California’s Department of Motor Vehicles is facing a class-action lawsuit over plans to cancel nearly 20,000 immigrant truckers’ commercial driver’s licenses, a move plaintiffs say would cause widespread disruption, according to Fox News.

The case was filed Tuesday by the Asian Law Caucus, the Sikh Coalition, and the firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP, seeking to block the DMV from revoking the licenses. According to the complaint, the cancellations would “result in mass work stoppages” beginning Jan. 5, 2026.

In a joint statement, the two advocacy groups said: “This class-action lawsuit is brought on behalf of the Jakara Movement and five commercial drivers who have been deprived of their rights and livelihoods.”

They added that although officials said licenses would start being reissued on Dec. 17, “the state has neither reissued any of the contested licenses nor created a process to remedy the date issue with no indication that it plans to do so before January 5.”

Fox News writes that the lawsuit says the DMV notified 17,299 drivers on Nov. 6 that their non-domiciled CDLs would be canceled on Jan. 5 due to errors with license expiration dates. Another 2,700 drivers received similar letters in December, with cancellations scheduled for mid-February.

State law requires CDL expiration dates to align with a driver’s work authorization or legal status. Instead, the suit claims the DMV issued cancellation notices rather than correcting the dates.

“For all 19,999 immigrants, the DMV intends to cancel their commercial licenses without affording any opportunity to obtain a corrected license or to contest the cancellation,” the lawsuit states.

It also alleges that “despite its own regulation, the DMV did not consistently ensure that a CDL’s expiration date matched the end of a person’s period of work authorization or lawful presence.”

Plaintiffs say the consequences extend beyond the drivers, noting they “play an indispensable role in our local and national economies” and warning that “the sudden loss of their ability to work threatens not only their livelihoods but also the stability of our supply chains and services on which the public depends.”

The filing includes examples of alleged errors, including a driver whose CDL already matches his work authorization and a Jakara Movement member who was “pressured into surrendering his CDL, out of fear that his non-commercial driver’s license would already be cancelled.” The suit also says the “DMV has not explained how it identified 19,999 licenses as out of compliance with state law and how it can ensure that its determinations are accurate.”

The plaintiffs are asking the court to order the DMV to provide corrected licenses “without interruption to their driving privileges.”

Authored by Sam Dorman via The Epoch Times,

The United States and the United Nations have finalized an agreement that includes $2 billion in humanitarian funding and what the State Department described as radical reform to save Americans’ tax dollars while avoiding ideological projects.

The finalized agreement supports the U.N.’s 2026 plan to reach nearly 90 million people and target 17 crisis-affected countries.

It was signed in Geneva, Switzerland, on Dec. 29 amid the administration’s criticism of what it said were wasteful foreign aid programs and its dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development.

“The agreement requires the U.N. to consolidate humanitarian functions to reduce bureaucratic overhead, unnecessary duplication, and ideological creep,” the State Department said in a press release.

“Individual U.N. agencies will need to adapt, shrink, or die.”

According to the department, annual contributions by the United States have increased in recent years, reaching $8 billion to $10 billion annually in voluntary contributions for humanitarian assistance.

The new agreement channels U.S. funding into consolidated and flexible fund vehicles administered by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, according to the department.

“Flexible funding vehicles will allow the Department of State to administer humanitarian funding more efficiently, materially reducing administrative burdens on the Department, and allowing diplomats to spend less time on bureaucratic grant management and more of their time on policy oversight, accountability, and impact analysis,” it said.

In a press release, the United Nations described the agreement as part of a “Humanitarian Reset” announced by U.N. Emergency Relief Coordinator Tom Fletcher earlier this year.

During a speech in February, Fletcher warned that a “massive funding, morale, and legitimacy crisis” was confronting the humanitarian community.

Citing funding cuts, he later called for a series of reforms while emphasizing the need for “much lighter, more nimble cooperation.”

Most of the countries impacted by the recent agreement are located in Africa.

Among them was Nigeria, where the U.S. military recently struck the ISIS terrorist group over concerns about the widespread persecution of Christians in the country.

Before that attack, the Trump administration also aimed at ISIS in Syria, which was one of the other 17 crisis-affected countries impacted by the agreement.

Other countries included Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Haiti, and Bangladesh.

Ukraine was also named as its government lobbied the Trump administration for a long-lasting plan to quell hostilities with Russia.

According to the U.N., the Dec. 29 agreement affects the U.N. Central Emergency Response Fund, which focuses on providing quick humanitarian assistance to people in crises.

The United Nations said on Dec. 29 that Fletcher “emphasized that donors expect results, saying accountability mechanisms would ensure that ‘every dollar we spend’ is tracked to confirm that it is saving lives.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio described the funding as “lifesaving” in a statement while pledging a new model that would require the United Nations to cut waste.

“Today, the [State Department] and United Nations signed an agreement that radically reforms the way the U.S. programs, funds, and oversees U.N.-administered humanitarian work, ensuring that more lives will be saved for fewer U.S. taxpayer dollars,” he said.

