US Lawmakers Push $2.5B Plan To Break China’s Grip On Critical Minerals
A bipartisan group of lawmakers has proposed creating a new $2.5 billion agency to accelerate U.S. production of rare earths and other critical minerals, according to AP and MSN.
The effort comes as the Trump administration has already taken aggressive steps to weaken China’s control over materials vital to high-tech products, electric vehicles, and advanced weapons systems.
While it remains unclear how the legislation would align with White House policy, pressure is growing to cut U.S. dependence on China after Beijing used its dominance in the critical minerals market during the trade war. Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping agreed last October to a one-year truce under which China would continue exports while the U.S. eased some technology restrictions.
The Pentagon has spent nearly $5 billion over the past year to secure access to these materials, highlighting how reliant the U.S. remains on China, which processes more than 90% of the world’s critical minerals. To counter that dominance, Washington has begun taking equity stakes in mining companies and, in some cases, guaranteeing prices—an approach more commonly associated with China’s industrial policy.
The Senate bill, introduced by Sens. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and Todd Young of Indiana, would establish an independent agency to build mineral stockpiles, stabilize prices, and encourage production in the U.S. and allied countries to support both national defense and the broader economy.
Shaheen called the legislation “a historic investment” to strengthen the U.S. economy against China’s leverage, while Young said the proposal is “a much-needed, aggressive step to protect our national and economic security.” Rep. Rob Wittman of Virginia introduced a companion bill in the House.
The AP report says that the urgency escalated after China imposed export restrictions last spring in response to U.S. tariffs, forcing Washington to seek a truce. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the Pentagon has recently “deployed over $4.5 billion in capital commitments” to close deals that will “help free the United States from market manipulation.”
Those efforts include investments in domestic alumina, gallium, and rare earth production, as well as partnerships to strengthen the supply chain for rare earth magnets. Trump reinforced the strategy this week, declaring the U.S. is “too reliant” on foreign critical minerals and ordering negotiations for stronger supply terms.
“Reshoring manufacturing that’s critical to our national and economic security is a top priority for the Trump administration,” a White House spokesperson said.
Some analysts view the strategy as a shift toward state-backed industrial policy. “Despite the dangers of political interference, the strategic logic is compelling,” wrote Elly Rostoum, adding that it could be “a prudent way for the U.S. to ensure strategic autonomy and industrial sovereignty.”
Industry leaders have largely welcomed the approach. “He is playing three-dimensional chess on critical minerals like no previous president has done. It’s about time too, given the military and strategic vulnerability we face,” said Jim Sims of NioCorp.
Alongside domestic investment, the administration is also working with allies, including major mining agreements with Australia and coordinated discussions among G7 finance ministers on supply chain resilience.
Despite sparking global news coverage documenting violence, sexual assaults, and drug-related crimes in the shared living integration project “Stek Oost,” the city of Amsterdam refuses to shut the project down.
According to public broadcaster BNNVARA, the municipality has rejected calls to shutter the facility early and plans to run the project until its scheduled end in April 2028.
The project, which launched in 2018, was the subject of a recent NPO 2 report where residents detailed an environment of frequent violence. Records indicate that the housing association responsible for the site, Stadgenoot, had requested an intervention plan from police and city officials as early as 2019 to address sexual abuse.
The news report highlighted serious cases and interviewed the victims in some instances, which has been translated by Remix News.
A Syrian resident was linked to a rape in 2019, but the case was initially closed due to insufficient evidence. However, the individual remained at the dormitory until March 2022, when a second sexual offense led to his expulsion and a subsequent prison sentence.
The former resident said that a Syrian raped her after she went to his room to watch a film and he would not let her leave.
He then raped her.
The woman, Amanda, said: “He wanted to learn Dutch, to get an education. I wanted to help him.”
In addition, students living in the shared spaces reported being threatened with kitchen knives. One student described a 20-centimeter-long blade.
Stadgenoot reportedly considered pulling out of the project in 2023 after its own employees faced threats.
“Stek Oost” was designed to foster social cohesion by housing asylum seekers and Dutch students together.
Initially, the 250 apartments were split in half between the two groups, so 125 places for each group. However, the ratio of asylum seekers was later reduced to 30 percent.
