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One in Five California Home Sales Canceled Due to Unaffordable Insurance

Glenn and Lorraine Crawford paid about $500 a month to insure their home in Agoura Hills northwest of Los Angeles when they bought it in 2012.

The Crawfords say they have little alternative but to pay the bill that arrived last month, which, at more than $44,000 a year, is almost as much as their mortgage bill. The only other insurer willing to cover their home, Lloyd’s of London, quoted them $80,000 a year.

More than a year after infernos tore through Los Angeles County, millions of Californians like the Crawfords are suffering through a home-insurance crisis that has rolled on for years with eye-watering rate increases, canceled policies and rejected claims.

Two of the biggest insurers, State Farm and Allstate, aren’t selling to new customers in the state, despite getting double-digit rate increases approved for their existing policyholders. A third, Farmers Insurance, has committed to cover more homes in fire-prone areas, but only a fraction compared with the drop in its overall number of policies since the crisis began.

The insurance dysfunction has spread to California’s housing market, the country’s biggest and most expensive, with nearly one-in-five real-estate agents reporting a canceled sale last year because of clients unable to find affordable insurance, according to a survey by the trade body California Association of Realtors.

The roots of California’s insurance crisis go back years. The state’s tough rate caps kept premiums low. But home insurers eventually balked, saying they couldn’t charge enough to cover rising wildfire and other losses, made worse by climate change and development. Insurers didn’t renew tens of thousands of policies, especially in fire-prone areas.

California’s uphill battle to draw insurers back could prove a template—or cautionary tale—for other disaster-prone states. New rules implemented last year, for instance, require home-insurers in the state to pledge to sell new policies in high-risk wildfire zones, in return for allowing them to charge higher rates.

As part of a request for a 6.99% rate increase, Farmers, the second-biggest home-insurer in the state, pledged to add at least 5,596 policies in high-risk areas by September 2028. That is less than a 10th of the 59,806 reduction in Farmers’ total number of California home-insurance policies in the previous two years, according to a Consumer Watchdog analysis.

Others continue to shun the state despite winning big concessions. California regulators approved a 34% rate increase for Allstate in 2024. Yet it has no “growth aspirations” in California home insurance, Chief Executive Tom Wilson said last year, adding that it would take time to fix the market. A spokesman said that remains Allstate’s position.

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Pentagon Releases Names of Fifth and Sixth US Service Members Killed in Action in Operation Epic Fury

March 3rd, The Gateway Pundit reported on the 4 deaths of Army Reserve Soldiers serving in Kuwait.  It has just been released that there is one more confirmed death and one unconfirmed death.

This evening, The Department of War announced the death of an Army Reserve Soldier who was supporting Operation Epic Fury. 

Maj. Jeffrey R. O’Brien, 45, of Indianola, Iowa, died on March 1, 2026, in Port Shuaiba, Kuwait, during an unmanned aircraft system attack. The Soldier was assigned to the 103rd Sustainment Command, Des Moines, Iowa. The incident is under investigation. 

The Department of War also announced that another Army Reserve Soldier who was supporting Operation Epic Fury is believed to be another casualty. 

Chief Warrant Officer 3 Robert M. Marzan, 54, of Sacramento, Calif., was at the scene of the incident on March 1, 2026, in Port Shuaiba, Kuwait, and is believed to be the individual who perished at the scene.  Positive identification of Chief Warrant Officer 3 Marzan will be completed by the medical examiner.  The Soldier was assigned to the 103rd Sustainment Command, Des Moines, Iowa. 

Press Release from The Department of War

UPDATE: The Department of War has announced the identity of a 5th U.S. Army Reserve soldier who died March 1st while supporting Operation Epic Fury. The soldiers, who were assigned to the 103rd Sustainment Command, Des Moines, Iowa, died in Kuwait at the Port of Shuaiba, during an unmanned aircraft system attack. The incident is under investigation.

