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Dear America, We Do Not Beat China in the AI Race if We Become China in the AI Race

America is in an AI arms race. That’s the official story, anyway — a convenient narrative blasted from the teleprompters of corporate media and the podiums of bought-off politicians. We’re told that to question the wholesale surrender of our power grids, our water aquifers, and now our public lands to the data center boom is not just naive, but unpatriotic. This is the oldest trick in the book of statecraft: wrap a corporate giveaway in the flag and dare anyone to question it. The moment dissent gets reframed as disloyalty, you know you’re being scammed.

This was the raw, unfiltered message from Donald Trump at his Ratepayer Protection Pledge event, where he looked at his own constituents and told them, regarding the industrialization of their communities, “You can’t fight it. You have to go with it.” There is no clearer definition of tyranny than that. It’s the voice of an apparatus that has stopped asking for consent and started issuing commands.

Before we go further, let’s be crystal clear about what a free market actually is, and how it relates to the building of these data centers, because the term has been so grotesquely twisted it’s nearly lost its meaning. A free market is what happens when private individuals or companies make consensual deals. It is the opposite of the centrally planned, state-subsidized, resource-commandeering binge we are currently watching unfold.

And the most damning evidence that this AI boom has nothing to do with free enterprise is the simple fact that they are building it on your land. This isn’t private companies buying private property from willing sellers. This is the state acting as a real estate agent for the corporate elite, handing over vast tracts of public and military land in negotiated deals that the communities sitting next to them never got a real vote on.

Consider the facts. In Nevada, the federal Bureau of Land Management just approved the first commercial AI data center ever authorized on public land, waving aside desert tortoise habitat and the already-drought-stricken Colorado River. The agency did it, according to the conservation groups now suing to stop it, by reusing an old environmental review written for an entirely different solar project — meaning no new review and no public comment period were ever required, and the city of Boulder City itself says it was never consulted. The Department of Energy is running the same play with the wreckage of the Cold War: it has tapped SoftBank to build a 10-gigawatt AI campus at the former Portsmouth uranium enrichment plant in Ohio, selected Brookfield and NextEra for a $100 billion complex at the former Paducah uranium plant in Kentucky, and picked Amentum and DC Blox to develop a gigawatt-scale campus at the Savannah River nuclear-weapons site in South Carolina.

The Department of Defense has gotten in on it too, conditionally selecting Carlyle and CyrusOne to build hyperscale data centers on Army land at Fort Bliss, Texas, and Dugway Proving Ground, Utah, while the Air Force has offered up nearly 4,700 acres across three bases in Alaska for the same purpose. It has even trickled down to city hall: back in 2023, the Manassas, Virginia city council voted unanimously to sell 21 acres of city-owned airport land directly to Amazon for a new data center, with no ballot, no referendum, and barely a public hearing.

When the state is auctioning off the very land it supposedly holds in trust for the public, this is not capitalism. This is corporatism. It is a direct transfer of public assets into private, politically connected hands, and it makes a complete mockery of any claim to a “free market.”

With every one of these backroom deals comes the same tired promise: jobs. But the state’s own numbers expose the fraud. At a cost of roughly $13 million in investment per permanent job in Virginia, or $11 million per job in a recent New York deal, these are not job-creation programs. They are handouts to automate human labor. You’re being asked to celebrate a system where your own tax dollars subsidize the very automation that renders you obsolete.

The real costs — the ones that never make it onto the glossy brochures — are being socialized and dumped on an unwilling public. Residential electricity prices have shot up more than 36 percent since 2020, with data centers a primary driver. Dominion Energy in Virginia pushed through its first base-rate hike since 1992, and Baltimore residents saw their bills climb by more than $17 a month after a record power auction. The grid is being strained toward the breaking point, and the cost of every upgrade flows directly to ratepayers who never consented to any of it. It’s a textbook case of privatized profit and socialized loss: politically connected corporations reap the rewards, and you get handed the bill.

These facilities are also vampires, and they are draining the aquifers dry. U.S. data centers consumed more than 200 billion gallons of water last year, with roughly 93 percent of that footprint hidden inside off-site power plants where nobody’s looking. In drought-stricken Texas, consumption is projected to explode 714 percent by 2030, yet a state legislative hearing revealed that a staggering 83 percent of the state’s data centers simply refused to comply with mandatory water reporting. This stops being a negotiation and becomes the outright seizure of a shared public resource, with the state acting as armed lookout for the plunder.

