The Trump administration expanded its crackdown on far-left violent extremist networks Thursday, as the State Department designated four far-left militant groups as Specially Designated Global Terrorists (SDGTs) and announced plans to formally add them to the Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO) list next Thursday.

The four radical left groups include:

Antifa Ost

• Antifa Ost (also known as Antifa East and Hammerbande) is a Germany-based militant group. Antifa Ost conducted numerous attacks against individuals it perceives as “fascists” or part of the “right-wing scene” in Germany between 2018 and 2023 and is accused of having conducted a series of attacks in Budapest in mid-February 2023.

• On September 26, 2025, Hungary declared Antifa Ost to be a terrorist organization and added the group to its national anti-terrorism list.

Informal Anarchist Federation/International Revolutionary Front (FAI/FRI)

• FAI/FRI is a militant anarchist group that primarily operates in Italy with historical self-proclaimed affiliates across Europe, South America, and Asia. FAI/FRI declares the necessity of the revolutionary armed struggle against nation states and “The Fortress Europe.”

• Since 2003, FAI/FRI has claimed responsibility for threats of violence, bombs, and letter bombs against political and economic institutions, including a courthouse and other “capitalist institutions.”

Armed Proletarian Justice

• Armed Proletarian Justice is a Greek anarchist and “anti-capitalist” group that has attempted and conducted improvised explosive device (IED) attacks against Greek government targets.

• Armed Proletarian Justice claimed responsibility for planting a bomb near the Greek riot police headquarters in Goudi, Greece on December 18, 2023.

Revolutionary Class Self-Defense

• Revolutionary Class Self-Defense is a Greek anarchist and “anti-capitalist” group. The group links its actions to broader political and social issues and cites opposition to “capitalist structures,” “state repression,” and solidarity with Palestine.

• Revolutionary Class Self-Defense claimed responsibility for two IED attacks targeting the Greece Ministry of Labor (February 3, 2024) and the Hellenic Train offices (April 11, 2025).

The designations remove these radical leftists from the U.S. financial system, block their assets under U.S. jurisdiction, bar U.S. persons from doing business with them, and criminalize providing material support.

Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) commented on the State Department’s news release, indicating, “It’s a major step in our fight against Antifa’s terror network.”

Schmitt boasted, “I was proud to work with the administration to make it happen,” adding, “This is a huge deal.”

Seems like Schmitt has made some enemies with FTOs after those comments. 

Today, the State Department announced its plan to designate four violent Antifa cells as Foreign Terrorist Organizations.

It’s a major step in our fight against Antifa’s terror network.

I was proud to work with the administration to make it happen.

This is a huge deal. 🧵 pic.twitter.com/Vh7m1hxDRa

— Senator Eric Schmitt (@SenEricSchmitt) November 13, 2025

Schmitt continued in a series of posts:

Antifa is not an “idea.” It is a sophisticated, violent terrorist movement—and its network extends far beyond our borders. As I have outlined at length in the past, the Antifa violence we see on U.S. soil is driven by a global web of extremist groups.

He noted:

Americans should understand that these aren’t isolated local gangs. They are chapters in the same transnational movement that fuels leftist violence from Atlanta to Athens. These militants are in regular communication with each other, coordinating and mobilizing across borders.

And this:

Antifa operates as a decentralized, cell-based terror network. It has no identifiable “leader.” But that’s a feature, not a bug—an intentional structure employed by far-left terror movements since the Weather Underground.

As @ShidelerK noted in a recent congressional testimony: pic.twitter.com/bJabJPWmFM

— Senator Eric Schmitt (@SenEricSchmitt) November 13, 2025

This transnational network includes fundraising streams, encrypted servers, doxxing networks, safe houses and “squats” to hide fugitives, training camps, and cross-border coordination for violent attacks.

This, for example, is a segment from Europol’s 2023 Terrorism Report: pic.twitter.com/CcNdKaAFei

— Senator Eric Schmitt (@SenEricSchmitt) November 13, 2025

All of this is critical to the operations of Antifa cells in America.

