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THE COVID LIE AND THE WORLD STOOD STILL…

The Pandemic Revealed the Most Cowardly Society of All Time

It wasn’t cowardice to be afraid of Covid. The fear was legitimate. The disease was real. The deaths were real. The cowardice was something else. It was accepting the moral inversion — old people sacrificing the young — without anyone raising a voice.

Image Credit: gollykim / Getty

If you think that in this article I’m going to downplay the deaths, and claim that we should have faced the pandemic without fear or anything like that, you’re wrong. That’s not what this is about.

In terms of importance, the Covid-19 pandemic was the biggest event in human history since World War II. Since that time, nothing has caused as much fear across the entire planet as what began in 2020. Because of the widespread terror, with lockdowns we reached the point of completely stopping the world, something that had never happened before in history. As proof, we were left with the frightening and dystopian photos of huge empty metropolises and airplanes parked on the runways of airports.

During the Cold War, with the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, when the Soviet Union brought nuclear missiles to Cuba, there was a lot of fear. Some families in the US and Europe even built survival bunkers in their homes. But that didn’t even come close to the worldwide scale of the terror caused by Covid-19.

However, the fear caused by the Cold War—that feeling that the world could end in nuclear explosions at any moment—even though it was more localized and lasted for a shorter time, quickly gave rise, as a positive side, to a formidable culture: the Beatles, revolutionizing music and interpreting the world, emerged from that.

The Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd came from that fear. At the same time, the miniskirt was invented, the contraceptive pill appeared, and sexual freedoms were conquered. In 1968, known as “the year that never ended,” young people all over the world wanted to be protagonists and took to the streets of cities on every continent. The hippie movement, of peace and love, arose from that brew.

I understand it was a process of liberation, in which the planet’s youth buried that well-fed fear of nuclear war. Everyone was thinking and expressing a loud and revolutionary “We want to live.”

Covid Affected the Elderly Much More

For you to keep reading this article, you need to agree with me on one single point. You need to agree that Covid-19 is a disease that affects the elderly much more than young people and children. After all, the elderly have far more comorbidities, accumulated over a lifetime, than the young. This is extremely basic, and I’m not even going to link to scientific studies that prove this fact.

Sales Strategy

“You vaccinate not only for yourself. You vaccinate also to protect society and particularly to protect those that you love the most,” declared Albert Bourla, CEO of Pfizer, at the 2022 World Economic Forum meeting. That was the main message around the entire world. In Brazil, for example, on every television program the message was identical: “The vaccine protects both you and the people around you,” stated epidemiologist Pedro Hallal, rector of the Federal University of Pelotas, on TV Globo—Brazil’s biggest network—also in early 2022.

What few people know is that this message had been previously studied and tested. Before rolling out the vaccines, Yale scientists conducted research to find out which messages would be most effective in getting people to comply. “It is even more effective to add language that frames vaccine uptake as a way to protect others,” the scientists concluded in the study.

In other words, the entire tone of the vaccination campaign became “Protect grandma.” From that point on, with the widely publicized idea that the Covid-19 vaccines were a social pact, politicians in various parts of the world implemented health passes and, in some cases, made vaccination mandatory for everyone—including children and babies.

There’s Just One Problem with That Message

It’s not true. The most effective marketing message claimed that Covid-19 vaccines had an ability they never actually had: reducing or stopping transmission.

It was October 2022. Rob Roos, a Dutch politician, during a hearing of the European Parliament’s Special Committee on Covid-19, asked a direct question to Janine Small, a senior Pfizer executive who officially represents the company at such hearings: “Was the Pfizer Covid vaccine tested on stopping the transmission of the virus before it entered the market?” he asked. Janine answered straight: “No.”

Besides asking the manufacturer directly, another MEP put a direct question to the European Medicines Agency (EMA), which authorized the vaccines for the entire European Union. Emer Cooke, the agency’s executive director, replied by admitting: “You are indeed correct to point out that Covid-19 vaccines have not been authorised for preventing transmission from one person to another. The indications are for protecting the vaccinated individuals only.”

“EMA’s assessment reports on the authorisation of the vaccines note the lack of data on transmissibility.” Cooke added in the document.

In other words, the highly effective message that the Covid vaccines were a social pact was misleading propaganda on a global scale. But for those who pay closer attention to the industry’s track record, this comes as no surprise. According to a 2020 survey published in the journal JAMA, the largest pharmaceutical companies in the United States alone paid $33 billion in criminal and civil fines between 2003 and 2016 for illegal activities—including fraud, bribery, and false advertising.

That’s not pocket change. But the math works out: “Big pharma: penalties $2 billion/yr, revenue $600 billion/yr. Organised crime increases because crime pays,” said Peter Gøtzsche, Danish physician, professor emeritus, and co-founder of the Cochrane Collaboration—from which he was expelled for his denunciations against the pharmaceutical industry.

“Patients pay with their lives, as drugs are the leading cause of death. Why are the worst crimes on earth not stopped?” he asks.

They fooled everyone, as usual. And, as expected for something with such a massive scope of economic domination, there were no screaming headlines around the world.

Those Who Tried to Denounce It Were Censored

To fill the gap left by the major newspapers not exposing the misleading advertising, independent journalists began investigating — like Alex Berenson, former New York Times science reporter.

“It’s not time to admit that the vaccines don’t stop Covid transmission? The data is clear,” Berenson posted on his Twitter in August 2021. His statement was simply true. He cited early observational studies that showed some reduction in transmission, but not elimination — especially with the Delta variant.

The next day, Twitter permanently banned him. The reason given: violation of rules for spreading “false information about Covid-19.” Soon afterward, it was proven that the White House had pressured social media platforms to censor numerous journalists, scientists, and whistleblowers who pointed out that the vaccine propaganda was misleading.

Let me put this in the proper perspective here. In the United States, freedom of speech is so deeply rooted in society that, in the name of that principle, they tolerate people marching down the street carrying Nazi flags. In other words, in the US you can walk around with one of those flags in public, but you cannot point out that there is misleading advertising about a pharmaceutical product. That crosses the line. That’s unacceptable, you know?

Possible Meager Reduction in the Short Term

By mid-2022, the Lancet was already publishing that the efficacy of the pediatric Covid vaccine against symptomatic infection dropped to a pathetic 21% after little more than a month from administration. And even then, it was without proving that the reduction in symptomatic infection actually translated into reduced disease transmission.

At the very end of 2022, Vinay Prasad, a renowned professor at the University of California, published an important study in the BMJ — one of the world’s most prestigious medical journals. The study addressed the ethics of coercing low-risk young people (in terms of Covid-19 mortality) to take the Covid-19 vaccines through vaccine passports in schools and universities. His conclusion was alarming: the risk of a young person being hospitalized due to vaccine side effects was higher than the risk of being hospitalized from a possible Covid-19 infection.

The data made it clear: it would be necessary to vaccinate between 30,000 and 40,000 young people to prevent a single Covid hospitalization in this group. However, those vaccinations resulted in 18.5 serious adverse events — including myocarditis and pericarditis — which in turn caused between 1.5 and 4.6 hospitalizations. In other words, the number of hospitalizations caused by vaccine adverse events would exceed the number of Covid hospitalizations that would be prevented.

Children and Young People as Human Shields

The elderly control power: governments, corporations, and the media. The elderly were the real at-risk group. The elderly ordered children and young people — who were at very low risk from the disease — to get vaccinated under the pretext of “protecting grandma.” In other words, protecting themselves. All of it based on unproven propaganda, as the Pfizer executive and the EMA director openly admitted, that the vaccines would reduce transmission.

