Start With Clean and Organized Spaces

One of the simplest ways to improve a home’s environment is by maintaining clean and organized living areas. Clutter can make spaces feel stressful and overwhelming, while an organized home often feels more peaceful and functional. Regular cleaning routines can help reduce dust and improve the overall appearance of a home. Keeping frequently used items organized also makes daily life easier and can reduce unnecessary frustration. Families often find that a well-organized environment encourages healthier habits and better use of shared spaces.

Improve Indoor Air Quality

Air quality plays an important role in creating a comfortable living environment. Poor ventilation, dust accumulation, and household pollutants can make indoor spaces feel less pleasant. Simple steps that may help improve indoor air quality include:

• Changing HVAC filters regularly
• Opening windows
• Using air purifiers
• Reducing indoor sources of dust
• Adding indoor plants where appropriate

These changes can contribute to a fresher and more inviting atmosphere throughout the home.

Encourage Healthy Daily Habits

The home environment often shapes daily behavior. Creating spaces that support healthy habits can make it easier for family members to maintain positive routines. Examples include setting up a dedicated area for exercise, creating comfortable reading spaces, or designing a kitchen that encourages healthy meal preparation. Small environmental changes can help reinforce habits that contribute to long-term well-being. A supportive home environment often makes healthy choices feel more natural.

Pay Attention to Water Quality

Water is used throughout the home every day, from drinking and cooking to bathing and personal care. As a result, many families are becoming more aware of the role water quality may play in their daily routines. In addition to drinking water filtration systems, some homeowners choose to install a heavy-duty shower filter from AquaBliss to address common water quality concerns in the bathroom. This improves the shower experience while supporting skin and hair care routines.

While water filtration needs vary from household to household, it has become an increasingly popular consideration among families looking to create a healthier living environment.

Create Comfortable Sleep Spaces

Quality sleep is an important part of overall health and wellness. Bedrooms should be designed to promote relaxation and restful sleep whenever possible. Some ways to support a better sleep environment include:

• Keeping bedrooms clean and uncluttered
• Using comfortable bedding
• Limiting unnecessary noise
• Maintaining a comfortable room temperature
• Reducing exposure to bright light before bedtime

A good night’s sleep can positively influence mood, productivity, and overall quality of life.

Make Time for Family Connection

A healthy home is not only about physical surroundings. It is also about creating opportunities for meaningful interaction among family members. Designing shared spaces where people can gather, talk, and spend time together can strengthen family relationships. Whether it is a dining area, living room, or outdoor space, having places that encourage connection can contribute to a more positive home environment. Strong relationships are often one of the most valuable aspects of a healthy household.

Focus on Long-Term Improvements

Creating a healthier home is an ongoing process rather than a one-time project. The most effective changes are often the ones that can be maintained consistently over time. Instead of attempting to overhaul every aspect of a home at once, families may benefit from identifying a few key areas for improvement and building from there. Small, sustainable changes are often easier to maintain and can lead to meaningful long-term results.

Final Thoughts

A healthier home environment is built through a combination of thoughtful choices, consistent habits, and attention to everyday details. From improving air quality and sleep spaces to considering water quality and family connection, there are many ways to create a more supportive living environment.

By focusing on practical improvements that enhance comfort and wellbeing, families can create homes that not only look better but also contribute positively to their daily lives. Over time, these efforts can help foster a healthier, happier, and more enjoyable place to live.

Staff Writer; Paul Brown

And somehow, too many Americans are shrugging.

Perhaps that shrug is less agreement than exhaustion. Americans are tired — tired of the scandals, the outrage cycles, the endless circus where every day produces another ethical breach, another fundraising scheme, another spectacle competing for attention. People are struggling with rent, groceries, healthcare, caregiving, and retirement. Corruption fatigue has become part of our political culture, and that exhaustion is dangerous because corruption flourishes when people become too weary to resist it.

Donald Trump did not invent corruption. He simply removed the curtains. Previous presidents at least understood that public office required the appearance of restraint. Trump has transformed the presidency into something between a branding opportunity, a grievance machine, and a family business.

