Friday, December 12, 2025

'Consumer' Watchdog Group Bought & Paid For By Big Pharma

The National Consumers League is America’s oldest consumer advocacy organization and a group trusted by the left, especially, to stand up for consumers’ interests.

But according to a review of its tax filings by the Washington Examiner, it has also become part of a web of astroturf groups shilling for the corporate interests of PhRMA, the massive drugmaker trade association that operates in Washington, DC, which donated close to $1 million to it just last year.

The organization’s 2024 tax form, which became available a few days ago, shows that the non-profit spent close to $600 million last year advocating for Big Pharma’s financial interests and policy agenda in Washington, DC, and state capitals across the country.

And a key way in which that advocacy was accomplished was through the National Consumers League, also known as NCL.

The Examiner reports that “PhRMA donated roughly $2 million to NCL between 2020 and 2024, including $875,000 in 2024 alone.”

During that time, NCL has hewed closely to PhRMA issue positions on matters including regulation of insurers that negotiate for lower drug prices for Americans (also known as PBMs), and the 340B drug discount program that disproportionately benefits red, rural America.

But a review of content historically featured on NCL’s website indicates that prior to taking PhRMA money, the group never criticized PBMs or 340B.

When asked for comment by the Examiner, NCL did not deny that their criticism of PBMs and 340B was related to the PhRMA funding, and they confirmed “that contributions from PhRMA support [the group’s] ‘healthcare work.'”

The Examiner has previously reported on apparent astroturf, “pay-to-play” advocacy efforts undertaken by PhRMA.

The Wall Street Journal also ran an exposé about PhRMA’s tactics in the nation’s capital, including what critics say looks like a “buying off” of supposed progressive “identity” groups like Black, Gifted & Whole– a group focused on “Black Queer men”– and MANA, A National Latina Organization.

NCL has also engaged on other issues where major industries have policy issues at stake, including higher interest rate short-term small dollar lending. Some credit unions support regulation of the annual percentage rate attached to such loans, but not the regulation of APRs on overdraft fees, which sometimes exceed more than 1000%.

Border Tsar Homan Announces Investigation Into Rep. Omar: A Case For Fraud Or Defamation?

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

This week, the lingering allegations over the marital history of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) took an ominous step when Border Tsar Tom Homan publicly acknowledged that the government is looking into the matter.

Rep. Omar has long denied that she married her brother to gain his entry into the United States, but the allegation has continued to rage on the Internet and among her critics.

The question is whether this is a substantive case of fraud or defamation.

Homan stated that he was investigating whether Omar committed immigration fraud, but also noted that the statute of limitations has been an issue.

In his comment to Newsmax, Homan stated:

“I just got advised by a fraud investigator the other day on that. I asked the question, can we review the files? You know, there was immigration fraud involved. The statute of limitation became an issue in the last four years when this was first brought up…Pulling the records now, pulling the files, and we’re looking at it. But this fraud investigator, who I know personally, one of the best fraud investigators in HSI, Homeland Security Investigations, said there’s no doubt he’d review the file. So, I’m running that down this week as a matter of fact, and we’ll see.”

According to her congressional biography, Omar came to the United States with her family in the 1990s. As I have previously noted, the election of a young immigrant to Congress is genuinely remarkable and commendable.

The questions arose regarding her marriage to Ahmed Elmi in 2009. Elmi was back in the news this week with postings highlighting his lifestyle as a “dirty dandy.” Critics charged that he is actually her brother. The couple divorced in 2017, and no DNA evidence has been offered to support the claim that they are siblings.

President Donald Trump and others have been ratcheting up the rhetoric against Omar and the Somali population in Minnesota. Many of us have objected to some of the attacks on Omar as offensive. As I have previously written, the call for foreign-born U.S. citizens to “go back to their own country” has been made for decades against foreign-born U.S. citizens. However, such attacks are generally protected speech.

The allegation against Rep. Omar is not opinion, but a statement of fact.

Many news organizations have referred to the allegation as “debunked” and “unsupported.”

OCC Says 9 Big Banks Took Part In 'Inappropriate' Debanking Practices

Via American Greatness,

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) has released a report saying that the nine largest lenders in the U.S. made “inappropriate distinctions” that it used to restrict services among certain customers.

