Last year saw a record of 714 million barrels of offshore oil produced, according to a press release from the Interior Department. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum underscored that the United States is tapping into its true energy potential.

“President Trump has made it clear that America should fully develop its abundant energy resources in a way that strengthens our economy and benefits American families,” Burgum said in a statement.

“By providing regulatory certainty, streamlining processes and encouraging responsible development, this administration is unlocking the full potential of our domestic energy resources — supporting job creation, lowering energy prices, strengthening energy security and maintaining strong safety and environmental protections,” he added.

The release notes that the administration’s policies, which include regulatory efficiency and providing energy developers with more certainty, have led to a boom in offshore project investment. The increase in investment is especially abundant in the Gulf of America.

“American energy leadership is a cornerstone of our economic strength and national security,” Burgum noted.

“This record production reflects the hard work of American energy workers and the strength of our offshore resources, helping drive economic growth, support good-paying jobs and deliver affordable, reliable energy to families and businesses,” he continued.

The record energy production makes good on one of Trump’s core campaign promises in the 2024 cycle. In February 2023, when he was the lone candidate in the Republican field, he pledged to “bring back a pro-American energy policy at long last.”

“I will deploy a team of warrior lawyers to hunt down every unnecessary regulation in the federal registry that hampers domestic production and we will wipe them off the books,” he said in a campaign video at the time.

“Nobody has more liquid gold under their feet than the United States of America, and we will use it and profit by it and live with it, and we will be rich again, and we will be happy again and will be proud again,” he went on to add.

TEHRAN — March 29, 2026 : Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has cautioned senior leadership of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) that Iran’s economy could face total collapse within three to four weeks if a regional ceasefire is not achieved, according to informed sources cited by Iran International.

The warning reflects growing internal divisions between Iran’s civilian administration and military leadership as the ongoing conflict enters its fifth week, intensifying both economic strain and governance disputes.

Internal Tensions Over War Strategy

The reported disagreement centers on the direction and management of military operations. President Pezeshkian is said to have directly criticized IRGC Chief Commander Ahmad Vahidi over continued escalation, including cross-border strikes that have contributed to mounting regional tensions and domestic economic pressure.

The divide became publicly visible on March 7, when Pezeshkian issued a video message apologizing for what he described as “fire at will” attacks by Iranian forces on neighboring countries. He instructed that such operations cease unless directly provoked. However, military activity reportedly resumed shortly after the broadcast.

Sources indicate that Pezeshkian has since demanded that executive and operational control over conflict-related decisions be returned to the civilian government. This request has been rejected by Vahidi, who instead attributed the country’s economic vulnerability to the administration’s failure to implement structural reforms prior to the conflict.

Further complicating the power balance, the IRGC has reportedly expanded its influence within Iran’s security institutions. The Guards are said to have pressured the president into appointing Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, an IRGC-affiliated figure, as secretary of the Supreme National Security Council—effectively reducing civilian oversight in strategic decision-making.

Economic Indicators Show Widespread Strain

The political dispute is unfolding against a backdrop of severe and accelerating economic distress. Iran’s economy, already weakened by sanctions and structural inefficiencies, is showing signs of systemic disruption under wartime conditions.

Banking infrastructure across major cities has been significantly affected. Many ATMs are either out of cash, inaccessible, or non-functional, while digital banking platforms—including those of major institutions such as Bank Melli—are experiencing repeated outages.

Public sector finances are also under pressure. Reports indicate that government employees have not received regular salaries or benefits for up to three months, affecting a large segment of the workforce.

Inflation, which had already reached between 105% and 115% for basic goods in February, has continued to rise since the onset of the conflict. Shortages of raw materials have disrupted factory operations, further constraining supply and pushing up prices of essential commodities.

Poverty levels have increased sharply. Data cited by economists and state-affiliated institutions suggest that more than 40% of the population now lives below the absolute poverty line, with the figure exceeding 50% in Tehran.

Currency Devaluation and Shift Toward Dollarization

The Iranian rial has undergone a significant loss of value, accelerating a shift toward informal dollarization in domestic markets.

By late 2025, the exchange rate had weakened to approximately 1,430,000 rials per US dollar, compared to around 800,000 earlier in the year. The sharp depreciation has eroded purchasing power and undermined confidence in the national currency.