A “buddy system” was implemented to connect the groups and promote integration.
Despite the controversies, the City of Amsterdam has blocked attempts to close the project. District President Carolien de Heer (PvdA) defended the decision to the broadcaster, stating that “250 people could not be put on the streets at once.”
However, what he does not note is that the refugees could simply be removed to another facility, which would not total 250 people.
The project has long been a source of political friction. In 2022, Green Mayor Femke Halsema acknowledged she was aware of the ongoing problems. By 2024, parties including the VVD and JA21 called for the project’s termination.
A scheduled debate on the facility was recently removed from the Municipal Council’s agenda, despite a request for discussion from Anton van Schijndel of the nationalist FvD party (Forum for Democracy).
Now, there are potential political implications to closing the project early, which could be seen as a failure of integration, even when forced and facilitated by the state in a controlled environment.
Tesla Cuts Berlin Gigafactory Workforce By 1,700 Employees
Tesla’s workforce at its Gigafactory near Berlin has fallen by about 1,700 employees, according to a report by Germany’s Handelsblatt.
An internal document cited by the paper shows the Gruenheide site—Tesla’s only European production hub—now employs 10,703 people, a decline of roughly 14% from staffing levels disclosed ahead of works council elections in 2024. The company did not immediately comment, according to Handelsblatt.
The reduction follows CEO Elon Musk’s April 2024 announcement that Tesla would cut more than 10% of its global workforce to curb costs and boost productivity.
The move also fits a broader pattern in early 2026, as manufacturers and technology firms continue to streamline operations amid slower demand growth, tighter financing conditions, and a push to protect margins after several years of aggressive expansion.
In 2025, Tesla spent much of the year shifting from rapid expansion to consolidation. Management emphasized cost control, factory efficiency, and cash preservation as aggressive price cuts and softer demand compressed automotive margins.
Even as its traditional auto operations lost momentum, Tesla’s stock has been relatively resilient. Investors have increasingly focused on the company’s longer-term ambitions in robotaxi services, autonomous driving software, and artificial intelligence, viewing these as potential high-margin growth engines.
That optimism has helped support the share price despite slowing vehicle sales and a wider backdrop of job cuts across manufacturing and technology in 2026, as companies adjust to weaker growth and higher financing costs.
Pakistan’s reported indirect arming of Ukraine through Poland might expand into direct military cooperation between them that could then also elicit concern from Russia…
Top Indian diplomat Dr. Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said during a press conference with his Polish counterpart Radek Sikorski that he wants to discuss the latter’s “recent travels to the region” in an allusion to his trip to Pakistan last fall after spring’s Indo-Pak clashes.
He also said that “Poland should display zero tolerance for terrorism and not help fuel the terrorist infrastructure in our neighbourhood.”
India has good reason to be concerned about Poland’s close ties with Pakistan, not just due to Sikorski’s suspicious behavior during the aforesaid interview which hinted at a seemingly inexplicable fear of offending that country, but because of reports that Poland aids Pakistan’s indirect arming of Ukraine.
Although the Russian Ambassador to Pakistan dismissed them as lacking evidence, perhaps in order to not derail their big-ticket energy and infrastructure talks, it’s likely that India believes them.
After all, it wasn’t only Indian media that reported on Pakistan’s indirect arming of Ukraine, but also French media and The Intercept.
Pakistan also has a sizeable defense industry and is a “Major Non-NATO Ally” so this alleged deal is reasonable.
Lending credence to this claim was Pakistani Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar declaring after last fall’s talks with Sikorski that “We agreed to expand bilateral cooperation in trade, energy, infrastructure, defence, counter-terrorism, science and technology and education.”
Their defense cooperation might eventually expand beyond Pakistan indirectly arming Ukraine to it directly arming Poland given the latter’s unprecedented military buildup that’s sold to the public on the pretext of defending against Russia.
The lion’s share of its military-technical equipment comes from the US and South Korea due to how embarrassingly underdeveloped its domestic military-industrial complex is, but it would make sense for Poland to pragmatically diversify suppliers by exploring related options with Pakistan.
This is especially so if they’ve already been cooperating on indirectly arming Ukraine and Pakistan took the opportunity to market its other military-technical equipment to Poland. Any such deal would bother Russia and India.
