduled to shut down on May 31, 2025, and be replaced by a plant fueled with a combination of natural gas, renewable energies, and battery storage in Covert, Michigan.

Eight days before the closure, Wright issued an emergency order directing Consumers Energy and the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO), which provides electricity for 223 utilities serving 45 million people across 15 states, to keep the plant open for 90 days. It was the first of a succession of 90-day orders that have kept the three-unit plant open since.

Wright’s order said that keeping the plant open was necessary “to minimize risk of blackouts and address critical grid security issues in the Midwestern region of the United States ahead of the high electricity demand expected this summer.”

The 2,000-acre coal-fired plant was being shuttered 15 years before the end of its “scheduled design life,” the order stated, citing a North American Electric Reliability Corporation 2025 Summer Reliability Assessment warning that MISO’s grid was at “elevated risk” of shortfalls during summer peaks. It also cited MISO’s own forecast that acknowledged “potential for elevated risk during extreme weather.”

The Michigan Public Service Commission and Michigan Attorney General’s office, along with national environmental groups and local consumer advocates, maintain that the aging plant is unnecessary and imposes higher costs on utility customers. The state and consumer organizations, along with Illinois and Minnesota, faced off with federal regulators in the May 15 hearing in Washington.

According to CMS Energy’s regulatory filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company maintains that between June 1 and Dec. 31, 2025, it cost $290 million to pay for coal shipped from Wyoming’s Powder River Basin, along with maintenance and salaries to keep the plant open, often at single-digit capacity.

That expense was offset by selling $155 million in electricity to utilities across 11 states within MISO’s grid. Overall, CMS Energy tabulates that it has incurred $180 million in operating losses—about $631,000 per day.

Consumers Energy has petitioned the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for permission to recoup $135 million from MISO ratepayers and is seeking to recover $43 million from the Department of Energy in costs incurred to comply with the federal order.

Wright maintains that the costs of keeping Campbell and other coal-fired plants open are outweighed by the risks, including potential loss of life, when electricity goes out, especially in winter.

He said Campbell “was integral in stabilizing the grid,” providing 650 megawatts a day of electricity—enough power for 600,000 homes—during Winter Storm Fern, from Jan. 21 to Feb. 1.

“Beautiful, clean coal was the MVP of recent winter storms,” he said in a February statement. “Hundreds of American lives have likely been saved because of President Trump’s actions saving America’s coal plants, including this Michigan coal plant, which ran daily during Winter Storm Fern.”

Washington: Centralia

Wright issued an emergency order on Dec. 16, 2025, mandating that TransAlta keep its coal-fired Centralia Generating Station Unit 2 operating beyond its planned Dec. 31 closure.

The Centralia plant is “essential” for the Northwest’s grid stability, he said in the order, referring to the North American Electric Reliability Corporation’s 2025-26 Winter Reliability Assessment, which determined that the region was at “elevated risk” of power shortages during extreme weather, including cold snaps. Wright extended the order in March by another 90 days through June 14.

Canada-based TransAlta in April filed a cost recovery application with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, claiming it cost between $20 million and $23 million to purchase and ship coal from Peabody Energy’s Spring Creek Mine in Montana and Rawhide Mine in Wyoming to keep the 53-year-old plant operating during the 87 days before March 16.

The company said the order derailed its plan with Puget Sound Energy to convert the plant to natural gas by 2028.

Washington Attorney General Nick Brown, in March, asked the U.S. Ninth Circuit of Appeals to reject Wright’s order while also filing a lawsuit in Seattle’s U.S. District Court challenging the legality of the action and claiming no grid emergency in the region.

Also in March, Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson signed House Bill 2367, which eliminates “preferential treatment related to coal-fired electric generating plants,” revokes cap-and-invest exemptions for coal plants, and ends tax exemptions on coal used at the Centralia plant.

Indiana: Schahfer, Culley

On Dec. 23, 2025, Wright issued an order preventing the planned Dec. 31, 2025, closures of two coal-fired units at the R.M. Schahfer power plant in Wheatfield, Indiana, operated by Northern Indiana Public Service Co., and the coal-fired F.B. Culley power plant near Newburgh, Indiana, operated by CenterPoint Energy.