Only one government health authority ever came close to a disguised apology for once having recommended Covid-19 vaccines for children and adolescents. That was Denmark’s Health Minister, Søren Brostrøm, in early 2022. He did it because he had once recommended the vaccine for children and adolescents aged 5 to 17. Even before Prasad’s study, in a TV interview commenting on the Danish government’s decision to end the program, Brostrøm said: “With the benefit of hindsight, we didn’t gain much from expanding the vaccination program to children in terms of epidemic control. But that’s with the benefit of hindsight.”

Yet in many countries, where there was plenty of product available, they went the opposite way and started recommending Covid vaccines for babies from 6 months of age — as happened in the United States and Brazil.

A side note: Brazil went even further and, starting in 2023, made Covid-19 vaccination mandatory for babies — becoming the only country in the world to do so. In other words, Brazil turned itself into a dumping ground for pharmaceutical products rejected everywhere else. After all, in the US, even though it was recommended for babies from 6 months, fewer than 5% of parents complied.

Second side note: now, in 2025, the United States has withdrawn that recommendation, aligning itself with most European countries. But in Brazil, this insane mandate still remains in force.

My Own Experience

In early 2023, shocked by the absurdity of Brazil being the only country in the world to make Covid-19 vaccination mandatory for all babies from 6 months of age — on top of many schools and universities still requiring it for enrollment — I got into a discussion with a pediatrician who is also a pharmacist and professor of medicine at one of Brazil’s most prestigious federal universities. I genuinely believed that simply showing the latest scientific evidence would be more than enough for every university in Brazil to take an official institutional stand against it, and that this governmental madness would collapse.

During the exchange, I sent him the link to an article in Science titled “Does Covid-19 vaccination still make sense to mandate?” Published in March 2023 and written by Science’s Germany correspondent, it stated: “It has become clear that vaccine-induced immunity quickly loses its ability to prevent infection and onward transmission of the most recent variants,” the author concluded.

The professor — who is over 60 — complained that the piece in Science was not a peer-reviewed research paper where he could check the methods, results, and discussion; it was merely a news/opinion article: “This is just a report by Gretchen Vogel pointing out the need to review certain vaccination criteria, but it does not invalidate the vaccines’ importance in pandemic control,” he replied.

Since the professor demanded a proper scientific paper with all the calculations and methods, I immediately sent him Prasad’s study — the one showing that 30,000 to 40,000 young people would need to be vaccinated to prevent a single Covid hospitalization, while generating roughly 18 serious adverse events and causing between 1.5 and 5 hospitalizations due to cardiac problems in those same young people.

The professor did not deny the serious side effects or the heart problems. He simply thought of something else: “They did not discuss the risk of disease transmission to susceptible (vulnerable) contacts in that environment or in households. The paper did not question the vaccines’ protective effect and their positive impact on the pandemic.”

And the Effectiveness Drops Quickly…And Even Turns Negative

Just a few months later, in mid-2023, the Cleveland Clinic — one of the largest hospital systems in the United States — published a study examining vaccine effectiveness among its more than 50,000 employees. They compared unvaccinated and vaccinated individuals, and also compared the effect in those who had received few versus all recommended doses.

The study was rigorous and had strong points: since it was a hospital institution, testing was strongly encouraged among staff at the slightest suspicion — even to excuse them from work. Therefore, case detection was tightly controlled.

Until then, we already knew that effectiveness against Covid-19 infection was low and waned rapidly, and we still didn’t know for sure whether it reduced transmission at all. With this study, we learned that effectiveness didn’t just keep falling — it actually became negative. In other words, it increased the chance of getting infected, doing exactly the opposite of what a vaccine is supposed to do.

“The greater the number of vaccine doses previously received the higher the risk of Covid-19,” the Cleveland Clinic scientists wrote.

In short, the now-consolidated information is: any reduction in infection risk is transient, drops rapidly, damages the immune system, and eventually becomes negative.

It went very wrong.

Convenient Forgetting

From the start of the pandemic until today, we’ve gone through more than five years, almost six. It was one of the biggest disruptions to everyday life in history. At the same time, no one talks about the subject in the media, leaving it off the agenda for conversation circles or get-togethers with friends.

There is, implicit in this, a strong interest in making the whole of society forget the matter and look forward, to other things.

If we were talking about recent history, all of society would have to confront a systematic review published in 2025 in Health Affairs Scholar. This study analyzed 132 other studies on lockdowns in the US and pointed to a public health disaster: harmful effects in more than 90% of indicators of mental health, obesity, and health-related social needs (child development, employment, access to food, economic stability). But it served to save lives, right? They found no evidence of that: “little or no effect on Covid-19 mortality,” the scientists wrote.

If the subject were still of interest, everyone would be following a Taiwanese study with nearly 3 million participants, published in 2025 in the International Journal of Medical Sciences. This study compared vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals and found, among the Covid-19 vaccinated, an 84% increase in the risk of needing dialysis after one year of follow-up, even after adjustments for age, comorbidities, and other renal risk factors. Almost double.

After so many governments forcing the product on people, with support from the media, entities, universities, and corporations, it’s really better not to highlight the Italian study covering the entire population of a province (296,015 people). With 30 months of follow-up, the study found, in the comparison between Covid-19 vaccinated and unvaccinated, a 54% increase in the risk of hospitalization for breast cancer among vaccinated women, plus increases in colorectal cancer (34%) in vaccinated and bladder (62%), also in vaccinated.

These findings were later confirmed by a Korean study with 8.4 million participants that found similar patterns in six types of cancer, also comparing vaccinated and unvaccinated: prostate (69% higher risk), lung (53%), thyroid (35%), gastric (34%), colorectal (28%), and breast (20%), with risks varying by age, sex, and vaccine type.

If the pandemic were still on the agenda, we’d have to talk about the Japanese study that saw accelerated progression of pancreatic cancer among vaccinated, compared to unvaccinated, confirming the data from Korea and Italy.

It’s really better that people forget, because otherwise we’d have to talk about the Israeli study with 500,000 children. This study also compared vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals and found a 23% increase in autoimmune diseases among vaccinated children during the study period. And in the long term? We’ll just have to wait and see.

With the topic in conversation circles, we’d have to discuss another study with 500,000 people, also from South Korea. This one found a 22.5% increase in Alzheimer’s cases among the vaccinated compared to those who chose not to take the product. In addition to a 137% increase in mild cognitive impairment — the onset of Alzheimer’s — during the study period.

How would newspapers, which are mostly run by the elderly and mostly supported coercing young people to get vaccinated, report another South Korean study published in a Nature group journal with more than 2 million patients that, when comparing vaccinated and unvaccinated, saw brutal increases in psychological disorders — like 68% more depression among the vaccinated, 44% more anxiety, dissociative disorders, stress-related disorders, and 93% more sleep disorders? Hard to make that a headline, let’s say.

With the topic still buzzing, we’d all have to talk about another Israeli study that followed more than 220,000 pregnancies and found increases in spontaneous abortions and stillbirths after Covid-19 vaccines among vaccinated pregnant women, compared to unvaccinated pregnant women.

These are large observational studies in reputable journals, with controls. If we reject these, we need to reject the observational studies that “prove” vaccines saved millions of lives. You can’t accept one standard and reject the other. After all, the original RCTs (gold-standard studies) for the vaccines didn’t show reductions in mortality. Yet in the “official narrative,” for benefits like reduced deaths, observational studies are treated as definitive causal proof.

“The vaccines saved X million lives” becomes a headline, and methodological limitations are downplayed. For harms (cancer, myocarditis, etc.), observational studies are dismissed as “just correlation” and RCTs are demanded (which will never be done for ethical reasons). And “We can’t claim causality” becomes the mantra. (Here, I’m putting you, the reader, at an honest crossroads: either accept both types of studies or reject both. There’s no escaping while maintaining intellectual integrity.)

