Blog

USDA Will Withhold SNAP Funds From 21 States That Refused To Provide Data

U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins says she will be moving to stop federal funding to 21 non-compliant states that have refused to provide data from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

In February, the Trump administration had asked all states to provide their SNAP data to the federal government as part of the administration’s efforts to root out waste and fraud in the welfare program.

29 mostly Republican-led states provided the data and revealed 500,000 cases of duplicate benefits as well as 186,000 deceased individuals’ Social Security numbers in use.

But 21 mostly Democrat-led states, including California, Minnesota and New York,  have dug in their heels and refused to provide the information, citing concerns over privacy.

Secretary Rollins told reporters that if a state refuses to share data on criminal use of SNAP benefits, “it won’t get a dollar of federal SNAP administrative funding.”

Rollins said that cooperation is needed from all states in order to root out fraud in the SNAP program and that action is impending for those states that refuse to provide names and immigration status of aid recipients.

Speaking at a Cabinet meeting Tuesday, Rollins said, “We asked for all the states for the first time to turn over their data to the federal government to let the USDA partner with them to root out this fraud, to make sure that those who really need food stamps are getting them, but also to ensure that the American taxpayer is protected.”

Rollins accused former president Joe Biden of trying to “buy an election” by ramping up food stamp funding by 40% last year.

Roughly 42 million recipients currently use SNAP benefits to help buy their groceries, at an annual cost to taxpayers of nearly $100 billion a year.

Keep reading

Sportswear Company Challenges Flat Earthers to Photograph Planet’s Edge

A clever new marketing campaign from sportswear company Columbia offers Flat Earthers a sizeable prize if they can produce a photograph of the edge of the planet. The amusing challenge was reportedly put forward by CEO Tim Boyle in an open letter published in the New York Times and a video released on Monday. “This is a message to Flat Earthers,” he wrote in the missive, “I’ve seen your manifestos, admired your diagrams, watched you stand proudly on your, well, flat ground. So here’s the deal: it’s time to put your map where your mouth is.”

Boyle subsequently announced the launch of what the company has dubbed ‘Expedition Impossible,’ a challenge to the controversial conspiracy theorists to “do what no one in history has ever done: find the edge of the Earth.” Should someone manage to pull off the unfathomable feat, the CEO said, they would receive “everything owned by the company.” To those who might attempt to win the prize, Boyle smartly advised that they make the journey to the frosty ‘forbidden zone’ in Columbia gear because it’s “tough enough for pretty much anything, except maybe falling into the abyss.”

While Boyle’s amusing video shows him promising all manner of materials found at the Columbia headquarters, a disclaimer attached to the contest notes that “the company refers to ‘The Company, LLC’ with assets which are valued at $100,000.” Additionally, to prevent any shenanigans from possible participants, Columbia stressed that “the Edge of the Earth” is a visible, physical end to the planet Earth. We’re talking infinite sheer drop, abyssal void, clouds cascading into infinity.”

Keep reading

Acoustic Levitation Breakthrough Uses Sound to “Float” Multiple Objects in Midair

Austrian scientists working to perfect acoustic levitation have broken through a critical barrier by using electrical charges, allowing them to lift several objects simultaneously while maintaining their separation.

The researchers behind the breakthrough suggest that their new approach will offer researchers in micro robotics, materials science, and other emerging fields that rely on creating dynamic structures from small building blocks an unprecedented capability of simultaneously manipulating several objects in mid-air without them clumping together.

Scott Waitukaitis, now an assistant professor at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA), began evaluating acoustic levitation in 2013 when the technology was still in its nascent phases.

“While acoustic levitation was being used in acoustic holograms and volumetric displays, it was essentially geared toward applications,” the professor explained in a statement detailing the ISTA team’s work. “I had the impression that the technique could be used for much more fundamental purposes.”

A central limitation to expanding acoustic levitation beyond these applications is a phenomenon the team called “acoustic collapse.” Although individual particles can be levitated and manipulated in mid-air with sound, the ISTA team said that when researchers tried to levitate multiple particles simultaneously, they tend to “snap together like magnets in mid-air.”

“This ‘acoustic collapse’ occurs because the sound scattering off the particles creates attractive forces between them,” they explain.

When hunting for solutions, Sue Shi, a PhD student in the Waitukaitis group and the first author of the study, said they initially tried to separate levitated particles individually so they would form into repetitive patterns.

“Originally, we were trying to find a way to separate levitated particles so that they would form crystals,” Shi explained.

Keep reading

The Oldest Known Eclipse Record is Shedding Light on Early Celestial Mysteries, Revealing the Location of a Misplaced Ancient Chinese City

Using ancient Chinese records, scientists have calculated Earth’s variable rotational speed back to 709 BCE, based on the earliest datable total solar eclipse.