Russia would dislike Pakistan arming Poland amidst their talks on big-ticket deals, which arguably require the US’ approval that Trump might not provide in order for US companies to take advantage of these opportunities instead, while India would object to Poland financing its rival through weapons deals.
Pakistan and Poland are also nowadays the US’ top partners in their home regions so each might lobby their shared US patron in support of the other’s interests as a goodwill gesture for bolstering their ties.
It’s therefore not just India which has good reason to be concerned about Poland’s close ties with Pakistan but also Russia, whose associated concerns could be exacerbated if India shares any intelligence with Russia that it might have obtained about their planned defense cooperation.
In that scenario, Russia would still be unlikely to end its energy and infrastructure talks with Pakistan since that’s not its diplomatic style, but it might become reluctant to further expand bilateral ties in other spheres.
On the campaign trail, President Donald Trump promised to end federal spending on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs. Yet the government has continued to award contracts based on race and sex. Despite rampant fraud and multiple court rulings against the practice, the Small Business Administration (SBA) has used “disadvantage” essays from business owners to skirt the rules and continue discriminatory programs that dole out billions in government contracts.
For decades, the federal government has awarded certain special contracts exclusively to so-called disadvantaged businesses and women-owned small businesses. Until 2023, SBA presumed that racial minorities were “disadvantaged.” The resulting discrimination was absolute: according to an analysis conducted between 2020 and 2023, these programs made not a single award to white men.
Though the second Trump administration has taken steps to limit these contracts, the largest disadvantaged-business initiative—the SBA’s 8(a) program—is thriving. The program “is still one of the most lucrative and sought after” SBA certificates, one contracting lawyer said in November. In fact, fiscal year 2025 saw the largest 8(a) spending on record, totaling $26 billion.
President Trump signed an executive order forbidding federal DEI discrimination, and a federal district court struck down the SBA’s presumption that minorities are disadvantaged. How, then, has 8(a) survived?
Much as colleges have used personal essays to evade affirmative-action bans, the Small Business Administration has asked companies to submit “social disadvantage narratives” to qualify for the 8(a) program. These allow business owners to establish minority status through descriptions of racial taunts or alleged discrimination. Applicants might not check a racial box, but the implication is clear: no white men need apply.
The SBA’s “Guide for Demonstrating Social Disadvantage” reveals how the shell game works. The guide teaches applicants how to play the system, featuring examples of potential “disadvantage.” It gives minorities and women the magic words: “I believe my application [for a bank loan] was denied due to bias toward my race” and “I believe my request [to declare a business major] was denied based on sex bias.” Once the agency approves the application, the contracts can start flowing—no real evidence required.
Are these applicants always disadvantaged? No. Consider Earl Stafford Jr., a black contractor who wrote an essay to apply for the 8(a) program. The Washington Business Journalreported on Stafford’s “painstaking” ordeal of writing the essay, in which he described unspecified acts of discrimination that made him think that he did not have “what it took to be in business.” Yet his father, Earl Stafford Sr., founded a successful defense firm and started his own private foundation—hardly the background of a disadvantaged person.
As with any racialized initiative, the 8(a) program is ripe for fraud. White business owners can find a minority front man or a woman to head a nominally disadvantaged or woman-owned firm, which the white man continues to run behind the scenes. Another option is for minority-owned firms to receive the government contract but act as “pass through,” taking a cut off the top and paying another firm to do the contracted work. The Supreme Court ruled last year against a “disadvantaged” company that provided none of the required paint for a Philadelphia bridge and train station and passed the work to other firms.
Out-and-out dishonesty is also common. In 2023, Margarita Howard and her companies HX5 and HX5 Sierra were forced to pay the government almost $8 million for lying about Howard’s assets in order to participate in 8(a). At the time she claimed to be disadvantaged, Howard was living in a 14,000-square-foot waterside Florida mansion featured on HGTV’s Extreme Homes, the complaint against her alleges. Howard is still the CEO of HX5 (a “woman-owned small business”) and applies for federal money. The Trump administration awarded her company millions last year.