If recent history were a topic of everyday interest, people would certainly question the curiosity of so many studies comparing vaccinated and unvaccinated coming only from South Korea and Israel. In that case, the recent news published in the Telegraph from England would probably echo far and wide. They reported that the British government was caught hiding data linking Covid vaccines to excess deaths, and the government’s excuse was that it was to “avoid distress or anger.”

In other words, there are many more people wanting to research this and other diseases, but most governments are withholding the data. The data already point to an ugly reality and an even worse future, and it may just be the tip of the iceberg.

If we keep talking about the pandemic, we’d have to mention that the Telegraph — official narrative, after all, it’s one of the United Kingdom’s most important newspapers — recently reported a revision of the numbers, based on a new calculation from Stanford University. “ Covid-19 vaccines ‘saved far fewer lives than initially thought.’”

Before, the WHO was talking about 20 million lives saved by Covid-19 vaccines. Now they’re talking about a fraction of that: just 12.5% of the WHO’s estimate. The news article carefully explains that previous calculations were “excessively optimistic.” It wasn’t misleading propaganda, folks. It was optimism, got it?

And the news goes on: “Aggressive mandates and zealotry to vaccinate everyone at any cost were probably a bad idea.” In other words, the passports weren’t to create demand and generate profit by selling the product to those who never needed it. It was just a bad idea, understand? A little innocent scientific slip-up, with no advantage for anyone, you know?

But then I ask: would anyone be surprised if, in the next revision down the line, they say it saved no one? Personally, I wouldn’t. Or that, in a slightly longer term, in light of studies comparing critical diseases between vaccinated and unvaccinated, the Covid-19 vaccines killed more than they saved, becoming humanity’s greatest medical disaster? Personally, I wouldn’t.

And if we were all analyzing the pandemic, we wouldn’t look only at the health issue. We’d have to be talking about how it was the greatest transfer of wealth in human history from the poor to the billionaires. That’s not mere rhetoric. Yes, it was the greatest in history, according to the Oxfam Global 2022 report. During the years 2020 to 2022, while billions of people faced job losses, hunger, and extreme poverty, billionaires saw their fortunes explode, driven by economic stimulus packages, stock market surges, and record corporate profits.

“Ten richest men double their fortunes in pandemic while incomes of 99 percent of humanity fall” is the report’s title.

“The world’s ten richest men more than doubled their fortunes, from $700 billion to $1.5 trillion — at a rate of $15,000 per second or $1.3 billion per day — during the first two years of a pandemic that saw the income of 99% of humanity fall and more than 160 million people pushed into poverty,” the data explained. “A new billionaire emerges every 26 hours, while inequality contributes to one person dying every four seconds.”

Certainly, if society were discussing this, we’d have various intellectuals raising questions, especially about how all of this was planned. According to another article in the Telegraph from England, scientists admitted to using fear to control behaviors. “Scientists on a committee that encouraged the use of fear to control people’s behavior during the Covid pandemic admitted that their work was unethical and totalitarian.” Really? I could never have imagined.

“There were discussions about the need to use fear to encourage compliance, and decisions were made about how to ramp up that fear. The way we used fear is dystopian,” one scientist told the Telegraph.

“Clearly, using fear as a means of control is not ethical. Using fear smacks of totalitarianism. It’s not an ethical stance for any modern government. By nature, I’m an optimistic person, but all this has given me a more pessimistic view of people,” said Gavin Morgan, psychologist on the scientific team, to the newspaper.

“The use of fear was definitely ethically questionable. It was like a strange experiment. In the end, it backfired because people got too scared.”

And everyone seeing the topic as a turned page.

Cowardice and Cultural Void

The Cold War generation was forged by old men who held power over the nuclear button. The young people’s response was a thunderous: “Fuck you, we’re going to make art, love, and revolution.”

Our generation was forged by old men in power ordering children to be vaccinated so they could serve as human shields. The response was silent obedience.

Five years after the Missile Crisis, the Beatles released Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. It was a revolution in music. On the radio it competed with the Rolling Stones’ hit “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.” Five years after the lockdowns, our society learned how to hold meetings on Zoom.

The Cold War produced a sexual revolution, the hippie movement, the miniskirt, young people taking to the streets in the US, Rio, Mexico City, Paris, Africa, and Asia. It produced May ’68. An existential fear generated a monumental cultural explosion. During Covid, we posted pictures of homemade bread on Instagram.

Cold War: smaller in global scale, generated questioning and a monumental cultural explosion.

Covid: the greatest disruption in modern history, generated absolute cultural emptiness.

And where is the movement that emerged from this collective experience of fear? Nothing. We have TikTok dances. Humanity went through the biggest collective trauma since World War II and came out…smaller. More fearful. More cowardly. More willing to obey. More willing to sacrifice the young to protect the old. And not even with a single Woodstock to show for it.

When Science, the Wall Street Journal, and even the scientific community itself admit that mandates no longer make sense? Silence. No one apologizes. No one reflects. They simply change the subject. In many places, the mandates continue to this day, as in Brazil.

What makes it even more perverse is the grotesque moral inversion. Throughout history, the old sacrificed themselves for the young. Captains went down with the ship last. “Women and children first” on the Titanic’s lifeboats. Parents protect their children, not the other way around.

During Covid: to hell with the children, we need to protect the old. Even with Prasad’s study showing that young people had a higher risk of hospitalization from the vaccine than from the disease itself. “It’s worth sacrificing them,” the world concluded, for a possible transient, short-lived reduction.

In primitive societies, when the gods demanded sacrifice, it was always the young. Virgins thrown into volcanoes. Firstborns offered on altars. The elders decided, the young died. We thought we had evolved.

“People found it normal to ruin children’s health in the name of false protection for the elderly. They were deceived, they lied a lot, and now they want all this evil to simply disappear. They react with contempt or aggression when confronted with the truth,” a friend of mine, a cardiac surgeon, told me.

The language used wasn’t scientific; it was religious. “Do your part,” “Protect the vulnerable,” “Follow the science.” Dogmas, not method. Questioning became heresy. “Denier,” “anti-science,” “murderer.” Moral accusations, not scientific disagreement.

Experts as priests. Young people as sacrificial offerings. Obedience as virtue. All for a “greater good” that never existed, that was a deception.

In the Cold War, the military-industrial lobby controlled the fear. During Covid, the pharmaceutical lobby was the one running the show. Decisions favored record profits while 160 million people were pushed into extreme poverty. Not a coincidence.

We are, in fact, the most cowardly society of all time. It wasn’t cowardice to be afraid of Covid. The fear was legitimate. The disease was real. The deaths were real. The cowardice was something else. It was accepting the moral inversion — old people sacrificing the young — without anyone raising a voice.

It was obeying misleading propaganda from corporations with a $33 billion history of fraud fines. It was creating nothing — no art, no movement, no meaningful culture — from the greatest collective trauma in decades. It was forgetting quickly when remembering became inconvenient.

The Cold War gave us “Born to Be Wild” and the slogan “Make love, not war.” Covid gave us vaccine passports and delivery apps. No transformative art. No revolution of thought.

Seven years after the Missile Crisis, in August 1969, Joe Cocker took the stage at Woodstock and sang “With a Little Help from My Friends.” His reinterpretation of the Beatles song became the most powerful live performance in music history. Four hundred thousand people celebrating life, not death or human shields.

Two babies were born during the festival. Nine-months-pregnant women decided they couldn’t miss that moment. Imagine the atmosphere.

Almost six years after the global lockdowns of March 2020, what exactly do we have? Zoom meetings. Homemade bread on Instagram. TikTok dances.

GM TO BRING BACK THE TWO STROKE SIMPLE ENGINE?

Is GM Bringing Back the Two Stroke?