That 90-day emergency order was renewed in March, requiring Schahfer’s two coal-fired units—built in 1983 and 1986—and Culley to remain operable at least through June 21.

Among the reasons Wright cited in the emergency order for keeping the plants operable, if not fully operating, was the same strain on MISO’s grid to which he referred in his Michigan order.

The December order also noted that it’s difficult for coal-fired generators “to resume operations once they have been retired.”

During a March 24 hearing before the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission, Northern Indiana Public Service Co. President Vince Parisi said that keeping Schahfer’s two coal-fired units open cost the utility “in excess of $100 million.”

One of the two coal-fired units ordered to remain operable had been shuttered since summer and remained offline, he said.

CenterPoint President Michael Roeder said during the hearing that it had cost his utility at least $18 million to keep its F.B. Culley Unit 2 plant operating during the first three months of the year.

In his March 23 order extending the emergency another 90 days, Wright said that during Winter Storm Fern, Schahfer generated more than 285 megawatts daily and Culley pushed 30 megawatts a day into MISO’s stressed grid.

R.M. Schahfer gets its coal primarily from Wyoming’s Powder River Basin and, to a lesser extent, the Illinois Basin. Culley’s coal is shipped from Oaktown mines southwest in Indiana’s Knox County.

The Sierra Club, among other environmental groups and local consumer advocate organizations, in April filed a lawsuit in Washington arguing that Wright’s orders are federal overreach. The suit is similar to Michigan’s challenge, and, as with that case, the attorneys general of Illinois and Minnesota have also signed on.

Colorado: Craig

On Dec. 30, 2025, Wright issued an emergency order directing Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association, the Platte River Power Authority, Salt River Project, PacifiCorp., and Xcel Energy’s Public Service Company of Colorado to ensure that the Craig Station Unit 1 coal-fired plant in Craig, Colo., “remains available to operate.”

Citing the North American Electric Reliability Corporation’s 2024 Long-Term Reliability Assessment for Colorado and the Western Electricity Coordinating Council, Wright said, “I determined the [council’s] area faced a significant amount of retiring baseload generation resources and has concerns in meeting demand.”

Keeping Craig Unit 1 online “would help prevent the loss of power to homes and businesses that would otherwise pose a risk to public health and safety,” he wrote.

The plant, built in 1974, was scheduled to shut down on Dec. 31. On March 30, the order was extended for another 90 days.

Craig, around 200 miles northwest of Denver with a Census 2020 population of about 9,000, was a major energy hub in the 1970s-80s for the Western Area Power Administration’s Rocky Mountain Region and Southwest Power Pool regional grid because of its nearby coal mines, including Trapper Mine.

The four owners of the two coal-fired plants within the three-unit power complex in north-central Colorado had planned the closures since 2016.

Tri-State, a not-for-profit electricity wholesaler owned by the 43 cooperatives and municipal power districts, and Platte River, a nonprofit utility operator, said the coal-fired plants were no longer needed, their generation exceeded by new solar and wind developments.

They filed a Jan. 29 petition asking the Department of Energy to reconsider the order, claiming they’re being forced to impose costs on ratepayers. They called the federal action an “uncompensated taking” of their property in violation of the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment.

A December 2025 analysis by Grid Strategies calculates that it could cost $85 million to $150 million annually to keep Craig 1 operating, in addition to concurrent expenses in operating new wind, solar, and transmission projects.

Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser and a coalition of environmental groups, including the Sierra Club and Earthjustice, have challenged the emergency order, filing a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., claiming it is an abuse of emergency authority and will unjustly inflate Coloradans’ electric bills.

Americans are still paying elevated prices at the pump in 2026, but the biggest financial burden is falling on states with lower household incomes rather than the highest fuel prices.

This map, via Visual Capitalist’s Bruno Venditti, shows where gasoline is least affordable by comparing the cost of a standard 15-gallon fill-up against median weekly household income across all 50 states.

The data comes from SmartAsset and AAA, as of May 2026.