The team’s work sought evidence to support the recently developed reconstruction of the solar cycle stretching back to the 8th century BCE. To do so, they analyzed descriptions of the solar corona produced in the ancient Chinese Lu Duchy’s capital, Qufu, which provided new information about the Earth’s rotational speed over time, as revealed in a new paper in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Eclipse Records of the Lu Duchy Court

Written in the Spring and Autumn Annals of the Lu Duchy court, it is reported that on July 17, 709 BCE, “the Sun was totally eclipsed.”

Ancient Chinese rulers filled their courts with ancient astronomers, tasked not with understanding the physical nature of the universe but with interpreting the signs and portents the night skies might hold. Notable astronomical events, such as auroras and eclipses, were believed to provide insight into whether cosmic forces approved of an emperor’s decision-making. The scrutiny placed on interpreting the meaning of these events led China to keep the ancient world’s best astronomical records.

A later addendum to the record in the first century CE states that the eclipse “penetrated the center of the Sun, and it was completely yellow above and below.” However, there is no documented provenance to support the claim that this quote originated with a witness to the event.

“What makes this record special isn’t just its age, but also a later addendum in the ‘Hanshu’ (Book of Han) based on a quote written seven centuries after the eclipse,” explained lead author Hisashi Hayakawa, Assistant Professor from the Institute for Space-Earth Environmental Research and Institute for Advanced Research at Nagoya University. 

“It describes the eclipsed Sun as ‘completely yellow above and below.’ This addendum has been traditionally associated with a record of a solar corona,” Hayakawa continued. “If this is truly the case, it represents one of the earliest surviving written descriptions of the solar corona.”

Locating Qufu from an Eclipse

The work not only revealed information about the Earth and Sun, but also about the geography of ancient China. Where the Lu Court at Qufu was believed to reside at the time would not have had the view of the eclipse described in the annals. The implication, therefore, is that earlier historical research obviously must have had the city’s location wrong. 

Matching historical sources and modern archaeology to discern the actual location was a task unto itself. Eventually, the researchers pinpointed a new site some 8 kilometers from the previously purported location of Qufu. With his PhDs in both solar physics and Asian history, Hayakawa was uniquely suited to the task.

“This correction allowed us to measure the Earth’s rotation during the total eclipse accurately, calculate the orientation of the Sun’s rotation axis, and simulate the corona’s appearance,” Hayakawa said.

Our planet has not always rotated at the same speed. At the time of the observation, 2,700 years ago, due to a variety of factors, including the Moon’s pull on the tides, it rotated faster than it does today. By correlating the revised location of Qufu with the date, the researchers were able to accurately measure the Earth’s rotational speed between the 8th and 6th centuries BCE.

“This new dataset fixes coordinate errors in previous Earth rotation studies. Additionally, it improves the accuracy of dating and reconstructing historical astronomical events,” Mitsuru Sôma, coauthor from the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, said.

“This unique historical addendum for the possible solar coronal structure is critical for providing a spot reference on solar activity reconstructions from tree rings and ice cores, as well as providing independent validation of solar activity models,” explained Mathew Owens, coauthor and professor of Space Physics at the University of Reading.

Keep reading

As Expected, a Hearing on Kids Online Safety Becomes a Blueprint for Digital ID

The latest congressional hearing on “protecting children online” opened as you would expect: the same characters, the same script, a few new buzzwords, and a familiar moral panic to which the answer is mass surveillance and censorship.

The Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade had convened to discuss a set of draft bills packaged as the “Kids Online Safety Package.” The name alone sounded like a software update against civil liberties.

The hearing was called “Legislative Solutions to Protect Children and Teens Online.” Everyone on the dais seemed eager to prove they were on the side of the kids, which meant, as usual, promising to make the internet less free for everyone else.

Rep. Gus Bilirakis (R-FL), who chaired the hearing, kicked things off by assuring everyone that the proposed bills were “mindful of the Constitution’s protections for free speech.”

He then reminded the audience that “laws with good intentions have been struck down for violating the First Amendment” and added, with all the solemnity of a man about to make that same mistake again, that “a law that gets struck down in court does not protect a child.”

They know these bills are legally risky, but they’re going to do it anyway.

Bilirakis’s point was echoed later by House Energy & Commerce Committee Chairman Brett Guthrie (R-KY), who claimed the bills had been “curated to withstand constitutional challenges.” That word, curated, was doing a lot of work.

Guthrie went on to insist that “age verification is needed…even before logging in” to trigger privacy protections under COPPA 2.0.

The irony of requiring people to surrender their private information in order to be protected from privacy violations was lost in the shuffle.