Other aspiring federal contractors have pretended to be Native American or embezzled funds intended for Natives. ProPublica recently highlighted the case of Charles Dawson, a contractor whose companies won hundreds of millions of dollars on a promise to use his profits to help “Native Hawaiians.” He funneled some of the money into private jets, Porsches, and polo. Even after a federal raid on Dawson’s house, the companies continued to win federal support.
Everyone within the system knows such fraud is rampant. A 2018 government audit reviewed 25 8(a) recipient firms which together received more than $100 million. Of these, 20 “should have been removed from the . . . program” due to ineligibility.
The Trump administration has taken important steps to address these problems. Late Friday, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced he was ordering a “line by line” investigation of 8(a) contracts. President Biden’s SBA sought to award 15 percent of all federal contracts to disadvantaged firms. Trump SBA administrator Kelly Loeffler has reduced the goal to the law’s actual standard of 5 percent. Her administration has also demanded financial records from 8(a) businesses to weed out fraud.
But the core problem with these programs is not fraud. It is that they systematically discriminate against one group: white men.
Instead of trying to reform 8(a), the Trump administration should abolish it. Under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, the administration would be within its rights to stop all contracting based on race and sex, even if such contracting were justified under the fig leaf of a “disadvantage” essay. The White House could also support Senator Joni Ernst’s “Stop 8(a) Contracting Fraud Act,” which would pause 8(a) contracting until a thorough audit is completed, or call on Congress to end the program altogether.
When the administration says, “no DEI,” it should mean it. In federal contracting, that’s also what the Constitution requires.
NIH Lab Studying Deadly Pathogens Reported Biological Incident In November: Federal Records
The White Coat Waste Project – which you may remember for exposing Dr. Anthony Fauci’s sick experiments on beagles in 2024 – has obtained a document revealing that the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) Rocky Mountain Laboratories (RML) in Hamilton, Montana reported a biological incident in November 2025.
RML, which operates BSL-2, BSL-3, and BSL-4 ‘full suit’ laboratories notably studies viral hemorrhagic fevers such as Ebola, Marburg and Lassa virus, as well as coronaviruses, dangerous bacteria, tuberculosis, tick-borne pathogens (Rocky Mountain spotted fever, for example), West Nile virus, Prion diseases, and others.
According to a November 2025 biosafety report obtained by WCWP, a ‘Form 3’ was reported to the Federal Select Agent Program on Nov. 13, 2025. Form 3 is a mandatory notification form used to alert the Federal Select Agent Program of any ‘theft, loss, or release’ involving select agents or toxins, Infowars’ Breanna Morello reports after interviewing WCWP’s Justin Goodman – who called Rocky Mountain Laboratories ‘one of the most dangerous biolabs in the country.‘
Morello: “You’ve recently obtained these documents over at the White Coat Waste Project, which detail specifically the threat that a bio agent, which apparently is classified as potentially posing a severe threat to public health, has been either stolen, lost, or released. What are some of the details behind this concerning story?”
Goodman: “Now, we recently—last week—exposed how Jay Bhattacharya, NIH director, just gave another $2 million to a bat lab being built at Colorado State University to provide animals for infection studies. Both the Colorado State and, as you mentioned, the Rocky Mountain Lab… Now, the Rocky Mountain Laboratory in Montana is run by Fauci’s former NIH division, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
“It is very infamous. The Rocky Mountain Lab is where ticks were weaponized with NIH and DOD to spread Lyme and other diseases back to the 1960s and ’70s. More recently, White Coat Waste exposed how—a couple years prior to the pandemic—the Rocky Mountain Laboratory was cloning coronaviruses that Peter Daszak and the Wuhan lab were finding out in bat caves in Wuhan. They were cloning those viruses at Rocky Mountain Laboratory.”
“These are the same viruses that the Wuhan Lab was doing gain-of-function with, putting spike proteins around at around the same time. The Rocky Mountain Lab has a very sordid history doing the most dangerous experiments in this country—Ebola, plague, anthrax, lots of different hemorrhagic fevers that have no cure and 90-95% kill rates in people. So we’ve been following the money to the Rocky Mountain Lab because this new Colorado State bat lab is going to be supplying bats to these facilities.
