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The Growing Burden Of Old-Age Dependency

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The Growing Burden Of Old-Age Dependency
The Growing Burden Of Old-Age Dependency

Many countries around the world are facing a rapidly rising old-age dependency ratio, according to projections published in the UN’s World Population Prospects 2024.

As Statista’s Anna Fleck details below, this indicator measures the number of people aged 65 and older relative to the working-age population (between 15 and 64 years old).

South Korea is expected to experience a particularly steep increase, with the number of people aged 65 and over per 100 working-age adults projected to jump from 31.2 in 2026 to 75.6 by 2050.

Infographic: The Growing Burden of Old-Age Dependency | Statista

You will find more infographics at Statista

Italy is also forecast to see a dramatic rise, climbing from 40.7 to 70.4. These figures underscore the accelerating pace of global population ageing, which will result in a growing economic burden on shrinking workforces.

Established industrial economies such as the United States are projected to age more gradually, with the old-age dependency ratio rising from 29.3 to 37.9 over the same period.

By comparison, China is expected to undergo a particularly rapid demographic shift, with its ratio more than doubling from 21.6 to 52.3.

India and several younger emerging economies are forecast to remain comparatively youthful despite moderate increases.

These UN projections are based on certain trends in birth rates, life expectancy and migration.

If these trends continue, ageing populations are likely to put increasing pressure on labor markets, pension systems and public finances, requiring governments to adapt their policies to older populations.

It’s important to note that this data does not account for the fact that many people over the age of 65 are still working, and younger people will not all be working.

Tyler Durden
Thu, 05/21/2026 – 05:45

Dubai’s Shipping Hub Status Under Pressure As Some Industry Veterans Eye Greece

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Dubai’s Shipping Hub Status Under Pressure As Some Industry Veterans Eye Greece

Via Middle East Eye

Some shipping industry workers based in Dubai are looking to relocate from the UAE as a result of the US-Israeli war on Iran, one ship-owner and two industry sources familiar with the matter told Middle East Eye.

Western expats working in the maritime industry are eyeing the Greek capital, Athens , and Cyprus as potential alternatives to Dubai, given those countries’ dominant positions in shipping and the favorable tax policies they offer the industry, the sources said.

via AFP

The search for alternatives to Dubai underscores how some expats, particularly westerners with easy access to Europe, do not expect the Gulf to return to its pre-war position anytime soon.

Around 2,000 vessels are trapped in the Gulf as a result of competing US and Iranian blockades of the waterway. But the shipping industry is experiencing a boom as a result of the war. The lockdown of vessels has compressed supply, and rates are soaring as energy corridors are rewired. 

US oil and gas exports have hit record highs as a result of the war. But the transit time from the US Gulf coast to Asia is substantially longer than the journey from the Arabian Gulf. 

Breakwave Tanker Shipping ETF, which tracks the price of crude oil tanker rates, is up 240 percent since the war on Iran started. 

The industry’s good fortune stands in stark contrast to the UAE’s maritime sector, which has been pummeled by the blockade. 

The Gulf state turned itself into the dominant logistics hub for the Middle East, Asia and Africa. The port of Jebel Ali is one of the largest in the world, and is a major hub for transhipment, where goods are transferred from one vessel to another before their final destination.

The UAE’s top export, oil, has also been cut by more than half as a result of Iran’s control of the Strait of Hormuz.

“It’s not so much the slowdown in business, but the unreliability of Dubai as a hub. Can you count on a flight back to London or Paris for your family during war?” the ship owner said to Middle East Eye.

‘Thousands’ of Dubai real estate offices to close

Dubai benefited potentially more than any other city in the world from the post-Covid boom of soaring asset prices, cryptocurrency, and remote work.

Capitalizing on its low corporate tax rate, zero income tax or capital gains tax, and smooth bureaucracy, it became a magnet for London bankers and American “finance bros”. Its financial institutions have served as a haven for Sudanese militia leaders dealing in gold to Russian and Ukrainian expats fleeing war in Eastern Europe.

But very few are willing to write Dubai off the map, particularly given the UAE’s deep pockets, yet there are some signs that the war has pulled a curtain over its tremendous boom years.