It’s no coincidence that, at the “Stop Cop City” riots in Atlanta, authorities found the Antifa militants they arrested during the violence were an “international group”—traveling from France, Canada, etc. pic.twitter.com/4v2lMVbOYa

— Senator Eric Schmitt (@SenEricSchmitt) November 13, 2025

It’s no coincidence that, in Portland, the violent Antifa cells rely on the services of the Italy-based “radical left hacking collective” Autistici/Inventati to plan, coordinate and organize their attacks:https://t.co/OGWBqROlTM

— Senator Eric Schmitt (@SenEricSchmitt) November 13, 2025

The list goes on. But for the first time, thanks to President Trump and Secretary Rubio, the U.S. government is getting serious about confronting and dismantling this network.

Under U.S. law, a Foreign Terrorist Organization designation is one of the strongest tools we have.

— Senator Eric Schmitt (@SenEricSchmitt) November 13, 2025

Remember this? 

• Watch: Journalist Locates Portland Antifa Founder Hiding In Sweden

After the Trump administration designated Rose City Antifa as a terrorist group, I can now reveal that its founder has resurfaced in Varberg, Sweden.

Early this morning, I approached Johan Victorin for comment on the designation — and whether he fears prosecution. pic.twitter.com/RuBxT0MRwh

— Christian Peterson 🇸🇪 (English) (@christianpet_) October 6, 2025

U.S.-based Antifa-aligned cells have gained operational space and momentum over the past decade, aided indirectly by Democratic Party messaging – whether intentional or incidental remains the question – that has amplified Antifa’s framing by sustaining a prolonged information war portraying President Trump and the MAGA movement as “fascist,” reinforcing the group’s core justification for escalation and violence.

Coordinated. 

It’s no mystery how Charlie Kirk’s murderer was conditioned to think conservatives are fascists. pic.twitter.com/9ZItjQE1nr

— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) September 12, 2025

Operational intentions are straightforward. The plan was also to sow chaos:

• “Planning War Against Fascists” – Socialist Rifle Association Boasts 10,000 Members

While the administration has pledged to dismantle violent far-left networks, the fight cannot stop at Antifa. The broader dark-money billionaire-funded NGO sphere has been driving a decade-long color revolution against MAGA, and conspired against the White House to derail Trump’s agenda at every turn.

💸 Billionaire #1: GEORGE SOROS

Soros’s Open Society network directly contributed $72 million+ to official No Kings 2.0 organizers & partners. Soros is a primary architect of the “Riot Inc.” political protest model and a master of “color revolutions.” pic.twitter.com/nOLLmeHNZm

— Seamus Bruner (@seamusbruner) October 16, 2025

Conservative nonprofits have warned the administration about the collateral damage a sweeping crackdown on NGOs could cause, but the reality is that if reforms don’t come to the nonprofit universe, the Marxist movement will continue undermining the administration. 

• “At What Point Does This Become Treason?”

Capital Research Center and investigative researchers Peter Schweizer and Seamus Bruner of the Government Accountability Institute have already mapped out the NGO crisis in detail for millennial and Gen Z staffers in the White House to understand fully.

Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via American Greatness,

Between 1892 and 1954, approximately 12 million immigrants arrived at the now-iconic Ellis Island to enter the U.S.—or nearly 200,000 legal entries per year.

All were registered, documented, and given rudimentary health exams.

They arrived as rich and poor, white and non-white, and, without exception, legally.

With the gradual decline of such great influxes, Ellis Island finally ceased operating roughly 71 years ago.

Yet Ellis Island’s successful tenure offers a sharp contrast to the failures of our recent open-border catastrophes.

Americans will never know how many immigrants swarmed the southern border between 2021 and 2025, when Joe Biden and his impeached Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas destroyed federal immigration law as we once knew it.

By design, they allowed between 10 and 12 million foreign nationals to make a mockery of federal immigration laws by swarming the southern border.

Many crossers grew violent at any sign of even meek efforts by ICE officers to enforce the law. Border Patrol officers were often mocked, threatened, and assaulted by arriving illegal aliens.

Officers were unsure as to what was worse: the occasional violence from illegal immigrants or retaliation from the Biden administration if they sought to enforce federal law and block illegal entrants.

So the Biden administration pulled off the near impossible. In a mere four years, it had invited in almost as many illegal immigrants as had entered through Ellis Island legally over seven decades.

But unlike past immigrants, we now witness organized violence against ICE officials. We see Orwellian scenes of mobs burning the American flag—the flag of the country they demand to stay in—while waving the flags of the countries they have no desire or intention of returning to.

