One of three virus-infected monkeys that escaped on a highway in Mississippi this past week was shot and killed by a homeowner who said she feared for her children’s safety.
Jessica Bond Ferguson told authorities that her 16-year-old son walked into their home and told her he thought he spotted one of the primates.
“I did what any other mother would do to protect her children,” Bond Ferguson said.
The mom, who lives near Heidelberg, Mississippi, with five children aged 4 to 16, first called the police, who told her to keep an eye on the monkey. But she said she worried that if it got away, it would threaten children at another house.
“If it attacked somebody’s kid, and I could have stopped it, that would be a lot on me,” Bond Ferguson said.
She said she grabbed her gun and cellphone and went outside, and found the monkey about 60 feet away in the yard.
“I shot at it and it just stood there, and I shot again, and he backed up and that’s when he fell,” she said.
The Jasper County Sheriff’s Department confirmed that a homeowner near Heidelberg found one of the monkeys on her property Sunday morning. The state’s Department of Wildlife, Fisheries, and Parks responded and took the animal away, the sheriff’s department said on Facebook.
Bond Ferguson, a 35-year-old professional chef, was being hailed locally as a hero.
“Ya don’t mess with a Mississippi momma’s young’uns,” Doug Jernigan, of Meridian, Mississippi, commented on Facebook on Nov. 3.
The local community had been on alert since last Tuesday, when a semi-truck carrying 21 monkeys overturned while transporting them from Tulane University to an out-of-state testing facility.
Initial reports said that only one of the monkeys, which were infected with COVID, herpes, and hepatitis C, escaped capture, but that number was increased to three.
The accident happened at about 2 p.m. local time on Interstate 59, about 86 miles east of Jackson, Mississippi, near Heidelberg.
The truck had picked up the Rhesus monkeys from the university’s biomedical research center in New Orleans, Louisiana, which provides primates to scientific research organizations, according to the university’s statement this past week.
Authorities said the truck driver warned them about the “dangerous and aggressive” primates. The monkeys were not infectious, however, according to the university.
Eight of the monkeys were ejected from their cases, of which five were killed and three escaped. Thirteen monkeys from the shipment were taken from the accident scene and arrived at their original destination in Florida this past week.
Two escaped monkeys remain unaccounted for, according to the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fish, and Parks. Department officers in the area are continuing to search for the monkeys and are asking for the public’s help to find them, a department official told The Epoch Times on Monday.
The monkeys are known to be aggressive, and the public was advised to avoid contact, according to the department.
The Mississippi Highway Patrol said it was investigating the cause of the crash.
Duffy Warns Parts Of US Airspace Could Grind To Halt Next Week If Gov’t Shutdown Drags On
After weeks of ground stops and flight delays across airports nationwide due to a severe shortage of air traffic controllers amid the ongoing government shutdown, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy warned today that the worst-case scenario could unfold as early as next week: a partial shutdown of U.S. airspace.
Duffy warned Tuesday that the Department of Transportation may be forced to close parts of U.S. airspace if the government shutdown continues into next week. As of Tuesday, the shutdown has reached 35 days – a record – with little to no indication that Democrats will agree to a clean resolution to reopen the government.
“So if, if you bring us to a week from today, Democrats, you will see mass chaos,” Duffy warned, adding, “You will see mass flight delays. You’ll see mass cancelations, and you may see us close certain parts of the airspace, because we just cannot manage it because we don’t have the air traffic controllers.”
Duffy noted that thousands of controllers have already missed paychecks, and another $0 pay stub is expected later this week. He said many cannot afford to continue working unpaid, leading to widespread absences, which have triggered ground stops at airports almost daily at this point.
🚨 “If you bring us to a week from today, Democrats, you WILL see mass chaos,” says @SecDuffy as the Democrat Shutdown means air traffic controllers are about to miss another paycheck.
“You may see us close certain parts of the airspace because we just cannot manage it.” pic.twitter.com/CkU98hd3fN
FAA data shows that about 13,000 air traffic controllers are currently working without pay. The federal agency warned that 80% of the staff in the New York metro area had called out.
On Tuesday afternoon, more than 2,450 flights traveling within, to, and out of the U.S. were delayed, and over 91 were canceled, according to data from FlightAware.
