Wednesday, May 14, 2025

Trump ‘looking at normalization with Syria’ after meeting al-Sharaa - Joshua Marks

 

​ by Joshua Marks

The meeting, the first between U.S. and Syrian leaders in 25 years, was hailed by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as "historic."

 

U.S. President Donald Trump meets with Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on May 14, 2025. Source: @PressSec/X.
U.S. President Donald Trump meets with Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on May 14, 2025. Source: @PressSec/X.

U.S. President Donald Trump met with Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa in Riyadh on Tuesday ahead of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) summit, a day after announcing the lifting of all U.S. sanctions on Damascus.

The meeting marked the first direct encounter between American and Syrian leaders in a quarter century.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan joined the 33-minute conversation via video call, alongside Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the Turkish Anadolu news agency reported. Erdogan praised Trump’s sanctions decision as “historic,” highlighting it as a key Turkish foreign policy objective.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt posted a photo of the meeting on X, saying Trump had thanked both Erdogan and the crown prince for their friendship, and had told al-Sharaa that he has “a tremendous opportunity to do something historic” in Syria.

According to Leavitt, Trump encouraged al-Sharaa to sign onto the Abraham Accords with Israel, expel all foreign terrorists from Syria, deport Palestinian terrorists, assist the United States in preventing an ISIS resurgence and take full responsibility for ISIS detention centers in northeast Syria.

Speaking to reporters on board Air Force One following the talks, Trump said: “I think they have to get themselves straightened up. I told him [al-Sharaa], ‘I hope you’re going to join when it’s straightened out.’ He said, ‘Yes.’ But they have a lot of work to do.”

Al-Sharaa, formerly known as Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, thanked the leaders for facilitating the meeting and acknowledged the strategic opportunity created by Iran’s retreat from Syria. He affirmed Syria’s commitment to the 1974 disengagement agreement with Israel, expressed support for U.S.-Syrian cooperation against terrorism and chemical weapons, and invited American companies to invest in Syrian oil and gas. He also proposed turning Syria into a trade corridor between East and West.

Following the trilateral discussions, Trump said the United States is “looking at normalization with Syria,” signaling a potential shift in decades of U.S. policy toward the country. The president also reportedly discussed economic incentives offered by al-Sharaa, including opening Syrian oil fields to American companies and proposing a Trump Tower in Damascus to encourage U.S. investment in post-war reconstruction.

The Russia-Ukraine war and ongoing conflict in Gaza were also discussed, according to Leavitt.

Jerusalem reportedly views the normalization push with deep concern, citing al-Sharaa’s past and the potential legitimization of a figure long tied to terrorism. Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar has previously called the new Syrian government “jihadists in suits.”


Joshua Marks

Source: https://www.ustraveldocs.com/il/en/american-citizens-services#acs-us-passports

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PM’s office blasts Macron for 'echoing Hamas propaganda' - Israel National News

 

​ by Israel National News

In a sharp statement, Israel accuses French President Emmanuel Macron of siding with Islamist terrorists and spreading blood libels, vowing to press on with its war goals and defeat Hamas.

 

Macron and Netanyahu
Macron and Netanyahu                                                              Yonatan Sindel/Flash90

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday responded to statements by French President Emmanuel Macron condemning Israel for defending itself against the Iranian axis of terror.

"Macron has once again chosen to stand with a murderous Islamist terrorist organization and echo its despicable propaganda, accusing Israel of blood libels," a statement from Netanyahu's office read.

"Israel is engaged in a multi-front war for its very existence following the horrific massacre committed by Hamas against innocent people on October 7th, including the murder and kidnapping of dozens of French nationals."

The statement slammed, "Instead of supporting the Western democratic camp fighting the Islamist terrorist organizations and calling for the release of the hostages, Macron is once again demanding that Israel surrender and reward terrorism."

"Israel will not stop and will not surrender."

Netanyahu's statement also stressed that he "is determined to accomplish all of Israel's war goals, including the release of all our hostages, destroy Hamas’s military and governance capabilities, and ensure that Gaza will never again pose a threat to Israel."

Minister of Defense Israel Katz joined the Prime Minister's criticism of President Macron, stating: "We vividly remember what happened to Jews in France when they couldn’t defend themselves. President Macron should not preach morality to us.

"It is expected that someone who considers themselves a friend of Israel would stand by Israel in its war against the murderous terrorist organization Hamas and the Iranian axis of evil threatening to destroy the State of Israel, instead of trying to deny it the right to self-defense."

He noted, "The IDF operates with a level of morality unmatched in such difficult and complex circumstances, certainly far beyond anything France did in its past wars."

On Tuesday, Macron told TF1 television that in his opinion, Netanyahu’s policy regarding humanitarian aid to Gaza is shameful, and that Europeans should consider increasing sanctions.

“What he’s doing is shameful,” Macron charged.

“My job is to do everything I can to make it stop,” he added, saying that the possibility of revisiting the European Union’s cooperation agreements with Israel is on the table.


Israel National News

Source: https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/408355

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Israel will only negotiate 'Witkoff framework' in renewed hostage talks, source tells 'Post' - Amichai Stein

 

​ by Amichai Stein

Hamas rejected Witkoff's framework, backing Israel's proposal to release 10 hostages in exchange for 45 days.