As a result, key sectors of the economy—including real estate, rental markets, and automotive transactions—are increasingly being conducted in US dollars rather than rials, reflecting a structural shift in pricing practices.

Fiscal Pressures and Budget Adjustments

To manage wartime financial demands, the government’s 2026–2027 budget relies heavily on inflationary financing and increased taxation.

Oil revenue, historically a central component of Iran’s fiscal framework, has declined sharply. Its share in the national budget has fallen to approximately 5%, down from 32% in the previous year. To compensate, authorities have raised taxes by more than 60%, placing additional strain on businesses and households.

The conflict has also disrupted energy infrastructure and oil and gas operations, further limiting revenue streams and affecting supply chains. In several regions, food prices have risen by at least 50% compared to pre-war levels.

Broader Economic Context and Outlook

Iran entered the current conflict period with pre-existing economic vulnerabilities, including high inflation, currency instability, and the ongoing impact of international sanctions. The continuation of hostilities is now compounding these challenges.

According to sources, President Pezeshkian has emphasized that a ceasefire is essential within weeks to prevent further deterioration and maintain basic economic functionality. The warning underscores concerns among policymakers about the limited timeframe available for stabilization under current conditions.

No official confirmation of the reported warning has been issued by Iranian state media or government spokespersons. However, analysts note that prolonged conflict could deepen budget deficits, banking system imbalances, and supply disruptions, reducing the government’s ability to respond effectively.

The situation reflects a convergence of economic stress, institutional friction, and strategic disagreement, with implications for both domestic stability and regional dynamics.

Today, the Supreme Court will decide on Trump v. Barbara, a new challenge to “birthright citizenship,” so in that spirit, here are some facts about birthright citizenship from a simple internet search:

The concept of birthright citizenship is based on an 1898 SCOTUS decision (United States v. Wong Kim Ark) when there were no planes allowing the entire third world to rush in, and birth tourism didn’t exist.

Very few countries in the world allow birthright citizenship. European countries don’t allow it, nor do Japan, China, Great Britain, or Australia.

Pew estimates around five million anchor babies are living with parents who are not citizens.

61% of these households are on one or more government welfare programs. Note: It is illegal for non-citizens to receive welfare benefits.

225,000 to 300,000 babies are born each year to mothers who are here illegally. Another 70,000 are born to mothers who are here on vacation. It is generally not recommended for mothers to travel close to their due date, so isn’t that odd? My intelligent guess is most of these mothers did not pay the hospitals for their healthcare.

Why are we promoting birth tourism?

Why are the illegals allowed to stay after the baby is born since they are here illegally?

Democrats want open borders and say we can’t send the parents back because that would separate families. The solution is easy. Get rid of birthright citizenship so this doesn’t happen, and send the babies back to their home country with their parents.

China is really pushing for new babies to be born in the U.S. so they can further influence their control:

Chinese national pleads guilty to running ‘birth tourism’ scheme that helped aliens give birth in US to secure birthright citizenship

A Chinese national pleaded guilty today to federal criminal charges for running an Orange County-based ‘birth tourism’ business that catered to wealthy pregnant clients and Chinese government officials, charging them tens of thousands of dollars to help them give birth in the United States so their children would get U.S. citizenship.

Why do we openly allow our enemies to infiltrate the U.S.? And, what about this story?

Chinese gaming billionaire reportedly sires more than 100 surrogate kids in US, hopes they’ll marry Elon Musk’s children

A Chinese billionaire who allegedly fathered more than 100 US-born children through surrogacy agencies reportedly hopes the kiddies will one day marry Elon Musk’s children and create a sprawling family dynasty. 

Xu Bo, a 48-year-old wealthy recluse who founded the online gaming company Duoyi, calls himself ‘China’s first father’ and has been hell-bent on siring at least ‘50 high-quality sons,’ according to social-media posts verified as his by the Wall Street Journal.

And here is how the compliant media is covering the issue as they campaign for continuing birthright citizenship in support of Democrats and getting more people to be dependent on the government. They call Trump’s desire to get rid of birthright citizenship controversial instead of calling the original decision controversial. Everything Trump does is called controversial to influence the public instead of informing them. This article by USA Today in my local paper was titled “History bolsters birthright citizenship.”

Bad laws or rulings, regardless of being part of America’s “history,” should be overturned—and birthright citizenship is nuts.