The Highest Gas Burdens Aren’t in California

West Virginia ranks as the state where gas prices hit the hardest, with a 15-gallon fill-up consuming 5.2% of median weekly household income.

West Virginia’s fuel prices are not especially high by national standards. Instead, lower household incomes mean a routine fill-up consumes a larger share of weekly earnings.

Other Midwestern and Southern states dominate the top 10, including Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Mississippi, and Kentucky. In many of these states, long driving distances and limited public transit make gasoline a near-essential household expense.

High Gas Prices Don’t Always Mean High Burden

California has the highest gasoline prices in the country at roughly $6.10 per gallon, yet it ranks only 12th in overall burden. Hawaii and Washington also post some of America’s most expensive fuel prices but remain outside the top 10.

Higher household incomes help offset the cost of filling up. In California, for example, median weekly household income exceeds $2,000, significantly higher than in many states across the South and Midwest.

Minimum Wage Workers Face an Even Bigger Challenge

The burden becomes even more severe when measured against weekly minimum wage earnings. In Indiana, a single 15-gallon fill-up represents nearly 25% of a week’s minimum wage income. Pennsylvania, Idaho, and New Hampshire also rank among the highest by this measure.

Meanwhile, wealthier Northeastern states such as Massachusetts, Maryland, and New Jersey post some of the lowest overall burdens relative to household income. Stronger wages help cushion residents from volatile energy prices.

If you enjoyed today’s post, check out Gas Prices Surge to Highest Level Since July ’22 on Voronoi.

Authored by Adam H. Douglas via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Business email compromise (BEC) is a targeted fraud scheme in which criminals impersonate vendors, executives, or accountants to steal money from businesses. AI has made these attacks dramatically harder to detect by generating personalized emails that mirror real writing styles and existing business relationships.

The FBI reported more than $20 billion in internet crime losses in 2025, with BEC ranked as the second-largest attack method. Small businesses are the primary target.

There are, however, five cost-free verification steps that can significantly reduce your exposure.

What Is Business Email Compromise?

A BEC is not your typical phishing email. There is often no suspicious link, no misspelled bank name, and no “lottery prize.”

BECs in 2026 are targeted, researched, and increasingly indistinguishable from a legitimate message sent by someone you already work with.

The Core BEC Scheme

A criminal impersonates a trusted contact, such as a vendor, your accountant, or your own CEO, and requests a wire transfer, an invoice payment, or a change to banking details.

By the time you realize something is wrong, the money is gone. Wire transfers are rarely reversible once they leave the domestic banking system.

Why AI Has Made This Significantly Worse

For years, spotting a BEC email meant looking for bad grammar, awkward phrasing, or a sender name that did not quite match the domain. That approach no longer works.

AI tools can now:

• Scrape LinkedIn profiles, websites, and public business filings to map your vendor relationships and internal structure.
• Analyze writing samples to clone the tone and style of a specific person.
• Generate emails that reference real projects, real invoice numbers, and real business history.
• Produce flawless English with none of the telltale errors that once flagged these attempts.

The result is correspondence that reads exactly like something your CFO or your longest-standing vendor would write. The old “just read it carefully” advice has been effectively neutralized by tools that generate deception at scale.

What a Typical Attack Looks Like

These two scenarios play out regularly against small businesses and freelancers:

Scenario 1: The Fake Vendor Invoice

You receive an email from what appears to be a vendor you have worked with for two years. The address looks right at a glance. The email references your last project together and includes an updated invoice with new banking details. The tone matches the vendor’s usual communication style. You process the payment. The real vendor’s account was never involved.

Scenario 2: The Executive Wire Request

You get an email from your company’s owner or a senior partner. A deal is closing today, and a wire transfer needs to go out immediately. The request emphasizes urgency and discretion. The writing style matches. The amount fits your normal range. You send it.

Both scenarios have cost small businesses hundreds of thousands of dollars in a single transaction.

Why Small Businesses Are Targeted More Than Large Companies

Large enterprises typically have layered payment approval systems, dedicated fraud detection software, and internal cybersecurity teams. Small and mid-sized businesses generally do not.