Arabian Business reported on Wednesday that thousands of real estate agencies in Dubai may close in the coming months due to the war. A leading property search platform said that up to 30 percent of the agencies active on its site could shutter within the next five to six months.

As with western expats, where the war is filtering out those most committed to Dubai, the real estate agencies most likely to close are smaller operators or those that focused on speculative ends of the market, such as off-plan sales.

Arabian Business cited Lewis Allsopp, the chairman and co-founder of Allsopp & Allsopp, a real estate consultancy, as saying that Dubai’s ratio of brokers to residents is close to 1,000 per 100,000. For comparison, London has around 176 brokers per 100,000 people.

Tyler Durden
Thu, 05/21/2026 – 05:00

UK Leads European Nations In Hiring Over-50s

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UK Leads European Nations In Hiring Over-50s
UK Leads European Nations In Hiring Over-50s

Over the past two decades, ageing populations, rising retirement ages and higher education levels have contributed to rising employment rates among workers aged 55 and over across OECD countries. Yet many workplaces are still designed around shorter careers, leading many people to leave work earlier than they need or want to. This deepens the demographic pressures facing ageing societies, including labor shortages, as early exits reduce the number of employees and inflate public welfare and healthcare costs.

The OECD argues that employers play a decisive role in enabling longer working lives through hiring practices, access to training, job quality and workplace conditions. To help organizations assess and improve their approach, the OECD recently launched a Longevity Readiness Tool, which benchmarks policies and practices across sectors and countries to identify where action is most needed.

As Statista’s Anna Fleck details below, the data reveals wide differences in how countries support older workers. In hiring, the United Kingdom ranked highest in Europe in 2023, with people aged 50 and over accounting for roughly 12 percent of new hires. Finland followed at 9 percent, while Denmark and Estonia each recorded 6 percent. Poland ranked lowest at just 2 percent.

Infographic: UK Leads European Nations in Hiring Over-50s | Statista

You will find more infographics at Statista

By industry, the category of accommodation and food services hired the largest share of older workers at 11 percent, followed by administration and support services at 9 percent, while education lagged behind at only 3 percent.

Training opportunities also varied significantly across OECD nations.

In New Zealand, 49 percent of surveyed employees aged 50 to 65 said they had participated in employer-funded training programs, marking the highest share recorded. The United States followed at 48 percent and Czechia at 43 percent, while South Korea ranked lowest at just 5 percent.

Job autonomy showed similar disparities. In Japan, 92 percent of workers aged 50 to 65 reported having some control over the pace of their work, compared with only 61 percent in Sweden.

An OECD paper notes that hiring rates among older workers are shaped by several factors. Although wages and benefits often rise with age, productivity does not always increase at the same pace. At the same time, evidence suggests multigenerational workforces can strengthen productivity through knowledge transfer and accumulated experience.

Older applicants also continue to face age discrimination (particularly women), alongside employer concerns about adaptability, tenure and technological skills.

However, the OECD argues these barriers can be addressed through better training, fairer compensation structures and policies aimed at reducing age-related bias in recruitment.

Tyler Durden
Thu, 05/21/2026 – 04:15

UK Police Log One-Year-Old Baby As Crime Suspect; Hundreds Of Kids Flagged For Offences

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UK Police Log One-Year-Old Baby As Crime Suspect; Hundreds Of Kids Flagged For Offences

Authored by Steve Watson via modernity.news,

A one-year-old baby girl has been officially recorded as a crime suspect by Kent Police after allegedly causing a minor injury to another toddler. This is part of a shocking tally where 683 children under 10 were reported for offences over three years.

This isn’t some isolated bureaucratic error. It’s the latest symptom of a system that treats tiny children as miniature criminals or budding bigots while real threats from failed integration and ideological grooming go unaddressed.

None of these under-10s can be prosecuted – the age of criminal responsibility in England and Wales is 10 – yet police are dutifully logging every playground scrape, tantrum, or alleged slight under ridiculous Home Office rules.

