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SENATOR LINDSEY GRAHAM, TRUMP’S BIGGEST SUPPORTER, DIES OF A HEART ATTACK AT AGE 71

Lindsey Graham answer media questions near a damaged Russian vehicles exhibition in central Kyiv© AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky

The haunting final photos of Lindsey Graham appeared to show no sign of the “brief and sudden illness” which claimed his life.

The South Carolina Senator passed away on the evening of Saturday, July 11, his office confirmed in a statement, without sharing further details about his cause of death. There have been unconfirmed reports that Graham suffered chest pain at his home in Washington, D.C. after returning from Ukraine.

It has been reported he suffered chest pains and a cardiac arrest before his death at the age of 71. The last public photos of Graham were taken during his diplomatic visit to Kyiv, Ukraine, where he met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday, July 10.

• Lindsey Graham the latest politician to fall ill without explanation

Zelensky shared a series of photographs documenting their meeting on his official social media account on X. During the visit, the pair discussed foreign policy, with Graham visiting the president’s office and looking at damaged Russian vehicles in central Kyiv.

Graham spoke to the press in the Ukrainian capital, announcing a new agreement with the Trump administration regarding a Russia sanctions package, which he noted was designed to give “tools to President Trump to end this war.” Graham, who was also photographed holding the P1SUN Ukrainian interceptor drone developed by SkyFall, engineered specifically to track down and destroy Russian drones, said during his final press conference in Kyiv, “I’m pleased to announce, as of about 30 minutes ago, we’ve reached agreement with the White House on a version of the Russian sanctions bill that they will support.”

Lindsey Graham answer media questions near a damaged Russian vehicles exhibition in central Kyiv© AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky

He added, “It means it’s gonna become law. So when I get back to Washington, I’m gonna go with Senator [Richard] Blumenthal to the Republican and Democratic leader to see if we can find time to move this Russian sanctions package that would give tools to President Trump to help end this war.”

On Friday, an announcement was also shared on his official website, with a joint statement from Senator Graham, Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), and Roger Wicker (R-MS). “We are proud to announce that we have reached an agreement with the Trump Administration to move our updated Russia sanctions legislation forward,” the statement read.

“We are very pleased with this significant progress and expect to roll out the legislation very soon. As Russia intensifies its slaughter of civilians, it is imperative that the legislative and executive branches work together to create tools to exact a heavy price on those who buy Russian oil and natural gas, fueling the Putin war machine.”

On Friday, Graham also continued banging the drum about modern infrastructure investment in his state, sharing the news that the US Coast Guard has awarded a $230 million contract for new operational support facilities at its base in Charleston, South Carolina.

Graham met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on July 10© Ukrainian Presidential Press Off

The senator’s last tweet, before his death was announced on Saturday, read, “Great news to see the continued investment in Coast Guard Base Charleston! As Chairman of the Senate @BudgetGOP Committee, I was glad to secure this historic funding for the Coast Guard as a part of the One Big Beautiful Bill.”

Last week, Graham also shared his last Instagram post – a video marking the 250th anniversary of American independence. “One nation, under God,” he captioned the post. “Here’s to the next 250 years of freedom.”

The senator visited SkyFall’s drone production facility© SkyFall

Announcing his death, Graham’s office said in a statement, “On the evening of Saturday, July 11, U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham passed away from a brief and sudden illness. Senator Graham’s family appreciates prayers at this time and asks for privacy during this incredibly difficult period.” The Washington Post has since reported the senator suffered chest pains before experiencing cardiac arrest.

The sparse statement from Graham’s office, which did not explain his death, comes during a stretch of concern about a lack of transparency about lawmakers’ health. Rep. Tom Kean Jr, a New Jersey Republican, was absent without explanation for months before returning to Congress and disclosing that he had been diagnosed with depression. Sen. Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, was hospitalized weeks ago for undisclosed health reasons.

The senator visited SkyFall’s drone production facility© SkyFall

Graham was elected to the US Senate in 2002 and was running for a fifth term. He had been a close ally of President Donald Trump and a longtime hawk on Iran. As a member of the US House in the 1990s, he backed policies aimed at isolating the country and limiting its missile and nuclear programs.

He also cheered on Trump’s decision to strike nuclear sites last year and had been been a supporter of the latest conflict that started a few months ago. Graham, who was most known for his hawkish foreign policy positions, mounted a brief bid for the party’s presidential nomination during the 2016 campaign and later was a vocal critic of Trump, the eventual GOP nominee.

BROWN UNIVERSITY STUDENTS, ARE DUMBER THAT YOU IMAGINE…SO MUCH FOR PRESTIGE LABEL

Brown’s ‘elite’ students scored 96 on a test with AI and 48 without it…

Brown used to represent the pinnacle of American education. Just saying that name, “Brown,” meant serious scholarship, fierce competition, and students who had fought with their smarts to earn their place among the brightest minds in the country.

Families pay a jaw-dropping amount of money for that reputation because a Brown degree is supposed to prove something to the world.

But lately, that prestigious reputation has been taking a brutal beating, especially after this latest cheating scandal… more on that later.

So, why has Brown gone from glistening, well-respected ivy to dusty, second-class weeds? Well, there are probably a lot of reasons, but the main one has to be these three letters: DEI.

Brown has spent years making diversity and inclusion a central part of its academic mission. Excellence has taken a backseat to their new purpose: charity.

Brown’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion describes itself as a “critical leader.” The university says DEI is essential to advancing knowledge and understanding. Of course, they can’t explain how accepting people based on skin color or sexual preference over excellence and IQ is advancing knowledge.

But Brown made a choice. They placed all of their eggs in the DEI basket, and now, they’re paying the price.

As a matter of fact, when President Trump signed an executive order targeting these unfair, dangerous programs, Brown administrators were reportedly prepared to fight any action they believed compromised the school’s very important mission.