It becomes something far more sinister when you remember what a lot of this infrastructure is actually for. Data centers themselves are neutral, but their deployment by the state is not. When the Department of Defense leases military land to build data centers, it isn’t for hosting cat videos. It is the physical construction of a turnkey surveillance apparatus, built on the one category of American ground that is already unambiguously controlled by the government, with none of the normal local checks that even a private developer would face. We are being told to subsidize the very infrastructure that is increasingly being used to watch our every move — and to do it on land we collectively own.

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Francesca Hong: Thanksgiving ‘Incredibly Painful for Many’, ‘There Are Multiple Views, But Views Can Evolve’

On Monday’s broadcast of CNN’s “The Source,” Democratic Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong responded to a question on whether she still believes Thanksgiving should be canceled as she had previously tweeted by saying that she has cooked Thanksgiving meals, “But Thanksgiving is also a time that’s incredibly painful for many people in our communities. And so, I think there, I wanted to make sure that people understood that there are multiple views, but views can evolve.”

Host Kaitlan Collins asked, “Do you still believe that Thanksgiving should be canceled?”

Hong answered, “I’m a chef, and one of the first meals that I made that was for the community, when I was 16, was a Thanksgiving meal. I always think my hospitality background in owning a restaurant for seven, eight years, that, bringing folks around the table to share conversation and build community, is always a good thing. But Thanksgiving is also a time that’s incredibly painful for many people in our communities. And so, I think there, I wanted to make sure that people understood that there are multiple views, but views can evolve. And the position that I’m running for right now, and I think my background as a chef will actually help me become a better governor that’s able to bring more people to the table.”

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Knoxville Mayor Shares Chilling 2020 Talk When Deborah Birx Admitted the Truth Didn’t Matter When It Came to the Science

Public officials faced pressure from “experts” to upend the lives of everyday Americans in the name of combating COVID. But were these measures really justifiable?

Republican Mayor of Knox County, Tennessee, Glenn Jacobs — popularly known for his work with World Wrestling Entertainment as Kane — recalled an exchange with a certain doctor who gave no indication that lockdown measures were proven to be effective.

Wednesday’s Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing, which featured former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci, proved that lockdown measures enacted during COVID are still an open wound.

Fauci, a power-hungry braggart who loved the spotlight, was reduced to a sheepish old man, opting to invoke the Fifth Amendment rather than answer questions.

He ruined lives in the name of “science,” but now has nothing to say.

Another “expert” in the spotlight is Dr. Deborah Birx, who served as the coordinator of the White House Coronavirus Task Force during President Donald Trump’s final year of his first term.

On Saturday, Jacobs remembered an exchange he had with Birx that proved anti-COVID policies were more of a stunt than a safety measure.

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Report: U.S. expands CIA presence and intelligence operations in Cuba

The United States has increased its intelligence assets in Cuba in recent months, including deploying additional spies and expanding the Central Intelligence Agency’s presence on the island, according to a report published by POLITICO.

Citing “two people familiar” with the Trump administration’s plans, the move is allegedly part of a broader effort to pressure Cuba’s communist government to reform or collapse and could support options ranging from stepped-up efforts to recruit Cuban officials or citizens to a potential U.S. military operation.

The intelligence expansion follows a rare high-level visit to Havana in mid-May 2026 by CIA Director John Ratcliffe.

During the trip, Ratcliffe reportedly met with Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, the grandson of former Cuban leader Raúl Castro, Interior Minister Lázaro Álvarez Casas and the head of Cuban intelligence services.

He personally delivered President Donald Trump’s message that the United States is prepared to engage seriously on economic and security issues only if Cuba makes fundamental changes. The discussions also covered intelligence cooperation, economic stability and security concerns, with emphasis that Cuba can no longer serve as a safe haven for U.S. adversaries such as Russia and China in the Western Hemisphere.

Senior officials accompanied Ratcliffe, with a subsequent report revealing that the delegation included a paramilitary operator involved in the earlier U.S. capture of former Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro.

