The Internal Revenue Service on Friday announced that it would postpone enforcement of a law that would require high-earners to exclusively allocate “catch-up” contributions to Roth-style investment accounts — rather than pre-tax accounts that confer an immediate income tax benefit.  

The change in the law, inflicted by December 2022’s SECURE 2.0 Act, stipulated that, starting in 2024, 401(k) participants making catch-up contributions by virtue of being age 50 or older must put those contributions in Roth accounts if their prior-year Social Security wages were more than $145,000. Friday’s announcement means people fitting that description can allocate catch-up contributions to pre-tax accounts for another two years.  

Unlike traditional pre-tax contributions, Roth contributions do not reduce a participant’s current-year taxable income and thus don’t provide immediate tax relief. The Roth payoff comes later, as qualified distributions are income-tax-free. Conversely, pre-tax contributions are full taxable when distributed. 

Some higher earners anticipate being in a lower tax bracket when they start tapping their 401(k) in retirement, compared to the bracket they’re in today. That means they’re more enthused about reaping current-tax-year savings from pre-tax contributions rather than the tax-free treatment in retirement. 

For 2023, the regular 401(k) contribution limit is $22,500. Participants who are 50 and older can contribute another $7,500 in catch-up contributions, for a total of $30,000. Vanguard says 16% of eligible participants made catch-up contributions in 2022.  

A participant in the 35% tax bracket can cut his income tax bill an extra $2,625 by making a $7,500 pre-tax, catch-up contribution — in addition to tax savings from the other regular contribution.  

“The administrative transition period will help taxpayers transition smoothly to the new Roth catch-up requirement and is designed to facilitate an orderly transition for compliance with that requirement,” the IRS said. The widely-despised instrument of government theft also clarified that the SECURE 2.0 Act doesn’t bar anyone from making catch-up contributions, regardless of income, in 2023 or beyond. Some feared a textual error had accidentally banned catch-up contributions altogether.  

The new and now-postponed rule about catch-up contributions only applies to 401(k) and similar accounts, not to Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs). 

Given the uncertainty of future tax rates — imposed by a government that’s hurtling toward insolvency — many advisors say it’s a good idea to diversify the tax flavor of your retirement accounts. Having a substantial bucket of Roth money provides flexibility in managing your tax bills in retirement…assuming Uncle Sam doesn’t pull a Darth Vader and “alter the deal” by revoking the tax-free treatment for “wealthy” Americans. 

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

Below is my column in The Messenger on the expanding evidence in the Biden corruption scandal and the need for Congress to take commensurate action to investigate the matter. After this column ran, Fox’s Brian Kilmeade conducted an interview with Ukrainian prosecutor general Viktor Shokin. What was striking about the interview is not just the contradiction with other accounts (like insisting that he was investigating Burisma and the investigation was expanding when he was fired), but that he claimed that Kilmeade was the first to seek to interview him. This is just Shokin’s account and many question his veracity. However, it is astonishing that this is the first interview that I have seen of one of the key figures in this scandal. It highlights the need to still fully investigate a scandal that the media has largely avoided in prior years.  However, the greatest case for an impeachment inquiry was made by Attorney General Merrick Garland himself.

Here is the column:

When Congress returns next month, it has little alternative but to launch a long-discussed impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden. For House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), the case for an inquiry came from a most unlikely source: Attorney General Merrick Garland.

The debacle in the Hunter Biden investigation has left most objective legal analysts in disbelief, with one CNN analyst calling it an “unholy mess.”

Even before the collapse of a widely condemned “sweetheart deal” with Hunter, the investigation headed by U.S. Attorney David Weiss was a growing concern for many observers. In prior years, I wrote about Garland’s refusal to appoint a special counsel despite the obvious conflicts posed by the potential involvement of President Biden in his son’s alleged influence-peddling scandal. I also raised the problem of an investigation that remained ongoing for years as the statute of limitations expired on major potential crimes.

It turns out that the same concerns were being raised within the Weiss team. Two IRS whistleblowers recently confirmed that the expiration of potential tax felony crimes was raised with Weiss and the Department of Justice (DOJ). There reportedly was an agreement to extend that period, including on the violations tied to the most controversial alleged payments from sources in Ukraine and other countries. The two witnesses testified that the Justice Department instead allowed the statute of limitations to expire.

