If there is one thing that leftist politicians are proficient at (or at the very least consistent at), it’s the exploitation of tragedies to push forward their agendas.  One of those agendas is the complete disarmament of law abiding citizens so that they no longer have the means to defend themselves against criminals, terrorists or authoritarian governments.  Another agenda is the demonization of conservatives to the point that their mere existence is labeled a “threat to democracy.”  

Without fail, anytime there is a mass shooting event or an assassination leftist officials and the media immediately jump to the accusation that the “right wing” must somehow be involved.  If there’s no evidence of such involvement, they simply lie and accuse conservatives anyway (as we witnessed with the assassination of Charlie Kirk).  

Furthermore, the true culprits and causes are often glossed over or buried if they are inconvenient to the establishment narrative.  For example, multiple mass murder events in Europe involving Islamic terrorists driving cars and trucks into crowds are invariably tossed down the memory hole and rarely spoken of again.  Addressing the cause – mass immigration from third world countries – is admonished as racist or xenophobic. 

Liberals love mass shootings most of all, and the latest shooting at Bondi Beach in Australia is a perfect example.  They have an extensive playbook ready to go in case their is an active shooter event and they follow it like clockwork.  Here’s how they operate…

Hide The Identities Of The Shooters (Unless They Are White, Conservative And Straight)

Liberal officials and left wing media will seek to suppress the identity details of the killers for as long as realistically possible if the culprits are minorities, immigrants, Muslims, LGBT or left wing activists.  

Social media histories are swiftly erased, leaving the public with only tiny crumbs of evidence.  Amateur sleuths are ridiculed when they find the truth, until the truth is officially admitted.  Manifestos are censored and restricted until years later. 

Unless, of course, the culprits are white, straight males, and then all of the information is released like a flood onto the internet.  Media stories will talk about the attack for weeks or months, reiterating the “dangers” of right wing ideology.  In other words, if the killers have the right politics, sexual orientation, religion or skin color, they are protected from mainstream scrutiny. 

In the case of the Bondi Beach shooters, the fact that they are Muslim migrants of Pakistani origin is being incessantly ignored.  Instead, the media initially pumped out hero stories about a Muslim man who tackled one of the shooters while refusing to identify the gunmen.

Blame The Victims If They Are Inconvenient (Ignore The Ideology Of The Killers)

When Charlie Kirk was murdered, the media and leftist politicians quickly blamed none other than Charlie Kirk for his own death.  Their claim was that his “rhetoric incited violence” and they asserted that it was “karmic justice” that a man who defended gun rights was killed by a gun.  They also lied and claimed the shooter was MAGA.  

Their message was clear (and insane):  If you support gun rights, we have the right to shoot you.  This mentality only convinces conservatives that they are correct to keep their guns, for what else is keeping the far-left from killing them all?  The political left sought to bury the actual ideological drive of the prime suspect in the Charlie Kirk murder; a far-leftist who engaged in a homosexual relationship with a transgender partner. 

When trans-shooter Audrey Hale shot up a Christian school, a large number of leftists argued that she was justified because the school was a “symbol of trans genocide”.  Meaning, in their view, the existence of Christians who oppose transgender ideology are all guilty and deserve to die.  Authorities under Joe Biden refused to release Hale’s full manifesto to the public.  

Following a t*rrorist attack targeting jews in Sydney by islamic t*rrorists, the Prime Minister of Australia warns about “right-wing extremism.” pic.twitter.com/rH4qoIKZQu

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) December 15, 2025

In the case of Bondi Beach, political leaders are trying to associate the shooting with “right wing extremism” even though the shooters were both Muslim migrants.  There’s also little doubt that numerous leftists will take to social media to blame the mostly Jewish victims because “Gaza is a thing.”  The victims only matter if they are not currently on the enemies list of the leftist hierarchy.   

Blame The Existence Of Guns (Punish Law Abiding Citizens Whenever Criminals Kill With Firearms)

Australia already has some of the most strict gun laws in the western world.  Only 3.4% of Australians have been able to get the approval for gun licenses necessary to purchase firearms and the types of firearms they are allowed to buy are heavily controlled (the vast majority of firearms in civilian hands are shotguns and bolt action hunting rifles).   

🚨 JUST IN: The Australian Prime Minister is now planning EVEN MORE gun control after the Islamic terror attack in Bondi Beach.

Australia has some of the world’s STRICTEST gun laws.

These politicians don’t seem to grasp the MUSLIMS were the problem in this case; NOT THE GUNS. pic.twitter.com/y5MUwbP5Rg

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) December 15, 2025

Keep in mind that Australia has a population smaller than the state of Texas with 11 times the amount of land.  Most of Australia is a wilderness where firearms are often necessary (though, necessity should not matter to gun rights).  The percentage of legal gun owners who commit gun crimes in Australia is less than 0.01%, yet, the leftist Australian government is already seeking to restrict the rights of good people even further. 

This simply shows that the government is on the side of criminals and not on the side of law abiding people.  The use of mass punishment any time there is a shooting crime indicates an agenda of total disarmament.  Politicians do not care about the murder victims or the true cause, they only want to use the event as a vehicle to further disarm the citizenry.  

Authored by Jacob Burg via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

President Donald Trump said on Dec. 15 that he’s considering an executive order to reclassify marijuana out of Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), a category reserved for drugs deemed to have no medical value and a high potential for abuse.

The president was asked about the plan during a ceremony at the White House on Monday, presenting the Mexican Border Defense Medal, which recognizes service members deployed to the U.S.-Mexico Border.

“We are considering that,” the president said. “Because a lot of people want to see the reclassification, because it leads to tremendous amounts of research that can’t be done unless you reclassify. So we are looking at that very strongly.”

A review process started by President Joe Biden in 2022 could reclassify marijuana as a Schedule III drug, but if finalized, it would not legalize or decriminalize the drug.

Trump told reporters in August that his administration was “looking at reclassification,” but that a determination would not come until later.