Last week, airline heads blasted Democrats on the government shutdown, urging the party of crazed leftists to back the Republican-led clean CR. Those airline bosses include:
United CEO Scott Kirby, speaking from the White House alongside Vice President J.D. Vance and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, called for passage of a “clean CR”—the House GOP’s stopgap funding bill that would reopen the government without new spending measures.
American, Delta, and Southwest joined United in supporting an immediate extension of current spending levels, warning that the situation was untenable as air-traffic controllers and TSA staff continue to work without pay.
Southwest spokesperson Lynn Lunsford said the public “expects and deserves to travel in a system where safety and security employees are paid in a timely fashion.”
Besides airlines, the American Federation of Government Employees, representing hundreds of thousands of federal workers, also urged Democrats to back the GOP’s clean-CR.
Anyone planning to travel by plane next week should prepare for widespread delays and cancellations if the shutdown is not resolved by the end of this week.
Leaders should seek to unify people. Instead, California governor and likely 2028 presidential candidate Gavin Newsom is mired in identity politics, dividing his constituents into those entitled to privileges and subventions by reason of their melanin, sex, or sexual orientation – and those who are required to fund the largesse.
He opposed race neutral admissions to the California state university system (overruled by the people of California – twice), imposed gender and racial requirements on corporate boards (held unconstitutional – twice), required ethnic studies and ethnically dumbed-down math in K-12 curricula, and is carefully advancing a potentially multi-trillion dollar reparations plan for California’s black residents.
Newsom’s unconstitutional quest to curry favor with, undermine the confidence of, and potentially spend trillions of dollars on, California’s 2.5 million black residents began in 2020 when he signed AB3121 into law. That act required the state to study and develop reparation proposals for black Californians, with “special consideration” for descendants of slaves.
Then, in 2022, Newsom created a commission to develop policies that impact racial equity and disparities. The following year, it recommended payments exceeding $1 million for each descendant of slaves, as well as housing assistance, guaranteed wages, racially segregated education, and overturning California’s ban on affirmative action in college admissions, among hundreds of other racially abhorrent policies.
Now, Newsom has established a new bureau nominally to develop programs to implement the commission’s report, but with legislative authority to “expand” its mission to address remedies for the “lasting harms” of disenfranchisement, segregation, discrimination, exclusion, neglect, and violence impacting black Californians. The bureau is also authorized to collect nonpublic personal and genetic information to identify those who should obtain preferential treatment.
Newsom vetoed legislation to give admissions preferences to descendants of slaves, which he said colleges can already do; investigate racist property taxes, which is already within the new bureau’s mandate; and allocate 10% of state loans to slave descendants, which is clearly unconstitutional. An appearance of balance is important for a nascent presidential campaign.
Nonetheless, whether borne of intense self-loathing or kowtowing to the radical left, the arc of Newsom’s support for reparations is racist political pandering at its worst.
Reparations are particularly inappropriate in California. The state was admitted to the Union in 1850 as a free state, in which slavery was prohibited. Its population today is about 37% non-Hispanic white, 39% Hispanic, 16% Asian, and 6% black. Over a quarter are foreign-born.
There is no doctrine in the United States that holds children liable for the crimes of their parents, much less their distant ancestors; nor do children inherit their ancestors’ debts. In 1860, there were 395,216 slave-owners in the 15 states that permitted slavery, and none in the other 18 states. In total, about 5-6% of all U.S. households owned slaves.
Today, most blacks are at least middle class, live in diverse suburbs, and pursue the same careers as do whites. They are doctors, lawyers, and chief executives. With about 12.5% of the population, blacks account for a somewhat larger share of House members and about one-third of the mayors in America’s 100 largest cities. Blacks have held the highest offices in government, from president and vice president to numerous cabinet positions and 22% of current Supreme Court justices.
In a 2002 Gallup poll, 14% of Americans favored the payment of cash reparations to descendants of black slaves. A 2019 Associated Press-NORC poll found 29% approval. In 2024, a Princeton University-Liberations poll found that 36% of Americans supported at least some form of reparations, with 15% strongly supporting cash payments. A 2022 Rasmussen poll and a 2025 YouGov poll and had similar results. About a quarter of blacks oppose reparations.
