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

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will be conducting more unannounced inspections at facilities outside the country, the agency announced on May 6.

Dr. Marty Makary, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, speaks in Washington on May 5, 2025. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

The FDA conducts about 3,000 inspections of foreign facilities each year, but many facility operators are informed of the inspections weeks or even months ahead of time.

“For too long, foreign companies have enjoyed a double standard—given advanced notice before facility inspections, while American manufacturers are held to rigorous standards with no such warning,” Dr. Marty Makary, the FDA’s commissioner, said in a statement. “That ends today.”

The FDA said it intends to expand unannounced inspections at facilities that manufacture a range of goods, including food and medicine. According to the FDA, the expansion will “help expose bad actors—those who falsify records or conceal violations—before they can put American lives at risk. ”

The move builds on an FDA pilot program that tested more unannounced inspections in China and India.

Some U.S. lawmakers, including Sens. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) and Jim Justice (R-W.Va.), had recently asked the FDA to conduct more unannounced inspections.

Investigators with the FDA previously told the Government Accountability Office that the downsides of letting facilities know before inspections are conducted include giving them time to clean up and implement new operating procedures. Twelve of the 18 inspectors who spoke to the office said that unannounced inspections are generally better.

The office recommended that the FDA increase the number of inspections of foreign facilities in 2008 and found that the FDA was conducting many more domestic inspections than foreign inspections in 2010. In 2016, the office said the FDA had increased the number of foreign inspections, but that many facilities manufacturing drugs that enter the United States were never inspected.

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The FDA suspended virtually all foreign inspections after the COVID-19 pandemic started, although it later resumed the work.

Dr. Janet Woodcock, a former FDA official, told lawmakers in 2019, before the pandemic started, that the FDA typically gives notice for foreign inspections because of logistics such as securing visas, “and partly because of the high costs of conducting foreign inspections.”

“When a surveillance inspection is announced, some manufacturers conduct a self-inspection or hire an independent inspector to ensure that manufacturing processes meet requirements,” she said.

An audit of FDA inspections of foreign facilities producing drugs, reported in 2022 by the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General, identified problems with the inspections, including a lack of training documentation for some of the inspectors and a failure to issue warning letters to companies on a timely basis.

The FDA concurred with the watchdog’s recommendations for improvement, including making sure inspectors have adequate training before conducting inspections.

Authored by John Murawski via RealClearInvestigations,

AUSTIN, Texas — Lacking three crucial components – students, faculty, and facilities – the two educational experiments proposed in this state capital sounded like moonshots just a few years ago. 

Today, the School of Civic Leadership at the University of Texas and a feisty startup calling itself the University of Austin are not just up and running, but helping lead the movement to revive classical liberal education across the country.

Now in their second semesters, the two unrelated schools – one public, one private – offer a mix of courses emphasizing political theory, economics, philosophy, and canonical texts that appeal to big-time donors eager to fund traditional academic subjects that have fallen into neglect, or even disdain, in the ivory tower. A big part of their strategy relies on a naked grab for the academic market share by being perceived as more relevant, more exciting, and more consequential. 

“We’re a throwback to an older model that sees serious engagement with the great debates of the Western tradition as the best possible preparation for leadership,” said Antonio Sosa, a professor at UT-Austin’s School of Civic Leadership. “We’re not interested in deconstructing America’s founding and the West; we’re not focused on race and gender.”

The reform efforts underway in Austin are now approaching a major milestone: the end of their first academic year, with further expansion around the corner. Commonly known by their acronyms, SCL will be launching a Civics Honors major with about 100 students this coming fall, while UATX will be adding a second freshman cohort of about 100 students as the current batch advances to its second year. 

Both are part of a national academic civics movement to create viable alternatives to higher ed trends that their backers deem intellectually bankrupt and moral dead ends: the penchant for DEI and social justice activism, training students in narrow careerism or “jobism,” and incentivizing the faculty fetish for fads and hyper-specialization.

Over the past quarter-century, more than 100 academic civics initiatives have arisen, emphasizing such themes as the Great Books, the Western canon, free markets, and individual liberty. In the latest incarnation of this trend, the University of Austin is comparable, at least superficially, to niche, independent colleges like Hillsdale, Ralston, St. John’s (Maryland), and Deep Springs that emphasize intellectual foundations and distinctive academic cultures. UATX’s board of advisers is a who’s who of public intellectuals, most of whom require no introductions in academic circles: Richard Dawkins, Jonathan Haidt, Robert George, Glenn Loury, Harvey Mansfield, Deirdre McCloskey, Nadine Strossen, Larry Summers, Andrew Young, among others.  

UT-Austin’s program is part of a new wave backed by conservative donors, trustees, and lawmakers that includes 13 autonomous civics schools established at eight public universities – including five in Ohio  – that have their own deans, their own majors, and, in some cases, their own Ph.D. programs. The School of Civic Leadership includes its own think tank, The Civitas Institute, which is modeled on Stanford’s Hoover Institution; its roster of fellows includes John Yoo, a lawyer who served in the George W. Bush administration; Jenna Silver Storey, an American Enterprise Institute fellow who specializes in the civics movement; Arthur C. Brooks, former AEI president and Harvard scholar of leadership and happiness; and Vincent Phillip Muñoz, a University of Notre Dame legal scholar and well-known constitutional originalist. 

