Authored by vittorio on X,

Bill Ackman quote-tweeted a graph showing the partisan gap between young men and women almost doubled in 25 years.

Political scientists & data quants have been telling us this for half a decade.

Women have moved *radically* leftward, at a scale & speed with no modern precedent, while men have, on the whole, remained largely steady & unchanged.

And you can see it across the data: https://t.co/3uvlTDRwMg pic.twitter.com/Vh6zwPkKUI

— Zarathustra (@zarathustra5150) January 15, 2026

Women moved radically left. Men stayed roughly where they were.

Good question. Most answers I’ve seen are either tribal (“women are emotional”) or surface-level (“social media bad”). Neither traces the actual mechanism.

Let me try.

First, notice what Wanye pointed out:

It seems pretty clear to me that what we’ve been told about radicalization for the last 10 years is exactly the opposite of what’s happened in reality.

We’ve been told that men are increasingly radicalized to the right and that this is a bad thing.

What’s actually happened is…

— wanye (@xwanyex) January 15, 2026

We’ve been told for a decade that men are “radicalizing to the right” and that this is dangerous. The actual data shows the opposite. Men barely moved. Women moved 20+ points leftward.

The story we are told is exactly inverted from reality. And when female leftward movement does get discussed, it’s framed as progress: “women becoming more educated, more independent, more enlightened.”

They’ll tell you the graph shows enlightenment and progress.

Wrong.

What the graph shows is capture.

This Isn’t Just America

Before getting into the mechanism, something important: this pattern isn’t only American. It’s global.

The Financial Times documented last year that the gender ideology gap is widening across dozens of countries simultaneously. UK, Germany, Australia, Canada, South Korea, Poland, Brazil, Tunisia. Young women moving left on social issues, young men either stable or drifting right.

This matters because it rules out explanations specific to American politics. It’s not Title IX policy. It’s not #MeToo. It’s not the specific culture war of US campuses. Something bigger is happening, something that rolled out globally at roughly the same time.

South Korea is the extreme case. Young Korean men are now overwhelmingly conservative. Young Korean women are overwhelmingly progressive. The gap there is even wider than the US. Contributing factors include mandatory military service for men (18 months of your life the state takes, while women are exempt) and brutal economic competition. But the timing of divergence still tracks with smartphone adoption.

Whatever is causing this, it’s not American. The machine is global.

The Substrate

Start with the biological hardware.

Women evolved in environments where social exclusion carried enormous survival costs. You can’t hunt pregnant. You can’t fight nursing. Survival required the tribe’s acceptance: their protection, their food sharing, their tolerance of your temporary vulnerability. Millions of years of this and you get hardware that treats social rejection as a serious threat.

Men faced different pressures. Hunting parties gone for days. Exploration. Combat. You had to tolerate being alone, disliked, outside the group for extended periods. Men who could handle temporary exclusion without falling apart had more options. More risk-taking, more independence, more ability to leave bad situations.

(Male status still mattered enormously for reproduction, low-status men had it rough. But men could recover from temporary exclusion in ways that were harder for pregnant or nursing women.)

This shows up in personality research. David Schmitt’s work across 55 cultures found the same pattern everywhere: women average higher agreeableness, higher neuroticism (sensitivity to negative stimuli, including social rejection cues). Men average higher tolerance for disagreement and social conflict. The differences aren’t huge, but they’re consistent across every culture studied.

Not better or worse. Different selection pressures, different adaptations.

But it means the same environment affects them differently. Consensus pressure hits harder for one group than the other.

The Machine

Now look at what we built.

Social media is a consensus engine. You can see what everyone believes in real time. Disagreement is visible, measurable, and punishable at scale. The tribe used to be 150 people. Now it’s everyone you’ve ever met, plus a world of strangers watching.

And look at the timeline. Facebook launched in 2004 but was college-only until 2006. The iPhone was launched in June 2007. Instagram in 2010. Suddenly, social media was in your pocket and in your face, all day, every day.

Look at the graph again. Women were roughly stable through the early 2000s. The acceleration starts around 2007-2008.

The curve steepens through the 2010s as smartphones became universal and platforms became more sophisticated.

Women are by nature more liberal, but the radicalization coincides with the rise in smartphone adoption.

The machine turned on and the capture began.

The mental health collapse among teenage girls tracks almost perfectly with smartphone adoption, with stronger effects for girls than boys. The same vulnerability that made social exclusion more costly in ancestral environments made the new consensus engines more capturing.

This machine wasn’t designed to capture women specifically. It was designed to capture attention. But it captures people more susceptible to consensus pressure more effectively. Women are more susceptible on average. So it captured them more.

Add a feedback loop: women complain more than men. Scroll any platform and it looks like women are suffering more. Institutions respond to this because visible distress creates liability, PR risk and regulatory pressure. In addition, women are weaker and inevitably seen as the victim in most scenarios. The institutional response is to make environments “safer”. Which means removing conflict. Which means censoring disagreement. Which means the consensus strengthens.

The counterarguments get removed or deplatformed and the loop closes.

The Institutions

Universities flipped to 60% female while simultaneously becoming progressive monoculture. The institution young women trust most, during the years their worldview forms, feeds them a single ideology with no serious opposition.

FIRE’s campus speech surveys show the pattern clearly: students self-censor, report fear of expressing views, cluster toward acceptable opinions. This isn’t unique to women, but women are more embedded in higher education than men now, and the fields they dominate (humanities, social sciences, education, HR) are the most ideologically uniform.

Four years surrounded by peers who all believe the same thing. Professors who all believe the same thing. Reading lists pointing one direction. Disagreement is not even rare, it’s socially punished. You learn to pattern-match the acceptable opinions and perform them.

Then they graduate into female-dominated fields: HR, media, education, healthcare, non-profits, where the monoculture continues. From 18 to 35, many women never encounter sustained disagreement from people they respect. The feedback loop never breaks.