“Now, what we just uncovered is that in November 2025—just a couple months ago—quietly, NIH posted a biosafety test to see if there’s any from Rocky Mountain Lab, indicating that a select agent… Now, select agents are very deadly pathogens—serious health concerns for both humans and livestock. These are things used as bioweapons, things like ricin, anthrax, Ebola, tularemia. The Rocky Mountain Lab report just has a very benign item—if you didn’t know what we were looking for—one of these pathogens was either accidentally released, lost, or stolen from this NIH-funded bioagent lab that participates in dangerous animal experiments with the military.
“So we don’t know exactly what that agent was and what happened, but we do know there’s a serious biosafety breach at one of the most dangerous biolabs in the country, run by the NIH. And we only know about this because we stumbled upon this document when we were digging into what’s currently happening at the Rocky Mountain Lab because of its tie to this very controversial bat lab project at Colorado State, which has gone viral—pun intended—over the last couple weeks.”
Let’s start with the obvious. The Venezuela operation is a win for America and the Venezuelan people. American consumers and businesses will benefit from lower prices while oil companies have a chance for bigger profits.
Venezuelans will benefit from increased investment, jobs, and profits in their country as well. This is why their stock market jumped 50, 60, 70, 80 percent after the U.S. takeover.
And if we recall that economic security is national security, then the new order in South America also simultaneously supports U.S. national security while undermining our greatest rival, China. In war, dependable access to oil is as important as dependable access to kinetic arms.
Access to ample, reliable flows of oil represents a key strategic interest. Removing one such flow from the Chinese sphere of influence and bringing it into our own is tremendous progress toward this goal. But the biggest loser of all isn’t China or Russia, it’s Canada.
Western Canada sends over four million barrels a day of heavy crude to American refiners that are equipped to handle this type of oil. But now, with access to the massive flows of Venezuelan crude, which is similar to the Canadian flavor, the United States no longer needs to rely on Canada to keep the refineries on the Gulf of America running at full capacity.
Instead, the oil shipments that previously went to China are already being redirected to American refiners—tens of millions of barrels worth just days after Maduro’s capture. And while the United States is paying full market price for that oil, don’t be surprised if oil prices start coming down because of this redirection.
After all, increasing supply puts downward pressure on prices. As American investment rebuilds Venezuela’s severely neglected oil infrastructure, we can expect production and exports to the United States to only increase, simultaneously benefiting the American and Venezuelan people.
That’s why this is such a massive economic win for American families and businesses who will benefit from lower prices, courtesy of more energy supplies. And since energy affects the price of everything else in an economy, lower prices for products like gasoline will put downward pressure on countless other prices, providing relief after four years of inflation under the Biden administration.
Consider when you go to a grocery store how much of the price of food you’re buying is dependent on energy prices. First off, farmers and ranchers are fueling their tractors and other vehicles with diesel and gas. They’re also using synthetic fertilizers created with natural gas.
But how did the gallon of milk, the carton of eggs, or the bag of bread get to grocery store in the first place? It got there on a trunk. Fueled by oil. What I’m getting at here is that we seriously underestimate just how much the price of energy affects everything we do and everything we buy.
Bring down energy prices, and you put downward pressure on prices throughout the economy. That’s a win for American consumers and businesses alike.
And U.S. control of Venezuela is also a second chance for jilted American oil companies to again profit from nearly one-fifth of the world’s proven oil reserves.
Years ago, those American companies poured investment into Venezuela to essentially modernize the entire industry there. For their troubles, these oil firms had their physical property confiscated and their intellectual property copied as the communists “nationalized” Venezuelan oil.
Of course, communist rule there was a disaster, as it has been everywhere, and the oil industry languished as infrastructure decayed, investment lagged, and production fell well below its potential. Venezuela pumps much less oil today than they did a quarter century ago. But this is poised to reverse.
Venezuela will now assuredly receive billions of dollars of investment from American oil companies, many of whom are champing at the bit to regain access to the largest reserves in the world. That will mean a windfall of jobs and income for the Venezuelan people, all of which could have been Canada’s, bringing us back to the story of the biggest economic loser here.
It didn’t have to be this way for the fifty-first state. But instead of welcoming oil and gas investment from the United States and building valuable infrastructure like pipelines, Canada has preferred to prioritize far-Left causes and an anti-energy agenda.