 

(L-R) Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US Middle East Envoy Steve Witkoff. (photo credit: Getty Images/Kevin Dietsch, JIM WATSON/AFP, Adam Smigielski)
(L-R) Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US Middle East Envoy Steve Witkoff.
(photo credit: Getty Images/Kevin Dietsch, JIM WATSON/AFP, Adam Smigielski)

A senior Israeli official said on Wednesday that "Prime Minister Netanyahu and Israel continue to make clear in talks in Doha that only the 'Witkoff framework' is a viable basis for a deal," The Jerusalem Post has learned. 

Hamas rejected Witkoff's framework last month, backing Israel's proposal to release 10 hostages in exchange for 45 days. Israeli hostages can be released if the Israeli government agrees to end the war, fully withdraw from Gaza, and allow for the reconstruction of Gaza.

"We will not accept partial deals that serve [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu's political agenda," Hamas negotiating team head Khalil al-Hayya said in a statement.

The terror group claimed its rejection of the deal is based on the continuation of the war.

Al-Hayya added that Hamas is ready to immediately negotiate a deal to swap all the hostages with an agreed number of Palestinians who are imprisoned in Israel. 

 Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a recorded message to Israel, April 19, 2025. (credit: Screenshot/YouTube)Enlrage image
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a recorded message to Israel, April 19, 2025. (credit: Screenshot/YouTube)

Netanyahu, Witkoff,  Huckabee meet, discuss hostage deal, ceasefire 

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with US special envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff and the US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee on Monday.

Netanyahu is set to meet with ministers and senior Israeli defense leaders to brief them on his meeting with Witkoff, Israeli officials told The Jerusalem Post.

The three discussed the latest efforts to implement Witkoff's outline for the release of Israeli-American hostage Edan Alexander ahead of a widened expansion of military operations in Gaza, a statement from the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) noted. 


Amichai Stein

Source: https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-853941

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Genocide in Syria: Jihadists Massacre Druze, Christians, 'Infidels' - Uzay Bulut

 

​ by Uzay Bulut

Endless footage from Syria signals that HTS and its supporters have a genocidal intent towards all religious minorities in the region.

 

Translations of this item:

Uzay Bulut, a Turkish journalist, is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Gatestone Institute.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21614/syria-jihadists-massacre-druze

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GOP zeroes in on Biden's clean energy giveaways as Trump urges passage of 'big beautiful' bill - Kevin Killough

 

​ by Kevin Killough

Coalitions wrote competing letters to the Ways and Means Committee chair, with 21 Republicans wanting to keep the green energy subsidies in Biden's Inflation Reduction Act, and 38 Republicans seeking a full repeal. Meanwhile, Trump urges the GOP to find a consensus to pass "one, big beautiful" budget reconciliation bill.

 

The House Energy and Commerce Committee released its section of the Republicans' budget reconciliation bill Sunday evening. The legislation, which was marked up on Tuesday, includes provisions to scrap $6.5 billion in funding from parts of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) that funds climate-related issues.

The text sets the stage for what could be a fight between Republicans who want to keep IRA subsidies and those who want a full repeal of them. In March, 21 House Republicans wrote to Rep. Jason Smith, R-Mo., chair of the Ways and Means Committee to advocate for preserving the IRA energy tax credits. Earlier this month, 38 House Republicans wrote a letter to Smith calling for a complete repeal of the entire IRA. 

Trump Monday urged the House GOP to find a consensus to pass the “one, big beautiful” bill. The budget reconciliation is a gargantuan piece of legislation that Republicans can use to advance Trump’s “unleashing American energy” agenda. The process for the bill lowers the Senate’s threshold of 60 votes down to 51. With Republicans controlling the House, Senate and White House, they can pass sweeping legislation for a host of favored policies — provided they can come to a consensus on a number of disputes which include IRA tax credits. 

Entitlements vs. energy subsidies

Alex Stevens, communications director for the Institute for Energy Research, told Just the News that the House, in order to pass a bill in line with Trump’s interest in scaling back government spending, will have to choose between entitlement programs, such as Medicaid, and the lavish subsidies granted climate programs in the IRA. 

For Republicans, Stevens said, the choice should be obvious. “Politically, it seems like the IRA would be a much more favorable option. A lot of these people campaigned on this,” Stevens said. 

Rep. Brett Guthrie, R-Ky., chair of the committee, made a similar point in an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal ahead of the legislation’s release. 

“The 2024 election sent a clear signal that Americans are tired of an extreme left-wing agenda that favors wokeness over sensible policy and spurs price increases,” Guthrie wrote. 

Provisions in the proposal

The committee’s section would claw back unobligated balances from the IRA that went toward the Department of Energy (DOE)’s Loans Program Office (LPO). Energy Secretary Chris Wright testified last week that the LPO had issued about $40 billion in loans for energy projects over the last 15 years. But in the last 76 days of the Biden administration, that number jumped to $100 billion. Wright said that the rushed loan agreements lacked clauses traditionally required by the DOE. 