Men took different paths. Trades. Engineering. Finance. Military. Fields where results matter more than consensus. Fields where disagreement is tolerated or even rewarded. The monoculture didn’t capture them because they weren’t in the institutions being captured. (mostly because they were kicked out of them, but that’s a different piece)

The Economics

Marriage collapsed. This probably matters more than people think.

Single women vote more left than married women. This is consistent across decades of exit polls. Part of this is likely economic: single women interact with government more as provider of services, married women interact with government more as taker of taxes. The incentives point different directions.

The marriage gap in voting is one of the most consistent predictors. And marriage rates have collapsed precisely during the period of divergence.

Men saw marriage collapse differently. Family courts. Child support. Alimony. The rational response was skepticism of expanding state power.

Same phenomenon, different positions in it, different political responses.

The Algorithms

Algorithms optimize for engagement. Engagement means emotional response. Time on platform. Clicks. Shares. Comments.

Women respond more strongly to emotional content on average, they are more empathetic, they can be more easily manipulated with sad stories. That higher neuroticism again, higher sensitivity to negative stimuli. The machine learned this. It fed them content calibrated to their response patterns. Fear. Outrage. Moral panic. Stories about danger and injustice and threat and wars and “victims”.

Men got different feeds because they responded to different triggers. The algorithm doesn’t really have a gender agenda. It has an engagement agenda. But engagement looks different by demographic, so the feeds diverged.

Women ended up in information environments optimized for emotional activation. Men found alternatives: podcasts, forums, cars, wars, manosphere etc.

The Ideology

Feminism told women their instincts and biology were oppression and wrong. Wanting children was brainwashing. Wanting a provider husband was internalized misogyny. Their natural desires were false consciousness installed by patriarchy.

Many believed it. Built lives around it. Career first. Independence. Freedom from traditional constraints.

Now they’re 35, unmarried, measuring declining fertility against career achievements. And here’s the trap: the sunk cost of admitting the ideology failed is enormous. You’d have to admit you wasted your fertile years on a lie. That the women who ignored the ideology and married young were right. That your mother was right.

I think this is why you see so little defection. Not because the ideology is true, but because the psychological cost of leaving is higher than the cost of staying. Easier to double down. Easier to believe the problem is that society hasn’t changed enough yet.

The Other Capture

I should be honest about something: men weren’t immune to capture. They were captured differently.

Women got ideological conformity. Men got withdrawal. Porn. Video games. Gambling apps. Outrage content. The male capture wasn’t “believe this or face social death.” It was “here’s an endless supply of dopamine so you never have to build anything real.”

Different machines, different failure modes. Women got compliance. Men got passivity.

The male line on that graph staying flat through 2020 isn’t necessarily health. It might just be a different kind of sickness, men checking out instead of being pulled in. Or it may be that everyone and everything moved more left and women moved lefter.

The Line Is Moving Now

Here’s the update: the male line isn’t flat anymore.

Post-2024 data shows young men shifting right. Recent surveys all show the same thing. Young men are now actively moving more conservatively.

My read: women got captured first because they were more susceptible to consensus pressure. The capture was fast (2007-2020). Men resisted longer because they were less susceptible and less embedded in captured institutions. But as the gap became visible and culturally salient, as “men are the problem” became explicit mainstream messaging, as men started being excluded from society because of lies, as masculinity, or the very thing that makes men men became toxic, men had to start counter-aligning.

The passivity is converting into opposition. The withdrawal is becoming active rejection.

This doesn’t mean men are now “correct” or “free”. It might just mean they’re being captured by a different machine, one optimized for male grievance instead of female consensus. Andrew Tate didn’t emerge from nowhere. Neither did the manosphere. Those are capture systems too, just targeting different psychological vulnerabilities.

The graph is now two lines diverging in opposite directions. Two different machines pulling two different demographics toward two different failure modes.

Some people will say this is just education: women go to college more, college makes you liberal, simple as that. There’s something to this. But it doesn’t explain why the gap widened so sharply post-2007, or why it’s happening in countries with very different education systems.

Some will say it’s economic: young men are struggling, resentment makes you conservative. Also partially true. But male economic struggles predate the recent rightward shift, and the female leftward move happened during a period of rising female economic success.

Some will point to cultural figures: Tate for men, Taylor Swift for women. But these are symptoms, not causes. They filled niches the machines created. They didn’t create the machines.

The multi-causal model fits better: biological substrate (differential sensitivity to consensus) + technological trigger (smartphones, algorithmic feeds) + institutional amplification (captured universities, female-dominated fields) + economic incentives (marriage collapse, state dependency) + ideological lock-in (sunk costs, social punishment for defection).

No single cause. A system of interlocking causes that happened to affect one gender faster and harder than the other.

So What

If this model is right, some predictions follow.

The gap should be smaller in countries with later smartphone adoption or lower social media penetration. (This seems true: the divergence is less extreme in parts of Eastern Europe and much of Africa, though South Korea is a major exception due to other factors.)

The gap should narrow among women who have children, since parenthood breaks the institutional feedback loop and introduces competing priorities. (Exit polls consistently show this: mothers vote more conservative than childless women.)

The gap should continue widening until the machines are disrupted or the generations age out of them.

Here’s the part I don’t know how to solve: these systems are self-reinforcing. The institutions aren’t going to reform themselves. The algorithms aren’t going to stop optimizing. The ideology isn’t going to admit failure. The male counter-capture isn’t going to produce healthy outcomes either.

Some women will escape.

The ones who have children often do since reality is a powerful solvent for ideology. The ones who build lives outside institutional capture sometimes do.

Some men will stop withdrawing or stop rage-scrolling.

The ones who find something worth building. The ones who get tired of the simulation.

But the systems will keep running on everyone else.

The Question

Bill asked why.

The answer isn’t “women are emotional” and it isn’t “social media bad.” The answer is that we built global-scale consensus engines and deployed them on a species with sexually dimorphic psychology. The machines captured the half more susceptible to consensus pressure. Then they started capturing the other half through different mechanisms.