“We’re looking at it. Some people like it. Some people hate it. Some people hate the whole concept of marijuana, because if it does bad for the children, it does bad for people that are older than children,” Trump said. “But we’re looking at reclassification, and we’ll make a determination over the next, I would say, over the next few weeks, and that determination, hopefully, will be the right one.”

The president added that marijuana is a “very complicated subject” and that he believes the plant has done great things in the medical field, even if there are “bad things having to do with just about everything else but medical.”

“For pain and various things, I’ve heard some pretty good things, but for other things, I’ve heard some pretty bad things,” Trump said.

Picking Up Where Biden Left Off

If the president proceeds with the executive order, it could mean picking up where his predecessor left off, as it wasn’t clear if the federal government would proceed with reclassifying marijuana as a Schedule III substance after Biden urged the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to review the drug’s status in 2022.

Once the agency completed its review in 2023 and considered recommendations from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), HHS endorsed moving marijuana to Schedule III.

Biden’s Justice Department followed suit in May 2024 and announced it was formally moving to reclassify marijuana out of Schedule I, which requires directing the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to change its classification status.

However, after the Democratic Party lost control of the executive branch in last year’s election, it was uncertain if the Justice Department and DEA would continue the process of moving marijuana into Schedule III with widely used medications, such as anabolic steroids, testosterone, and ketamine.

Schedule I, by contrast, is reserved for drugs with no “currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse,” including LSD, ecstasy or MDMA, and heroin.

Supporters of reclassifying marijuana point out the decades of anecdotal reports of its medical benefits treating ailments like insomnia, anxiety, and pain, but recent research has called into question the plant’s efficacy for treating non-neuropathic pain, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

However, some of the compounds found in the plant—known as cannabinoids—have led to the creation of new FDA-approved drugs, including Epidiolex, made from cannabidiol, or CBD, which treats severe childhood epilepsy.

“These kids have seizures maybe 100 times a day, and this drug can reduce the number of seizures and, in a small percentage, abolish the seizures,” Kent Vrana, director of the Penn State Center for Cannabis and Natural Product Pharmaceuticals, said during a university Q&A in August.

A poll released in March by Fabrizio, Lee, & Associates found that 72 percent of all voters, and 67 percent of Republican voters, support moving marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III.

Legal Implications

Putting marijuana in a different category of the Controlled Substances Act does not legalize or decriminalize the plant, but it can ease red tape on legal markets in states with recreational or medical marijuana laws.

Some banks refuse to do business with companies in the industry because marijuana is still a Schedule I substance at the federal level.

Additionally, marijuana being on Schedule I has made it difficult for universities and organizations to conduct authorized clinical studies that involve giving the drug to participants, sometimes relying on self-reported experiences with the drug that are less empirically rigorous for medical research, according to Vrana.

“I can only get cannabis and cannabinoids from a handful of federally approved sources,” he said in August, adding that it puts the university’s funding at risk.

“It makes it harder for us to conduct clinical trials that would help us better understand the potential benefits—and harms—of cannabis.”

Remember Uranium One? The massive 2010 sale of US uranium deposits to Russia approved by Hillary Clinton and rubber-stamped by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) – after figures linked to the deal donated to the Clinton Foundation?

Turns out rank-and-file FBI investigators thought there was enough smoke to launch a criminal investigation, but internal delays and disagreements within the DOJ and FBI ultimately caused the inquiry to lapse, newly released records reveal. 

The materials, made public by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and first reported by Just the News, reveal that investigators argued internally over the delays – which allowed the statute-of-limitations to expire and ultimately halt the case.

The Uranium One transaction – involving the sale of a Canadian mining company with substantial U.S. uranium assets to Russia’s state-owned nuclear firm Rosatom – became a flashpoint during Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. Critics argued that then-Secretary of State Clinton, a member of CFIUS, helped approve the deal while donors connected to Uranium One made large contributions to the Clinton Foundation.

The New York Times reported in 2015 that “as the Russians gradually assumed control of Uranium One in three separate transactions from 2009 to 2013 … a flow of cash made its way to the Clinton Foundation. Uranium One’s chairman used his family foundation to make four donations totaling $2.35 million. Those contributions were not publicly disclosed by the Clintons, despite an agreement Mrs. Clinton had struck with the Obama White House to publicly identify all donors. Other people with ties to the company made donations as well.”

“And shortly after the Russians announced their intention to acquire a majority stake in Uranium One, Mr. [Bill] Clinton received $500,000 for a Moscow speech from a Russian investment bank with links to the Kremlin that was promoting Uranium One stock,” the Times reported. “At the time, both Rosatom and the United States government made promises intended to ease concerns about ceding control of the company’s assets to the Russians. Those promises have been repeatedly broken, records show.” -Just the News

Resistance from senior officials – including then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates and then-FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe – slowed the inquiry to the point where statute-of-limitations concerns were later cited to justify shutting it down.

Investigators disputed statute-of-limitations claims

Thanks to Grassley we now have a newly declassified FBI investigative timeline surround the deal, as agents in multiple field offices opened inquiries in early 2016 examining the Clinton Foundation’s intersection with the Uranium One deal. The Little Rock field office initiated a full field investigation, while New York and Washington opened preliminary investigations.

Internal records show that agents and prosecutors continued to debate whether the investigation was time-barred. Jonathan Ross, then First Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, argued in a 2018 email that “there is no legal barrier in continuing the present investigation.” Ross has served as U.S. Attorney in Arkansas since 2022.

Then-U.S. Attorney Cody Hiland of Arkansas echoed that view in a separate email to then-U.S. Attorney John Huber of Utah, stating that the team did not believe the case was barred by statute of limitations because payments to the Clinton Foundation “were made continuously from 2007 through 2014.”