At least 23 cities and states are considering paying reparations, including New York City, San Francisco, and Boston. Under most reparation proposals, the national cost would range from about $12 trillion to $20 trillion.
While polls usually ask about reparations for descendants of slaves, most commissions also consider payments to other black Americans. A Brookings Institution report justifies giving reparations to wealthy blacks and recent immigrants by the wealth gap between black and white families.
Polls and partisan commissions aside, the 14th Amendment prohibits governments from allocating benefits based on race. The Supreme Court has been clear that our detour into justifying affirmative action and other race-based programs was a “pernicious aberration.”
There have been trillions of dollars of transfer payments to black Americans through welfare, food stamps, loan payments, enterprise zones, minority contracting, and affirmative action. These giveaways deprive blacks of agency and create dependency, not a path toward self-actualization.
Chief Justice John Roberts said it well in the Supreme Court’s decision ending affirmative action in college admissions: “Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it. … [T]he guarantee of equal protection cannot mean one thing when applied to one individual and something else when applied to a person of another color.”
Gavin Newsom knows all this. He just doesn’t care.
Trump Regulator Making Sure The “Debanking” Era Officially Over
A top bank watchdog said he was making sure big banks have finally ditched those “oops, we just destroyed your business because we don’t like your political beliefs” – er, debanking rather, policies. You remember those, right? We sure do. It happened around the same time Google, Paypal and Amazon all banned us due to our (correct) take on the origins of Covid-19 and because they didn’t like our (correct) take on the BLM movement.
For those that missed it, a slew of banks under the Biden administration outright cancelled people’s accounts and didn’t allow them access to a bank account based on the industry they worked in, or many times their political views (surprise, none of them were Democrats).
Jonathan Gould, head of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, or OCC, told a conference that supervisors are double-checking banks really did stop blacklisting sectors like firearms from banks, according to Reuters.
This oversight follows a June executive order from President Donald Trump directing banks to avoid denying services based on industry type or political considerations. Reuters writes that supervisors are now ensuring that the largest banks are in compliance with the updated approach.
As The Epoch Times wrote back in August, President Donald Trump’s executive order banning politicized debanking is intended to reverse what some analysts say is a trend of banks and payment services refusing service to people and companies for political, religious, or ideological reasons.
Advocates against political debanking cite cases of Christians and conservatives who they say have been victims of this process. This includes allegations by Christian organizations including Tennessee-based nonprofit Indigenous Advance Ministries, as well as Sam Brownback, the chairman of the National Committee for Religious Freedom (NCRF), and the president himself.
Speaking to bank executives at the World Economic Forum in January, Trump said, “I hope you start opening your bank to conservatives, because many conservatives complain that the banks are not allowing them to do business within the bank, and that included a place called Bank of America.”
Debanking is one of the most nefarious secrets of the financial system: It is never in public forums, only specialists write about it, yet it is a threat to everyone in the most intensely effective way. The practice denies people access to the basics of life and there is no appeal, no process, no methods of challenge, and no remediation.
In her biography, Melania Trump revealed that she and her son Barron were victims of debanking. This happened in 2021, after her husband had left the office of the presidency. There were concerted efforts at the time to wipe out the memory of his time in office. Here’s more from Eric Trump on what his family endured.
Lets hope the era is over, permanently, no matter who is in the White House.
Dramatic Footage Shows UPS Cargo Jet Crashing At Louisville Airport
Watch Live:
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Dramatic footage from Louisville’s Muhammad Ali International Airport on Tuesday evening shows a UPS jumbo jet on departure before what appears to be a catastrophic mechanical failure – possibly an engine fire. The aircraft failed to generate enough altitude before crashing and erupting into flames moments later.
“UPS Flight 2976 crashed around 5:15 p.m. local time on Tuesday, Nov. 4, after departing from Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport in Kentucky. The McDonnell Douglas MD-11 was headed to Daniel K. Inouye International Airport in Honolulu. The FAA and NTSB will investigate. The NTSB will lead the investigation and will provide all updates,” the FAA wrote on X.