Brown has made it very clear what it considers worth defending.

What isn’t clear is whether academics, integrity, and actual learning have been protected with the same level of passion or if any of that is even part of the mission these days.

And that brings us to the cheating scandal now blowing up at Brown. It started in one of the university’s toughest economics classes, where the difference between what students could do at home and what they could do sitting in a classroom (without AI) was quite a shocker.

The take-home midterm average was 96 percent, and forty students got perfect scores.

That’s pretty impressive, right?

Well, when Professor Roberto Serrano decided to move the final back into the classroom, eighteen students suddenly dropped the course, nine students didn’t show up, and the class average crashed from 96 percent to a horrific 48 percent.

As it stands now, Brown is looking like a wildly expensive “credential factory” that just got caught selling the appearance of Ivy League excellence.

Did the universities’ DEI culture and DEI students and staff cause students to cheat? Probably, but honestly, that’s not the argument here.

The story here is less about the students cheating and why and more about these once well-respected institutions revealing their true priorities through the things they fight hardest to protect. Brown has feverishly defended DEI as part of its actual “academic mission.” Meanwhile, the professor at the center of this scandal says the administration’s response to very obvious mass cheating has been pretty weak.

So, how did all of this go down?

It started after a deadly shooting on Brown’s campus. Professor Serrano decided to make the spring midterm and final take-home exams.

Serrano noticed that many of the answers were technically correct but strangely written. When he and his grad students dug deeper, it was clear that ChatGPT was likely the culprit.

Professor Serrano didn’t throw out the midterm right away. He gave the students a chance to prove the scores were legit. He moved the final back into the classroom and told them it would only count if their results were somewhere in the same ballpark.

That’s when the whole thing blew up.

The course… typically attracts few students, but very good ones. [Serrano] has never had more than 30 students enrolled at a time, and on some occasions he had only eight. This semester, probably because of the new evaluation system, 86 students signed up for the class. The results of the midterm exam, which was administered on March 5, were extraordinary, with an average score of 96 out of 100. Forty students scored a perfect 100.

This was indeed extraordinary, because as Serrano told Inside Higher Ed, “Historically the average grade in the midterm of this course has ranged between 65 and 80 [percent], and this exam was harder than the exams I wrote in the past, because… take-home is an opportunity to challenge the class a little bit more, given that you’re giving the students unlimited time.”

Beyond the numbers, many of the answers, even when correct, felt slightly off. They had a “very convoluted style,” Serrano said. When he and his grad students ran the exam questions through ChatGPT, they received similar results.

A suspicious Serrano decided that he would make the final exam in-person; he would see if students did similarly well on it. He emailed his class, telling them, “I am not declaring [the midterm] void for now. I am going to give the class a chance to prove me wrong. That is, if the distribution of the final exam is roughly similar to the distribution of the midterm, I will count the midterm. Otherwise, which is of course what I expect to happen, I will declare the midterm void and reweigh the final accordingly.”

Eighteen students suddenly dropped the course, while nine others didn’t even attend the final exam. Of those 27 students, El País noted, “22 had scored a perfect 100 in the midterm exam.”

Among those who took the test, the average score plunged—from 96 all the way down to 48.

Maybe these students aren’t a bunch of dummies. Some of them might be really clever. But being smart and actually learning something aren’t the same thing. This scandal makes it look like plenty of students figured out how to work the system without ever really learning the material.

Brown didn’t suddenly develop this crisis because ChatGPT popped on the scene. AI exposed how much of the university’s “celebrated excellence” is based on grades, credentials, and appearances rather than academic excellence.

The professor who exposed all of this understands something about genuine academic work that his students don’t.

Serrano went blind from retinal dystrophy when he was seventeen. He could’ve decided that was the end of his academic future, but he didn’t. He learned Braille, kept going, and made it to Harvard… on his smarts and merits, not DEI.

That probably explains why he couldn’t shrug off what happened in his classroom.

TBDH:

After a short-lived crisis, he decided [blindness] would not stop him. He learned Braille, and his excellent academic record opened up the doors of Harvard. “Of course it affects my life, but one shouldn’t over-dramatize. We economists understand reality as a set of people responding to optimization problems with restrictions. I view my disease simply as one more restriction that I have to deal with, and I optimize based on that,” he says.

DEI is a major part of this collapse in excellence. It helped create a university culture that fixates on how students feel inside the institution, but does Brown care nearly as much about what those students can actually do?

Brown’s own research shows that students know AI is weakening them, yet they keep using it anyway.

More than half of the undergraduate students surveyed said they intentionally use generative AI either daily or weekly. Graduate and medical students reported even higher usage.

Great, so medical students are skating by on AI. That’s good to know.

The students know the shortcuts are making them less capable, but the pressure to compete, save time, and protect their grades keeps pulling them back to it.

So we have to ask: Are these exceptionally smart students who are under a lot of pressure, maybe a little lazy, and looking for a shortcut? Or are these DEI students, admitted under lowered standards, who are now in way over their heads and using AI as a life preserver just to stay afloat?

TBDH:

As a university, Brown is grappling with hard questions about AI use at the moment. It recently released a provost-led report (PDF) on “Generative AI in Teaching and Learning,” which found that it’s not just professors who have concerns.

Even though “56 percent of undergraduate respondents [at Brown] and 67 percent of graduate and medical student respondents reported intentionally using GenAI tools daily or weekly,” the report notes that large majorities of students also have “concerns about the impact of GenAI use on their learning” and a “fear of negative consequences for their cognitive capacity.”

Serrano shares those concerns, and he wants universities as a whole to stand up for human thought. That’s why he’s not letting this story go, despite what he contends is a fairly tepid reaction from Brown administrators.

“We cannot afford to have a society in which a significant fraction of our best young minds think that cheating is okay,” he told Inside Higher Ed. “That leads to a declining society, to a failed society.

