Authored by Milan Adams via Preppgroup blog,

There are moments in history when the world changes with noise — sirens, speeches, falling statues. And then there are moments when it changes so quietly that almost nobody realizes it is happening. We are living through the second kind. No formal announcement marked the transition. No historic summit collapsed on live television. No leader stepped forward to say: the old rules no longer apply.

And yet, somewhere between the war in Ukraine, the tightening strategic alignment between Russia and China, and the silent expiration of the New START in February 2026, the global system that kept great-power rivalry inside predictable boundaries began to dissolve. Not explode. Dissolve.

For decades, the world’s stability did not come from trust. It came from limits. From inspection regimes. From numbers written into treaties. From the strange comfort of knowing exactly how dangerous your adversary was allowed to be. Military planners in Moscow and Washington worked with ceilings. Diplomats worked with verification schedules. Leaders worked with red lines that had legal meaning. Those ceilings are now gone, and most of the public has not noticed because nothing dramatic happened the day they disappeared.

The Strategic Triangle That No Longer Moves

For years, American strategists believed the triangle between Washington, Moscow, and Beijing could be manipulated. If relations with one deteriorated, the other could be courted. It was the logic behind the Cold War opening to China and the repeated attempts to “reset” relations with Moscow. There was a quiet confidence that Russia, culturally tied to Europe and historically wary of China, would never fully lean toward Beijing.

That confidence now looks misplaced.

Today, the United States faces not two separate rivals but two powers whose interests increasingly overlap:

• Both view American sanctions as a weapon of political coercion

• Both seek to dilute U.S. influence in global institutions

• Both advocate a “multipolar” order where Washington’s dominance fades

• Both benefit from closer economic and strategic coordination

This is not a formal alliance, which paradoxically makes it more durable. It is not built on ideology or treaty obligations but on a shared reading of the world. Even a future change in leadership after Vladimir Putin may not reverse this direction. Years of sanctions, NATO expansion, and the war in Ukraine have reshaped Russian political psychology. The turn toward China is no longer tactical. It is structural.

The Day the Guardrails Disappeared

On February 5, 2026, New START expired. There was no emergency summit. No dramatic breakdown in negotiations. It simply ended.

For the first time since the early 1970s, there is no binding agreement limiting how many deployed strategic nuclear weapons the U.S. and Russia can field. Together, they hold the overwhelming majority of the world’s nuclear warheads. During the Cold War, even at moments of extreme tension, both sides maintained arms control agreements because they served a critical purpose: they made the enemy measurable. You could count warheads. You could inspect launchers. You could verify data.

Now, you cannot.

Russia suggested informally that both sides observe the old limits for another year to allow time for talks. Washington did not formally accept. No replacement treaty emerged. No urgent negotiations dominated the news cycle. The expiration passed like a date on a calendar, but inside defense ministries, the conversation shifted. Without legal ceilings, planners no longer ask what are we allowed to deploy? but what can we deploy? That is how arms races begin — quietly, through planning assumptions rather than political declarations.

A Pattern of Pressure in Unlikely Places

While most attention remains on Ukraine and nuclear policy, Moscow has been testing American reactions in places that rarely make front pages.

The Western Hemisphere

Near Venezuela, a U.S. Coast Guard seizure of a Russian-flagged tanker suspected of sanctions violations brought American and Russian forces into unusual proximity. Russian naval assets, reportedly including a submarine, were operating nearby. Moscow denounced the move as piracy. The incident did not escalate, but it revealed a willingness to challenge U.S. authority in its own neighborhood through presence and ambiguity rather than confrontation.

The High North

In the Arctic, melting ice is opening the Northern Sea Route into a viable trade corridor between Europe and Asia. Russia controls much of this passage and positions itself as its gatekeeper. China’s interest in what it calls a Polar Silk Road adds another layer of leverage for Moscow without a single shot being fired.

The Middle East

In crises involving Iran, Russia has condemned Western actions but avoided direct military involvement, constrained by the demands of the war in Ukraine. Even so, Moscow continues to present itself diplomatically as an alternative power center to Washington, choosing its moments carefully.

Multipolarity as a Strategic Weapon

In international forums, Moscow and Beijing repeat the same phrase: multipolar world. It sounds abstract and even reasonable, but strategically it signals a shift away from the system in which the United States could enforce rules through economic and institutional power. In a multipolar system, sanctions lose effectiveness, institutions become arenas of gridlock, and regional powers gain more freedom to challenge established norms without immediate consequences.

There is no secret pact binding Russia and China into a military bloc. But patterns are visible. China purchases discounted Russian energy. Russia benefits from China’s refusal to isolate it diplomatically. Joint exercises occur. Messaging aligns in international institutions. This is not conspiracy. It is convergence, and over time, convergence reshapes the balance of power as effectively as formal alliances.

A World Without Clear Edges

For American policymakers, the problem is new and uncomfortable. Deterring one nuclear peer was the central challenge of the Cold War. Deterring two, at the same time, is a strategic puzzle without historical precedent. How do you prepare for simultaneous crises in Europe and the Pacific? How do you distribute forces without weakening credibility in either theater?

The answers are unclear, and that uncertainty is itself destabilizing. What makes this period unsettling is not the presence of immediate crisis but the absence of clear boundaries. No arms control limits. No clean separation between economic and military rivalry. No reliable assumptions about how far competitors are willing to go.