These two whistleblowers — and, more recently, a former FBI agent — said that the DOJ tipped off the Biden team on attempts to interview Hunter and to conduct searches. They describe an investigation that was anything but the “routine” matter described by congressional Democrats in seeking to block House investigations.

What followed has bordered on the burlesque. Weiss cut a deal with Hunter’s legal team that was widely derided. After years of investigation, he and the DOJ agreed to a couple of tax misdemeanors, a papered-over gun charge, and no risk of jail time for the president’s son. The deal disassembled in court after a few questions from the presiding judge about sweeping immunity language and other curious elements. When District Judge Maryellen Noreika asked the prosecutor if he had ever seen any agreement like this one, he replied “no.”

House Republicans had previously demanded that Weiss and his team answer questions about the investigation and the plea bargain. And an appearance before a House committee was planned when Garland suddenly preempted that by doing what many of us have demanded for years: He appointed a special counsel. To the amazement of many, though, he appointed the one prosecutor who should have been categorically excluded — David Weiss.

Section 600.3 of the DOJ’s code on special counsels requires an appointment from outside the Justice Department, for obvious reasons. While another prior special counsel, John Durham, also came from within the Justice Department, Durham was retiring from the department at the time of his appointment. Not only did Garland have to ignore his own regulations to appoint Weiss but he also had to ignore the main qualification: The appointed outside counsel should be someone with “a reputation for integrity and impartial decision-making.”

Weiss could well have a legitimate defense to Republican complaints that he ran a fixed investigation into Hunter or accusations that he made false statements to his own team. However, he clearly remains under suspicion by many people. That is reflected in an ABC News/Ipsos poll in which almost half of Americans lack trust that the DOJ will conduct the Hunter Biden investigation in a “fair and nonpartisan manner.”

In addition to this controversial appointment, Garland again refused to expressly extend the special counsel’s mandate to include influence-peddling allegations involving President Biden.

Even some liberal pundits are mystified by these moves and why Garland would not simply appoint someone in compliance with the regulations who could guarantee a new and full investigation.

So Weiss is now investigating crimes that continue to dwindle in number due to the long delays in prosecution. It is like waiting for winter to go goose hunting in Canada, long after the geese have flown South. Everyone just gets dressed up and fires aimlessly into an empty sky.

While Hunter still can be charged on the same meager grounds (and possibly the addition of a Foreign Agents Registration Act charge), the alleged fix remains in the Biden investigation.

Now, however, Congress will have a more difficult time getting answers out of Weiss because he can claim he is engaged in an ongoing special counsel investigation, and he can use the eventual special counsel report as much to defend his own actions as to detail any potential crimes.

At the same time, the Biden administration still is resisting the sharing of information with the House, including records held by the National Archives.

For months, I have discussed a potential impeachment of the president with Republican House members and have encouraged them not to repeat the abuses of House Democrats in the use of “snap impeachments” and the discarding of fact hearings in the House Judiciary Committee.

Garland, however, has effectively forced their hands.

While Garland seems incapable of imagining any crime involving the president, he has made a conclusive — if unintended — case for an impeachment inquiry.

With the investigative impediments created by the Weiss appointment and by Garland’s refusal to expressly extend the special counsel’s mandate to the allegations of Biden family influence-peddling, there is little choice but to commence an impeachment inquiry. The authority of the House is at its apex when carrying out its duties under the impeachment clause.

Whatever interest — or ability — remains to prosecute Hunter Biden, Congress has a separate duty to confirm any high crimes and misdemeanors committed by President Biden. Indeed, the Democrats themselves established precedent for carrying out retroactive impeachments for prior offices, including any which may have occurred when Biden was vice president.

With the current state of the Hunter Biden investigation and the baffling conduct of Attorney General Garland, there is no alternative for the House but to launch the impeachment inquiry.

Yale University is rushing to reassure freshman students and parents after the school’s police union, which in the midst of contract negotiations, distributed flyers with stark warnings about high crime in New Haven, Connecticut — complete with a graphic of a grim reaper. They warned incoming students to avoid walking alone and avoid public transport. Forget night life: Student should stay in their dorms and “off the streets after 8 PM.” 