Keep reading

Gavin Newsom Accused of Protecting Illegal Alien Charged with Killing 11-Year-Old Boy After California Refuses ICE Detainer

Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), a proponent of California’s sanctuary state policy, is being accused of protecting an illegal alien accused of killing 11-year-old Aiden Antonio Torres De Paz the day before Thanksgiving.

As Breitbart News reported, illegal alien Hector Balderas-Aheelor of Mexico has been arrested by the Escondido Police Department and charged with felony hit-and-run causing death or injury.

Police allege that while Aiden Antonio Torres De Paz was playing in his front yard and went to retrieve his soccer ball after it rolled into the street, Balderas-Aheelor hit him and left him to die.

Aiden ultimately died from his injuries on Thanksgiving Day.

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials are pleading with Newsom’s office to allow Escondido law enforcement to cooperate with ICE so that if Balderas-Aheelor is released from jail before he is convicted, he can be turned over to federal agents rather than going back into the community.

Newsom’s office denied refusing the ICE detainer on Balderas-Aheelor, claiming “California honors federal criminal warrants.”

“This is a complete lie,” Newsom’s office wrote in response to a clip that stated California had refused the ICE detainer. “As we have repeatedly said: The state coordinates with ICE on the deportation of convicted criminals. California honors federal criminal warrants. Nothing prohibits the federal government from doing its job in this case.”

Keep reading

N.Y.: ‘Level 2’ sex offender with 16 prior arrests charged with assaulting 20-year-old NYU student

A 45-year-old homeless man with a lengthy history of sex crimes and violence against women was arrested on Tuesday after a brazen daylight assault on a 20-year-old New York University student just steps from the school’s Manhattan campus.

James Rizzo, 45, obtained his 17th arrest on Tuesday after attacking NYU sophomore student Amelia Lewis, 20.

According to the report, Rizzo quickly approached the NYU sophomore as she walked to class, slapped her forcefully on the buttocks, then struck her head, knocking her to the ground.

“I just really want to emphasize how not OK this is. I am a student at NYU. I should not be scared to be walking the street to go to my 9:30 a.m. class. These people are disgusting, and they should not be able to be walking around the street freely targeting girls and doing this. Cause I heard that this guy did this a month ago,” Lewis said on a TikTok video, where she further discussed the incident with her friends, family, and online followers.

Police say Rizzo is listed on New York’s Sex Offender Registry as a Level 2 offender, with two publicly accessible mugshots. According to the registry, he was convicted in March 2023 for forcing himself onto another person’s intimate parts during an assault that occurred the month before.

“The University is pleased that a suspect has been apprehended in the attack on one of its students that took place Monday morning on a Broadway sidewalk,” NYU spokesperson John Beckman exclaimed. “We take this incident very seriously. We are continuing to offer support to the student, and our Campus Safety Department assisted the victim and worked with the police investigating the incident.”

Following the most recent incident, Rizzo was later arrested and charged with persistent sexual abuse, forcible touching, and assault. 16 prior arrests of his similarly involved sex offenses or sexual misconduct, a law enforcement source reported.

Just days before the attack on the NYU student, Rizzo also purportedly shoved a 68-year-old woman as she walked along Fifth Avenue at around 8:45 p.m. on Thanksgiving. In what investigators described as an unprovoked assault, he reportedly struck her with his elbow so forcefully that she fell to the ground and suffered a deep cut.

He was also charged with burglary in connection with a separate incident in a nearby building, with some reports indicating multiple counts. New York authorities stated that they found Rizzo “in the act” as he was burglarizing an apartment near Washing Square Park on Tuesday. Police connected Rizzo to four other burglaries committed at the same location, all around 1 a.m. on Tuesday.

Victims of the theft include a 28-year-old man who woke up to find his suitcase and backpack gone. Another unnamed man, 29, had three laptops, headphones, and his backpack stolen. Lastly, a 58-year-old woman had $3,150 in items taken, police added.

“I just feel very lucky,” the unidentified woman attacked on Thanksgiving said on Wednesday. “[I’m] very lucky that he didn’t have a weapon or that it didn’t happen in the subway station and throw me on the tracks.”

In addition to the burglary charges, police have since announced that he faces assault counts for both attacks, as well as sexual abuse and forcible touching stemming from the assault on Lewis.

Keep reading

Minnesota Immigrant Rapist Who Walked Free on “Sweetheart” Plea Deals Strikes Again — Rapes Third Victim After Dodging Jail for Kidnapping and Raping a Woman He Met Online

In a horrifying testament to the utter collapse of law and order under radical left-wing policies, a vicious repeat sex offender named Abdimahat Bille Mohamed, 28, of Minneapolis, has been charged with the brutal kidnapping and repeated rape of yet another terrified woman, just months after dodging real prison time for two prior rape convictions.