Speak privately with diplomats or analysts, and you hear the same quiet phrase repeated: this feels different. Not louder. Different. The stabilizing mechanisms built over fifty years are eroding faster than new ones can replace them, and the world is drifting into a phase where miscalculation becomes more likely simply because the rules that once structured rivalry no longer exist.

The Geography of Escalation

What makes the current geopolitical shift so difficult to grasp is that its most consequential developments are not unfolding in spectacular acts of confrontation, but through a slow accumulation of pressure points that, taken together, redraw the strategic map of the world. The new contest for power is no longer concentrated in obvious flashpoints alone; it is spreading across trade routes, technological infrastructure, energy corridors, and regions once treated as peripheral to great-power rivalry.

Its defining characteristics are becoming increasingly clear:

• Strategic competition is expanding into spaces once considered neutral, from Arctic maritime corridors and orbital infrastructure to undersea cables and semiconductor supply chains that now carry the weight of national security.

• Economic interdependence is no longer viewed primarily as stabilizing, but increasingly as vulnerability — something states seek to weaponize, shield against, or strategically reduce.

• Military deterrence is becoming more diffuse and unpredictable, shaped not only by nuclear arsenals, but by cyber capabilities, autonomous systems, and the ability to cripple critical infrastructure without firing a conventional shot.

• Political fragmentation inside democracies has become an external strategic variable, as rivals increasingly calculate not only military strength, but institutional resilience, public fatigue, and the ability of societies to sustain prolonged competition.

This is what makes the moment historically unusual: the architecture of confrontation is becoming broader than war itself. Power is now projected through disruption, ambiguity, and exhaustion as much as through force, creating a landscape where crises may emerge not as singular explosions, but as overlapping pressures that slowly weaken the coherence of entire systems.

Where Stability Used to Live

For decades, global order depended on mechanisms that reduced uncertainty even when hostility remained intense. What held rivalry in check was not goodwill, but structure — the confidence that opponents understood thresholds, recognized consequences, and operated within a strategic grammar both sides could read. That grammar is now eroding, and with it disappears the predictability that once made dangerous competition manageable.

Several pillars have quietly weakened at once:

• Arms-control architecture is fading faster than replacement frameworks can emerge, removing the legal and psychological ceilings that once constrained escalation.

• Diplomatic channels remain open, but increasingly hollow, producing language of cooperation while substantive trust continues to deteriorate beneath the surface.

• Alliance systems are strengthening militarily while becoming politically more complex, forcing governments to balance deterrence abroad with growing strain at home.

• Strategic planning is increasingly dominated by worst-case assumptions, and once governments begin budgeting, deploying, and preparing around pessimistic scenarios, those scenarios begin shaping reality regardless of original intent.

This is how history often changes — not when one pillar falls, but when several begin cracking at once under accumulated weight.

The Century’s Harder Question

The central issue facing the world is no longer whether tension between major powers will define the coming decades; that much is already visible. The deeper question is what kind of competition is now being born, and whether political leadership is capable of understanding its scale before events begin dictating terms on their own.

What increasingly worries strategic analysts is a convergence of destabilizing trends:

• Two nuclear peer competitors confronting Washington simultaneously, creating deterrence challenges without modern precedent.

• A world economy fragmenting into competing technological and industrial blocs, where efficiency is sacrificed for resilience and security.

• Critical infrastructure becoming a battlefield, from ports and power grids to satellite systems and digital finance architecture.

• A widening gap between strategic reality and public perception, with governments quietly preparing for long-term confrontation while much of society still assumes the turbulence is temporary.

That disconnect may prove more dangerous than any single military crisis, because nations are often least prepared for transformation when they mistake structural change for passing instability. By the time reality becomes obvious, the balance of power has usually already shifted.

The Illusion of Distance

One of the most persistent misconceptions in periods of strategic transition is the belief that major geopolitical change remains distant until it becomes visible through unmistakable crisis. That assumption is comforting, but history rarely moves according to the emotional timelines societies prefer. By the time structural change becomes obvious to the public, it has usually been unfolding for years beneath the surface — inside defense budgets, industrial policy, intelligence assessments, shipping patterns, alliance planning, and the quiet recalibration of what states believe they may soon be forced to do. What appears sudden is often only the first moment ordinary people notice what governments have already spent years preparing for.

Several developments suggest that this deeper transition is no longer theoretical:

• Military-industrial production is being reconsidered as a strategic necessity rather than an economic burden, with governments increasingly prioritizing ammunition stockpiles, shipbuilding capacity, rare-earth access, semiconductor sovereignty, and resilient supply chains that can withstand prolonged confrontation.

• Energy has fully returned as an instrument of power, no longer merely a commodity traded on markets but a geopolitical lever capable of rewarding alignment, punishing dependence, and reshaping regional influence through pipelines, shipping routes, and long-term infrastructure partnerships.

• Technology is being absorbed into national-security doctrine at unprecedented speed, turning artificial intelligence, quantum computing, satellite networks, cyber offense, and digital infrastructure into strategic assets whose control may define power as decisively as oil fields or naval fleets once did.

• Neutral space is shrinking, as regions and states once able to balance relations between competing blocs increasingly face pressure to choose economic, technological, and strategic alignment in a world becoming less tolerant of ambiguity.

The cumulative effect is profound: global competition is no longer being organized around isolated disputes, but around a broader contest over who will shape the operating rules of the twenty-first century. That makes nearly every crisis larger than it first appears, because behind each confrontation sits a wider struggle over influence, leverage, and strategic endurance.