Following the signing of an executive order by President Donald Trump in August of this year, the OCC began reviewing all banks for any current or past practices that effectively barred customers on the basis of political or religious belief.

Wednesday, the OCC released its report, saying that it had found conclusive proof that nine large banks had policies that either refused services to some industries or required higher levels of scrutiny that exceeded the actual financial risks between 2020 and 2023.

Chinese Drone "Mothership" Capable Of Swarm Attack Takes Flight

Whether launched from shipping containers, robotic arms, commercial box trucks, or delivered by heavyweight jet-powered mothership drones, the creativity of military technology developers in designing and deploying loitering-munition swarms has been remarkable to watch.
The latest piece of military hardware to hit our radar is China's Jiutian ("Nine Heavens") unmanned aerial mothership, capable of hauling up to six tons of guided bombs, air-to-air and anti-ship missiles, or entire racks of kamikaze drones.
Jiutian's internal bay can deploy up to 100 kamikaze drones for a saturation-swarm attack, flying in coordinated patterns to strike targets simultaneously and overwhelm defenses.
Jiutian was first revealed at the air show in Zhuhai, in China's southern Guangdong province near the border with Macau, last year. Now footage has surfaced of the mothership drone taking off for the first time.

Broken Arrow

Impeachment Articles Filed Against Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

I recently wrote about the absurdity of the Democratic effort to impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. I have also opposed Republican calls to impeach judges. Impeachment mania has returned for the midterm elections. However, on the scale of utter lunacy, the call to impeach Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. takes the cake.

This effort is being led by Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI), who is running for Senate and has decided that the best way to achieve that distinction is to turn the constitutional process into a mockery.In academic writings, testimony (including at the impeachment hearings of Clinton, Trump, and Biden), and litigation (as the lead counsel in the last judicial impeachment trial), I have long argued against such ill-defined articles for impeachment.Stevens is seeking to impeach Kennedy for turning “his back on science”:

“Today, I formally introduced articles of impeachment against Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. RFK Jr. has turned his back on science and the safety of the American people. Michiganders cannot take another day of his chaos.”

Many Americans welcome Kennedy’s efforts to make food healthier and to challenge the status quo at HHS. Others, like Stevens, have strong objections to those policies. This is a good-faith and worthy debate for us to have. For years, there was little debate on such questions.

Indeed, in the prior Administration, to challenge prevailing expert opinion was to risk being labeled a wingnut or conspiracist. The very same people who are calling for Kennedy’s head were part of the mob denouncing dissenters in the scientific community, or those who remained silent as scientists were fired, censored, and cancelled.

The most anti-science position was to demand compliance with the orthodoxy of the pandemic years. Take Jay Bhattacharya, who co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration and was a vocal critic of COVID-19 policies.

Bhattacharya is now the 18th director of the National Institutes of Health and is working with Kennedy to change the culture of groupthink among health researchers and regulators in the government.

Bhattacharya was censored, blacklisted, and vilified due to his opposing views on health policy, including opposing wholesale shutdowns of schools and businesses. He was recently honored with the prestigious “Intellectual Freedom” award from the American Academy of Sciences and Letters.

He was one of many who were blacklisted for challenging pandemic policies. It did not matter that positions once denounced as “conspiracy theories” have been recognized or embraced by many.

Some argued that there was no need to shut down schools, which has led to a crisis in mental illness among the young and the loss of critical years of education. Other nations heeded such advice with more limited shutdowns (including keeping schools open) and did not experience our losses.

Others argued that the virus’s origin was likely the Chinese research lab in Wuhan. That position was denounced by the Washington Post as a “debunked” coronavirus “conspiracy theory.” The New York Times Science and Health reporter Apoorva Mandavilli called any mention of the lab theory “racist.”

Federal agencies now support the lab theory as the most likely based on the scientific evidence.

Likewise, many questioned the efficacy of those blue surgical masks and supported natural immunity to the virus — both positions were later recognized by the government.

Others questioned the six-foot rule, which shut down many businesses, as unsupported by science. In congressional testimony, Dr. Anthony Fauci recently admitted that the rule “sort of just appeared” and “wasn’t based on data.” Yet not only did it result in heavily enforced rules (and meltdowns) in public areas, but the media further ostracized dissenting critics.