Figures obtained via Freedom of Information request reveal the scale: six two-year-olds, 11 three-year-olds, and 20 four-year-olds among the suspects. Boys made up over three-quarters of cases, with violence against others the top category. There were also 130 ‘sexual offences’ involving children under nine.

Kent County Council cabinet member for children’s services, Councillor Paul Webb, called the numbers “not great” but stressed early intervention through prevention programmes. He pointed to county lines drug gangs recruiting vulnerable kids, especially those in care, as a major driver.

Kent Police Chief Superintendent Rob Marsh explained that reports come from victims, families, schools, and agencies, with the focus on safeguarding rather than punishment: prevention, education, and family support.

This toddler-as-suspect absurdity doesn’t emerge in a vacuum. It mirrors the broader UK push to turn nurseries, schools, and playgrounds into surveillance hubs for ideological compliance.

Just weeks ago, nurseries in Wales were urged to report “racist” toddlers to police under a £1.3 million taxpayer-funded scheme.

Childcare workers receive training to spot and log “hate incidents” by children barely out of nappies, complete with audits for “diversity” and lessons on “white privilege.”

The guidance from Diversity and Anti-Racist Professional Learning (DARPL) at Cardiff Metropolitan University explicitly frames toddler squabbles as potential hate crimes warranting 999 calls.

Meanwhile, schools in Sheffield and elsewhere are pushing radical race doctrine claiming “Black people cannot be racist” towards white people because they supposedly lack “power.”

Materials for seven-year-olds hammer home “white privilege” and demand kids monitor their language and report peers.

Related efforts include schools pressured over “Islamophobic” children’s drawings that could be deemed blasphemous under Islamic law, books celebrating small boat migrants and telling kids there’s “plenty of room” for unlimited crossings, government pushes to snitch on “anti-Muslim hostility,” and even a video game flagging kids who question mass migration as potential extremists.

The pattern is clear: British children’s innocence is collateral damage in the drive to enforce woke orthodoxy and cultural replacement.

Add in the 2025 case of a toddler under four expelled from nursery for “transphobia” – likely just innocent curiosity – and the picture is complete.

While authorities obsess over logging baby “assaults” and policing toddler speech, genuine safeguarding issues fester.

Child-on-child sexual abuse is a recognised national concern requiring police referral regardless of age. County lines exploitation preys on the vulnerable.

Yet the response often defaults to bureaucratic box-ticking and ideological reprogramming rather than addressing root causes like family breakdown, open borders straining social services, and education systems more focused on dividing kids by race than teaching right from wrong.

Critics are right to call this Orwellian. Toddlers cannot meaningfully hold racist or transphobic beliefs – they lack the cognitive framework.

Projecting adult political neuroses onto them turns childhood into a minefield of potential reports and exclusions. It erodes parental authority and normal development in favour of state-approved conformity.

This is the inevitable endpoint of a cultural shift that prioritises grievance hierarchies, mass demographic change without integration, and “anti-racism” that actually fosters resentment.

Parents see their kids labelled suspects or bigots for normal behaviour while institutions bend over backwards to accommodate sensitivities that clash with British norms.

The solution starts with rejecting this madness. Reclaim education for basics like reading, maths, and personal responsibility. Prioritise actual child protection over ideological score-settling. Push back against the surveillance state treating every playground as a crime scene or re-education camp.

British children deserve a childhood free from this nonsense – one rooted in reality, freedom, and common sense.

Tyler Durden
Thu, 05/21/2026 – 03:30

Where Inflation Is Highest In Europe In 2026

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Where Inflation Is Highest In Europe In 2026

Inflation has eased from its recent peaks, but price growth remains stubbornly high across much of Europe.

This graphic, via Visual Capitalist’s Gabriel Cohen, ranks 36 European countries by annual inflation rate, using the latest available 2026 data from Eurostat and the UK Parliament.

Annual inflation measures how much consumer prices have risen over the previous 12 months, such as from April 2025 to April 2026.

Where Inflation is Highest in Early 2026 in Europe

Romania has the highest inflation rate in Europe at 9.0%, followed by Kosovo at 6.5% and Bulgaria at 6.2%. Several of the highest-inflation countries are in Southeastern Europe, highlighting how price pressures remain especially elevated in parts of the region.