The Pressure That Does Not Break — Until It Does

What makes this era particularly dangerous is that it is not defined by one overwhelming shock, but by the gradual layering of tensions that, individually manageable, collectively create systemic strain. International order does not always fail because of catastrophic singular events; often it weakens because too many pressures build simultaneously until institutions lose the capacity to absorb them. That is the pattern increasingly visible today.

Among the most destabilizing pressures now converging are:

• Persistent military confrontation in Europe, where the war in Ukraine has transformed from regional conflict into a long-term strategic contest reshaping NATO posture, Russian doctrine, European defense spending, and the broader military balance on the continent.

• Rising strategic friction in the Indo-Pacific, where Taiwan, the South China Sea, maritime chokepoints, and expanding naval competition increasingly place the world’s economic center of gravity inside an active security dilemma.

• Intensifying competition over critical resources, including rare earth minerals, industrial metals, advanced chips, and logistical infrastructure that underpin both civilian economies and modern military capability.

• Growing vulnerability of interconnected systems, where attacks on communications networks, financial systems, power grids, satellite constellations, or maritime infrastructure could generate cascading disruption without a single formal declaration of war.

This is what gives the current moment its unusual gravity: escalation no longer needs to be deliberate to become real. It can emerge through overlap, accident, misreading, or exhaustion. A cyber disruption during a regional military standoff, an industrial blockade disguised as regulation, a maritime collision in contested waters, a sanctions spiral that unexpectedly fractures global markets — these are no longer improbable scenarios imagined in think-tank exercises. They are increasingly plausible outcomes in a world where strategic friction exists across too many domains at once.

The Cost of Misreading the Moment

Perhaps the greatest strategic danger is not aggression itself, but complacency — the tendency of societies, markets, and political systems to interpret structural instability as temporary turbulence rather than historic transition. The modern world is deeply conditioned to believe that shocks are disruptions to normality, after which normality returns. Yet some periods are not interruptions; they are turning points, moments when the previous equilibrium quietly expires and a harder reality begins taking shape.

The signs of that transition are already visible:

• Governments are preparing for resilience rather than efficiency, favoring redundancy, domestic production, and strategic reserves over the economic logic that dominated globalization’s peak decades.

• Defense planning horizons are expanding, with states investing not for immediate conflict alone, but for prolonged competition measured in decades rather than election cycles.

• Strategic alliances are being reinforced not simply for deterrence, but for endurance, reflecting growing recognition that the defining challenge ahead may be sustained geopolitical pressure rather than singular confrontation.

• Public awareness remains significantly behind elite strategic assessment, creating a dangerous disconnect between the scale of transformation underway and the political urgency with which societies respond to it.

History is often shaped not by the crises leaders expect, but by the ones they underestimate because the early warning signs appear too gradual to command attention. That is what makes this moment so consequential. The old order is not collapsing in spectacle, but in slow motion — treaty by treaty, assumption by assumption, safeguard by safeguard — while a more unstable world quietly assembles itself in its place, piece by piece, beneath the comforting appearance of continuity.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ZeroHedge.

Zero-Point energy? Hologram theory? Consciousness is actually remote controlling our bodies via quantum microtubules in our squishy brains? How about all those dead scientists? Whatever reality is, the steady drumbeat of UFO ‘disclosures’ now apparently includes religious leaders, who are being ‘read in’ on some plan for a 2027 disclosure. Maybe project Blue Beam is ready for prime time…

Perry Stone, an influential pastor and author based in Tennessee, claimed that U.S. intelligence officials told Christian leaders to brace their congregations for the federal government’s imminent disclosures regarding extraterrestrial beings, warning that the shocking findings could shake the foundation of their faith.

In a recent video, Stone alleged that the pastors were briefed on unidentified flying objects and so-called “reptilians” in the possession of the government. The claim follows President Trump’s order directing the Pentagon and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to release all information the government possesses on aliens.

“You’re going to have people who are going to say if there are galaxies and there are allegedly other creations in the galaxies, then the whole creation story is a myth, and you’re going to have people that’s going to apostatize and turn from the Christian faith because they have no answer for what they’re about to hear,’ Stone said.

🚨Report: Pastor Perry Stone said a large group of pastors was invited to a secret meeting with individuals from the US government telling them to prepare their churches for UFO disclosure:

“There’s going to be a release concerning aliens. You need to prepare your people.” pic.twitter.com/ctUFpMNc2p

— The Calvin Coolidge Project (@TheCalvinCooli1) May 6, 2026

Stone added that non-believers could be so shaken by the findings that religious leaders will see a flood of people coming to them seeking answers.

“They’re going to freak out and they’re going to come to pastors, ministers, and teachers and say, ‘What is this? Is this really real?”’ he said.

Then there’s this guy: 

In a Space today, Alan DiDio (@alandidio) says he attended the UFO disclosure pastor meeting, and the year 2027 was discussed in relation to aliens and UFO disclosure. 😳 pic.twitter.com/BvUbFYFrYY

— Astral🛸 (@The_Astral_) May 5, 2026

Despite Trump’s order to release files on aliens, some of the highest-ranking government officials remain skeptics.

Vice President JD Vance told conservative podcaster Benny Johnson in March that the most likely explanation for aliens is that they are actually “demons.”

“When I hear about extra natural phenomenon, that’s where I go: The Christian understanding that there’s a lot of good out there, but there’s also evil out there,” Vance said. “I think that one of the devil’s great is to convince people that he never existed.”