The updated list of the deceased is:

(newly released) Maj. Jeffrey O’Brien, 45, of Waukee, Iowa

Capt. Cody Khork, 35, of Winter Haven, Florida

Sgt. 1st Class Nicole Amor, 39, of White Bear Lake, Minnesota

Sgt. 1st Class Noah Tietjens, 42, of Bellevue, Nebraska

Sgt. Declan Coady, 20, of Des Moines, Iowa

Maj. Jeffrey O’Brien, a resident of Waukee, Iowa, commissioned in the Army Reserve as a Signal Corps Officer in 2012. He deployed to Kuwait in 2019.

O’Brien’s awards and decorations include the Army Achievement Medal, Meritorious Unit Commendation, Army Superior Unit Award, Army Reserve Component Achievement Medal, National Defense Service Medal, Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal, Army Service Ribbon, and the Armed Forces Reserve Medal with “M” Device.

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House kills effort to release all congressional sexual misconduct and harassment reports

The House on Wednesday voted to scuttle an effort by Republican Rep. Nancy Mace to shed more light on sexual misconduct allegations against members of Congress.

Mace, a conservative Republican who is running to be governor of South Carolina, forced a floor vote on her resolution directing the House Ethics Committee to make public all reports on allegations of congressional lawmakers and aides engaging in sexual misconduct or harassment.

But in a 357-65 vote, the House voted to refer the Mace resolution to committee — a move that effectively killed it.

The Ethics Committee had encouraged members to vote to refer the resolution. In a joint statement, the Republican and Democratic leaders of the committee argued it “could chill victim cooperation and witness participation in ongoing and future investigations” and would make it harder for the committee “to investigate and eliminate sexual misconduct in the House.”

“Here and elsewhere, perpetrators of sexual misconduct should never be shielded from responsibility for their misdeeds,” Chairman Michael Guest, R-Miss., and ranking member Mark DeSaulnier, D-Calif., said.

But, they added, “victims may be retraumatized by public disclosures of interim work product, excerpts of interview transcripts, and certain exhibits. And witnesses, who often only speak to the Committee confidentially or on condition of future anonymity, could fear retaliation if their cooperation is made public.”

Mace has spoken openly about her own experiences as a sexual assault survivor, and she’s been at the center of the fight over releasing the government’s Jeffrey Epstein files. She was one of just four House Republicans who teamed with Democrats on a discharge petition last fall that circumvented her own GOP leadership and eventually led to the Justice Department’s release of the Epstein files.

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Degraded Schools

Many students are chronically absent or have dropped out of school.

Nat Malkus, a senior fellow in education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, oversees the Return to Learn Tracker, which monitors chronic absenteeism in U.S. schools. His latest report, released in early February, includes data from 39 states and Washington, D.C.

He states that after reaching a high of 29 percent in the 2021–22 school year, the chronic absenteeism rate—missing 10 percent or more of school days in an academic year—fell by 2.6 percentage points the following school year and by 2.2 percentage points the following school year. This progress was encouraging, but it stalled last school year, with rates falling by just over one percentage point on average. This leaves the average chronic absenteeism rate for most of the country at 23 percent, roughly 50 percent higher than the pre-pandemic baseline.

This chronic absence problem is especially egregious in our large urban areas. In Los Angeles, more than 32 percent of students were chronically absent during the 2023–24 school year. Thirty-four elementary schools have fewer than 200 students, and 29 use less than half of their buildings. Chicago is even worse, with a chronic absentee rate of 41 percent.

Malkus concludes that these patterns suggest that shifts in attitudes and behavior are largely driving the across-the-board increases in post-pandemic absenteeism. Six years into the pandemic, students and their parents are placing less value on attending school each day.

One realistic way to address chronic absenteeism—and save taxpayer dollars—would be to close ineffective schools. But government educrats and teacher union bosses refuse to allow that to happen. In fact, school closures have slowed over time.

An analysis by the IZA Institute of Labor Economics shows that in 2014–15, the closure rate—the share of schools nationwide that were open one year and closed the next—was 1.3 percent, but in 2023–24, the rate was just 0.8 percent.