In tandem with the intelligence expansion, Washington significantly intensified aerial surveillance around Cuba starting early this year — flooding the surrounding airspace with P-8 Poseidon maritime patrols, RC-135 Rivet Joint reconnaissance planes and high-altitude MQ-4 drones.

Cuban officials have since criticized the heightened U.S. intelligence and related pressure as “unlawful attempts to destabilize the island.” Nonetheless, Trump administration officials maintain that a stronger intelligence posture is necessary to protect American national security, track foreign adversaries operating in Cuba and maintain leverage as economic conditions deteriorate and diplomatic talks remain stalled.

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Court Shields Catholic Nuns, Healthcare Ministries from New York Assisted Suicide Law

A district court on Thursday blocked New York from enforcing its assisted suicide law against four orders of Catholic nuns and several Catholic healthcare ministries as their religious liberty lawsuit continues. 

The temporary agreement, which New York agreed to, will shield the Catholic nuns and ministries from being forced to take any part in assisted suicides when the law legalizing the practice goes into effect on Wednesday, attorneys with Becket Fund for Religious Liberty announced. The agreement will be in effect while the court considers their request for a preliminary injunction. 

“Forcing Catholic nuns to participate in suicide—and robbing New Yorkers of the choice to receive faithful, life-affirming care—is both unlawful and unjust,” said Mark Rienzi, president of Becket and lead attorney for the healthcare ministries. “This agreement protects the sisters and those they care for while we fight to end New York’s suicide mandate for good.”

The groups — including the Carmelite Sisters, the Dominican Sisters, the Benedictine Sisters, the Little Sisters, Bishop John Barres of the Diocese of Rockville Centre, and Catholic Health — are suing over part of the law that requires them to provide referrals to patients who are interested in assisted suicide. While the 2026 law contains a religious liberty exception, it requires objecting parties to send interested patients to providers who will enable the suicide to occur, thus still mandating some form of facilitation. 

The complaint asked the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York to block the law before it takes effect on August 5. The lawsuit alleges that if the law goes into effect, healthcare providers who refuse to take part in counseling and referrals for assisted suicides will face significant fines, professional sanctions, and even criminal penalties.

The lawsuit accuses New York of violating core constitutional protections for religious freedom and freedom of speech by compelling Catholic nuns and ministries to either violate their faith or risk state punishment.

“There is a tendency in our society to treat the elderly as if they are a burden,” Mother Alice Marie Monica of the Little Sisters of the Poor said in a statement. “This temporary protection allows us to keep showing them that they are wanted, loved, and precious in God’s eyes.”

In February, New York became the 13th state, plus Washington, DC, to legalize assisted suicide. The “Medical Aid in Dying” or MAID bill allows assisted suicide for terminally ill New Yorkers with less than six months to live.

Democrat New York Gov. Kathy Hochul released a statement at the time of the bill’s signing equating assisted suicide with “freedoms” and a “right to bodily autonomy” — a similar argument used by pro-abortion and pro-transgender activists who promote mutilation and the killing of unborn babies.

The groups — including the Carmelite Sisters, the Dominican Sisters, the Benedictine Sisters, the Little Sisters, Bishop John Barres of the Diocese of Rockville Centre, and Catholic Health — are suing over part of the law that requires them to provide referrals to patients who are interested in assisted suicide. While the 2026 law contains a religious liberty exception, it requires objecting parties to send interested patients to providers who will enable the suicide to occur, thus still mandating some form of facilitation. 

The complaint asked the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York to block the law before it takes effect on August 5. The lawsuit alleges that if the law goes into effect, healthcare providers who refuse to take part in counseling and referrals for assisted suicides will face significant fines, professional sanctions, and even criminal penalties.

The lawsuit accuses New York of violating core constitutional protections for religious freedom and freedom of speech by compelling Catholic nuns and ministries to either violate their faith or risk state punishment.

“There is a tendency in our society to treat the elderly as if they are a burden,” Mother Alice Marie Monica of the Little Sisters of the Poor said in a statement. “This temporary protection allows us to keep showing them that they are wanted, loved, and precious in God’s eyes.”

In February, New York became the 13th state, plus Washington, DC, to legalize assisted suicide. The “Medical Aid in Dying” or MAID bill allows assisted suicide for terminally ill New Yorkers with less than six months to live.