UPS Flight 2976 crashed around 5:15 p.m. local time on Tuesday, Nov. 4, after departing from Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport in Kentucky. The McDonnell Douglas MD-11 was headed to Daniel K. Inouye International Airport in Honolulu. The FAA and NTSB will investigate.…
Absolutely shocking footage coming out from Muhammad Ali International Airport…
FOOTAGE: Another perspective of the UPS Flight 2976, a McDonnell Douglas MD-11 cargo plane crashing just after takeoff from Louisville International Airport. pic.twitter.com/AcpGfZhfil
🚨#BREAKING: A major emergency response is currently underway after a UPS cargo plane crashed, leaving multiple people injured a shelter-in-place order within a five-mile radius of the airport.
Reports of a massive explosion and resulting fire, possibly the result of a crash involving a cargo plane with UPS Airlines, near Muhammad Ali International Airport in Louisville, Kentucky. pic.twitter.com/HtTQLVDH6D
Muhammad Ali International Airport in Louisville, Kentucky is currently closed to arriving and departing flights, following the crash of (UPS2976), a McDonnell Douglas MD-11 being operated as a cargo plane by UPS Airlines that had just taken-off from the UPS Worldport in… pic.twitter.com/vck5PmJMNK
As a content creator, I’ve noticed something hard to ignore: the posts that get the most engagement are rarely the ones that bring people together. They’re usually the ones that stir people up. The ones that make us mad or pick at our differences. The ones that feed the algorithm.
And yet, part of my job is to keep engagement going. It’s only natural that when a post performs well, I look at it and think, okay, people responded to that. It shapes what I post next—how I talk, what I highlight, even what I believe my “lane” is.
But what happens when the content that performs best doesn’t actually represent who I am?
For example, I write for The Epoch Times, and I know certain topics draw a lot of readers. But does that mean I should only write what gets clicks? Or do I have a responsibility to keep writing what I believe is meaningful, even if it doesn’t blow up online?
Last week, I posted a short video from my ranch. I was standing next to my cows, talking about the decision to import Argentinian beef—and how I didn’t think that was good for American farmers. Normally, my videos reach around 7,000 to 10,000 views. This one hit nearly 80,000, simply because I mentioned President Donald Trump.
And with that came more than 2,000 comments, many of them hateful.
People told me I was stupid, that I “got what I voted for.” They said I was aging poorly or that I looked unhealthy. Some even wished harm on my family.
But here’s what’s interesting: no one has ever said those things to my face.
In real life, people are kind.
We can disagree, but we still treat each other like human beings.
Online, though, the rules change. The algorithm rewards division, and division drives engagement. Engagement drives creators to lean further into whatever keeps people talking. It’s a loop—anger fuels clicks, clicks fuel income, and income rewards outrage.
The problem is, the more we live inside that feedback loop, the more we start to mistake it for real life. We begin to think the world is as cruel and divided as our comment sections. But it’s not. Social media is a curated, artificial experience that has very little to do with reality.
I’ve even run my own little tests to better understand it. When I post about God—about faith, gratitude, or anything that invites peace—the engagement drops dramatically. But when I talk about politics, the numbers skyrocket.
So I can’t help but ask: Are people more devoted to politics than to God? Or is it that the algorithm boosts whatever makes us angry, frustrated, or divided?
Because it really seems like the system is built to reward irritation over inspiration. The algorithm knows that anger spreads faster than peace. If you start to notice, you’ll see the pattern everywhere: content that makes people mad always travels farther. That’s not an accident. The machine is learning exactly what keeps us scrolling—and conflict is its favorite fuel.
But when division becomes profitable, unity starts to disappear. When angry voices get boosted, peaceful ones get buried. And before long, we start believing that the world is angrier than it actually is.
That belief shapes everything—our conversations, our politics, even our sense of safety. It makes us afraid to be honest because nuance doesn’t trend. Kindness doesn’t go viral.
So maybe the real choice we face isn’t just what we consume, but what we create.
As a creator, I can chase engagement or stay true to what I believe matters. I can talk about what gets clicks, or I can speak of truth, even when it doesn’t get rewarded.
Because the truth is, God doesn’t measure engagement.
He measures courage, integrity, and the willingness to keep speaking truth, even when it’s unpopular.