The energy section of the committee’s proposal also rescinds IRA funding for advanced vehicle manufacturing, electric vehicles, tribal energy loan guarantees, and efficiency grants for states. The IRA allocated approximately $8.3 billion to those programs. 

The proposal also contains a provision that would require companies applying to the DOE for liquefied natural gas export permits to non-free-trade agreement countries to pay a $1 million user fee to have their application deemed to be in the public interest, which is normally an important hurdle in having the applications approved. 

Another provision allows developers of natural gas projects to pay $10 million, or 1%, of the project’s projected capital costs, whichever is less, to have their permit reviews given expedited treatment. Thwarting lawfare that often delays domestic gas production, those projects would be exempt from judicial review. 

Phasing out tax credits may not be a solution

The IRA provided extensive tax credits for a variety of climate projects — everything from wind farms to hydrogen. Rep. Jodey Arrington, R-Texas, chair of the House Budget Committee, told E&E News that he thinks there could be a more “thoughtful” way to phase out the IRA’s tax credits. 

The Institute for Energy Research argues that a phase down of the green energy subsidies would only give them a foothold for those who want to preserve them. 

“History shows there is no such thing as a 'phase down' of these policies because they will inevitably be resurrected. If the goal is to protect taxpayers from never-ending subsidies and protect the electric grid from the destabilizing influence of the Production Tax Credit (PTC) and Investment Tax Credit (ITC), these tax credits need to be ended now,” the IER argued

Stevens, who co-authored the paper, said in an interview that “when push comes to shove, if people hold firm to their commitments to cut spending, the IRA is going to be at the top of the list of things that they're going to need to look at.”

Estimates vary as to how much the IRA’s subsidies will ultimately cost taxpayers, but the Cato Institute puts the figure at $5 trillion by 2050. The clean-energy subsidies don’t have an end date. Instead, they would be phased out only after certain emission-reduction targets are met, and that’s not likely to happen, according to the Cato Institute’s calculations.

Citing the Cato Institute’s research, as well as other estimates that put the cost of subsidies in the trillions of dollars over the next decade, Americans for Tax Reform led a coalition of free-market organizations in a letter to members of Congress calling on a complete repeal of the IRA's “Green New Deal” subsidies in the reconciliation bill. 

The letter notes a number of ways in which the subsidies create distortions in America’s energy market, from driving up the cost of energy to destabilizing the grid. 

Compared to Obamacare 

Gabriella Hoffman, director of the Center for Energy and Conservation at the Independent Women’s Forum, which is one of the groups that signed the letter, told Just the News that the IRA creates lucrative subsidies that flow into some Congressional districts. 

“It's not shocking that some elected Republicans who didn't vote for it, but seek to benefit from it, are part of the opposition efforts,” Hoffman explained. She also said that the subsidies drive the development of unreliable and expensive wind and solar power, while innovation in nuclear energy is stifled. 

“So much emphasis has been placed unfairly on these intermittent, unreliable sources, and they're costly. Ultimately, the taxpayers are going to feel the brunt of this. It would be prudent for Congress to repeal all the subsidies, or else we’re going to be stuck with it, much like Obamacare,” Hoffman said. 

Obamacare, also known as the Affordable Care Act, was passed in March 2010 during the Obama administration, promising to lower healthcare costs for all Americans. Instead, total healthcare expenditures in the U.S. have continued to climb since the bill was passed. There have been multiple attempts to repeal or replace the law, and none have so far been successful. 

Under pressure to pass a reconciliation bill, it remains to be seen whether Republicans will manage a full repeal of the IRA clean energy tax credits. Despite the value to some lawmakers' constituencies, with so much opposition to the tax credits, the final bill may, at the very least, scale them back. 

 

Kevin Killough

Source: https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/energy/gop-zeros-bidens-clean-energy-subsidies-trump-urges-passage-big-beautiful

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Germany’s Fiscal Suicide - Thomas Kolbe

 

​ by Thomas Kolbe

Germany’s general state debt spiral should be a constant feature in daily headlines

 

Germany’s general state debt spiral should be a constant feature in daily headlines. Its prominence should force policymakers into a radical fiscal turnaround. Yet while Germany is working under immense pressure to ban the AfD, forming alliances with left-wing extremists and eroding the political culture, on the other side of the Atlantic, preparations are underway for the approaching storm.

We live in record-breaking times. In the first quarter of this year, global debt surged to a record high of $324 trillion. This milestone becomes significant when compared to global GDP, which currently hovers around $110 trillion. Governments worldwide now owe 100% of GDP -- an alarming reality, as no modern state has ever managed to free itself from the ensuing fiscal bind once this threshold is reached. Debt levels of 80-90% mark the "point of no return."

The Tipping Point of the Debt Spiral

At this scale, debt reaches a critical mass. It inevitably forces an escalating debt service burden that drains scarce capital from the private sector to finance bloated social funds, ultimately leading to the same scenario we faced 15 years ago during the last severe sovereign debt crisis. Back then, Greece’s impending default sent shockwaves across credit markets. Central banks intervened with trillions, and governments stepped in to rescue debt-laden pension funds and banks with taxpayers' money.