After recent events, not only is Canada losing its biggest crude customer, but it’s also losing its only real leverage in trade talks with the United States. This is an economic reality that few professional pundits seem to have grasped.
To be clear, the flood of cheap Venezuelan crude will not arrive in the United States overnight. It will take time, years in fact, to rebuild Venezuela’s oil infrastructure and really ramp up production to replace most Canadian crude imports. But the writing is on the wall.
The United States, for a change, is firmly in the driver’s seat and master of its own destiny—and hemisphere.
The economic story here also goes well beyond oil too, although that’s what has gotten most of the attention. Venezuela is a veritable goldmine of other natural resources like rare earth minerals, lumber, bauxite (the primary source of aluminum), natural gas, and more. Canada just lost not only its leverage with oil, but just about every other one of its exports too.
Since the Canadian economy is much more dependent on exports than the U.S. economy is, and since nearly all Canadian exports come to the United States while relative few of ours go to Canada, the slowdown in trade between our two countries has very unequal effects.
In short, this has been very harmful to Canada and will be devastating in the long run. But it’s little more than a speedbump here in America.
President Donald Trump has effectively barred the door on Canada, and the latter will have few alternatives to completely opening every one of its markets to free and fair competition.
Of course, Canada can always choose to fall further into irrelevance and economic impoverishment by stubbornly continuing to snub American manufacturers, farmers, and workers.
Let me close by saying that if the Monroe Doctrine warned Europeans to stay out of the Western Hemisphere and the Roosevelt corollary established American intervention therein, then the Trump corollary has put a finer, and more economic, point on the matter that’s best summed up in two words: America first.
Opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the opinions of ZeroHedge.
Iran Vows Prolonged All-Out War If Attacked As Trump Still Seeks ‘Options’
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi penned an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday warning the United States that Tehran will be “firing back with everything we have if we come under renewed attack” – following President Trump reiterating threats against the Islamic Republic.
“Our powerful armed forces have no qualms about firing back with everything we have if we come under renewed attack,” he wrote in reference to the 12-day war of last June.
The top Iranian diplomat stated that this was not a “threat” but a “reality I feel I need to convey explicitly, because as a diplomat and a veteran, I abhor war.”
Araghchi said his country is ready for all-out war, describing that “an all-out confrontation will certainly be ferocious and drag on far, far longer than the fantasy timelines that Israel and its proxies are trying to peddle to the White House. It will certainly engulf the wider region and have an impact on ordinary people around the globe.”
What’s more is he described the most violent part of protests in Iran, which were met with vehement denunciations and warnings by Trump, in reality the result of an anti-Tehran conspiracy and effort by externally supported groups to sow chaos, destabilization, and to begin an insurgency:
As black-clad groups of masked terrorists used rifles and handguns to infiltrate protests and mow down innocent demonstrators on our streets, reports emerged in various media claiming that big cities in Iran had “fallen.” Other reports alleged the continuation of widespread armed violence. In reality, the violent phase of the unrest lasted less than 72 hours.
By many accounts, the ballistic and even hypersonic missiles which fell on Israel last June did significant damage, and put fear into Israeli leadership given just how many among the hundreds of projectiles sent, including drones, were able to evade Israel’s anti-air defenses.
Iran’s foreign ministry is issuing such forceful warnings given the crisis between Tehran and Washington doesn’t appear fully over, at a moment a US carrier group and additional military assets are headed to the Middle East region. WSJ notes that ‘options’ are still being weighed by the administration:
After pulling back from strikes on Iran last week, President Trump is still pressing aides for what he terms “decisive” military options, U.S. officials said, as Iran appears to have tightened its control of the country and targets protesters through a crackdown that has killed thousands.
Meanwhile the WSJ, along with others among the mainstream media, is questioning where Trump the hawk is and why he’s exercised restrained on the Iran question – in the typical fashion of the warmongering media. WSJ’s editorial board wrote:
Araghchi’s not-so-implicit threat of war if President Trump orders help for the protesters… This is a threat against Americans, an attempt to intimidate the Trump Administration. We wonder how President Trump sees this threat, especially since the regime so clearly crossed his “red line” against shooting protesters.