“We cannot choose to become idiots.”

One could argue the university’s DEI mission is creating a whole bunch of idiots.

Brown has fought hard to make DEI part of the school’s front-and-center identity. It’s spent years talking about making students feel welcomed, valued, represented, and empowered. That all sounds great in a brochure.

But an Ivy League school is supposed to expect something from the students lucky enough to be there. It should care about honesty, effort, excellence, and big consequences when students cheat.

Sure, Brown still has the Ivy League name, the prestige, and the massive price tag.

But excellence and high-achieving greatness have been diluted by DEI, AI, and cheating scandals.

TIRES AND ALZHEIMER RISK???

Learning What Substance Is Suspected of Causing Alzheimer’s May Throw You Into an Existential Crisis

If you drive, your car’s tires are shredding more than just tread: they may be mincing up our grey matter too.

New research by a team in China discovered an alarming link between a chemical commonly found in tires and the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. The chemical, called 6PPD-Q, is formed when fine tire particles meet ozone. That happens anytime new chunks of tire are exposed to the air, meaning the particle may be nearly ubiquitous in car-heavy environments.

According to the findings, recently published in the journal Open Medicine, when the ozone-treated chemical meets our brain cells, it can cause oxidative stress — wear and tear, basically — and inflammation, while also reducing how effectively individual cells “communicate” with one another. These factors strongly correlate to the development of early-stage Alzheimer’s, suggesting anyone who regularly comes into contact with rubber tires may be inadvertently exposing themselves to brain-altering chemicals.

For those in car-dependent regions of the world like North America, that’s a pretty significant chunk of the population.

The chemical makes its way into our brains through our blood, which it enters primarily when we breathe in dust particles laden with 6PPD-Q. Other avenues of exposure include crops and soil, stadium turf, working near highways or with cars, and contact with recycled tire products.

While scientists already knew that 6PPD-Q interacts with the brain somehow, the chemical’s newfound molecular connection to Alzheimer’s is significant. Using machine learning software, the team mapped how effectively the chemical binds to five “Alzheimer predictor genes,” finding that 6PPD-Q forms strong bonds with three.

Beyond humans, 6PPD-Q run-off from roadways is having a sizable impact on fish populations, notably salmon. One 2022 study on the environmental journey road runoff takes described the substance as a “highly toxic tire-derived chemical,” which has caused “mass mortalities of coho salmon,” specifically.

Going forward, scientists still need to conduct broader lab tests on human cells in order to figure out how severely various quantities of 6PPD-Q contribute to Alzheimer’s disease. Only then can we get a sense of just how risky it is to burn rubber.

111,000,000 AMERICANS ARE NOT IN THE LABOR FORCE!

111 Million U.S. Adults Do Not Have a Job and America Spends More Than a Trillion Dollars per Year on a Social Safety Net for Them

Did you know that the number of Americans that are out of work right now is far higher than it was at any point during the Great Recession? I know that sounds crazy, but I will prove it to you in this article. A whopping 111 million Americans do not have a job, and we are spending more than a trillion dollars a year on the social safety net that supports them. Of course we cannot afford to do this, because the national debt has already reached 39 trillion dollars and it is growing at an astounding rate. If we do not fix our economy, disaster is inevitable.

The bureaucrats in Washington keep telling us that the unemployment rate is low even though there are vast numbers of adults all around us that are not working.

The way that they are able to do this is by dumping almost everyone that is not working into a category known as “not in labor force”.

This allows them to keep the official rate of unemployment suppressed even as the labor force participation rate hits an insanely low level…

On the surface, a June drop in the unemployment rate helped provide some upside to what was an otherwise downbeat jobs report — but it was for all the wrong reasons.

That’s because the decline in the jobless level to 4.2%, the lowest in a year, came largely from an exodus of workers from the labor force, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics data Thursday.

In fact, the measure of the working-age population either employed or looking for a job slid to 61.5%, the lowest since March 2021. Excluding the Covid-era jobs market, it was the lowest labor force participation rate in exactly 50 years.

Today, there are just over 7 million Americans that are officially unemployed.

That doesn’t sound bad at all.

But they rarely mention those that are considered to be not in the labor force. This is how the Federal Reserve defines that category…

Persons who are neither employed nor unemployed are not in the labor force. This category includes retired persons, students, those taking care of children or other family members, and others who are neither working nor seeking work.

As you can see from the chart below, the number of people that they have been dumping into that category has grown dramatically since 1990.

Right now, there are 104 million Americans that do not have a job that are considered to be not in the labor force…

When you add the 7 million Americans that are officially unemployed to the 104 million Americans that are considered to be not in the labor force, you get a grand total of 111 million Americans that do not have a job right now.

At no point during the Great Recession did that combined figure ever reach 100 million.

That is how bad things are in the U.S. at this moment.

Of course the 111 million Americans that are not working need to be supported somehow.

Some of them are supported by other family members that have incomes coming in.

But most of them are either partially or totally supported by our social safety net.

According to the House Ways and Means Committee, we spend more than a trillion dollars a year on more than 80 different social safety net programs…

Buying Americans out of poverty is undermining incentives to work, with families living in poverty relying more on taxpayer-funded welfare checks than income from work, according to a newly released report from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). Costing well over $1 trillion, America’s social safety net encompasses more than 80 federal programs, and is discouraging beneficiaries from seeking income from work.

The report, which was requested by Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith (MO-08), shows low-income families are becoming increasingly dependent on government transfers. In 1979, families living below the poverty line earned about 60 percent of their income from work. In 2021, that number dropped to an all-time low of around 25 percent. The report also shows how the dramatic increase in dependency on government transfers for low-income families was accelerated by COVID-era benefits.

Read that first paragraph again. I had no idea that it was this bad.