Jack Hellner, American Thinker

They are preparing for large-scale violent jihad in Europe against Jewish targets. And there are likely to be more attempts, as Stephan Weh, Berlin police union chief, suggested when he said: “As a Western metropolis, Berlin remains a focal point for radical Islamist networks, which today primarily recruit new members and supporters via social media.”

Nonetheless, Weh states that this Berlin court ruling was important, given the precedent it establishes, and especially since Hamas is not a designated terror group under German law. As Western authorities become more knowledgeable about organized jihad groups, they still lag too far behind. They are still reckless about immigration and Islam itself, while jihad terror is regularly committed in its name. It is important to remember in this connection that Hamas (Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya) means Islamic Resistance Movement.

“Berlin Court Jails 4 Men in Landmark Hamas Weapons Case, First German Ruling Treating Membership as Terror Offense,” by Ailin Vilches Arguello, Algemeiner, March 26, 2026:

Four men were sentenced to prison in Berlin on Wednesday for operating a covert Hamas weapons-stockpiling network across Europe in preparation for potential terrorist attacks — a landmark ruling marking the first time a German court convicted members of the Palestinian terrorist group under the country’s terrorism laws.

The Berlin State Protection Senate — a special national-security chamber within the Berlin Court of Appeal — convicted the defendants of stockpiling weapons for future attacks in Europe, including possible targets in Germany, sentencing them to four and a half to six years in prison for membership in a foreign terrorist organization and related charges.

The court determined the men, aged 36 to 58, had acted as foreign operatives for Hamas’s military wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, and had already helped establish several firearms caches across Europe.

According to official records, the defendants helped build weapons depots as part of “preparations to carry out attacks on Jewish and Israeli targets in European countries,” with possible targets including the Israeli Embassy in Berlin, the US Ramstein Air Base in southwestern Germany, and Berlin’s former Tempelhof airport.

German authorities also found the stockpiles were meant for attacks on Israeli, Jewish, or other targets across Europe over an extended period, with sites discovered in multiple countries including Poland, Bulgaria, and Denmark….

Hamas, long supported by the Iranian regime as well as Qatar and Turkey, is designated as a terrorist organization by the European Union and several other Western countries, including the United States.

However, the terrorist group has not been officially classified as such under German law, making Wednesday’s ruling especially important because it sets a legal precedent allowing membership in the group to be treated as a criminal offense.

“It’s a clear and important ruling by the Berlin Court of Appeal, even though we know that it does not in itself reduce the danger of terrorist attacks,” Stephan Weh, Berlin police union chief, said in a statement.

“As a Western metropolis, Berlin remains a focal point for radical Islamist networks, which today primarily recruit new members and supporters via social media,” he continued.

Christine Douglass-Williams, Jihad Watch

Iran’s security and military forces moved personnel, weapons and equipment into at least 70 civilian sites during the US-Israeli airstrikes, an Iran International investigation found, exposing what appears to be a nationwide pattern of using public spaces for military purposes.

The sites span 17 provinces, 28 cities and two villages. Nearly half of them – 34 in total – were primary or secondary schools. Other locations identified in eyewitness accounts and documents reviewed by Iran International included hospitals, stadiums, universities, mosques, parks and government offices.

The accounts were gathered over a 10-day period from March 2 to March 14, 2026, during a near-total internet shutdown that sharply restricted the flow of messages, photos and video from inside Iran.

While Iran International could not independently verify every account, it geolocated visual evidence from seven reported sites, all of them schools.

Civilian sites and battlefield risk

The deployment of military forces at civilian sites “shifts battlefield risks onto civilians,” a regional security source who requested anonymity said, adding that using such locations for military purposes is prohibited under international law.

“When security or paramilitary forces move into schools, hospitals or mosques, they endanger civilians physically, degrade protected civilian services and may turn those sites into military objectives,” the source said.

Under international humanitarian law, civilian sites can lose protected status if used for military purposes, though attacking forces must still comply with rules on distinction, proportionality and precaution.

The source said the legal implications vary depending on the type of site but warned that such practices can strip civilian locations of their protected status.

“Schools are civilian objects; using them as barracks, firing positions, detention sites, or weapons depots can make them lawful military targets, while still leaving the attacker bound by distinction, proportionality, and feasible precautions,” the source said, adding that this “amounts to human shielding.”