Regardless, the American public won’t stomach yet another drawn out forever war in the Middle East. Poll after poll shows Bush’s overthrow of Saddam Hussein is among the most deeply unpopular US military actions in history.
The dust has barely settled on 20+ year fruitless and deadly occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan, where the severe limitations of US empire were confirmed (also as the Taliban remains in Kabul, and Shia pro-Iran governance is stronger than ever in Baghdad), and yet already the armchair interventionist chickenhawks in the media are eyeing another regime change war.
WOW. Strategic advisor to Iran’s Parliament Speaker, Mahdi Mohammadi:
“We know that we are facing a regime-change war in which the only way to achieve victory is to make credible the threat that, during the 12-day war, although it was ready, did not get the opportunity to be…
Probably (or rather, hopefully) Trump senses this, and is seeking de-escalation, also perhaps knowing there will be other future Iran protests and ‘opportunities’ to pull the trigger against Tehran. But it won’t be some kind of easy in, easy out Venezuela scenario – and American troops might die.
When news broke of the massive child nutrition fraud in Minnesota, many Americans reacted with disbelief. During the pandemic, roughly $250 million intended to feed hungry children was siphoned off, prosecutors say, and spent on luxury cars, real estate, and other indulgences. To most people, it appeared to be a shocking betrayal of public trust.
To me, it felt unsettlingly familiar.
Decades ago, long before Minnesota became synonymous with one of the largest fraud cases in U.S. history, I had an experience in Somalia that permanently altered my perspective on aid, trust, and good intentions. It is why I read the indictments differently, not with surprise so much as recognition.
What struck me most about the Minnesota case was not only the scale of the theft but the silence surrounding it. The fraud appears to have operated in plain sight within tightly knit circles, yet few people spoke out.
More than 40 years ago, when I was a rice farmer in California, American rice growers learned of famine conditions in Somalia. Competitors set aside their rivalry and donated an entire shipload of rice for humanitarian relief. I later traveled to Somalia, expecting to see that food had reached people on the brink of starvation.
It had not.
A powerful clan had taken control of the shipment. Once its own members’ needs were met, the remaining rice did not go to feed other Somalis. Instead, it was used to feed animals, while those outside the clan continued to go hungry.
At the time, I tried to explain what I had seen by blaming corruption, weak oversight, or a few bad actors. None of those explanations captured the deeper pattern. The behavior made sense only when I began to understand how differently trust and obligation were organized.
That realization came rushing back as I read about the Minnesota fraud.
According to federal indictments, the stolen money flowed through networks bound by kinship and loyalty. The theft was large, coordinated, and sustained. What stood out was not only who took the money, but who stayed silent. In societies with strong civic norms, whistleblowing is often praised, or at least protected. In tightly bound clan systems, speaking out can mean punishment.
Over time, I found language for what I had observed: the Prisoner’s Dilemma, a concept from game theory that explains how cooperation and trust either compound or collapse. When two parties cooperate, both benefit and trust grows. When one cheats while the other cooperates, the cheater prospers and the cooperator becomes the loser. When both are defective, everyone loses.
High-trust societies solve this dilemma by extending cooperation beyond family and tribe. Laws, institutions, and norms reinforce the idea that cheating ultimately harms everyone, including oneself. Low-trust societies work differently. Trust is reserved for kin. Outsiders are assumed to cheat. In that environment, cheating is not necessarily immoral. It is often rational, expected, and even applauded.
Seen through this lens, both my experience in Somalia and the Minnesota scandal follow the same pattern. Institutions cooperated in good faith. Clan-based networks exploited that trust. Children and taxpayers paid the price.
Somalia represents the most destructive version of this equilibrium. When trust does not extend beyond blood ties, cooperation cannot scale. Investment dries up. Contracts mean little without enforcement beyond kinship. When everyone expects everyone else to cheat, no one can afford to cooperate.
In that context, Somalia’s ranking of 213th out of 215 countries in per-capita income is not shocking. It is almost inevitable. This is not an indictment of individual Somalis. We know that many, many Somalis live honest, productive lives, raise families, and contribute positively wherever they reside. Individuals can transcend the cultures they are born into. Social systems, however, change slowly and are likely to shape behavior.