If the federal government was not supporting them, tens of millions more Americans would be living in poverty right now.

So what would our society look like if we stopped borrowing gigantic mountains of money to fuel this system?

And each day, even more Americans are losing their places in the middle class because they are getting laid off.

In fact, it is being reported that Microsoft is preparing for yet another round of massive layoffs…

Microsoft is reportedly planning another round of layoffs, expected to be announced as early as next week.

The cuts will impact thousands of roles across sales, consulting, and the Xbox gaming division. Total layoffs will amount to less than 2.5%% of the company’s workforce.

Microsoft employs roughly 220,000 people across the globe. The company eliminated approximately 15,000 positions just last year — 6,000 layoffs in May 2025 and another 9,000 layoffs in July 2025.

But if we just throw the entire country into the “not in labor force” category, we can pretend that the unemployment rate is at 0.0 percent and that everything is just fine, right?

What a joke.

Of course most Americans that are actually working are really struggling these days.

Home prices in the U.S. have risen by about 60 percent since the beginning of the last pandemic, and at this stage housing in the U.S. is more unaffordable than it has ever been before…

Home prices have grown by roughly 60 percent since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to JP Morgan data. Mortgage rates are historically high, and have been so since 2022. And the U.S. homeownership rate hit its lowest level since 2019 last year, at 65 percent, according to Census data.

“I think right now the housing market is pretty unprecedented,” Daryl Fairweather, chief economist at Redfin, told Newsweek. “We have the highest home prices that have ever been on record, along with pretty high mortgage rates. The mortgage rates aren’t the highest we’ve seen on record—they exceeded 18 percent in 1981—but they are higher than they have been for the last 10 years or so.

“And so housing affordability has gotten really bad, especially for young people who don’t already own homes. Breaking into the housing market is incredibly tough.”

How are young adults supposed to purchase homes in this environment?

Home prices have risen far faster than incomes have, and this has “put homeownership out of reach for millions of millennial and Gen Z Americans”…

Back in 1975, a typical home cost about 2.4 times as much as the average under-40 household earned in a year, a standard measure of housing affordability, according to a new report from Pew Research Center.

By 2019, that price-to-income ratio had risen to 2.9. In 2024, it reached 3.5.

Over the past decade, home prices have risen much faster than wages. The rising ratio of price to income, coupled with elevated interest rates, has put home ownership out of reach for millions of millennial and Gen Z Americans.

This is one of the biggest reasons why young adults are so angry.

They simply can’t afford to live normal lives.

Last year, the percentage of first-time homebuyers dropped to the lowest level ever recorded…

First-time buyers represented only 21% of all home purchasers in 2025, a record low, according to the National Association of Realtors. The typical age of a first-time buyer climbed to 40, an all-time high.

Meanwhile, virtually everything else is becoming more expensive too.

For example, the price of ground beef is up 13 percent over the past year, and that price of steak is up 16 percent over the past year…

The average price of ground beef was $6.75 per pound in May, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data, up nearly 13% from a year ago and just below April’s record high of $6.90. Beef steak prices averaged $12.80 per pound, up 16% from a year earlier and the second-highest level on record.

Tens of millions of Americans are deeply hurting right now, and what we have experienced so far is just the beginning.

This is why I rant about the economy so much.

I hear from so many people out there that are in very real pain.

Decades of very foolish decisions have resulted in decades of economic decline, and now we really have reached a breaking point.

COLLEGE STUDENTS IN THE USA AND WORLDWIDE ARE EXHIBITING THE SAME COMPREHENSION AS 10-YEAR OLDS!!!!

College Students Are Testing at the Level of 10-Year-Olds

Are you smarter than a 4th grader?

Illustration by Tag Hartman-Simkins / Futurism. Source: Shutterstock

Gone are the days of university freshmen reading classical philosophers like Plato or contemporary pedagogues like Ta-Nehisi Coates. These days, incoming college students are lucky if they can get through Judy Blume’s “Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing.”

According to a new “Survey of Adult Skills” conducted by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development — a forum for 38 high-income, predominantly Western countries — a not insignificant number of adult students enrolled in higher education are now reading and doing math at a level which, in a more functional society, would be alarming for a middle schooler.

The survey, first spotted by the Economist, tested around 160,000 people of all ages, across all 38 member states. It found that across all OECD member countries, a full 8 percent of college students are reading at the level of a ten-year-old, if not worse. While countries like Germany and France rang in at under 5 percent, countries like Poland, Israel, and the United States blew the curve at 21, 20, and 14 percent, respectively.

The numbers aren’t much better when it comes to math. Across OECD countries, 9 percent of college students do math at or below a ten-year-old level. In Italy, the US, and Slovakia, that figure jumps to over 15 percent — only outdone by Israel, where roughly 21 percent of college students were underachieving at the same low benchmark.

It seems there are numerous compounding explanations for these test results: pandemic-era learning gaps leading to lower levels of preparation, declining college enrollment forcing schools to lower admissions standards, and lower levels of public funding for education, to name a few.

The results also coincide with the explosion of large language models like ChatGPT, which by many accounts have carved out a new floor for academic failure in both K-12 and college-level education.

While there’s no denying how complicated the issue is, there is evidence that removing technology from classrooms altogether could offer an immediate boost.

In one classroom in Minneapolis, for example, a literature and English teacher banned phones and laptops, requiring all coursework to be done on pencil and paper. As the school-year started in September, just 46 percent of the students involved said they felt confident about their reading skills. A few months later in February, that number stood at 95 percent.

Though it’s just one classroom, something is clearly off the rails in the education systems of the richest countries of the world — and the longer it goes unaddressed, the more students will be pushed into the world with the reading skills of 4th graders.

THE GREAT AMERICAN STATE FAIR IS BORING!!!!