In sum, three generations ago, a smaller, poorer, but wiser America properly solved its immigration problem at Ellis Island—welcoming in immigrants orderly and legally with health and background screenings.

In contrast, during the Biden years, we, in our arrogance and affluence, engaged in a great experiment—or rather misadventure. Never in our history has the U.S. been home to roughly 53 million foreign-born residents.

Never have immigrants comprised nearly 16 percent of the population.

Never has California had 27 percent of its residents not born in the U.S.

Never have we allowed in up to 10,000 aliens a day, with little concern for whether they carried fentanyl, had criminal records, were sick, were unvaccinated, were traffickers, or belonged to violent gangs.

Worse still, the Biden administration made zero effort to acculturate, integrate, and assimilate this massive influx. In fact, they did the very opposite of Ellis Island’s protocols, which fostered pro-American values, melting-pot integration, and respect for American history and culture. Once upon a time, new arrivals were all expected to become Americans—or why else had they come?

Now, the moment an illegal alien has entered the U.S., he likely senses that his ethnicity or race will be essential to his identity. In the minds of the ruling DEI commissariat, claiming a tribal identity offers an easy pathway to generous housing, food, healthcare, legal, and educational entitlements.

So, under Biden’s immigration non-policy, almost all illegal immigrants were immediately categorized as victims in the Marxist binary ledger that now divides America into the oppressed vs. the oppressors.

If one devised a plan to damage America, he could not have done better than further dividing us by tribal chauvinism, overwhelming our fragile social services so essential to struggling Americans, and fueling the already dangerous neo-Confederate state and local nullifications of federal law and the growth of “sanctuary cities.”

Daily, we witness performance-art mayors and governors boasting of how they “resist” federal law enforcement. These modern rebels pose as if they are our own era’s versions of mini-Confederate states. They now brag of states’ rights as they dare the federal government to protect its own property and enforce federal laws within their parochial jurisdictions.

Why did Biden—or whoever was making policy in his place—destroy the border?

What was his utterly mad intent?

To alter the nation’s demography by importing future Democrat constituents dependent on state largesse?

To bow to the demands of his DEI base?

To mindlessly do the opposite of the prior Trump administration, which had closed the border and returned to legal-only immigration?

Virtue signaling while waving illegal aliens across an open border is easy.

But trying to close the border and return millions who entered unlawfully to their homelands is nearly impossible.

It is surreal that those who claimed moral superiority while systemically destroying federal law now condemn as immoral those striving to restore it.

Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A new report from the Intercontinental Exchange shows that nearly 875,000 homeowners now owe more on their mortgages than their properties are worth—the highest level in three years—as softening home prices and elevated borrowing costs squeeze household finances.

The surge in negative equity represents 1.6 percent of all mortgage holders and highlights a worsening affordability landscape that officials in the Trump administration say is weighing on the broader economy.

While the jump is notable, the Intercontinental Exchange said in the Nov. 10 report, the overall share of underwater loans remains comparable to long-term averages prior to the pandemic housing boom, with the exception of the Great Recession. Still, the company warned that certain markets are seeing concentrated pockets of borrower vulnerability as prices continue to retreat from their post-COVID peaks.

“While overall negative equity rates remain low, certain markets are showing signs of concern, particularly in the Gulf Coast of Florida and Austin, Texas,” the report noted.

In Cape Coral, Florida, for example, where home prices are down 15 percent from their peak, 11 percent of mortgages are underwater, including more than one-third of those that originated between 2023 and 2024, when rates were highest.

The rise in negative equity is concentrated among recent, lower-down-payment borrowers, particularly those with Federal Housing Administration (FHA) and Veterans Affairs (VA) loans issued in 2023 and 2024.

In some VA cohorts, more than 20 percent of borrowers are now underwater, the Intercontinental Exchange said—a reflection of both local price declines and the fact that these newer borrowers never benefited from the pandemic-era equity cushions that protected earlier buyers.

Another 6.9 percent of mortgage holders have less than 10 percent equity remaining, the highest share since mid-2020. While the Intercontinental Exchange noted that the figure remains below long-term averages, low-equity borrowers are typically more vulnerable to credit stress if home prices continue to fall.