Another way to alleviate the problem would be to reduce the number of teachers by eliminating the lowest performers, but that will not happen. Teacher union-mandated permanence clauses make it nearly impossible to fire an incompetent teacher. In California, a 2012 court case revealed that, on average, only 2.2 of California’s 275,000 teachers (0.0008 percent) were dismissed each year for unprofessional conduct or unsatisfactory performance.

Chronic absenteeism rates would also improve if students felt a sense of purpose in going to school. Currently, many kids lack interest in showing up. A 2024 report from Gallup and the Walton Family Foundation surveyed over 1,000 Gen Z students aged 12 to 18 and found that only 48 percent of those enrolled in middle or high school felt motivated to show up. Only half said they do something interesting in school every day. Similarly, a 2024 EdChoice survey indicated that 64 percent of teens said school is boring, and 30 percent view it as a waste of time.

In addition to the problem of chronically absent students, families are removing their children, especially if they are high achievers, from government-run schools in large numbers.

Joshua Goodman, an associate professor of education and economics at Boston University, authored a study that found that nationally, white and Asian parents are far more likely to withdraw their children from public schools than Hispanics and blacks.

“The question that worries me is whether this means that public schools have now cemented a reputation as not being the place where high-achieving students attend. If you’re a family that’s looking for a challenging curriculum, and you have a talented student, you’re no longer seeing public schools in quite that light,” Goodman said.

Perhaps the leader in the public school exodus is Chicago, whose numbers are particularly grim. Dwindling enrollment has left about 150 Windy City schools half-empty, while 47 operate at less than one-third capacity, leading to high costs and limited course offerings.

Worth noting is that Chicago spends about $18,700 per student. At small schools that have been losing students, per-pupil costs are double or triple that. At one 28-student school, the cost per student is $93,000. (For the sake of perspective, the Latin School of Chicago, among the city’s most expensive private schools, costs about $47,000 per year.)

Not surprisingly, as the number of students declines, school district insolvency is on the rise. Education finance experts say more districts are grappling with this problem, especially those that spent pandemic federal aid on recurring expenses or didn’t scale back their budgets in anticipation of the aid’s end.

As a result, districts are facing increased involvement from their counties and states, ranging from financial monitoring to takeovers. In rarer cases, districts may even declare bankruptcy or consider merging with other districts.

While public schools are bleeding students, school choice of all types continues to grow. Overall, there are now 75 private school choice programs in 34 states, serving more than 1.5 million students.

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Visualizing Iran’s Vast Size & Why Any Ground Invasion Means Years-Long Quagmire

Most Americans have little understanding or concept of Iran’s size in terms of geography or population. The ethno-religious make-up of the sprawling Mideast/West Asian nation is also deeply important, given the US is already talking about arming and supporting some kind of Kurdish-led anti-Tehran ground operation. 

Suffice it to say, Iran’s population is more than double (over 90 million people) that of neighboring Iraq’s. Iran is also the size of almost half the European continent. All of this is crucial for attempting to visualize what American military escalation there might mean, given the Trump White House has not ruled out American boots on the ground amid the unfolding ‘Operation Epic Fury’. Consider: the US spent two blood-soaked decades occupying Iraq (again, significantly smaller than the Islamic Republic). Russia has spent over four years on its military operation in Ukraine, and Iran dwarfs Ukraine in size.

Size of Iran vs. Alaska (with the continental USA for scale). Imagine a war that covered some nearly one-third of the continental United States, and and outside force trying to pacify a population of 90 million within that vast geography. 

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Politician Rory Amon admits sex with a 13-year-old boy in a ‘dirty, hidden car park toilet’ – as he faces rape charges and jury hears his explanation

A teen lied about his age to a former Liberal MP before the pair had sex on the floor of a dirty car park bathroom, jurors have been told.

Rory Amon was a 27-year-old aspiring politician when he met the teenager at his Sydney apartment block in July 2017.

He admits having sex with the 13-year-old on one occasion at night in the underground car park bathroom.