UATX President Pano Kanelos, who compares the creation of the University of Austin to Plato’s founding of the Academy in Athens in 387 BC, predicts that “we’re growing a university that’ll be around for centuries.” But observers note that these and other civic education reform efforts are some years away from achieving the movement’s ultimate goal: producing a permanent infrastructure with a pipeline of scholars to lead and populate similar programs across the country. In the coming years, they must deliver on their long-term promises to their backers that they can attract competitive students, produce consequential scholarship, place graduates in solid careers, and grow their programs into lasting institutions.

It’s no coincidence that both are located in Austin, a vibrant college town and state capital known for its music festivals, its Silicon Hills tech hub, and its countercultural motto: Keep Austin Weird. The Austin-American Statesman newspaper describes the city's famed South By Southwest Festival (a.k.a. SXSW) as "a giant, caffeine-and-booze-fueled playground for creatives."

With conservative intellectuals creating their own anti-establishment ethos, Austin has also become home to the global headquarters of Elon Musk’s EV venture, Tesla, and the home of the dissident political podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience. In a nod to these counter-cultural landmarks, an earlier iteration of UATX’s FAQs page used to proclaim: “If it’s good enough for Elon Musk and Joe Rogan, it’s good enough for us.”

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Nevertheless, both schools are still in their infancy. The University of Austin, for example, is now housed in a repurposed department store in downtown Austin that looks like a hip, Gen Z shared workspace. To attract top students, it’s covering all tuition costs for the teenagers who are taking the risk of attending a startup that lacks accreditation, a complicated review process that could take longer than expected. Likewise, at the University of Texas, School of Civic Leadership Dean Justin Dyer said that a common question that arises in faculty searches is “whether our funding is secure and whether this is a viable long-term project.”

Even as they grapple with challenges common to start-ups, the two programs continue to face skepticism from the entrenched academic interests they are seeking to reform. The common refrain is that they function as conservative safe spaces and cheerleaders for Western Civilization, out of touch with contemporary scholarship. And yet, for the most part, the educational reforms underway in Austin have avoided major public controversy, and their early success is evident in their confidence that they represent the future of higher education.

“We are a self-conscious rebel faction that’s offering a new university on the model of the old,” said Morgan Marietta, UATX’s dean of economics, politics, and history. “Our movement is: We’re going to take their students, we’re going to take their faculty, we’re going to take their money – that’s how we’re going to win.” 

A recent visit to Austin offered a glimpse of how these two programs are alike, how they differ, and what they look like in practice. The University of Austin leadership is brash and provocative, and tends to hire public intellectuals active on the podcast circuit and in other journalistic outlets. Within weeks of launching in 2021, two high-profile advisers – Harvard professor Steven Pinker and then-University of Chicago chancellor Robert Zimmer – resigned from the advisory board, with Zimmer stating that he could not abide by the startup university’s exaggerated statements about the incorrigibility of academia. UATX does not offer tenure to its faculty, but instead hires on five-year renewable contracts. 

As a public entity, UT’s School of Civic Leadership is more traditional, hiring tenure-track faculty and evoking the marble-and-mahogany solemnity of a present indebted to the past. Many of SCL’s classes are offered in the school’s current headquarters, the Victorian-era Littlefield House, appointed with wood-paneled walls, antique furniture, and regal paintings of Texas grandees.

The students in the maiden class are essentially ambassadors for these programs, and tend to speak in that mode.  

“I think every student should take at least one civics class because the ideas are so expansive, so inspiring, and thought-provoking,” said Debbie Chu, a sophomore and a government major currently taking Professor Sosa’s “Perennial Problems in Civic Thought” class. 

Both of these programs are in their infancy, and they are still undecided on where their permanent facilities will be located. UATX might at some point create an open campus away from the downtown office it now occupies, and has enlisted famed architect Léon Krier to draw up a master plan, Kanelos said. It has raised over $200 million from more than 3,000 donors, including real estate developer Harlan Crow, notable friend of Justice Clarence Thomas; hedge fund titan Bill Ackman; and billionaire trader Jeff Yass, who has given $35 million, the single biggest gift to date to UATX. The donations and pledges so far can fund UATX’s operations until at least 2030, Kanelos said, by which time the new college expects to have accreditation, which will be retroactive to all graduates, and will be charging tuition. 

UT’s School of Civic Leadership was initially funded with $6 million from the Texas state legislature and Board of Regents, and the Regents are tentatively looking at adding $5 million more for a total of $11 million, said Dyer, SCL’s dean. The school now has 14 tenure-line faculty members, approaching its Board of Regents mandate of hiring 20 faculty within three years. SCL has also netted $20 million in donations and pledges from the likes of Crow and Robert Rowling, a hotel magnate ranked 126 on Forbes’ 400 richest Americans. 

Getting to this point could be considered a minor miracle, but such accelerated development hasn’t come without growth pains. 

A finance professor at UT-Austin who had planned to start a conservative “Liberty Institute” has accused the university administration of hijacking the idea, diluting it, and threatening him with retaliation for public criticism. The professor, Richard Lowery, has aired his allegations in conservative outlets, The National Review and the James Martin Center for Academic Renewal. Lowery’s lawsuit against UT was dismissed by a federal judge and is now pending on appeal. 

Last September, UT-Austin’s Faculty Council approved SCL’s Civics Honors major by a razor-thin vote of 23 to 21. According to the description of the course of the study, the curriculum will be tailored to “high-performing students” who “will study the wisdom of the past not in order to become antiquarians but in order to subject the conventional orthodoxies of the present to rational critique.” To anyone in academia, “conventional orthodoxies” has unambiguous overtones: wokeness, DEI, and social justice advocacy. 