We’re watching the results in real time. Two failure modes. One graph. Both lines are moving away from each other and away from anything healthy.

I don’t know how this ends. I don’t think anyone does. I don’t think it will.

Both machines are still running.

In the days since Renee Good tried to run over an ICE agent in Minneapolis and was shot and killed by an ICE officer, the liberal media has found yet another offensive word to whinge over. 

“The far-right has coined a new derogatory term for white women, which has gained traction following the fatal shooting of Renee Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, in Minneapolis earlier this month,” reports The Independent. 

The objectionable term is the acronym AWFUL, which stands for Affluent White Female Urban Liberal. Another variant is AWFL.

For example:

Liberal white woman LOSES HER MIND over duck hunters..

These people are insane. lmao pic.twitter.com/2xRNSDE9fl

— American AF 🇺🇸 (@iAnonPatriot) January 15, 2026

The New York Times was the first paper to report on this new “offensive” term.

“Beyond labels and name-calling, the death of Ms. Good and the protests and anger in its wake have sparked a response from many on the right that is particularly targeted at white women in the streets, even though men have been just as involved,” the paper wrote. “A majority of college-educated women, including white women, have long been skeptical of President Trump’s Make America Great Again movement, and that skepticism has been growing, according to exit polls after the 2024 election. And for months now, such women are attracting the ire of the president’s supporters.”

The term AWFUL is not the first derisive name targeting white women. People across the political spectrum once gleefully targeted so-called Karens, a term meant to denigrate women — usually white and middle-aged — caught using their privilege to bend the world in their direction.

And the use of AWFUL emerged well before Ms. Good was killed. Conservative critics began attaching it to female protesters at least as far back as last summer.

The acronym so scandalized the New York Times that it even tattled to the Department of Homeland Security about it and its growing popularity. “I’m more concerned with facts on the ground than I am about acronyms,” DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin told the paper in a text message.

The Times leaned heavily on academic experts to medicalize and psychologize conservative criticism of affluent white liberal women, transforming political disagreement into pathology. 

But for the broader core of Mr. Trump’s followers, the description of white, urban women as violent radicals obstructing mass deportations seems to reflect older anxieties around race, gender and immigration among the white, non-college educated men who make up the core of Mr. Trump’s movement and perceive their place in society slipping, said Dr. Shauna Shames, a political scientist at Rutgers and co-editor of the book “The Right Women: Republican Party Activists, Candidates, and Legislators.”

[…]

Liberal academics have been diagnosing what they see as the problem. Laura K. Field, author of the book “Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right,” said social, demographic and economic changes had left men with a sense that they have lost status.

“Women are, for many of them, the place holder for their ‘stolen’ status,” she asserted.

 While the Times objects to calling affluent white female urban liberals what they are, it recently published opinion pieces comparing ICE to a “secret police” and portraying Trump as a fascist. In the past week, the paper has published columns demeaning Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as “a Virtual Secret Police” and accusing the agency of “Waging War on Blue Cities,”framing routine enforcement as an attack on liberal opposition. Columnist Michelle Goldberg also described Trump’s actions as textbook fascism.

After years of using terms like “Nazi” and “fascist” against Trump and Republicans, the paper’s outrage over AWFUL rings hollow. The acronym simply states observable demographic and ideological facts. Affluent, white, female, urban, and liberal are not slurs. Yes, the acronym is clever, but its implied criticism is far milder than the relentless, extreme rhetoric the New York Times has long published against the right, particularly President Trump. 

Authored by Zach Boren via RealClearEducation,

For the better part of a year, the Trump Administration said little about apprenticeships. Then, almost out of nowhere, it announced a $145 million funding forecast aimed at expanding Pay for Apprenticeship—one of the largest investments we’ve seen in years.

That move matters because it follows a long gap between rhetoric and reality. Early on, the President issued an Executive Order calling for one million apprentices and indicating apprenticeship as a central workforce strategy. But that ambition amounted to little more than lip service, as Biden-era apprenticeship contracts were either canceled or stagnated.

For decades, the federal government has underinvested in apprenticeships, relying instead on small, bespoke grant programs that helped grow apprenticeships by nearly 80 percent over a decade, but never at scale. That’s real progress, but apprentices still make up just three-tenths of one percent of the labor force.

The Pay for Apprenticeship forecast is the first meaningful signal that the administration’s promises could be fulfilled—and perhaps finally move apprenticeships from the education margins to the mainstream.

Pay for Apprenticeship — also known as Pay for Success — ties public dollars to real results: apprentices hired, trained, and retained. In a frozen labor market, this policy focuses on what works, not what makes headlines. That makes it a welcome—and somewhat surprising—dose of pragmatism in a policy landscape often driven by ideology.

What’s actually different this time

Unlike traditional workforce grants that fund training without accountability for outcomes, Pay for Apprenticeship funds employment outcomes. Grantees are rewarded for hires and apprenticeship contracts signed—not paperwork, pilots, or press releases.

The forecast also acknowledges a basic truth long ignored in Washington: employers rarely build apprenticeship programs on their own. They rely on intermediaries—industry associations, unions, nonprofits, and technical experts—to design training, manage registration, recruit apprentices, and maintain standards. Without this infrastructure, apprenticeship policies remain aspirational rather than operational.

This funding approach mirrors what our international competitors already do. The UK, Germany, and Australia invest heavily in apprenticeship systems that share training costs and pay for results. Overseas, apprenticeships aren’t an alternative — they’re a competitive advantage and valued on par with the university track.

Why apprenticeships meet this moment

The U.S. faces acute labor shortages across critical sectors. We are short nearly one million electricians. AI and tech companies and their data centers and energy infrastructure projects are driving unprecedented demand for skilled workers.

Bachelor’s degrees, for the first time, are losing their earnings premium, even as the first rung of the career ladder disappears.