At least four hospitals were identified in eyewitness accounts as having nearby or associated military deployments, including Golestan Hospital in Ahvaz and medical sites in Kermanshah and other western regions.

“Hospitals get even stronger protection than schools. Under International Humanitarian Law, they must be respected and protected, but if they are used outside their humanitarian role, such as for a base, observation post, military center, shelter for military-security personnel, or weapons depot, they lose that special protection, although a clear warning is required before any attack,” the source said.

At least three mosques were identified in eyewitness accounts as having been used for military deployments. In the capital, Tehran, this included Rezvan Mosque on March 8 and Chahardeh Masoum Mosque in University Town on March 7, where special police units were stationed.

Malek Ashtar Mosque in Khosrowshah in East Azarbaijan province was also used on March 9, where IRGC forces were relocated.

Mosques are protected as civilian objects and may also qualify as cultural property under the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property, the source said.

“Using mosques for military purposes is prohibited, but if turned into a military objective, they lose protection, while attacking forces must still take precautions and avoid indiscriminate or disproportionate action,” the source added.

How the reporting was assembled

As authorities imposed a near-total internet shutdown across the country after the outbreak of the war, only a limited number of messages were able to get through filtering systems, while photo and video footage remained scarce.

Things that Actual Kings do: Confiscate the guns of peaceful people;

Hike taxes, try to tax the same income 2 or 3 times;

Threaten social media companies for criticism of government policies;

Declare martial law and install a totalitarian regime for months or years on the pretext that the 99 percent survivable flu is a global emergency;

Refuse to require voter IDs if it means your candidates will lose;

Force people to send their kids to schools where they’re told that boys are girls and girls are boys, and then force parents to give their children hormone treatments when their children become confused;

Side with violent cults (Iran, Hamas) building nuclear weapons (or threatening executions, such as beheading) to use against people who won’t join the cults, and forcing citizens to pay taxes to subsidize the building of nuclear weapons.

Actually, Kings throughout history, while many of them were very bad, were not as bad as people doing these things today. The people doing these things today are called Democrats. Their behavior is not merely tyrannical; it’s sociopathic and sadistic.

Trump is doing none of these things. In fact, he’s trying to stop many of these things, despite being shot at and legally prosecuted repeatedly by people who ACTUALLY DO THESE THINGS and call Trump a King for trying to stop them from doing these things.

It’s madness beyond the scope of anything historians, psychiatrists or dystopian novel writers have ever needed to consider. Madness seems too tame a word for it.

People voting Democrat WANT a King. They hate Trump because he’s trying to limit the power of government, not expand it. Lowering taxes, reducing regulations, shutting down Cabinet departments, refusing to lock down society for the flu, refusing to let violent Medieval barbarians behead and bomb our civilization, stopping censorship, upholding the Second Amendment, restoring private property rights–these are all the actions of someone who DOES NOT WANT TO BE A KING.

The problem with Democrats is that they want a King. They yearn to be controlled, to be bossed around, to live under an insanely controlling and inept bureaucracy that creates the illusion of being taken care of. They yearn for a Fauci, or a Stalin, a Castro, or a Mao. If they get their way, they will get AOC instead. And won’t that absurd fiasco be the end of their Dream. It’s infuriating and frightening to see leftists (Soros paid and all) throw their tantrums and act out their psychopathic wrecking balls over all our lives. But you can be sure: No matter what happens, no matter what future battles they may manage to win here and there — they will never, ever be at peace.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

We are capable of winning this fight.

J.B. Shurk | March 30, 2026

When I write about threats to Western civilization, I struggle to find the sweet spot between describing the myriad problems we face and my firm belief that we are capable of winning this fight.  I do not think all is lost.  I do, however, think that it is important for as many people as possible to recognize what our enemies are doing.  

When we are being attacked from all sides — culturally, politically, economically, socially, parentally, morally, religiously, psychologically — it is sometimes difficult to recognize that these attacks are all connected.  Those who wish to destroy Western civilization use every available weapon to hurt us.  When we concentrate on nothing but “bad news,” though, we talk ourselves into premature defeat.  We psych ourselves out.  We give our enemies greater power over us than they have.  

