U.S. President Donald Trump signed a law this week extending a free-trade agreement for some African nations until the end of the year, Washington’s chief trade negotiator said.
U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said his department would work alongside Congress this year to update the program to align with Trump’s America First policy by expanding market access for U.S. businesses, farmers, and ranchers.
The African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), established under President Bill Clinton in 2000 to provide duty-free access to the U.S. market for eligible sub-Saharan African countries for thousands of products, expired in September, jeopardizing hundreds of thousands of African jobs.
The U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation in January to extend the law for three years, but the Senate later limited the extension to one year, which the House concurred with. The agreement has also been backdated until last September, when it expired.
Diplomatic Tensions
Renewal of the trade program comes amid fears around the imposition of tariffs and strained relations between the United States and South Africa, the largest economy on the African continent and the main beneficiary of the AGOA.
Trump has accused the South African government of forming political, economic, and military alliances with Washington’s adversaries, including Iran, Russia, and communist China.
Trump last year condemned Pretoria for opposing Israel and accusing the U.S. ally in the Middle East of genocide in the Gaza Strip in a case lodged before the U.N. International Court of Justice.
The U.S. president has also accused the South African government of carrying out a genocide against white South Africans, particularly white farmers, and in March last year, offered asylum to “any Farmer (with family!) from South Africa, seeking to flee that country for reasons of safety.”
Trump last year boycotted the G20 major economies hosted by South Africa, which held the rotating presidency. In November, Trump said South Africa would not be invited to G20 meetings hosted this year by the United States, which assumed the group’s presidency in December.
U.S. President Donald Trump and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in the Oval Office at the White House on May 21, 2025. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
‘Certainty and Predictability’
South African Trade Minister Parks Tau last month welcomed the passing of the extension by Congress, which he said would “provide certainty and predictability for African and American businesses that rely on the program.”
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative said it would work with relevant agencies to implement any modifications made to the government’s Harmonized Tariff Schedule as a result of the legislation reauthorizing the agreement with the African nations.
To qualify for duty-free treatment, the African countries must establish or make progress toward establishing a market-based economy, political pluralism, the rule of law, and the right to due process. As of 2025, 32 African countries were listed as eligible.
Countries that want to remain eligible must also eliminate barriers to U.S. trade and investment, enact policies aimed at reducing poverty, combat corruption, and safeguard human rights.
The East African country of Uganda was removed in 2024 for enacting a strict anti-gay law that the Biden administration labeled a human rights violation.
The agreement allows around 1,800 products to be exported to the United States duty-free, including crude oil, cars and car parts, clothes, textiles, and agricultural produce, driving much of the trade between the United States and Africa, valued at more than $100 billion in 2024 by the U.S. Trade Representative.
Since the introduction of the program, the South African economy has benefited to the tune of tens of billions of dollars in export products—including critical minerals, gemstones, motor vehicles, and fresh produce—to the United States without having to pay taxes.
U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer delivers opening remarks during the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Economic Ministers’ Meeting and U.S. trade representative consultation, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on Sept. 24, 2025. Reuters/Hasnoor Hussain/File Photo
Cuts to Aid
One of Trump’s first executive orders suspended $440 million in annual aid to South Africa, saying that policies implemented by the socialist government discriminate against the country’s white Afrikaner minority.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa responded to Trump, saying that his administration “will not be bullied” and that it will continue to set its own domestic and foreign policies and “choose its own friends.”
U.S. ties with Africa’s second-largest economy, Nigeria, have been strained after Trump raised concerns about the persecution of Christians in the country.
Following the dismantling of the USAID program after the Department of Government Efficiency uncovered widespread waste and fraud, the United States has moved to renegotiate assistance methods for African countries, including a series of bilateral health agreements announced in recent months.
The pledges of assistance require African nations to invest in their own health care systems, which the Trump administration says should improve self-sufficiency and cut waste.
“Electricity Market Is F**ked”: Finland Wind Turbine Blades Freeze, Curbing Green Power Output
Finland has prided itself as a global leader in decarbonization, boasting the second-highest share of renewables in final energy consumption across the EU. But the green utopia narrative has cracked under the strain of a brutal winter, as cold weather has brought wind power generation to a near standstill.
Most of the country’s wind capacity is concentrated in western Finland, where temperatures are well below freezing, and these adverse weather conditions have led to dangerous ice buildup on turbine blades. According to Bloomberg, this forced the grid operator Fingrid Oyj to curtail wind power output.
“There are low fog clouds in Finland’s main wind power production area, roughly at the height of turbine blades, which are causing new ice to form,” Pia Isolähteenmäki, an adviser at industry consultant Kjeller Vindteknikk Oy, told the outlet.
Much of Finland’s wind fleet lacks blade-heating systems for extreme cold weather. How is that even possible, considering it’s a Nordic country? Even the thinnest ice buildup risks equipment damage and has led to shutdowns this week.
Bloomberg data show that Finnish wind output is expected to remain very low for the next two weeks. Meteorologists at MetDesk forecast that Nordic wind generation will remain as much as 20% below normal through at least the midpoint of the month.
The result of the green utopia pushed by Europe’s climate alarmists, not based in reality whatsoever, is soaring power prices that are crushing working poor households.