Trump’s Great American State Fair is a sad state of affairs

Deflated visitors describe event on National Mall as ‘unnecessarily vanilla’ and a ‘disgrace’

An image from the fair's opening day on June 25 shows one visitor lain low by the festivities — An image from the fair’s opening day on June 25 shows one visitor lain low by the festivities Credit: Getty Images

17 years at The Telegraph, Robert has covered the UK’s major news events and has reported widely abroad

Published 30 June 2026 6:48pm BST

Who knew that Kansas ranked fourth in the US for sunflower production, or that Georgia has been number one for poultry farms since 1951? Or that Montana’s official state sport is rodeo?

There are endless facts to be gleaned from four hours trudging around the Great American State Fair, and some of them are vaguely interesting. If this sprawling event had been the dream child of Alan Partridge, nobody would raise an eyebrow.

But this is Donald Trump’s contribution to America’s 250th birthday celebrations, and the result is often achingly, numbingly dull.

What’s missing is all the things Mr Trump is known for: pizazz, glitz and showmanship. Instead, what the great American public is being served up is the one thing he doesn’t do so much of: facts, endless facts.

The Great American State Fair occupies a great chunk of the National Mall, nestled between Washington’s World Cup Fifa fan zone (which is exciting) and the Washington Monument.

There are tents and booths for everything, including the 50 states – but also a stall for Mr Trump’s own social media platform Truth Social (where you can sign up and get a red tick), another for SpaceX and a tent for US steel.

In the Wyoming booth, bison hair (or is it fur?) is available for stroking while the Florida display (widely recognised as the most exciting experience on offer) includes as its chief draw an artificial putting green that’s about 5ft by 3ft.

The department of defense, which deployed a couple of marines to paint children’s faces with camouflage, was the big hit among the federal departments, laid out in a row of pre-fab buildings. The office of personnel management’s booth was not, it’s fair to say, a crowd pleaser.

“This is all so weird,” said Amy Cohen, 65, a university administrator from Virginia, “I am really sad and disappointed that what could have been an extraordinary celebration of the many, many things that make the United States a wonderful place was attenuated, reduced and flattened.

“It’s like reading a social studies textbook from the seventh grade. There’s so much vibrancy in the country, and this is unnecessarily vanilla. And there aren’t a lot of people here.”

Trump supporters weren’t convinced either. Holly Lewis, 57, a travel agent from Richmond, Virginia, said: “I grew up with state fairs in Iowa, and this is really disappointing.” She was sitting in a chair at the Maine stall with her daughter Dani, 26.

Besides the chairs, there’s nothing other than a backdrop with a few facts printed on such as: “Maine is the largest producer of blueberries.”

Several states, including Connecticut, Rhode Island and Vermont, have boycotted the event, which was opened by Mr Trump on June 25 and which will run until July 10.

Holly Lewis and her daughter, Dani, pictured at the American State Fair — ‘This is really disappointing’: Holly Lewis and her daughter, Dani, pictured at the Great American State Fair

“This should have been the highlight of my life,” said Mrs Lewis. “This should have been like the World Exposition. But most of the states are a bit of a disappointment. It would have been really good if Fifa had run this. This feels like a silent protest.”

The fair’s organisers – the Freedom 250 committee set up to oversee the nation’s 250th birthday celebrations – declined to reveal attendance records.

But the area is huge, and crowds do seem sparse. A gymnast doing tricks with hoops on a podium drew a crowd of maybe 30 people spread out on the grass. Arizona had clocked up 3,000 visitors to its display on the first Sunday of the fair. But its booth was one of the better ones.

“I think we would have had a lot more people if Trump wasn’t president,” said Wiley Larsen, who was counting visitors through the Arizona booth. He’s a Trump voter – “I think he’s doing a lot of great things,” he said – but recognises the president’s divisiveness.

Out on the Mall, the fair’s centrepiece is a Ferris wheel that’s 110ft high (the London Eye is four times the height), although its operation has been reportedly disrupted by power outages which also resulted in melted ice cream.

A rodeo ring has also been constructed in which a cowboy rides a bucking bronco or bull once a day. “It’s not a real rodeo,” one of those involved in its construction whispered.

Then there’s a scaled-down replica of the president’s planned 250ft victory arch, which online critics have likened to a miniature Stonehenge in the spoof documentary This is Spinal Tap! Others said it looked like it had been bought from the bargain website Temu.

A scaled-down version of the president's proposed 'Arc de Trump' has been ridiculed online — A scaled-down version of the president’s proposed ‘Arc de Trump’ has been ridiculed online Credit: Getty Images

Ari Drumm, 58, a salesman who had flown in from Florida, blamed TDS – Trump Derangement Syndrome – for the no-show states and the no-show crowds. “It’s a disgrace,” he said. “We should be together in this. We should be 50 united states and this is not very unified.”

He wore a t-shirt with Maga emblazoned on the front, and as he walked off, the slogan on the back became clear. Beneath photographs of the president and JD Vance, the writing on the back of the t-shirt said: “The Outlaw and the Hillbilly cleaning up America one liberal at a time.”

Ari Drumm, 58, flew in from Florida for the American State Fair with his wife — Ari Drumm flew in from Florida with his wife for the Great American State Fair Credit: Robert Mendick for The Telegraph

Mr Trump opened the fair with what one Trump watcher called “notably tame remarks”, sticking to a script and declaring: “Tonight, as we stand on the edge of our 250th year of independence, I am thrilled to declare that America is back,” he said.

But he has been stung by the criticism since its opening. “Do you think people appreciate what a fantastic job we did in building and operating the Great American State fair at the National Mall, packed with happy people, and everybody loving it?”

Joe Biden or Barack Obama could never have created such a show, Mr Trump insisted.

On that, he is probably correct.