According to a transcript of the meeting, a number of professors voiced their opposition. 

“I think it’s important for us to, as the Faculty Council, take note and perhaps a stand on the political origin of this discipline imposed upon the University by the legislature,” said astronomy professor Paul Shapiro. “When does the legislature get to tell us we need to teach something we’re not teaching? And I think that is the question we should be asking. How is this free of that political origin?”

Mathematics professor Lorenzo Sadun, who served on the committee that hired Dyer as SCL Dean, told the Faculty Council that the hiring committee members were initially very skeptical, but “the more we talked with our top candidates, one of whom became our Dean, the more we were really impressed” with the project. 

In an email to RealClearInvestigations, Sadun said the School of Civic Leadership is unquestionably a political project, but one that can be justified on the merits.

“The impetus for creating the school was overtly and unambiguously political, with a lot of pressure from outside the University,” Sadun explained. “I hated the idea, as did most of the faculty.” 

“However, the people charged with creating it saw an opportunity to make lemonade out of lemons,” Sadun continued. “To make a place where conservative thought can thrive, but in dialogue with liberal thought, not in isolation. That sort of dialogue is what universities are for, regardless of how much I may personally disagree with the SCL leaders' political ideas.”

Civics advocates describe their schools and curricula as nonpartisan and apolitical, but at the same time, anchored in the vision of America’s founding principles that were erected upon the foundation of Western Civilization. 

UATX President Kanelos was formerly the president of St. John’s College, a small liberal arts institution in Annapolis, Maryland, emphasizing a Great Books curriculum. He said that University of Austin students read more than 20,000 pages in their first two years, which constitute UATX’s Intellectual Foundations curriculum, where all the students take the same core classes in the same order.

A Mix of Old and New 

Dyer comes from a different background. In a 2017 article, he described himself as “a conservative, straight out of central casting, a pro-life evangelical who is an unapologetic admirer of the American Founding Fathers and the U.S. Constitution.” In his 2013 book, “Abortion, Slavery, and Constitutional Meaning,” published by Cambridge University Press, Dyer argues that abortion is legally analogous to slavery, in that certain classes of humanity are deprived of legal status and legal protections.

The course selections at both programs, more than two dozen in all, offer a mix of old and new. This semester, UATX is offering “Bitcoin, Blockchain, and Cryptocurrency” and “Artificial Intelligence II” alongside “Crown, Cathedral, and Crusade” and “Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy.” 

About two miles away, UT-Austin’s School of Civic Leadership is offering multiple units of “Intro to Philosophy, Politics, and Economics” and “Constitutional Principles: Core Texts” alongside “Democracy and Capitalism” and “The Age of Reformation.”

An RCI reporter’s visit to three SCL classes revealed courses taught by a combination of lecture and discussion, with a heavy reading load. SCL’s syllabi for the classes being taught this semester show that the readings hew to the classical liberal model of exposing students to primary sources and historical debates about slavery, due process, libel, abortion, and other controversies.

Introduction to Philosophy, Politics, and Economics readings include Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Adam Smith, Thomas Sowell, John Rawls, Friedrich Hayek, John Jacques Rousseau, Kurt Vonnegut, among a host of others. The Democracy and Capitalism class likewise includes reading selections and podcast episodes representing a variety of perspectives – Milton Friedman’s “Capitalism and Freedom,” Robert Heilbroner’s “Socialism,” Friedrich Hayek’s “The Road to Serfdom,” Irving Kristol’s “On Corporate Capitalism in America,” George Stigler’s “Monopoly,” those being just a sample.

Dyer is teaching a course called Constitutional Rights that is heavy on U.S. Supreme Court rulings and dissents. Dyer’s syllabus contains a two-word clue – “close reading” – to the way historical texts are interpreted in the civics culture, a phrase that also appears on other SCL syllabi. The phrase means much more than simply careful reading or attention to detail. The words contain an entire philosophy governing the relationship between a reader and a text, which is based on the belief that texts contain objective meanings, and that the student’s job is to attempt to comprehend that meaning. Once a mainstay of academia, that approach has fallen out of favor and is a radical departure from contemporary methods that dismiss traditional interpretations of classical texts as naïve or sycophantic, and say that today’s readers are heir to an evolved understanding of history that gives them the moral authority to stand in judgment of the past. 

As Professor Sosa explained in an interview after his class, “We don’t study with the assumption that the students and faculty are better or smarter than the things they’re studying.”

Zach Lacy, a UT-Austin sophomore triple-majoring in government, philosophy, and classical languages, said he was not exposed to a single “great book” in high school, and the School of Civic Leadership is unlike any other education he has experienced. 

“I really get to chew on the texts, read deeply and fully understand it,” he said. “There’s a sincerity in approaching the text and acknowledging there is wisdom that we do not have.”

John Murawski reports on the intersection of culture and ideas for RealClearInvestigations. He previously covered artificial intelligence for the Wall Street Journal and spent 15 years as a reporter for the News & Observer (Raleigh, NC) writing about health care, energy and business. At RealClear, Murawski reports on how esoteric academic theories on race and gender have been shaping many areas of public life, from K-12 school curricula to workplace policies to the practice of medicine.

The world of nuclear energy and small modular reactors - which we believe is the next obvious secular bull market in energy - keeps moving forward. 

Ontario officials have granted final approval for the construction of a small modular reactor (SMR) developed by GE Vernova Hitachi Nuclear Energy, according to new reporting from Axios.