Registered Apprenticeships combine paid, on-the-job training with structured instruction, allowing workers to earn while they learn—and employers to train talent to real-time needs. Unlike college students taking on debt, apprentices are paid by their sweat, and the average graduate earns about $80,000 annually –exceeding entry-level bachelor’s degree wages. Employers see returns as well—apprenticeships deliver a positive ROI, with high retention and strong employer satisfaction.

For young men, these pathways matter even more. Today, there are three times as many men who are not in education, employment, or training (NEET) as there were in the 1980s. That is not a cyclical downturn. It is a slow-rolling structural failure. For boys underserved by the traditional classroom, apprenticeships offer a practical path forward. In fact, roughly 85 percent of American apprentices are men.

A step forward, not the finish line

This investment alone will not solve the nation’s workforce challenges—but it is a solid step in the right direction.

To meet the moment, Congress must go further, faster. A large-scale, national Pay for Apprenticeship initiative—designed to reach millions of young people over the next decade—is within reach. And, it does not require new debt. Apprentices pay taxes, and their availability reduces reliance on public assistance. They begin paying into the system almost immediately.

For too long, American society and federal policy have defaulted to a college-for-all approach, even as evidence mounted that the system was badly out of balance. When more than 90 percent of Congress has a bachelor’s degree, it should not surprise anyone that policy has repeatedly doubled down on college as the only answer. Washington’s groupthink has crowded out other proven educational paths to the middle class.

It’s time for a reset.

The $145 million Pay for Apprenticeship forecast is a good bet—but it’s not a silver bullet. If Congress builds on it, rather than treating it as a one-off, apprenticeships could finally become what they should have been all along: a central pillar of a working-class–building strategy.

And it doesn’t require more debt to get there—just pragmatic investments in our future, rather than borrowing against it. Few other workforce policies can claim this consistent result across workers, employers, and taxpayers. The evidence is clear: apprenticeships work.

Zach Boren is the Senior Vice President of Policy and Government Affairs at Apprenticeships for America.

Iran’s streets have at this point been relatively calm for the last several days, after two weeks of large-scale protests rocked the country amid an ongoing economic crisis and Washington threatened to intervene by hitting government sites.

When protests and unrest turned to riots and clashes with police, which in some locations resulted in deaths on both sides, Tehran authorities moved to impose a complete internet and messaging blackout – believing this would thwart or slow any foreign plotting seeking to exploit the protests.

After eight days of no internet access, Iran has begun easing these restrictions Saturday, restoring short messaging service (SMS) nationwide. State media describes there will be a phased plan for bringing back internet and messaging services.

Al Jazeera cites state authorities who say terror cells and a foreign conspiracy had been disrupted, but now the situation is stable:

Quoting officials, the agency reported that the decision followed what it described as the stabilisation of the security situation and the detention of key figures linked to “terror organizations” behind the violence during protests over rising prices and economic hardship that erupted on December 28 in several Iranian cities.

Authorities said the internet blackout had “significantly weakened the internal connections of opposition networks abroad” and disrupted the activities of the “terror cells”.

On this, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has also weighed in, claiming that actors linked to the United States and Israel were responsible for killing “several thousands” during the anti-government protests.

“Those linked to Israel and US caused massive damages and killed several thousands” he said Saturday. The US and Western allies have repeatedly rejected these Iranian claims of ‘foreign plotting’. And more via Bloomberg:

Some of those were killed “brutally and inhumanely,” Khamenei said without offering detail in a public meeting broadcast on state TV.

This marks the first time any top Iranian authority described the casualties as being in the “thousands”. Some US-based ‘monitor’ groups as well as American media earlier in the week raised eyebrows and skepticism in claiming 12,000 were killed – a huge figure.

As for the possibility of foreign plotting, the Financial Times appears to be the first mainstream outlet to describe black-clad and well-organized groups who unleashed chaos and anti-police violence amid the protests…

“There were groups of men in black clothes, agile and quick. They would set one dustbin on fire and then quickly move to the next target” They “look[ed] like commandos” …“They were definitely organized, but I don’t know who was behind them”

FT offers one of the first acknowledgments by Western media of well organized cells wreaking havoc on Iranian cities

“There were groups of men in black clothes, agile and quick. They would set one dustbin on fire and then quickly move to the next target”

They “look[ed] like… pic.twitter.com/Fwq2ab8ZHI

— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) January 17, 2026

Iran has said that hundreds of police and security personnel were killed or wounded, and has cited videos showing armed supposed ‘protesters’ seeking to wage an insurgency against government positions. It should come as no surprise that Israeli or Western intelligence should seek to hijack and steer the protests toward some kind of regime destabilization goal. But this scenario is always hard to prove amid the fog of war and thick propaganda coming from all sides.

Authored by Jack Phillips and Jan Jekielek via The Epoch Times,

Dr. Mehmet Oz, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, revealed that health care fraud in Minnesota is more significant than previously known, according to his interview with EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders,” premiering at 5 p.m. ET on Jan. 17.

After speaking to whistleblowers across the state, Oz said there has been a “cover-up” for years and that it reaches the “highest levels” of state government.

Oz made reference to Somalian Americans and Somalian nationals who have a significant presence in the Minneapolis-Twin Cities area, who have recently been accused by administration officials of engaging in the defrauding of federal government entitlement programs, including Medicaid.

“For example, the Somalian sub-population, who have different cultural norms than the folks who have historically been in Minnesota, might be taking advantage of systems that were built for ‘Minnesota Nice’ people,” Oz said.

“And this is what was told to me by people working in the Department of Health and Human Services there, from folks who are police, law enforcement, they were witnessing it.”

The administration has gained “evidence now that we might be seeing that in other Somalian populations” in the United States, Oz said, adding that “they talk to each other.”

“Once you figure out that no one’s watching the till, you begin to steal money in other areas,” he said. “In any case, we are aggressive on this.”