JD Vance Tells Me That UFOs are DEMONS:

“I Think They’re DEMONS” 🛸

“I don’t think they’re aliens. There are weird things out there that are very difficult to explain.”

The Vice President tells me he’s going to AREA 51 with his Top Secret Security Clearance to FIND OUT.

“I… pic.twitter.com/mDtrafkxB9

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) March 27, 2026

Still, some in Congress appear to disagree Vance’s dismissed stance towards UFOs, including Rep. Tim Burchet (R-TN)

“I’ve been briefed by just about every alphabet agency there is,” Burchet told Newsmax. And, I’ll just say this, if they were to release the things that I’ve seen, you’d be up at night, worrying about, thinking about this stuff.”

“This country would’ve come unglued, I think, if they [the public] would’ve heard all that I heard. They would demand answers,” the lawmaker added.

And just in case all of this is true – here’s stoned Alex Jones going off…

Via The Cradle

Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) opened a second office in mainland China earlier this year, establishing a Shanghai branch to expand dealmaking and attract more Chinese investment into the kingdom, Bloomberg reports.

The office was registered last year, falls under PIF’s Beijing branch, and is led by Lily Cong, a former chief representative of Fidelity International in China’s capital.

The Shanghai outpost was reportedly created to strengthen the $1 trillion fund’s ability to pursue outbound deals in China, while officials are also seeking to bring more Chinese companies into Saudi Arabia.

This move strengthens Riyadh’s investment relationship with Beijing, while the US continues to be a major market for the kingdom. The Shanghai office expands PIF’s global presence, which already features offices in New York, London, Hong Kong, and Paris. 

Saudi Arabia and China already maintain strategic and financial links across sectors, including energy and finance, while other Gulf wealth funds are also looking to expand their exposure to China.

Abu Dhabi is also considering placing Chinese assets held by two of its wealth funds into a new entity, according to earlier reports, a move that could pave the way for a broader shift in its investment strategy.

The Gulf investment push comes amid major shifts in West Asian markets following the US war on Iran, triggering regional disruptions that have put pressure on Gulf economies and accelerated moves away from dollar-dominated energy trade.

Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and other Gulf states have deepened yuan-based financial links with China, while disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz have further exposed the fragility of the “petrodollar order”.

According to a report by Fortune, Riyadh did not formally renew its 2024 commitment to price oil exclusively in US dollars, a year after signing a $7 billion currency swap agreement with Beijing. 

The Saudi central bank is also a key participant in the mBridge digital payment platform, which enables direct currency exchanges via blockchain technology.

Economists cited by Fortune say the shift reflects China’s growing weight in Saudi trade, as Beijing has displaced the US as the kingdom’s largest oil customer. 

“The economic gravity pointed toward yuan while the currency arrangement pointed toward dollars,” EBC Financial Group analyst Michael Harris wrote. 

Saudi Arabia still conducts most deals in US dollars, but expanding financial ties with Beijing signal a broader effort to diversify trade and investment channels as China positions the yuan as a possible alternative in global energy markets.

Authored by Matthew Vadum via The Epoch Times,

Chief Justice John Roberts said on May 6 that U.S. Supreme Court justices are not “political actors.”

Roberts’s comments came at a conference in Hershey, Pennsylvania, attended by judges and attorneys from the jurisdictions covered by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. That circuit encompasses Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Although some of the high court’s decisions may be unpopular, they are based exclusively on the law, he said at the gathering.

“I think, at a very basic level, people think we’re making policy decisions, we’re saying we think this is how things should be, as opposed to what the law provides,” said the jurist, who was appointed by President George W. Bush in 2005.

“I think they view us as purely political actors, which I don’t think is an accurate understanding of what we do.”

Roberts’s speech came at a time when public confidence in the Supreme Court is at a low ebb, and a week after the court issued a ruling that changed how the federal Voting Rights Act is interpreted.

Roberts was part of the court’s majority on April 29 when it ruled 6–3 in Louisiana v. Callais that race may only be a minor factor in redistricting rationales, and may not be the predominant, overriding reason for how congressional district lines are drawn.

The justices struck down a federal district judge’s decision that created a second black-majority congressional district in Louisiana. The judge had ruled the electoral district was needed to comply with anti-discrimination provisions of the Voting Rights Act.

The ruling has spurred a new round of mid-decade redistricting efforts, largely in Republican-dominated state legislatures around the country.

In the past few years, the Supreme Court has also issued rulings striking down the constitutional right to abortion, strengthening gun rights, weakening the powers of federal agencies, and getting rid of affirmative action in higher education admissions.

Roberts avoided mentioning any specific rulings in his presentation, but stressed that the court is “simply not part of the political process.”

He said the court’s formal, written opinions are based on the Constitution.

“One thing we have to do is make decisions that are unpopular,” Roberts said.

The chief justice said criticism should be aimed at rulings, instead of individuals in the form of personal attacks.

He denounced the rhetorical targeting of lower court judges.

“That’s not appropriate, and it can lead to very serious problems,” Roberts said.

Weeks ago, Roberts said that personal criticism of federal judges imperils the judiciary.

Although criticism of judicial opinions “comes with the territory” and can be healthy, “personally directed hostility is dangerous and it’s got to stop,” he told an audience at Rice University in Houston, Texas, on March 17.

As the chief justice of the United States, Roberts presides over Supreme Court oral arguments and oversees the entire federal judiciary.

Uber Technologies, Inc. is expanding its use of AI tools and using some of those efficiency gains to slow the pace of hiring, according to Business Insider.