This reactor, known as the BWRX-300, is anticipated to be the first SMR to become operational in the Western world. The 300-megawatt unit will be located next to the existing Darlington Nuclear Station, operated by Ontario Power Generation. Once completed, it will generate enough electricity to power approximately 300,000 homes.

The successful implementation of this reactor at the Darlington site is expected to serve as a model for the feasibility and benefits of SMR technology.

Ontario’s energy ministry emphasized the significance of the project, noting that it will be the first SMR of its kind among G7 nations. GE has stated that early site preparations have been completed and full construction will commence soon, with the reactor projected to begin operations by 2030, the report says. 

The Darlington site is planned to host a total of four SMR units, all of which are expected to be operational by 2035. The entire project is estimated to cost 20.9 billion Canadian dollars, which is about 15.06 billion USD. According to Stephen Lecce, Ontario’s energy minister, this initiative is a crucial part of the province's strategy to meet an anticipated 75% increase in electricity demand by 2050.

"Ensuring that we have reliable, affordable energy is essential to the economic sovereignty of our province and country," Lecce said. 

Recall just days ago nuclear names popped on news that The White House is poised to issue executive orders aimed at accelerating the deployment of nuclear reactors across the United States.

The White House actions are expected to leverage the Departments of Defense and Energy to expedite reactor deployment, potentially circumventing delays from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).

This initiative aligns with the administration’s strategy to meet the surging energy demands driven by sectors like artificial intelligence and advanced manufacturing.

Publicly traded companies positioned to benefit from this nuclear expansion include our favorite, Oklo, formerly backed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. The company is among eight companies selected to provide microreactors for U.S. military bases, aiming to supply 100% of critical energy needs at these sites.

The ADVANCE Act of 2024, signed into law in July, aims to streamline the licensing process for advanced nuclear technologies, reduce regulatory costs, and promote the development of next-generation reactors.

Additionally, in a rare show of bipartisan agreement, the Biden administration had formerly expressed intentions to triple the nation’s nuclear power capacity by 2050, recognizing nuclear energy’s role in achieving carbon-free electricity goals.

For those who missed it, in our note "The Next AI Trade" from April 2024, more than one year ago, we outlined various investment opportunities for powering up America, most of which have dramatically outperformed the market since then.

Authored by Nancy Brinker via RealClearPolitics,

DOGE is saving billions and it’s doing what voters asked for.

As someone who has represented the United States abroad, first as ambassador to Hungary and later as U.S. chief of protocol, I’ve seen how American leadership is measured not just by strength or ideals, but by functionality. Our allies watch how we govern ourselves. And too often, what they’ve seen in recent decades is an increasingly bloated federal government, mired in duplication, inefficiency, and bureaucratic inertia.

That’s why the work of the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, deserves serious consideration. Led by Elon Musk, DOGE has taken on a task that most administrations have promised but failed to achieve: modernizing how our federal government operates. It has consolidated overlapping offices, canceled wasteful contracts, sold underutilized properties, and implemented data-driven reforms, all aimed at reducing cost, improving performance, and saving taxpayer money. 

Since it began in January, DOGE has either cut or reduced grants, leases, and contracts in over 176 departments or agencies. On its website the department reports saving $160 billion. For comparison, that’s more than the entire annual budget of the Department of Transportation. Even according to independent data and analysis, DOGE efforts have already generated billions in savings. This is not a theoretical exercise in reform. It is tangible, measurable, and aligned with what the American people have repeatedly said they want: a government that delivers more by doing less.

Polling backs this up. A February Harvard CAPS/Harris poll found that 72% of Americans support the existence of an agency focused solely on eliminating waste and inefficiency in government. A clear majority (60%) said they believe DOGE is helping to rein in unnecessary federal spending. That’s not a left-wing or right-wing perspective; that’s a mainstream one.

DOGE’s creation may have sparked controversy, particularly among those uncomfortable with Musk’s unconventional approach and public persona. But we shouldn’t allow style to eclipse substance. If government is functioning more effectively and at a lower cost to taxpayers, then we must look seriously at how those outcomes are being achieved, and what lessons can be responsibly applied more broadly.

Having served in federal roles that demand strict compliance with law, protocol, and tradition, I know firsthand that reform must operate within the boundaries of our values. Rule of law and adherence to institutional norms are non-negotiable. Yet so, too, is the need for honest appraisal: Much of our federal bureaucracy has become outdated, sprawling, and resistant to change. Streamlining is not an assault on government. It is, in fact, an affirmation of it – an attempt to make public institutions worthy of public trust.

Of course, DOGE’s approach is not without flaws. Musk himself has candidly admitted as much. Critics have questioned whether all reported savings are fully verified, and transparency around decision-making needs improvement. Oversight is not only appropriate – it’s essential. But the existence of imperfections should not be a pretext for dismissing a bold, productive effort to modernize government. We cannot let perfect be the enemy of progress.

It’s a time-honored tradition in Washington for good ideas to wither under partisan suspicion. But government reform should not be the property of any one party. For decades, both Republicans and Democrats have campaigned on promises to cut waste, modernize services, and rein in unnecessary spending. 

DOGE is doing what many in both parties have failed to do: take those promises seriously.

The real question is not whether DOGE is controversial – it is. The real question is whether it is effective. So far, the evidence suggests that it is. The challenge ahead is to preserve that momentum, institutionalize the best of what DOGE is doing, fix mistakes, and ensure it is guided by transparency, accountability, and legal rigor.

This moment presents a rare opportunity: the chance to reshape how government operates in a way that is more responsive to the people it serves. Instead of vilifying reformers, we should come together around a shared goal that transcends politics: building a government that works.