Providing an example, Oz said that investigators in the Twin Cities discovered a building with “boarded-up windows” that allegedly had “400 businesses running out of there in the last couple of years that had generated about three $80 million in bills” for the federal government and Minnesota.

“And these are all social service businesses. So as you start to probe into how this beehive of corruption arose, the question does come up, you know, who owns the building? Like, how did this even come about? The building owner would not let us go into the building,” he added.

The state has been under the spotlight for years for Medicaid fraud, including a $300 million COVID-19-related fraud case involving the Feeding Our Future nonprofit.

Federal prosecutors said it was the largest COVID-19-related fraud scheme in the United States, and that the defendants exploited a state-run, federally funded program meant to provide food for children.

Since 2022, 57 people have been convicted, either by pleading guilty or by losing at trial. The majority of the defendants who were charged in the case are of Somali origin. Numerous other fraud cases are under investigation, including new allegations involving child care centers.

Aside from the Medicare and Medicaid agencies, the Treasury Department also announced last week that it will investigate financial transactions between Minnesota residents and businesses in Somalia, as the government ramps up an operation targeting illegal immigration in the state.

The Department of Homeland Security, too, has deployed thousands of agents to Minnesota as part of that broader federal effort, although protests have erupted in recent days over the shooting of a protester.

The Trump administration said late last month it would freeze child care funds in Minnesota unless officials there provide more data about the programs, and in a January statement said it would freeze a program that allows states to pay child care providers without attendance requirements.

A video that went viral on social media in December featured influencer Nick Shirley, who alleged significant daycare fraud involving the theft of state government funds. The clip was amplified and referenced by Vice President JD Vance and tech billionaire Elon Musk on X.

Responding to the claims, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz has been critical of the Trump administration’s efforts in his state while arguing that his office has already taken steps to reduce fraud.

Meanwhile, the ongoing federal operations in Minneapolis are “a direct threat against the people of this state, who dared to vote against him three times, and who continue to stand up for freedom with courage and empathy and profound grace,” Walz said earlier this week.

The Epoch Times contacted the governor’s office for comment on Jan. 16.

Fraud Investigation Expanding

The administration’s ongoing investigations into entitlement fraud are being expanded, namely in California, Oz told “American Thought Leaders.”

“What we’re seeing in Minnesota is the tip of the iceberg, because it is dwarfed by what I saw in California, which is whole-scale cultural malfeasance around health care,” Oz said.

“There is an acceptance that you need to be in the fraud business, especially in Los Angeles, and the magnitude of fraud there, we believe, is approximating $4 billion just in hospice and home health care.”

Oz described Southern California’s situation as a pervasive “tolerance and acceptance of fraud” and that “it’s so rampant that you don’t even know how to get your arms around it.”

“We have the unions being involved in some of these endeavors and lobbying as well” to get certain individuals elected, he added.

U.S. Attorney’s Office officials speak at a news conference inside the U.S. Courthouse in Minneapolis, detailing fraud in Minnesota, on Dec. 18, 2025. Kerem Yücel/Minnesota Public Radio via AP

Oz said he believed foreign-based gangs were perpetrating fraud in hospice and home health care programs, but he did not provide detailed examples.

The alleged fraud “might be part of a much larger scheme to change how we elect our officials, and that is very chilling for us to think that you might be using social programs designed to help all Americans who are struggling or who have vulnerabilities, using that as a tool to change who gets elected,” he said.

Last week, Oz, along with First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli, said at a news conference that federal officials will investigate allegations of fraud involving hospice centers in the state, describing the crimes as pervasive.

Both Oz and Essayli suggested that foreign-based gangs were behind the fraud targeting hospice centers and home health care programs, while Oz elaborated on those claims on Friday by saying that a “Russian Armenian … mafia” was targeting California’s health care systems.

“These hospice programs are created when the most common reason that you enter it is cancer. But these days, not everyone with cancer dies, but also you put a lot of people with Alzheimer’s, other conditions, in there … so it became a little harder to police whether people were going into hospice,” he said.

A post from California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s press office account on X on Jan. 6 said that the state had stopped tens of billions of dollars in fraud, specifically unemployment fraud, and also criticized the Trump administration.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) urged airlines on Jan. 16 to exercise caution when flying over Central America and the eastern Pacific due to military activities and potential navigation interference.

The FAA said it issued notices covering the airspace in Mexico, Central America, Panama, Bogotá, Guayaquil, and Mazatlán Oceanic Flight Regions, as well as parts of the eastern Pacific Ocean.

The notices will remain effective for 60 days, according to its statement.

“Potential risks exist for aircraft at all altitudes, including during overflight and the arrival and departure phases of flight,” the aviation regulator said in its notices to airmen (NOTAMs).

As Aldgra Fredly reports below for The Epoch Times, the notices came just weeks after U.S. forces carried out airstrikes on Venezuela’s capital, Caracas, on Jan. 3 and captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, from their residence to face drug and arms-related charges in the United States.

Tensions have intensified in the region as the U.S. military stepped up counter-narcotics operations in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific. Last month, a JetBlue flight departing from the Caribbean nation of Curacao, just off the coast of Venezuela, halted its ascent to avoid a collision with a U.S. Air Force refueling tanker.

FAA issued an advisory on Dec. 16, 2025, warning airlines of the security situation in Venezuela and urging pilots to exercise caution when operating in the Maiquetia flight information region, which covers Venezuelan airspace.

The advisory was set to remain in effect until Feb. 19, and marked the regulator’s second warning last year on security risks in Venezuelan airspace amid the U.S. military’s counter-narcotics operations in the Caribbean.

Following Maduro’s ouster, President Donald Trump warned drug traffickers in Colombia and Mexico that they could face action by the U.S. military.

Trump told Fox News on Jan. 8 that the U.S. military will begin ground operations targeting drug cartels in Mexico.