“This new model will better share the burden of U.N. humanitarian work with other developed countries and will require the U.N. to cut bloat, remove duplication, and commit to powerful new impact, accountability, and oversight mechanisms.”

In November, the entertainment media was energized by the news of potential studio mergers and a potential jump in content spending by Disney and Paramount.  The possibility of more cash flowing into productions was seen as a light at the end of a long dark tunnel for a film industry crushed by endless box office and TV streaming failures.  Maybe this new funding would revitalize a Hollywood gasping for oxygen?

However, as The Hollywood Reporter noted, the surge in funding was not necessarily going into the pockets of the current crop of filmmakers and TV series showrunners.  Instead, Disney, Paramount and other entertainment conglomerates are shifting cash into sports and foreign content.  

The reasons why media giants are quietly abandoning Hollywood should be obvious.  In early 2025, these same companies took one last gamble on DEI and stood in solidarity with activist producers, directors and writers.  And, the result this year was the same as the last several years:  They lost billions in revenues per project.

The raw box office numbers are ugly, but they don’t tell the whole story.  Overall productions costs have skyrocketed by 25% since early 2020 and inflation in ticket prices has hidden the crippling plunge in total ticket sales compared to the same time period.  In other words, Hollywood’s profit margins are shrinking while their audience is dwindling.

Their strategy in early 2025 revolved around the idea of attacking the audience (their customer base) as a “toxic fandom” that needs to be shamed and marginalized.  The problem is, in most cases when companies go to war with their customers they inevitably lose.  

More recent examples include Superman director James Gunn’s social media rants attacking fans for criticizing the pro-illegal immigration propaganda planted in the comic book film which was intended to relaunch the Warner Bros. DC universe.  The media applauded Gunn’s handling of the fandom and claimed that he set a precedent for future films that draw audience backlash.  In reality, Gunn’s movie was a box office flop, falling $100 million short of the $700 million in global ticket sales needed for the film to break even.

Gunn’s big mouth and far-left propaganda sunk the movie’s chances.  Keep in mind, the Superman franchise is about as all-American as you can get; to not draw in a massive US audience requires stunning incompetence. 

Then there was the epic failure of Disney’s Star Wars series, “The Acolyte”.  The streaming series sought to deconstruct the Star Wars mythos by making the Jedi the villains and portrayed the Sith as misunderstood good guys.  The show was saturated with LGBT casting and gay propaganda including the infamous lesbian space witches.  The Acolyte was created by Leslye Headland, former assistant of Harvey Weinstein, and was essentially the last attempt by Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy to force fans to embrace a woke version of the franchise.

To this day, Headland has been raging against “toxic” audiences for rejecting the series and making it one of the most embarrassing projects ever to be released by Disney’s streaming service (and there’s a long list of disastrous releases from Disney+).  She asserts that her show’s dismal reception had nothing to do with bad writing and woke storytelling; rather, it was the fault of “racist and fascist” fans. 

Disney immediately cancelled the show due to rock bottom viewership and it’s unlikely Headland will ever touch another Star Wars project again.   

Even “Stranger Things”, a Netflix mainstay considered a sure winner, faced audience decline during its final season after planting abrupt and unnecessary LGBT messaging in the series.  The establishment media came to the show’s defense, arguing that audiences have become “entitled” and that studios need to stop trying to give customers what they want. 

The truth is, Hollywood has been ignoring audience feedback for years and their concerns have focused more on force-feeding fans a steady diet of woke indoctrination.  This might have been possible for them a few years ago when cash reserves were still strong, but the studios are finally realizing that they can’t propagandize the public if no one pays to watch their garbage.

In other words, the leftists in entertainment didn’t take into account the possibility that audiences would simply walk away.  They can control every facet of media from TV to advertising to film, but they can’t force people to consume their content (at least not in the US).

And this seems to be the new business model for Hollywood going into next year.  2025 was the last hurrah for woke programming in America.  Now, studios are scrambling to cancel a number of politically charged shows and movies in the hopes of finally bringing profits back to their pre-pandemic glory.  Their pending 2026 release lineup, though, is anorexic.  

In the meantime, companies like Netflix are adapting with targeted woke messaging in countries where people can actually be forced to watch.  In Britain, for example, the government is excitedly promoting the Netflix series “Adolescence”. The show is set to be featured in UK classrooms as part of an anti-masculinity program to brainwash young men into avoiding conservative content and fearing their own biology. 

It is likely that the industry will try to adapt their productions to markets where audiences have less freedom of choice in the hopes of offsetting their losses in the US, but the fact remains that unless they abandon woke politics completely there is little chance that they will be able to weather another year of failure similar to the ugliness of 2025.