Speaking on the company’s first quarter earnings call, CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said autonomous coding agents now account for about 10% of Uber’s code updates. Engineers still review that output before it is committed to internal repositories, but he said the shift offers an early glimpse of how AI can accelerate software development.

Business Insider writes that Uber has long relied on machine learning for customer facing functions such as setting ride prices and pairing drivers with riders. Now the company is rolling out similar tools across internal teams. “We’re seeing uptake of these tools, whether it’s our legal team or marketing team or developers,” Khosrowshahi said. “We think it’s creating kind of employees with superpowers.”

That broader adoption is influencing hiring plans. CFO Balaji Krishnamurthy said executives did not fully anticipate how quickly AI tools would improve productivity when they mapped out their 2026 budget.

He said on the call, per Goldman: “One last comment on AI. I would say, candidly, when we set up budgets for 2026 in November, we underestimated the amount of impact the AI tools could have,” he said. After a new wave of models arrived in December, Uber “re-upped our investment here,” while also reducing “incremental headcount growth.”

The spending ramp has been significant. Last month, CTO Praveen Neppalli Naga said Uber had already used its entire 2026 budget for Anthropic’s Claude Code, underscoring how quickly demand for AI tools is growing inside the company.

Khosrowshahi said the strategy makes sense if those tools continue improving employee output. “If every person at this company can increase their throughput by 20%, 30%, 50%, 100%, then I think metering headcount growth and leaning in on AI investment is going to be well worth it,” he said.

Authored by Dylan Morgan via The Epoch Times,

The California Department of Insurance announced on May 4 it filed an enforcement action against State Farm, alleging the company significantly mishandled claims from survivors of the 2025 Los Angeles wildfires.

“Wildfire survivors came to us for help, and we followed the facts,” Insurance Department Commissioner Ricardo Lara said.

“Our investigation found that State Farm delayed, underpaid, and buried policyholders in red tape at the worst moment of their lives. That is unacceptable, and we are taking decisive action to hold them accountable.”

The Palisades Fire and the nearby Eaton Fire, which ignited in Altadena, California, on Jan. 7, 2025, claimed around 30 lives and destroyed more than 12,000 structures.

The Insurance Department said that State Farm received approximately 11,300 of the nearly 39,000 claims related to the Los Angeles wildfires filed across all insurers, and that Lara launched an investigation into the insurance company in June 2025 after the department heard many complaints.

According to the department, it examined 220 of the claims filed with State Farm and found a total of 398 violations in 114 of those claims.

These violations consisted of “slow and inadequate investigation” through failing to meet deadlines in investigating claims, accepting or denying claims, and providing notice for additional time.

The Insurance Department also alleged that State Farm made unreasonably low settlement offers and underpaid claims.

This enforcement action seeks millions of dollars in penalties, which the department said is the largest amount pursued this century relating to a wildfire disaster.

The department also wants State Farm to speed up payments and settle outstanding claims.

The property lines of homes burned during the Palisades Fire are visible in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles on June 9, 2025. John Fredricks/The Epoch Times

State Farm denied any mishandling or intentional underpaying of wildfire claims and said the violations the Insurance Department identified require only about $40,000 in additional payments beyond the more than $5.7 billion it has paid to those affected by the fires.

“California’s homeowners insurance market is the most dysfunctional in the country … the state is facing an availability and affordability crisis, and the California Department of Insurance should take responsibility for regulatory delays and uncertainty that have contributed to fewer choices and higher costs for consumers,” the company said in its statement.

State Farm said it strongly disagrees with the department’s characterization of the company, and that any prospect or threat to suspend its licensing over “primarily administrative and procedural errors” is a reckless and politically motivated attack.

“Using a thin sample of claims to justify sweeping allegations turns regulatory oversight into a political weapon, creating headlines instead of delivering facts and real consumer protection. [The department’s examination] was based on a sample of 220 files, and most of the issues cited were administrative or process-related,” State Farm said.

The insurance company said every issue identified has already been, or is being addressed through claim reviews, and that it will provide supplemental payments when appropriate.

The same day, California Governor Gavin Newsom issued a statement warning insurance companies they may be subject to state enforcement actions if they unlawfully delay or deny claims from survivors of the Los Angeles fires.

In November 2025, Los Angeles County launched its own investigation into State Farm’s handling of insurance claims.

“The County has heard loud and clear from wildfire survivors that State Farm’s delays are standing in the way of rebuilding. Fair and timely insurance payments aren’t a privilege; they’re a right,” Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors Chair Kathryn Barger said.

On March 31, President Donald Trump also weighed in on the situation, saying State Farm and other insurers should “get their act together” after meeting with California politicians and hearing about the difficulties the wildfire victims faced in their insurance claims.

“It was brought to my attention that the Insurance Companies, in particular, State Farm, have been absolutely horrible to people that have been paying them large premiums for years, only to find that when tragedy struck, these horrendous Companies were not there to help!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

Authored by Steve Watson via modernity.news,

The Trump administration continues its aggressive push to root out waste and abuse in federal entitlement programs, exposing yet another layer of systemic fraud thriving in Gavin Newsom’s California. 

A new investigation highlights a single attending physician whose National Provider Identifier was tied to 17 different hospice operations in the Los Angeles area. 

These entities filed more than 3,000 claims on behalf of only 900 patients, billing Medicare for $16 million.