This data table ranks European countries by their annual inflation rates as of early 2026.

Romania, the largest economy in Southeastern Europe, faces a crisis on three fronts: high inflation, a multi-month economic recession, and a protracted political crisis that imperils governmental efforts to rein in the country’s fiscal deficit, the largest in Europe.

Inflation in recent months has climbed not only because of food and fuel prices, but also due to rising rents.

Inflation is equally politically sensitive in neighboring Bulgaria, given the country’s recent adoption of the euro in January 2026. Many in the country had feared that joining the eurozone would contribute to rising prices for everyday goods.

The Success Stories of Europe

The European Central Bank, Bank of England, and Swiss National Bank all maintain a 2% inflation target. Only four European countries fall within this target range as of March 2026: Czechia and Sweden (1.5%), Denmark (1%), and Switzerland (0.6%).

Interestingly, none of these countries use the euro as their national currency, although both the Czech Republic and Sweden are theoretically expected to join the eurozone upon satisfying certain criteria. Denmark has negotiated an opt-out.

Switzerland’s inflation rate is not only the lowest in Europe, but also among the lowest worldwide. The small Alpine country has successfully navigated international turbulence without seeing large-scale price increases.

It has also managed to avoid deflation (negative inflation), another key part of the Swiss National Bank’s mandate.

Inflation in Europe’s Major Economies

The major European economies today each grapple with inflation rates above the targets set by the ECB and other central banks.

France (2.5%), Germany (2.9%), and the United Kingdom (3.3%) are all facing substantial cost-of-living increases, driven partly by rising energy prices linked to geopolitical conflicts such as the wars in Iran and Ukraine.

Persistent inflation has also kept cost-of-living pressures high, making price stability a central political issue across many of Europe’s largest economies.

Wondering where rising prices can be seen most clearly? Check out Where Inflation Has Hit the Hardest (2000–2025) on Voronoi.

Tyler Durden
Thu, 05/21/2026 – 02:45

Norway Wants To Lead A “Viking Bloc” For Containing Russia In Northern Europe

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Norway Wants To Lead A “Viking Bloc” For Containing Russia In Northern Europe

Authored by Andrew Korybko,

It can simultaneously threaten Russia along the increasingly interconnected Arctic and Baltic fronts.

Russian Ambassador to Norway Nikolai Korchunov gave a brief interview to TASS about bilateral relations. He warned that Norway is integrating new NATO members Sweden and Finland into the bloc’s regional plans. More American military bases and NATO facilities are opening up there too. To make matters worse, 32,500 troops from 14 NATO countries in last March’s “Cold Response” military drills in Norway and Finland’s northern regions, which add to growing NATO threats to Russia from this direction.

NATO’s militarization of the Arctic, which also includes artificially engineered tensions over the demilitarized Svalbard Archipelago, is proceeding in parallel with its militarization of the Baltic.

Korchunov believes that this raises the risk of the bloc one day attempting to blockade Russia. He reassured his compatriots that the authorities will defend their country’s interests, however, including through military-technical means in an allusion to new naval escorts of some commercial vessels.

In connection with blockade scenarios, Korchunov was asked about TASS’ report from early April about how “Ukraine readies terrorist attacks on Russian ships off coast of Norway”, which he said caused quite a stir in his host country. He didn’t elaborate on how exactly Russia plans to deter or defend against potential Ukrainian drone attacks from Norway, but he ominously warned that escalating threats to Russia from Norway “will inevitably lead to a directly proportional increase in risks for Norway itself.”

Korchunov wasn’t asked about it in his interview, but the week prior to its release, the UK announced that it’ll lead a new multilateral naval initiative against Russia with Norway and eight others. This goes to show Norway’s growing role in threatening Russia through blockade scenarios, whether they’re in its neighboring Arctic region and/or the nearby Baltic one. As a founding member of NATO, Norway seems to believe that this obligates it to lead Russia’s containment in Northern Europe.