Again, Fauci and other scientists did little to stand up for these scientists or call for free speech to be protected. As I discuss in my new book, “The Indispensable Right,” the result is that we never really had a national debate on many of these issues and the result was massive social and economic costs.

The point is that these attacks were “turning your back on science” by crushing dissent and stopping any meaningful debate on these issues. These same figures were wrong on the science, but now seek to lead another mob to impeach those seeking to change policies and practices at HHS and NIH.

Democrats clearly oppose Kennedy’s initiatives. Fine. Use legislation and the power of the purse to push back on those efforts if you have a majority in Congress. What you should not do is use impeachment to achieve what you could not achieve during the confirmation

2.5 Million Illegal Immigrants Deported Under Trump Admin: DHS

Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

More than 2.5 million illegal immigrants have left the United States under the Trump administration, a “record-breaking achievement” in a year, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said in a Dec. 10 statement.

The 2.5 million figure includes more than 605,000 individuals deported as part of DHS enforcement operations and around 1.9 million illegal immigrants who have voluntarily self-deported since January.

“Since January 20, DHS has arrested more than 595,000 illegal aliens,” DHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin said. “Illegal aliens are hearing our message to leave now. They know if they don’t, we will find them, we will arrest them, and they will never return,” the department said.

DHS encouraged illegal immigrants to use the CBP Home app, which allows them to notify the federal government of their intent to depart the United States willingly. Those who self-deport via the app get $1,000 and a free flight home.

According to DHS, it has prioritized the removal of the “worst of the worst” criminal illegal immigrants as part of the administration’s push to ensure law and order in the country.

The rapid decline in the illegal immigrant population is showing effects nationwide, such as a “resurgence in local job markets,” DHS said. In October, 12,000 jobs were added to the U.S. economy, which followed 431,000 additions in September.

President Donald Trump recently commended DHS Secretary Kristi Noem for a closed, secure border.

“We have a border that is the best border in the history of our country,” he said.

In a Dec. 10 post on X, Noem said that DHS’s accomplishments this year under Trump have been “historic.”

“None of it would be possible without the Homeland Security Advisory Council,” she said. “The men and women of this council provide their experience and insights to help deliver seven consecutive months of zero illegal entries, a revitalized Coast Guard, and more than 2.4 million deportations.”

The council provides the DHS secretary with advice and recommendations on homeland security issues and comprises leaders from state and local governments, academia, the private sector, and first responder communities.

However, the Trump administration’s enforcement against illegal immigrants has faced pushback from lawmakers.

Trump Admin Pulls 9,500 Truck Drivers Off The Road For Failing English Tests

Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times,

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said more than 9,500 commercial truckers have been taken out of service for failing English-language proficiency checks, a cumulative enforcement tally he said highlights an ongoing effort to keep unqualified operators from posing dangers on the nation’s roads.

“We’ve now knocked 9,500 truck drivers out of service for failing to speak our national language — ENGLISH!” Duffy wrote in a Dec. 10 post on X. “This administration will always put you and your family’s safety first.”

The tally reflects cumulative enforcement actions taken since May, when the Department of Transportation reinstated out-of-service penalties for drivers who cannot read or speak English well enough to operate a commercial motor vehicle.

President Donald Trump and Duffy have both said the renewed enforcement is necessary to ensure truckers can understand road signs, communicate with police and inspectors, and follow instructions at checkpoints and weigh stations.

“America First means safety first,” Duffy said in May. “Americans are a lot safer on roads alongside truckers who can understand and interpret our traffic signs. This common-sense change ensures the penalty for failure to comply is more than a slap on the wrist.”

The crackdown comes after Trump signed an executive order in March designating English as the country’s official language. In April, he signed another order directing Duffy to ensure that commercial truck drivers who fail to meet English-language proficiency standards are taken out of service.

“My Administration will enforce the law to protect the safety of American truckers, drivers, passengers, and others, including by upholding the safety enforcement regulations that ensure that anyone behind the wheel of a commercial vehicle is properly qualified and proficient in our national language, English,” Trump wrote in the April order. “This is common sense.”