The FBI timeline also noted that statute-of-limitations arguments “failed to include whether Acts of Concealment such as deleting emails in 2015” could have extended the filing window. Investigators pointed to possible statutes including the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, major fraud against the United States, bank fraud, and the Wartime Suspension of Statute of Limitations Act.

Despite those arguments, senior DOJ officials expressed growing reluctance to proceed. In late 2016, then-U.S. Attorney Robert Capers and then-Criminal Chief James Gatta raised concerns about potential statute-of-limitations issues and urged moving on from the case.

Internal emails show morale collapse among agents

The records reveal frustration among investigators who believed conflicting legal guidance undermined their authority to continue the probe. Hiland wrote in June 2018 that an email circulated by then-First Assistant U.S. Attorney Patrick Harris, asserting that the statute of limitations expired on Feb. 1, 2018, “cast a permanent pall over the local agents’ attitude” toward the investigation.

Ross later disputed Harris’s conclusion, writing that Harris was unaware of 18 U.S.C. § 3287 when issuing his assessment. Ross warned that agents’ confidence had been damaged and urged additional resources or reassignment of the case to a new investigative team.

The timeline indicates that prosecutors believed additional interviews and investigative steps remained unfinished, including questioning Uranium One executives, foreign nationals, State Department officials involved in the CFIUS vote, and Department of Energy personnel who approved export authorizations after the deal closed.

Political scrutiny and congressional oversight

The Uranium One deal drew sustained attention from Congress. In 2010, Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) warned that the transaction would give Russia control over a sizable share of U.S. uranium production capacity. Grassley repeatedly pressed DOJ officials to examine whether donations to the Clinton Foundation influenced the CFIUS process.

The Hill reported in 2017 that the FBI had gathered evidence as early as 2009 that Russian nuclear officials engaged in bribery, kickbacks, and money laundering connected to U.S. uranium interests. That reporting cited a confidential U.S. witness and financial records tied to the Russian nuclear industry.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions later tasked Huber with reviewing the Uranium One matter in 2017, but did not appoint a special counsel. By early 2020, reports indicated that Huber’s effort was winding down. Special Counsel John Durham later stated that his mandate did not include Uranium One.

Fallout continues amid uranium supply concerns

The release of the FBI records comes as U.S. reliance on Russian-sourced uranium remains a national security concern. Russia accounted for roughly 20% of U.S. enriched uranium supplies in 2024, according to the Energy Information Administration, down from prior years.

Congress banned Russian uranium imports following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, but experts have warned that decades-old policy decisions left the United States vulnerable.

The newly released documents suggest that the circumstances surrounding Uranium One were never fully investigated, leaving unresolved questions about how a strategic U.S. asset came under Russian control – and whether potential criminal conduct went unexamined due to internal delays and legal disputes.

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

The Food and Drug Administration is not adding “black box” warnings to COVID-19 vaccines, even though an agency center recommended it, FDA commissioner Dr. Marty Makary said on Dec. 15

“When it comes to the ‘black box’ warning, we have no plans to put that on the COVID vaccine,” Makary said during an appearance on Bloomberg Television.

Black box warnings are the highest safety-related warnings that FDA officials can place on products. Scenarios warranting their usage include when there is an adverse reaction so serious that it is “essential that it be considered in assessing the risks and benefits of using the drug” or when there is a serious adverse reaction that can be prevented or reduced by appropriate use of the drug, according to FDA documents.

The announcement comes several weeks after FDA officials reported deaths of children following COVID-19 vaccination and concluded that at least 10 deaths were related to the vaccines, according to a November memorandum obtained by The Epoch Times. The review, which included looking at autopsies, has been broadened to other age groups.

The announcement also came several months after regulators updated language on the vaccine labels for a form of heart inflammation called myocarditis. The inflammation was discovered after the FDA first authorized COVID-19 vaccines in December 2020. The updated labels state that the highest observed risk of myocarditis was among young males aged 12 to 24 after receipt of vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.

Makary said Monday that an FDA safety and epidemiology center did recommend adding a black box warning to the COVID-19 vaccines, and indicated the recommendation stemmed from the risk of myocarditis.

But, he said, Dr. Vinay Prasad, the agency’s top vaccine official, and other FDA leaders opted against accepting the recommendation because the dosage people are receiving has changed from the original two doses within weeks or months of each other.

“When you have those two doses three months apart, that’s when you see the side effects go way up, like myocarditis in young people,” Makary said on Bloomberg.

“Now that it’s annual, you may not see that same prevalence. So we don’t want to extrapolate findings to today if it’s not transferable.”

COVID-19 vaccines had been cleared and recommended for virtually all Americans until Trump administration officials took a series of steps to narrow the clearance and recommendations. They are now only advised on an annual basis after consulting with a health care professional and taking into account various factors, including whether people have characteristics such as obesity that could put them at higher risk of severe problems if they contract COVID-19.

Moderna and Pfizer have said their vaccines protect people and have favorable safety profiles, a position also held by some groups such as the American Academy of Pediatrics.

The academy counts Pfizer and Moderna among its partners.

Other experts and advocates have called for the removal of COVID-19 vaccines.

Dr. Robert Redfield, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, recently told The Epoch Times that clearance for them should be withdrawn because the spike protein they deliver is immunotoxic, and that he would not be surprised if, after the FDA finished its investigation, regulators placed a black box on the shots.

Authored by Anna Jackson and Jenn Hatfield via PewResearch.org,

As we do every year, we’ve gathered data around some of the most pivotal news stories of 2025, including President Donald Trump’s return to the White House, the changing U.S. immigration landscape and the rapid rise of artificial intelligence worldwide.

Here’s a look back at 2025 through 12 of Pew Research Center’s most striking research findings.

After more than 50 years of rapid growth, the number of immigrants living in the United States is on the decline. In January 2025, there were 53.3 million immigrants in the U.S., making up close to 16% of the country’s population. Both the number and the share were record highs. But by June 2025, the nation’s immigrant population decreased by more than a million, to 51.9 million. That decline has likely continued since, due to deportations, voluntary departures and fewer new arrivals.