Via The Middle East Eye

The UAE has announced that it will withdraw its military personnel from Yemen, hours after Saudi Arabia struck its Yemeni allies and made an extremely rare public condemnation of Abu Dhabi’s conduct in the country. The Emirati defense ministry said in a statement that “in light of recent developments” it was announcing “the termination of the remaining counterterrorism personnel in Yemen of its own volition”. 

The ministry said Abu Dhabi had participated in an Arab coalition supporting the internationally recognized government of Yemen since 2015. It stated that while UAE forces had mostly concluded their role in 2019, specialized teams remained to work on “counterterrorism efforts” alongside international partners. 

It added: “In light of the recent developments and the potential repercussions that may affect the safety and effectiveness of counterterrorism missions, the Ministry of Defense announces the termination of the remaining counterterrorism teams in Yemen at its own volition, in a manner that ensures the safety of its personnel, and in coordination with the relevant partners.”

Mohammed al-Basha, an expert on Yemen and founder of the Basha Report, a US-based risk advisory, said that most of the UAE’s military forces and hardware was withdrawn from Yemen six years ago. 

“This withdrawal included main battle tanks, artillery, Patriot air defense systems, helicopters, and Apache gunships,” he told Middle East Eye. “Today, the UAE maintains only a limited presence made up of rotating advisory, intelligence, counterterrorism and reconnaissance personnel. This is not a large-scale combat force and does not conduct major offensive operations.”

On Tuesday morning, Saudi Arabia struck targets belonging to the Southern Transitional Council (STC) in the port of Mukalla. The STC is a UAE-backed group that seeks an independent south Yemen.

Riyadh said it targeted weapons and vehicles that had arrived in Mukalla on ships originating in Fujairah, a port city on the east coast of the UAE. It added that the weapons “constituted an imminent threat”, and therefore Saudi-led forces conducted “limited air strikes” targeting shipments offloaded from two vessels. 

Mohamed Alsahimi, an STC representative, told MEE that the group disagreed with this assessment, and said the attack targeted “civilian infrastructure”. 

Saudis claim threat to national security

A few hours after the strike, Riyadh published a strong statement criticizing the UAE’s role in Yemen. The Saudi foreign ministry said it was disappointed by actions taken by the UAE “pressuring” the STC to conduct military operations on Saudi Arabia’s southern border, in the Yemeni regions of Hadhramaut and al-Mahrah. 

It said such actions were a threat to Saudi Arabia’s national security, and the security and stability of Yemen and the wider region. “The kingdom stresses that any threat to its national security is a red line,” it said. “[We] will not hesitate to take all necessary steps and measures to confront and neutralise any such threat.”

BIG: Saudi airstrikes hit Yemen’s Mukalla Port, targeting ships from the UAE carrying armored vehicles and weapons for UAE-backed Southern Transitional Council (STC) separatists.

Tensions between Saudi-backed and UAE-backed forces have escalated sharply after pro-UAE forces… pic.twitter.com/ExPP78VVTz

— Clash Report (@clashreport) December 30, 2025

It marked the strongest statement made by the kingdom since the STC seized control of swathes of territory in southern Yemen earlier this month. 

The UAE has backed the STC since 2017, said Basha, “through diplomatic support, funding, military assistance, logistics, and training”.

“This support has been comprehensive,” the analyst added. “The UAE position, however, is that it does not control the STC’s political end goals.” The UAE said it was “surprised” by the Saudi strike, and that it rejected Riyadh’s account. 

Abu Dhabi’s foreign ministry said the strike was made without consulting other member states of the Saudi-led coalition that intervened in the Yemeni war against the Houthis in 2015. 

It said that the targeted shipment was coordinated with Saudi Arabia, and that it did not contain weapons, but rather vehicles intended for use by UAE forces in the country. The UAE claimed Saudi Arabia’s statement contained “fundamental inaccuracies”. 

“The UAE categorically rejects any attempt to implicate it in the tensions between Yemeni parties and condemns the allegations of pressuring or directing any Yemeni party to carry out military operations,” the Emirati foreign ministry said, before later announcing its withdrawal from Yemen.

Saudi Arabia officialy joins the “All my homies hate the UAE” club pic.twitter.com/5oodRCw8kp

— MenchOsint (@MenchOsint) December 30, 2025

After the Yemeni war and the takeover of the capital, Sanaa, and other areas in the north by the Houthis in 2014, the Aden-based STC has emerged as a key player among anti-Houthi elements.

Southern Yemen has for years been overseen by the Presidential Leadership Council (PLC), an executive government body that includes the STC and initially had both Saudi and Emirati support. However, the body has long been riddled with internal disagreements and jostling.

Earlier on Tuesday, Rashad al-Alimi, the head of the PLC, called for an immediate withdrawal of Emirati forces from Yemen, and cancelled a joint defence agreement with the UAE. 

Alsahimi, the STC official, said the PLC had “no mandate” to make such an announcement, and that its chair made a “unilateral decision… without any consensus from the other PLC members”.

The Department of Health and Human Services on Tuesday announced that it has frozen all federal childcare funding for the state of Minnesota, citing rampant fraud allegations largely attributed to the Somali community. 