Trump’s April order scrapped an Obama-era rule under which inspectors could cite truckers for failing English requirements but were not allowed to remove them from service, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration said in a May memo.

Fatal Crashes Prompt Wider Crackdown

The English-proficiency push is part of a broader campaign to tighten oversight of commercial licensing after a series of fatal crashes involving foreign or nondomiciled drivers. Several of those drivers were later found to have failed English tests or held licenses issued in error by states.

In one Florida case, Indian national Harjinder Singh was accused of killing three people after making an illegal U-turn in a semi-truck.

Harjinder Singh is escorted onto an airplane by Florida Lt. Gov. Jay Collins and law enforcement in Stockton, Calif., on Aug. 21, 2025. Benjamin Fanjoy/AP Photo

Officials said Singh—who was in the United States illegally—failed an English exam, answered only two of 12 questions correctly, and could identify just one of four road signs. Despite that, Washington state issued him a full-term commercial driver’s license (CDL) in 2023, and California issued a second CDL in 2024.

Singh pleaded not guilty in September. The Epoch Times reached out to Singh’s attorney for comment at the time but did not receive a response.

Federal reviews have identified similar cases in California, New York, Pennsylvania, and other states, prompting widespread scrutiny of state licensing practices.

US 'Answers' China By Sending Pair Of Nuclear-Capable Bombers Over Sea Of Japan

On Wednesday we detailed that Japanese and South Korean fighter jets quickly answered a joint Russian-Chinese long-range bomber flight over the Western Pacific. Chinese J-16 fighter jets, two Russian Su-30 fighters and an A-50 early-warning aircraft were part of the provocative flight, which also passed close to South Korea. Russia's Defense Ministry (MoD) had confirmed its Tu-95MS strategic bombers and China’s H-9 strategic bombers conducted the eight hour flight over the Sea of Japan, the East China Sea and the Western Pacific - but that at no time was any country's airspace violated.

Washington has quickly injected itself into the ratcheting situation, coming amid a diplomatic and economic standoff between Japan and China, by sending US nuclear capable bombers on patrol over the Sea of Japan.

Japan's government confirmed its fighter planes joined the US bomber patrol, which was clearly a show of force signaling China and Russia.

"We confirmed the strong resolve of Japan and the United States not to allow any unilateral change of the status quo by force, as well as the readiness of the Self-Defense Forces and the US military," Japan's Defense Ministry said in a statement.

The fresh exercise with the US Air Force was conducted in "an increasingly severe security environment surrounding our country" - it said.

The flight included a pair of US B-52 bombers, escorted by Japanese F-35 stealth fighters and three F-15 jets. Beijing had presented the prior, longer flight as routine and in accord with international law.

"We consider it a grave concern from the standpoint of Japan's security," Japan's Chief of Staff, Joint Staff General Hiroaki Uchikura, commented of the prior Chinese-Russian aerial patrol.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun responded dismissively, saying "The Japanese side has no need to make a fuss about nothing or to take this personally."

All of this is taking place as a carrier strike group is sailing close to Japan, and after weekend PLA drills saw monitoring Japanese planes come under radar lock. The US State Department has condemned this, saying "China's actions are not conducive to regional peace and stability."

Much of these tensions hearken back to Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi's words to parliament last month wherein she left open the possibility of Japan sending its military to defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion.

Affordability Crisis: Challenging The Poverty Line

Authored by Michael Lebowtiz via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,

Michael Green, Chief Strategist and Portfolio Manager at Simplify Asset Management, wrote a provocative Substack essay, Part 1: My Life Is A Lie, that is sparking a debate among economists and raising awareness of the affordability crisis. It’s not just the wonky economists debating the merits of his article; The Washington Post, CNN (News Central), FOX Business (Charles Payne), and social media are also critiquing it.

Michael uses the official poverty line calculation and what he deems the “Mathematical Valley” to help his readers better appreciate why affordability is becoming a hot topic.