Most immigrants are in the U.S. legally. As of 2023, 73% were either naturalized American citizens, lawful permanent residents or temporary lawful residents. The remaining 27% were unauthorized immigrants.

Views of the U.S. have worsened – and views of China have improved – across many of the 10 high-income countries we surveyed this year. Across these countries, a median of 35% of adults now say they have a favorable opinion of the U.S., while 32% say the same about China. These shares are the closest they’ve been since 2018.

There is a similar pattern when it comes to confidence in U.S. and Chinese leaders to do the right thing regarding world affairs. A median of 22% of adults in the 10 high-income countries surveyed have confidence in Trump, while 24% express confidence in Chinese President Xi Jinping. Their median confidence in former U.S. President Joe Biden was consistently higher than their confidence in Xi.

Seven-in-ten Americans now say the U.S. higher education system is generally going in the wrong direction – up from 56% in 2020. Views of the nation’s colleges and universities have turned more negative among Republicans and Democrats alike. (In this analysis, Republicans and Democrats include independents who lean toward each party.)

Many Americans give these institutions broadly negative ratings in specific areas. For example, 79% of U.S. adults say colleges are doing an only fair or poor job of keeping tuition costs affordable, and 55% say this about preparing students for jobs in today’s economy.

Americans have grown more critical of the widespread legalization of sports betting, and this is especially the case among young men.

Overall, 43% of U.S. adults say the fact that sports betting is now legal in much of the country is a bad thing for society, up from 34% in 2022. And 40% say it’s a bad thing for sports, up from 33%.

One of the biggest shifts in attitudes has occurred among men under 30. In this group, 47% say legal sports betting is a bad thing for society, an increase from 22% in 2022. For women under 30, the shift is smaller: 35% now see legal sports betting as bad for society, up from 25%.

A substantial share of men under 30 (36%) also say they have personally placed a sports bet in the past year.

Around seven-in-ten Americans (69%) say Trump is trying to exert more power than his predecessors, according to a Center survey from September.

Most of those who say this view it as a bad thing for the country. Overall, 49% of U.S. adults say Trump is trying to exercise more presidential power than previous presidents and that this is bad for the country.

Democrats overwhelmingly say Trump is trying to exert more executive power and that this is bad (83%). Republicans are more divided: About half (49%) say Trump is trying to exert more power, and among those who say this, more say it’s good for the country than say it’s bad.

A majority of parents with a child under 2 say their child watches videos on YouTube. Some 62% of parents with a child under 2 say their child ever does this, up from 45% in 2020.

A growing share of parents with a child under 2 also say their child watches YouTube videos daily: 35% say this, up from 24% five years ago. Daily use is also up among kids ages 2 to 4, according to their parents (51%, up from 38%). But it’s stable among children in other age groups.

Google users who encounter a Google AI Overview are about half as likely as users who don’t to click on search results. Users who landed on a Google search page with an AI summary clicked on a search result 8% of the time. Those who did not encounter an AI summary clicked on a search result 15% of the time, according to our analysis of data from U.S. adults who agreed to share their March 2025 web browsing activity.

People who encountered the summaries – which Google introduced in 2024 – very rarely clicked on the sources cited, and they were more likely than those who didn’t see summaries to end their browsing session entirely.

Republicans have become much less likely to say healthy children should be required to get the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine to attend public school. Around half of Republicans (52%) now hold this view, down significantly from 79% in 2019. The share of Democrats who support school MMR requirements (86%) has not changed.

Our broader survey on childhood vaccines found that Republicans are divided over some aspects of vaccine safety. For instance, 32% of Republicans are highly confident that the childhood vaccine schedule is safe, while 31% are not too or not at all confident. A 71% majority of Democrats are highly confident.

Partisans differ sharply on which news sources they trust, especially when it comes to Fox News and CNN. More than half of Republicans (56%) say they trust Fox News, but 64% of Democrats say they distrust it. The reverse is true for CNN: 58% of Democrats trust it, while the same share of Republicans distrust it.

Fox News stands out among the 30 news sources we asked about because it is the only one that a majority of Republicans trust. Democrats tend to trust a much broader range of sources.

For the first time in nearly two decades of our national surveys of U.S. Hispanics, most say Hispanics’ situation in the country has worsened over the past year. About seven-in-ten Latinos (68%) now express this view, up sharply from 26% in 2021 during the Biden administration and 39% in 2019 during the first Trump administration. In the most recent survey, 9% of Latinos say their group’s situation is better than it was a year ago, and 22% say it’s about the same.

About a third of Latinos (32%) also say they’ve recently thought about moving to another country. Among those who have considered this, the most commonly cited reason is the political situation in the U.S.

Sub-Saharan Africa is now home to more Christians than any other world region, surpassing Europe. As of 2020, about 31% of the world’s Christians live in sub-Saharan Africa, while 22% live in Europe. This change has been fueled by Africa’s much higher fertility rates, but also by widespread disaffiliation from Christianity in Western Europe.

Christianity remains the world’s largest religion. But Islam was the fastest-growing religion between 2010 and 2020, among the seven groups Pew Research Center has measured globally over time. The global Muslim population increased by 347 million people during that span (to 2.0 billion), while the Christian population grew by 122 million (to 2.3 billion).

Americans are far more pessimistic than optimistic about the effect AI will have on human creativity and connection. About half (53%) say AI will worsen people’s ability to think creatively, while 16% say it will improve this. And 50% say it will worsen people’s ability to form meaningful relationships with others, while only 5% say it will make this better.

As generative AI technology continues to improve, most Americans (76%) say it’s extremely or very important for them to be able to distinguish between content made by AI and by people. But 53% are not too or not at all confident that they can personally tell the difference; just 12% are highly confident.

*  *  *

This is just a small slice of the Center’s research publications this year.