At the same time, the report struck a more positive tone on the outlook for refinancing and equity access as borrowing costs begin to ease.

The Intercontinental Exchange said falling mortgage rates have “significantly expanded” the number of homeowners who could lower their monthly payments, while also reducing the cost of tapping home equity.

“The recent easing in mortgage rates has begun to open the refinance window for many borrowers, particularly those who originated loans in the past two years,” Andy Walden, head of Mortgage and Housing Market Research at the Intercontinental Exchange, said in a statement.

The Intercontinental Exchange’s data show the number of highly qualified refinance candidates—those with strong credit, at least 20 percent equity, and potential savings of 75 basis points or more—rose to 1.7 million in late October, the largest since early 2022.

Including broader borrower profiles, approximately 4.1 million mortgage holders are currently “in the money” to refinance, a figure that could approach 5 million if rates drift slightly lower.

Housing in ‘Recession,’ Treasury Secretary Warns

The equity deterioration comes amid growing concern inside the Trump administration that high mortgage rates are dragging the housing sector into a downturn.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a recent interview on CNN that parts of the economy “are in recession,” in particular housing, and that high borrowing costs are hitting low-income Americans the hardest.

“We have seen the biggest hindrance for housing here that are mortgage rates,” Bessent said. “So, if the Fed brings down mortgage rates, then they can end this housing recession.”

Bessent echoed warnings from Federal Reserve board member Stephen Miran, who told The New York Times in an earlier interview that keeping monetary policy “this tight for a long period of time” risks inducing a recession. Miran said he sees no reason for the central bank to delay further rate cuts with inflation cooling.

Borrowers Under Strain as Credit Stress Mounts

Beyond housing, other consumer-credit segments are flashing warning signs. Subprime auto-loan delinquencies hit 6.65 percent in October—the highest level on record since the early 1990s—according to Fitch Ratings. Two major auto-finance firms serving low-income borrowers filed for bankruptcy this fall.

Foreclosure activity is also creeping higher. More than 101,000 properties received filings in the third quarter, up 17 percent from a year earlier, according to ATTOM.

Mortgage delinquencies—while still low by historical standards—have also begun to rise from last year’s trough, according to data from VantageScore and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Reuters and Naveen Athrapully contributed to this report.

While President Trump reiterated earlier this month that he doesn’t want China getting its hands on Nvidia’s most advanced AI chips, a Chinese AI company has found a convenient loophole: Indonesia. 

An investigation by the Wall Street Journal reveals that around 2,300 of said chips have been procured by said Chinese AI company – and has traced how “a chain of deals across several countries got the chips inside the data center, which is wedged between a private school and an upscale apartment complex. A company that arranged the transaction is a subsidiary of a Chinese business on an American trade blacklist.”

And the kicker: none of it appears to have violated US law.

China has notably been barred from buying advanced US semiconductors since 2022 over national-security concerns. And while Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang insists that Nvidia’s market share in China has ‘fallen to zero’ from 95% due to the US export restrictions – which is clearly not the case. 

Some bring the chips physically into China using middlemen. Another increasingly popular workaround, which has been employed in Australia and Malaysia, is renting computing power abroad and bringing data out of China and back—sometimes by packing suitcases with hard drives, the Journal has previously reported.

In the Indonesia case, the Journal was able to trace the chips from start to finish, including the specific entities involved. American technology is being made available to a Chinese company through these four steps. -WSJ

Here’s how it works: 

1. Nvidia sells chips to a U.S. partner partly owned by a Chinese firm

   Nvidia supplies advanced AI chips to Aivres, a Silicon Valley server builder whose parent company is one-third owned by Inspur—a Chinese tech firm placed on a U.S. national-security blacklist in 2023. While Nvidia is barred from dealing with Inspur or its blacklisted subsidiaries, the restrictions don’t extend to U.S.-based entities like Aivres, allowing the business relationship to continue.

2. Aivres finds an overseas buyer for high-end Nvidia servers

   In mid-2024, Aivres negotiated a $100 million deal to sell 32 Nvidia GB200 server racks – containing roughly 2,300 Blackwell-generation chips – to Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison’s cloud-computing division in Indonesia. Indosat is jointly owned by Qatar’s Ooredoo and Hong Kong’s CK Hutchison.