If DOGE continues to help us get there, it deserves not derision, but support.

Nancy Brinker served as U.S. ambassador to Hungary and as chief of protocol during the George W. Bush administration. She is the founder of the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure and the Promise Fund.

Amtrak is cutting roughly 20% of its senior management positions, aiming to reduce expenses amid uncertainty over President Donald Trump’s infrastructure investment plans, sources familiar with the matter told Bloomberg.

The federally-owned passenger railroad - which operates as a for-profit entity, is targeting $100 million in annual cost reductions through these cuts, a source disclosed anonymously, sharing details not publicly announced.

In an official statement, Amtrak confirmed the elimination of roughly 450 management roles, reiterating the goal of achieving $100 million in yearly savings. The company emphasized these layoffs only impact corporate-level positions and assured that operational railroad jobs would remain unaffected. As of 2024, Amtrak employs approximately 22,700 people. (what!?)

"Amtrak identified opportunities to better align resources with the important work we are doing for America," the statement reads.

Amtrak President Roger Harris communicated the details of these layoffs to employees in a recent letter, indicating that impacted staff would receive notifications in the first half of May. Additionally, the railroad has implemented a hiring freeze and halted promotions for management roles, Harris wrote.

"Amtrak is making a full review of our cost structure, which includes evaluating the size of our management staff," reads the letter, adding that leadership plans "to notify impacted employees in the first half of May."

Planning for these cuts reportedly began months ago, driven by uncertainty following Trump’s presidential victory and his subsequent moves to withhold previously approved grants. This has cast doubt over future infrastructure funding.

Significant projects potentially impacted by the management layoffs include new multi-billion-dollar rail tunnels in New York City and Baltimore, as well as a replacement of the Susquehanna River Bridge and other major initiatives along the Northeast corridor.

While construction on these major projects is currently ongoing, future financing—particularly funding initially expected from the fifth year of former President Joe Biden’s infrastructure bill—is now uncertain.

Authored by Patrick Keeney via The Epoch Times,

The French have an apt expression for those vexing moments when, having exited a spirited exchange, the perfect rejoinder belatedly arrives. They call it l’esprit de l’escalier—“the wit of the staircase.”

The phrase captures that all-too-human affliction of eloquence delayed. The sharp retort, the subtle riposte—these come not in the heat of dialogue but only after one has turned his back and descended the stairs. “If only I had said ...” It’s an experience with which I’m intimately familiar.

Yet every so often, I rise to the occasion. One such instance still affords a small measure of satisfaction. A visitor from England took it upon himself to scold me for driving a German automobile. He declared he could never own one, not after the destruction wrought by the Luftwaffe on England during the war. The implication was unmistakable: my vehicular choice constituted a moral failing. He drove, he proudly informed me, a Toyota Camry. For once, I replied in real time, “Ah, well, I could never own a Japanese car, not after what the Japanese Army did to our Canadian boys in Hong Kong.” 

We changed the subject.

That brief exchange came to mind as I watched the recent paroxysms of hostility directed at Tesla. 

Dealerships have been torched, vehicles vandalized, and owners accosted in parking lots by sanctimonious citizens, sneering moral condemnation.

It is not necessary to be a shareholder, Tesla owner, or admirer of Elon Musk to find this troubling. The issue transcends personalities or partisanship.

It is a symptom of a civic pathology, one where ideological grievance takes precedence over shared achievement, and where economic success is no longer a cause for celebration but a litmus test of political allegiance.

If Mr. Musk espouses views one finds disagreeable, there are democratic mechanisms to contest them. 

But to vilify an entire enterprise—its workers, consumers, products—based on its founder’s political eccentricities is intellectual laziness masquerading as moral conviction.

It also prompts a deeper question, leading us to the heart of the matter: which corporations, if any, are so morally unblemished that we can consume their products without public disapproval? In an age increasingly saturated with virtue signalling and performative ethics, should we now consider our consumer choices as moral declarations?

If so, the standard quickly becomes untenable.

Consider Henry Ford, whose contributions to American industry were matched only by the virulence of his anti-Semitism. 

Ford financed the dissemination of “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” a notorious forgery, and his newspaper, The Dearborn Independent, published material that later delighted Nazi propagandists. By the logic of ideological purity, must we now abandon our Fords and dismantle every endowment bearing his name?

Or ponder Apple. Lauded for its sleek design and innovation, the company has also drawn fire for its reliance on overseas manufacturing, particularly through Foxconn, where reports of dire labour conditions have prompted global concern. 

Are we then to discard our iPhones, torch our MacBooks, and boycott the Apple Store as gestures of resistance?

Coca-Cola, Nestlé, Nike, and Amazon have all faced their respective reckonings—environmental degradation, exploitative labour, tax evasion, and anti-competitive conduct. 

Even the so-called “green industries,” ostensibly paragons of sustainability, are entangled in troubling realities: the mining of cobalt and lithium (often involving child labour), the environmental toll of solar and wind technologies, and the geopolitical implications of rare earth extraction.

And what of legacy media organizations, whose selective coverage, ideological slant, and occasional falsehoods have sown confusion and deepened division? If we are to demand moral rectitude from our manufacturers, should we not hold our journalists and media organizations to the same standard?

The list is endless. In a fallen world, condemning every corporation and institution for its moral shortcomings takes little imagination. Yet, this is precisely the point: the moral outrage directed at Tesla is not principled but opportunistic. It is less about ethics and more about tribalism.