🚨 GAVIN NEWSOM JUST GOT CAUGHT ALLOWING EVEN MORE FRAUD

This “hospice” provider PANICKED when the reporter came up and exposed:

“[They] filed more than 3,000 claims for 900 patients, billing Medicare for $16 MILLION DOLLARS.” 🤯

“Anything over 100 patients at a given time… pic.twitter.com/vTNwyZ3MLR

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) May 5, 2026

Hospice care expert Ira Byock laid out the red flags clearly: “Anything over 100 patients at a given time that you have responsibility for as a hospice physician should start to raise red flags.”

This case fits the broader pattern of exploitation that federal authorities under the Trump administration have targeted. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, led by Dr. Mehmet Oz, recently delisted around 450 suspected fraudulent hospice providers in Los Angeles County, suspending more than $600 million in questionable claims with no appeals filed.

Oz’s spotlighted billions in hospice fraud connected to foreign mafias and welfare scams that victimized seniors:

These revelations build directly on prior exposures of California’s entrenched fraud networks. As we previously detailed, the Trump administration dismantled elements of a sprawling $146 billion Medi-Cal fraud operation: 

California Democrats have responded by attempting to criminalize the very act of exposing such schemes, as independent journalist Nick Shirley confronted them over proposed measures that would silence watchdogs: 

The on-the-ground reporting captured providers panicking when approached. Doors closed quickly. Seniors in Visalia described feeling deceived. One couple stated plainly: “The way I see it we were just taken in.”

Neither the physician in question nor the associated hospice operation has faced discipline or charges in this latest instance. Both remain active in the Medicare program. This lack of immediate consequences underscores the inertia that oversight under Trump is now confronting head-on.

State officials have pointed out that Medicare is a federal program and highlighted their own enforcement actions, including a $267 million hospice fraud takedown announced in April. Yet the persistence of these schemes in Los Angeles County—home to far more hospice providers than many entire states—reveals deep vulnerabilities that predated the current federal pressure.

The Trump administration’s Task Force to Eliminate Fraud is delivering results by acting decisively, protecting taxpayers and vulnerable Americans from networks that treat end-of-life care as a revenue stream. Newsom’s deflection cannot obscure the reality: California’s entitlement systems have operated with minimal accountability for too long.

Billions have been siphoned while seniors were enrolled without full understanding and providers cycled patients for maximum billing. The sunlight now being shone on these operations marks a decisive shift from previous neglect.

Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

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

A Texas city that had a Muslim-only celebration scheduled at a city-owned water park has said that the event would be canceled.

“After further review and in the best interest of the City of Grand Prairie, the June 1 Eid event at Epic Waters Indoor Waterpark has been canceled. No additional comment will be made at this time,” said Eric Alvarez, spokesman for the city of Grand Prairie.

Aminah Knight, the organizer of the event, said she was “deeply disappointed” by the event being canceled and had only been informed by a park manager.

“What began as a private event for the Muslim community to celebrate Eid in a joyful and modest environment became something much bigger than I ever imagined,” she said in a text message to The Epoch Times. “The flyer was originally shared within private community spaces, but it was later circulated more broadly by people who were not interested in attending, but rather in creating division and controversy.”

Knight said she is going to turn what she called a “painful experience” into “something beautiful” and will host an interfaith event called “The Great American Cookout” on July 4. She said the event would be a place “where people from different backgrounds can come together, connect, and truly get to know one another as Americans.”

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott threatened to pull $530,000 in state funding if the city of Grand Prairie allowed the celebration to go on.

The event was to celebrate Eid al-Adha, an annual Islamic celebration, and was promoted as being for only Muslims. While the city of Grand Prairie owns the water park, a private third-party contractor runs it.

“A city-owned water park in Grand Prairie openly advertised a ‘MUSLIMS ONLY’ event—closed to the general public,” Abbott posted on X on Wednesday. “That’s religious discrimination. It’s unconstitutional. I signed HB 4211 into law—banning Muslim only no-go zones in Texas. The City must cancel the event and commit to never allowing something like it again by May 11th, or lose $530,000 in state grants. Let this be a lesson to local officials: Facilities funded by ALL taxpayers are not just for a subset of Texans.”

The city, prior to the cancellation, posted a message on its website.

“The City of Grand Prairie is aware of concerns that have been expressed about an upcoming private event at Epic Waters,” the statement reads. “The City has been in contact with the Epic Waters management team to ensure all policies and procedures have been followed. Epic Waters is owned by the City and managed by a third-party operator. Like other City-owned facilities, it is available for rental by individuals and organizations.”

Alvarez said earlier Wednesday in an email to The Epoch Times that the city reached out to Abbott’s office and was in discussions with the state government regarding the matter.

The third-party contractor did not respond to an email seeking comment.

Knight posted on the event’s website, “So if you are a friend of a different faith who wants to celebrate the Eid holiday with us and adhere to the modest dress code … this event is FOR YOU TOO!”

Knight continued: “DFW Epic Eid is a privately organized and privately funded event held through a standard rental of Epic Waters, just like many other private gatherings hosted at the park. This event was created to celebrate Eid al-Adha, one of the most important holidays in Islam, which commemorates faith, devotion, and gratitude. … In response to feedback, we have updated our materials to clearly reflect that this is a modest dress-only event, centered around a respectful and family-friendly environment.”

Mitch Little, a Republican Texas state representative, said in a video posted on Facebook that he learned the “Muslim-only” event had been held two previous times.