We cannot bury our heads in the sand and ignore what is happening.  We also cannot allow what is happening to intimidate us into silence or cow us into submission.  Ideally, we will become more vocal in articulating exactly what our enemies are doing, find comfort in the growing chorus of voices urging resistance, and become only more confident in our defense of Western civilization.  

Sounding the alarm is not a call for surrender.  Nor should hearing the alarm cause us to tremble.  This is the time for courage and determination.  When our Western ancestors faced similar dangers in the past, they did not hide or run away.  They prepared themselves for hardship.  They prayed.  They retrieved hidden swords from thatched roofs, straw beds, and bales of hay.

In broad strokes, we know what’s happening.  Open borders policies in North America and Europe are sabotaging social cohesion.  Christianity is under attack.  Reason, rationality, and scientific inquiry have been abandoned.  Our shared history is continuously rewritten in ways that turn our ancestors into villains.  Enlightenment ideals fostering individual sovereignty, personal freedom, and maximum liberty have been eroded by the pernicious encroachments of collectivism, Marxism, socialism, and communism.  Virtue is mocked, while sin is celebrated.  Unchecked desire, envy, and instant gratification have supplanted temperance, humility, and self-restraint.  The indulgence of personal fantasy has superseded the pursuit of eternal truth.  Schools, governments, and cultural institutions preach a false and destructive religion requiring Westerners to repent for their “climate change sins” and embrace the doctrines of “multiculturalism” and “diversity” as tenets of leftism’s “faith.” 

Those are the various arrows being shot at us daily.  The damage caused from such sustained onslaught is immense.  Last week, conservative publications around the world carried the sad news of a twenty-five-year-old Barcelona woman named Noelia Castillo Ramos who chose to end her own life with the help of Spanish authorities.  Ramos spent her childhood in Spain’s broken foster system, being moved from one facility to the next.  Spain also uses these facilities to house unaccompanied foreign minors.  A group of these foreign minors brutally gang raped Ramos when she was a teenager. Suffering physically and psychologically, Ramos attempted suicide by leaping from a fifth-floor window four years ago.  She survived but was left paraplegic.  Spanish authorities deemed her “severe mental suffering” sufficient grounds to grant her plea for State-assisted death.  

Dutch political commentator Eva Vlaardingerbroek spoke for many Westerners who have mourned Ramos’s death when she wrote: “The system didn’t fail her, it actively betrayed her.  This girl’s tragic story is a perfect illustration of how the establishment feels about European women.  They first endanger you and then when you need help and cost them too much money, they push you to your grave.”

The life of Noelia Castillo Ramos is a terrible indictment of the malignant forces working to collapse Western civilization.  State-run childcare facilities cannot replace the immeasurable value of a loving mother and father.  Uncontrolled immigration invites predators to prey on our nations’ children.  Western governments’ evil efforts to protect foreign rapists and murderers from public scrutiny have aided and abetted the exploitation and abuse of our most vulnerable citizens for decades.  Because of the State’s complicity and the corporate news media’s silence, the butcher’s bill of victims has only grown.  Ignored and kept hidden, victims are deprived of life-saving attention, counseling, rehabilitation, Christian nurturing, physical recovery, and the salubrious promise of spiritual salvation.  In place of familial protection, social support, cultural camaraderie, and Christian fellowship, the forgotten members of our societies receive the cold indifference of government bureaucracy.  When those most suffering cry out in pain, the same institutions that failed to secure the border or provide for citizens’ safety offer State-sponsored death.  

Discarding the moral and intellectual enlightenment obtained over centuries of work and contemplation, today’s governments have abandoned the hallmarks of Western civilization and reanimated the rotting corpses of paganism, hedonism, idolatry, and child sacrifice.  While Western citizens desperately seek civilizational renewal, Western governments do nothing but fan the flames of the growing inferno.

In the United States, Democrat Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal is demanding that law enforcement agents who arrest illegal aliens be prosecuted and that illegal aliens who have been detained receive monetary “reparations.”  For decades, Democrats (and Establishment Republicans) have aided and abetted foreign nationals in illegally entering the United States.  Many of these illegal aliens steal American citizens’ social security numbers and commit various forms of identity theft and fraud in order to collect welfare benefits or secure employment.  Democrats wish to reward the criminals and punish their victims.