In a post on X, Deputy HHS Secretary Jim O’Neill wrote that “You have probably read the serious allegations that the state of Minnesota has funneled millions of taxpayer dollars to fraudulent daycares across Minnesota over the past decade,” which resulted in the following:

1. I have activated our defend the spend system for all ACF payments. Starting today, all ACF payments across America will require a justification and a receipt or photo evidence before we send money to a state.

2. Alex Adams and I have identified the individuals in @nickshirleyy ‘s excellent work. I have demanded from @GovTimWalz
 a comprehensive audit of these centers. This includes attendance records, licenses, complaints, investigations, and inspections.

3. We have launched a dedicated fraud-reporting hotline and email address at https://childcare.gov Whether you are a parent, provider, or member of the general public, we want to hear from you.

Starting immediately, all HHS payments to Minnesota “will require a justification and a receipt or photo evidence before we send money to a state.”

We have frozen all child care payments to the state of Minnesota.

You have probably read the serious allegations that the state of Minnesota has funneled millions of taxpayer dollars to fraudulent daycares across Minnesota over the past decade.

Today we have taken three actions… pic.twitter.com/VYbyf3WGop

— Deputy Secretary Jim O’Neill (@HHS_Jim) December 30, 2025

“Funds will be released only when states prove they are being spent legitimately,” O’Neill said in a follow-up comment.

Following viral footage from journalist Nick Shirley which showed nearly a dozen Minnesota day care centers that had no children in attendance during the middle of the day, despite receiving state funds to provide services. O’Neill said that HHS has identified the centers featured in Shirley’s video and demanded that the state carry out a “comprehensive audit,” including “attendance records, licenses, complaints, investigations and inspections.”

And just so you know how the MSM is playing it, CBS News writes: 

CBS News conducted its own analysis of day care centers mentioned by Shirley. All but two have active licenses, according to state records, and all active locations were visited by state regulators within the last six months. The analysis found dozens of citations for safety, cleanliness and other issues, but no recorded evidence of fraud.

…

In recent years, Minnesota has grappled with a litany of alleged fraud schemes targeting the state’s public assistance programs. Dozens of people have been convicted as part of a scheme to bilk nearly $250 million from a federally backed child nutrition program during the pandemic, and federal prosecutors have charged people with defrauding Medicaid-supported autism services and housing stabilization programs.

So…

> alleged (Somalian) fraud schemes

> dozens (of Somalians) convicted

> regulators say no fraud in (Somalian) daycare centers

Sure CBS, state regulators in a state with rampant fraud far beyond Shirley’s findings – are doing just great.

According to a spokesman for governor Tim Walz, “The governor has been combatting fraud for years while the President has been letting fraudsters out of jail.  Fraud is a serious issue. But this is a transparent attempt to politicize the issue to hurt Minnesotans and defund government programs that help people.”

Indeed, Walz thinks he’s got it all figured out!

trump’s long game is waiting for you to allow $18b in fraud? pic.twitter.com/ZLCGZo80Oj

— Christopher Kocurek (@bigironchris) December 31, 2025

Minnesota receives hundreds of millions in federal dollers annually to support its Child Care Assistance Program, which subsidizes daycare for around 23,000 children from low-income families. In 2026, HHS was expected to kick in $218 million, while the state will kick in $155 million, according to state projections.

Brilliant execution by Trump’s sleeper Somali cell. https://t.co/d0ohABYo27

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) December 31, 2025

Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Scientists have reversed Alzheimer’s disease in mice, potentially showing a pathway to treat the illness among humans, according to a Dec. 22 peer-reviewed study published in the Cell Reports Medicine journal.

Alzheimer’s is traditionally considered irreversible. In the study, researchers treated two groups of mice with P7C3-A20, a pharmacologic agent. One group carried human mutations related to amyloid processing, while the other carried a tau protein mutation. Both amyloid and tau pathologies are two major early events of Alzheimer’s.

Researchers say that as mice develop brain pathologies resembling Alzheimer’s, they are ideal subjects to test how P7C3-A20 affects Alzheimer’s in humans.

Among the amyloid mice, treatment with P7C3-A20 was found to have resulted in restoring the proper balance of Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+), which is a cellular energy molecule and a major driver of Alzheimer’s disease. As people age, NAD+ levels decline in their bodies, including the brain. Without proper NAD+ balance, the cells are unable to execute critical processes necessary for proper functioning.

The treatment was found to have reversed blood-brain barrier deterioration, DNA damage, oxidative stress, and neuroinflammation, researchers wrote. The blood-brain barrier maintains nutrient and hormone levels in the brain while protecting the organ from toxins and pathogens.

The treatment enhanced synaptic plasticity and hippocampal neurogenesis, a process in which new functional neurons are generated.

These changes resulted in “full cognitive recovery and reduction of plasma levels” of p-tau217 among the amyloid mice, researchers said. P-tau217 is the clinical biomarker of Alzheimer’s that helps predict cognitive decline.