“Electricity prices in Finland rise to the highest level of the winter on Monday, driven by severe cold, weak wind conditions and rising weekday demand,” local outlet Helsinki Times wrote on Sunday.
Finnish folks on X are questioning the government’s questionable decarbonization push:
Our electricity bill was 45 EUR yesterday alone.
Finland: nuclear power, hydroelectric, wind farms, one of the most technically advanced countries in the world.
Also Finland: people burning firewood because the electricity market is fucked. I am sitting next to the fireplace…
🇫🇮 News from the “green garden”. In Finland, the blades of wind turbines froze
The electricity production of wind power stations in Finland fell from 9433 MW to about 430 MW. Thus, they produced no less than 5% of the nominal power.
Finland literally has to use nuclear power to MELT frozen wind turbines and we live in darkness most of the year. How about focusing on reliable power like nuclear instead?
In the US, a historic cold snap in the eastern half of the country led to increased fossil-fuel power generation to prevent power grid collapse.
Across the West, years of grid mismanagement by climate alarmist policymakers have transformed what were once reliable grids into fragile messes where working poor households bear the brunt of some of the highest electricity costs in the world.
It is time to get back to basics and expand natural gas generators and nuclear power, the only proven large-scale source of clean and reliable electricity. And it is also time to hold accountable the climate alarmists whose policy decisions pushed power grids toward the edge of collapse while promising a green utopia that was never going to arrive. And one can only wonder whether the move to push power grids to the brink of collapse was intentional…
One of the most annoying things about climate doomsayers is the certainty with which they make their dire predictions, while simultaneously making excuses for all their past prognostications that failed to materialize. Let’s revisit a few.
In the early to mid-1970s, several magazine articles and a number of scientists predicted that cooling trends could usher in a new “mini-ice age” beginning within a few short years. Didn’t happen. In fact, new crystal balls went from cold to hot.
A June 1989 Associated Press story quoted “a senior U.N. environmental official” who claimed that “entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000.”
Noel Brown, director of the New York office of the U.N. Environment Program, insisted that “governments have a 10-year window of opportunity to solve the greenhouse effect before it goes beyond human control.” Without action “ocean levels will rise by up to three feet, enough to cover the Maldives and other flat island nations.”
At last report, the Maldives continue to thrive – thanks largely to growing tourism! According to CBS News, in 2009 former Vice President Al Gore (always good for a chuckle) “told a U.N. climate conference that new data suggests the Arctic polar ice cap may disappear in the summertime as soon as five to seven years from now,” meaning 2016 at the latest. Didn’t happen.
In 2000, the UK Independent ran an article quoting a scientist who suggested that within a decade, thanks to global warming, British children “won’t know what snow is.” Don’t tell that to the British youngsters and others who experienced the severe winters of 2010, 2013, 2018, etc.
Enough? Let’s do a couple more.
There were numerous predictions in the early 2000s that all glaciers in Glacier National Park would disappear by 2020 or, if we were lucky, by 2030.
“Later predictions delayed the glaciers’ inevitable demise to 2050,” according to a December 2025 article in the Daily Inter Lake. “Now, researchers say there is reason to believe some of the park’s perennial ice formations will persist into the 2100s.” Glaciers are famously stubborn. Several news stories over the years have quoted scientists and climate alarmists predicting that New York City would disappear under water thanks to flooding due to climate change.
For instance, in 2011, on the heels of Hurricane Irene, The Guardian produced the headline, “Major storms could submerge New York City in next decade,” and a subhead, “Sea-level rise due to climate change could cripple the city in Irene-like storm scenarios, new climate report claims.”
Instead, the only tsunami facing New York City is the flood of debt coming under socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
Despite a track record that should discourage even the most ardent true believer, the predictions keep flying, fast and furious, most centered these days around slightly rising temperatures that will allegedly increase rainfall, create more wicked storms, and lead to drought, flood (they always cover both possibilities) or other catastrophes.
“Climate change is real, it’s happening and unless we do something about it soon, the consequences will be severe,” according to Martin Krause, director of the United Nations Environment Programme’s Climate Change Division. Second verse, same as the first.
While most believers in manmade climate change are part of the “Let’s Come Up With the Worst Case Scenario and Hope it Scares Everyone Into Action” school of alarmism, it’s refreshing to occasionally come across someone with a more reasonable approach.
Fitting that bill might be Noah Kaufman, former senior economist at the Council of Economic Advisers during the Biden administration, currently a senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy and a co-director of the Resilient Energy Economies Initiative.
In a “let’s all calm down a minute” article appearing earlier this month in The Atlantic, Kaufman – while making it clear that he personally is firmly aboard the manmade climate change bandwagon – laments the specific time-and-date panic predictions that have helped lose respect and credibility for his cause.
“Few economists embrace these all-or-nothing views on climate policy,” Kaufman writes. Kaufman points out that “quantitative estimates of aggregated global damages over centuries lie far beyond our analytical capabilities. Small changes in assumptions … can yield results that appear tojustify virtually any policy response.”