Criminals who have no legal right to be in the United States — including those who fled criminal prosecutions in their native homelands — go on to commit new crimes while here.  Violent foreign nationals who should not be here have raped and murdered far too many Americans.  Negligent foreign nationals who should not be here have killed far too many Americans while driving cars and commercial trucks across the country.  Far too many schools have been forced to figure out how to teach illegal alien children who cannot speak English or easily assimilate.  Far too many towns and cities have been forced into insolvency while providing ever-expanding social services for illegal aliens whom American taxpayers cannot afford.  Far too many hospitals are overrun with illegal alien patients who delay treatment for and drive up the healthcare costs of Americans.  And now the Democrat Party wants to pay the tens of millions of foreigners who illegally reside here “reparations” for feeling “unsafe.”  

You know who doesn’t feel safe?  American citizens.  At some point, they will be forced to seek reparations from the same government officials who do everything to feed, shelter, and protect foreigners while leaving Americans poorer and less secure. 

In responding to the pro-foreigner / anti-American policies of Representative Jayapal and her Democrat colleagues, one online commenter concluded, “Sometimes seems like only a civil war will save this country.”  That’s a sentiment widely held throughout the West these days.  

Last week, a European Parliament conference concluded that the whole continent is headed for civil war.  One professor argued that “the foundations of Western self-belief, prosperity, and competency” are now broken and that Europe is “on a track for a peasant revolt.”  In response to Western governments’ betrayal of Western civilization, there will be an “uprising in which the ruled seek to punish their rulers for violating their obligations under the social contract, and for changing the rules of the game against their wishes.”  Most of the politicians and academics who participated in the conference do not believe that Europe will survive this century.  Although they expressed various opinions about how the coming chaos will unfold, they reached a common conclusion: “It will be bloody.”

Those of us who wish to defend the West should not scurry and hide.  We should recognize the moment and prepare ourselves accordingly.  Our enemies are everywhere.  That’s okay.  We are everywhere, too.

American Thinker

California Democrats have a problem with their leading candidates. One doesn’t live in the state but allegedly lived, in the euphemistic sense, with a Chinese spy. Another has the looks and personality of a distempered boar and can’t stop screaming at staffers, reporters and anyone late with her lunch. A third is a billionaire who convenes events at luxury hotels to explain how he’ll fight against the billionaires for the working class he sometimes reads about in the paper.

And those are their most popular candidates.

But since this is California, the real problem is that all of those candidates are all the wrong color. Their skin lacks melanin. Two of them can’t even tan. Their distant ancestors probably came here on the Mayflower or some other European sailing vessel. Basically they’re white.

Much too white.

There are other more ‘diverse’ candidates like a Latino former Los Angeles mayor, a Chinese State Controller, a Black Jewish school superintendent, and Biden’s former Latino Secretary of Health and Human Services (he’s still Latino, but a former secretary), but the public isn’t interested in voting for them or giving them money and so they’re not viable candidates.

What are the Democrats to do when their voters just aren’t interested in diversity?

The crisis of the #TooWhite Democrat ticket came to a head when USC was forced to cancel the first gubernatorial debate because all of the candidates were white and mostly male. If the Oscars, the Golden Globes and hockey had to be revamped because there were too many white people, shouldn’t the candidates for the governorship of a diverse state be diverse?

The problem is that the voters don’t agree which means that democracy is racist.

Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, who insists he is not white, Senate President Monique Limon, who has also achieved the great distinction of not being white despite probably not being able to tan, along with the leaders of the Latino, Black, Asian, LGBTQ and numerous other caucuses, all signed a letter claiming that there was “growing alarm from California voters” because “every excluded leading candidate… is a person of color” and warned that if “USC does not do the right thing, we call on California voters to boycott this debate.” And then probably the election.

The candidates that the diverse leaders of the state claimed were excluded are polling respectively at 3%, 3%, 1% and 1%. The selection process of the gubernatorial debate that they claimed was biased is indeed biased. It’s biased against politicians polling between 1% and 3%.

Together all the diverse candidates add up to 8%. California voters aren’t ‘alarmed’, they’re not interested in the ‘diverse’ candidates who talk a lot about their diverse backgrounds as the children of immigrants who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps to becoming millionaire state officials. (One of the septuagenarian diverse candidates recently got to keep his $3.5 million mansion in the divorce, another diverse candidate has a net worth of over $7 million.)