This is not to say that ethics should not play a role in commerce. Instead, it is to warn against the politicization of consumption, whereby our purchases become emblems of ideological identity. A society that demands moral perfection from its corporations but does so selectively, based not on a coherent principle but on partisan affinity, is not morally serious. It is merely moral theatre. The recent wave of anti-Tesla fervour has less to do with conscience than spectacle.

But moral seriousness requires more than slogans. It demands consistency, humility, and, most critically, an acknowledgment of our shared imperfection. Without these, protests that take us to task for our consumer habits are not acts of ethical resistance, but empty gestures—tribal totems in the theatre of cultural war.

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

President Donald Trump is urging Republican lawmakers to raise taxes on some of the wealthiest Americans as part of his sweeping new economic package - a move that US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick says he's 'in favor' of doing.

According to individuals familiar with the discussions, Trump is pushing for the creation of a new 39.6 percent tax bracket for individuals earning at least $2.5 million annually or couples making $5 million. The current top rate stands at 37 percent. If enacted, the measure would restore the top marginal rate to its pre-2017 level, effectively rolling back a key piece of President Trump’s own first-term tax cuts.

According to Bloomberg, Trump made his case in a phone call Wednesday with House Speaker Mike Johnson, where he also reiterated support for ending the carried interest tax break - a longstanding benefit claimed by private equity and venture capital managers, one source said.

Representative Jason Smith, the Missouri Republican who chairs the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, is expected to meet with President Trump on Friday. A congressional aide said Smith plans to assure the president that the forthcoming tax bill 'will deliver on the president’s priorities,' according to the aide.

While the proposal’s full contours remain under negotiation, it is not yet clear whether it would include an expansion of the existing small business income exemption under the individual tax code.

The push to raise the top rate comes as House Republicans face mounting fiscal pressure in drafting what President Trump has labeled the “one big beautiful bill” — a multi-trillion-dollar package aimed at extending the 2017 tax cuts while enacting a range of new promises, including eliminating taxes on tips and overtime pay.

To finance the plan, GOP leaders have struggled to find consensus on cuts to entitlement programs such as Medicaid, prompting President Trump to float alternatives. Despite concerns that taxing high earners could harm Republicans politically or drive wealth abroad, President Trump has increasingly suggested such a move might be necessary.

Raising taxes goes against long-standing Republican orthodoxy. Trump’s willingness to propose a tax hike for millionaires demonstrates how much he has remade the GOP in his own populist image. Top Republicans have balked at other proposals that would raise levies on affluent households. -Bloomberg

“Anytime the president asks for something, we will consider it,” said Representative Kevin Hern of Oklahoma, a member of the House tax-writing committee. He confirmed that both the new top rate and carried interest repeal are “under discussion” but emphasized that “there is no agreement yet.”

In the Senate, the reaction has been more measured. Senator Mike Crapo of Idaho, the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, told conservative talk show host Hugh Hewitt on Thursday that he’s “not excited” about the tax hike but acknowledged that “there are a number of people in both the House and the Senate who are.”

“If the president weighs in in favor of it,” Crapo added, “then that’s going to be a big factor that we have to take into consideration.”

As Republicans weigh how to advance President Trump’s second-term tax ambitions, the question of who pays — and how much — is shaping up to be a defining test of the president’s enduring sway over the party’s economic direction.

Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

Vice President JD Vance said on Wednesday that negotiations between the US and Iran are "on the right pathway," although he repeated a false claim that no other country in the world besides Iran has a nuclear enrichment program without a nuclear weapons program, a talking point first used by Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Several non-nuclear armed states that are signatories to the Non-Proliferation Treaty enrich uranium at low levels, including Japan, Germany, and Brazil. "Let me ask this basic question. Which regime in the world has civil nuclear power and enrichment without having a nuclear weapon? And the answer is: no one," the vice president said at the Munich Leader Conference in Washington.

Vance at the Munich Leaders Conference in Washington. White House video screenshot.

Vance said that Iran could maintain a civil nuclear program, but his comments about enrichment suggest he’s saying all uranium enrichment must be eliminated, a condition Tehran has strongly rejected.

"We don’t care if people want nuclear power. We’re fine with that, but you can’t have the kind of enrichment program that allows you to get to a nuclear weapon, and that’s where we draw the line," Vance added.

The 2015 Iran deal, known as the JCPOA, limited Iran’s uranium enrichment at 3.67%, far below the 90% needed for weapons grade, and made its nuclear program subject to the most stringent inspections in the world. Vance criticized the deal, claiming it left open a path to Iranian nuclear weapons.

"We believe that there were some elements of their nuclear program that were preserved under JCPOA that, yes, they weren’t nuclear weapons — Iran doesn’t have a nuclear weapon — but [it] allowed Iran to sort of stay on this glide path towards a nuclear weapon if they flip the switch and press go," Vance said.

Vance’s comments come after President Trump said Iran’s nuclear program must be totally dismantled, although he said he was "open" to hearing about the possibility of a civil program.

So far, the US and Iran have held three rounds of negotiations. Talks that were supposed to be held this past weekend were postponed, but Iranian media has reported that another round of negotiations will be held this Saturday in Oman.

In his comments on Wednesday, Vance also referred to President Trump’s threat that if a deal isn’t reached, the US will attack Iran. He said there was a possibility of a deal that would "reintegrate Iran into the global economy," which he called "Option A." He added that "Option B" would be "very bad."