SENIOR HOUSING PAYS OFF BIG FOR THIS OWNER, NOW WORTH $160 BILLION MARKET VALUE

Sunrise at East 56th in Manhattan is one of Welltower’s properties.© Julian Rigg/WSJ

Shankh Mitra, chief executive of the senior-housing company Welltower, made one of commercial real estate’s most daring bets in 2020.

Welltower spent more than $40 billion over the following six years to acquire tens of thousands of senior-housing units, while many rivals retreated when the pandemic caused senior-facility occupancy rates to plummet. Welltower now owns more than 2,500 senior-living communities, the most of anyone in the industry.

That move is paying off as these properties fill up again. Welltower’s market value has increased close to sevenfold to about $160 billion since 2020, making it the world’s largest publicly traded real-estate company.

Mitra has been well compensated for the turnaround. He received a compensation package valued at $821 million last year, according to The Wall Street Journal’s annual analysis of executive pay using data from MyLogIQ. That was the biggest pay package for any public-company CEO in America, save for Elon Musk.

While that payout is contingent on Welltower’s stock continuing to climb, the magnitude of Mitra’s compensation is sparking a backlash.

Institutional Shareholder Services, a proxy advisory firm, recommended that shareholders vote against the pay package, describing the awards as being of “extraordinary value.”

Jonathan Litt, founder of activist hedge fund Land & Buildings, said that the compensation plan gives management too much credit for gains driven largely by the aging of the baby boom generation and the industry’s recovery from the pandemic.

Litt, who has disclosed a short position in Welltower, said in a report that the compensation plan encourages “growth for growth’s sake” by rewarding executives for expanding the company’s market value through acquisitions.

Welltower said that the compensation plan for Mitra and other executives was needed to “secure the long-term retention of the company’s exceptional leadership.”

Five years ago, such a pay package in the senior-housing industry would have been unthinkable. The business had been weakened by years of overbuilding, then battered by the pandemic as thousands of elderly residents died. Move-ins slowed and labor costs soared.

Today, senior housing is one of commercial real estate’s hottest sectors. The oldest members of the baby boom generation are reaching the age where many need the different levels of care that Welltower and others provide: independent living, assisted living, memory care and skilled nursing.

Occupancy at U.S. senior-housing communities fell from 87.4% at the end of 2019 to a pandemic low of 78.2% in the first quarter of 2021. This year occupancy continued to rebound, climbing to 89.9% in the first quarter, according to NIC MAP, an industry data source. Occupied units stand at a record 1.05 million.

Analysts give Mitra high marks for redefining Welltower’s relationship with senior-housing operators. Welltower is a landlord and relies on operators such as Sunrise Senior Living and Atria Senior Living to run the communities, hire caregivers, market apartments and care for residents.

Mitra used Welltower’s clout to secure exclusive partnerships with some of the industry’s strongest operators while giving them better data, technology and incentives to improve performance. He also rewrote contracts so Welltower participated more directly in the gains when its operators filled more apartments and increased rents.

“They have the best operator relationships among all of their peers,” said Michael Stroyeck, an analyst with real-estate-analytics firm Green Street.

Welltower also gained an edge by concentrating on the industry’s most lucrative segment: upscale communities serving affluent seniors. Mitra sold many of the company’s low-growth healthcare properties like medical office buildings while buying senior housing in high growth areas such as Southern California, South Florida and the Toronto metro area.

One example of a high end Welltower property is Sunrise at East 56th. Located on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, it looks more like an upscale boutique hotel than a retirement home.

The 17-story community offers chef-prepared meals, a fitness studio, salon, theater and concierge services. Monthly rents begin at more than $15,330 and can exceed $20,000, depending on the apartment and level of care.

Mitra, 45 years old, had a varied career before Welltower. He was born in India and received an engineering degree there. In the U.S. he worked at Fidelity Investments and Citadel before joining Welltower’s finance division in 2016.

When Mitra took over as CEO in 2020, Welltower shares traded in the low $40s. Today, they trade above $200.

Looking at it another way, Green Street estimates that Welltower shares trade at roughly 115% to 125% above the value of its underlying real estate, compared with premiums of about 35% to 55% for many of its senior living REIT peers. That allows Welltower to raise money by selling stock on especially favorable terms to finance additional acquisitions.

These metrics help explain why Welltower’s board was willing to award him one of the richest compensation packages in corporate America. The package followed months of deliberations by Welltower’s board, which enlisted compensation consultants, law firms and spent “hundreds and hundreds of hours” designing the plan, Mitra said on an earnings call.

But Welltower investors disagreed. About 80% of shares voting opposed the company’s advisory “say-on-pay” resolution, one of the biggest rebukes of last year’s executive compensation by shareholders.

Mitra’s regular compensation for 2025 actually was pretty modest for a major U.S. company. His annual base salary was $1.3 million, and he earned a cash bonus of about $6.5 million for the company’s 2025 performance.

The real payday comes from a one-time, 10-year stock award whose value depends largely on Welltower continuing to meet ambitious performance goals. If the company does, Mitra will gradually receive shares over the next decade that were valued at $821 million when the award was granted.

Focusing on retaining Mitra and his management team, Welltower’s board also granted roughly $170 million in long-term equity awards to other top executives.

“Make no mistake, this is a team game,” Mitra said on another earnings call.

Critics fault the award in part because too much compensation depends on Mitra remaining at Welltower, rather than continuing to meet demanding performance goals. Roughly half of the package eventually vests based primarily on time, they say, while the performance hurdles are concentrated in the plan’s first five years.

“That’s disappointing,” said Alan Johnson, managing director of Johnson Associates, a compensation consulting firm. “At these magnitudes, half of it time-based just seems too much.”

THE ULTRA WEALTHY IN THE WORLD SURGED IN 2025!

Ranks of Ultrawealthy Surged in ’25

Number of those worth more than $30 million jumped by 14.4% last year

The ranks of the ultrawealthy hit a high in 2025 as the AI trade lifted global markets, according to a new report by wealth-intelligence firm Altrata.