Presented by the Yale Police Benevolent Association as “A Survival Guide for First-Year Students of Yale University,” the flyers were distributed on freshman move-in day. “The incidence of crime and violence in New Haven is shockingly high, and it is getting worse,” the flyers warned. “During the seven month period ending July 23, 2023, murders have doubled, burglaries are up 33% and motor vehicle thefts are up 56%.”

A city spokesman confirmed the numbers are accurate. However, New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker condemned the union, saying the flyers were “totally offensive” and cherry-picked data to create a “false and scary” impression. He countered that violent crime has decreased by 29.2% since 2020. However, it seems Elicker did his own cherry-picking: The New York Times notes New Haven homicides are up over that same span. 

The union is in the midst of renegotiating its contract, but its lawyer, Andrew Matthews, denied that the flyers were a negotiating tactic. “They have motor vehicles chasing each other down the streets of New Haven shooting at one another. If you or your children were to go to Yale, wouldn’t you want to know that?” asked Matthews.

Undermining Matthews’ denials about the intent, the flyers state that “the New Haven and Yale Police Departments are understaffed,” and suggests the situation puts students at risk: “Do not be mislead by ‘Blue Phone cameras.’ They are not monitored.” They warn students not to expect help after dark: “If you restrict your travel to daylight hours, police personnel are best able to provide adequate protection.” 

The flyer painted a grim picture of New Haven’s Union Train Station, noting that separate shootings and stabbing incidents occurred there just last month. The leaflet also says “theft has become so great a problem that Yale University is urging students to engrave identifying numbers on all property.” The school is giving out free steering-wheel locks to any Yalie who owns easily-stolen Kia or Hyundai vehicles. 

Yale police chief Anthony Campbell joined the condemnation. “We do not support this and, to be quite frank, I’m really disgusted that they have chosen to take this path,” he said at a press conference with the New Haven mayor. “Young people are coming to the city for the first time. That’s appalling. You don’t try to scare them into getting a better contract,” added New Haven Police Chief Karl Jacobsen. 

While accurately describing bleak conditions in New Haven may not amount to fearmongering, the Yale union is guilty of an academic sin: plagiarism. Many passages in the flyer and the grim reaper graphic are directly copied from a notorious flyer handed out by a New York cop union in 1975.

Titled “Welcome to Fear City,” the New York flyers concluded, “The best advice we can give you is this: Until things change, stay away from New York City if you possibly can.” On an ostensibly cheerier note clearly not meant to be received that way, the Yale police flyer acknowledged that “some Yalies do manage to survive New Haven and even retain their personal property.” 

With freshmen and parents rattled by the reaper, we get to savor the spectacle of Yale University’s leftist administration condemning heavy-handed labor-union tactics. The school posted a statement noting the pending negotiations and accusing the union of using “disturbing and inflammatory rhetoric…aimed at creating fear among new students and their families.” Yale reprimanded the union for casting a pall over the school’s move-in day, which “has always been special and memorable for students and their families.”

Well, the cops certainly did their part to make it memorable. 

In yet another example of the nanny state’s intrusion into the private lives of its citizens, President Biden’s so-called ‘alcohol czar’ revealed to Daily Mail that the United States Department of Agriculture could soon revise its booze guidelines to a meager two drinks a week. 

George Koob, director of the US National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, said the current alcohol intake guidelines are up for review in 2025, which recommend women can have up to one bottle of beer, a small glass of wine, or a shot of liquor per day while men can have two. 

Koob was asked in what direction would the current guidelines change. He responded, “I mean, they’re not going to go up, I’m pretty sure,” adding the USDA could revise its alcohol recommendations to match Canada’s guidelines, where people are advised to two drinks per week. 

While these new guidelines are being discussed, he said updated versions might not be published until 2025. 

“The debate about whether alcohol is good in low amounts has been around for decades, but increasingly studies show that even a small amount can harm your health,” Daily Mail said. 

Koob’s interview comes after a study recently published in JAMA Network Open found an increasing number of Americans are drinking themselves to death. 