There are rumors afoot that GM is developing a two stroke engine, which is a type of engine not seen in cars (outside of the old Soviet Union) since before JFK was elected president.

Two strokes have many virtues, including simplicity – because they have no valvetrain – and low cost (because they have fewer moving parts) and high output for their displacement, relative to a four stroke engine of the same displacement, because two stroke engines make power every time a piston ascends to top dead center within the cylinder. A four stroke engine has four strokes – intake, compression, combustion, exhaust – but only one of those strokes (combustion) results in power.

Two strokes also have some strikes against them. The main one being they are very difficult to make compliant – with emissions standards – because for one thing they burn oil on purpose (it is mixed with the gas, to provide engine lubrication) and for another because the nature of the design allows for contamination of the intake charge with exhaust gasses. which is a function of using ports that are covered and uncovered by the pistons as they go up and down in the cylinders. Four strokes also have ports but they are opened and closed by intake and exhaust valves that seal when closed.

There is also the related problem of piston ring wear caused by the piston going up and down in cylinders that have holes (those ports) in their sides. In a four stroke engine, the piston is surrounded completely by the cylinder wall, which compresses the piston and oil control rings evenly. In a two stroke engine, the open port on the side of the cylinder creates a spot where the rings are not compressed evenly, leading to faster wear and more blow-by (higher emissions). And that is why the only vehicles with two stroke engines that can still be legally sold are for use off-road only.

These being off-road dirt bikes.

But a two stroke may be coming back on-road. The may be part is suggested by a new GM patent for a new-design two stroke engine that appears to have a sleeve-valve or linear system that creates a hole-less cylinder wall when the piston passes by the port, thereby improving sealing and reducing premature piston ring wear – which will (or ought to) help reduce emissions and make the engine compliant.

Maybe.

But don’t expect to see this engine powering a GM vehicle anytime soon – though it may be buried somewhere deep inside inside a future GM EV as a power source. More finely, as a generator, to produce the electricity you’d otherwise have to plug in (and wait) to get. This would eliminate not just the Range Anxiety you have heard people talk about but the arguably more serious problem – Wait Annoyance – that is much less-talked-about. Few people would give a flip about range if it were easy to get more. Have you ever heard of someone complaining about the range of a Hellcat Charger? It has a range of maybe 200 miles, if you are easy on the accelerator pedal. If you aren’t, you might burn up the contents of its tank in 150 miles or even less.

But it’s not a problem because it’s not a hassle to refill the tank. A five minute stop and you’re ready to go. With an EV, the wait is best-case at least 15-20 minutes for a partial charge and that’s just too much hassle for most people.

Hence the idea of what’s being marketed as a range extender by some purveyors of EVs. The range extender being a gas-burning engine. You never run low on charge because the engine is there to generate more as you drive – so long as you have some gas in the tank. That is the role GM’s new two-stroke is likely to play, if it ever sees the light of day – which it just might because there are certain advantages, as detailed earlier. A two-stroke range extender would be cheaper and so help reduce the cost of the EV. It also takes up less space and it’s simpler, all of that is good given it would likely be buried somewhere deep inside the EV’s guts and for that reason not easy to service.

Best to make it so that it needs service less often.

This isn’t a new concept, by the way. GM was first to market a range-extender equipped EV. It was called the Volt (old review of one is here). It could be driven about 50 miles on battery power but when that was exhausted you did not have to stop for a charge because it could charge itself. Some people, at the time, confused the Volt with a hybrid – which it technically was. But it was very different from other hybrids because unlike them, the Volt was primarily an electric car that happened to have a gas engine on board. In conventional hybrids, the gas engine provides both charge and propulsion; i.e., it powers electrically powered accessories and the wheels that move the car. In the Volt, the gas engine was there chiefly to generate the electricity that powered the electric motors that turned the wheels.

It was a fine idea with bad timing. The Volt came out in 2011, when there wasn’t much market for such a vehicle and no mandated “market” for EVs. That came too late to save the Volt, which got cancelled after 2019 – just as the “market” for EVs began to pick up. To borrow a line from On the Waterfront, it coulda been a contender.

The Volt wasn’t obnoxiously expensive – as the EVs that came later were (and are) and it was practical. More so, arguably, than an engine-only car because it could run for 50 miles entirely on battery power. This gave it dual fuel capability – as well as very long legs. Some owners had to get into the habit of using fuel stabilizer because it took months to burn through a tank.

It’s ironic to reflect that the one EV that maybe made some sense got cancelled at just the moment when everything else began to make no sense at all.

. . .

TESLA THE WORST USED CAR BRAND IN AMERICA, EVEN WORSE THAN CHRYSLER, JEEP AND RAM!

Tesla is the most unreliable used car brand in America, even behind Jeep and Chrysler

Older Teslas rank dead last in Consumer Reports study, but newer models show improvement

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The big picture: Tesla has been at the forefront of the EV revolution, delivering blazing performance, advanced driver-assistance features, and an extensive Supercharger network. However, a new survey reveals that Teslas may not be the most reliable vehicles on the market and might fall short in terms of overall ownership experience.

According to Consumer Reports’ 2025 used vehicle reliability study, Tesla is the most unreliable used car brand in the US. It placed last among 26 automotive brands with a reliability ranking of 31 – below Jeep (32), Ram (35), and Chrysler (36). The study evaluated the reliability of 5- to 10-year-old models on the second-hand market.

While the results may seem like a damning indictment of Tesla, the report notes that the company has improved the build quality of its vehicles. All of its latest models now offer “better-than-average reliability,” and Tesla ranks among the top 10 brands in Consumer Reports’ new car predictability rankings, surpassing established automakers like Ford, Chevrolet, Mercedes-Benz, Audi, and Volkswagen.

While newer Teslas are more reliable than older models, the company has issued several recalls across most of its lineup, including the flagship Model S and the all-new Cybertruck. Earlier this year, Tesla recalled more than 46,000 Cybertrucks to fix an exterior panel that wasn’t properly secured and could detach while driving.

In January, the company recalled over 200,000 vehicles due to a software glitch affecting rearview cameras. In recent years, Tesla has recalled millions of cars for issues ranging from autopilot bugs, brake fluid detection problems, and faulty seat-belt warning systems, to malfunctioning touchscreens and power steering failures.

Used Tesla prices have fallen sharply since the pandemic years, when federal tax credits helped fuel demand for EVs in the US. Since those credits were rolled back under President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, demand has softened, with consumers increasingly opting for traditional internal combustion vehicles or plug-in hybrids.

CHINA COULD DESTROY USA AIRCRAFT CARRIERS WITH HYPERSONIC MISSILES IN MINUTES IN FIGHT OVER TAIWAN! USA DOES NOT HAVE EVEN ONE HYPERSONIC MISSILE AND CHINA HAS 600!

China would defeat the US military in a war over Taiwan, according to a top-secret US government assessment.

US reliance on costly, sophisticated weapons leaves it exposed to China’s ability to mass-produce cheaper systems in overwhelming numbers, the highly classified “Overmatch Brief” warns.

A national security official under Joe Biden who reviewed the document is said to have turned pale on realising Beijing had “redundancy after redundancy” for “every trick we had up our sleeve”, The New York Times reported.

Losing Taiwan, the US’s key bulwark against Chinese power in the western Pacific, would deliver a severe strategic and symbolic blow to Washington.

The country’s most advanced aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R Ford – recently sent to the Caribbean for Donald Trump’s crackdown on drug traffickers – is often destroyed in the wargames outlined in the brief.

The $13bn (£9.75bn) vessel, which entered service in 2022 after years of delays, is vulnerable to attacks from diesel-electric submarines and China’s arsenal of some 600 hypersonic missiles, capable of travelling at five times the speed of sound.

