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California farmers to destroy 420,000 peach trees after Del Monte collapses

Central California peach farmers are preparing to destroy around 420,000 clingstone peach trees afterDel Monte Foods shut down its canneries earlier this year.

Del Monte, the 139-year-old canned fruit and vegetable company, permanently closed its canneries in Modesto and Hughson in April following a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing last July.

The closures left hundreds of workers without jobs and devastated growers, many of whom lost 20-year contracts with Del Monte and had few alternative buyers for their crops. Farmers could face an estimated $550 million in lost revenue, according to the Sacramento Bee.

In response, Senator Adam Schiff and Reps. Mike Thompson and David Valadao announced last week that affected growers could receive up to $9 million in federal aid to remove up to 420,000 clingstone peach trees before the upcoming harvest season, which typically runs from late May through September.

The approved emergency assistance will help growers remove about 3,000 acres of clingstone peach orchards. Removing about 50,000 tons of peaches from production could reduce oversupply and save farmers an estimated $30 million in additional losses, the officials said. The growers can then pivot to another crop.

“For generations, Central Valley family farms have relied on Del Monte’s Modesto facility to process their peaches,” Valadao said in a statement.

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The Hantavirus Panic Machine: When Rare Diseases Become Media Theater

Periodically, the public faces a new microbial threat. The pattern is consistent: a tragic death or cluster of illnesses emerges, prompting newsrooms to employ dramatic language such as “deadly virus,” “mysterious outbreak,” and “health officials concerned.” Social media further amplifies public fear. Public health agencies issue cautious statements, which journalists often reframe in alarmist terms. Within days, individuals previously unfamiliar with the terminology may become convinced that a civilization-ending epidemic is imminent. This month, it is hantavirus. Just turn on your TV sets and watch the number of newscasts depicting this “new illness.”

For most Americans, hantavirus is not a new disease. It has existed for decades, particularly in rural areas where rodent exposure is common. Physicians, especially those in pulmonary and critical care medicine, have known about hantavirus pulmonary syndrome (HPS) since the 1990s, when a cluster of severe respiratory illnesses in the American Southwest led investigators to identify the Sin Nombre virus carried by deer mice. Since that time, the total number of confirmed cases in the United States has remained extraordinarily small. According to CDC data, the cumulative number of cases over more than three decades nationwide barely exceeds 1,000.¹ This fact alone should prompt a reassessment of the emotional tone characterizing the current media coverage.

A disease responsible for approximately one thousand confirmed cases over three decades in a population exceeding 330 million does not constitute an existential societal threat. It is neither comparable to Covid-19 nor does it justify widespread public alarm. However, contemporary media systems are structurally ill-equipped to present rare infectious diseases in proportionate terms. Fear increases engagement, which in turn drives revenue, and dramatic narratives consistently overshadow measured epidemiological analysis.

As a clinician, I do not mean to suggest that hantavirus should be ignored. Hantavirus pulmonary syndrome can indeed be severe. Mortality rates in hospitalized patients may approach 30–40% in some series, particularly when diagnosis is delayed.² Patients may present with fever, myalgias, cough, and rapidly progressive respiratory failure. Intensive care physicians who have treated true HPS cases understand how devastating the illness can become. But severity is not the same thing as prevalence. A disease can be both dangerous and exceedingly uncommon.

Contemporary public discourse frequently fails to differentiate between these two concepts. This distinction matters because exaggerated risk perception carries consequences of its own. Constant fear messaging changes human behavior, distorts policy priorities, and damages public trust. After Covid-19, one might assume society would have learned the importance of measured communication. Instead, many institutions appear trapped in a perpetual cycle of alarmism. Every unusual pathogen is immediately framed through the lens of catastrophe. Every isolated event becomes a potential “emerging crisis.” The result is a population psychologically conditioned to interpret uncertainty as imminent disaster.