… and it’s not just booze. Since Covid, middle-aged adults 35 to 50 (prime-age workers) have been consuming higher and higher amounts of marijuana and hallucinogens. 

Koob pointed out there were “no benefits” to drinking alcohol in terms of improving overall health. He said: 

“Most of the benefits people attribute to alcohol, we feel they really have more to do with what someone’s eating rather than what they’re drinking.

“So it really has to do with the Mediterranean diet, socio-economic status, that makes you able to afford that kind of diet and make your own fresh food and so forth.

“With this in mind, most of the benefits kind of disappear on the health side.”

Good luck getting the majority to comply with these guidelines since ‘Bidenomics’ has driven many working-class folks to the bottle.

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Parents are not able to opt their children out of lessons featuring LGBT content, a federal judge has ruled.

Parents sued Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland over the lessons after officials revoked their opt-out policy over the large number of opt-out requests. Parents said the failure to provide opt-outs forced them to give up their religious beliefs or seek alternative schooling.

U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman, though, said the parents had not shown the policy would “result in the indoctrination of their children or otherwise coerce their children to violate or change their religious beliefs.”

“With or without an opt-out right, the parents remain free to pursue their sacred obligations to instruct their children in their faiths,” Judge Boardman, an appointee of President Joe Biden, said in a 60-page ruling denying a request for a preliminary injunction. “Even if their children’s exposure to religiously offensive ideas makes the parents’ efforts less likely to succeed, that does not amount to a government-imposed burden on their religious exercise.”

Montgomery County Public Schools is one of the largest school systems in the country, with some 160,000 students.

Montgomery County officials said in a statement that the school district “remains committed to cultivating an inclusive and welcoming learning environment and creating opportunities where all students see themselves and their families in curriculum materials.12 hours ago.”

“We also will continue to adhere to our responsibility to include instructional materials that reflect the diversity of the local and global community by exploring the aspirations, issues, and achievements of women and men, people with disabilities, people from diverse racial, ethnic, religious and cultural backgrounds, as well as those of diverse gender identity, gender expression, and sexual orientation,” officials said.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs, who adhere to Islam or Christianity, said the ruling was wrong.

“The court’s decision is an assault on children’s right to be guided by their parents on complex and sensitive issues regarding human sexuality,” Eric Baxter, vice president and senior counsel at Becket, and one of the lawyers, said in a statement. “The School Board should let kids be kids and let parents decide how and when to best educate their own children consistent with their religious beliefs.”

Plaintiffs plan to appeal Judge Boardman’s ruling and expect oral arguments to take place at the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in the fall.

Judge Boardman said that the appeals court has not yet addressed whether mandatory lessons in public schools might burden the religious exercise of students or parents, but that rulings from other courts support the idea that “the mere exposure in public school to ideas that contradict religious beliefs does not burden the religious exercise of students or parents.”

That includes Mozart v. Hawkins County Board of Education, a 1987 decision in which an appeals court found that students were compelled to violate their religious convictions but that they were not required to affirm their belief or disbelief in any of the ideas, like evolution, promoted in the curriculum.

More on Case

Montgomery County officials introduced 13 new books featuring LGBT characters at the start of the 2022–23 school year. They said the books were introduced because a review of its curriculum found it lacked representation of LGBT people.

The books have been used in lessons for children as young as 3, prompting concerns from parents, teachers, and principals.

“It is problematic to portray elementary school age children falling in love with other children, regardless of sexual preferences,” a group of principals said in a memorandum to the district that was revealed in the litigation.

“Family life isn’t taught until fifth grade, but a second grade book uses terminology such as cisgender or transgender,” the memo also stated.

Teachers were also instructed to tell students that “when we’re born, people make a guess about our gender” and that sometimes, the guess is “wrong,” according to other documents made public in the case.

Judge Boardman acknowledged that the guidance document for teachers contained answers that “could be interpreted to promote a particular view as correct,” but added, “they are not required answers, and they are outliers among the suggested answers that do not promote a particular view.”

Parents were able to have their children excluded from lessons featuring the books initially, but officials informed them on March 23 that further requests would not be entertained “for any reason.”