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

In a stunning display of leftist intolerance, an elderly Target employee found herself on the receiving end of a heated confrontation simply for wearing a shirt honoring conservative icon Charlie Kirk.

The incident, captured on video and shared widely on social media, underscores how the mere sight of patriotic apparel can send so called ‘progressives’ into a frenzy, even in the most mundane settings like a retail store.

The video shows the worker calmly going about her duties in the clothing section, her red “FREEDOM” shirt emblazoned with an American flag sleeve and Kirk’s name. But peace was short-lived as a woman approached, launching into a foul mouthed tirade that reeks of the kind of unhinged rhetoric that’s become all too common from the left.

🚨BREAKING: Deranged Liberal woman HURRASSES an elder Target employee for wearing a Charlie Kirk “FREEDOM” shirt in the store.

LIBERAL: “Are you stupid? You support a racist.”

EMPLOYEE: “He is NOT a racist—have a nice day.”

Liberals are triggered over the rights this… pic.twitter.com/GALFtl3h8E

— The Patriot Oasis™ (@ThePatriotOasis) December 16, 2025

“Are you f***ing stupid? You support a racist?” the woman snarled at the employee, her voice dripping with disdain.

Unfazed, the Target worker explained she was free to wear any red shirt of her choosing and responded with grace: “He is NOT a racist—that’s your opinion, have a nice day.”

The employee continues folding clothes and pushing her cart, embodying the quiet dignity that leftists seem intent on stamping out. The harasser’s words, promising “this is going to be taken above your f***ing head,” echo the knee-jerk accusations often hurled at anyone daring to support freedom.

The simple act of wearing merchandise tied to Kirk was enough to provoke outright harassment. It’s a stark reminder that for some on the left, freedom of expression only applies when it aligns with their worldview.

Liberals champion diversity and inclusion, yet they can’t tolerate a differing opinion expressed through a t-shirt. This woman didn’t just disagree; she harassed a senior citizen at her workplace, potentially violating store policies on customer conduct. If the roles were reversed—say, a conservative berating someone in a BLM shirt—the media would erupt in outrage, labeling it hate speech. But when it’s a leftist doing the bullying, it’s crickets from the fake news media.

This episode exposes the fragility of progressive tolerance. Triggered by symbols of freedom, they lash out, revealing their discomfort with the very rights that allow them to spew such venom.

Charlie Kirk built his movement on empowering young people to think critically and reject agendas that erode national sovereignty. His assassination was a blow to that cause, but incidents like this only fuel the resolve of patriots to carry on his work.

Leftists, emboldened by years of unchecked cultural dominance, now feel entitled to police personal expression in public spaces. But as the employee demonstrated, standing firm with poise is the best rebuke.

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

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

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) must extend a deadline for states to implement new immigration-related eligibility restrictions on food stamps, a federal judge ruled on Dec. 15.

U.S. District Judge Mustafa Kasubhai, during a hearing in Eugene, Oregon, issued an injunction requiring the USDA to extend the expiration date of a grace period for the states to comply with the new restrictions on Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits.

The deadline was Nov. 1. It is now April 9, 2026. A written order has not been released yet.

Under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed by President Donald Trump over the summer, states had to stop letting certain immigrants, including those with deportation hold orders and refugees who are not legal residents, receive food stamps from SNAP, the USDA said in an Oct. 31 memorandum.

The USDA also stated at the time that lawful permanent residents, or green card holders, would only be eligible for SNAP after a 5-year waiting period.

Twenty-one states and the District of Columbia sued over the guidance. They said that the guidance wrongly required a waiting period for all green card holders, even though another federal law allows a variety of permanent residents, including people who are blind or disabled, to receive SNAP without a waiting period.

Kasubhai said on Dec. 15 that the guidance contributed to “confusion” that impeded states’ ability to implement the new restrictions.

The USDA said it never intended for its guidance to go beyond the new immigration-related eligibility restrictions set forth in the law, and a lawyer for the Department of Justice told the judge that reflected a “misunderstanding” by the states.

On Dec. 9, the USDA issued revised guidance on implementing the new rules, stating that some permanent residents, including refugees, do not need to wait five years to receive food stamps.

The states also said in a motion for a preliminary injunction that if the judge did not block the guidance, he should extend the compliance deadline to March 1, 2026.

Kasubhai said that the updated guidance corrected the USDA’s previous position, which he said ran counter to the One Big Beautiful Act. Later in the hearing, he said the deadline for compliance was illegal, contrary to past practice, and would expose the states’ budgets to irreparable harm if not extended.

“The inability to provide compliance in the time period in which they were forced to by virtue of the guidance contributed to an erosion of trust,” Kasubhai said.

A USDA spokesperson declined to comment in an email to The Epoch Times.

Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield, a Democrat, said in a statement that the ruling “allows Oregon to keep administering SNAP without fear of being punished for following the law.”

Reuters contributed to this report.

European luxury stocks have been locked in a 4.5-year trading range, oscillating between peaks and troughs rather than the up-and-to-the-right pattern seen with AI stocks.

Global consumer uncertainty has been a persistent overhang for the last few years. Lower-income households remain under pressure from inflation and affordability constraints. By contrast, upper-income consumers have benefited from wealth effects driven by rising equity markets, cryptos, precious metals, and home prices.

UBS analyst Andrew Garthwaite now offers clarity on the next move for luxury stocks, writing in a lengthy 2026 outlook note to clients that his team has, for the first time in three years, upgraded luxury to “overweight.”

Garthwaite cited a combination of improving fundamentals, supportive valuations, and strengthening macro tailwinds entering 2026 as the primary reasons for the upgrade in luxury stocks.