“I think this is a very serious civil rights violation that is going on here,” Little said in the video. “If you are making a public accommodation, whether it is a restaurant or a hotel or an entertainment venue like Epic Waters, you’re not permitted to exclude people on the basis of race, religion, etc. I think people are locally shocked at what is going on here.”

With the ranks of its foreign sympathizers plummeting all around the world and all across the political spectrum, the State of Israel is quadrupling its budget for so-called “public diplomacy,” bringing its 2026 spending on foreign influence campaigns to a massive $730 million.

With the country’s growing unpopularity threatening US financial, military and diplomatic support, Israel’s foreign minister has said an intensified effort to mold global opinion is an “existential issue.” Both inside and outside of Israel, the country’s public diplomacy effort is also referred to by its Hebrew name: hasbara. Even before the 2026 ramp-up in spending, Israel’s spending on hasbara was already striking. 

Recent disclosures about 2025 hasbara spending shed some light on how Israel goes about shaping public opinion. Per the Jerusalem Post, that year’s outlays included a $50 million social media ad campaign carried out on Google, YouTube, X and Outbrain. Another $40 million covered the hosting of foreign delegations. “We flew a lot of delegations to the country – whether it’s pastors, whether it’s politicians, universities,” Israeli Consul General Israel Bachar told the Jerusalem Post. “Everyone who returns from the country understands better and is more supportive. But you have to fly out a lot of people.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson abruptly ended the workweek, sending the House into early recess to avoid a vote on releasing more Jeffrey Epstein documents.

Members of Congress then packed their bags and flew to Israel. pic.twitter.com/QMV3TvAgaK

— FlyingBeagle “Abu Alya” (@FlyingBeagle_) August 6, 2025

“We must as a country invest much, much more,” Israeli foreign minister Gideon Sa’ar argued in December. “It should be like investing in jets, bombs and missile interceptors. In the face of what’s arrayed against us and what’s invested against us, it’s far from enough. This is an existential issue.”

An April Pew Research survey found that 60% of American adults now view Israel unfavorably — that’s up 18 points from 2022. Underscoring the mammoth challenge faced by Israel’s hasbarists, the proportion of Americans who have a very unfavorable view of Israel now stands at 28% — triple what it was in 2022. Most alarming for Israel is the cratering of support among Republicans, with 57% of those under 50 now viewing Israel unfavorably.  

The erosion of US support has taken place over a span that has included Israel’s stunningly-destructive rampage across Gaza in response to the Oct 7 2023 Hamas invasion of Israel, and this year’s US-Israeli war on Iran which has caused fuel prices to rocket higher while threatening a global economic catastrophe. 

The money they steal from you they spend on lying to you. https://t.co/YUwfEEqhFm

— Scott Horton (@scotthortonshow) May 5, 2026

Israel’s weakened position in US politics is manifesting in various ways. Candidates in Democratic primaries are now attacking opponents who’ve taken money from the pro-Israel lobby, which has prompted those forces to effectively “launder” their contributions through intermediary organizations. This week, 30 House Democrats co-signed a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, demanding that the US government finally acknowledge the existence of Israel’s nuclear arsenal — ending decades of bipartisan obfuscation. Votes in Congress that follow the Israel lobby’s recommendations used to be enormously lopsided on Israel’s side, but are now decided by just a handful of votes — with the lobby still prevailing for now.   

In October, westerners’ wariness of Israeli hasbara was heightened by Responsible Statecraft’s revelation that Israel was paying social-media influencers something like $7,000 per pro-Israel post that they made. 

The best ‘conservative’ influencers Israel can buy?

Emily Austin participated in the Epstein binders hoax, and joined Netanyahu’s recent influencers meeting

Xavaier DuRousseau attended the secret Hamptons influencer summit with Bill Ackman, then junketed off to Israel pic.twitter.com/JLoGk3Jzfd

— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) September 28, 2025

Some hasbara efforts have been carried out in a purposely deceptive fashion. For example, an undercover Al Jazeera documentary captured American Jordan Schachtel, who now publishes The Dossier on Substack, describing his involvement in a social media campaign in which Israeli propagandists ran Facebook pages that ostensibly cover topics far from geopolitics — such as the environment or feminism — for the sole purpose of periodically sprinkling the feed with pro-Israel content. “It’s a secretive thing, because we don’t want people to know that these side projects are associated with The Israel Project,” Schachtel was caught saying on hidden camera.

Imagine what they’ll be cooking up with three-quarters of a billion dollars. 

Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,

There are still some Trump supporters out there who continue to bill the Trump administration as some kind of great victory for the forces of populism against the “deep state.” A year into the second Trump administration, it is clear this is not a serious position. The populism of the Trump campaign has clearly failed and what we ended up with instead is a continuation and strengthening of the status quo. Over the next three years of this second Trump term, the welfare-warfare state will only get larger. Trump now actively pushes to strengthen the surveillance state, and to massively increase overall defense spending. He points to some miniscule trimming around the edges of the welfare state while overall spending continues to rise and federal deficits are near all-time highs. In turn, these huge deficits will require central-bank intervention to partly monetize the debt, pushing up price inflation. 

Far from being some sort of shock to the system in Washington, Trump is governing largely like a business-as-usual Republican. In other words, it should be abundantly obvious by now that there is not going to be anything coming out of this administration that will endanger the governing elites or their institutions which retain a firm grip on Washington institutions and the special interests that drive policy. 