Greece’s national debt stood at 143% at the onset of this crisis, and it is now about 155% -- no debt consolidation has occurred. The southern European countries are, quite frankly, sinking into a swamp of debt. Italy, with 140%, Spain at 120%, and France’s budget deficit at 7%, leave much to be desired. On average, the EU’s debt-to-GDP ratio is now approaching 95%, closing in on the global benchmark of 100%.

Bond Vigilantes Lurk in the Markets

We must now prepare for the moment when a tipping point in bond markets triggers a series of sovereign defaults. This will occur when a growing crisis of confidence among investors, banks, and investment funds translates into a sell-off cascade in the bond markets. Let’s keep an eye on interest rates: if they rise with high volatility and market volume, general unrest is on the horizon. We have already witnessed the emergence of "bond vigilantes" this year -- critical bond investors who pull the plug when debt levels rise. On the day it was announced that Germany would borrow about a trillion euros over the next four years and issue corresponding bonds, the interest rates on German bonds surged by more than 40 basis points.

 

This was a quantum leap in typically sluggish bond markets, particularly for the highest-rated bonds, such as those issued by Germany (still considered a safe bet). And it served as an unmistakable warning shot from the bond vigilantes: "Up to here, and no further!" Under Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s fiscal policies, Germany’s national debt would rise from 63% to 95%. Germany would join the ranks of high-debt nations -- without reason and without economic logic.

Friedrich Merz, who stumbled into office as a "fiscal expert," would be responsible for the largest debt binge Germany has experienced since World War II. It would also be his doing if Germany’s already shaky fiscal consensus, previously undermined by the Ampel coalition government, completely collapsed. The principle of only incurring debts that can be controlled by a strong economy would disappear entirely.

The Economy in Crisis

As for the state of this economy, which has been in a perpetual recession for three years, it is well known: €65 billion in direct investments fled abroad last year alone, seeking refuge from Germany’s burgeoning welfare state and its increasing regulatory burden and tax appetite. A significant portion of these investments likely found their way to the United States -- still viewed by global capital as the last bastion of economic freedom and entrepreneurial resilience.

In these days, Germany is politically isolating itself. On the geopolitical front, no one cares that Berlin is raising the firewall against the AfD. The moral gymnastics of German politicians and media resonate mostly in Brussels, where the same agenda is followed and political opposition is harshly confronted, as seen in Romania and Hungary.

More important matters are at hand: for example, the trade dispute with the U.S. Just two days ago, India made a first move, largely unnoticed in the media, offering the Trump administration to eliminate all tariffs on industrial metals and automobiles. New Delhi is seeking the first-mover advantage and positioning itself as a strategic partner of the U.S. in Asia. This could lead to industrial growth and domestic political stability -- something worth building upon!

USA: Tax Cuts on the Horizon

Meanwhile, in the U.S., a major round of tax cuts is on the horizon. And it’s not just about the successful campaign slogan, "No Tax On Tips" (in the U.S., campaign promises are taken seriously). The U.S. government is working on a broad reform program aimed at shrinking the state and providing new opportunities for the private sector. Regulations are being rolled back, and unnecessary budget items are being eliminated -- proof that America, unlike Europe, still holds the political will to fight Leviathan before it devours the republic. The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has already proven a success: the octopus-like media machine is being systematically dismantled, and propaganda vehicles such as USAID are being axed.

While Washington prepares for the approaching sovereign debt crisis and works on the revival of its own industry -- and a debt crisis is inevitable given the dynamics of credit markets -- Berlin is desperately searching for a lever to remove its only political competitor, the AfD, from the game. It seems that Germany has sunk into a monothematic pit of ignorance. Whether it's the collapse of the automotive industry, the burgeoning migration crisis, or the growing hyper-state with an extraordinary state share of 49.5% -- nothing can free Berlin from its discursive AfD prison.

In Berlin’s ideological bubble, daily crises are ignored in favor of moral crusades -- an ominous lesson for any free nation tempted to follow the same path.

Image: Bundesarchiv


Thomas Kolbe, born in 1978 in Neuss/Germany, is a graduate economist. For over 25 years, he has worked as a journalist and media producer for clients from various industries and business associations. As a publicist, he focuses on economic processes and observes geopolitical events from the perspective of the capital markets. His publications follow a philosophy that focuses on the individual and their right to self-determination.

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2025/05/germany_s_fiscal_suicide.html

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California Schools Are a Mess - Larry Sand

 

​ by Larry Sand

The Golden State’s education priorities are terribly misguided, schools are bleeding students, and teachers are being laid off.

 

For many years, Mississippi schools were among the worst in the nation. However, in 2024, test scores in both fourth-grade math and reading on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) increased significantly, surpassing those of California’s fourth-graders.

In math, Mississippi is now ranked 16th nationally, while California is 43rd. More stunningly, Mississippi ranks 7th in reading, whereas California is 39th.

Why did historically low-performing Mississippi advance in reading?

Per-pupil spending and teacher pay are certainly not the reasons. California is 20th in the nation in per-pupil spending, while Mississippi is 44th. The average teacher salary in California for the 2023-2024 school year was the highest in the U.S. at $101,084 per year. In contrast, Mississippi’s average educator makes just $53,704, 48th in the country.