The analyst laid out his case in a section of the note titled, “The major sector changes are to upgrade luxury…”: 

We take luxury up to overweight for the first time in over 3 years:

We upgraded to benchmark (from underweight) on July 1st. We raise further because: i) EPS is now back to trend (having been 100% above trend); ii) capex is now below trend (implying that future margins should improve); iii) we are now seeing EPS and revenue expectations being at the low end of range but improving (with UBS forecasting luxury EPS to be 5% above the market compared to consensus on 2% above the market) – we have seen the first signs of margin improvement since 2022; iv) P/E relatives ex Hermes are mid-range (only slightly above its normal 32% P/E premium) – on UBS HOLT, the implied CFROI and growth rate are at the bottom end of their historical range against that of the market at only a 1.3% and 1.5% premium, respectively. A quarter of the luxury cluster is US-related and if just 0.5% on the wealth gain in equities that we predict in 2026 in the US is spent on luxury, then that adds c7% to sales. The rise in gold has generated a wealth gain 3X higher than the losses in bitcoin YTD. The top income decile household stands to benefit by $12K a year (according to the CBO) from the OBBB. A stronger dollar forecast post Q1 26 has statistically speaking been very helpful for a sector with extremely high transactional exposure. High-end luxury tends to avoid the disruption associated in other sectors from Gen AI, GLP-1, governments cutting healthcare budgets or Chinese competition. We forecast outsized growth of the EM middle class, boosting demand for conspicuous status symbols. China is a risk, but Macau casino stocks (a proxy on high-end spending) have modestly outperformed YTD. The team have Buys on LVMH, Richemont and EssilorLuttoxica.

The UBS EU Luxury Goods basket has been rudderless for roughly 4.5 years, trapped in a trading range as investors search for signs of a consumer rebound.

Will a breakout be coming in 2026?

Meanwhile, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent pointed to a brighter outlook for low-income consumers in 2026.

ZeroHedge Pro subs can read the full note in the usual place.

Authored by Satyajit Das via NakedCapitalism.com,

AI is tracing the familiar, weary boom and bust trajectory identified in 1837 by Lord Overstone of quiescence, improvement, confidence, prosperity, excitement, overtrading, convulsion, pressure, stagnation, and distress.

There are three primary concerns.

First, there are doubts about the technology.

Building on earlier technologies such as neural networks, rule-based expert systems, big data, pattern recognition and machine learning algorithms, GenAI (generative AI), the newest iteration, uses LLMs (large learning models) trained on massive data sets to create text and imagery. The holy grail is the ‘singularity’, a hypothetical point where machines surpass human intelligence. It would, in Silicon Valley speak, lead to ‘the merge’, when humans and machines come together potentially transforming creativity and technology.

LLMs require enormous quantities of data. Existing firms in online search, sales platforms and social media platforms can exploit their own data troves. This is frequently supplemented by aggressive and unauthorised scraping of online data, sometimes confidential, leading to litigation around access, compensation and privacy. In practice, most AI models must rely on incomplete data which is difficult to clean to ensure accuracy.

Despite massive scaling up of computing power, GenAI consistently fails in relatively simple factual tasks due to errors, biases and misinformation in datasets used.  AI models are adept at interpolating answers between things within the data set but poor at extrapolation. Like any rote-learner, they struggle with novel problems. Their ability to act autonomously interacting within dynamic environments remains questionable. Cognitive scientists argue that simply scaling up LLMs based on sophisticated pattern-matching built to autocomplete rather than proper and robust world models will disappoint. Claimed progress is difficult to measure as benchmarks are vague and inconclusive.

Cheerleaders miss that LLMs do not reason but are probabilistic prediction engines. A system which trawls existing data, even assuming that is correct, cannot create anything new. Once existing data sources are devoured, scaling produces diminishing returns. Rather than fully generalisable intelligence, generative models are regurgitation engines struggling with truth, hallucinations and reasoning.

AI models can take over certain labour-intensive tasks like data driven research, journalism and writing, travel planning, computer coding, certain medical diagnostics, testing and routine administrative tasks like handling standard customer service queries. Its loftier aims may prove elusive. Predictions of medical breakthroughs have disappointed although pre- OpenAI machine learning models, pattern recognition engines and classifiers, used for years, continue to be useful.

For the moment, GenAI, an ill-defined marketing rather than technical term, remains a costly parlour trick for some low-level applications, making memes and allowing scammers to deceive and defraud – the “unfathomable in pursuit of the indefinable”.

Second, financial returns may prove elusive.

Capital expenditure on AI is expected to total up to $5-7 trillion by 2030. AI startup valuations based on the latest round of funding were $2.30 trillion, up from $1.69 trillion in 2024, and up from $469 billion in 2020. But AI’s capacity to generate cash and returns on the investment remains questionable.

Revenues would have to grow over 20 times from the current $15-20 billion per annum to just cover current annual investment in land, building, rapidly depreciating chips and power and water operating expenses. Revenues totalling more than $1 trillion may be required to earn an adequate return. Microsoft’s Windows and Office, among the world’s most used software, generates less than $100 billion in commercial and consumer revenue. Around 5 percent of its 800 million users currently pay to use ChatGPT. Microsoft’s CEO drew the ire of true believers when he argued that AI had yet to produce a profitable killer application to match the impact of email or Excel.

The hope is AI will be paid for from higher productivity and corporate profits. But 95 percent of corporate GenAI pilot projects failed to raise revenue growth. After cutting hundreds of jobs and replacing them with AI, many firm were subsequently forced to reemploy staff when the technology proved deficient. Corporate interest is already showing sign of plateauing.

Monetisation of AI faces other uncertainties. Several Chinese firms, such as DeepSeek, Moonshot as well as Bytedance and Alibaba, have developed cheaper models which cast doubts about the capital investment intensive approach of Western firms. China’s favoured open-source design would also undermine the revenues of firms which have invested heavily in proprietary technology. Required electricity and water supplies may prove to be constraints.

In the meantime, AI firms remain a cash burning furnace. In the first half of 2025, OpenAI, owner of ChatGPT, generated $4.3 billion in revenue but spent $2 billion on sales and marketing and nearly $2.5 billion on stock-based equity compensation, posting an operating loss of $7.8 billion.