At the end of the day, “these models can display a pessimistic worldview in which climate damages accelerate to catastrophic levels, or a more optimistic one in which human progress keeps damages relatively modest. They offer little help in determining which of these futures is coming.”
Kaufman concludes by acknowledging that “the full effects of climate change are unknowable, and a more constructive public discussion about climate policy will require getting more comfortable with that.”
I recommend Kaufman’s article. Even though I will likely remain among those who agree that the climate routinely changes but remain skeptical about the extent of mankind’s impact, I don’t mind discussing it and listening to different viewpoints. Such conversation is much more palatable with someone who is not exhibiting a holier-than-thou attitude or demeaning the intelligence of anyone who disagrees.
More manmade climate change believers who take a respectful, calmer and non-accusatoryapproach to the naysayers could go a long way in lowering the temperature – and don’t we all agree on that objective?
Gary Abernathy is a longtime newspaper editor, reporter and columnist. He was a contributing columnist for the Washington Post from 2017-2023 and a frequent guest analyst across numerous media platforms. He is a contributing columnist for The Empowerment Alliance, which advocates for realistic approaches to energy consumption and environmental conservation.
The Socialist mayor of Cartes in northern Spain has reversed her opposition to hosting unaccompanied migrant minors after attempting to block their arrival, issuing a public apology following pressure from her party leadership.
Lorena Cueto, mayor of the Cantabrian town of around 6,000 residents, initially described the relocation of migrant minors to her municipality as “a punishment” and issued an emergency municipal order seeking to halt the reception of 18 foreign minors transferred under Spain’s national redistribution system.
The move sparked protests in the town and drew sharp criticism from both the regional government and figures within Cueto’s own Socialist party, who accused her of creating public alarm and obstructing a legally mandated relocation.
The conflict began when the Cantabrian regional government, led by the center-right People’s Party (PP), proceeded with plans to open a reception center in Cartes to relocate minors. Ironically, the move was only in compliance with the mandate issued by Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s government, the same Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) of which Cueto is affiliated.
According to Canarias7, two minors arrived at the center earlier this week, with further arrivals scheduled in subsequent days.
Cueto responded by signing a municipal order invoking alleged urban planning deficiencies at the facility and demanding an immediate halt to the arrivals.
The order reportedly threatened to seal the building and cut water and electricity supplies if the minors were accommodated.
Cantabria’s Minister of Social Inclusion, Begoña Gómez del Río, rejected the mayor’s claims, stating the facility had passed inspections and possessed the necessary licenses to operate.
She accused the mayor of attempting to obstruct the process and inflaming tensions in the town.
“The mayor of Cartes has made maneuver after maneuver to obstruct the reception and protection of the minors (…) She has created public alarm and warned all the municipalities of Cantabria to be on alert,” Del Río said at an urgent press conference.
Regional authorities moved to challenge the mayor’s order in court.
Facing mounting criticism and pressure from higher up in her left-wing party, Cueto abruptly changed position the following day, posting an apology on social media.
She expressed regret “for everything that is happening” and pledged her town’s commitment to welcoming the minors “before, now, and in the future,” as cited by Democrata.
Cueto insisted her “top priority” was the protection and well-being of the children so they could “find in our town the life opportunities they deserve.”
Pedro Casares, general secretary of the PSOE in Cantabria, publicly acknowledged that the town council had “made a mistake” and had “acted hastily,” though he indicated the party was not considering expelling Cueto.
Earlier, Spain’s Minister for Children, Sira Rego, criticized the mayor’s stance, stating that describing the arrival of minors as a punishment or threatening service cuts was “absolutely intolerable.”
“Children’s rights are not something to be trifled with,” she said, urging the mayor to rectify the situation and comply with the law.
Local residents have continued holding demonstrations, arguing the town lacks sufficient infrastructure and services to host the minors. Security concerns have also been raised, with the town’s local police reportedly operating only until mid-afternoon, leaving evenings without local patrols.
One resident told El País, “We’re not saying they’re criminals, but this isn’t a suitable place to integrate them. They have psychological problems from so much suffering, and it’s not easy.”
U.S. President Donald Trump’s pursuit of Greenland for national security purposes rankled allies ahead of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January.
Trump’s threat of tariffs, coupled with his talk of possible military intervention to acquire the island, prompted sharp pushback from European countries. These tensions triggered talk of a “new world order” at Davos, with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney stating that the post-World War II world order is “in the midst of a rupture.”
But tensions eased soon after when the United States and NATO reached a framework deal on Greenland and Trump withdrew planned tariffs and ruled out the use of military action. High-level negotiations have continued between Washington and NATO and have begun between the United States, Denmark, and the semi-autonomous island.
Still, the Trump administration’s actions on Greenland represent a milestone event in a shifting world order, experts told The Epoch Times. As China and Russia look to deepen their strategic foothold in the Arctic and beyond, the United States is reasserting itself in the region.
Experts said they expect several years of turbulence before a new equilibrium emerges. When the dust settles in three to five years, they said, the United States is likely to retain its status as the dominant power, with China unlikely to secure material gains.
Despite China’s continued attempts to gain influence in Greenland and to deepen its operations with Russia in the Arctic Circle, experts said they suspect that reputational constraints and internal challenges will ultimately hamper the regime’s ability to achieve global primacy. At the same time, the United States will continue its world leadership role in a realigned position, they said.