But this was far from a case of a man lurking in a space for children, a NSW Supreme Court jury was told on Tuesday.

Amon met the teen on a gay dating website where users had to be over 18 to sign up, defence barrister Matthew Johnston SC said.

‘This is not a case … where there is an adult who’s on a chatroom that’s frequented by 13-year-olds and is tricking them into a meeting,’ he told the jury.

The alleged victim admitted lying about his age, once in signing up to the website and again when chatting to Amon, Mr Johnston said.

This was the only reason his client had met the boy, he argued.

If the teen had said he was 15 – as he claimed in the witness box – the former politician would have ceased chatting to him immediately, the barrister said. 

Instead, the 13-year-old bolstered his lies by sending photos and messages, which made him seem older with the intent of meeting Amon for sex, Mr Johnston said.

‘I’m raising that not to, in any way, say that (the alleged victim’s) to blame for anything,’ he told the jury.

‘He was 13 … adolescents make stupid decisions all the time.’

But the jury was urged by prosecutors to reject Amon’s evidence he thought the teen was above the age of consent.

‘Using your common sense and experience, you may have very little difficulty finding this accused is guilty,’ crown prosecutor Meaghan Fleeton said.

It would have been obvious to Amon when he met the boy in person he was under 16, she argued.

She said the intelligent, articulate former MP had lied about his age to manipulate the boy before pursuing and sexually assaulting him.

The alleged victim was a child with no sexual experience at the time, she said.

Now 36, Amon has pleaded not guilty to 10 child sexual abuse, child rape and indecent assault charges.

He admits meeting the boy for sex once, but denies allegations of a second meet-up where a towel was brought to the bathroom.

Mr Johnston suggested the incident had ‘grown’ in the complainant’s mind over the years as he grappled with its impact.

‘Some witnesses – they believe they’re telling the truth … but they’re genuinely mistaken about some things,’ he said.

But the Crown portrayed the key witness as honest and who broke down when testifying.

‘You saw (him) get upset when shown the photos of the car park toilet – that dirty, hidden car park toilet – where he had his first sexual experience,’ Ms Fleeton said.

‘It was a significant and life-changing course of events.’

There would have been a window of opportunity in July 2017 for both of these ‘hasty hook-ups’ to have taken place, she argued.

Soon after the alleged sexual abuse, he gave some details of what occurred to his mother, friends, school counsellor and psychologist, she noted.

The complainant first became aware of Amon’s identity in 2020 through a COVID-19 announcement when the former Liberal was a councillor.

The two reconnected on Snapchat in 2019 and then on Grindr in 2022 when Amon sent him some photos, including one in his volunteer firefighter uniform.

The trial continues on Wednesday.

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Declassified Documents Link U.S. Bioweapons Program to Lyme Disease Outbreak

An extensive investigation based on declassified government documents and previously suppressed scientific research has uncovered compelling evidence that U.S. biological weapons programs contributed to the emergence of Lyme disease, which now affects hundreds of thousands of Americans annually.

The investigation reveals a pattern of concealment spanning six decades, including the systematic suppression of critical medical research and the release of nearly 300,000 radioactive ticks across Virginia to study how the disease-carrying insects would spread.

CIA Deployed Infected Ticks Against Cuba

Declassified documents and testimony from a CIA operative describe the 1962 deployment of infected ticks against Cuban sugarcane workers as part of Operation Mongoose, the Kennedy administration’s effort to destabilize Fidel Castro’s regime.

The operative, now in his seventies, told researchers that the “strangest thing he ever did was drop infected ticks on Cuban sugarcane workers” using C-123 transport aircraft flying nighttime missions “almost skimming the surface of the Caribbean to avoid Cuban radar.”

After returning from Cuba, the operative’s four-month-old son developed life-threatening fever requiring emergency surgery. His CIA commander advised him to “burn all the clothes you took to Cuba. Burn everything,” indicating contamination concerns.

The deployment was canceled when “Cuba’s shifting winds made accurate payload delivery difficult,” according to the operative’s account.