Third, there are financial circularities seen during the dot com boom. 

CoreWeave, an equipment rental business trying to cash in the AI boom, purchases graphics processers in-demand for AI applications and rents them to users. Nvidia is an investor in the company, and the bulk of revenues is from a few customers. There is concern around CoreWeave’s accounting practices, especially the rate of depreciation of the chips, and its significant borrowings.

In 2025, Nvidia, the backbone of the boom, agreed to invest $100 billion in OpenAI which in turn bought a similar dollar value of GPUs from it. Open AI proposed to invest in chipmakers AMD and Broadcom. There are side arrangements with Microsoft. Figure 1 sets out some of the complex interrelationships.

Figure 1: AI Firm Inter-relationships and Cross-Investments

This intricate web of linkages creates risks. They complicate ownership and create conflicts of interest. It was not clear how any of these commitments will work or be funded if they proceed. Open AI’s ability to finance these investments depends on continued access to new money from investors because it currently does not have the resources to meet many of these long-term obligations.

These transactions distort financial performance. The firm selling capital goods reports sales and profits while the funding of the sale is treated as an investment. The buyer depreciates the cost over several years. Given that Nvidia seemingly upgrades its chip architecture regularly, depreciation periods of anywhere up to 5 years or longer seem optimistic. This means that dubious earnings boost share prices in a dizzying financial merry go round.

The AI bubble, with its growing gap between expectations, investment and revenue potential, eerily resembles the 1990s. But it is much larger. Investment may be 17 times that of the 2000 dot com and four times the 2008 sub-prime housing bubble.

AI’s acolytes deny any excess and argue that this time it is different because it is financed by equity capital. In fact, a large proportion is funded by debt with the amount tied to AI totalling around $1.2 trillion, 14 percent of all investment-grade debt.

The funding pattern is intriguing. Hyperscalers, firms that build and operate large data centres providing on-demand cloud computing, storage, and networking services, such as Microsoft, Meta, Alphabet and Oracle, are providing much of funding alongside venture capital investors. These firms are currently spending around 60 percent of operating, not free, cash flow, on capital expenditure, the vast majority of which is to support AI projects. This is supplemented by borrowing, relying on their credit standings, to finance their investments. Increasingly, a significant proportion of the funding is being provided by private credit with. expected volumes as high as $800 billion over the next two years and $5.5 trillion through to 2035. Given the high return, high risk appetites of these lenders, the level of financial discipline applied to these loans remains uncertain.

In effect, these large firm are now acting as financiers, borrowing money which is on-lent or invested in AI start-ups with unclear prospects. This exposure is troubling. Investor and lender assumptions that their exposure is to a strong firm is undermined where it is heavily invested in speculative AI ventures with unclear prospects. Microsoft’s share of Open AI’s losses is significant, over $4 billion in the latest quarter, representing around 12 percent of its pre-tax earnings.

Oracle’s experience is salutary. The shares rose 25 percent when it announced a transaction to provide cloud computing facilities to OpenAI. The data centres do not currently exist and will have to be constructed. The transaction requires Oracle, which is significantly leveraged, to borrow funds to create these centres meaning that the firm is taking significant exposure to Open AI. As of December 2025, investor concern was palpable. Given its current net debt of over $100 billion which will need to increase substantially to finance the data centres, the cost of insuring against Oracle default rose sharply and presumably will flow through into the value of existing debt and the cost of future debt. A credit ratings downgrade from its current BBB, low investment grade, is possible, potentially to non-investment or junk grade. Its share price has fallen to levels around that before the announcement of the OpenAI transaction. While Microsoft, Meta and Amazon have stronger balance sheets, the risks are not dissimilar.

The impact of the AI boom on the wider economy is material. AI companies account for 75-80 percent of US stock returns and earnings growth and 90 percent of capital expenditure growth. It has added around 40 percent or a full percentage point to 2025 US growth.  Any retrenchment would affect the wider economy. It would also result in financial instability because of the direct and indirect exposure of banks and financial institutions to the AI sector. It is not inconceivable that some tech firms may require bailouts, such as that engineered for Intel, alongside familiar support for financiers, who will plead that without assistance the economy will collapse.

Investors have convinced themselves that the greater risk is underinvesting not overinvesting. Amazon founder Jeff Bexos hails it a “good kind of bubble” arguing that the money spent will bring long-term returns and deliver gigantic benefits to society, the tech-bro’s persistent bromide. Investors should be cautious. In the 1990s telecoms and fibre optic cable bubble, investors drastically overestimated capacity required. The percentage of lit or used fibre-optic capacity today, much of it installed during the dot com boom, is around 50 per cent, and global average network utilisation is 26 percent.

Investors believe that they have minimises risk by avoiding direct exposure to AI firms investing instead in firms like Nvidia, which provide the ‘picks and shovels’ of the revolution. The case of Cisco, for which the investment case during the halcyon days of the 1990 was similar, provides an interesting benchmark. It briefly became the world’s most valuable company on the largely correct assumption that its routers and other products would be crucial to the Internet. While the company’s financial performance has been generally steady, investors in Cisco lost out as its share price plummeted in 2000 only reaching the same level after 25 years.

When the dot com boom ended, Microsoft, Apple, Oracle and Amazon fell 65, 80, 88 percent, and 94 percent respectively taking 16, 5, 14 and 7 years to recover their 2000 peaks. The economy slowed requiring government support and historically low interest rates, at the time, to sustain economy activity which set off the housing boom which resulted in the 2008 crisis.

Consensual Tolkien-esque hallucinations notwithstanding, it would be surprising if the ending is different this time.

This is an expanded version of a piece first published on 4 November 2025 in the New Indian Express print edition.