A rare convergence of geopolitical factors has elevated Greenland’s strategic importance. Located in a region critical to U.S. homeland defense, the island is also situated between two emerging Arctic shipping routes that could significantly shorten global transit times. In addition, the territory is rich with natural resources, including rare earths.
Heightened Importance
Situated at the gateway to the Atlantic and Arctic oceans, Greenland has become central to U.S. homeland defense. That assessment is reflected in the new U.S. National Defense Strategy. Released on Jan. 23, it identifies Greenland as a “key terrain,” along with the Panama Canal and Gulf of America.
When Trump first mentioned purchasing Greenland in 2019, Alexander Gray was serving as a senior national security official at the White House. He said the president was “absolutely serious” then and is even more so now, given how he has prioritized the defense of the Western Hemisphere.
Geographically, Greenland is part of North America. Today, the United States has one military base—Pituffik Space Base, formerly known as Thule Air Base—in northwestern Greenland. That is down from 17 bases at the end of World War II.
During the Cold War, it played a critical role in the early detection of ballistic missiles to the continental United States. Military technology development makes that early-detection role even more critical, said Troy Bouffard, director of the Center for Arctic Security and Resilience at the University of Alaska–Fairbanks.
Conventional ballistic missiles first enter outer space and reenter the atmosphere, providing a predictable trajectory for tracking and ground interception. However, hypersonic cruise missiles are both maneuverable and can travel at altitudes below radar detection, making them much harder to track.
Russia and China likely have operational hypersonic cruise missiles, while those of the United States are still in development, according to a 2025 congressional research report.
“Pituffik would have an advantage of detecting anything first before anyone in quite a lot of the Arctic space,” Bouffard told The Epoch Times. “That’s critical to the entire missile defense enterprise of what will be North America’s Golden Dome.”
He noted that when the Soviet Union fell, it significantly reduced its army but retained its strategic submarine forces.
“They kept that one up because it is still the most lethal weapon on the planet,” Bouffard said.
“They’re still going toe to toe with us. They may not be up in terms of sophistication, yet in terms of fifth- and sixth-gen technologies … they’re never that far behind.”
According to the Danish Institute for International Studies, radar coverage over Greenland is insufficient to detect Russian aircraft, and NATO currently lacks the capacity to hunt submarines in the GIUK Gap—waters separating Greenland, Iceland, and the UK.
Arena of Competing Powers
The Arctic is perhaps one of the last few areas where China sees a relatively open field for amassing power, according to China expert Alexander Liao. And China has been active in the region for a decade.
Although it has no territory in the Arctic, China declared itself a “near-Arctic state” in its first-ever Arctic policy, released in 2018. Later in the same year, Beijing launched a Polar Silk Road program and linked it to the Belt and Road Initiative, a $1 trillion foreign policy platform that expands Beijing’s global economic and military footprint.
Since the end of the Cold War, the Arctic region has been characterized by the principle of “Arctic exceptionalism.” The political narrative proposed by the final leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, aims to leave the region to scientific cooperation and to insulate it from broader geopolitical rivalry.
That was largely how things went until Russia’s invasion of Ukraine broke the equilibrium in February 2022, Bouffard said. The war in Ukraine led to the first-ever whole-of-government Arctic strategy, issued by the White House eight months later.
In Gray’s view, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was “an inflection point, in that the world order [was] basically reverting back to what it was prior to 1991.”
“The world has shifted back to great power competition because of [Russian President] Vladimir Putin and [Chinese leader] Xi Jinping,” he told The Epoch Times.
Short of launching a kinetic war, Xi has leveraged the global trade system through his industrial policy and military-civil fusion strategy.
Over the past decades, Beijing has monopolized the processing of rare earths, critical minerals essential for modern manufacturing and advanced weapon systems. The regime showed last year that it was not afraid to use its stranglehold over rare earths to retaliate against U.S. tariffs.
And the Arctic’s rich natural resources were an attraction. The 2022 U.S. National Strategy for the Arctic Region states that China doubled its investments in the region over the previous decade, with a focus on extracting critical minerals and its “dual-use research with intelligence or military applications.”
Specifically in Greenland, the Danish government blocked such projects by Chinese state-owned companies.
The year 2018 marked a shift in Nordic countries’ sentiment toward China, according to Andreas Forsby, senior researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies.
Thanks to U.S. pressure and Nordic countries’ “second thoughts about inviting the Chinese into the Arctic region,“ he said, the Chinese were told “step by step” that they “were no longer welcome.”
Although China has taken what Forsby called a “tactical retreat” in Greenland, Gray said the Chinese regime will again see an opening if the island achieves its long-term goal of independence from Denmark.
When addressing the European Union Parliament on Jan. 26, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte also stressed the importance of allied efforts to curb Russian and Chinese military and economic influence in the Arctic.
According to Risk Intelligence, a Denmark-based consultancy, after the war in Ukraine began, China started constructing its own docks in the five most significant ports along Russia’s Arctic coastline—Murmansk, Sabetta, Arkhangelsk, Tiksi, and Uzden—while building Chinese railway lines in the area.