A single employee may have full authority to execute a wire transfer without a second sign-off. Criminals know this and exploit it systematically.

Five Verification Steps That Cost Nothing

You do not need specialized software or a cybersecurity team to reduce your BEC exposure. You need consistent habits.

• “Call to confirm” protocol. Any request involving a payment, wire transfer, or change to banking details should be verified by phone, using a number already in your records, not one provided in the email in question.
• Create a payment change policy. Set a firm rule: vendor or employee banking information is never updated based on an email alone. Require a written request plus a live phone confirmation.
• Treat urgency as a red flag. Urgency is a deliberate manipulation tactic in BEC attacks. If an email is pressuring you to skip normal approval steps, slow down regardless of how legitimate it looks.
• Check the actual sending domain. The display name may read “Sarah at Metro Supplies” while the actual address is sarah@metro-supplies-llc.net rather than sarah@metrosupplies.com. Lookalike domains are a standard BEC tool.
• Require dual authorization for wire transfers. Even in a two-person operation, require a second approval on any outgoing wire above a defined threshold.

If Your Business Has Already Been Hit

If your business has already been hit, act immediately. Contact your bank and request a wire recall. File a complaint with the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center at ic3.gov. If the loss is significant, contact your local FBI field office directly.

Also, review your insurance coverage. Standard commercial general liability policies typically do not cover funds transfer fraud. A cyber liability policy or crime insurance endorsement may provide protection.

Talk to a commercial broker about your current coverage before you need to file a claim.

FAQs About Business Email Compromise

What Makes BEC Different From a Regular Phishing Scam?

Phishing sends the same generic email to thousands of people, hoping someone clicks. BEC is the opposite: it is researched and customized to your specific business. Scammers study your vendor relationships, your internal structure, and your communication patterns before sending a message designed to look like it came from someone you already trust. That targeting makes BEC significantly more dangerous than standard phishing and much harder to catch before money has already moved.

Can My Business Recover Money Lost to a BEC Scam?

Recovery is possible but not guaranteed. Wire transfers move quickly, and funds often reach overseas accounts within hours of being sent. Contact your bank the moment you suspect fraud and request a wire recall. File a complaint with the FBI IC3 at ic3.gov. Acting within 24–48 hours gives you the best chance at partial or full recovery. Once funds leave the domestic banking system, getting them back becomes substantially harder and, in many cases, is not possible.

Does My Small Business Need Cyber Liability Insurance to Protect Against BEC?

Standard commercial general liability and property policies typically exclude funds transfer fraud. If your business regularly processes wire transfers, receives vendor invoices, or handles client financial data, a cyber liability policy or a crime insurance endorsement is worth reviewing with a commercial broker. Premiums for small businesses can be modest relative to potential losses. Understand exactly what your current policy covers before you need to file a claim, not after.

The Epoch Times copyright © 2026. The views and opinions expressed are those of the authors. They are meant for general informational purposes only and should not be construed or interpreted as a recommendation or solicitation. The Epoch Times does not provide investment, tax, legal, financial planning, estate planning, or any other personal finance advice. The Epoch Times holds no liability for the accuracy or timeliness of the information provided.

In a revelation that blurs the line between calculated covert strategy and sheer desperation, the deep state’s latest regime change playbook for Iran has officially leaked via the NY Times; however, there are many aspects to the story which defy belief, and so like many Iran-related things being reported lately, should be taken with a big grain of salt.

According to a fresh New York Times report citing briefed US officials, Washington and Tel Aviv launched “Operations Roaring Lion” and “Epic Fury” with the objective to reinstall none other than former Iranian firebrand Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the nation’s new leader.

The very man who had widely been deemed by West as a ‘hardliner’ was president of the Islamic Republic from 2005 to 2013 with a fiercely anti-Western agenda, and yet was apparently tapped by US intelligence to manage “Iran’s political, social, and military situation.”