So the next time I post, I’ll ask myself: Am I feeding the algorithm, or am I feeding the soul?
And maybe—just maybe—if enough of us choose the latter, the machine will change. Perhaps it will finally begin to give us what our souls actually long for: unity, love, and God.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.
COVELO, Calif.—Driving up the steep and windy road from his station in Ukiah, Mendocino County Sheriff Matt Kendall stops his pickup at a pullout overlooking California’s Round Valley.
“It’s where the trouble begins and never ends,” he told The Epoch Times.
Native American sovereignty and California’s policies that shield illegal immigrants have allowed Mexican drug cartels to swoop in on tribal lands of the Round Valley Indian Tribes, a confederation of several tribes, the sheriff said.
The valley, known for illegal marijuana grows on tribal lands, is remote and surrounded by forested mountainous terrain. It’s a patchwork of tribal lands and those sold off to private owners years ago.
Kendall, 56, grew up here in the 1970s. During the drive to Covelo, an isolated town in the valley, he talks about how the times have changed over the decades.
“Back in the ’60s and ’70s, it was a beautiful place—a lot of freedom here,” he said. “When we were kids, we’d be riding our horses and having fun. Every kid in this valley had a horse. We’d go out to the river. All of us had summertime jobs, hauling hay and cutting firewood.”
His nostalgic journey ends abruptly as he passes a burned-out building with murals of missing women on its walls—a stark reminder of the violence that plagues the valley. Other banners along the road display their names and faces, including that of Khadijah Rose Britton, a native American woman who, according to the FBI, was last seen in Covelo being kidnapped at gunpoint in 2018.
Today, Kendall says, “there’s a little bit of farming, and then just tons and tons of marijuana, and pretty much all of it is illegal.”
“We see a lot of Hispanics here when there is no work, no sawmill jobs, no grapes, no vineyards and not much logging. They’re all here taking orders to grow marijuana, and a lot of it’s happening on tribal lands.”
He estimates up to 80 percent of the illegal marijuana in Mendocino County is grown on tribal lands, based on aerial surveillance and satellite imagery revealing a vast network of illegal grow ops.
Kendall first encountered Mexican cartels in his county in the mid-1990s.
“I got shot at right over there in a Mexican grow” 25 years ago, he said, pointing to a footpath through the brush. “A guy pops out of a tent with a 12-gauge and I’m screaming at him in English and Spanish, ‘Drop it or I’m going to drop you!’ and he takes off running and gets a round off at me over his shoulder.”
Years ago, a group of Hispanics growing marijuana in the hills “were digging up artifacts and just tearing things up,”’ Kendall said. “We hit this place with search warrants years ago. We got thousands of plants.”
Today, even though the cartels and the laborers who work for them cultivating and harvesting the illicit marijuana are mostly illegal immigrants, Kendall is not legally allowed to call in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) due to state Senate Bill 54, signed in 2018 by former Gov. Jerry Brown.
The law prohibits state and local law enforcement from using their resources to assist federal immigration enforcement agencies, including ICE, and forbids them from asking about a person’s immigration status or sharing confidential information with federal agents.
Today, two competing Mexican cartels, Jalisco New Generation Cartel and La Familia Michoacana, are exploiting California’s sanctuary state policies and the sovereignty of native tribes to illegally grow marijuana in the county, the sheriff said.
The cartels have tagged their territory with spray paint in different areas of the valley, he said.
“We know that we’ve got some hard hitters from a cartel in the Mexican state of Michoacán,” said Kendall, who suspects a shootout in the hills in May was infighting among La Familia Michoacana members, known for gun battles in the streets of Mexico.
A roadside shrine with a crucifix marks the site where Jorge M. Zavala Estrella, 30, was shot and killed in the shootout.
“These guys had some bad blood over money and grow operations, and they met nose-to-nose right up here,” he said, pointing out the spot on Hulls Valley Road.
Another man was shot about a dozen times and was bleeding out near the edge of the road when deputies found him. He was airlifted to an out-of-county hospital and survived, the sheriff said.
A third and fourth suspect were also involved in the gun battle, and the homicide investigation is ongoing, Kendall said.
Kendall estimates about 300 shots were fired.