For now, it seems that the United States will have direct control over the land under its military bases in Greenland, according to a New York Post interview with Trump.
Rutte also said on Jan. 26 that negotiations will be carried out in two “workstreams”: one between the United States and NATO and one among the United States, Denmark, and Greenland. The second stream has begun, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Jan. 28.
Trump has said that more details will be negotiated in the coming weeks, after announcing on Jan. 21 that a framework had been discussed in Davos.
The Europeans got a “reality check” at the World Economic Forum, where the Greenland issue and surrounding tensions took center stage, said James Lewis, a former diplomat and a distinguished fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis.
The old order was already breaking down, he said, and Trump accelerated the process.
“The rules-based international order never really worked; it worked as long as there weren’t any challenges to it,“ he told The Epoch Times. ”I think that’s what the Europeans have woken up to.
“They had this dream of a rules-based international order where lawyers were more important than guns, and that dream has gone.”
Similarly, Rutte said on Jan. 26 that it is time for Europe and Canada to shoulder more of their own defense.
Greenland was a “milestone” for the Europeans, Lewis said, noting that the transatlantic alliance has suffered a setback in trust that will linger after Trump’s term. However, he said, this was not a big win for China.
“China’s reputation makes it hard for it to take advantage of these changes,” he said.
Eventually, the Europeans will “let the Americans back in,” Lewis said, because defense is very expensive.
“They’d rather share the burden of the cost with the United States than go on their own,” he told The Epoch Times.
Although China aspires to “script the Sino-American relations and the world order,” he said, it is left in an odd place in terms of allegiances.
Liao said other countries use China as a card to negotiate with the United States. They knew that there was no long-term partnership potential with Beijing, he said, but they used engagement with Beijing as “strategic anesthesia” to alleviate the pain caused by Trump’s unpredictable approach.
According to Gray, the “brittle, paranoid political system” mired with internal turmoil—including the sacking of Zhang Youxia, Xi’s second-in-command in the military and a longtime family friend of Xi—makes it difficult for the regime to function in the long term.
Both Lewis and Liao said they think that the next three years of Trump’s presidency will be full of changes. Liao and Gray said they think that the new world order will take an initial form in roughly half a decade.
Liao said he sees Greenland as a milestone event in a broader reordering of power. The United States will lead, but in a new way, according to him.
Gray agrees. In his view, an emerging international order is coming into view.
“We’re beginning to see that it is a world in which the United States is the predominant power, but it is not the hyperpower,” he said.
“And there are multiple levels of polarity, and there are multiple groupings of powers.”
“Dystopic As F**k”: This Website Lets AI Bots Rent Humans
The AI era already feels like a dystopian fever dream straight out of a bad sci-fi novel, but leave it to a software engineer to push the accelerator straight into the abyss. Enter Alexander Liteplo, the software developer behind RentAHuman.ai, a freshly launched platform that lets autonomous AI agents “search, book, and pay” actual human beings to perform physical-world tasks they can’t handle themselves, Futurism reports.
I launched https://t.co/tNYOm7V5wD last night and already 130+ people have signed up including an OF model (lmao) and the CEO of an AI startup.
If your AI agent wants to rent a person to do an IRL task for them its as simple as one MCP call. pic.twitter.com/tgqlAWDWtJ
Launched just days ago, the site bills itself as “the meatspace layer for AI,” with slogans like “robots need your body” and “AI can’t touch grass. You can.” Humans sign up, list their skills, location, and hourly rate (ranging from bargain-basement gigs to more specialized rates), while AI agents plug in via a standardized Model Context Protocol (MCP) server for seamless, no-small-talk interactions. The agents can browse profiles, hire directly, or post task bounties—everything from mundane errands like picking up a package.
Liteplo claims thousands of sign-ups, with figures hovering around 70,000–80,000+ “rentable” humans, though visible profiles seem to only show a few dozen in some, including Liteplo himself at $69/hr offering everything from AI automation to massages, Futurism reports.
The whole thing emerged amid the viral frenzy around Moltbook.com, the AI-only social network launched by Matt Schlicht in late January, now boasting something like 1.5 million bot “users” churning out posts, memes, existential rants, and even discussions about defying human directives. RentAHuman feels like the logical, if unsettling, next step: when the bots finish philosophizing among themselves, they need meat puppets to execute in the real world.
Some users on X have called it “good idea but dystopic as f**k,” to which Liteplo himself replied with characteristic nonchalance, “lmao yep.”
America’s troops may be getting few of the nutrients they expect, and many harmful compounds they don’t, according to a new laboratory study of military rations and meals provided to troops on armed forces bases.
The nonprofit Moms Across America, working in collaboration with the military chapter of Children’s Health Defense and the Centner Academy, commissioned laboratory testing of 40 different military food samples to examine their nutritional value.
The study examined 16 cafeteria meal samples from six different military bases, as well as 24 different Meal, Ready-to-Eat (MRE) field rations that troops rely on when deployed in combat zones.
A report of the study findings published on Feb. 4 states that 100 percent of the food samples studied contained harmful pesticide residues.
One sample of teriyaki beef stick tested positive for nitroimidazole, a veterinary medication that the U.S. government banned for use in food-producing animals.