The change stemmed from the large number of parents who requested opt-outs, Niki Hazel, a district official who oversees curriculum, said in a court filing.

“Individual principals and teachers could not accommodate the growing number of opt out requests without causing significant disruptions to the classroom environment and undermining MCPS’s educational mission,” Ms. Hazel said.

Other officials have said that children who are LGBT or have LGBT family members were hurt when other students left the classroom when the controversial materials were read.

Plaintiffs argued that revoking opt-outs violated state law and the U.S. Constitution and that hurt feelings were not an adequate reason to change the policy.

Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The Biden administration has blocked off millions of acres of federal waters from a planned oil and gas lease sale after settling with environmental groups over habitat protections for a rare species of whale.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) said in an Aug. 23 notice that, as part of Lease Sale 261, it will offer around 67 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico for oil and gas drilling.

That is around 9 percent, or 6.4 million acres, less than BOEM’s original proposal, following a settlement with environmental groups that pauses ongoing litigation over environmental protections in the Gulf of Mexico in exchange for excluding Rice’s whale habitat from any lease sales.

Environmental groups praised the exclusions, while representatives of the oil and gas industry called the carveouts “unfounded” and said the restrictions would needlessly hamper domestic energy production.

Some lawmakers also objected to the exclusions, including Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

“This Administration continues to kowtow to radical environmentalists at the expense of American energy security and costs to American families,” Mr. Manchin said in a statement obtained by The Epoch Times.

Rice’s whale is one of the most endangered marine mammal species on the planet, with an estimated population of just 51 individuals, around 100 scientists told the Biden administration in an open letter (pdf) last year.

Arguing that the loss of even a single whale threatens the survival of the entire species, the scientists urged the Biden administration to disallow oil and gas drilling in and around the whale’s habitat.

Settlement With Environmental Groups

In order to proceed with the gas lease sale as required by provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the Biden administration agreed to settle with environmental groups that sued the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) over what they said was a flawed biological opinion that failed to sufficiently protect endangered species in the Gulf of Mexico.

In 2020, environmental law organization Earthjustice filed a lawsuit (pdf) against NMFS on behalf of the Sierra Club, the Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the Earth, and Turtle Island Restoration.

The lawsuit challenged a Trump-era biological opinion on oil and gas activities in the Gulf of Mexico, with the groups saying that the legally binding opinion failed to require sufficient safeguards for endangered species, including Rice’s whale (identified in the complaint as Bryde’s whale, an alternate name for the species).

Under a settlement agreement (pdf) that was approved on Aug. 24 in the U.S. District Court in Maryland, the groups agreed to pause their litigation. In exchange, BOEM said it will exclude Rice’s whale habitat from any lease sales that occur during a 13-month period that the case is on hold while federal agencies reevaluate the 2020 biological opinion.

More Details

As the lawsuit made its way through the courts, BOEM said it decided to reinitiate consultation with the NMFS regarding an oil-spill risk analysis and ways to incorporate certain previously developed mitigation measures to protect Rice’s whale habitat.

On Aug. 23, BOEM said in a document that provides key information about the sale to potential bidders (pdf) that, as talks continue with the NMFS and as the agency awaits a new or amended biological opinion, it decided to add “certain interim measures to the ‘Protected Species’ Stipulation to provide additional protections for Rice’s whale while the reinitiated consultation is ongoing.”

The temporary measures include designating temporary whale-safe zones between 100 and 400 meters in depth across the northern Gulf of Mexico, eastward from the Mexican border with Texas, and westward from Rice’s whale core area (as identified in the biological opinion that is the subject of ongoing litigation).

These interim protective measures for Rice’s whales are basically what accounts for the 6 million or so fewer acres made available as part of BOEM’s lease sale.

At the same time, efforts are underway to permanently designate waters between 100 and 400 deep in the Gulf of Mexico as “critical habitat” zones that are “essential to the conservation of the Rice’s whale,” according to a July proposal by NOAA Fisheries. The proposal is open to public comment until Sept. 22, 2023.

In addition to the whale habitat zone exclusions, the settlement also includes a requirement for any oil and gas vessel to reduce its speed to 10 knots when traveling through the habitat area.