The reason for the dramatic shift is that Mississippi passed the Literacy-Based Promotion Act, a landmark education reform law, in 2013. The law ensures that all students read at or above grade level by the end of third grade. This sweeping set of reforms includes requiring schools to focus heavily on phonics-based instruction, also known as the “Science of Reading.”

Additionally, Mississippi ended the practice of promoting third graders who couldn’t read proficiently. Instead, the state invested in specialized reading coaches rather than expanding central office bureaucracies and demanded excellence, provided targeted support, and held students, teachers, and administrators accountable.

Notably, the success wasn’t limited to one demographic. Black students in Mississippi matched the broader gains, demonstrating that when high expectations are set for Black children, they rise to meet them.

What is California doing to support student literacy?

Not much. Currently, 81% of school districts in California don’t teach the Science of Reading, according to research by the California Reading Coalition, a literacy advocacy group. A recent bill in the California state legislature to mandate the Science of Reading stalled.

The California Teachers Association, the state’s powerful teachers’ union, opposes reading instruction mandates, arguing that teachers, not legislators, are best positioned to assess the needs of individual students and require maximum flexibility in the classroom.

California has passed a slew of politically motivated education laws, however. For example, the passage of AB 800 in 2023 requires juniors and seniors to be taught about their workplace rights, the achievements of organized labor, and students’ right to join a union.

In October 2023, Assembly Bill 873 became law, stipulating that media literacy skills must now be taught in California schools. The law requires that this be done not in a stand-alone class, but rather woven into existing English language arts, science, math, and history classes.

In 2024, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed AB 1955 into state law. This deplorable legislation bars school districts from requiring staff to notify parents if their child decides to change their gender. No other state in the country has passed such a drastic law. The “Support Academic Futures and Educators for Today’s Youth (SAFETY) Act” explicitly forbids schools from adopting any policies that require them to disclose “any information related to a pupil’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression to any other person without the pupil’s consent.”

In 2025, several education bills were signed into law, ranging from rules to protect young people from being outed against their will to regulations that require elementary schools to offer free menstruation products.

In other California education news, a recent headline blared, “Massive teacher layoffs in California are devastating, chaotic, and detrimental to student learning conditions.” The writer explains that in March, approximately 2,300 California school employees received preliminary layoff notices as the state implemented a series of cost-cutting measures to balance the budget.

Most of the hysterics don’t acknowledge that many school districts are overstaffed, due in part to the expiring $190 billion in federal COVID relief funds. It’s worth noting that in most of the country, where teacher union contracts are in play, layoffs are based on seniority, not teacher quality. Hence, in California, students will suffer not because of fewer teachers but rather fewer good ones.

Additionally, a significant contributor to the need for fewer teachers in California is the decline in the student population. While there were 6.3 million students enrolled in the 2006-2007 academic year, the number has since decreased to 5.8 million, and the state projects it will fall to 5.3 million by 2031.

As the Public Policy Institute of California notes, falling birth rates, reduced international migration to California, and continued outmigration to other states are the primary drivers of enrollment declines.

The major cities in California have been particularly hard-hit.

In 2002, Los Angeles, the nation’s second-largest school district, was home to 746,831 students. However, as of January 31, the number of enrolled students has decreased to 408,083. The decline, which accelerated during the pandemic and then slowed, has since increased again.

As disclosed by The 74, nearly half of the 225 campuses of L.A.’s 456 zoned elementary schools are half-empty or worse, and 56 have seen their rosters decline by 70% or more. To preserve the quality of instruction, some of the district’s public schools may soon need to be shuttered.

It’s not only Los Angeles that’s in trouble. EdSource’s John Fensterwald reported in March that

Oakland, San Francisco, and Hayward have joined four smaller districts on the “five-alarm fire list” of the state’s most financially stressed districts—those flirting with insolvency.

“They join 32 districts on a second, cautionary list where there’s smoke but no fiscal flames—yet. The second list, released last week, includes Sacramento Unified, several small rural districts where a small drop in enrollment can pose a financial threat, and two San Jose elementary districts, Alum Rock and Franklin-McKinley, which are closing multiple schools in the fall. Not on the list so far this year is West Contra Costa Unified, which is struggling to stay afloat and received a special ‘lack of going concern’ designation the past three years.”

Some school districts are offering retirement buyouts and/or laying off teachers, counselors, and other staff because salaries account for approximately 80% of overall costs.

It’s not only education in California that is in an advanced state of disrepair. The state has many other areas of self-inflicted wounds, which I will address in a future post.

***

Larry Sand, a retired 28-year classroom teacher, is the president of the non-profit California Teachers Empowerment Network—a non-partisan, non-political group dedicated to providing teachers and the general public with reliable and balanced information about professional affiliations and positions on educational issues. The views presented here are strictly his own.

Source: https://amgreatness.com/2025/05/14/california-schools-are-a-mess/

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Harrowing confrontation between contractors led to Fort Detrick bio-lab shutdown, NIH boss reveals - Steven Richards

 

​ by Steven Richards

The incident sparked safety concerns that led the new NIH Director to order the lab temporarily closed and open a new probe over its safety practices.