Trump has been threatening to bomb Iran if a deal isn’t reached, even though his intelligence agencies recently reaffirmed that there’s no evidence Tehran is building a bomb or that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has reversed his ban on the development of nuclear weapons.

Authored by Frank Miele via RealClearWire.com,

Thursday, April 24, was a day like any other day – the sun came up, the sun went down, and Donald Trump was hit with at least three nationwide injunctions by federal district court judges.

That’s just the way it goes if you are a president who wants to take back America from the entrenched left-wing bureaucracy and restore common sense to government before it is too late.

The danger of the bureaucracy was predicted by Julien Benda in his 1927 book “The Treason of the Clerks,” which warned of the danger of the intellectual class adopting political passions that had previously been the sole domain of the masses. We see this most distinctly today in the federal bureaucracy, which I dare say has the greatest concentration of degree-holders from Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia (and the like) of any sector in the nation, other than the incestuous universities themselves.

The treason that Benda described was the loss of independence of thought and dispassionate reason by intellectuals, and the accompanying subservience of intellect to political passions. During Trump’s first term, I wrote a column describing the danger that Benda had foreseen:

Benda wrote at the beginning of the age of mass communication, and yet he already saw that “political passions have attained a universality never before known. … Thanks to the progress of communication and, still more, to the group spirit, it is clear that the holders of the same political hatred now form a compact impassioned mass, every individual of which feels himself in touch with the infinite number of others, whereas a century ago such people were comparatively out of touch with each other and hated in a ‘scattered’ way” …

It seems that we are now living out Benda’s worst nightmare — an age of manipulation of the masses by those who think they know better — whether you call them the “deep state,” the “opposition party,” “the national elite,” “the entrenched bureaucracy,” or just “the establishment.”

And for the past 10 years, they have turned their hatred on Donald Trump. Without rhyme or reason, they fight him on every reform and arm themselves with invented scandal and fake news.

Now, in Trump’s second term, we see that the bureaucracy has a close ally in the judiciary – not one judge, but multitudes that aim to preserve the status quo of liberal governance. If that wasn’t clear before April 24, there was no room for doubt after the day was filled with one court ruling after another telling Trump to “stand back and stand by” rather than to exercise his lawful power as president.

Here’s what tumbled out of the judicial branch that day:

– A federal district court judge in California blocked Trump’s executive order that would have denied federal funds to so-called sanctuary cities that limit or forbid cooperation with federal immigration authorities.

– A Washington, D.C., judge blocked the Trump administration from following through on the president’s executive order requiring that voters in federal elections show proof of citizenship when registering.

– A district judge in New Hampshire blocked efforts to defund public schools that utilize diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. Not to be outdone, judges in Maryland and Washington, D.C., essentially issued the same order, giving added protection to one of the least popular programs ever shoved down the throat of American citizens.

At the time, those were the latest of more than a dozen nationwide injunctions issued by unelected federal judges who appeared more interested in preserving and protecting left-wing shibboleths than the Constitution.

Also in courts across the nation that week were attempts by judges to reject Trump’s authority as commander in chief to ban transgender participation in the military, to deny Trump the right to strip security clearances from law firms that he says put national security interests second to political partisanship, and stop the administration’s efforts to eliminate federal news services such as Voice of America that engage in anti-American propaganda.

Those are all in addition to the several injunctions issued relative to Trump’s promised reform of the immigration system to expedite deportation of illegal immigrants, especially those who have a criminal history or are members of international gangs.

If that seems normal, it isn’t. 

There were only six nationwide injunctions during the eight years of the George W. Bush presidency, and only 12 during the Obama presidency. That increased to 14 under President Biden, which was surpassed by President Trump in the first nine weeks of his second term when 15 such injunctions were issued. Of course, Trump should be accustomed to such judicial abuse. In his first term, there were 64 injunctions against his policies, a staggering 92.2% issued by Democrat-appointed judges. Julien Benda would have clearly recognized the “political passions” that had supplanted the disinterested intellectual rigor we once expected of our judges.

Yet because of our habituated respect for the separation of powers, none dare call it the treason of the judiciary.

That of course is a reference to the 1960s tract “None Dare Call It Treason” by John A. Stormer. Stormer took on the country’s intellectual elites, blaming them for working against the interests of the nation by tolerating or quietly promoting communism. The left-wing elites of the day laughed it off as another right-wing conspiracy theory, but as time has passed it’s become clear that there was indeed a long-range effort to corrupt our institutions with Communism 101 – reducing social acceptance of religion, turning education into indoctrination, and infiltrating government with the intelligentsia that thinks American values are outdated.

Now, at long last, we can see the fruit of the corrupt tree sprouting in our court system, where judges help illegal immigrants escape through the back door of the courtroom, where other judges demand the return of deported gang members or halt the deportation of antisemitic radicals, and where every effort to put America first is ruled unconstitutional.

Fighting back against the overreach of the judiciary must be Donald Trump’s No. 1 priority as he seeks to restore sanity to the federal government. Because the most important principle of constitutional law that is being decided in the next few months is whether the president is truly the chief executive or whether he serves at the pleasure of left-wing judges who put political passion ahead of national interests.

In the ultimate irony, the case must be decided by nine men and women in black robes, the justices of the Supreme Court of the United States. The fate of the nation’s future hinges on whether they will seek justice impartially or be swayed by partisan rancor.

Unfortunately, it’s an open question.

Authored by Kimberly Hayek via The Epoch Times,

California is home to some of the widest gaps between mortgage payments and rental costs in the nation, meaning it is increasingly harder to buy a home compared to renting one, according to analysts.