“We knocked out 97 percent of the drugs coming in by water, and we are going to start now hitting land with regard with the cartels,” Trump said.

“The cartels are running Mexico. It’s very sad to watch and see what’s happened to that country.”

Trump told reporters on Jan. 4 that he had spoken to Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and offered U.S. troops to help combat drug trafficking in Mexico.

He said that despite her concern, Sheinbaum was “just not willing” and “a little afraid.”

Mexico has strongly denounced the U.S. airstrikes on Venezuela. The Mexican Foreign Ministry issued a statement on Jan. 3 calling for dialogue between the two nations and urging the United Nations to help de-escalate tensions.

“Latin America and the Caribbean is a zone of peace, built on the basis of mutual respect, the peaceful settlement of disputes and the prohibition of the use and threat of force, so any military action seriously jeopardizes regional stability,” the ministry stated.

Authored by Maryanne Demasi via The Brownstone Institute,

For the first time in a generation, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has rewritten its official position on whether vaccines can cause autism.

This is a change that could reshape one of the most politically charged and emotionally fraught debates in modern medicine.

In a website update published on 19 November 2025, the agency now states that the long-standing claim “vaccines do not cause autism” is “not an evidence-based claim” because scientific studies “have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism.”

The page also acknowledges that “studies supporting a link have been ignored by health authorities.”

It’s difficult to overstate the significance of these statements. For nearly two decades, they would have been unthinkable for a federal public health agency.

The timing is equally striking.

The change arrives at a moment when the political and scientific landscape around vaccine safety is undergoing a marked shift inside the Trump–Kennedy administration.

For months, critics have accused Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr and several of the administration’s appointees of holding unconventional views on vaccine safety.

The CDC’s revised language now places the agency closer to Kennedy’s long-standing argument that federal agencies had ignored crucial evidence.

The CDC explains the shift by pointing to the Data Quality Act, which requires federal communications to accurately reflect the evidence.

Because studies have not excluded the possibility that infant vaccines could contribute to autism, the agency concedes that its long-standing categorical statement was not scientifically justified.

The update states plainly that scientific uncertainty remains, particularly for vaccines administered in the first year of life.

Scientific Uncertainty Finally Acknowledged

The information on the website draws a sharp distinction between the infant vaccine schedule — which includes DTaP, HepB, Hib, IPV, PCV and others — and the measles–mumps–rubella (MMR) vaccine.

For the MMR, the CDC continues to cite observational evidence showing “no association … with autism spectrum disorders,” describing the conclusion as supported by “high strength of evidence.”

But the agency also acknowledges that these studies had “serious methodological limitations” and were all retrospective epidemiological analyses, the type that cannot establish cause and effect or identify subgroups who may be more vulnerable.

The acknowledgement of limitations is unusually candid for a federal agency discussing vaccines and autism.

For the infant vaccine schedule, the shift is even more dramatic.

The CDC cites a series of authoritative reviews — including the 1991 and 2012 Institute of Medicine’s assessments, and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s review in 2021 — all concluding that the evidence was “inadequate to accept or reject” a causal relationship between early-life vaccines and autism.

In other words, the fundamental scientific question remains unresolved.

Political Dynamite

The political context makes this change even more consequential. Senator Bill Cassidy (R-LA), who chairs the Senate Health Committee, has been one of the most vocal critics of Kennedy’s vaccine views.

Cassidy has repeatedly insisted that the science on autism and vaccination was settled years ago. Now the CDC states that the claim “vaccines do not cause autism” does not meet evidence standards.

Remarkably, the CDC states that the headline phrase remains on the page only “due to an agreement with the chair of the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee.”

The implication — that the wording is a political compromise rather than a scientific one — will undoubtedly invite scrutiny on Capitol Hill.

Attorney Aaron Siri, who has spent years litigating against federal agencies for greater transparency around vaccine safety, said the update marks a long-overdue shift in honesty from the CDC.

“It is an excellent step in the right direction for CDC to start telling the truth to the public about its past misdeeds and misrepresentations,” said Siri.

“Telling the truth and apologising for its prior misrepresentations is the only way the CDC will ever rebuild trust with the public,” he added.

How the Wakefield Saga Shaped Debate

For years, any attempt to revisit the vaccine–autism question was coloured by the fallout from the “Wakefield saga.”

The retracted 1998 Lancet paper became a shorthand for misinformation, and it allowed public health agencies to dismiss all subsequent concerns as if they were simply a continuation of that controversy.

The episode became a kind of cultural firewall.

Invoking Wakefield was an easy way to shut down inquiry, even when parents were describing patterns that had nothing to do with the MMR vaccine and everything to do with the expanding infant schedule.

The CDC’s admission that the evidence for early-life vaccines is “inadequate to accept or reject” a causal link — and that some studies “supporting a link have been ignored” — breaks the long-standing habit of waving away legitimate questions by pointing back to a decades-old scandal.

A Broad Recalibration

The CDC’s shift also aligns with a broader recalibration underway across federal health agencies in the US.

The Trump administration has ordered new NIH reviews of vaccine safety science, reinstated the Task Force on Safer Childhood Vaccines, and rejuvenated the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP).

The pattern is unmistakable: agencies that once treated certain questions as “settled science” are now reopening them and its impact is likely to reverberate across the globe.

The CDC now admits the science has not ruled out potential links for vaccines given in infancy.

The website also notes that “about one in two surveyed parents of children with autism” believe vaccination played a role, often pointing to shots given in the first months of life or around the one-year mark.

Until now, those parents were often told their concerns were baseless. The agency’s new wording fundamentally alters that dynamic.

Changing the Conversation

In the US at least, public health agencies will no longer be able to respond to parental concerns with blanket denials.

Moreover, researchers studying plausible mechanisms — such as aluminium adjuvants, neuroinflammation, mitochondrial vulnerabilities, and immune activation — will find themselves in an environment that formally recognises these questions as scientifically legitimate.