Reactions

BOEM’s announcement of the 6 million acre carveout for the oil and gas lease was lauded by environmental groups but met with disdain by the fossil fuel industry.

“The simple protective measures in this agreement recognize the first rule of holes: when you find yourself in one, stop digging,” Steve Mashuda, Earthjustice managing attorney for Oceans, said in a statement. “If we’re going to save Rice’s whales, we need to first stop dropping more oil rigs and more ships in their habitat and making the problem worse.”

The American Petroleum Industry (API), a fossil fuel industry lobby, took a dim view of the settlement-related exclusions to the lease sale.

“While the Department of the Interior announced a much-needed offshore lease sale today, the Biden administration continues to throw up roadblock after roadblock to American energy production, prioritizing their campaign promise to stop American oil and natural gas development in federal waters over their duty to meet Americans’ energy needs,” Holly Hopkins, API vice president of Upstream Policy, said in a statement.

“This action defies Congress’s mandate in the Inflation Reduction Act, jeopardizes U.S. energy security and violates the Biden administration’s energy obligations to the American people,” Ms. Hopkins added.

The Inflation Reduction Act includes provisions that reinstate previously halted oil and gas lease sales.

Mr. Manchin, who fought for the oil and gas lease provisions in the legislation, denounced the Biden administration’s lease exclusions.

“Let me be clear, the exclusion of more than 6 million productive acres from the upcoming offshore oil and gas lease sale in the Gulf of Mexico based on a settlement reached in the name of protecting Rice’s whale while conveniently only targeting oil and gas is yet another example of this Administration’s intentional undermining of the strong energy security provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act,” Mr. Manchin said.

“The IRA required lease sales to get oil and gas leasing back on track to reduce the cost for working families to cook, heat their homes and fill their gasoline tank,” Mr. Manchin added.

The Biden administration’s rapid push to decarbonize power grids with solar and wind while squeezing fossil fuel plants into early retirement could spark grid stability risks this winter as a new report sheds light on the possibility of “below average irradiance across most of North America” due to the impacts of El Niño producing more cloud coverage.

Solar-focused news publication PV Magazine said, “Solcast, a DNV company, predicts that El Niño will likely bring lower than normal solar power production through winter in the United States. Its analysis is based on data collected from previous El Niño events.” 

El Niño threatens US winter solar generation: In a new weekly update for pv magazine, Solcast, a DNV company, predicts that El Niño will likely bring lower than normal solar power production through winter in… #renewableenergy #solarenergy #sustainability https://t.co/C4fI1F0sis pic.twitter.com/dyAgaG1DAT

— pv magazine (@pvmagazine) August 25, 2023

Here’s more from the report:

This coming winter is more likely than not to see below average irradiance across most of North America, as the impacts of El Niño bring cloudier, wetter conditions across the continent. Analysis of Historical Time Series data from El Niño years using the Solcast API, shows that irradiance is significantly impacted in these years.

The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has declared that we are in El Niño’s Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phase, and that there is a 90-95% probability this will continue into the upcoming winter.

NOAA has further forecast a 60% chance that this will be a “strong event,” so solar producers across the continent should be anticipating this to change their expected performance through the winter.

Analysis of December-February months from previous El Niño events (2006-07, 2009-10, 2014-15, 2015-16 and 2018-19) shows the historic impact on global Horizontal Irradiance (GHI). This image shows a comparison of the average GHI in the El Niño episodes with the neutral and La Niña phases of the ENSO climate cycle.

The clear observation is that most of the Continental US experienced reduced irradiance during El Niño winters. California, the Midwest, Southern states, and Mexico in particular see higher precipitation, as well as cloudier conditions.

Conversely, the North-eastern USA and neighboring Canadian provinces depict the opposite. These regions experienced increased irradiance during El Niño intervals.

This trend correlates with decreased precipitation during such periods, another trend these regions might expect in the coming winter.

As the solar energy sector leads into the lower-producing winter months, El Niño is likely to bring even lower than normal production through winter. The increased rain may result in decreased dust soiling for panels that aren’t already being cleaned regularly.