Democrat New York Gov. Kathy Hochul released a statement at the time of the bill’s signing equating assisted suicide with “freedoms” and a “right to bodily autonomy” — a similar argument used by pro-abortion and pro-transgender activists who promote mutilation and the killing of unborn babies.

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Cursing, Unhinged Democratic Congressional Candidate Arrested After Violent Altercation on Keawakapu Beach

Another violent, cursing Democrat takes a fall.

Kirill Basin, a democratic candidate for Congress, was arrested on Keawakapu Beach on Saturday.

Kirill is running against incumbent U.S. Rep. Jill Tokuda in Hawaii. He was arrested after a violent altercation at Keawakapu Beach in South Kihei.

South Kihei is a census‑designated place in Maui County, Hawaii, located on the leeward (south) side of Maui, between Maʻalaea and Wailea.

The ambitious Democrat was filmed taunting a group on the beach, saying, “What you gonna do? What you gonna do?”

He was then filmed getting knocked out cold in one punch from a fed-up man who took was tired of his mouth.

Kirill Basin, 40, was charged with two counts of first-degree terroristic threatening, and his bail was set at $1 million.

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Egyptian Police Arrest Four Christians Who Complained About Being Beaten By Muslims

A Coptic Christian church in Egypt endured an attack by an Islamic mob earlier this month — resulting in the arrests of four Christians who endured beatings.

Christian Solidarity Worldwide reported that according to the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, a church faced a horde of Muslims — mainly women and children — throwing stones at the building on July 8.

Some of the believers were injured, while the priest’s car and the church building were damaged.

Tal Al-Quiblya, a province in upper Egypt, did not have a church for many years, but Christians started “organising prayers and regular masses in their homes on a rotating basis,” per the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights.

“The varying distances involved in traveling to different homes affected some residents’ ability to attend regularly,” the organization added.

“Consequently, the villagers decided to designate an existing building located amidst their homes as a church — a move made with the knowledge of both security authorities and the village’s Muslim residents.”

Their efforts to coordinate the worship of the Triune God appeared to incense the Muslim locals.

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Zelensky Dismisses Ambassador to the U.S. Olga Stefanishyna, Investigated by the Ukrainian Anti-Corruption Agencies

Corruption probe sealed Stefanishyna’s fate.

The troublesome government reshuffle that Volodymyr Zelensky is implementing in his Kiev regime is still ongoing.

While most of the attention has been devoted to Zelensky’s firing of Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov – and subsequently of Commander-in-Chief General Oleksandr Syrsky, Ukrainian press has reported since the start that the reason for the shakeup was the Ambassador to the US, Olga Stefanishyna.

So, yesterday (3), as expected, Zelensky dismissed Stefanishyna.

And the reason why, that the AFP report tried to hide in the next-to-last paragraph: “According to Ukrainian media, Stefanishyna is under investigation by the country’s anti-corruption agency on suspicion of wrongdoing, although she has not been formally accused.

[…] In a Facebook post in which she also posted a letter asking to be relieved of her duties, Stefanishyna said the decision was her own and ‘dictated by personal circumstances’.”

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Palisades Fire Fraud: Man Headed To Prison After Scamming $64K Out Of FEMA

An East Hollywood man is headed to federal prison for a year and a day after collecting more than $64,000 in wildfire disaster relief on a Pacific Palisades home he had no connection to whatsoever.

Delvonne Dashon Johnson, 32, was sentenced on July 31 in Los Angeles and ordered to repay $64,148 to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. He pleaded guilty last year to fraud in connection with major disaster or emergency benefits – a charge that carries a statutory maximum of 30 years.

In February 2025, weeks after the Palisades Fire tore through the coastline, Johnson filed a FEMA claim listing a Pacific Palisades address as a home he owned. FEMA wired him $64,138 later that same month – except, he didn’t own the house. Someone else did, and she was living in it.

The fraud unraveled only when the actual homeowner tried to file her own claim. FEMA told her someone had already submitted one on her property’s behalf. When investigators interviewed her on April 2, 2025, she told them she had lived at the address since 2015, that it was her primary residence, that she was there when the fire hit, that she had never rented the place to anyone, and that she had never heard of Delvonne Johnson.