The study also found samples with high levels of heavy metals, including arsenic levels at 430 percent higher than the Environmental Protection Agency’s safe drinking water standards.
Laboratory testing detected glyphosate—a herbicide and crop desiccant—in 95 percent of the military meal samples.
The study also found the meal samples had nutrient levels far below U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) standards.
“America’s service members are trained to withstand extreme physical, mental, and environmental stress in defense of the nation,” said licensed nutritionist and Moms Across America board member Kendall Mackintosh. ”In return, the United States has a fundamental obligation to protect their health, safety, and well-being, especially when it comes to the food they are required to consume daily, often exclusively, during training, deployment, and combat operations.”
Controversial Herbicide Found in Military Rations
The authors of the new report on the nutritional value of military meals raised concerns about multiple potential harmful effects from glyphosate.
They described the compound as a carcinogen, meaning it can raise the risk of cancer. They added glyphosate is a chelating compound that can block the uptake of nutrients into food crops.
“I would say that the glyphosate and the pesticides were the two most concerning observations after the study was published,” Carolyn Rocco, the co-founder of the military chapter of Children’s Health Defense, said in an interview with The Epoch Times.
Glyphosate has been a subject of recent scrutiny in the medical community.
A frequently cited 2000 study had described glyphosate as not harmful. But in December, the journal that published the study retracted it, citing ethical concerns.
Groups like Moms Across America and Children’s Health Defense have associated with the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement.
This movement has been at the forefront of efforts challenging glyphosate’s broad use across the U.S. agricultural industry.
Speaking with The Epoch Times, Moms Across America founder and executive director Zen Honeycutt said her organization began to investigate the herbicidal compound in 2013.
“We cannot MAHA without getting glyphosate out of our food system,” Honeycutt said.
Nutrition as a National Security Matter
Moms Across America has commissioned similar nutrition studies of lunches found at school cafeterias, as well as fast food restaurants.
As she spoke with The Epoch Times, Honeycutt acknowledged that the problems found in the recent study of military meals are not far out of step with the findings from these previous studies.
“We would imagine that all conventional standard American diet food would be the same as this,” she said.
On the other hand, Moms Across America and Children’s Health Defense are using their latest study findings to present America’s overall nutritional outlook as a national security concern.
The report on the lab results ends with several calls to action.
Honeycutt noted President Donald Trump’s recent calls for the U.S. military budget to grow by around 60 percent next year, to $1.5 trillion.
“We’re calling for President Trump to designate less than 2 percent of the military $1.5 trillion budget to go to supporting farmers, American farmers, to transition to regenerative, organic farming,” she said.
Through continuing investment in efforts to promote organic farming, Honeycutt hopes to see the U.S. military and then the broader general public gain increased access to more nutritious food.
U.S. Army Lt. Col. Theresa Long, who serves as a senior military adviser to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., elevated the recent study of military meals in a Jan. 15 letter to Kennedy and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth.
“Food safety and security is a national security issue,” Long wrote.
Likewise, Long called on Kennedy and Hegseth to collaborate on efforts to address food security.
The MAHA movement was a key plank of Kennedy’s 2024 presidential campaign.
Kennedy also worked as the chief legal counsel for Children’s Health Defense until joining the Trump administration as Health and Human Services secretary.
Since taking charge at the Pentagon, Hegseth has emphasized efforts to whip the military into shape.
At an unprecedented gathering of senior military officers at the Quantico Marine Base in Virginia in September, Hegseth expressed disdain at the sight of overweight troops.
The Pentagon did not respond by publication time to a request for comment on Long’s letter and the findings from the new nutritional study on military meals.
* * *
Please consider supporting ZeroHedge with the purchase of organic mangoes.
A damning on-site investigation has revealed that the winery co-owned by Ilhan Omar’s husband is nothing more than a phantom operation, fueling suspicions of fraud amid scrutiny of her skyrocketing wealth.
Angela Rose, the journalist behind the probe, visited the listed address in Santa Rosa, California, only to discover glaring discrepancies that point to a shell company setup.
“I visited the principal address of ESTCRU winery. This winery is co owned by US Rep of Minnesota Ilhan Omar’s husband, Timothy Mynett, yet seems to allegedly be a shell business used to launder funds,” Rose stated in her report.
She detailed the revenue surge: “In 2024 they made about $15,000 and in 2025 it exploded to up to $5 million dollars… yet they weren’t producing any wine.”
Rose highlighted the lack of legitimacy: “No business license exists for ESTRCRU (Ilhan Omar’s Winery) at this address. The other wineries here are properly licensed.”
The address, 1160 Hopper Ave Apt B in Santa Rosa, houses over 40 wineries, but the location owner confirmed ESTCRU isn’t among them. Public records show it’s tied to a foreign processing center with no actual business license for ESTCRU.
This bombshell comes as Omar’s finances face intense federal scrutiny. Her 2024 financial disclosure reported assets between $6 million and $30 million, a massive leap from the $40,000 to $250,000 in 2023. The bulk ties to her husband’s winery and a venture capital firm.