Numerous power grids across the US have warned about the growth of power demand, while decarbonization policies have led to a mismatch between power sources due to the early retirement of fossil fuel power generation. We’ve pointed this out in America’s Largest Power Grid Faces Worsening Reliability Risks and A Crisis Is Looming For The US Energy Grid. 

Solar and wind are unreliable; these power sources are useless if the sun doesn’t shine or the wind doesn’t blow. 

Meanwhile, a soaring number of Americans want reliable and clean nuclear power… 

Authored by Matthew Lysiak via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

American cattlemen are readying for a fight to protect the definition of the word meat from producers of synthetic cellular-based beef alternatives.

“It’s a red line. It isn’t right that these factory-made products should be able to market and sell their products off the backs of the cattleman,” Justin Tupper, President of the United States Cattlemen’s Association, told The Epoch Times.

“We are talking about chemical-laced cell-cultured products that can in some ways simulate meat, but they aren’t meat, and the American consumer needs to understand that,” added Mr. Tupper.

The synthetic “meat” market has already arrived in America.

Last year, the USDA gave two producers the green light to start producing and selling their lab-grown chicken-like products in the United States.

While a decision over the labeling of the product has yet to be announced, the cattle industry plans on being aggressively proactive in both discussions with the USDA and, if needed, litigation after having learned a valuable lesson from the dairy farmers.

“The milk industry really dropped the ball,” said Mr. Tupper. “They never believed that anyone would think that almond milk was actual milk, so they brushed it off at the time. Now there are hundreds of items with milk in the name but with no milk in the product, and it has really hurt the entire dairy industry.”

“In the same way that you can’t milk an almond, you can’t get meat from a lab, only an animal, and we are not going to allow them to use our name to promote their product.”

Synthetic meat-like products are created by taking cells acquired from animals and placing them in a warm, sterile area, usually, a metal vat, where they are then combined with a solution of chemicals that causes the cells to double once a day.

The demand for synthetic meat has been spurred largely by corporate entities and government agencies working in tandem with the environmental movement.

Bill Gates, an investor in Upside Foods, one of the two synthetic meat producers approved by the USDA, believes meat alternatives are needed to save the world from upcoming catastrophic climate events caused by greenhouse gasses.

In a 2021 interview with Technology Review, Mr. Gates said that all well-off nations need to switch to be completely weaned off of living, breathing cows.

“All rich countries should move to 100% synthetic beef. You can get used to the taste difference, and the claim is they’re going to make it taste even better over time,” Mr. Gates told the interviewer. “Eventually that green premium is modest enough that you can sort of change the people or use regulation to totally shift demand. So for meat in the middle-income-and-above countries, I do think it’s possible.”

A switch from animal meat to a laboratory-grown substitute would eliminate the need for animals to be bred and slaughtered—in the U.S. alone, around 9 billion chickens and 32 million cattle are killed every year.

However, beef cattle production constitutes only a small fraction of the gasses that many environmentalists claim have had a negative impact on the planet.

Just 2 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions in the United States come from beef cattle production, while energy production and transportation produce a combined 54 percent of emissions, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Italian Ban

American ranchers aren’t the only ones raising the alarm. After two million Italians signed a petition calling for a ban against synthetic meat products, the Italian Senate passed a bill earlier this week, becoming the first country to make it illegal to produce or market the food, highlighting health concerns as the primary reason.

Ettore Prandini, President of Coldiretti, the largest association representing Italian agriculture, touted the vote as a legislative victory for the Italian people over corporate powers, telling the media that “the products in the laboratory in the authorization processes are not equated to food but rather to products of a pharmaceutical nature.”

An April 2023 report by the United Nations on the safety of “cell-based food products” cited 53 potential health hazards, including “the potential for expression of novel toxins, toxic metabolites, or allergens or a change in expression of toxins, toxic metabolites, or allergens as a result of genomic instability.”

The report concluded with a call for additional research and funding in order to draw more definitive conclusions.

Transparency Needed

Mr. Tupper isn’t calling for a ban on synthetic foods, only transparency, and believes that despite the large push for meat alternatives coming from corporate leaders and government agencies, the American cow is here to stay.