 

National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya said poor safety culture, and a feud between employees that risked the leak of an unknown pathogen, prompted him to temporarily shutter the high-level biosafety laboratory at Fort Detrick, Maryland. 

Bhattacharya, who was confirmed by the Senate in late March, had only just taken the helm at the agency which was at the center of much COVID-19-era controversy when he received a report about the high-security laboratory that caused his “blood to chill,” he told the Just the News, No Noise TV show on Monday.  

He said the lab reported that one researcher slashed a hole in a containment suit of another researcher, potentially exposing them to a pathogen. 

A lovers' spat turns potentially deadly

“About three weeks in, I got a report that there was a lab—a BSL four lab, that is a high-security lab that deals with, like, really nasty bugs, you know, Ebola, whole bunch of other bugs—that there had been a safety incident…[that] involved a contractor cutting a hole in the bio containment suit of another worker with the intention of that, getting that worker sick with some nasty bug and potentially spreading it outside of the lab itself,” Bhattacharya said, confirming an incident first reported by Fox News earlier this month. 

Fox News also reported that the incident between the two contractors was sparked by a lover’s spat, according to an anonymous official from the Department of Health and Human Services. 

“I mean, I have not been scared by anything…in this job so far, except for that. When I heard that, my blood just chilled,” Bhattacharya said. 

The incident, which raised significant safety concerns at the high-security laboratory, was the catalyst for the temporary closure, which halted work at the facility. Work at the Biosaftey Level 4 laboratory was halted on March 29, shortly after Bhattacharya took the helm at NIH.

The lab is equipped to handle research on highly infectious and lethal diseases like Anthrax bacteria, COVID-19, the Ebola virus, and the lesser-known but deadly Marburg and Nipah viruses, among others.

“I ordered immediately, as soon as I heard about this incident, that there's an operational pause of all, all experiments at this lab at Fort Detrick, Maryland, and that we're not going to reopen it until, until I'm satisfied that we have a group that can run it with safety first,” the director told Just the News of his decision. 

“This is really, really dangerous stuff, and if we're going to play around with these kinds of experiments, it better be at a 100% secure lab where the safety culture says that it's more important to get the safety right than to have the science go forward,” he added. 

Not the first shutdown for the lab

The laboratory has been plagued by safety concerns since at least 2019 when a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention inspection of the facility uncovered several “serious” safety protocol violations that led to a similar temporary shutdown, according to documents obtained by ABC affiliate WJLA. 

In one incident, the CDC found an individual had entered a room multiple times without the mandatory respiratory protection gear while scientists were performing procedures on a deceased non-human primate on a necropsy table. The agency noted a number of other incidents involving improper respiratory protection. 

Additionally, the agency found the lab did not sufficiently verify employee training for handling toxins and select agents—“agents and toxins that have the potential to pose a severe threat to public health and safety,” per the CDC. 

Officials also cited insufficient systems to “decontaminate wastewater” from the facility. The CDC did not originally release publicly its decision to temporarily close the lab, citing “national security reasons,” The New York Times reported at the time. By April 2020, the laboratory had resumed full operations. 

Other labs will go under the microscope

Bhattacharya said the most recent incident has spurred him to review several other high-security labs in the United States to ensure they are adhering to proper safety standards going forward.  

“I'm still… about a month in the job, and I'm still learning a lot of things about how these labs work. But, I do know within the NIH, there are several of these kinds of labs, including a BSL 3 lab here on campus in Bethesda, there's another lab in...the Rocky Mountains, [a] lab in the Northwest... mountain region,” he said. 

“So we're gonna look into all of these, and we're gonna examine the safety culture of all of them,” he vowed. 


Steven Richards

Source: https://justthenews.com/nation/science/nih-director-says-confrontation-between-lab-contractors-precipitated-fort-detrick

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Unbridled: How Massive Pentagon Spending Happens by Design - Bob Ivry and Jeremy Portnoy

 

​ by Bob Ivry and Jeremy Portnoy

Despite audits failing and costs ballooning, the Pentagon's $1T budget keeps growing—fueled by “wish lists,” lobbying, and jets that can’t fly when needed.

 

Like the weather, everyone complains about Pentagon spending and mismanagement, but no one does anything about it. Leaders of the world’s most expensive military have refused to conduct or failed to complete every internal financial audit since Congress first demanded such accountability in the 1990s. The Department of Defense owns over 70% of the nation’s assets and can’t account for half of them. In fairness, military brass has had plenty of enablers in its failures to tame wild and sometimes blindfolded spending, with a special boost from political leaders who consistently block reform.

Although the Pentagon budget has grown by 50% over the last 10 years, President Trump wants to add another 12% to the Pentagon’s budget for fiscal year 2026, a move that for the first time will boost defense spending to over $1 trillion.

That number will almost certainly end up higher because, by law, no matter how generous the president’s request is, the Pentagon is required to ask Congress for even more money. The chief of staff of each military branch must put together an unfunded priority list – nicknamed a “wish list” – requesting money for items not included in the president’s budget.

This has been routine since the 1990s, and the procedure became federal law in 2017. The lists don’t need to include lengthy justifications of why the money is needed, as is the case for most budget requests to Congress.