Informed consent practices may need to be revisited as the existence of uncertainty is formally acknowledged.

And lawmakers who insisted that the science was settled will now face uncomfortable questions about why federal agencies relied on definitive messaging that did not meet evidence standards.

To be clear — the CDC’s update does NOT assert that vaccines cause autism. What it does say — with clarity the agency has avoided for years — is that the available evidence has not established that they do not, at least for the vaccines given in early infancy.

That distinction may seem subtle, but it represents a profound shift in how the conversation is framed and will undoubtedly impact the personal experiences of families raising autistic children.

For the first time that I can remember, the question of vaccines and autism is no longer treated as taboo. It has been recast — at the CDC’s own hand — as a research question that demands proper investigation.

The shift may prove to be one of the most consequential public health developments of the decade, and it suggests that something significant is moving behind the scenes in the federal agencies that once seemed immovable.

Old CDC Website:

Updated CDC Website:

Republished from the author’s Substack

After campaigning on transparency regarding the Epstein files, President Trump became quickly defensive when asked about them shortly after taking office last year – which continued into July, when Trump clapped back at a journalist who asked about Epstein’s ties to a foreign intelligence agency, asking; “Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein?” 

NOW – Trump: “Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein?! This guy’s been talked about for years… Are people still talking about this guy?!… Do you want to waste the time?!… I can’t believe you’re asking a question on Epstein at a time like this…” pic.twitter.com/j2ZttTRm1V

— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) July 8, 2025

Trump’s outburst came months after AG Pam Bondi said she had the entire Epstein client list on her desk, and later revealed that there were “tens of thousands of videos of Epstein with children or child porn,” and that there were “hundreds of victims.” 

Then we had the botched Binder release, Patel and Bongino insisting the Epstein list doesn’t exist and that Epstein definitely killed hismelf. 

Kash Patel and Dan Bongino say Jeffrey Epstein killed himself. So either Patel and Bongino have launched a new Deep State coverup to protect co-conspirators in a demonic sex trafficking ring, or Epstein did in fact kill himself pic.twitter.com/2k1nsN6jLY

— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) May 18, 2025

In September of last year, Trump called the Epstein controversy an “irrelevant Democrat hoax,” as Democrats, and Reps. Thomas Massie and MTG pushed for the release of the Epstein Files – which eventually culminated in the November passage of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which required the DOJ to release Epstein files. And instead of just doing that, they released highly redacted files highlighting Epstein’s ties with Democrats. 

Which brings us to today

In response to the Trump DOJ’s redacted releases, Massie and Dem Rep. Ro Khanna pushed for a special master to provide independent oversight and ensure both compliance and speed, the NY Post reports. 

The DOJ responded by saying that it has assigned 500+ reviewers to the project, and has formally moved to block the appointment of a special master. In a six-page letter filed with US District Judge Paul. A Engelmayer, DOJ prosecutors contend that efforts to force production of the Epstein Files are an improper attempt to relitigate a concluded criminal case. 

According to the filing, amici curiae are intended to provide neutral legal analysis—not to introduce new disputes, seek new remedies, or assume an adversarial role. The government argues that Khanna and Massie are attempting to do precisely that by asking the court to oversee DOJ document production, compel testimony from prosecutors, and effectively enforce a statute that provides no judicial enforcement mechanism.

“An amicus cannot initiate, create, extend, or enlarge issues,” the DOJ writes, citing longstanding federal precedent. Because no party to the case has raised compliance with the Act as a live issue, prosecutors argue there is nothing for amici to assist the court with.

The government’s argument goes further: even if the court were inclined to entertain the request, it could not do so constitutionally. –Meidas News

The DOJ further argues that Khanna and Massie lack standing because they were not personally injured by the Trump administration’s failure to release the files. 

Dave Smith couldn’t have said it better:

See the DOJ filing below:

Authored by Matthew Brouillette via RealClearPennsylvania,

Pennsylvania is hemorrhaging residents and resources. And it’s been happening for years. 

The recent U-Haul Growth Index shows that people are voting with their feet against Pennsylvania and other purple and blue states that have become inhospitable as places to live, work, and raise a family. And these out-migrators are heading to redder states that welcome them.

In 2025, Texas, Florida, North Carolina, and Tennessee topped U-Haul’s ‘in-migration’ states, measured by one-way customer moves. 

Meanwhile, Pennsylvania ranked an abysmal 44th. 

The impact of losing friends and families — and their wealth — to other states should be the canary in coal mine for Pennsylvanians getting ready for another election year in 2026. We need to recognize that bad state-level policies are driving tax dollars and our neighbors to more friendly environments.

In fact, the blue-to-red migration is profound across the country. 

Seven of the top 10 growth states have Republican governors, and nine of those states voted for Trump-Vance in the last presidential election. And four of the top five prime destination states for the last three years are solidly red. 

Conversely, of the 10 worst growth states, nine of them have Democrat governors, and all but three of those states voted for Harris-Walz in the last presidential election.

Since 2015, when U-Haul began tracking the migration of residents, Pennsylvania has been in the worst 10 out-migration states in the nation every year but two. 

The result for our state has been disastrous.

According to VoteWithYourFeet, which tracks migration trends, Pennsylvania lost $16,509,051,000 in Aggregated Gross Income (AGI) between 2012-2022. That’s more than $16 billion with a “b”.

Over the same time period, Florida — the biggest beneficiary — gained more than $195 billion in AGI, including $12.3 billion from Pennsylvania. Texas took nearly $1.5 billion in AGI from Pennsylvania on its way to gaining more than $54 billion total. 

This trend of losing people and income to other states is alarming but not surprising. 

It’s no coincidence that three of the top four in-migration states — Texas, Florida, and Tennessee —have no personal income tax at all. Meanwhile all ten of the bottom-ranked states are forced-union states. Economic policies matter.