3. The Indonesian buyer lines up a Chinese AI startup as the end user

   Indosat agreed to purchase the servers only after securing a major client facilitated by Aivres: Shanghai-based AI startup INF Tech. Negotiations also included representatives from Fudan University, where INF’s founder, Qi Yuan, directs an AI institute.

4. The Chinese startup intends to use the chips for finance and medical AI

   By October, the servers had arrived in Indonesia and were being set up. INF plans to use the computing power to train AI models for financial analytics and scientific research, including drug-discovery applications.

According to attorneys familiar with export-control rules, as long as the Chinese company isn’t directly using the chips to help China with military intelligence or weapons of mass destruction, the arrangement doesn’t violate any laws set by the Trump administration. 

Interestingly, the Journal reports that in the waning days of the Biden Autopen administration, a rule was created that would have tightened controls over the sale of advanced US chips to countries such as Indonesia that aren’t in a small group of US allies – yet, the Trump administration later said it wouldn’t enforce the rule, which would have given the US a chance to scrutinize the customer’s intentions, along with the exporter – particularly if they were on a national-security trade blacklist known as the “entity list.” 

One way or another, China gets their racks. (h/t Capital.news)

Authored by Vince Quill via CoinTelegraph.com,

The last penny, nominally valued at $0.01, was minted by the United States Mint in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on Wednesday, marking the end of 232 years of new pennies being coined and circulated.

US President Donald Trump directed the US Treasury to stop producing pennies in February, and the Treasury initially set a 2026 target for the last mint. However, the Treasury exhausted the templates used to manufacture the coins between June and September, according to Axios.

A penny costs about 3.7 times its face value to manufacture, meaning that each $0.01 coin actually costs over $0.03.

While it is no longer economically feasible to mint more US pennies, the coin will remain as legal tender, with the more than 250 billion physical pennies continuing to circulate.

“Inflation made the penny useless. Meanwhile, it’s making the sat more relevant every year,” Alexander Leishman, CEO of Bitcoin financial services company River, said, referring to the subunit of one Bitcoin.

Bitcoin as a solution to the erosion of fiat money’s value

Bitcoin was created as an alternative monetary system that has a supply cap of 21 million coins, meaning that as demand for BTC increases, so should the price per coin.

Technological development is a deflationary force that makes the production process more efficient and reduces the price of goods and services over time, according to author, economist and BTC advocate Saifedean Ammous.

Fiat currencies, in contrast, fail to capture this price deflation because their supply is constantly increasing, resulting in reduced purchasing power over time, which is reflected in the higher prices of goods, assets and services.

In other words, the price of goods and services is not increasing; the value of fiat currencies is declining relative to goods, services and hard assets, according to Ammous.

If those same goods, services, and assets were denominated in BTC or some other hard money standard, prices would go down over time, the economist argues.

Median home prices measured in BTC showcase how a supply-capped hard money benefits the holder through depreciating prices of goods, services and assets. Source: Priced In Bitcoin

The US dollar has lost over 92% of its value since the creation of the Federal Reserve Banking System in 1913, according to precious metals dealer The Gold Bureau.

Meanwhile, Bitcoin hit all-time highs above $126,000 in October, as the US dollar was on track for its worst year since 1973, according to market analysts at The Kobeissi Letter.

“The USD has lost about 40% of its purchasing power since 2000,” The Kobeissi Letter said in October, adding that it lost over 10% of its value year-to-date as of October.

Source: Anthony Pompliano

However, economist Paul Krugman, who has long been critical of cryptocurrencies and BTC, said the dollar’s power rests in how easy it is to use, compared to BTC, which is difficult for the average person to hold and transact with.

“The whole point about the dollar is it’s really easy to use, and Bitcoin is not easy to use,” Krugman told podcast host Hasan Minhaj.

Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) is super pissed after Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) Director Bill Pulte referred him to the DOJ for criminal prosecution over alleged mortgage fraud.

On Thursday, Swalwell lashed out, saying in a statement “As the most vocal critic of Donald Trump over the last decade and as the only person who still has a surviving lawsuit against him, the only thing I am surprised about is that it took him this long to come after me,” adding “Like James Comey and John Bolton, Adam Schiff and Lisa Cook, Letitia James and the dozens more to come — I refuse to live in fear in what was once the freest country in the world.“

The accusations against Swalwell are connected to a DC property, according to CBS News. 