To that end, it’s functioning as Sweden and Finland’s “big brother” in NATO while actively cooperating with the UK, one of Russia’s historical nemeses. This enables Norway to simultaneously advance Russia’s containment along the increasingly interconnected Arctic and Baltic fronts. Given its oil wealth, Norway could also extend military loans to its “little brothers” for accelerating their military buildups and the subsequent creation of a northern regional command against Russia as part of the US’ “NATO 3.0” plans.

The preceding insight draws attention to one of the ways in which multipolarity is reshaping Europe, namely through the trend of regional military integration, whether it’s Norway wanting to lead a nascent “Viking Bloc” or Poland trying to restore its lost Great Power status in Central and Eastern Europe. The Anglo-American Axis is managing this division of military-strategic labor, with the US being the senior partner and the UK being the junior one, and they plan to replicate this model elsewhere in Eurasia.

Apart from Norway and Poland’s regional military blocs, Romania provides this duopoly with reach into Moldova and the Black Sea, while Turkiye expands their influence in the Black Sea but also the South Caucasus, Caspian Sea, and Central Asia via the “Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity”. There’s also AUKUS+, which could prospectively include Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, and even Indonesia. The emerging result is “The Globalization of NATO” with multipolar characteristics.

Tyler Durden
Thu, 05/21/2026 – 02:00

The Pentagon’s Next Critical Minerals Source Is Already In Its Own Warehouses

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The Pentagon’s Next Critical Minerals Source Is Already In Its Own Warehouses

Authored by Matt Bedingfield via RealClearDefenseolitics,

Last week, U.S. Navy destroyers began escorting commercial ships through the Strait of Hormuz under Project Freedom, the most aggressive American action in the strait since Iran shut it down in March.

The naval blockade of Iranian ports is now in its fifth week. U.S. warships are running mine-clearance operations, intercepting Iranian-flagged cargo, and absorbing drone threats daily. And the permanent magnets in those destroyers’ guidance systems are still refined in China. So are the rare earths in their radar arrays and the cobalt in their battery backups. The war just proved what the 2027 DFARS deadline already assumed: we cannot fight a conflict while depending on an adversary for the materials inside our own weapons.

And the Pentagon’s largest untapped source of those materials is already sitting in its own warehouses.

The Pentagon has a multi-year backlog of classified electronics it can’t destroy fast enough. It also has a critical minerals shortage it can’t solve fast enough. The copper, gold, palladium, silver, and tin locked inside those warehoused devices are exactly the metals it’s spending billions to source elsewhere. That elsewhere, increasingly, can’t be China. Beginning January 1, 2027, the Pentagon can no longer enter contracts for materials mined, refined, or separated in China, Russia, Iran, or North Korea.

The Numbers Don’t Work

The United States generates roughly eight million metric tons of e-waste every year, and the number is climbing. AI infrastructure is accelerating the cycle. Data centers replace server hardware every three to five years. Each generation of defense electronics contains more critical minerals than the last.

Only about 15 percent of U.S. e-waste gets recycled. And that figure hides a deeper problem. The printed circuit boards inside those devices, the components richest in strategic metals, are almost entirely exported overseas for processing. None of the recovered metals stay here without first leaving.

Washington isn’t ignoring it. Project Vault, the administration’s $12 billion critical minerals stockpile, is a serious commitment. The Department of Energy just opened a $500 million funding opportunity for domestic critical minerals recycling. There’s talk of export restrictions on raw e-waste. But before we build a fence around these materials, we first need something inside it: the domestic capacity to process them onshore.

If an export ban went into effect tomorrow, we’d pile up a mountain of e-waste with no way to recover what’s inside. That’s the capability gap. New mines take a decade to permit. Traditional smelters cost a billion dollars and take seven to ten years to build. Neither delivers the batch-level traceability federal compliance now demands. The 2027 deadline will not wait.

A Faster Path Already Exists

A new generation of hydrometallurgical processing, including biosorption, can recover high-purity metals from end-of-life electronics at commercial scale without the footprint of a smelter. These facilities can be built in about 15 months for roughly $40 million each. They maintain full chain of custody from waste stream to refined metal. And the upstream supply chain already exists: some 900 certified e-waste recyclers operate across the country today. What’s missing is the domestic processing capacity to keep those metals here.