These “Dear Santa” letters totaled at least $30.8 billion in fiscal year 2025, $17 billion in 2024, and $21.5 billion in 2023. Some of the items the Defense Department “wished” for in those three years include:

  • $6.8 million for an Air Force dog kennel
  • $10.2 million for a “high altitude balloon”
  • $22.5 million for “mobile kitchen trailers”
  • $106.6 million for a power plant in Djibouti
  • $8.5 million for the Space Command to renovate its temporary base while it waits for its actual base to be built
  • $20 million for a Great Lakes icebreaker that can sail through frozen water – 10 years from now
  • $398 million for classified Space Force programs

The practice persists even though the Defense Department isn’t always happy about it. The Biden administration’s Pentagon Comptroller, Mike McCord, publicly supported ending the requirement. He wrote in a 2023 letter to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) that unfunded priority lists are “not an effective way to illuminate our top priorities.”

The opportunities to spend go beyond even the wish lists. Members of Congress often add “Congressional increases” to the Pentagon budget – de facto earmarks for programs neither the president nor Pentagon officials thought were important enough to include even in their dream spending plans.

Congressional increases added at least $22.7 billion to the military budget in 2024. The dollar total is likely even higher because the public report lists only increases of $20 million or more. Auditors at the government watchdog group Open the Books filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the missing information, but were told that no record exists.

The largest single addition last year was $1.8 billion for the Navy to buy ten extra planes. Other add-ons have little direct connection to defense, such as $110 million for prostate cancer research.

Although Trump created the Department of Government Efficiency to signal his commitment to reducing and streamlining government, the president is sending mixed signals on Pentagon spending. On the one hand, the president said in an April 9 executive order that he wanted the Defense Department to compile a list of programs more than 15% behind schedule or 15% over cost so they can be assessed for possible cancellation. The (soft) deadline was last week.

At the same time, however, Trump has been receptive to the complaints of lawmakers like Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, who lamented in February that defense spending was “near record lows as a percentage of our gross domestic product, and all aspects of our military forces are now in dire need of repair or replacement.” (Defense spending in 2023 was 3.4% of GDP, in line with the last 10 years but well below the Reagan-era high of 6.8% in 1982, before the end of the Cold War.)

Trump’s planned increase of the military budget would go a long way to wiping out the $160 billion that DOGE claims it’s saved taxpayers with its government-wide cost cuts.

The added resources don’t mean the military is getting stronger or better at equipping its warfighters. It means there’s more bureaucracy to feed. In 2000, the Defense Department spent roughly $150 billion on its active personnel, adjusted for inflation. Since then, that number has only inched upward, to $166 billion in 2024. Active forces made up just 21% of the 2025 budget request. Most of the rest is eaten up by “operations and maintenance,” the conducting of day-to-day business, which has increased sharply. In 2000, the military spent roughly $175 billion 2024 dollars on O&M. For 2025, the Pentagon requested $338 billion, a 93% increase.

Shortchanging personnel has consequences. A March report from the Government Accountability Office found “shortages in trained maintenance personnel” compromised the ability of the Army, Navy, and Air Force to meet mission-capable goals for many aircraft. It reported that “the Navy EA-18G Growler – an aircraft with advanced electronic warfare capabilities … [and] the Army CH-47F Chinook – the Army’s only heavy-lift cargo rotary wing aircraft” failed to meet their “mission-capable rate goal in any year from fiscal year 2015 through fiscal year 2024.” The GAO also found that “the Air Force C-130H Hercules and C-130J Super Hercules – performing airlift support and aeromedical missions” met its goal just once during that period and the B-2 Spirit – the Air Force’s “stealth bomber that can deliver both conventional and nuclear munitions by penetrating an enemy’s defenses” met its mission-capable rate goal just four of the 10 years.

Similar problems plague the military’s marquee weapons. The F-35 Lightning II, an impressive bit of high-tech hardware, can move at supersonic speed, maneuver against enemy aircraft, hit ground targets, and, in stealth mode, evade radar. One variant can even hover. The Air Force, the Navy, and the Marine Corps all have their versions of the fighter; there are more than 700 F-35s deployed in bases and on carriers around the world.

By the 2040s, the Defense Department plans to acquire 2,470 more F-35s for an estimated total cost of about $442 billion, and to keep them flying into the 2080s. The cost of maintaining the F-35 fleet over the next six decades is the real budget-killer. It soared to $1.58 trillion in 2023, 44% more than the $1.1 trillion in 2018.

Even with that price tag, the F-35 has availability problems, according to the Government Accountability Office. The GAO’s litany of concerns includes a shortage of spare parts, inadequate training of mechanics, and an overreliance on contractors to repair the jets, leaving the military at their mercy. The result is a disappointing level of readiness, which the GAO defines as “the percentage of time during which these aircraft are safe to fly and able to perform at least one tasked mission.”

The F-35 might be a test case for military spending because it could be seen at odds with Trump’s noninterventionist, “America First” philosophy, according to Richard Aboulafia, managing director of the consulting firm AeroDynamic Advisory. “It was developed in partnership with our allies, and it’s meant as an expeditionary force, meaning it’s good for defending U.S. interests in Europe or Asia, but not as effective at home,” he said. On the other hand, the pricey plane is built in Texas with an engine from Florida.