Beijing displayed its ship-destroying YJ-17 missiles, estimated to travel at eight times the speed of sound, at a military parade in September.

Nevertheless, the Pentagon is planning to build nine additional Ford-class aircraft carriers, while it has yet to deploy a single hypersonic missile.

China paraded ship-destroying missiles at a military parade in September Credit: VCG via Getty Images

Eric Gomez, a research fellow at the Taiwan Security Monitor, said the end result was unclear when he participated in a wargame for a Taiwan conflict, but noted the US suffered heavy losses.

“The US loses a lot of ships in the process. A lot of F-35s and other tactical aircraft in the theatre are degraded pretty rapidly too,” he told The Telegraph.

“I think the high cost of it was really sobering when we did the after-action summaries, and we’re like, ‘Okay, like, you guys lost 100-plus fifth-generation aircraft, multiple destroyers, a couple of submarines, a couple of carriers’.

“It’s like, ‘oh gosh, man, that was a heavy toll’.”

Hegseth: China could destroy US carriers in minutes

Last year, Pete Hegseth, the defence secretary, said that “we lose every time” in the Pentagon’s war games against China, and predicted the Asian country’s hypersonic missiles could destroy aircraft carriers within minutes.

China has significantly expanded its arsenal of short, medium, and intermediate-range missiles, which means it could destroy many of the US’s advanced weapons well before they could reach Taiwan.

ELITE UNIVERSITIES CLAIM THAT 38% OF THEIR STUDENTS ARE CLAIMING(lying about) A DISABILITY TO GET MORE FOR TESTS!

Cheaters Faking Disabilities Are Dragging Colleges Into Crisis

Having ‘ADHD’ does not make you disabled.

The campus of Stanford University (Robert Gareth/Unsplash)

A large proportion of college students, law students, and medical students are willfully cheating and lying to get better grades. Nowhere is this happening more than at elite universities, where there is exponential growth in the number of students claiming disabilities in order to get the “accommodation” of time and a half on their exams.

Nationwide, 20 percent of college students now claim to have a disability. That number has quintupled over the past decade. Of course, there is no plausible scenario in which the number of disabilities among young people would actually increase fivefold (unless a city were carpet-bombed), so this must be a trend with a purpose. Plus, the more elite the school, the higher the rate of “disability,” even though one would think debilitating cognitive and learning disabilities would make attendance at such schools less likely. At Stanford University, for instance, 38 percent of undergrads are officially registered as being disabled. Certain populations also have extremely high rates of diagnosed disability. For example, 54 percent of nonbinary students at American colleges today are registered as having a disability. (RELATED: The Outrageous Scandal That Should Be Rocking Higher Education)

[M]ost of these “disabled” students are liars and cheaters who know they have no actual impediment that prevents them from taking an exam within an allotted timeframe.

Many assessments in the mainstream media on the surge of “accommodations” speak in gentle tones about whether additional safeguards are needed and whether the system has become “unfair.” But make no mistake about it, most of these “disabled” students are liars and cheaters who know they have no actual impediment that prevents them from taking an exam within an allotted timeframe. (RELATED: America’s Universities: A Multi-Generational Perspective)

Their decision to take extra time on their exams — which has been shown by several studies to significantly increase the likelihood of a better grade — is a purposeful act to hurt their classmates in favor of advantaging themselves. It is wrong. Even if they have genuinely fallen for the claim that anxiety and “ADHD” entitle elite college, law, or medical students to 150 percent time on exams, they’re guilty because they know that they are perfectly capable of reading the exam and giving an answer, and that a lower score is the result of low effort and/or low intelligence. After all, half of these students had no disability until after they showed up at their university.

The time and a half given to students with “disabilities” is certainly not leveling the playing field. Several studies have found that giving students extra time has about the same effect on increasing scores for students with and without disabilities. Those benefits to students with “disabilities” can be seen in the rise in LSAT scores in recent years, which can be attributed to the increased rates of test-takers receiving time and a half. Conveniently, these “disabled” test-takers who get time and a half on the LSAT do, on average, better than their non-disabled peers.

These “disabled” students do serious harm to students who are actually disabled. College students who are blind, paralyzed, missing limbs, have cerebral palsy, have severe dyslexia, are recovering from surgery, etc., etc. actually need accommodations. Students with fake disabilities who monopolize the resources of accommodations testing offices for the purpose of cheating steal resources from students who genuinely need them. Plus, they cast suspicion on the students who need accommodations by means of promoting widespread resentment toward accommodations.

This month, the Atlantic published an essay on this growing phenomenon. The author, Rose Horowitch, argued that the explosion of accommodations in higher education “has put the entire idea of fairness at risk.” She traced the origin of this explosion in accommodation grants back to a 2008 amendment from the Association on Higher Education and Disability that called for colleges to give significant consideration to students’ own assessment of their disability and not to rely only on medical diagnoses. The organization claimed that “(r)equiring extensive medical and scientific evidence” actually “perpetuates a deviance model of disability.” In addition, the American Psychiatric Association in 2013 expanded the definition of ADHD — the “disability” that 17 percent of college students claim to have — to the amorphous standard that a person’s symptoms need only to “interfere with, or reduce the quality” of academic functioning.

Horowitch doesn’t say this, but ADHD is a diagnosis that is made to account for totally disparate behaviors in people. For example, one person with “ADHD” could be a 21-year-old woman who gets distracted by TikTok when she’s supposed to be studying, and another person with “ADHD” could be a 11-year-old boy who has intense anger and is willfully disobedient toward all adults. In other words, ADHD can be applied to people who aren’t the best at staying focused (a difficult task for almost everyone, it turns out), and it can describe people with a range of other serious mental disorders. Brain scans of those with an “ADHD” diagnosis have found nothing in common among those with the condition that is distinct from the rest of the population. Brain scans have also found nothing consistently deficient in the brains of people with ADHD. Therefore, a diagnosis of ADHD means and describes practically nothing coherent. And yet, there are many ADHD activists who claim that there is something wrong with the brain chemistry of people who have ADHD, and that this can only be solved by stimulants that are controlled substances. (These activists still haven’t shown what is wrong with the brain chemistry of people with ADHD, or demonstrated that the stimulants have positive effects in the long term.)

Even though ADHD means so little and has such a low standard for diagnosis, many psychiatrists have been known to diagnose patients with it even when the basic standards are not met. In a survey, nearly half of psychologists said the purpose of a psychoeducational assessment was to secure accommodations for a student rather than to discover if the student is in need of them. Others advertise that they will provide a diagnosis for accommodations. One assessment company, for instance, publicly bragged that it had a “95 percent success rate in getting learning disability accommodations.” The company’s owner even said in a YouTube video that he wasn’t aware of a case in which a client had been denied accommodations. A different cognitive testing company had a banner on its website that said “Get ACT Extra Time.”

Thus, it’s become easy for parents to essentially buy their kid a diagnosis that will unlock time and a half on his or her exams. Another piece of evidence for this is the fact that disability accommodations are given more frequently at schools with students from wealthier families.

But really, parents don’t even need to buy their kids a diagnosis. In a recent study in Canada, 23 universities approved a (fictional) student’s request for extra time on her exams because of ADHD. Here’s the twist: The official neuropsychological battery, which was given to the universities, stated that she was within normal range for everything. All she had to do to get accommodations was state that she felt she had ADHD. The researcher, Allyson G. Harrison, reported that she was inspired to do the study by a similar study that was conducted in the U.S. that also “found almost perfect compliance” with the student’s request. The researcher refused to publish that study, she said, because he feared institutional backlash.

Increasingly, diagnoses of anxiety and/or depression are accounting for a greater proportion of students who receive extra time on their exams. At Ohio State, students with these mental health difficulties constitute 36 percent of those receiving accommodations. These students also tend to receive leniencies, such as being able to skip class or turn in assignments late.