Ahead of today’s jobs report, Goldman Delta One Head Rich Privorotsky wrote that with the October print backward looking and mostly govt related and irrelevant, “anywhere near consensus for November (+/-25k of 50k) feels like the sweet spot…that said, hard to see the FOMC feeling compelled to halt accommodation or even talk about hiking if labor momentum is still sub-100k on trend. Too cold (<25k or negative) and the pro-cyclical rally we’ve seen has to be questioned. Probably bigger risk to the market narrative is a re-acceleration in labor which is consistent with some of the bonce in open jobs visible in the higher frequency data.”

With that in mind, moments ago the the BLS published a very mixed report, with payrolls coming solid, thanks to a big beat in the November print, offset by an unexpected jump in the unemployment rate to 4.6%, above estimates, and the highest since Sept 2021.

Here are the details: in October, the US lost 105K jobs, entirely due to a plunge in government jobs (more below) but this was offset by the November jump of 64K jobs, which came in higher than the 50K expected. Private payrolls increased by an even stronger 69K (vs the same consensus est of 50K).

Naturally, the negative revisions continued: the BLS also reported that the change in total nonfarm payroll employment for August was revised down by 22,000, from -4,000 to -26,000, and the change for September was revised down by 11,000, from +119,000 to +108,000.  With these revisions, employment in August and September combined is 33,000 lower than previously reported. 

Of note, government employment tumbled in November by -6,000. This follows a sharp decline of 162,000 in October, as some federal employees who accepted a deferred resignation offer came off federal payrolls. Federal government employment is down by 271,000 since reaching a peak in January. (Federal employees on furlough during the government shutdown were counted as employed in the establishment survey because they received pay, even if later than usual, for the pay period that included the 12th of the month. Employees on paid leave or receiving ongoing severance pay are counted as employed in the establishment survey.)

But while payrolls were generally solid, the unemployment rate was a problem and is what will likely prompt the Fed to cut more: in November, the unemp rate rose to 4.6% (with October blank), worse than the 4.5% estimate and the highest since Sept 2021.

Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rate for teenagers was 16.3% in November, an increase from September. The jobless rates for adult men (4.1 percent), adult women (4.1 percent),  Whites (3.9 percent), Blacks (8.3 percent), Asians (3.6 percent), all rose, and just the unemp rate for Hispanics (5.0 percent) dropped.

We note that the 16-19 year-old cohort (male worse than female) is seeing a surge in unemployment while the 2024 cohort is seeing their unemployment rate decline (with females outperforming males)…

Both the labor force participation rate (62.5 percent) and the employment-population ratio (59.6 percent) were little changed from September. These measures showed little or no change over the year. 

In November, average hourly earnings for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls edged up by 5 cents, or 0.1 percent, to $36.86. Over the past 12 months, average hourly earnings have increased by 3.5%, lower than the 3.6% expected. The average workweek for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls edged up by 0.1 hour to 34.3 hours in November. In manufacturing, the average workweek changed little at 40.0 hours, and overtime was unchanged at 2.9 hours. 

Taking a closer look at the report we find the following details:

• The number of people jobless less than 5 weeks was 2.5 million in November, up by 316,000 from  September. The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) changed little at 1.9 million in November and accounted for 24.3 percent of all unemployed people. 
• The number of people employed part time for economic reasons was 5.5 million in November, an increase of 909,000 from September. These individuals would have preferred full-time employment but were working part time because their hours had been reduced or they were unable to find full-time jobs. 
• The number of people not in the labor force who currently want a job, at 6.1 million in November, was little changed from September. These individuals were not counted as unemployed because they were not actively looking for work during the 4 weeks preceding the survey or were unavailable to take a job. 
• Among those not in the labor force who wanted a job, the number of people marginally attached to the labor force, at 1.8 million in November, was little changed from September. These individuals wanted and were available for work and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months but had not looked for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey. The number of discouraged workers, a subset of the marginally attached who believed that no jobs were available for them, also changed little at 651,000 in November. 

Taking a closer look at the monthly change in jobs, employment rose in health care and construction while federal government employment declined by 6,000, following a loss of 162,000 in October. 

• In November, health care added 46,000 jobs, in line with the average monthly gain of 39,000 over the prior 12 months. Over the month, job gains occurred in ambulatory health care services (+24,000),  hospitals (+11,000), and nursing and residential care facilities (+11,000).
• Construction employment grew by 28,000 in November, as nonresidential specialty trade contractors added 19,000 jobs. Construction employment had changed little over the prior 12 months. 
• Employment in social assistance continued to trend up in November (+18,000), primarily in individual and family services (+13,000). 
• In November, employment edged down in transportation and warehousing (-18,000), reflecting a job loss in couriers and messengers (-18,000). Transportation and warehousing employment has declined  by 78,000 since reaching a peak in February. 
• The big outlier was Federal government employment, which continued to decrease in November (-6,000). This follows a sharp  decline of 162,000 in October, as some federal employees who accepted a deferred resignation offer came off federal payrolls. Federal government employment is down by 271,000 since reaching a peak in January. (Federal employees on furlough during the government shutdown were counted as employed in the establishment survey because they received pay, even if later than usual, for the pay period that included the 12th of the month. Employees on paid leave or receiving ongoing severance pay are counted as employed in the establishment survey.)

And visually:

While the quantitative aspects of the report were ok, the qualitative were ugly. In November, the number of full-time workers plunged by 983K from September to 134.17 million. At the same time, in the two months since Sept, the number of part-time workers soared by over 1 million (1.025 million to be precise) to 29.486 million…

… the highest on record while full-time workers tumbled to a 2025 low!

As for the closely watched “immigrant” shift, in November there were no fireworks here, with Native Born workers up 114K, while foreign-born increased by 58.

There was more: the number of people who need more than one job to make ends meet soared by almost 500K in the 2 months since Sept to 9.301 million, the highest on record!

Overall, this jobs report was weaker than it will be spun for political reasons, which however is precisely what the market is looking for because as Morgan Stanley’s Mike Wilson put it, “bad news is now good news for stocks.”