Another publication has correctly called the story and alleged plan “cartoonish” and outlandish-sounding. Indeed just look at how the NY Times report begins: it first recounts how President Trump in the opening days of the war mused publicly that it would be best if “someone from within” Iran took over, and then—

It turns out that the United States and Israel went into the conflict with a particular and very surprising someone in mind: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the former Iranian president known for his hard-line, anti-Israel and anti-American views.

But the audacious plan, developed by the Israelis and which Mr. Ahmadinejad had been consulted about, quickly went awry, according to the U.S. officials who were briefed on it.

Mr. Ahmadinejad was injured on the war’s first day by an Israeli strike at his home in Tehran that had been designed to free him from house arrest, the American officials and an associate of Mr. Ahmadinejad said. He survived the strike, they said, but after the near miss he became disillusioned with the regime change plan.

An associate of Ahmadinejad further told the NYT that the Americans viewed him as someone who could actually hold the fractured nation together, despite his well known and colorful anti-Israel statements while he had been in power.

But apparently some of the aspects which made him a candidate, or potential future US-Israeli puppet in Tehran (Delcy Rodriguez-style), was that he had been barred three times from running for president by Iran’s unelected 12-member Guardian Council (in 2017, 2021, and 2024). Following his 2017 disqualification, he apparently flipped, becoming a highly vocal critic of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

For this story to be true, it would mean that Ahmadinejad is an Israeli-US asset. It would also mean that his Israeli-US handlers decided to disclose this to the NYT. And it would mean that an Israeli-US bombing of Ahmadinejad’s home, which ended up wounding him, was actually… https://t.co/sfjsQI35z0

— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) May 20, 2026

Recent reports in the wake of the large-scale January protests, including in The Atlantic, indicated that his freedom of movement had been heavily restricted, and even his phones confiscated. He was by the start of Epic Fury under house arrest.

Because of all of this, a March Atlantic piece had concluded, “For more than a decade, he has been known more as a regime opponent than as a supporter.”

The Times report further alleges that blueprint to reinstall the former president was engineered by Israel, who supposedly had been actively discussing the plot with Ahmadinejad himself, but then the plan collapsed after Ahmadinejad was wounded during the chaotic jailbreak attempt – or rather, large-scale airstrike on his home. Since the strike, his actual condition and whereabouts remain entirely unknown.

⁠Ahmadinejad, SERIOUSLY? The Holocaust denier? The wipe Israel off the map guy? The Green Revolution death and torture guy who stole the 2009 elections? The nuclear program accelerator guy? The Islamic fundamentalist end-days guy? https://t.co/xYCUoKjy76

— Christiane Amanpour (@amanpour) May 20, 2026

But he has managed to deliver a few public addresses since his alleged escape – including a highly strategic congratulatory message on Mojtaba Khamenei’s rise to supreme leader, after his father was killed. So ultimately, little of this NY Times account, which reads like a fantastical spy thriller, sounds too believable.

What the report may have done is simply to paint a bright target on this back: “People close to Mr Ahmadinejad have been accused of having too close ties to the West, or even spying for Israel,“ the NYT added.

Pundits across the political spectrum have been scratching their heads over the NY Times report:

I wasn’t a fan of Mr. Ahmadinejad during his first term, and my aversion only grew during his second. But why would the New York Times now publish a claim branding him an alleged traitor to his own country? Why would the criminal Trump regime reveal its supposed assets in the… pic.twitter.com/JMEMcnUdph

— Seyed Mohammad Marandi (@s_m_marandi) May 20, 2026

The more believable aspect does come when the NYT suggests he Ahmadinejad was top of the list after he personally praised President Trump in a 2019 interview, and argued for a rapprochement between Tehran and Washington.

“Mr Trump is a man of action,” Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying. “He is a businessman and therefore he is capable of calculating cost-benefits and making a decision. We say to him, let’s calculate the long-term cost-benefit of our two nations and not be shortsighted.”

*  *  *

Oppositionist lobbies never seem to learn that Washington ‘loyalty’ doesn’t run deep, and is even quite fickle…

Notable development for the Reza Pahlavi crowd and and his “Thank you Bibi” rallies. 👇🏼 https://t.co/wpIVPlbGuM

— Vali Nasr (@vali_nasr) May 20, 2026