“The simple truth is that the taste of real beef cannot be replicated and, more importantly, when people discover the chemical storm that is actually in this product they are trying to pass off as meat, consumers are going to come to the conclusion that beef should come from a cow, not from a laboratory.”

“Our hopes are that the USDA will label this product for what it is, a cellular-based derivative of chemicals,” added Mr. Tupper.

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

Former President Donald Trump has detailed his “terrible experience” of being booked into the Fulton County Jail in Atlanta, Georgia, on Aug. 24 after surrendering himself to authorities following his indictment on racketeering and conspiracy charges.

President Trump, 77, handed himself over to authorities in Georgia at around 7:36 p.m. local time and was released on a $200,000 bond roughly 20 minutes later.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who brought the indictment against President Trump and 18 of his associates, had given those charged until noon on Aug. 25 to hand themselves over or risk arrest.

During his time being processed at the jail, President Trump had his fingerprints and mugshot taken—something he insists he had never ever heard of before stepping foot in the jail.

It was a “terrible experience” according to the Republican 2024 White House candidate.

“I went through an experience that I never thought I’d have to go through, but then I’ve gone through the same experience three other times. In my whole life, I didn’t know anything about indictments. And now I’ve been indicted, like, four times,”  he told Newsmax.

“Everything is just like one thing after the next. What they want to do is they want to try and wear you out which they would never do,” he continued, adding that he had “never heard the words mug shot” prior to Thursday because “they didn’t teach me that at the Wharton School of Finance.”

‘Very Sad Day for Our Country’

Despite the “terrible experience” of being booked into jail, President Trump insisted he was treated “very nicely” during the booking process but still called it a “very sad experience” and a “very sad day for our country.”

“This is a weaponized Justice Department,” he added.

Separately, President Trump told Fox News Digital the booking process was “not a comfortable feeling.”

“They insisted on a mugshot and I agreed to do that,” he said. “This is the only time I’ve ever taken a mugshot. It is not a comfortable feeling—especially when you’ve done nothing wrong.”

Thursday marked the first time in U.S. history that a former president has had their mugshot taken.

Online records from the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office showed President Trump was booked on 13 charges after Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis indictment him and 18 others in relation to their efforts to dispute the results of the 2020 election in the state.

The charges against him include a violation of Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO Act), solicitation of violation of oath by a public officer, conspiracy to commit forgery in the first degree, and conspiracy to commit filing of false documents, among others.

Back on Twitter

After leaving the Sheriff’s Office, President Trump posted a bold, defiant message on X, formerly known as Twitter, after more than two years of inactivity on the platform.

The post on X at 9:39 p.m. ET shows President Trump in the booking photo. The accompanying text to the social media post includes “MUG SHOT — AUGUST 24, 2023,” “ELECTION INTERFERENCE,” “NEVER SURRENDER!” and “DONALDJTRUMP.COM.” It received 200,100 likes and 7.1 million views after just 24 minutes.

Co-Defendant Still in Jail

The latest indictment marks the fourth brought against President Trump so far this year. He has denied all wrongdoing.

As part of his release conditions, President Trump agreed to not “act to intimidate any person known to him or her to be a codefendant or witness in this case or to otherwise obstruct the administration of justice.”

“The above shall include, but are not limited to, posts on social media or reposts of posts made by another individual on social media,” his release order states.

President Trump also agreed not to communicate, either directly or indirectly, with the 18 co-defendants, regarding the case, unless lawyers are present.

His co-defendants in the Georgia election indictment include former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, President Trump’s personal lawyers John Eastman and Sidney Powell, and his former attorney Jenna Ellis, along with over a dozen more.

They were all charged with at least one count of violating Georgia’s RICO Act, among others.

Most of the defendants listed in the indictment have already handed themselves in to officials at the Fulton County Jail and have been released on bond, except for Harrison Floyd, a former U.S. Marine and former head of Black Voices for Trump, who has reportedly been held in custody without bail.

Court records do not list an attorney for Mr. Floyd in the Georgia case.

President Trump told Newsmax Thursday that many of his co-defendants are having their “lives destroyed” by the latest indictment, adding that many of them “don’t even know what they’re being charged for.”

Mimi Nguyen Ly contributed to this report.