Of course, it seems quite clear that teenagers with anxiety and depression would be better off being held to the same standard as their peers instead of being coddled into feelings of helplessness and insufficiency. Having depression and anxiety might mean you need help and therapy, but it certainly doesn’t make you too stupid to take your exam in the normal amount of time.

Also, about this time and a half for exams. There’s no scientific rationale for it. Harrison explained to the Chronicle on Higher Education that there’s no significant research on what extra time might be appropriate for certain disabilities. “It’s just throwing darts,” she said. Students in Australia with disabilities, for instance, only receive 115 percent time for exams.

In recent years, many employers have reported that college graduates are unprepared for the workforce. Of course, getting concessions and easier exams for claiming to have the “disability” of “ADHD” at a time when rigor in higher education is falling each year is hardly the best preparation for the workplace. After all, you don’t get time and a half to do your job.

In 2023, Brett Seaton, then a student at the University of Pennsylvania who was diagnosed with ADHD but refused to accept accommodations, wrote about what exactly is supposed to happen when these coddled students show up at their place of work post-graduation and aren’t given concessions. He said:

Employers trust Penn to educate students and to prepare them to enter the workforce. Imagine how surprised they will be when they find out that in time-sensitive situations, accommodated students function at half of the processing speeds of non-accommodated students. Accommodated students will feel slow and behind, while employers will be frustrated and more likely to fire them for their slow rate of creating value.

What will be much worse is when doctors who received time and a half on their exams start treating patients. Unfortunately, doctors with “ADHD” will also not receive time and a half to help a patient in a medical emergency.

By choosing to give so many students such unwarranted benefits, universities are putting their reputations at serious risk. Students are graduating from their schools entitled and unprepared. Genuine merit is overshadowed by those who game the system. And, as most college courses are graded on a curve, either officially or unofficially, each student who is not cheating is being robbed of the grades he or she deserves. Universities’ entire system of academic integrity has collapsed, and the value of their degrees has fallen.

Surely, these schools are terrified of getting sued by students who claim their disabilities were not accommodated. But there is no reason that time and a half on an exam should be a “reasonable” accommodation for ADHD, depression, or anxiety. Universities need to fight back against the liars and the cheaters.

THE POPE IS BLIND TO ISLAMIC TAKEOVER!

THE POPE’S WAR ON CHRISTENDOM: HIS ISLAMIC FANTASY VS. EUROPE’S BLOODY REALITY

The Pope’s interfaith rhetoric collapses against Europe’s blood-soaked reality, revealing a globalist agenda that demands Christian nations surrender to the very forces destroying them.

On his carefully orchestrated “interfaith” tour through Turkey and Lebanon, Pope Leo XIV was confronted with a question he could no longer avoid: whether Islam threatens the Christian identity of the West.

The Pope was asked a serious and unavoidable question: “Is Islam a threat to the Christian identity of the West?”

Rather than answering with Scripture, historical understanding, or even basic honesty, he delivered a set of rehearsed globalist talking points. He dismissed the concerns of millions of Europeans by claiming that their fears are “created by people against immigration.” He insisted that Western Christians “should be less fearful,” and he even suggested that Lebanon — a nation shattered by sectarian violence and Islamist dominance- should serve as the model for Europe and the United States.

This is not spiritual guidance. It is ideological blindness, and the moment it collides with reality, it crumbles.

POINT 1: Fear Was Not Created by Political Rhetoric. It Was Created by Reality.

Europeans did not become fearful because commentators told them to be. They became fearful because jihadist violence entered their daily lives.

How can anyone call it “fearmongering” to recall Father Jacques Hamel, who was beheaded at his own altar in France?

Or the Nice truck massacre that killed eighty-six innocent people?
Or the Bataclan slaughter, where ninety concertgoers were tortured and massacred?
Or the Vienna Islamic State attack, or the London Bridge terrorists who stabbed passersby while shouting “Allahu Akbar”?

These are not abstract policy debates. They are lived experiences. Europeans fear for their families because mothers have been murdered while attending Christmas markets, priests have been attacked mid-Mass, and schoolgirls have been stabbed or raped on their way home.

Their fear is not imagined. It is earned through blood and suffering.

POINT 2: Lebanon Is Not a Model of Coexistence. It Is a Warning.

When the Pope presents Lebanon as a model for Europe, he ignores the country’s tragic history. Lebanon was once approximately 80 percent Christian, a prosperous and Western-oriented nation often called the “Paris of the Middle East.” What followed, however, was not peaceful coexistence. Islamist militias rose to power, civil war erupted, Hezbollah entrenched itself, and Christians were driven out, slaughtered, or reduced to a vulnerable minority.

Lebanon did not evolve into a harmonious, pluralistic society. It became a case study in demographic conquest and political submission. To call this a “model” for Europe is to endorse Christian decline, the consolidation of Islamic political power, and the erosion of civil society.

Europe does not need Lebanon’s fate recreated on its soil. Yet that is precisely the trajectory the Pope’s narrative supports.

POINT 3: Dialogue Means Nothing When Only One Side Is Dying.

The Pope speaks earnestly of “dialogue,” “friendship,” and “mutual respect.” But these phrases ring hollow in the face of ongoing violence. Try telling European priests who now celebrate Mass behind locked doors that “dialogue” is sufficient. Try telling Jewish children who require armed guards just to attend school. Try telling the women of Sweden, Germany, and the United Kingdom who have been raped by “refugees” that they are simply misunderstanding the situation. Try telling Christians in Nigeria, Egypt, Iraq, Syria, and Kenya, whose communities are decimated by Islamist violence, that the Vatican’s calls for dialogue are enough to protect them.

Christians facing persecution do not need gentle diplomatic slogans. They need truth. And the truth is that the Qur’an’s teachings on Jesus, Christians, and Jews cannot peacefully coexist with Christian civilization. Islamic scholars openly teach that Jesus will return to destroy the Cross, abolish Christianity, and establish Islam as the only legitimate religion. That doctrine is not dialogue. It is replacement.

POINT 4: Islam’s “Jesus” Is a Weapon, Not a Bridge.

While the Pope praises interfaith harmony, Islamic activists across the West are promoting a deceptive campaign built around the claim “We love Jesus too.” This is not an attempt at genuine connection. It is theological infiltration. The “Isa” of Islam is not the Son of God, was not crucified, did not rise from the dead, and cannot save anyone. In Islamic prophecy, Isa returns for one purpose: to eliminate all religions except Islam.

This is not a bridge between faiths. It is a strategic weapon used to dismantle Christian belief from within. As RAIR has exposed in “The Counterfeit Christ: Islam’s War to Replace Jesus,” Islam does not honor Jesus; it redefines Him to erase Christianity.

POINT 5: The Pope Preaches Blindness While Christians Pay the Cost.

When the Pope tells Europeans to “be less fearful,” he erases the lived trauma of victims. Tell that to the families devastated by the Stockholm truck attack. Tell that to the teenagers who were blown apart at the Manchester Arena. Tell that to the families of those murdered at the Berlin Christmas market. Tell that to Catholic teachers who are now afraid to wear a cross in public.

Fear is not hatred. Fear is the normal, rational response of a civilization under assault. The Pope’s attempt to reframe self-preservation as moral failure is not compassion. It is a dangerous confusion of surrender with virtue.

POINT 6: Why Is He Promoting Mass Muslim Migration Into the West?

If the Pope wants to lecture Christians about fear, he must confront the truth he refuses to acknowledge. The Vatican is deeply embedded in the global refugee-resettlement industry, a billion-dollar network that moves overwhelmingly Muslim populations into Western Christian nations while presenting itself as “charity.” The Catholic Church receives vast sums of government and UN funding for resettlement programs. This is not merely a moral stance. It is a financial system.