The number of ultrawealthy individuals—those Altrata defines as having a net worth of more than $30 million— jumped by 14.4% last year to 556,850 people worldwide by the end of 2025. That’s the fastest pace of growth since 2017.

“What we’ve been seeing in the past decade is, on the whole, it’s been going up over time and it’s been growing quickly,” said Altrata Senior Director Maya Imberg, referring to the number of ultrawealthy people.

Lower inflation, resilient corporate earnings and enthusiasm for AI investment also bolstered the number of the ultrawealthy individuals and the value of their holdings in 2025.

One of the fastest-growing subgroups of the ultrawealthy in recent years has been centimillionaires, or those worth more than $100 million, mainly from founding or investing in rapidly-growing technology companies, according to Altrata. That echoes findings from other research showing that the world is get–ting wealthier, but with riches disproportionately accruing to the wealthiest.

One such study, the World Inequality Report 2026, found that the wealth of the richest b i l l i o n a i re s from 1995 to 2025 had grown at about 8.5% a year compared with about 3.4% a year for the bottom half of the global population.

The researchers said that by their count, around 60,000 people— the top 0.001% wealthiest in the world—are each worth at least $254 million.

“The population that can fit in a football stadium own three times more wealth than half of humanity combined,” said Ricardo Gómez-Carrera, lead author of the report, when it was released, referring to the w e a l t h i e s t 0.001% of the population. The Altrata report showed that those worth more than $30 million made up a little over 1% of the millionaire population—defined as those worth $1 million or more—but held 32% of that group’s wealth. Zooming out, the ultrawealthy made up 0.01% of the global adult population but held 11% of all private wealth held by individuals. Imberg said the Altrata numbers tell a story about the outsize returns possible from financial wealth, including from investments, from successful entrepreneurship and from ongoing intergenerational wealth transfers.

The U.S. remained home to more of the ultrawealthy than the rest of the top 10 countries combined, with 37% of the population. China and Germany came in second and third, respectively, with about 10% and 5%.

The New York metropolitan area continued to have the largest number of ultrawealthy residents, followed by the metropolitan areas of Hong Kong, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Portion of the ultrawealthy in the U.S. last year, the most of any country.

TOM CRUISE HAS AN AIRPLANE COLLECTION!

What Planes Does Tom Cruise Own?

Credit: Photo: Austin Deppe/Shuttertock

Tom Cruise is a licensed pilot with qualifications as a multi-engine instrument-rated pilot and helicopter flying skills.
Cruise owns a collection of airplanes, including a vintage P-51 Mustang fighter from World War II and a Gulfstream IV G4 jet.
There may be additional aircraft in Cruise’s fleet, such as a HondaJet and a Bombardier Challenger 300 jet, according to a travel expert.

It wasn’t just a show for ‘Top Gun.’ Tom Cruise is one of the few actors who genuinely love aviation. He has been a licensed pilot since 1994 and is able to fly several types of aircraft. However, it doesn’t stop with a license. The famous Hollywood actor also has a collection of airplanes varying from vintage fighters to business jets.

What kind of license does Cruise have?

In various discussions, Tom Cruise has revealed that his affinity for aviation was crucial to his initial attraction to the original ‘Top Gun.’ He shared that he holds qualifications as a multi-engine instrument-rated pilot and has continued to enhance his skill set throughout his life. Notably, he acquired helicopter flying skills for the remarkable stunts seen in the 2018 film ‘Mission Impossible: Fallout.’

Plane collection

North American P-51 Mustang fighter

During a segment on The Late Late Show, Cruise took host James Corden for a ride in his own vintage P-51 Mustang fighter plane. Tom Cruise acquired this World War II fighter in 2001, which was initially built in 1946.

The P-51 Mustang was an American long-range fighter bomber that served alongside other conflicts during World War II and the Korean War. It was developed by North American Aviation and was retired in 1984. Nevertheless, even today, the fighter is utilized for air racing by civilian pilots. After being donated to an Illinois museum, the plane underwent restoration in 1997.

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Making his recent performance in ‘Top Gun: Maverick,’ Tom Cruise takes to the skies in the P-51 Mustang fighter. What adds intrigue to this is the revelation that he wasn’t just portraying the pilot on screen – he was actually at the controls of his very own P-51 Mustang fighter.

Gulfstream IV G4 jet

With an estimated price tag of $20 million, this jet boasts the capability to accommodate as many as 19 passengers. Notably, it reportedly comes furnished with luxuries, including a jacuzzi and a dedicated movie-screening room, according to Business Insider.

The Gulfstream G4 jet landing during the evening — Photo: Anton Volynets/Shutterstock

The Gulfstream IV G4 is a long-range executive jet designed and built by Gulfstream, a General Dynamics company based in Savannah, Georgia, United States, from 1985 until 2018. Its production spanned from 1985 to 2018, resulting in over 900 G4 units taking to the skies. This jet can cover distances of up to 7,100 kilometers and achieve a top speed of 850 kilometers per hour.

Is there more?

Whether the actor has more aircraft in its fleet has been under speculation as it was never officially confirmed. But according to a Business Insider report, in addition to the vintage fighter jet and the Gulfstream IV G4, Jack Sweeney, who is famous for reporting the travel habits of numerous celebrities, including Elon Musk, said he has been able to identify Cruise’s HondaJet and a Bombardier Challenger 300 jet.

FIVE JOBS THAT ARE STRESSFUL AND NOT WORTH IT INCLUDING ONE FOR $9 MILLION ANNUAL COMPENSATION!

Despite the difficult job market, many dissatisfied Americans are seeking new roles.

Some 69 percent of workers cite higher pay and benefits as their reason for looking for a better position, according to a March survey from polling firm Gallup. However, a bigger paycheck doesn’t always mean a better job.