Hilariously, Democrats and their media lapdogs are SHOCKED that Trump, who they went after hammer and tong for a decade, would investigate their actual (alleged!) crimes and go after them. 

Pulte, has leveled similar accusations against several other officials, including Democrats New York Attorney General Letitia James and California Sen. Adam Schiff, and Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook. 

James was indicted on one count of bank fraud and one count of making false statements to a financial institution last month and pleaded not guilty. President Trump moved to fire Cook in August after Pulte accused her of making misrepresentations on mortgage documents. But Cook filed a lawsuit arguing her removal was unlawful, and the Supreme Court will hear arguments in January on whether Mr. Trump can fire her from the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. –CBS News

In September, Swalwell said that he “fully” expects to be prosecuted by the Trump administration – while also confronting FBI Director Kash Patel during a congressional appearance that same month, noting that Patel had referred to him as a “government gangster.” 

“You identified 60 individuals in that book. You put me on that list at the top of the list,” Swalwell said, adding “Thank you. My children find it flattering… Twenty of those individuals have been investigated or have had adverse actions.” As part of his statement, Swalwell told President Trump to “do better. Be better.” 

And then he got tricked into banging another Chinese spy (kidding!).

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

President Donald Trump delivered a game-changing pitch on healthcare during an address Wednesday, calling for a radical shift in how federal funds are distributed under Obamacare.

Putting Americans first, Trump proposed redirecting massive subsidies away from wealthy insurance companies and straight into the pockets of everyday people.

“I am calling today for insurance companies NOT to be paid. But for this massive amount of money be paid DIRECTLY to the people so they can buy their own healthcare!” Trump stated, highlighting the inefficiencies of the current system.

🚨 WOW! President Trump has the Democrats TOTALLY CORNERED on Obamacare

“I am calling today for insurance companies NOT to be paid. But for this massive amount of money be paid DIRECTLY to the people so they can buy their own healthcare!”

“Their stocks have gone up 1,000%!… pic.twitter.com/V8gWK8RdSo

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) November 13, 2025

He slammed the status quo, noting, “Their stocks have gone up 1,000%! Because our country STUPIDLY pays them so much money with this Obamacare scandal.”

Emphasizing empowerment, Trump added, “I want the money to go directly to YOU, the PEOPLE!” and vowed, “We will pay a lot of money to the people, and FORGET this Obamacare madness!”

This innovative approach positions Democrats in a tough spot, as opposing direct aid to citizens could prove politically toxic.

The Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare, has long been criticized for funneling billions in taxpayer dollars to insurance giants through premium subsidies that reduce costs for enrollees.

Currently, these payments go directly to insurers, with over 90% of marketplace participants qualifying for enhanced subsidies in 2025 alone. Republicans, including Trump, have decried this as a giveaway that has bloated insurer profits, with major health insurance stocks soaring post-ACA implementation—some by as much as 1,000% as Trump noted.

This system has driven up costs for families while enriching corporations, leading to premium hikes averaging 26% in 2026. Critics argue it’s a bureaucratic mess that prioritizes big business over individuals, a point Trump’s proposal aims to rectify by cutting out the middlemen and letting Americans choose their own plans.

Trump has been a fierce opponent of Obamacare since his first term, repeatedly vowing to repeal and replace the flawed law. In 2017, he pushed for legislation to dismantle it, though congressional efforts fell short.

During his 2024 campaign, Trump reiterated his commitment, stating in debates that he aimed to “terminate” the ACA and introduce “brand new beautiful health care.” He has consistently argued that Obamacare destroys choice and inflates costs, promising alternatives that expand affordable options and end surprise billing.

In previous remarks, Trump outlined a vision for healthcare that reduces drug prices, increases fairness, and empowers consumers—principles now embodied in his direct-payment idea. This latest push builds on executive actions from his prior administration, such as rescinding rules that limited drug spending in Medicaid and Medicare.

The current Trump administration maintains a strong focus on dismantling Obamacare’s inefficiencies while prioritizing American families.

Recent executive orders have rolled back burdensome regulations, emphasizing trade policies to lower costs and tariffs to fund potential dividends. Officials like those in the Department of Health and Human Services have backed legal immunity for reforms and affirmed Trump’s authority to redirect funds.