“There was brass collected everywhere,” he said.
Shootouts are common, he said, “about three or four every year,” and firearms used include AK-47s, AR-15s and M-16s.
Kendall suspects the money for infrastructure to grow illegal marijuana is coming from south of the border because the toxic chemical containers are labeled in Spanish and most local residents can’t afford to pay for hoop houses and haul in soil and water.
“Somebody’s putting up the money for this,” he said. “There are millions of dollars being poured into the marijuana industry up here.”
The Biden administration’s “wide open” border policies made things worse in Mendocino, he said.
“I’m not playing partisan politics here,” Kendall said. “It’s a fact. Borders were open.”
Illegal immigrants who couldn’t pay the full fare to Mexican cartels to cross into the United States fell into debt with the Mexican cartels, and much of that debt is being worked off in the marijuana grows, Kendall said.
Over the last few years, Kendall’s deputies have seen an increase in human trafficking cases as the cartels bring in more illegal immigrants to cultivate, trim, and harvest the illegal marijuana crops.
“It’s sex trafficking, it’s labor trafficking, it’s narco-slavery,” he said.
One victim told Kendall after he crossed the border from Mexico into the United States, he was picked up in California and informed by the driver working for a cartel he would be taken to Washington state to work in the “logging industry.”
“I’ve spoken with a lot of people in marijuana grows—once they’re caught—who have been trafficked, and didn’t realize it,” he said.
Kendall found the man months later in Mendocino, one of three Northern California counties—including Trinity and Humboldt—that comprise the Emerald Triangle, an area long known for cannabis cultivation.
“He’s in the middle of the forest, in the middle of nowhere, in a weed grow. He has no idea where he is. He thinks he’s in the state of Washington. He doesn’t know anyone, except for a couple of other clowns that are also working there. He doesn’t know how to get out of there,” the sheriff said.
“So, where do you start to find your way home? He’s in a foreign country. He doesn’t speak the language, and these guys show up and bring food now and then. And, whether he knows it or not, he has been trafficked.”
The man told him the cartels promised to pay him for his labor at the end of the growing season but didn’t, Kendall said.
“A lot of these folks I’ve spoken to aren’t getting paid at all,” he said. “We had two people wander out of the brush—husband and wife. They weren’t getting paid. They wanted to leave, and the gate was locked, and the boss goes and lights their car on fire.”
Many of the laborers at illegal grow sites in several California counties live in squalor at makeshift camps where their basic human needs are not being met, and they aren’t there of their own free will, he said.
“They’re scared to death of the cartels,” Kendall said. “They wind up here, but they’re still under that control.”
The sheriff’s department is underfunded, understaffed, and under-equipped to deal with all the crime related to illegal marijuana grow operations, he said.
“This is cartel violence that not even the United States government seems to be able to handle, and we’re expected to take it on when we’ve got six deputies for 3,500 square miles,” Kendall said.
“We’re not Mayberry,” he said, referring to the quaint, fictional town in the 1960’s TV series about a rural police department. “I wish we were because we’d have enough personnel to handle Mayberry.”
Kendall isn’t looking forward to the coming weeks of harvest season, which usually means more robberies, murders, and mayhem.
“There’s cash, there’s marijuana, there’s greed,” he said.
Tribes Sue Sheriff
Tribal sovereignty also poses a challenge for law enforcement. In April, the Round Valley Indian Tribes and three residents of the reservation filed a lawsuit against Kendall and other law enforcement agencies over raids that occurred on tribal land in July 2024. The lawsuit alleges sheriff’s deputies failed to produce valid search warrants and illegally destroyed medicinal cannabis gardens and cultivation.
Kendall wouldn’t comment on specifics related to the case but said the tribes are trying to assert their sovereignty over marijuana grown on tribal lands.
While the tribes “should have sovereignty,” the sheriff said he has received complaints from tribal members saying the reservation has been overrun by cartels.
“We’ve had some really good, forward thinking tribal leaders over the years—really good people—but there’s a little ebb and flow where we’ll get some people in who are making money off the marijuana, and the rules change,” Kendall said.
Reservations are often the “canary in the coal mine,” he said. “If something goes south there, because it’s a very close, tight-knit community, it’s going to go south across the entire county,” he said.