In fact, when P7C3-A20 was initiated for 6-month-old mice as they manifested advanced Alzheimer’s pathology and cognitive deficits, the treatment “comprehensively restored brain health and function by 12 months,” researchers wrote in the study.

P7C3-A20 reversed advanced Alzheimer’s in mice with tau mutation and was found to help protect the human brain microvascular endothelial cells (BMEC) from oxidative stress. BMEC is the major component of the blood-brain barrier.

“Our results challenge the long-held view that [Alzheimer’s disease] is intrinsically irreversible,” the researchers wrote.

They said that restoring the proper balance of NAD+ levels may be “a potentially transformative therapeutic approach.”

Multiple study authors declared competing interests for holding patents related to subjects covered under the study.

In a Dec. 22 statement, Ohio-based University Hospitals, whose researchers took part in the study, said the findings should spark new research into complementary approaches and clinical testing in Alzheimer’s patients.

Andrew A. Pieper, senior author of the study, said that they were “very excited and encouraged” by the results.

“The key takeaway is a message of hope—the effects of Alzheimer’s disease may not be inevitably permanent,” he said. “The damaged brain can, under some conditions, repair itself and regain function.”

Alzheimer’s is a progressive illness that starts with mild memory loss and eventually leads to a situation where the person is unable to carry on conversations or conduct daily activities.

Alzheimer’s typically affects people aged 60 and older. While the exact causes of the illness remain unknown, Alzheimer’s is likely the result of various factors such as genes, environment, family history, and lifestyle behaviors, according to an August 2024 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

An October 2024 study identified that a silent phase of Alzheimer’s begins up to 20 years before symptoms appear.

This silent phase is marked by subtle changes in brain cells. For instance, the inhibitory neurons could become vulnerable, thus disrupting communication between brain cells. In this phase, there is a gradual buildup of beta-amyloid plaques and tangles, which are hallmarks of Alzheimer’s.

According to data from the nonprofit Alzheimer’s Association, more than 7 million Americans currently live with the illness, a number projected to jump to almost 13 million by 2050.

About one in nine individuals aged 65 and older has Alzheimer’s. Almost 12 million Americans are estimated to provide unpaid care for people with Alzheimer’s or other types of dementia, valued at more than $413 billion last year.

A video that surfaced late last week from an unnamed Chinese lab has captivated the internet, capturing a teleoperation session gone comically awry with Unitree Robotics’ G1 humanoid, Interesting Engineering reports. An engineer, clad in a motion-capture suit and positioned alongside the robot, performs martial arts moves. As both face the same direction, his attempted low kick sends his own leg swinging upward in a painful self-inflicted strike to the groin. Collapsing in agony, he doubles over—prompting the G1 to mirror the posture precisely, to the audible amusement of onlookers.

Using a mocap suit to kick yourself in the balls with a robot is a great metaphor to close out 2025. pic.twitter.com/G1hY5Fd6YF

— CIX 🦾 (@cixliv) December 27, 2025

The clip, shared on shared on Bilibili and X, swiftly racked up millions of views across platforms, even eliciting a laughing emoji from Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Unitree clarified that the synchronized “combat” routine was enabled by a customer’s custom software, not its factory programming.

This hilarious incident comes as Chinese companies like Unitree accelerate ahead of the United States in affordable humanoid platforms.

The G1, available for $13,000 to $21,500 depending on configuration, serves primarily as a research and education tool, yet its demonstrations of fluid Kung Fu sequences—high kicks, spins, and acrobatic flips—highlight remarkable progress in agility and balance. In contrast, Tesla’s Optimus program has encountered setbacks, with reports indicating production delays stemming from redesigns, particularly in dexterous hands and overheating components, pushing meaningful scaling beyond 2025 targets. While Musk envisions rapid expansion in the coming years, supply-chain sources suggest ongoing refinements have tempered near-term ambitions.

Yet, don’t let recent setbacks plaguing the robotic sector fool you.

Analysts see vast potential in humanoid robots, with Morgan Stanley forecasting the humanoid sector could reach $5 trillion by 2050, including supply chains and services, with over one billion units deployed—90% in industrial and commercial roles. Adoption may accelerate in the late 2030s as costs decline and capabilities improve, according to the bank.

Venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, an early OpenAI investor, has predicted a “ChatGPT-like” breakthrough in robotics within two to three years, leading to adaptable humanoids performing household tasks affordably by the 2030s.

Authored by Matt Schlapp via The Epoch Times,

As the freest nation in the world, America has long understood the value of free speech—not as an abstract ideal, but as a fundamental right.

The Conservative Political Action Conference’s (CPAC) newly released 2025 “Freedom of Speech Around the World Ratings” cut through the noise with a simple question: Does a country imprison or execute citizens for speech protected by the U.S. First Amendment? The purpose is not to deny America’s internal struggles, but to draw a clear line between nations that debate speech and those that punish it with prison or death.