The California Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) reported on April 21 that the gap between monthly costs of buying a bottom-tier home versus renting a bottom-tier home has reached levels not seen since the mid-2000s housing bubble, with the growth attributed to higher home prices and higher mortgage rates.

“Historically, people would rent, save money, and then buy a house. But, if the rents are high and the prices of houses are even higher, then there’s really no hope,” Joel Kotkin, a fellow in urban studies at Chapman University, told The Epoch Times.

“Buying is becoming more and more difficult, unless you have inherited wealth, or if you have money from overseas.”

A study by Bankrate published on April 23 highlighted the growing affordability challenges in the state’s largest metropolitan areas, where coastal cities lead the country in cost disparities between owning and renting.

Bankrate compared average monthly rent to average monthly mortgage payments across the 50 largest U.S. metropolitan areas, and revealed that cities in California are at the top of the list when it comes to expensive home ownership, especially when compared to rents.

San Francisco has a buy-rent gap of 190.7 percent, making it home to the largest gap nationwide. The typical monthly mortgage payment in San Francisco was around $8,882, up 4.7 percent year-over-year, while the typical rent is $3,055, down 1.7 percent year-over-year.

San Jose comes in a close second on the list, where homeowners fork over mortgage payments that are 185.6 percent higher than rent. The typical mortgage payment is $9,438, up 10.5 percent year-over-year, with rent coming in around $3,305, down 1.3 percent year-over-year.

Los Angeles and San Diego have seen a similar trend. Mortgage payments in Southern California’s largest metro areas are 88.5 percent and 79.9 percent higher than rent, respectively, landing them sixth and ninth compared to other U.S. metros included in the study.

Bankrate’s study attributes high cost gaps between renting and owning a home to skyrocketing home prices because of low housing supply, as well as high mortgage rates, which average nearly 6.90 percent for a 30-year fixed loan nationwide as of April 24.

“ If you’re in the coastal markets, you have to consider this home as a very long-run solution,” Skylar Olsen, Zillow’s chief housing economist, said in a statement. “In California, people famously leave their homes to their children. There are very long tenures in these really expensive markets for that reason.”

California Housing Costs

California homes are around twice as expensive as the typical American home, reported the California LAO, citing Zillow data. A mid-tier home in California costs around $789,000 in 2025, compared to the U.S. average of $361,000.

According to the California Association of Realtors (CAR), the median California home price in March 2025 was $884,350.

In a July 2024 report from Zillow, for 117 cities across California, a typical starter home costs $1 million or more.

Los Angeles’s median home price is just over $1 million, reports Redfin. Meanwhile, San Francisco and San Jose report higher median home prices, at more than $1.3 million and $1.4 million, respectively.

Mid-tier home monthly payments reached nearly $5,900 a month in March 2024, making for an 82 percent growth in prices since January 2020, reported the California LAO. Bottom-tier home payments reached more than $3,500 per month, representing an 87 percent increase since January 2020.

CAR reports that a mere 17 percent of households could afford a median-priced home in early 2024. California home prices are forecasted by CAR to increase 4.6 percent in 2025.

Homeownership rates have fallen in California, according to U.S. Census Bureau data, where the current home ownership rate is 55.9 percent, compared to the national average of 65.2 percent. Homeownership in the state peaked at 60.2 percent in 2006.

Meanwhile, according to the LAO, the monthly rent for a two-bedroom home in California in 2024 was $2,225 compared to the $1,400 national average.

The California Housing Partnership found in 2024 that renters in Los Angeles need to make $48.04 per hour—2.9 times Los Angeles’s minimum wage—in order to afford the average rent of $2,498.

The Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) reported that renters comprise a 44 percent share of households in California compared to 35 percent in the rest of the country. Save for two other states, more California renters spend over half of their income on rent than any other state.

Lack of Homeownership

Amid the rising prices, 70 percent of Californians believe children today will fare worse than their parents financially, according to a 2024 PPIC statewide survey.

The survey found 29 percent of Californians skipped meals or ate less food in order to save money within the prior year, while 17 percent used CalFresh (food stamp) benefits. Moreover, 20 percent put medical care on hold as a result of financial constraints.

According to Mark Schniepp, director of The Economic Forecast, the main issue is housing.

“But there’s not much we can do about it outside of building more of it,” Schniepp told The Epoch Times in an email. “However we are unlikely to be able to build enough, given current regulations in place and current zoning.”

“The Coastal Act, CEQA, land costs and many local regulations prevent developing housing,” he added.

Kotkin agreed state policies have contributed to a lack of affordable housing, which makes it difficult to build in places that would otherwise be cheaper.

“What essentially is approved is increasingly high density and expensive in the inner city,” Kotkin said.

The bottom line, he said, is that home ownership is an important part of preparing for retirement. If you own a house, then you can stay there once you retire, because you probably have paid it off.

“The house is an asset,” he said. 

“[Owners] can borrow against it, they can sell, and then they can have a comfortable retirement.”

However, if an increasing number of people are forced to rent, “people will generally look to the state, or some other institution, to take care of them, because they have nothing of their own,” Kotkin said. 

“They’re going to rent for life, which means that when they retire, they’re not going to have any assets. They’re going to be dependent on state transfer payments.”

He sees such dependency as incompatible with democracy.

“Democracy is built on the fact that there’s some degree of independence on the part of a large part of the population,” he said. “If you own a house, you have a certain degree of autonomy that maybe you can think in a different way than if you are dependent on the fact that your landlord may decide to increase the rent 50 percent.”