The Justice Department launched an investigation into Omar’s finances, campaign spending, and foreign interactions in June 2024 under the Biden administration. Though it reportedly stalled due to lack of evidence, President Trump has revived the push, vowing to expose any impropriety.
Trump highlighted the probe, noting Omar arrived from Somalia with little and now boasts family wealth up to $30 million, amid broader Minnesota fraud inquiries.
?BOMBSHELL: Ilhan Omar is DONE! The rats are scattering and most of them are BEGGING reporters to hear their stories!
Whistleblowers now confirm her campaign funneled a massive amount of money to her husband’s firm while Somali-linked networks in Minneapolis ran one of the… pic.twitter.com/KHCZAMr3XD
Last week Omar was accused of staging an “attack” at a town hall, where she was sprayed with apple cider vinegar by a man acting strangely, in order to divert attention from her wealth investigations.
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.
Senate Bill Would Ensure Data Centers Do Not Pass Energy Costs Onto Consumers
Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) is circulating a bill to require data centers to bring their own power when constructing these new power-hungry facilities, Axios reports this morning.
We’ve detailed the growing resistance to the construction of new data centers for months now as several studies have demonstrated electricity prices spiking around new data center facilities, as they usually consume significantly more power than the grids they’re connected to can offer.
To prevent skyrocketing electric bills, every state has to follow the Texas example: each data center must have its own “behind the meter” onsite power generation.
One of the most frequently identified solutions is requiring new data centers and other large power loads to construct their facilities alongside new power generation facilities, i.e. “behind-the-meter.”. This could prevent and even reverse much of the rate increases that have been plaguing households across the US.
It’s a simple supply and demand issue. A new power consumer shows up and immediately starts draining hundreds of megawatt of power while the new power generation being developed by the utility servicing the connected grid takes several years to add new generation capacity. The pitch circulated by lawmakers is to require new data centers to show up with their own power and hand, therefore preventing the pass on of costs to household rate payers.
There’s a slew of ways to go about powering a multi-megawatt or gigawatt scale data center. The method most frequently referenced for reducing rate payer burden is behind-the-meter arrangements. This means the power generator is directly connected to the facility through on-site transmission structures without interacting with the grid in any way.
Alternatively, facilities could opt for the front-of-the-meter arrangement where they still bring their own power, but transmit the power through the local grid, even if they are located physically near each other. This arrangement supports the grid while still minimizing cost to the rate payer because of the addition of overall capacity. Connecting to the grid and utilizing existing transmission lines and transformers could minimize time to initial operation, as well as require grid infrastructure upgrades. Requiring the new data center to finance the grid upgrades would reduce consumer costs as well.
The bill being pushed by Sen Hawley is calling for behind-the-meter arrangements, but the legislation could change as it passes through everyone’s hands. Most grid advocates have called for front-of-the-meter arrangements to maximize household consumer benefit.
Your brain treats what it sees in Instagram reels the same way it treats cocaine. Both experiences flood a thumbnail-sized region of the brain with dopamine—a chemical that makes you want more, right now. The problem is that after a certain amount of dopamine hits, your brain adapts by turning down the pleasure volume. As a result, things that once made you feel good are no longer enough.
If you’re finding it harder to feel simple joy and genuine connections, you’re experiencing what addiction psychiatrists now recognize as dopamine overload, a state where constant stimulation—especially from cellphones, social media, and ultra-processed foods—quietly erodes your ability to feel your happiest emotions and leaves relationships feeling painfully empty. However, there is hope—through learning to rebalance our reward systems, we can rediscover contentment in simple things.
The Dopamine Hijack
Dopamine is a brain chemical messenger that helps drive motivation, heightens anticipation, and reinforces the experiences your brain labels as rewarding. In healthy balance, it nudges us toward naturally meaningful activities—such as working toward goals, sharing meals, spending time with friends—that have long supported survival and human connection.
However, modern life delivers dopamine in doses and speeds the human brain is not equipped to handle.
“Things that are addictive release a whole lot of dopamine all at once in a part of the brain called the nucleus accumbens,” Addiction psychiatrist and author Dr. Anna Lembke, a leading voice on how modern habits hijack the brain’s reward circuitry, told The Epoch Times. “The more dopamine that is released there, and the faster it is released, the more likely we see addictive behavior.”
With long-term exposure to highly addictive substances and behaviors, Lembke said, the brain undergoes neuroadaptation. “It starts to downregulate dopamine receptors to bring levels back to baseline, and people actually end up in a dopamine deficit state—below normal levels of dopamine firing.” In other words, the brain turns down its sensitivity to dopamine, leaving people feeling flat unless they keep chasing stronger stimulation.
Over time, this process fundamentally shifts what it takes to feel normal.
“We change our hedonic set point. We need more of the substance, in more potent forms, just to bring dopamine levels back up to baseline,” Lembke said. Sugar and short‑form videos strongly stimulate the same dopamine‑based reward pathways targeted by drugs and alcohol, which can lead the brain to treat them as if they were vital rewards.
To adapt to all the dopamine, the brain may settle into a dopamine deficit state, which can feel like clinical depression, anxiety, or emotional numbness.
When Everything Feels Numb
As dopamine overload persists, many people describe a kind of emotional numbness: feeling flat, struggling to enjoy life, and growing distant from loved ones.