President Donald J. Trump underscored the stakes during his most recent Cabinet meeting, warning that America is nearing a consequential turning point, one in which the nation must decide whether to restore trust and order in its institutions, or follow other countries down a path where breakdown is met not with reform but with censorship.

This debate is real. But a volatile argument is not the same as criminalization. Having different political views should not result in violence or jail.

We have already seen alarming flashes of how volatile debates over speech and ideology have become in America. The assassination of Charlie Kirk underscored those dangers in stark terms. Universities should be places where young people learn to engage ideas, challenge arguments, and think for themselves, and not be arenas where disagreement turns hostile or deadly.

The results of CPAC’s ratings should sober every American.

The worst offenders, Iran, North Korea, Russia, and Syria, score zero. These regimes openly imprison or execute people for words and ideas. More troubling, however, are developed democracies that still describe themselves as free. Several now jail citizens for speech that would be constitutionally protected in the United States.

In Switzerland, a man was sentenced to jail for insulting a journalist. In the United Kingdom, a citizen spent months behind bars for posting stickers labeled “hate speech,” many criticizing illegal immigration and public-safety failures. British authorities later acknowledged ideology played a role in the punishment.

France, Germany, and Canada all score just 20 percent in CPAC’s index. In Canada, the consequences are especially stark. A father, Robert Hoogland, served prison time for refusing to use compelled language regarding his daughter’s gender identity. His crime was not violence or harassment, it was speech, and a refusal to surrender parental conscience to the state.

Australia, often assumed to be a free-speech peer of the United States, also scores poorly. After a religiously motivated stabbing incident, authorities responded not by reinforcing public order but by expanding speech restrictions and online censorship. Using tragedy to justify silencing dissent has become an increasingly common pattern abroad.

This is how free societies slide.

Governments do not begin by banning obvious truths. They start by criminalizing offense, tone, or dissenting ideology. Over time, disagreement itself becomes punishable, debate gives way to intimidation, and silence replaces persuasion.

The United States still stands apart.

America received a perfect score in CPAC’s ratings—not because we are flawless, but because we remain the only nation on Earth with both a constitutional guarantee of free speech and a judicial system that still enforces it.

Even amid fierce internal debate, speech in America remains a right, not a privilege.

That makes the United States not just an outlier, but a model that other nations should be moving toward, not away from.

But a strong score today is not a permanent guarantee.

America’s free-speech culture depends not only on laws, but on restraint. Political movements across the spectrum are free to argue their case in the marketplace of ideas. What must be resisted is the temptation to silence opponents through state power, mob intimidation, or violence.

There have been close calls. The prosecution of Douglass Mackey for a political meme tested the limits of speech protection. His conviction was later overturned on appeal, and he never spent a day in prison. That outcome matters. When free speech survives the close cases, the culture remains free. When it fails, conformity follows.

The lesson for Americans is not complacency, it is vigilance. Around the world, prison cells reveal what happens when nations choose control over debate. The United States still has time to choose wisely, but only if freedom is defended before it is rationed.

To view the full CPAC Freedom of Speech Ratings and country scorecards, click HERE.

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

Last month, the Las Vegas police department became the first in the US to deploy a fleet of Tesla Cybertrucks for patrol, according to The Guardian.

The 10 black-and-white vehicles, equipped with sirens and emergency lights, were donated — costing taxpayers nothing, according to Sheriff Kevin McMahill.

“They represent something far bigger than just a police car,” McMahill said. “They represent innovation.”

News of the trucks first emerged in February when McMahill posted renderings on X, writing “These are badass.”

The department later said the fleet “was entirely donated by an anonymous supporter.” That donor was soon revealed as Silicon Valley investor Ben Horowitz and his wife Felicia, who live in Las Vegas and have long supported the police department. Their donation — worth about $2.7m — included 10 patrol vehicles and one Swat “sting protector” and was finalized in January 2025 through a law-enforcement charity called Behind the Blue.

“As we’ve discussed, the use of these vehicles would represent a groundbreaking approach to modern policing,” wrote police chief of staff Mike Gennaro in a December 2024 email. “The morale of the cops will be through the roof when these show up at their substations… And we will use them as a tool to keep morale high and cops productive.”

The trucks were retrofitted by California firm UpFit with tactical gear, barrier shields, radios and ladders. One Swat vehicle will be used in situations involving “barricaded suspects and hostage incidents.” Tesla’s high-speed “beast mode” was removed from all vehicles.

Reaction has been mixed. Athar Haseebullah of the ACLU of Nevada said the vehicles appear to endorse Tesla CEO Elon Musk. “I recognize that LVMPD sees value in having cool-looking vehicles around… But the reality is that for communities, that’s not what they’re asking for,” he said. “They’re asking to feel safer. I don’t know that a Tesla Cybertruck makes anybody feel any safer.”