Amid the recent government shutdown, Trump urged Senate Republicans to prioritize direct payments, potentially through health savings accounts, to bypass insurers and foster competition.

This aligns with broader goals to cut Medicaid funding and ACA subsidies that balloon federal spending, putting power back in the hands of the people rather than corporations. As experts note, such moves could transform healthcare into a more efficient, consumer-driven system, despite pushback from entrenched interests.

Trump has also masterfully framed his proposal as a populist boon for everyday Americans, promising to cut out corporate middlemen and deliver funds directly to individuals for better, more personalized healthcare choices.

By emphasizing that this would allow people to “buy their own healthcare” and even have “money left over,” Trump positions the plan as an improvement over Obamacare’s bloated system, putting the American people first and forcing Democrats into a defensive posture.

Opposing direct payments risks being seen as siding with wealthy insurers over struggling families, a narrative that could prove disastrous in swing districts.

Democrats like Rep. Adam Schiff have dismissed the idea, but policy analysts warn that rejecting such consumer-focused reforms might alienate voters amid rising premiums.

Trump’s call to redirect subsidies directly to citizens cleverly ties into broader America First themes, making it challenging for opponents to counter without appearing to defend corporate profits over public welfare. This strategic approach not only energizes his base but also pressures bipartisan support for overhauling a system long criticized for inefficiency.

This proposal exemplifies Trump’s commitment to bold, America-first reforms, challenging Democrats to defend a system that has enriched insurers at taxpayers’ expense while promising real relief for millions.

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

Kim Kardashian’s brand Skims has closed a major new funding round, raising $225 million at a $5 billion valuation, per Lauren Hirsch. The Goldman Sachs Alternatives–led round, with BDT & MSD Partners participating, underscores how far the brand has grown beyond its shapewear origins, according to DealBook.

Founded in 2019 by Kim Kardashian and Jens Grede, Skims is profitable and expects to top $1 billion in net sales this year. Its last round in 2023 valued it at $4 billion.

The company plans to use the new capital to expand its retail footprint. Skims has 18 stores across U.S. cities like New York, Los Angeles, Austin, Atlanta and Boca Raton, and aims to grow internationally, especially in emerging markets. Kardashian said the raise “validates the hard work of our incredible team and partners … becoming a global omnichannel retail brand.”

DealBook writes that the brand is also pushing into new categories, including the high-profile NikeSkims collaboration announced in February, with apparel now and footwear and accessories planned. Skims remains the official underwear partner of the W.N.B.A., N.B.A. and USA Basketball.

Skims is building out beauty, having repurchased the 20 percent stake previously sold to Coty and hiring Ami Colé founder Diarrha N’Diaye to lead the effort. A recent hint came via the $48 Seamless Sculpt Face Wrap that uses its “signature sculpting fabric.”

New investors include Goldman Sachs Alternatives and BDT & MSD Partners, joining Wellington Management, Greenoaks, D1 Capital, Imaginary Ventures and Thrive Capital. Goldman’s Beat Cabiallavetta said Skims excels at “pioneering new categories and redefining everyday wear.”

As for an I.P.O., speculation continues, but Grede recently downplayed near-term plans, saying, “We might make that position in the future, but that’s not what I’m thinking about.”

The worsening power bill crisis across the Mid-Atlantic region, a combination of nation-killing climate change policies colliding with surging load growth from data centers, has forced Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro to sign legislation allowing the state to abandon the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI).

The Pennsylvania legislature ended the state’s RGGI participation in the new state budget, which also cut funding tied to the climate initiative, effectively reversing the state’s 2019 entry under former Governor Tom Wolf.

Senate Republicans have opposed RGGI for years, which, through its carbon-pricing structure, effectively penalizes the state’s energy sector, increasing costs for the very plants that anchor the state’s power grid and industrial economy. In return, power plants pay for CO₂ allowances that only send wholesale electricity prices higher, and result in higher power bills for businesses and families.

It’s straightforward: climate taxes = higher power bills. 

Independent reports (from grid operator PJM and state regulators) have warned RGGI would:

• pressure to close gas and coal plants early

• loss of grid resilience

• higher risk of capacity shortages

Given surging load growth from data centers, RGGI was a disaster waiting to happen that would’ve stripped the grid of spare capacity, destabilized regional power supply, and effectively paralyzed the state into a power crisis, as its neighbors just south, in Maryland, have done through failed globalist climate crisis policies.