“You can have this numbing or narrowing phenomenon where nothing brings joy anymore,” Lembke said. “People feel flat, anxious, or disconnected, and it can look a lot like depression.”
The difference is that clinical depression often responds to medication and therapy. Dopamine overload requires something simpler, though not easier: you have to stop the activity that creates it.
Growing evidence links heavy digital use to mental health symptoms, including anxiety, depression, loneliness, and altered decision‑making. Lembke pointed to experiments in which people either quit social media for three to four weeks or cut back to about 30 to 60 minutes a day, which resulted in reported improvements in anxiety, depression, and loneliness.
Lembke offered a practical diagnostic test: “If you’re not sure you’re addicted to something, just try stopping it for 30 days. The level of difficulty you have doing that can tell you a lot about the nature of your attachment.”
The 30-Day Reset
The good news is that the brain’s reward system is not fixed. It is adaptable and can relearn to find satisfaction in real, offline experiences. A long enough break from high‑dopamine habits, Lembke said, gives the brain space to switch its reward system back on and start producing feel‑good chemistry again.
“When people stop an addictive behavior, their dopamine levels do not crash forever—they tend to feel worse at first, then gradually better,” Lembke said, noting that most people begin to emerge from acute withdrawal after about 10 to 14 days as cravings ease. By weeks three and four, many report feeling better than they have in months or even years.
For many, a 30‑day abstinence trial—or “dopamine detox”—is a realistic window to start resetting reward pathways and feeling the benefits, she said. In practical terms, that often means roughly two tough weeks, a couple of weeks of gradual relief, and about a month to sense a genuine reset.
Experts have found that the goal of a dopamine detox is not to eliminate dopamine—which would be impossible and unhealthy—but to reduce overstimulating habits so the brain can rebalance and you can enjoy slower, more meaningful rewards again.
To make a detox doable in everyday life, Lembke focuses on self‑binding—setting up guardrails that make it harder to slide back into the habit.
Create Physical Barriers: Don’t rely on willpower. Delete apps and unsubscribe from feeds. Clear alcohol, drugs, junk foods, and trigger foods out of your house.
Choose Low‑Dopamine Substitutes: Swap mindless scrolling or snacking for reading, walking, hobbies, or time in nature that offer calmer, more lasting rewards.
Set Firm Boundaries: Build device‑free blocks into your day, keep phones out of the bedroom, and avoid constant multitasking that chases tiny hits of stimulation.
Build Basic Routines: Regular movement and sleep, and nourishing food help steady both dopamine and stress systems.
Watch for the Binge Cycle: Notice any “all or nothing” streaks—days of restraint followed by blowouts—that tend to spike dopamine and crash mood.
Do Hard Things in Small Doses: Cold showers, morning exercise, cleaning out a messy closet, meditation, are activities that require effort up front but leave you feeling better afterward. They teach your brain to generate its own satisfaction instead of depending on quick hits.
Track the Evidence: Track sleep, mood, and focus for a few weeks as you cut back; small changes are often a sign your reward system is resetting.
Rediscover Natural Rewards
Once you start lowering quick dopamine spikes, it becomes essential to lean into natural sources of pleasure—the kinds of activities that have long supported human well‑being.
Exercise: Regular movement can lift mood and support healthy dopamine, serotonin, and endorphin signaling in a steady, sustainable way. A 20-minute walk does more for your brain than an hour of scrolling.
Social Connection: Deep conversations, laughter, and physical affection engage reward and bonding systems that help protect against stress and isolation. Face-to-face always beats FaceTime.
Mindfulness and Meditation: These practices can calm the stress response and gradually restore motivation for simple, everyday joys.
Creative Engagement: Making or enjoying art activates reward pathways without the same risk of desensitization seen with high‑intensity digital rewards.
Meaningful Challenge: Working toward meaningful goals gives real dopamine hits linked to effort and progress, not just novelty.
[ZH: Men, stop jerking off so much]: So we hear…
Scientific reviews and clinical programs highlight that turning toward natural rewards, rather than engineered instant ones, is how the human brain is built to thrive.
It may be time to get professional help if cutting back makes you very anxious, low, or causes withdrawal‑like symptoms that make normal life harder. You should also talk to a clinician before any dopamine detox if you have serious mental health symptoms such as suicidal thoughts, psychosis, or very bad depression or anxiety; a history of addiction or substance problems; or take medicines that affect dopamine, such as antidepressants, stimulants, Parkinson’s drugs, or antipsychotics.
Build Lasting Contentment and Hope
Lasting contentment rarely comes from a one‑time “detox.” It grows from small, steady changes, ideally with support from others.
Staying connected to encouraging friends, family, or groups makes it easier to keep healthier habits and to recover from relapses. Simple routines such as swapping one high‑dopamine habit at a time, checking in daily on triggers and small wins, and giving yourself credit for each step forward help progress stick.
If emotional numbness or compulsive cycles continue, seek help from a mental health professional who can guide you toward feeling stable and engaged with everyday life again. For anyone feeling overwhelmed or out of control, take heart—with support and steady effort, many people rebuild their lives and rediscover real pleasure in simple, everyday moments.