The irony is that the actual preventive measures for hantavirus are remarkably mundane and have been known for decades. Avoid rodent infestations. Use gloves and a mask when cleaning heavily contaminated enclosed spaces, such as sheds or cabins. Ventilate areas before sweeping droppings. Seal food containers. Maintain sanitation. These are practical environmental hygiene recommendations, not civilization-altering mandates. There is no evidence-based justification for widespread public panic.

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16-Year-Old Texas Student EXPOSES Woke High School’s War on Conservative Kids – SILENCING Republicans While Openly Promoting Sharia Law and Islam

Brave 16-year-old sophomore Marco Hunter-Lopez just blew the lid off the radical left’s blatant double standard in Texas public schools: conservative students get censored, harassed, and stonewalled for months, while Islamic groups get the royal treatment to push “Understanding Shariah” pamphlets, Qurans with conversion cards, and hijabs right in the lunchroom.

As previously reported by The Gateway Pundit in February, “Why Islam” (tied to the Islamic Circle of North America) invaded Wylie East High School during lunch, setting up a massive table and handing out Islamic materials and head coverings while administrators watched approvingly.

The school later tried to downplay it as a “procedural breakdown,” but Hunter-Lopez – president and founder of the Wylie East High School Republican Student Club – has now gone public with the full story of systematic anti-conservative bias.

Hunter-Lopez detailed how his club faced endless roadblocks that other groups never encounter: months of delays in getting approved, posters ripped down by administrators while he was out of town, and hostile interrogations and condescending lectures pulled straight from the principal’s office.

He’s documented over 55 specific incidents of censorship, unfair treatment, and outright harassment against him and his conservative club dating back to August 2024.

Meanwhile, the Muslim Student Association and “Why Islam” got a free pass. They operated with zero pushback, distributing Sharia-promoting materials and hijabs as part of World Hijab Day celebrations.

School administrators didn’t just allow it – they enabled it. Principal Tiffany Doolan has proudly participated in World Hijab Day two years in a row, posting photos of herself wearing the hijab and gushing online: “I LOVED this experience!”

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‘Zelensky thrives on war, why would he end it?’: Former press secretary exposes Ukraine’s posturing

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky is prolonging his country’s conflict with Russia in order to enrich himself and his associates in his cabinet, former spokeswoman Yulia Mendel has claimed in an interview with Tucker Carlson.

Mendel, Zelensky’s press secretary from 2019 to 2021, launched a series of stinging allegations of corruption and drug use as Andrey Yermak, Zelensky’s former influential chief of staff, was named a suspect in a money laundering case. Zelensky’s longtime former business partner, Timur Mindich, fled the country last year to avoid arrest in connection with another major corruption scandal involving energy-sector kickbacks that has seen several other close associates of the Ukrainian leader placed under suspicion.

In an episode of the Tucker Carlson Show released on Monday, Mendel described her former boss as a “dictator” who has grown “detached from reality” and employed “thousands of talking heads” to craft a favorable image both at home and abroad.

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Politico Protects Pro-Migration Lobby by Blaming Biden for Trump Victory

Politico is trying to protect President Joe Biden’s border chief Alejandro Mayorkas — and his Wall Street backers — from blame for President Donald Trump’s triumph over the Democrat Party in 2024.

Politico interviewed migration zealot Alejandro Mayorkas on May 12 and suggested that Mayorkas’s policy failures were caused by infighting in Biden’s mismanaged White House:

It seems to me … that you became really the most prominent political punching bag for a White House that did not have a coherent immigration policy, and a president who could not make up his mind about what he wanted to do about border control. I wonder how does that thesis strike you?

Mayorkas accepted Politico’s excuse, saying, “I found myself to be quite resilient,” and adding:

It was also my responsibility as a member of the cabinet to execute the orders of the Chief Executive of this country. Whether I agreed or disagreed with those orders, I made my positions known, and then when decisions were made, I executed. That’s my responsibility as a member of the cabinet.