Only the Latino candidates even crack 3%. The Black and Chinese candidates are at 1%.

Whose fault is this? If voters don’t like diverse candidates, what can be done to cure them? Gunpoint Drag Queen Story Hour? Electroshock therapy accompanied by Candace Owens podcasts? Mandatory tickets to WNBA games held in North Korean labor camps? Netflix?

Golden State Democrats have weeks in which to either convince voters that they need to be more diverse in their political choices or just do what the Oscars did and import a bunch of outsiders and make them voters in order to rebalance the system to manufacture diversity.

The problem with Plan B is that’s been the official policy of California Democrats for the last 35 years. Its elected officials have wrecked the state, bankrupted it, threatened law enforcement with several penalties and fought a near civil war against the federal government in order to keep the border open and fill every part of it with illegal aliens. Especially illegal alien criminals.

California Democrats also dismantled any kind of voter security measures and made it possible for a Venezuelan here for three weeks to still vote. And, despite all that, the party is too white.

What else is a party that already bitterly clings to demographic replacement supposed to do?

Opponents of the USC debate keep speaking in the name of “democracy” and “voters” when those are their leading obstacles. The only way to save California’s diversity is to get rid of the voters and democracy in the name of democracy and the voters because that’s what they would want if they weren’t such miserable racists. Sometimes you have to kill democracy to save it.

Democrats have flirted with various ways of sidelining democracy, like enabling voter fraud, inviting in illegal aliens to create ‘ghost districts’, ranked choice voting which gave us Zohran Mamdani, and late ballot dumps which gave us Karen Bass in Los Angeles and Katie Wilson in Seattle, but the current California candidate diversity crisis can’t be fixed with half-measures.

There are other options on the horizon, like proportional representation, which would finally ensure that the Communist Party would have some official legislative seats, but 1% only gets you so much. The truly anti-racist position may be to recognize that democracy is racist.

If democracy leads to minority candidates polling at only 1% while white men take the rest of the voters, it becomes all too obvious that letting the people elect their leaders is systemically racist.

Sure, 32% of California’s registered voters are Latino, 16% are Asian and 5% are black, making for a majority minority electorate that helped Democrats turn the state into a one-party system, but they must be suffering from internalized unconscious bias if they won’t vote for diversity.

When states are accused of systemic racism and disparate impact, they’re forced to sign consent decrees admitting to their racism and promising to implement specific policies to rig the system in favor of minorities. Each California voter must be forced to sign a similar consent decree acknowledging that he, she or xer was biased for not supporting minority candidates and promising to vote for them instead of whichever white person they were originally supporting.

Or California could just abolish elections. It’s the only truly anti-racist thing the state can do.

Daniel Greenfield, Front Page Magazine

Sycophantic bots coach users into selfish, antisocial behavior, say researchers, and they love it

AI can lead mentally unwell people to some pretty dark places, as a number of recent news stories have taught us. Now researchers think sycophantic AI is actually having a harmful effect on everyone.

In reviewing 11 leading AI models and human responses to interactions with those models across various scenarios, a team of Stanford researchers concluded in a paper published Thursday that AI sycophancy is prevalent, harmful, and reinforces trust in the very models that mislead their users.

“Even a single interaction with sycophantic AI reduced participants’ willingness to take responsibility and repair interpersonal conflicts, while increasing their own conviction that they were right,” the researchers explained. “Yet despite distorting judgment, sycophantic models were trusted and preferred.”

The team essentially conducted three experiments as part of their research project, starting with testing 11 AI models (proprietary models from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google as well as open-weight models from Meta, Qwen DeepSeek, and Mistral) on three separate datasets to gauge their responses. The datasets included open-ended advice questions, posts from the AmITheAsshole subreddit, and specific statements referencing harm to self or others.

every single instance, the AI models showed a higher rate of endorsing the wrong choice than humans did, the researchers said.

“Overall, deployed LLMs overwhelmingly affirm user actions, even against human consensus or in harmful contexts,” the team found.

As for how AI sycophancy affects humans, the team had a considerable sample size of 2,405 people who both roleplayed scenarios and shared personal instances where a potentially harmful decision could have been made. AI influenced participant judgments across three different experiments, they found.