The Poverty Line

Per Michael Green:

But there was one number I had somehow never interrogated. One number that I simply accepted, the way a child accepts gravity.
The poverty line.
I don’t know why. It seemed apolitical, an actuarial fact calculated by serious people in government offices. A line someone else drew decades ago that we use to define who is “poor,” who is “middle class,” and who deserves help. It was infrastructure—invisible, unquestioned, foundational.
This week, while trying to understand why the American middle class feels poorer each year despite healthy GDP growth and low unemployment, I came across a sentence buried in a research paper:
“The U.S. poverty line is calculated as three times the cost of a minimum food diet in 1963, adjusted for inflation.”
I read it again. Three times the minimum food budget.
I felt sick.

This article summarizes Michael Green’s perspective and opposing arguments regarding the poverty line. Bear in mind, as you read on, that there is no “right” poverty line. However, what Michael Green has successfully done is ignite a conversation about the large number of Americans who feel left behind economically and repeatedly raise affordability as a key political issue.

The 1963 Poverty Line Benchmark

Green’s analysis centers on the poverty line, which was established in the early 1960s by Mollie Orshansky. The original formula she developed was simple: take the cost of a basic basket of food for a family, multiply it by three (on the assumption that food accounted for about one-third of a household’s budget), and use that as the poverty threshold.

Her benchmark was then adjusted for inflation each year, but the underlying assumptions about household spending and needs haven’t been updated since. Per Green:

Orshansky’s food-times-three formula was crude, but as a crisis threshold—a measure of “too little”—it roughly corresponded to reality. A family spending one-third of its income on food would spend the other two-thirds on everything else, and those proportions more or less worked. Below that line, you were in genuine crisis. Above it, you had a fighting chance.

Notably, Green emphasizes that Orshansky’s poverty line served as a threshold. Those with incomes beneath this threshold were in crisis.

Orshanky’s Poverty Line Is Outdated

Green emphasizes the items we spend money on, and their costs compared to food prices have changed significantly since then. For example, he points out:

Housing costs as a percentage of income rose significantly.
Cell phones didn’t exist.
Healthcare costs have become the most significant expense for most families.
A second income became a necessity for many families after the formula was devised, leading to increased childcare expenses.
He also notes rising college and transportation costs.

Simply, feeding a family no longer constitutes a third of total family budgets. To wit, he states:

Housing now consumes 35 to 45 percent. Healthcare takes 15 to 25 percent. Childcare, for families with young children, can eat 20 to 40 percent.
Michael Green’s punchline:
Which means if you measured income inadequacy today the way Orshansky measured it in 1963, the threshold for a family of four wouldn’t be $31,200.
It would be somewhere between $130,000 and $150,000.
What does that tell you about the $31,200 line we still use?
It tells you we are measuring starvation.

Green’s Data Analysis

Green supports his theory with a basic family budget based on national averages. He applies it to a family earning the median household income of $80,000. The results, as we share below, cast significant doubt on the value of the current $31,200 poverty line. Furthermore, they argue that at least half of the nation is “living in deep poverty.” Per Green:

I wanted to see what would happen if I ignored the official stats and simply calculated the cost of existing. I built a Basic Needs budget for a family of four (two earners, two kids). No vacations, no Netflix, no luxury. Just the “Participation Tickets” required to hold a job and raise kids in 2024.
Using conservative, national-average data:
Childcare: $32,773
Housing: $23,267
Food: $14,717
Transportation: $14,828
Healthcare: $10,567
Other essentials: $21,857
Required net income: $118,009
Add federal, state, and FICA taxes of roughly $18,500, and you arrive at a required gross income of $136,500.

The graph below shows the cumulative price growth for $1,000 across many of the spending items Michael Green identifies above. As shown, except for transportation prices, all the others have significantly outpaced food prices. Thus, to Green’s point, a poverty line based on a steady price-consumption relationship for these goods and others in relation to food prices has become grossly ineffective.

US-Backed Opposition Leader Secretly Whisked Out Of Venezuela, Appears In Oslo To Urge Regime Change

As the main opposition figurehead and rival to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, she's reportedly been in hiding for many months. María Corina Machado hasn't appeared in public for nearly a year, after she was briefly detained all the way back on Jan. 9 in Caracas.