Politico’s cover-up is important because Mayorkas’s political allies — chiefly the FWD.us lobby for West Coast investors  — are still pushing Democrats to maximize migration. For example, FWD.us and like-minded lobbies are backing the “cheap labor” migration bill that is being fronted by Rep. Marie Salazar (R-FL) and the business-backed Problem Solvers Caucus.

But there is abundant evidence that Mayorkas is a progressive who ideologically welcomed the Biden-era migration, even as Biden urged his deputies to curb the unpopular inflow.

Mayorkas also has repeatedly said that he wanted to help the “Bidenomics” economic stimulus policy by importing millions of migrants to serve as apartment-sharing renters, taxpayer-funded consumers, and low-wage workers.

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Detransitioner Chloe Cole cancels UW speech after alleged Antifa threats

Detransitioner Chloe Cole announced Tuesday she is canceling a scheduled University of Washington speech after citing alleged threats from Antifa.

“Antifa has assembled a local militia, in their own words, to shut down this event,” Cole said in a Tuesday video announcement. 

“Their actions, their explicit threats on my life, have raised this event to national attention, a level of attention our security team and our PD are frankly unprepared for,” she added. 

Cole, a detransitioner who went through the process of transitioning from female to male between the ages of 12 and 16, was set to speak Wednesday at the University of Washington in Kane 210 as part of TPUSA’s “Pick Up the Mic” initiative.

At the age of 15, Cole underwent hormones and a double mastectomy.

In a post on Instagram, UW Divest News, a pro-Palestinian group, urged students to protest the Turning Point USA chapter event with Cole, calling her a “transphobic right-wing grifter.”

The post instructed protesters to “bring flags, drums, or anything to make some noise! Email UW admin to cancel the event and ban Turning Point USA from campus! WE WILL NOT TOLERATE HATE GROUPS ON CAMPUS! WE LOVE OUR TRANS SIBLINGS! 🏳️‍⚧️ FREE PALESTINE! 🇵🇸”

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The Absurdity of Public Health

The United States medical system, combined with the industrial food complex, kill and maim people on a colossal scale every single year.

Heart disease kills over 683,000 Americans annually. Cancer kills another 620,000. Stroke, diabetes, chronic lung disease, sepsis, obesity-related metabolic disease, opioid overdoses, and preventable medical errors collectively account for millions of deaths, disabilities, and shattered families.

And yet, if you browse the front page of the CDC website on any given week, there is a decent chance you will find public health officials issuing urgent alerts about backyard chickens, raw milk, pet turtles, or someone hugging a duck too enthusiastically.

Seriously.

At the very moment when roughly 1,870 Americans are dying every day from heart disease and another 1,700 from cancer, federal public health agencies are sounding alarms about salmonella from backyard poultry.

The contrast has become almost surreal.

One recent CDC warning involved 34 reported salmonella cases linked to backyard poultry across 13 states. Thirteen hospitalizations were reported. No deaths. Another CDC investigation from 2024 linked backyard poultry exposure to 470 salmonella cases and one death nationwide.

To be clear, salmonella infections are unpleasant. Severe cases can absolutely happen, particularly in small children or immunocompromised individuals. Basic hygiene around animals and food handling matters. But the sheer disproportion between the magnitude of America’s actual health catastrophes and the obsessive messaging priorities of modern public health is impossible to ignore.

Americans are drowning in chronic disease.

Over 40 percent of U.S. adults are now obese. Diabetes continues to explode. Cardiovascular disease remains the nation’s leading killer. Cancer rates in younger adults continue to rise. Meanwhile, researchers from Johns Hopkins estimated that medical errors themselves may contribute to more than 250,000 deaths per year, potentially making preventable medical harm the third leading cause of death in America.

Yet somehow the institutional energy of public health repeatedly gravitates toward regulating raw milk farmers, warning people not to kiss chickens, and issuing carefully branded panic messaging campaigns over statistically tiny risks.

Why?