This is apparently the best that the “militant” populists could come up with: yet another milquetoast republican administration that will ensure the gravy train continues for politically favored allies. This administration is basically just a Marco Rubio administration with some “mean tweets” thrown in for color. 

The populist “victory” of the Trump administration is perhaps the best evidence yet that a strategy of “vote harder” is simply not going to lead to any significant change of any kind. After all, the media, academia, and even the GOP’s old guard fought tooth and nail to keep Trump out of the White House. And in the end, it was much ado about nothing. Now, just imagine if someone ran for the presidency who actually opposed the regime’s power on principle. That person would simply not be allowed to get the nomination, let alone win. 

So, there won’t be any viable candidates who will actually tear down the federal state through legal or constitutional means. That will not be permitted via any federal election. The logic of the welfare state, moreover, ensures that no candidate can hope to get elected while also favoring significant cuts to defense spending, old-age pensions, or any of the beloved federal programs that support millions of Americans on the dole, such as pensioners and government contractors. 

The only way significant change comes to this tightly constructed system of patrons and clients will be via a significant crisis that disrupts standards of living. This must be severe enough that it shakes the population’s faith in the regime to the point that people actually begin to question the state’s legitimacy. Only when real economic pain is felt will there be any real change. So long as the most of the population feels comfortable enough with an ample supply of Doordash and pornography and reality TV, the system will be deemed to be working “well enough.” 

Eventually, however, the ruling elite, through either miscalculation or laziness or complacency, will no longer be able to deliver on its promises to guarantee ease, safety, and “free” goods and services for a growing population on the dole. Once the elites become unable to buy compliance from the population, the regime will turn to brute force. This, however, can only last as long as the ruling elites are able to draw upon loyal personnel in large enough numbers as to be able to force obedience from the general population. This is easier said than done, especially in a period of economic stagnation or decline. The Soviet Union is a key example. In 1989, when the Soviet Government was crumbling, the Soviet Regime still commanded six million personnel in military uniform. But when the regime tried to shore up control, that enormous military proved to be largely AWOL and of little use. 

But then what? Once the ruling elite and its regime cease to be seen as legitimate, and once the usual methods of control fail, what is the next step? Unfortunately, the next step is usually to simply replace the outgoing group of governing elites with a new group. This is the usual progression of events. Uprisings turn into civil wars and civil wars turn into contests over who will control the state’s enormous apparatus of coercion. The French revolution is perhaps the quintessential cautionary tale here. The revolutionaries won with lavish promises of freedom and “rule by the people.” Yet, there is no such thing as rule “by the people,” and there never has been. Any polity that is more complex than a tribal village ultimately ends up with the civil government in the hands of a relatively small elite.

What usually happens is this: the state and most of its powers endure, but under new management. As the Italian sociologist Vilfredo Pareto put it: “The revolution at the end of the eighteenth century led merely to the bourgeoisie taking the place of the old elite.”  Pareto further notes that in the wake of a revolution, the population discovers “they have merely exchanged yokes.”

This will be the ultimate end game of every scheme hatched by those who imagine themselves to be anti-regime radicals, but who ultimately want nothing more than to keep the state fully in tact and use it to their own ends. And make no mistake, the power will be used to benefit the small new class of governing elites, at the expense of the ordinary taxpayers. Whatever rhetoric may be used about serving “the people” will be nothing more than window dressing designed to trick unsophisticated non-elites into supporting the new regime. 

Whether from the Left or the Right, this type of centralist “revolutions” will provide no escape from the endless cycle of replacing one set of elites with another, and which characterizes much of human history which is, Pareto writes, “a graveyard of aristocracies.” Again and again, we find that the “liberators” are doing little more than replacing the people’s current yoke with a slightly different one.

Consequently, the only hope in providing any truly limiting factors on state power will be the dismemberment of the state into smaller and weaker pieces. It will be necessary to check power with power through true decentralization. This is why the Soviet state never re-emerged under a new name with similar prerogatives. Thanks largely to the centrifugal forces of latent nationalism within the various republics of the Soviet Union, the new Russian elite that replaced the old Soviet elite was unable to maintain the “union.” The result has been greatly beneficial to many of the former Soviet republics—especially the Baltic states—and to the old states of the Warsaw Pact which were informally under the boot of the Soviet regime.   In other words, the dismemberment of the Soviet State, through a variety of de jure and de facto secession movements, accomplished what would not have been through simply placing a new elite atop the Soviet state. 

Similarly, the American revolution, which was primarily a movement to secede from the British state, created a highly decentralized new “state” which possessed few of the powers of the old regime.

We can conclude that any American who actually values human freedom—and its necessary antecedent, the weakening of the central state—will desire a similar dismemberment of the United States. After all, as the French revolution showed us, it is not enough to simply transfer the regime from the hands of one elite to another. Rather, radical decentralization, via secession and other means, will have to take place in order to create new power centers and new elites that can push back against the established elites and power centers of the rump state. Only when power is allowed to check power will there be any meaningful institutional limits on state power. 

Yet, for the foreseeable future, we are likely to hear over and over again that the only acceptable “strategy” is to embrace elections and party politics. This is the “vote harder” argument. The usual “reformers” prefer this because voting, from the perspective of the regime, is harmless and quite ineffective in mounting any sort of meaningful opposition to the core powers and institutions of the state and its elites. Moreover, even in the highly unlikely event that elections were able to bring about any significant replacement of the current elite, this would only leave the current centralized state and its institutions intact, with only a change in those who control the means of exploitation.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ZeroHedge.