Fearing another arrest where she could go away to prison for good, Machado has avoided public political or or protest events, even as her star was rising internationally with her being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

But there are reports she was safely whisked out of the country while Caracas authorities were distracted and preoccupied with Wednesday's US seizure of a Venezuelan oil tanker.

After this, Machado popped up in Oslo, Norway - where she announced while appearing on a hotel balcony that many people had "risked their lives" to get her there. "I am very grateful to them, and this is a measure of what this recognition means to the Venezuelan people," she said. The purported details sound straight out of a Hollywood movie:

The Wall Street Journal, though, said she wore a wig and a disguise when she began her journey on Monday. First, she left her hideout in a Caracas suburb where she had been living for nearly a year, heading for a coastal fishing village.
Two people helped her flee. The trio passed 10 military checkpoints, avoiding capture each time, on a nerve-wracking 10-hour trip, before reaching the coast around midnight, the newspaper said. They then began a perilous trip across the open Caribbean Sea to Curacao in an open wooden fishing skiff.
According to the WSJ, the US military was informed of her crossing, to avoid the boat being targeted by airstrikes. Machado confirmed on Thursday that she had US support.

"Machado arrived in Curacao around 3:00 pm (1900 GMT) on Tuesday. She was met by a private contractor who specializes in extractions and was supplied by the Trump administration," according to the WSJ account.

Her daughter, Ana Corina Sosa, had accepted the Nobel Prize in her place as she had missed the award ceremony - apparently by a mere hours. But Thursday's appearance can be thought of as her post-award press conference.

To be expected, she used the opportunity to again call for regime change in her own country, calling it a "criminal hub". She's calling on the international community to intervene and "cut those sources."

"The regime is using the resources — the cash flows that come from illegal activities, including the black market of oil — not to give food for hungry children, not for teachers who earn $1 a day, not to hospitals in Venezuela that do not have medicine or water, not for security. They use those resources to repress and persecute our people," she said.

And the mainstream media is fawning over her, with the NY Times hailing her as the "de facto spokeswoman for democracy in Venezuela." But given the US military is parked just off Venezuela's coast, this all seems less some kind of organic democratic uprising and much more obviously a brazen Washington orchestrated regime change op.

As an example of her own regime change rhetoric, geared toward the overthrow of President Maduro:

Reporter: Would you welcome a U.S. military intervention in Venezuela?
Machado: Venezuela has been already invaded. We have the Russian agents, we have the Iranian agents. We have terrorist groups such as Hezbollah, Hamas, operating freely in accordance with the regime.

She's of course giving the neocons and hawks what they want to hear, as this narrative of "Middle Easts terrorists" setting up shop in Venezuela has long been a talking point among Republicans especially. But evidence is thin to non-existent, and exists more in the imaginations of 24/7 Fox News consumers.

Machado also expressed support for the US military intercepting and seizing Venezuelan oil tankers, and sanctioning her country:

Mr. Maduro’s largest corporate partner is Chevron, the American energy company, which has continued to export Venezuelan oil to the United States despite Mr. Trump’s military escalation.
In response to questions about the seizure of the oil tanker, Ms. Machado said that she supported cutting the funds of Mr. Maduro’s government. She added that he finances himself with gold smuggling, human trafficking, drugs and illegal oil sales.

Just like the US-led regime change playbook says...

Machado outside her hotel in Oslo smiles while crowds chanted "President! President!" She declared, "I want you all back in Venezuela." She may soon get her wish in the country with the world's largest proven oil reserves.

Her daughter has promised that "she will be back in Venezuela very soon." Machado has said it is her "duty" to return to Venezuela with her Nobel award, and she's willing to do so whether or not Maduro remains in power.

Meanwhile, there has actually been some local opposition to the oppositionist evident on the streets of Norway...

Palantir Lands $448 Million Deal To Fix Navy Submarine Delays

Palantir Technologies is becoming a deeper partner to the US military as the Navy launches ShipOS, a $448 million effort to use the company’s AI and data tools to improve submarine production, according to a new report from Bloomberg.

The deal will provide Palantir’s Foundry and Artificial Intelligence Platform across select shipyards and suppliers.