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The Iran War’s Most Precious Commodity Isn’t Oil

The CIA calls it the “strategic commodity” of the Middle East. But it’s not referring to oil or natural gas. What the American spy agency has in mind is far more prosaic: drinking water. Don’t underestimate it, though, because if military hostilities continue to escalate, water could become the geopolitical commodity that decides the war between the US and Iran.

The Persian Gulf is gifted with a fabulous hydrocarbon endowment, worth trillions of dollars. What its desertic countries don’t have is water. From the 1970s onward, the oil money bought a solution: desalination plants. Today, the region relies on nearly 450 facilities to stop everyone going thirsty.

The US Central Intelligence Agency has been briefing American policymakers for decades on the inherent risk of relying on those plants for such a crucial supply. In a secret assessment in the early 1980s — since declassified — the CIA said: “Senior government officials in some of the countries perceive it [water] as more important than oil to the national well-being.”

More than four decades later, not much has changed. Desalination remains a relatively cost-effective technology to transform sea water into drinking water. The downside is the vulnerability of the installations, and the oil and gas consumption required to fire the power generators that run the plants.

About 100 million people live in the countries belonging to the Gulf Cooperation Council — Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Oman — all now under Iranian attack. Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE are, for all practical purposes, completely dependent on the desalination plants, particularly for metropolises such as Dubai. Saudi Arabia, and especially its capital, Riyadh, also relies heavily on them.

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Questions Mount Over Viral Claims of Apocalyptic Iran War Briefings in the Military

A viral claim alleges that as many as 200 U.S. troops at 50 military installations were told the war in Iran is meant to hasten the Biblical end times and the return of Christ. But is the story true?

While the claims have been breathlessly repeated online—and even by some major outlets—key red flags have been ignored, as Americans hit “repost” on a story that feels all too plausible in the current news environment. The truth, however, is far less clear in this rabbit hole of uncertainty, which may reveal more about the fractured nature of modern society than anything else.

Apocalypse Claims

The story first appeared in a Monday evening report by Jonathan Larsen on his Substack, in which he relayed a claim by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) that it had received reports of apocalyptic religious briefings on the Iran war conducted by military leadership across more than 40 units stationed at roughly 30 installations. MRFF highlighted a single email, which they claim is representative of over 110 incidents, all of which are being kept confidential to avoid reprisals. 

The email in question details the account of a non-commissioned officer (NCO) in a unit outside of Iran, who claims that his commander told him to instruct his troops that President Trump is anointed by God and that the Iran war is the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy relating to Armageddon and the return of Christ. At the end of the email, the NCO states that these actions violated their constitutional oath and threatened morale and unit cohesion.

Larsen’s reporting provides the first clues that MRFF president and founder, Mikey Weinstein, isn’t your typical polished non-profit figurehead. Quotes attributed to Weinstein include words such as “wet dream” and “shit”—unusual language selection for a representative of an advocacy group—as he explains his issues with Christian fundamentalist proselytization in the military, and how that violates the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

Weinstein also notes that the group has received similar complaints from service members during previous conflicts involving Israel. In a lengthier statement at the close of the article, Weinstein refers to President Trump as “the narcissistic, sociopathic, orange, POS tRump.”

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation

On Tuesday morning, a post on the Military Religious Freedom Foundation website expanded on the original claim, now indicating knowledge of 200 complaints involving apocalyptic preaching about the Iran conflict from 50 installations.

A look at the organization’s website reveals more of Weinstein’s style: articles on the site generally feature provocative titles and dramatic, politically themed AI-generated art. A link to a video of Weinstein in his car, letting loose with profanity-laced opinions about Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, appeared on the site’s front page. In style and demeanor, the website is at odds with what one typically expects of a straight-laced advocacy group.

Previously having served as an Air Force JAG officer, Weinstein says he started the group as his son experienced anti-Semitic bias while attending the Air Force Academy, when students were pressured to see the film The Passion of the Christ. Critics have noted that Weinstein draws a relatively large salary from the organization, accounting for almost half of its 2024 expenses at $364,392, which he has previously defended as commensurate with his legal training and extensive work hours.