Prosecutors allege that Mohamed met the victim via Snapchat at her home in Mankato in September 2025, then drove her to a hotel in Bloomington.

Once the victim got in the vehicle, Mohamed reportedly told her, “You’re not going home,” according to Fox News.

The woman told investigators that Mohamed confiscated her phone and indicated she would not be allowed to leave while she was held captive and sexually assaulted over several days.

Nearly a week after the kidnapping, she escaped, jumping out of Mohamed’s car near Aldrich Avenue South in Minneapolis, at which point a resident called the police.

Authorities have charged Mohamed with kidnapping, felony third-degree criminal sexual conduct, and other related offenses. He is currently held in the county jail on a $300,000 bond.

Mohamed was previously convicted in two separate sexual-assault cases, but under plea deals, he avoided traditional prison time.

In a 2017 case, he was linked via DNA and other evidence to the kidnapping and rape of a 15-year-old girl who had communicated with him on Snapchat.

The court accepted a plea agreement: a 36-month prison sentence was stayed, he was given 364 days in a workhouse (credit for time served) and placed on probation for five years.

In a separate 2024 case, prosecutors said he had threatened a woman and her sister with a gun if she refused sex in his Minneapolis apartment.

Keep reading

YouTube says it will comply with Australia’s teen social media ban

Google’s YouTube shared a “disappointing update” to millions of Australian users and content creators on Wednesday, saying it will comply with a world-first teen social media ban by locking out users aged under 16 from their accounts within days.

The decision ends a stand-off between the internet giant and the Australian government which initially exempted YouTube from the age restriction, citing its use for educational purposes. Google (GOOGL.O) had said it was getting legal advice about how to respond to being included.

“Viewers must now be 16 or older to sign into YouTube,” the company said in a statement.

“This is a disappointing update to share. This law will not fulfill its promise to make kids safer online and will, in fact, make Australian kids less safe on YouTube.”

The Australian ban is being closely watched by other jurisdictions considering similar age-based measures, setting up a potential global precedent for how the mostly U.S. tech giants behind the biggest platforms balance child safety with access to digital services.

The Australian government says the measure responds to mounting evidence that platforms are failing to do enough to protect children from harmful content.

Keep reading

The Link Between Transgenderism and Autism

Chloe Cole grew up a tomboy, was diagnosed with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) by age 7, and referred for autism screening by age 17.

Cole began identifying as a boy during adolescence and sought physical changes to match.

Doctors readily consented to medical intervention. They prescribed puberty blockers and testosterone at age 13. At 15, surgeons performed a double mastectomy, she told The Epoch Times.

But doctors didn’t address her neurological issues first. The same gender specialist who referred her for breast surgery later referred her for autism screening. Cole has described herself as being on the autism spectrum, but said she was never formally diagnosed.

Cole is now a leading campaigner against interventions to transition children with gender dysphoria.

She said many of those she knew personally when she was involved in the transgender community, as well as many of the detransitioners she knows, “are either somewhere on the autism spectrum, or they have been diagnosed with similar conditions, like ADHD.”

Her observations are increasingly supported by research. For at least a decade, studies have reported links among transgender identity, autism, and other neurological conditions. These connections have recently gained greater public attention.

Growing evidence of an autism–transgender link is already prompting some nations to recommend neurological screening before intervention. In America, the treatment model remains unchanged, and the predominant “affirmation” model makes the link difficult to investigate.

Autism and Gender Dysphoria

A report published this month by the British think tank Centre for Social Justice showed that autism and ADHD were “overrepresented,” or disproportionately high, among youth with gender dysphoria.

​The report, citing data from the UK’s National Health Service, showed 32.4 percent of gender dysphoria referrals had an autism diagnosis, and 11.7 percent had an ADHD diagnosis. ​

Those numbers were 16 times higher than the national population averages for autism, and more than twice as high for ADHD. The population-wide averages for autism and ADHD in the United Kingdom are estimated at 2 percent and 5 percent, respectively.

“Individuals with autism spectrum disorder are far more likely to identify as transgender,” Joseph Nicolosi Jr., a licensed clinical psychologist and researcher in California, told The Epoch Times via email.

A pair of studies conducted in 2016 and 2019 indicate that autistic children are between four and seven times more likely to experience gender dysphoria or gender variance, he said. A 2019 study was conducted by researchers at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, and a 2016 study was conducted at New York University.

Nicolosi said there are several reasons for the connection, including “rigid thinking.”

​For example, if a boy with autism lacks stereotypical male interests, he may doubt he is a boy and assume he must be a girl. Reading social cues is often hard for those with autism, so they may perceive same-sex peers as getting along better than they do.

​“This heightens their sense of alienation from their peers,” Nicolosi said.

Keep reading