This isn’t theoretical. My company, Mint Innovation, proved the model last month when HP announced the PC industry’s first certified closed-loop recycled copper. Copper recovered from HP’s own end-of-life circuit boards, independently certified, placed back into new HP products. The same technology can close the loop for the Department of War. Add mobile destruction units that process classified hardware on site, feeding directly into domestic metal recovery with no offshore processing, and the result is full auditability from destruction to refined metal.

When I testified before Congress on this issue, not a single member pushed back on the diagnosis. This is one of those rare problems that doesn’t break along party lines. The FY 2026 NDAA recognized the potential of recycled-material pathways by expanding exceptions within DFARS sourcing restrictions. Congress has opened the door. The Pentagon needs to walk through it.

A Framework Is Already in Place

The United States doesn’t have to do this alone. The State Department’s Pax Silica initiative and the February 2026 Critical Minerals Ministerial established a framework for allied cooperation with Japan, Australia, the U.K., South Korea, and others. Five Eyes nations are already coordinating to counter Chinese price manipulation and build friendshored supply chains. Domestic e-waste processing fits squarely into that strategy. A modular biosorption facility built in the U.S. today becomes a template Pax Silica partners can replicate tomorrow.

Modular secure destruction facilities co-located on military installations could clear classified hardware backlogs and recover critical minerals simultaneously. A security liability becomes a strategic asset.

The fastest way to build a domestic critical minerals supply chain is to recover the metals already here. The Pentagon is sitting on both the problem and the solution.

*  *  *

Matt Bedingfield is President of Mint Innovation, a recycling technology company that recovers critical minerals from electronic waste using proprietary biosorption and hydrometallurgical processing. Mint partnered with HP earlier this year to produce the PC industry’s first certified closed-loop recycled copper.

Tyler Durden
Wed, 05/20/2026 – 23:25

BBC Report Portrays Islamic Child Slavery In Afghanistan As Necessary

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BBC Report Portrays Islamic Child Slavery In Afghanistan As Necessary

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.

Tyler Durden
Wed, 05/20/2026 – 23:00

Washington State Under Federal Investigation For Housing Men In Women’s Prisons

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Washington State Under Federal Investigation For Housing Men In Women’s Prisons

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.

Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson speaks during a news conference outside the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma, Wash. on April 28, 2026. Nick Wagner/The Seattle Times via AP

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.

Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon, accompanied by her aides, speaks at the Justice Department in Washington on Sept. 29, 2025.  Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

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.

Tyler Durden
Wed, 05/20/2026 – 22:35

1 In 5 Jobs Faces High Risk Of AI Automation

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1 In 5 Jobs Faces High Risk Of AI Automation
1 In 5 Jobs Faces High Risk Of AI Automation

As concerns about AI-driven job losses grow, new research sheds light on how artificial intelligence could impact the U.S. labor market in the short term.

According to an OpenAI framework analyzing how AI affects different occupations, published last April, nearly half of all jobs (46 percent) are expected to see little immediate change, while around 24 percent are likely to be reorganized as tasks shift rather than disappear.

As Statista’s Tristan Gaudiaut shows in the chart below, a smaller but still significant share of roles face more direct disruption, with roughly one in five jobs (18 percent) categorized as being at high risk of automation.

Infographic: One in Five U.S. Jobs Faces High Risk of AI Automation | Statista

You will find more infographics at Statista

At the same time, only about 12 percent of roles could actually grow with AI, as lower costs and increased productivity expand demand for certain services.

The findings suggest that exposure to AI does not automatically translate into job losses. Instead, outcomes depend on factors such as how essential human input remains and whether increased demand for a product or service is sufficient to offset lower labor demand from efficiency gains.

In many cases, AI is therefore likely to reshape tasks and workflows rather than eliminate entire occupations.

While other recent studies have pointed to a higher risk for job displacement, OpenAI’s analysis suggests a more nuanced picture of how the labor market may evolve.

Tyler Durden
Wed, 05/20/2026 – 22:10

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