“What I’m noticing now, especially since the pandemic and all the layoffs we have recently had, is that people are starting to reassess what is truly successful,” Trevor Houston, CEO at ClearPath Wealth Strategies, told The Independent in an email. “More people are asking, ‘What is this all costing me?’ Not just financially, but personally, too, because after all, your career should serve your life, not replace it.”

The Independent asked career and industry experts about high-paying careers – those at least 50 percent higher than the $64,000 national median salary – where the costs significantly outweigh the perks.

Senior corporate leader

Senior corporate leaders – such as senior vice presidents – get the satisfaction of making major company decisions and earning a median salary of $105,350, per the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Despite the appeal, many senior leaders leave their coveted roles since the paycheck and status no longer seem worth the high cost to themselves and their families, Houston said.

“Many of them feel worn down by the never-ending demands and the pressure to always be on,” he said. “They feel like they’re missing out on family, while their mental, physical, and relational health suffer. Some feel like they’ve sold out their identity for the sake of their paycheck.”

Even when senior leaders realize their responsibilities are hurting their quality of life, the pay can become a trap – other roles with less pressure may have less pay, too.

“I call this the golden handcuff effect, where you have to stay even though you know it’s costing you because of the lifestyle you’ve built [around the salary],” Houston said.

A senior corporate leader’s salary doesn’t always account for how sustainable the job’s demands are, Houston said. Ultimately, the pay may not seem worth it if keeping the job means damaging health or relationships.

Commercial trucker

Commercial trucking pays up to $100,000 per year and doesn’t require a degree, making it an attractive high-paying position for those without a degree, said Andrew Brown, CEO of Immediate Movers and Storage. But many underestimate the costs and risks of long-distance driving.

“Long-term sustainability in commercial trucking is challenged by a combination of physical stress, mental burnout, and time away from family,” Brown told The Independent in an email. ”The average driver sits for 10 to 14 hours without moving, causing the body to ultimately break down in ways that usually do not appear at first.”

Truck drivers also face physical risks on the road. The job is part of the most dangerous occupation in the country based on fatalities – transportation, according to a February report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

‘Families pay a price for a driver’s time away from home that is not factored into the hourly wage,’ one expert said. (Getty Images)

Typically, commercial trucking doesn’t allow for a life that balances professional and personal needs. That can impact the driver’s relationships and sense of meaning, Brown said.

“A driver can leave home for an extended period, and during that time, holidays or weekends have little or no meaning compared to delivering a load,” he said. “As a result, families pay a price for a driver’s time away from home that is not factored into the hourly wage.”

Big law partner

Some partners at big law firms bring in as much as $9.3 million a year, depending on the firm, according to a 2026 report from legal recruitment and placement firm BCG Attorney Research.

But the prestige and pay come at the cost of a frenetic work environment, said Loren Margolis, an executive coach and Stony Brook University faculty member.

“The hours are thankless and brutal because you must make your ‘billable hours,’ which is doing client-facing work or client-oriented work on legal matters that move your client’s needs forward,” Margolis told The Independent in an email. “You have a threshold that you must meet in order to maintain your partner title.”

An on-call schedule that destroys work-life balance is a reality for these attorneys. This means working nights, weekends, and even vacations, Margolis said. Unsurprisingly, partners may find the prestige underwhelming, given the toll on their personal lives.

“The external rewards quickly fade as a source of satisfaction because all you have is your work life, not a home life or anything else,” Margolis said.

Other workplace factors create an environment that can lead to job dissatisfaction, too.

“Firm politics can be brutal, where others elbow you out of clients, deals and leave you out of the room during important meetings so they can get ahead,” Margolis said.

Management consultant

Management consulting -giving businesses advice on how to improve efficiency – offers strong job prospects and a median salary of $101,190, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. However, the career is a tough one, given shaky job security and high competition, said Joel Marotti, senior managing partner at resume writing firm Vertical Media Solutions.

Business consultants can earn as much as $285,000 at big firms, but turnover rates and AI’s influence make openings risky for those looking for a long-term role at a company (Getty Images for Community Catal)

An employee with a master’s in business administration working for a major strategy firm, such as BCG or McKinsey, might start at $260,000 to $285,000, according to Marotti.

But many don’t stay for more than two to four years, raising questions about longevity and future career plans.

“At one of the top firms, 43 percent of the workforce has been there for less than two years. 77 percent have been there for five years or less,” Marotti told The Independent in an email.

Job security depends on earning frequent promotions and doing what’s necessary to compete, including traveling often and working 60 to 70 hours per week, Marotti said. AI is also playing a role.

“The firms themselves have cut thousands of jobs over the last couple of years as sort of client demand has shifted and AI has really started to carve out a lot of the analysis work that these junior consultants used to do,” Marotti said.

Investment banker

Investment banking offers an average salary of $127,933, according to career site Indeed.com data. Yet, it often requires employees to endure extreme pressure and long hours, according to Indeed.

“The core issue in [investment banking] is that it’s optimized for big deals and client service, not for human development or flourishing,” Margolis said. “The money is genuinely extraordinary – but for many people, the life it requires is extremely hard.”

Long advancement timelines to a high-paid managing director role also mean potentially spending many years in a lower-paying analyst role with less autonomy or direct client work, according to Margolis.

“Making [managing director] takes at least 10 years of making it in a ruthless, ‘up-or-out’ culture where the majority of analysts and associates burn out or don’t make it.”

Investment bankers at firms like JP Morgan Chase can earn good money but face burnout and long paths to promotion (Reuters)

Additionally, pay volatility makes the high salary less certain than many believe, Margolis said.

“It’s highly dependent on the market,” she said. “If you don’t bring in a big deal as a [managing director], you can have a very low-paying year.”

Roles at private equity firms offer the highest payoff, though getting there may require toughing it out for “a decade or two,” she said.