Kendall says partisan politics are getting in the way of law enforcement and public safety, but he does his best to stay out of the fray.
“I’m careful what I say because I don’t want to alienate people, but I still have to tell the truth,” he said, adding that one of the more important things he can do is to call out corruption and deception. “There’s a very small portion of people who are making money on it, and they are being bullies and creeps, intimidators, knee-cappers, to the good people.”
Kendall says he’s repeatedly called California Gov. Gavin Newsom but the governor won’t return his calls.
The national unemployment rate for the U.S. rose to 4.3% in August 2025. But that figure masks vast differences in local labor market health across states.
In this Markets in a Minute graphic, created in partnership with Terzo, Visual Capitalist’s Julia Wendling maps all 50 states and the District of Columbia by their August 2025 unemployment rates.
Data is from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The National Picture
The U.S. unemployment rate rose to 4.3% in August, up slightly from 4.2% in July.
This was the second consecutive monthly increase and the highest level since October 2021. Long-term unemployment, which tracks the share of those unemployed for 27 weeks or more, rose for the third month in a row in August.
According to Reuters, the uptick reflects a softening economy, as higher tariffs and widespread public-sector layoffs strain the labor market amid ongoing geopolitical uncertainty.
Unemployment Rates by State
At the top of the list with the lowest unemployment rates are South Dakota (1.9%), North Dakota (2.5%), and Vermont (2.5%).
Conversely, California (5.5%), Nevada (5.3%), and Michigan (5.2%) are facing slower job growth. Tech layoffs and a weakening consumer spending profile are weighing on employment.
What’s Ahead
Economists and policymakers are closely watching for the delayed September employment report, postponed by the ongoing government shutdown. The report is a key indicator for investors, offering a clear read on the nation’s economic pulse and signaling areas of strength or weakness.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) on Nov. 3 urged a federal judge to reject former FBI Director James Comey’s argument that he was “vindictively and selectively” prosecuted by the Trump administration.
DOJ lawyers filed a motion asking the judge to reject Comey’s bid to dismiss federal charges alleging that he made a false statement to Congress in 2020 and obstructed a congressional investigation.
In the court filing, prosecutors defended President Donald Trump’s Sept. 20 post calling on the DOJ to take action against his political foes, including Comey.
“The defendant spins a tale that requires leaps of logic and a big dose of cynicism, then he calls the President’s post a direct admission,” prosecutors wrote. “There is no direct admission of discriminatory purpose. To the contrary, the only direct admission from the President is that DOJ officials decided whether to prosecute, not him.”
Comey had argued in an Oct. 20 motion that he was “singled out” for prosecution because he had frequently criticized Trump and what he described as Trump’s “personal animus” toward him, referencing Trump’s social media posts to support his claim.
DOJ lawyers contended that while Trump’s posts may suggest he “disfavors” Comey, they cannot be considered direct evidence of a vindictive motive.
Prosecutors said that Trump’s Sept. 20 post reflected a “legitimate prosecutorial motive,” grounded on the president’s views that Comey should be prosecuted for criminal conduct for allegedly lying to Congress.
“None of the President’s social-media posts express a desire for the defendant to be penalized for exercising his First Amendment rights. Far from it,” DOJ lawyers stated in the motion. “The President’s social-media posts are clear on why he thinks the defendant should be prosecuted: he thinks the defendant is ‘guilty as hell.’ That is not an expression of vindictiveness.”
Prosecutors also stated that Comey is asking the court to take the extraordinary step of dismissing his case before trial, which they argued should only be granted if there is a clear constitutional reason to do so.
“The societal interests in this prosecution are readily apparent and overwhelming. The defendant is a former FBI director who lied to Congress about his conduct while at the helm of the nation’s primary federal law-enforcement agency. His prosecution implicates societal interests of the highest order,” they stated.
“Nonetheless, he asks the Court to take the extraordinary step of dismissing his indictment because—he says—he is being vindictively and selectively prosecuted. Given the deep-seated separation-of-powers principles at stake, his request can be granted only if ‘the Constitution requires it.’”
The Epoch Times reached out to Comey’s lawyer for comment, but did not receive a response by publication time.