The Navy wants to fix chronic delays and overruns affecting its Virginia- and Columbia-class programs. Secretary of the Navy John Phelan said the goal is to speed up an industry that has struggled with labor issues and subcontractor delays: “By enabling industry to adopt AI and autonomy tools at scale, we’re helping the shipbuilding industry improve schedules, increase capacity, and reduce costs.”

Palantir CEO Alex Karp emphasized the scale of the challenge, saying, “It takes 10 million man hours to build a submarine. There are 2,000 businesses involved. Every single one of these components is specialized.” He added that tracking parts through software is vital because “that’s exactly why you need software” to remove bottlenecks, arguing that “already that problem’s gone.”

Bloomberg writes that two major shipbuilders and three public shipyards will receive the software first, and Phelan said the same system could later support carriers, the fleet, and even fighter jets.

The Navy expects the Palantir approach could “significantly” reduce the Columbia-class delay, currently projected to push delivery to March 2029. The contract uses a new “shared risk” model. Phelan said, “If they perform well…they’re going to do well and they should.” Karp responded, “You’re forcing us to absorb risk,” adding, “We get paid as we perform…This is not your typical ‘you get paid after everything fails’ kind of contract…We want to change contracting across the US government to ‘you get paid when it works.’”

Israel Funds Summit For 1,000 US Pastors Overseen By Amb. Huckabee

Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

A group of more than 1,000 American Christian Zionist pastors and influencers has spent a week in Israel on an all-expenses-paid trip that was funded by the Israeli Foreign Ministry, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported on Tuesday.

"This is the first time in history that the state of Israel has officially partnered with 1,000 strategic pastors to commission them as ambassadors to combat antisemitism and reach the youth of their generation," Mike Evans, an evangelical pastor who helped organize the trip, told CBN News. "Right now there’s an ideological war that Israel is losing, so they need the evangelicals, they need the Zionists to fight an ideological war," Evans added.

Christian Zionists like Evans believe that the modern state of Israel has the right to all of the land in historic Palestine, including the Israeli-occupied West Bank, based on the Bible, a view that has its roots in dispensationalism, a Christian theology developed in the US in the 19th century.

The view runs counter to thousands of years of Christian tradition, as it’s rejected by the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, and many Protestant denominations, yet it has significant influence on US foreign policy. During a speech to the crowd of pastors at the Shiloh archeological site in the West Bank, Evans addressed recent remarks from Vice President JD Vance and President Trump about not supporting the Israeli annexation of the Palestinian territory, which he calls Judea and Samaria.

"You said that the policy of the administration is that the West Bank will not be annexed by Israel. Mr. Vice President, we love you, and we love America, but the policy of the God who birthed America and the policy of the God who gave these people this land is in fact that Judea and Samaria is Bible land," Evans said.

"Eighty percent of Bible stories come out of Judea and Samaria. So don’t pressure Israel to give illegal, radical Islam Jew-haters Judea and Samaria," he said, adding that the MAGA movement is based on the Bible and "upon the God of this book, the God of Israel."

While American evangelicals have always comprised a solid base of support for Israel, that support has been declining, part of an overall trend among Americans due to Israel's brutal campaign in Gaza.

"There is a growing cancer within the evangelical movement in America, where people are thinking Israel doesn’t matter and there’s nothing biblical about our relationship with Israel. This is very dangerous," US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee told CBN News during the summit.

Friday, December 12, 2025

Silver Smash

On Drugs

'Consumer' Watchdog Group Bought & Paid For By Big Pharma

The Somali Way?

Border Tsar Homan Announces Investigation Into Rep. Omar: A Case For Fraud Or Defamation?

DeBanking Is Cranking

OCC Says 9 Big Banks Took Part In 'Inappropriate' Debanking Practices

Cool

Chinese Drone "Mothership" Capable Of Swarm Attack Takes Flight

Thursday, December 11, 2025

Broken Arrow

Impeachment Articles Filed Against Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Go Back

2.5 Million Illegal Immigrants Deported Under Trump Admin: DHS

Cooking And Driving

Trump Admin Pulls 9,500 Truck Drivers Off The Road For Failing English Tests

Fatal Crashes Prompt Wider Crackdown

Tits And Tats

US 'Answers' China By Sending Pair Of Nuclear-Capable Bombers Over Sea Of Japan

What Is Poor?