The Pope also refuses to discuss his alignment with Amy Pope, the UN’s migration chief, who is shaping the demographic future of the West. He met privately with her just days before attacking President Trump’s border protections. Under her leadership, the IOM has become the operational engine of global population transfer, and its priorities are heavily influenced by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation. The Vatican provides the moral justification, while the UN provides the infrastructure. This is not compassion. It is coordination.

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And when the Pope claims Lebanon as his model, he is not describing peaceful coexistence. He is describing demographic replacement dressed as virtue.

THE QUESTION HE CANNOT ESCAPE

Why must Europe and America absorb endless waves of Muslim migrants while the Vatican partners with the very institutions orchestrating the demographic transformation of the West?

The answer is clear: This agenda has nothing to do with hospitality, mercy, or Scripture. It is the Great Replacement wrapped in religious language.

The Pope never pressures the fifty-seven Muslim-majority nations of the OIC to take in refugees. He demands only that Christian nations abandon their borders. This is not peace. It is a population transfer disguised as a moral duty.

THE FINAL VERDICT

As Christians across Europe bury their dead after jihadist violence, Pope Leo XIV scolds them for feeling fear. Meanwhile, he collaborates with UN migration architects, pressures Western governments to remain borderless, and helps funnel millions of Muslim migrants into the very communities already breaking under the strain.

If he wants to lecture Christians about fear, he must first explain why he is actively helping engineer the demographic invasion he insists they should ignore. Until he answers that question, his sermons are meaningless.

A shepherd who leads his flock toward wolves is not compassionate. He is complicit.

FRAUD, FRAUD AND CONTINUED MASSIVE FRAUD IN OBAMACARE SUBSIDIES

Fake People and Phony SSNs Had 100% Success in Getting Obamacare Subsidy, Fraud Investigation Finds

—A scathing new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report identified rampant fraud and systemic failures in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplace just as Congress is battling over the future of Obamacare’s enhanced premium subsidies.

The report, released Wednesday, revealed that fictitious identities, invalid Social Security numbers, and even deceased individuals were easily approved for taxpayer-funded subsidies. Every single application investigators submitted using fabricated or invalid Social Security numbers in 2024 was approved for coverage.

“Republicans have sounded the alarm on the flawed structural integrity of Obamacare and how Democrats’ failed policies to temporarily prop up the program have exacerbated fraud, hurt patients, increased the burden on American taxpayers,” Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-KY), chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee and one of the members who requested the GAO investigation, said in a statement.

“The concerning findings from GAO’s report further confirm that Republican efforts to strengthen, secure, and sustain our federal health programs are critical and necessary to ensure access to quality health care at prices Americans can afford,” Guthrie added.

The month-long government shutdown that ended just before Thanksgiving stemmed largely from Democrats’ refusal to budge on the expiring Obamacare premium subsidies, which they passed without a single Republican vote in 2021 and set to expire at the end of 2025.

Those subsidies were originally limited to households earning between 100% and 400% of the federal poverty level. However, Democrats removed the upper-income cap and increased the subsidy amounts, and in some cases reduced premiums to zero.

Fraud is especially widespread among enrollees reporting incomes between 100% and 150% of the federal poverty level, who qualify for zero-premium plans. Critics say zero-premium plans create opportunities for bad actors to sign up unsuspecting victims without their knowledge.

In nine states, the number of sign-ups at that income level exceeded the number of eligible residents, according to a joint report from the Foundation for Government Accountability and the Paragon Health Institute.

GAO’s undercover investigation found that 100% of the fictitious applications it submitted were approved in late 2024, and 18 out of 20 fake applicants were still receiving subsidized coverage for 2025. ACA marketplaces approved coverage even when no documents were requested, or fake documents were submitted, including those related to the applicants’ citizenship status.

The government watchdog also uncovered 66,000 Social Security numbers with more than a year’s worth of subsidized coverage in 2024, including one number used for the equivalent of 71 years of coverage — in a single plan year.

Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), which manages the ACA marketplace, does not block new applications using the same Social Security number, according to the report.

Additionally, 58,000 SSNs receiving benefits in 2023 matched Social Security death data, resulting in $94 million in taxpayer-funded subsidies being sent to health insurers on behalf of deceased individuals.

“For years, we were told we could keep our plan, keep our doctor, and premiums would go down. None of it happened,” Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan said in a statement. “This new report confirms what we already knew: under Obamacare, hardworking Americans saw their premiums skyrocket and their healthcare choices shrink, all while fraud benefited insurance companies.”

Democrats, meanwhile, warn that without extending the expanded subsidies, millions of Americans will face steep premium hikes and loss of coverage.

ACA premiums are projected to rise by 20% on average in 2026, but Paragon’s earlier analysis found that the expiring subsidy would account for just 3.3% of those premiums. The group also found that Obamacare plan premiums have grown nearly twice as fast as employer-sponsored plans since the ACA took effect.

TREASURY SECRETARY CALLS OUT THE GIANT TAXPAYER MONEY DRAIN FOR ILLEGALS IN THE COUNTRY

FINALLY: Treasury’s Bessent Takes Aim at Taxpayer Drain From Illegal Aliens

For years, American workers have shouldered the load of a broken immigration system that lets in millions without a plan, while their hard-earned dollars flow into programs that reward lawbreakers. Now, with Scott Bessent at the helm of the Treasury Department, that era of unchecked spending is facing a reckoning.

Bessent, the Wall Street veteran who took over as the nation’s 79th Treasury secretary in January, has kicked off a direct assault on the loopholes allowing illegal aliens to tap into federal tax breaks and wire billions back home without a second thought.

Bessent’s office laid it out plain: The department is “reviewing the tax status of ITIN filers with a focus on preventing access to refundable credits such as the Child Tax Credit and Earned Income Tax Credit.” Those Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers—ITINs—have long been a backdoor for non-citizens to file returns and snag refunds, even as they dodge the full weight of citizenship.

It’s a setup that’s funneled an estimated $4.2 billion in child tax credits alone to households with at least one illegal alien last year, according to Treasury data. And that’s just the start. Bessent’s team is also eyeing restrictions on remittances, those cross-border cash transfers that hit $96 billion from the U.S. to Latin America in 2024, per World Bank figures. “We’re looking at ways to limit or tax those outflows to keep more money circulating in the American economy,” a department insider told Fox Business on Friday.

This push comes straight from President Trump’s playbook, echoing his February executive order that slammed the door on “all taxpayer-funded benefits for illegal aliens.” That order, which Bessent has called a “vital first step,” forced agencies to scour their books for any federal dollars propping up sanctuary cities or padding programs that indirectly aid those here unlawfully.

The math tells a grim story: The Federation for American Immigration Reform pegs the annual cost of illegal immigration at $182 billion, with Medicaid emergency care for illegals alone gobbling up $16.2 billion under the previous administration—a 124% spike from Trump’s first term. Critics in Washington whisper that these moves are just theater, but the fine print suggests otherwise. By tightening ITIN rules, Treasury could claw back billions that might otherwise go toward extending the 2017 tax cuts for working families—the very families Bessent vowed to protect during his Senate confirmation.

Bessent’s no stranger to big bets. The South Carolina-born hedge fund manager built a fortune spotting market shifts, first at George Soros’s firm in the ’90s, then launching his own outfit, Key Square, which raked in returns during global turmoil. He backed Trump’s tariff threats on China during his January hearing, arguing they’d force fairer trade without tanking growth.

Now, applying that same sharp eye to immigration, he’s betting that cutting off these incentives will slow the flood at the border. “Illegal immigration imposes crushing burdens on American taxpayers,” Trump said in a statement tied to the order, and Bessent’s actions back it up. Remittances aren’t just money leaving the country; they’re a lifeline for cartels and smugglers, with U.S. officials estimating that up to 20% of those transfers tie back to drug money laundering, based on a 2023 DEA report.