Comey is accused of lying in 2020 when he told a Senate committee he stood by prior testimony that he had not authorized anyone at the FBI to serve as an anonymous source in news reports about investigations into Trump and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
He has pleaded not guilty to false statements and obstruction charges brought against him.
Comey filed another motion on Oct. 30 requesting that the court dismiss his criminal case. His lawyers argued that Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-Texas) questions could not form the basis for his indictment because they were “fundamentally ambiguous,” and that Comey’s answers to his questions were “literally true” and therefore cannot sustain a conviction.
DOE And NRC Sign Addendum To Fast Track Commercial Reactor Licensing
The Department of Energy (DOE) and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) recently signed Addendum No. 9 to their 2019 Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), paving the way for faster follow-on licensing of advanced nuclear reactors and nuclear fuel technologies.
This agreement, signed Oct 24th and effective immediately, comes as major concerns have been raised by reactor development companies and industry observers regarding the double work that may be required of developers when they bring their tested products over to the NRC. Demand for clean, reliable energy by data centers and major industrial companies has created a stronger need for change in the path to reactor design commercialization, with companies like Microsoft, Google, and Amazon signing long-term offtake agreements with reactor operators Constellation, NextEra, and Talen.
“Establish an expedited pathway to approve reactor designs that the DOD or the DOE have tested and that have demonstrated the ability to function safely. NRC review of such designs shall focus solely on risks that may arise from new applications permitted by NRC licensure, rather than revisiting risks that have already been addressed in the DOE or DOD processes.”
Surprisingly, the DOE and NRC took the executive order one step further and included a streamlined licensing process for nuclear fuel facilities as well. It becomes less surprising when we remember the current administration has highlighted multiple times the desire to reduce the reliance on foreign nuclear fuel supplies. Even with the Russian uranium import ban, the US is still importing over a fifth of the required enriched uranium from Russia through last year. The US government is looking to expand the domestic capacity of every step in the fuel chain as quickly as possible.
The new addendum will directly impact the companies already announced by the DOE as participants in their pilot reactor and fuel programs:
Reactor developers: Aalo Atomics, Antares Nuclear, Atomic Alchemy, Deep Fission, Last Energy, Oklo (two projects), Natura Resources, Radiant Industries, Terrestrial Energy, Valar Atomics
Fuel facilities: Standard Nuclear, Oklo, Terrestrial Energy, TRISO-X, Valar Atomics
Additional companies are expected to be announced for both of the programs in the near future, as the DOE still looks to expand the number of participants as an effort to increase the chance of success.
There are multiple companies currently involved that are worth highlighting. Oklo is the most involved company, with three reactor projects — Aurora, Pluto, and Atomic Alchemy — currently receiving high-speed treatment, and three nuclear fuel facilities on the fast track as well. Terrestrial Energy enjoys double involvement with their integrated molten salt reactor design and unique fuel. Valar Atomics has also earned a spot in both programs, alongside industry leadership on the reactor side from Aalo and Radiant, and on the fuel side with Standard Nuclear.
Part IV.C of the addendum discusses the new agreement between the NRC and DOE, with two separate statements for advanced reactor designs and nuclear fuel line facilities:
“NRC establishes an expedited pathway to approve advanced reactor designs [nuclear fuel line facilities] that have been authorized and tested by DOE and have demonstrated the ability to function safely that focuses on risks or safety issues identified during the NRC licensing review that may arise from, among other things, design changes in new applications to be licensed by the NRC, rather than revisiting risks that have already been addressed in the DOE review.”
This removes the previous risk of a company designing a reactor, getting the DOE to approve it, building an operating it for months or years to develop proficiency and improvements, only to have the NRC tear it apart to meet a different set of requirements that results in a loss of the work put in to the reactor up to that point. The NRC will now skip reviews regarding design features that are no different in the commercial product than they are with the design built under the DOE.
There are likely more MOUs to be released in the near future, specifically relating to coordination between the DOW and the NRC for all the same reasons. This will stem from the Army’s recently announced Janus Program, which looks to hyper-speed the development of microreactors, such as that recently launched by Nano Nuclear, and drive consolidation and standardization of the nuclear equipment/manufacturing supply chain.