Because modern public health increasingly behaves less like a system designed to improve population health and more like a managerial communications apparatus. The goal is no longer primarily to build a healthier citizenry. The goal is to demonstrate vigilance, maintain bureaucratic relevance, manage narratives, and continuously remind the public that experts are monitoring every conceivable risk, no matter how trivial.

And triviality matters here.

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GOP Sen. Tommy Tuberville Urges English Language for Everyone in Schools, Colleges

Alabama Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville slammed the U.S. education establishment Tuesday for pushing America’s children into second place by promoting multiple languages used by diverse migrants.

Standing beside a sign reading, “Assimilate Or Go Home,” the Alabama senator blamed some of the problems with American schools on “mass migration,” which he says is “destroying our educational system.”

“Mass migration is destroying our educational system…more and more American kids are entering the classroom, hearing multiple languages being spoken around them every day, and having a difficult time making friends because they are now the minorities in the school,” Tuberville said on the floor of the United States Senate.

“We’re having enough problems with our education system when our kids can’t understand the language that the other people are speaking,” he continued.

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Living Wage for All: A Prescription for Economic Ruin

Four Democratic House members, Jesús “Chuy” García (IL-04), Delia Ramirez (IL-03), Lateefah Simon (CA-12), and Analilia Mejia (NJ-11), introduced the Living Wage for All Act on April 28, proposing to raise the federal minimum wage to $25 an hour.

The bill is backed by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and a coalition of more than 100 organizations. Large employers would have until 2031 to comply, while smaller employers would have until 2038. After that, the minimum wage would adjust periodically to two-thirds of the national median wage, currently around $31 an hour.

The legislation is unlikely to pass with Republicans controlling both chambers of Congress. However, the economic damage caused by a forced multiplication of the minimum wage would be staggering.

The federal minimum wage has stood at $7.25 since 2009. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, roughly 82,000 workers currently earn at that floor, approximately 0.05% of the 170 million-person U.S. labor force, or about one worker in every two thousand. To raise wages for that population, every employer and consumer in the country would absorb the cost.

Proponents claim the bill would benefit millions more, pointing to BLS data showing 760,000 workers earn below the standard minimum wage. That figure is misleading. Those workers are tipped employees, legally paid $2.13 an hour under a separate federal provision on the assumption that tips make up the difference. This is a legal carve-out, not exploitation.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook reports the median hourly wage for waiters and waitresses, including tips, was $16.23 in May 2024, more than double the standard minimum wage. Tipped workers who found the arrangement unprofitable could leave for minimum-wage jobs, which are plentiful. The market already corrects for this. The actual universe of workers this bill targets is 82,000.

The cost impact on prices can be modeled mathematically under explicit assumptions: all affected workers currently earn $7.25 an hour, wages rise to $25 an hour, employers pass 100% of the increase to consumers, and no automation or headcount reductions occur. This produces a ceiling estimate, not a prediction.

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Demi Moore at Cannes: ‘AI Is Here,’ ‘We Can Work With It,’ ‘You Fight It … Is a Battle We Will Lose’

Oscar-nominated actress Demi Moore declared “AI is here” at the Cannes International Film Festival while urging people to find ways to work with it.

Moore, who serves as one of the jury members, shared her thoughts on AI when Variety asked a question.

“Wow, that’s a big question. I think the reality is that to resist — I always feel that against-ness breeds against-ness. AI is here. And so to fight it is to fight something that is a battle that we will lose. So, to find ways in which we can work with it, I think, is a more valuable path to take,” she said.

“To your question of, are we doing enough to protect ourselves? I don’t know the answer to that. And so my inclination would be to say probably not,” she added.

Moore said people should not be afraid of AI, believing it will not replace human creativity.

“The truth is there really isn’t anything to fear because what it can never replace is what true art comes from, which is not the physical, it comes from the soul,” she said. “It comes from the spirit of each and every one of us sitting here, to each and every one of us who creates every day. And that they can never recreate through something that is technical.”

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