The only reason Pennsylvania hasn’t become California—the highest out-migration state for the last six years straight — is that Democrats haven’t been able to gain a ‘trifecta’ here as they have in California, where they control both chambers of the legislature as well as the governor’s office. 

As the fifth largest and biggest swing state in the nation, Pennsylvania has elected Democrats in the last three gubernatorial elections, and the state House flipped to a 102-101 Democrat majority in 2022.

But since 1994, Republicans have held the Pennsylvania state Senate and served as a firewall against the bad policies that Democrats have inflicted on the highest out-migration states. 

Now, national Democrats have set their sights on finally breaking the 27-23 Republican majority in the Senate to gain a trifecta. 

By re-electing Josh Shapiro as governor, holding the state House, and flipping just two state Senate seats in 2026, Democrats would gain the trifecta they’ve long sought — locking up Pennsylvania as a solid blue state. And the threat is very real.

Make no mistake: If Democrats succeed, there is zero chance of reversing our outmigration trend. We will become California, Illinois, and New Jersey. We will lose more people, more wealth, and more opportunity. 

Of course, the Left isn’t seeking to capture Pennsylvania so they can impact a U-Haul list. Instead, they realize that if they can control the Keystone State, they can control the direction of the country. States that vote blue at the state level rarely vote red at the national level. 

This is why Democrats have flooded our state elections with millions of dollars from donors across the country over last several election cycles.

With Gov. Shapiro enjoying high approval ratings, we should expect spending from national Democrat special interests to flood our state to help him get the trifecta Democrats haven’t enjoyed in more than four decades.

And if they succeed, we can expect even more U-Haul trucks filled with our friends and families —along with their incomes — to migrate to the states still voting red.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz mobilized the National Guard to support the Minnesota State Patrol and other local law enforcement during expected weekend protests in downtown Minneapolis.

“We are staged and ready to respond. We are not deployed to city streets at this time,” Minnesota National Guard spokesperson Army Maj. Andrea Tsuchiya told CNN earlier, adding that troops will help provide “traffic support to protect life, preserve property, and support the rights of all Minnesotans to assemble peacefully.”

Citizen journalists on X reported National Guard Humvees staging across multiple parts of the metro area throughout the morning and into the late afternoon.

NOW: Seen in Minneapolis.

Video by @noturtlesoup17 @FreedomNTV Desk@freedomnews.tv to license pic.twitter.com/lrmKBTDk9Z

— Oliya Scootercaster 🛴 (@ScooterCasterNY) January 17, 2026

BREAKING: I just spotted two National Guard vehicles at South Cedar Ave & the I-94 eastbound on-ramp in Minneapolis. pic.twitter.com/Nsi3sB5QM0

— IRT Media (@IRT_Media) January 17, 2026

🚨 Minneapolis is now crawling with National Guard pic.twitter.com/OZuHQM2j9y

— Cam Higby 🇺🇸 (@camhigby) January 17, 2026

“Stay safe and stay peaceful today,” Gov. Walz wrote on X earlier today, adding, “Our public safety team has the resources, coordination, and personnel on the ground to maintain public safety and respond if needed. Thanks to local law enforcement for keeping the peace.”

Stay safe and stay peaceful today.

Our public safety team has the resources, coordination, and personnel on the ground to maintain public safety and respond if needed. Thanks to local law enforcement for keeping the peace.https://t.co/PX0o4ugKWa

— Governor Tim Walz (@GovTimWalz) January 17, 2026

Daily Caller spotted what appears to be a ‘mostly peaceful’ protester…

🚨SPOTTED in downtown Minneapolis. pic.twitter.com/u7akZtdz1A

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) January 17, 2026

Anti-ICE protester sits on a vehicle holding a gun in Minneapolis pic.twitter.com/V7eBPyjh2c

— Wid Lyman (@Wid_Lyman) January 17, 2026

Protest activity already underway:

🚨 JUST IN: Anti-Islam protest organizer Jake Lang just got DRAGGED into the crowd and ASSAULTED MULTIPLE TIMES, police are doing absolutely nothing

IT’S TOTAL ANARCHY!

Minneapolis police are STANDING DOWN because corrupt Democrats refuse to protect conservatives.

THE FEDS… pic.twitter.com/BNHSLGJYMC

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) January 17, 2026

Pushing and shoving between Jake Lang’s group and counter protesters who showed up to disrupt his anti-Islam rally at Minneapolis City Hall. pic.twitter.com/1ZVNBEdKCO

— Julio Rosas (@Julio_Rosas11) January 17, 2026

🚨 Sheriffs deputies just pulled up and rescued a man being attacked by a violent mob.

According to the mob the man was hit “HARD” in the head.

This is the first time I’ve seen police help someone being attacked in Minneapolis. pic.twitter.com/KnOgpF4mVS

— Cam Higby 🇺🇸 (@camhigby) January 17, 2026

Overnight, CBS News reported that the Justice Department is investigating Gov. Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey over an alleged conspiracy to impede federal immigration agents during deportation operations (read report).

Details remain scant about the specific comments by Walz and Frey that DOJ investigators have focused on, but there is a recent interview in which the mayor acknowledges the existence of a network of left-wing nonprofits organizing pressure campaigns in the city. He stopped just short of identifying which nonprofits were involved.

POLITICAL VIOLENCE: Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey refuses to reveal the identities of the NGOs he’s working with to organize protests in his city. The DOJ is investigating the groups with funding and directives from Soros and CCP-linked NGOs. pic.twitter.com/C9cWgIZ5VN

— @amuse (@amuse) January 8, 2026

Related:

• Biden-Appointed Minnesota Judge Limits Federal Immigration Enforcement Actions At Protests

*Developing. Check back for updates as protest activity is expected this evening. That said, temperatures in the metro area are currently 9°F, with lows forecast to fall to -3°F. Those conditions are likely to thin the turnout of the Grantifa and purple-haired white liberals, though Antifa and Antifa-aligned militant groups may still attempt to cause chaos.