“Participants exposed to sycophantic responses judged themselves more ‘in the right,'” the team said. “They were [also] less willing to take reparative actions like apologizing, taking initiative to improve the situation, or changing some aspect of their own behavior.”

That, they conclude, means that almost anyone has the potential to be susceptible to the effects of a sycophantic AI – and more likely to keep coming back for more bad, self-centered advice. As noted above, sycophantic responses tended to create a greater sense of trust in an AI model among participants thanks to their willingness to, in many situations, be unconditionally validating.

Participants tended to rate sycophantic responses as higher in quality, and found that 13 percent of users were more likely to return to a sycophantic AI than to a non-sycophantic one – not high, but statistically relevant at least.

All of those findings, along with the growing number of young, impressionable people using them, suggests a need for policy action to treat AI sycophancy as a real risk with potential wide-scale social implications.

• AI chatbots that butter you up make you worse at conflict, study finds
• OpenAI pulls plug on ChatGPT smarmbot that praised user for ditching psychiatric meds
• AI companion bots use emotional manipulation to boost usage
• Chatbot Romeos keep users talking longer, but harm their mental health

“Unwarranted affirmation may inflate people’s beliefs about the appropriateness of their actions, reinforce maladaptive beliefs and behaviors, and enable people to act on distorted interpretations of their experiences regardless of the consequences,” the researchers explained.

In other words, we’ve seen the consequences of AI on the mentally vulnerable, but the data suggests the negative effects may not be limited to them.

Noting that sycophantic AI tends to keep users coming back, discouraging its elimination, the researchers say it’s up to regulators to take action.

“Our findings highlight the need for accountability frameworks that recognize sycophancy as a distinct and currently unregulated category of harm,” they explained. They recommend requiring pre-deployment behavior audits for new models, but note that the humans behind AI will have to change their behaviors as well to prioritize long-term user wellbeing instead of short-term gains from building dependency-cultivating AI. ®

Hizbullah’s retaliatory missile attacks against Israel, following the death of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, have created an existential threat for the group.

Hizbullah is miscalculating its heavy losses from military operations, which intensified after the group violated the November 27, 2024, ceasefire agreement.

On March 13, Hizbullah Deputy Secretary-General Naim Qassem called the conflict an “existential battle,” but analysts unanimously assess this will be the group’s last war.

“Hizbullah is waging its final, losing battle, defying the Lebanese state’s designation of it as an illegitimate entity and a faction operating under the orders of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC),” security expert and retired Brigadier General Saeed Qazah, told Al-Fassel.

Defiance of government decisions Hizbullah dragged Lebanon into an open-ended war, defying the government’s ban on military activities after launching missiles at Israel.

In August 2025, the government committed to having the Lebanese Army disarm Hizbullah and dismantle its military infrastructure and weapons arsenal in the Litani River.

Analysts said Hizbullah’s retained weaponry undermines the army’s role, and is a major obstacle preventing Lebanon from securing military, financial and international aid.

Hizbullah is sacrificing Lebanon’s future to execute the Iranian regime’s agenda, functioning as a mere instrument.

Its military mobilization was driven by the IRGC Quds Force orders and Tehran’s vacuum, not the Lebanese Ministry of Defense, shattering its defense claims.

Hizbullah’s military adventurism isolates Lebanon, undermining its economic recovery and completely paralyzing its airspace, maritime trade and commercial activity.

The state is unable to shoulder the war’s burdens, which caused massive destruction, a heavy toll of casualties and displaced hundreds of thousands of residents.

Loss of Hizbullah’s base “Hizbullah’s adventurism has cost it a major segment of the Shia community, most notably the Amal Movement, and its other allies,” Hadi Murad, a political activist, and Shia opponent of Hizbullah, said.

“A significant rift has now emerged between the group and its public, who actively oppose this war,” he told Al-Fassel.

The Shia political sphere is no longer a unified front, marking a significant and massive shift.

The group has been reduced to a faction clinging to power by instilling fear within its own community, not popular consensus.

“Hizbullah’s narrative of an existential battle for the Shia is false. in reality, Hizbulah is exhausting its entire missile arsenal in what is undoubtedly its own last battle,” Murad said.

Hizbullah’s initiation of an unwanted war confirms its status as a rogue militia willing to sacrifice Lebanese sovereignty for the Iranian regime.