The Guardian writes that other US cities have faced backlash over Tesla fleet purchases, while several California police departments testing Tesla sedans have said the vehicles are ill-suited to modern policing.

The donation also comes as Cybertruck sales slump and the model faces repeated recalls — including defects involving side panels, accelerator pedals and light bars. Despite Musk’s claims that the truck is “apocalypse-proof” and “really tough, not fake tough,” the vehicle has struggled in the market and is banned in Europe for pedestrian safety concerns.

“Why didn’t they pick any other type of vehicle?” Haseebullah asked. “Why would a Tesla be more efficient for police to utilize than a Ford?”

McMahill remains enthusiastic. For him, the trucks are about building “the most technologically advanced police department on the planet.”

“These trucks are high performance and they’re built tough,” he said. “Cops are going to look kinda cool in them too.”

Authored by Michael Snyder via TheMostImportantNews.com,

If you are having a really difficult time keeping up with the rapidly rising cost of living, you are certainly not alone.  This year, “affordability” was a buzzword that was constantly on the lips of politicians, economists and talking heads on television.  As you will see below, Americans are being slammed by rising prices from a multitude of directions.  Meanwhile, “layoffs” has been another buzzword that has been widely used in 2025.  Thanks to the rise of AI and our steadily deteriorating economy, we have seen far more mass layoffs this year than we did last year.  Unfortunately, one survey has found that executives are gearing up for an even larger round in 2026.

This is what happens when you flood the system with money and you go into unprecedented amounts of debt.

Eventually a day of reckoning arrives.

Ever since the Great Recession, our leaders have been pursuing highly inflationary policies, and now the American people “are yelling about affordability”…

Affordability has been a source of household frustration and a key focus of political discourse in recent months, as prices for everyday goods and services continue to rise.

“People are yelling about affordability,” said Martha Gimbel, executive director and co-founder of the Budget Lab at Yale University. “I think it’s very obviously become a political flash point,” she said.

It wasn’t a foregone conclusion that things would turn out this way.

If we had made different choices, we would have gotten different results.

But we can’t go back and change the past now.  At this point, things are so bad that “affordability” has become the number one concern for U.S. voters…

A University of Michigan poll published in December shows that high prices remain a pain point for consumers. About 46% blame high prices for poor personal finances — among the highest shares since the series started in the late 1970s.

Consumers’ views of their current financial situation in December “collapsed” into negative territory for the first time since July 2022, the month after pandemic-era inflation had peaked, according to a poll published Tuesday by the Conference Board.

Overall, 65% of U.S. households say the cost of living has gotten worse or much worse in the past year, according to a recent Politico poll.

Healthcare costs have risen particularly rapidly.

One 62-year-old man that was recently interviewed by Business Insider openly admitted that he cannot afford to get sick, but he can’t afford to be healthy either…

David Deal’s 2026 outlook is what he describes as a “whack-a-mole of worry.” While he’s 62 and presumably approaching retirement, 65 is “just a number” for him, not a milestone marker for throwing in the towel on his career like his parents’ generation. The thing that really has him wound up, though, is healthcare, which he calls a “DEFCON 1” situation. Deal, a marketing consultant who lives in the Chicago suburbs, and his wife pay for their own insurance, and their premiums are going up by 25% next year. He’s worried one slip on the ice this winter could mean financial disaster. A family member’s recent two-hour trip to the ER cost them thousands of dollars, even with insurance, and the episode has him spooked.

“For me, it’s the double-whammy of skyrocketing premiums and also the skyrocketing costs of actually getting care,” he says. “We are literally at a point where we can’t afford to be sick, and we can’t afford to be healthy.”

He emphasizes that he means a collective “we” — he knows he’s far from alone in his predicament.

Health insurance premiums are set to rise even higher in 2026, and many Americans are cancelling their policies as a result.

When you don’t have health insurance, you just pray that you don’t get sick.

If you do get sick, it can be a financial disaster.

Meanwhile, one recent survey discovered that 75 percent of Americans have “reduced spending in other areas” just so that they can afford to pay for their groceries…

But whatever their preferences, many shoppers still fretted about how to pay for their groceries. More than 2 in 3 respondents (67.6%) said that they’re struggling to pay grocery bills because of inflation and rising food prices, according to a survey by Swiftly, which provides digital and media solutions for brick-and-mortar supermarkets.

More than 3 out of 4 (75.2%) responded that they’ve reduced spending in other areas to afford groceries, and in a follow-up question selected what areas they’ve cut spending in the most to pay grocery bills, with entertainment spending the most likely to be cut, followed by spending on travel, clothing, and going out to eat or drink.

Government bureaucrats keep telling us that food prices are not going up very quickly.

But everyone can see that they are wrong.

And going out to eat has become a luxury that most of the population simply cannot afford on a regular basis.  As a result, restaurants are closing down at a staggering pace…

New data shows that 2025 was a record year for restaurant closures in the District.

The Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington (RAMW) reports 92 restaurants closed their doors this year, compared to 73 closures in 2024 and 48 in 2022.