Of course, not everyone’s cheering. Immigrant advocacy groups are already filing lawsuits, claiming this targets families and kids who “just want a shot at the dream.” But let’s be real: The dream was never supposed to come at the expense of citizens waiting in line, or taxpayers footing the bill for schools, hospitals, and now tax refunds they never earned. Bessent’s review could wrap up by spring, with proposed rules hitting the Federal Register soon after. If it sticks, it might finally make the system play fair—prioritizing the folks who built this country, not the ones gaming it.

In a nation where borders mean something and budgets balance on trust, these steps feel like common sense long overdue. With Trump’s team digging in, the message is clear: America’s resources stay with Americans. Whether the courts or Congress throw up roadblocks remains to be seen, but for now, the Treasury’s got its sights locked.

PRESIDENT TRUMP’S THANKSGIVING MESSAGE ABOUT THE MASS MIGRATION APPROVED BY BIDEN’S AUTOPEN!?

A very Happy Thanksgiving salutation to all of our Great American Citizens and Patriots who have been so nice in allowing our Country to be divided, disrupted, carved up, murdered, beaten, mugged, and laughed at, along with certain other foolish countries throughout the World, for being “Politically Correct,” and just plain STUPID, when it comes to Immigration.

The official United States Foreign population stands at 53 million people (Census), most of which are on welfare, from failed nations, or from prisons, mental institutions, gangs, or drug cartels.

They and their children are supported through massive payments from Patriotic American Citizens who, because of their beautiful hearts, do not want to openly complain or cause trouble in any way, shape, or form.

They put up with what has happened to our Country, but it’s eating them alive to do so! A migrant earning $30,000 with a green card will get roughly $50,000 in yearly benefits for their family.

The real migrant population is much higher. This refugee burden is the leading cause of social dysfunction in America, something that did not exist after World War II (Failed schools, high crime, urban decay, overcrowded hospitals, housing shortages, and large deficits, etc.).

As an example, hundreds of thousands of refugees from Somalia are completely taking over the once great State of Minnesota.

Somalian gangs are roving the streets looking for “prey” as our wonderful people stay locked in their apartments and houses hoping against hope that they will be left alone.

The seriously retarded Governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz, does nothing, either through fear, incompetence, or both, while the worst “Congressman/woman” in our Country, Ilhan Omar, always wrapped in her swaddling hijab, and who probably came into the U.S.A. illegally in that you are not allowed to marry your brother, does nothing but hatefully complain about our Country, its Constitution, and how “badly” she is treated, when her place of origin is a decadent, backward, and crime ridden nation, which is essentially not even a country for lack of Government, Military, Police, schools, etc. Even as we have progressed technologically, Immigration Policy has eroded those gains and living conditions for many. I will permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries to allow the U.S. system to fully recover, terminate all of the millions of Biden illegal admissions, including those signed by Sleepy Joe Biden’s Autopen, and remove anyone who is not a net asset to the United States, or is incapable of loving our Country, end all Federal benefits and subsidies to noncitizens of our Country, denaturalize migrants who undermine domestic tranquility, and deport any Foreign National who is a public charge, security risk, or non-compatible with Western Civilization.

These goals will be pursued with the aim of achieving a major reduction in illegal and disruptive populations, including those admitted through an unauthorized and illegal Autopen approval process.

Only REVERSE MIGRATION can fully cure this situation. Other than that, HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO ALL, except those that hate, steal, murder, and destroy everything that America stands for — You won’t be here for long!

CRYPTO SCHEMES CONTINUE TO STEAL BILLIONS!

More Nations Unite to Sanction Prince Group, a Huge Crypto Scam Organization Making Billions

Imagine scrolling through your social media feed, only to click on what seems like a golden opportunity—a friendly chat that blooms into a crypto investment tip promising quick riches. Before you know it, you’ve wired thousands to an offshore account, and poof, it’s gone. That’s the grim reality for countless Americans ensnared by “pig butchering” scams, those insidious operations where fraudsters groom victims online before bleeding them dry. Now, South Korea’s bold entry into the fray against these networks is a shot in the arm for U.S. efforts to reclaim our economic security from foreign predators.

On Thursday, Seoul dropped its first-ever independent sanctions aimed at transnational crime, targeting a whopping 15 individuals and 132 entities. This isn’t just paperwork—it’s the “largest single sanction measure in history,” as South Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs put it in an official release. “It shows the government’s firm determination to actively respond to online organized crime in Southeast Asia that is causing serious damage at home and abroad.”

For everyday Americans, whose retirement savings and hard-earned cash fuel these scams to the tune of billions lost annually, this means fewer safe havens for the crooks.

At the heart of the crackdown sits the Prince Group, a Cambodia-based conglomerate led by Chen Zhi, a 38-year-old Chinese national also known as “Vincent.” U.S. authorities have painted a stark picture: Prince allegedly ran sprawling “scam centers” in Cambodia and Myanmar, stuffing them with trafficked workers—lured by bogus job ads—forced to man 1,250 mobile phones controlling 76,000 fake social media accounts.

These setups didn’t just target South Koreans; they preyed on folks worldwide, including a surge of American victims in recent years. The U.S. Treasury slapped Prince with a “Transnational Criminal Organization” label back in October, right alongside the UK, which detailed how these outfits peddle love scams and crypto cons under the shadow of torture threats.

Zhi himself faces federal charges in New York for wire fraud and money laundering conspiracies, with the Department of Justice seizing about $15 billion in bitcoin from his wallets on October 14. That’s real money—enough to fund entire communities back home—stolen from trusting Americans chasing the dream of financial independence.

And it’s not isolated: The same sanctions netted Huione Group, another Cambodian player the Treasury fingered in May as a key laundry for North Korean cyber heists and Southeast Asian fraud rings.

“Huione Group serves as a critical node for laundering proceeds of cyber heists carried out by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), and for Transnational Criminal Organizations in Southeast Asia perpetrating virtual currency investment scams,” the department warned.

Prince, for its part, fired back through high-powered U.S. lawyers at Boies Schiller Flexner. “The recent allegations are baseless and appear aimed at justifying the unlawful seizure of assets worth billions of dollars,” the group claimed in a November 11 statement.

They’re lawyered up and denying it all—but the mounting evidence from Phnom Penh to Washington tells a different story. Singapore piled on last month, freezing over 150 million Singapore dollars in assets tied to the network, from bank accounts to cold hard cash.

This international pile-on didn’t happen in a vacuum. It kicked into high gear after a gut-wrenching incident in August: a South Korean university student tortured to death in a Cambodian scam compound. That tragedy spurred Seoul and Phnom Penh to launch a joint task force in October, a practical step toward dismantling these human-trafficking-fueled fraud factories. For the U.S., it’s a reminder of why we lead on sanctions—our Treasury’s moves often light the fuse for allies to follow, starving these operations of the global financial lifelines they need to thrive.

What does this mean for American families and businesses? Less tolerance for the kind of economic sabotage that erodes trust in our markets and drains wealth from Main Street. These scams aren’t victimless—they hit retirees in Florida, young investors in Texas, and small savers everywhere, turning the promise of American opportunity into a nightmare. By joining forces with Seoul, London, and beyond, we’re not just punishing the guilty; we’re fortifying our borders against digital thieves. It’s a win for free enterprise, where honest work and smart risks should pay off, not line the pockets of overseas kingpins.

As probes deepen, keep an eye on your inboxes and feeds—verify before you invest, and report the suspicious. In the end, cracking down on these empires isn’t charity; it’s essential to keeping America’s economic engine humming strong.

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