“For years, the Republicans who’ve led the Senate have used RGGI as an excuse to stall substantive conversations about energy production; today that excuse is gone,” Shapiro told reporters during a press conference minutes before signing the budget.

Shapiro noted, “I am looking forward to aggressively pushing for policies that create more jobs in the energy sector, bring more clean energy onto our grid and reduce the cost of energy for all Pennsylvanians.”

The question becomes whether other surrounding states, many of which are experiencing power bill crises, thanks to horrible green policies that strip stable spare capacity from grids and replace it with unreliable solar and wind, which collide with expanding load growth from data centers, quietly exit RGGI.

It’s time to bring common sense back to Mid-Atlantic politics after decades of failed Democratic policies that have sparked a cost-of-living crisis. And for those leftist-controlled states still pushing the climate-crisis narrative, remember this: even Bill Gates has acknowledged that many of the extreme claims around climate policy have been overstated.

By the way, the whole climate crisis hoax delayed America’s ability to add new reliable spare capacity on the grid – now it must play catch up (all detailed in this epic report).

Authored by Vince Dioquino via Decrypt.co,

• Judges found GEMA’s claims valid, ordering OpenAI to cease reproduction and provide damages and disclosure.

• The court said GPT-4 and GPT-4o “memorized” lyrics, amounting to reproduction under EU copyright rules.

• The decision, not yet final, could set a major European precedent on AI training data.

Germany’s national music rights organization secured a partial but decisive win against OpenAI after a Munich court ruled that ChatGPT’s underlying models unlawfully reproduced copyrighted German song lyrics.

The ruling orders OpenAI to cease reproduction, disclose relevant training details, and compensate rights holders.

It is not yet final, and OpenAI may appeal.

If upheld, the decision could reshape how AI companies source and license creative material in Europe, as regulators weigh broader obligations for model transparency and training-data provenance.

The case marks the first time a European court has found that a large language model violated copyright by memorizing protected works.

In its decision, the 42nd Civil Chamber of the Munich I Regional Court said that GPT-4 and GPT-4o contained “reproducible” lyrics from nine well-known songs, including Kristina Bach’s “Atemlos” and Rolf Zuckowski’s “Wie schön, dass du geboren bist.”

The court held that such memorization constitutes a “fixation” of the original works in the model’s parameters, satisfying the legal definition of reproduction under Article 2 of the EU InfoSoc Directive and Germany’s Copyright Act.

“At least in individual cases, when prompted accordingly, the model produces an output whose content is at least partially identical to content from the earlier training dataset,” a translated copy of the written judgement provided by the Munich court to Decrypt reads.

The model “generates a sequence of tokens that appears statistically plausible because, for example, it was contained in the training process in a particularly stable or frequently recurring form,” the court wrote, adding that because this “token sequence appeared on a large number of publicly accessible websites“ it meant that it was “included in the training dataset more than once.”

In the pleadings, GEMA argued that the model’s output lyrics were almost verbatim when prompted, proving that OpenAI’s systems had retained and reproduced the works.

OpenAI countered that its models do not store training data directly and that any output results from user prompts, not from deliberate copying.

The company also invoked text-and-data-mining exceptions, which allow temporary reproductions for analytical use.

“We disagree with the ruling and are considering next steps,” a spokesperson for OpenAI told Decrypt. “The decision is for a limited set of lyrics and does not impact the millions of people, businesses, and developers in Germany that use our technology every day.” 

OpenAI claims systems like theirs do not store or contain training data and thus do not hold copies of lyrics or other texts. Instead, these models learn patterns and generate new outputs based on patterns, OpenAI said.

The company told Decrypt that treating a model as if it contains stored works reflects a misunderstanding of how the technology works.

The court rejected those defenses, ruling that full reproductions embedded in a model’s structure fall outside the scope of data-mining exemptions.

“Training the models is not to be regarded as a usual and expected form of use that the rights holder must anticipate,” the court wrote. “This applies all the more when—as in the present case—the works are reproduced in the model, something that even the defendants themselves consider undesirable and against which countermeasures are taken.”

Decrypt reached out separately to GEMA for comment but has yet to receive a response by press time.