Purchasing a new vehicle has also become a luxury that most of the population simply cannot afford any longer.

Since the early days of the pandemic, the average price of a new vehicle has gone from less than $38,000 to more than $50,000…

Americans are shelling out record car payments — and now some are signing up for loans stretching nearly a decade to get a new set of wheels.

The average monthly payment for a new car hit about $760 in November, according to industry-research firm J.D. Power, after the typical new-vehicle price surged past the $50,000 mark this fall — up from less than $38,000 in early 2020.

With sticker shock everywhere, buyers are leaning hard on longer financing to keep payments from exploding — even if that means paying far more interest over time.

Some dealers are now stretching out vehicle payments for 100 months so that people can actually afford them.

To me, that is absolutely insane.

But this is the economic system that we live in now.

It is designed to get us into as much debt as possible, and at this stage U.S. households are a whopping 18.6 trillion dollars in debt…

The Federal Reserve signaled a higher bar for 2026 interest rate cuts at its December meeting, potentially snatching away a much-needed reprieve for millions of Americans saddled with debt.

Household debt ballooned to a record $18.6 trillion during the third quarter of 2025, and the central bank is expected to lower its benchmark rate just once or twice next year to soften borrowing costs.

Americans have never been more overextended than they are right now.

It was another record year for credit card debt during the holiday season, but vast numbers of our fellow citizens are still paying off credit card debt from Christmas 2024.

Getting deep into debt in this very challenging economic environment is very foolish, because most people do not have jobs that are secure.

In fact, job security is now the number two concern for U.S. voters…

Job security rose to workers’ second-most pressing concern this year, after covering their monthly expenses, according to a new survey by Mercer.

While “covering monthly expenses” had been the leading concern for the past three annual surveys, fears around job loss jumped from seventh place in 2023 to second place in 2025, where it was tied with being able to retire and work-life balance. Mercer did not conduct this survey in 2024.

Throughout this year, I have documented so many of the mass layoffs that have been occurring all over the nation.

For example, Tyson Foods has announced that a beef processing facility in Lexington, Nebraska will be shut down permanently next month, and that means that approximately 3,200 workers will be losing their jobs.

A reporter that visited Lexington discovered that fear of what those layoffs would mean had gripped the entire area…

On a frigid day after Mass at St. Ann’s Catholic Church in rural Nebraska, worshipers shuffled into the basement and sat on folding chairs, their faces barely masking the fear gripping their town.

There are only about 11,000 people living in Lexington, and so these layoffs have the potential to turn it into a ghost town…

“Suddenly they tell us that there’s no more work. Your world closes in on you,” Alejandra Gutierrez said

She and the others work at Tyson Foods’ beef plant and are among the 3,200 people who will lose their jobs when Lexington’s biggest employer closes the plant next month after more than two decades of operation.

Hundreds of families may be forced to pack up and leave the town of 11,000, heading east to Omaha or Iowa, or south to the meatpacking towns of Kansas or beyond, causing spinoff layoffs in Lexington’s restaurants, barbershops, grocers, convenience stores and taco trucks.

There are so many other examples that I could share with you.

In Michigan, the closure of a facility in Detroit will mean that more than a thousand General Motors employees will be out of work starting on January 5th…

According to WARN Act notices filed in November, 1,140 General Motors employees will be let go from the company’s Factory Zero site in Detroit, Michigan on January 5.

In a filing with the Michigan Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity, General Motors said the cuts would be permanent, affect several roles, and stemmed from adjustments related to the slower-than-expected adoption of electric vehicles.

Sadly, this is just the beginning.

According to one recent survey, over one-third of all large companies intend to slash their payrolls during the months ahead…

In November, executive search firm Spencer Stuart asked 90 chief marketing officers how aggressively they plan to use AI to shrink payrolls, the Wall Street Journal reported.

More than one in three executives said that they expect to hand out pink slips in the next 12 to 24 months as they deploy more computer agents.

The trend is even worse among bigger companies.

Nearly half the executives at firms worth more than $20 billion said they’re planning significant job cuts.

If this survey is accurate, we could see millions of layoffs over the next couple of years.

Just think about that.

We were warned that this was going to happen.

Now it is playing out right in front of our eyes.

And survey after survey is indicating that the American people are quite gloomy about where economic conditions are heading next…

Americans are ending 2025 significantly more pessimistic about the direction of their financial situations than they were at the start of the year, according to the University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment gauge from early December. Its reading on personal finance expectations is 12% below where it was at the beginning of the year. A November consumer survey from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York similarly found that people are increasingly gloomy about their current and future finances, and their expectations for increased medical care costs are at their highest levels since January 2014.

If you understand what is happening, that will help you to make better decisions.

When conditions get tough, those that are wise tighten things up.

Sadly, most of the population continues to party as if tomorrow will never come, but no matter how hard one may try it is impossible to stop the inexorable march of time.

Michael’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.