Johnson was not working alone – he was one of several people federal prosecutors swept up for running the same play on the same disaster. Deanniah Hogan, 32, of Compton, allegedly posed as a renter at a Palisades home and drew roughly $17,351. Zenalyn McIntre, 38, of Sherman Oaks, allegedly submitted a fabricated utility bill and a driver’s license listing a different address, and received about $25,229. Hedeshia Robertson, 36, of Lakewood, pleaded guilty after obtaining some $24,899. Another defendant allegedly claimed a nonexistent Altadena address as her destroyed primary residence and collected $23,441, plus two FEMA-booked hotel stays. Jaime Arturo Carrillo, 48, pleaded guilty after claiming property damage and utility disruption at a South Los Angeles address roughly 20 miles from either fire.

The pattern extends well beyond Los Angeles County. In June, a Honolulu man was sentenced to two years for conspiring to submit false FEMA claims tied to both the Lahaina fire and the Pacific Palisades fire, with a co-defendant posing as his Maui landlord before turning around and claiming to have lived in Pacific Palisades herself. The pair collected more than $60,000. He then filed fabricated flight records with the court and picked up an obstruction charge on top.

Victims of the Eaton and Palisades fires could qualify for a one-time $750 FEMA payment, up to $43,600 in other-needs assistance covering personal property, transportation and medical costs, and housing assistance for as long as 18 months. Homeowners were eligible for up to another $43,600 in repair money. Money that moves fast enough to help people who just lost everything moves fast enough to reach people who lost nothing.

The two fires ignited on Jan. 7, 2025, burned close to 60,000 acres, destroyed more than 16,000 structures, and killed 30 people.

For claiming a slice of the recovery money set aside for those people, Johnson drew 12 months and one day.

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Former FBI Agent Charged With Stealing Nearly $1 Million In Crypto, Asked ChatGPT How To Hide It

A supervising U.S. FBI agent who worked in intelligence at the national headquarters has been arrested and accused in a federal court filing of stealing more than $1 million in cryptocurrency.

The high-level special agent, identified as Patrick Steven Yarmoch, allegedly turned himself in to agency colleagues, reporting that he dug crypto keys from FBI systems to make as many as a dozen transfers to himself from accounts tied to foreign individuals he’d investigated, according to an August 1 account filed with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.

“During the afternoon of July 28, 2026, Yaroch contacted DOJ Employee 1 via Signal and requested to meet to discuss personal matters,” prosecutors said in the complaint.

“Upon meeting DOJ Employee 1 at FBI headquarters, Yaroch immediately started to break down as he told his story.”

Yarmoch — who held a “top secret” security clearance — had worked in counterintelligence, specifically with an investigative unit that focused on an unnamed “adversary nation,” according to the court filing, which noted he was suspended for a couple of days before being fired and arrested on July 31.

The resident of Ashburn, Virginia, had worked as a supervisory special agent at FBI headquarters in Washington, specifically in its counterintelligence and espionage division. He’d previously worked for years out of Boston, where he’d been in a national-security unit investigating the adversary nation referenced in the court filing.

In handling the digital assets, Yarmoch was said to use accounts with Kraken and also Suilend, the decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem for the Sui blockchain, via a Slush wallet.

The FBI searches of his computer and phone records revealed some of his recent questions to AI apps, including, “If you had a bucket of money (around $1 million) and you wanted to leave the USA and become a resident or citizen of an EU country, what would you do?”

To which the app allegedly recommended Portugal as a favored destination.

Investigators also located travel plans for Yarmoch and his family to go to Portugal next month, and located the power of attorney forms for Portugal.

“Yaroch stated he was not planning to funnel money into Portugal,” the complaint said.

“Yaroch told FBI WF Agents that his family had a trip planned to Portugal in September 2026 to meet friends. Yaroch realized he might not be able to attend the trip but stated he hoped his wife and child would still go on the trip.”

Later searches included whether Americans need a visa when connecting through Turkey and help drafting a follow-up email about a job opportunity and life in Greece.

He was also said to take recent trips to Germany, and Grenada that he hadn’t reported internally, in violation of FBI rules.

Yarmoch was placed in detention in Alexandria, Virginia.

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