Somalia sits at the end of a continuum, but the underlying dynamic is not unique to it. Whenever loyalty to the group eclipses loyalty to shared rules, corruption flourishes. The Minnesota scandal was not an aberration so much as a warning: When institutions assume trust without enforcing it, low-trust behavior fills the vacuum. Somalia shows what happens when that low-trust approach is entrenched.
Mitzi Perdue is a fellow at the Institute of World Politics and the co-founder of Mental Help Global, a philanthropy that uses AI to support mental health.
Justice Jackson Cites Racist ‘Black Codes’ As Precedent To Justify Gun Control In Hawaii
During oral arguments in Wolford v. Lopez, Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson suggested that the post-Civil War “Black Codes” – a set of openly racist laws enacted in the Democrat-controlled South to strip newly freed Black Americans of basic rights, including the right to possess firearms – could serve as legitimate historical precedent under the Supreme Court’s Bruen test. That test evaluates modern gun laws by asking whether similar restrictions were accepted in the nation’s historical tradition. The case concerns a Hawaii law that bars licensed gun owners from carrying firearms onto privately owned property open to the public. Jackson relying on the Black Codes for constitutional guidance is hilarious, as those laws were explicitly designed to deny civil rights to Black Americans in defiance of emancipation.
The exchange unfolded as Justice Jackson pressed U.S. Principal Deputy Solicitor General Sarah Harris on why post–Civil War Black Codes should be excluded from consideration when courts examine modern-day gun control laws. Hawaii relied on a 1865 Louisiana statute as historical support for its law, a statute even Neal Katyal, the lawyer representing Hawaii, admitted was “undoubtedly a relic of a shameful portion of American history.”
“So, I guess I really don’t understand your response to Justice Gorsuch on the Black Codes,” Jackson began. She explained that, under Bruen, courts are required to look to history and tradition to assess constitutionality. “The fact that the Black Codes were, at some later point, determined themselves to be unconstitutional doesn’t seem to me to be relevant to the assessment that Bruen is asking us to make.”
Harris responded by emphasizing the fundamentally racist purpose of those laws. “Black Codes were unconstitutional from the moment of their inception because they are pretextual laws that are designed to ensure that newly freed slaves are returned to a condition of sharecropping.”
Justice Jackson, a black woman, immediately pushed back. “Okay, let me stop you there. They were not deemed unconstitutional at the time that they were enacted,” she said. “They were part of the history and tradition of the country, and when we have a test now that’s asking us to look at what people were doing back then, I don’t understand why they should be excluded.”
Harris reiterated that point. “Because they are outliers. They are, by definition, unconstitutional. They have always been unconstitutional.”
Jackson bizarrely remained unconvinced. “Found later, afterwards, not at the time,” she said, returning to the Bruen framework. “And if the test says what’s happening at the time tells us what’s constitutional for this purpose, why aren’t they in?”
Harris responded by insisting the laws should be disregarded because they were aberrations and unconstitutional from their inception.
But Jackson rejected that framing. She argued that their unconstitutionality was determined later, not contemporaneously, making it a legitimate precedent. And, according to Jackson, if the test looks to historical practice at the time of enactment, she asked, why should those laws be left out?
Harris attempted to explain how a law could be unconstitutional from inception, while still accounting for historical analysis. Jackson claimed that Harris’s position effectively dismissed history altogether. When Harris denied that implication, Jackson underscored the contradiction by noting that history either matters under Bruen or it does not.
Harris then stressed that historical inquiry remains essential, though not indiscriminate. “We should deeply care about the history,” she said, adding that Bruen requires courts to identify a genuine national tradition by excluding aberrations. She described the Black Codes as precisely that — laws enacted “for the purpose of trying to reduce newly freed slaves back to conditions of servitude,” including measures that criminalized carrying arms on private property. “Those are obvious outliers which should not count under the whole point of Bruen.”
Things I didn’t have on my bingo card today: Justice Jackson defending the racist Black Codes as precedent for what we should consider constitutional. pic.twitter.com/I9yxcMsDrf
Justice Jackson has never distinguished herself on the bench for her bright legal mind, but it was frankly remarkable to see her treating some of the most overtly racist laws in American history as potentially valid reference points for modern gun control.