The Sole Source for Iran “Armageddon” Claims

More than any idiosyncrasies in the organization’s presentation, the most unusual part of this story is that MRFF is the sole source of the recent “Armageddon” allegations. Despite alleged complaints from hundreds of soldiers across dozens of installations, no public faces—or even anonymous internet postings—have appeared that offer support for the claim, and no journalists with other organizations have indicated having a direct whistleblower source on the matter.

One of the largest organizations performing similar work is the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF). With an operating budget over 15 times that of MRFF, the FFRF promoted MRFF’s claims on Tuesday, prompting The Debrief to inquire as to whether they had received any similar reports that could corroborate the story.

“We have interacted with MRFF before,” Chris Line, Legal Counsel for the Freedom From Religion Foundation, told The Debrief. “It would be surprising if they were making this complaint up, but we have not been able to verify their complaints yet and haven’t received any complaints from service members ourselves.”

When pressed on whether the organization found it unusual that a comparatively smaller group has been the only one to receive such complaints, and that nothing corroborating the claims has appeared publicly, FFRF conceded to The Debrief that it was difficult to explain.

“The volume of complaints that MRFF has reported is hard to believe given that we haven’t heard from anyone about it ourselves, but the lack of corresponding social media posts, etc. is not,” Line told The Debrief.

“We’re very used to dealing with anonymous complainants who face potential negative repercussions for speaking out about state/church issues,” Line added. “We’ve received complaints from military personnel in the past, and the concern about repercussions can be heightened in that kind of environment, especially given the current administration.”

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Cannabis timeline pushed to 20,000+ years

New research suggests cannabis use may date back 20,000 years or more, far earlier than previously thought.

Most scholars agree cultivation of cannabis began in Asia between 10,000 and 12,000 years ago, during the advent of farming following the last ice age. But a 2023 morphometric study of ancient cannabis seeds suggests it may have begun far earlier — 20,000 years ago or more — in what is now Western China and the Tibetan Plateau.

The study looked at the size of seeds, which began to change as people started using them thousands of years ago.

People have been living in the Tibetan Plateau for up to 38,000 years, and in Central Asia for up to 50,000 years, so it is plausible cannabis has been used up to that long.

Cannabis has been around for millions of years, and the oldest plant material discovered so far is seeds dated to 8000 BC, found in Okinoshima, Japan at a neolithic site linked to the Jomon people. The seeds were likely used as food and to make oil.

Pottery found at an ancient archaeological site in Taiwan and dated to the same period, around 8000 BC, has impressions made with hemp cord, meaning cannabis was used widely across Asia by that time.

Along with using it as a source of food, the 2023 study suggests that by 6000 BC, cannabis was being cultivated for its fibre — what we now call hemp. It was around 3000BC that people began selecting cannabis for its trichomes, which contain the medicinal and psychoactive compounds.

Those findings align with a 2021 genomic study that also places domestication around 10000 BC, with a slightly different timeline — hemp selection beginning around 4000 BC, and medicinal/psychoactive use emerging around 3000 BC. Cannabis also appears to have reached the Indian subcontinent from China around that time.

“The first users were probably nomadic peoples,” explains Barney Warf, a professor of geography at the University of Kansas. “We know this from burial mounds of chieftains.”

Warf authored the 2014 paper High Points: An Historical Geography of Cannabis, which traces the spread and use of cannabis from ancient to modern times.

Several nomadic tribes are thought to have been the main conduit for bringing cannabis from Central Asia into India, the Middle East, Northern Africa and Europe between 4000 BC and 2000 BC, says Warf, along routes that would later become known as the Silk Road.

One possible origin for the word ‘Cannabis’ is the Scythian word, ‘Kanab,’ which itself may have come from the Assyrian word ‘Qunubu’. The Scythians were a nomadic group dated to between 900 BC and 200 BC and the Assyrians were in Mesopotamia between 2000 BC and 600 BC.

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