Sky-high costs also afflict Naval housing. Soon after John Phelan was sworn in as Secretary of the Navy in March, he reviewed the bill for a new set of barracks to house his sailors. Phelan, a longtime investment executive without military experience, said he had trouble believing it. “I see numbers on things that are eye-opening to me,” Phelan said at an April 9 public appearance. The barracks cost $2.5 million a key (per room), he said. “My old firm, we built the finest hotel in Hawaii for $800,000 a key, and that has some pretty nice marble and some pretty nice things in it, and I’m trying to understand how we can get to those numbers.”

Another chronic concern is the time and expense it takes the Navy and its shipbuilding contractor, Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII), to put together a fleet of battle-ready fighting vessels. The planned July delivery of the newest aircraft carrier, the $12.9 billion USS John F. Kennedy, will likely need to be rescheduled. The ship is 95% complete, but there are issues with the elevators used to move munitions from below deck and aircraft launch and recovery systems. Similar problems plagued the USS Gerald R. Ford, which was delivered 32 months late in 2017 without functioning elevators. The next carrier on the assembly line, the $13.5 billion USS Enterprise, is running more than two years behind schedule.

Delivery delays of as much as 18 months are also expected for the lead boat in the Columbia class of nuclear-armed submarines.

Delivery of the first frigate in the Navy’s Constellation class has been changed to 2029 from 2026, and its cost has swelled to $1.4 billion from an initial estimate of $1 billion. Frigates are armed fighter vessels often used to escort other ships through treacherous waters.

The Air Force was singled out for criticism in the April 9 White House order. The first flight of the Sentinel, the Air Force’s new intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM, is two years behind schedule and its costs have slopped 37% over what was initially promised.

“With adversaries like China and Russia rapidly advancing their own military technologies,” the executive order said, “it is essential to prioritize speed, flexibility and innovation to deliver cutting-edge capabilities to our Armed Forces.”

The Pentagon wrings its hands over one of the roots of this predicament – the lack of competition for contract work – but it’s partly its own fault. At a 1993 dinner party now known as the “Last Supper,” then-Defense Secretary Les Aspin urged defense companies to merge with each other. In the afterglow of the Soviet Union’s collapse, the conventional wisdom at the time was that without the antagonism of its main rival, the U.S. military would be spending less.

The subsequent consolidation of the defense industry was a marvel of corporate wheeling and dealing. What were 51 separate companies during the Clinton administration are now the “Big Five” defense contractors – Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, Raytheon Technologies, and Northrop Grumman. Together, they account for 15% of the Pentagon’s contract spending, which, defying experts of the early 1990s, has ballooned since the end of the Cold War. The companies’ exalted status doesn’t mean they’ve skimped on PowerPoint presentations, wining and dining, and the occasional arm-twisting. Defense companies spent $70 million on lobbying in 2023, with the Big Five making up the bulk of that.

There’s also the issue of resources that the Pentagon should have been allocating but failed to. The U.S. is responsible for 40% of the world’s military spending, or roughly as much as the next nine countries combined, but somehow little of the cash has gone to keeping up with technology. Astonishingly, the software revolution of the 21st century pretty much bypassed the Pentagon procurement offices. That finally seems to be changing. A March 6 order from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, “Directing Modern Software Acquisition to Maximize Lethality,” requires the Pentagon to adopt new, tech-enabled buying practices.

“While commercial industry has rapidly adjusted to a software-defined product reality,” Hegseth wrote, the Defense Department “has struggled to reframe our acquisition process from a hardware-centric to a software-centric approach. When it comes to software acquisition, we are overdue in pivoting to a performance-based outcome and, as such, it is the Warfighter who pays the price.”

Artificial intelligence promises to make Pentagon procurement leaner and meaner, an evolution that could be made easier by the Trump administration’s friendly relationship with Silicon Valley. For years, tech bros treated defense contracts as if they spread the avian flu – both Microsoft and Google stepped away from collaborating with the Pentagon, in 2018 and 2019, respectively, after employees revolted. The Defense Department had almost $2 billion budgeted for AI in 2024 but couldn’t “fully identify” how it planned to use the money, the GAO found. Now, a political alliance between Trump and tech entrepreneurs such as Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and David Sacks could soothe the perceived stigma of tech startups focusing on building weapons systems, making troops safer, and fixing cost overruns and delivery delays in Pentagon purchasing.

Alexander Karp, CEO of defense surveillance software contractor Palantir Technologies and co-author of “The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West,” has emerged as head cheerleader of the new relationship. He has said he hopes it yields new and better ways for America’s war fighters to find and kill their enemies. “If a U.S. Marine asks for a better rifle, we should build it,” he said in the book. “And the same goes for software.”

Put that on the wish list.

***

This article was originally published by RealClearInvestigations and made available via RealClearWire.
 
Photo: US pentagon building aerial view at sunset


Bob Ivry and Jeremy Portnoy

Source: https://amgreatness.com/2025/05/14/unbridled-how-massive-pentagon-spending-happens-by-design/

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