Campaign fundraising, cryptocurrency ventures, donor cultivation, luxury branding, political memorabilia, legal defense funds, and influence-peddling now swirl together into one giant transactional enterprise where political power and private wealth are increasingly difficult to separate. The presidency is no longer merely an office; it is becoming a monetization platform.

Trump’s defenders often say, “Well, he was rich before politics.” That misses the point entirely. The issue is not whether Trump entered office wealthy. The issue is whether political power is now being openly leveraged for personal financial gain while ethical guardrails collapse around us.

Reports estimate Trump-linked crypto ventures alone have generated staggering sums for Trump-affiliated entities while the administration influences the regulatory environment surrounding those same markets. In another era, such conflicts would have triggered bipartisan outrage. Today, many Americans barely react before the next scandal arrives.

Corruption survives when exhaustion sets in and citizens begin believing that everybody is dirty anyway, although everybody is clearly not dirty in the same way.

Poor people are investigated for survival. Working people are lectured about personal responsibility. Black families are criminalized for minor infractions. Yet wealthy elites convert influence into wealth and are celebrated as savvy businessmen.

A poor woman receiving excess food stamps is treated like a criminal mastermind. Billionaires gaming the tax code are called “smart.”

America still punishes poverty more aggressively than it punishes corruption.

That is why the debate over IRS enforcement matters so much. Efforts to strengthen tax enforcement against wealthy tax evasion provoke immediate political backlash. Politicians rage about “government overreach” when auditors examine millionaires, but remain silent while ordinary taxpayers face penalties and garnishments over comparatively tiny sums.

There are effectively two tax systems in America — one for people with lawyers and one for people without them.

Trump did not create that system. He understands it instinctively because he has benefited from it for decades. But his presidency has accelerated something even more corrosive: the collapse of ethical expectations altogether.

Conflicts of interest barely register anymore. Foreign money moves through luxury properties and investment vehicles. Campaign funds circulate through politically connected businesses. Political branding and family enrichment now operate side by side with governance itself, and Americans are increasingly expected to accept all this as normal.

This is neither normal nor harmless; it is dangerous.

A democracy cannot function when citizens conclude that public office is simply another avenue for private enrichment. Once people stop believing government serves any public purpose, cynicism replaces citizenship. Voters disengage. Institutions weaken. Democracy itself becomes transactional, and transactions always favor the wealthy.

What worries me most is not merely Trump himself, but the national adjustment surrounding him. Americans are not embracing the circus so much as surrendering to it. The daily chaos creates a numbing effect. Every scandal competes with five others. Every outrage is replaced before citizens can fully absorb its implications.

Exhaustion itself becomes a political strategy, because if the public remains overwhelmed long enough, accountability begins to erode. People stop asking, “Is this acceptable?” and begin asking only, “What happened today?”

That shift in public consciousness is profoundly dangerous.

History teaches us that republics rarely collapse in one dramatic moment. More often, they are hollowed out gradually — one indulgence, one rationalization, one ethical compromise at a time.

The presidency is not supposed to be a family inheritance project, a licensing operation, or a speculative investment vehicle. Public office is supposed to involve public trust.

Yet public trust is eroding rapidly.

The grift matters. But the greater danger is the national numbness surrounding it.

History will not judge us solely by the corruption we tolerated. It will judge us by how quickly we became accustomed to it.

Written by Julianne Malveaux

Official website; https://www.juliannemalveaux.com

Everyone with even just a little bit of money set aside — not just the California billionaires targeted by the wealth tax — should understand what these two measures represent.

Start with the Billionaire Tax Act. The gap between what it promises and what it would deliver is stark. Joshua Rauh of Stanford University has run the numbers with his Hoover Institution colleagues, and the results cast doubt on the prospect of any revenue gain whatsoever.

Proponents claim the tax would raise $100 billion. Rauh’s team found that billionaires have already been voting with their feet: Larry Ellison left California in 2020, and six others, including Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, departed between the proposal’s announcement and Dec. 31, 2025 — the day before the liability would take effect.

These departures alone reduce the measure’s supposed tax revenue by nearly 40% before a single dollar is collected. Once migration patterns uncovered in the academic literature are applied to quieter departures, expected revenue falls to only $40 billion.

Now, factor in the normal state taxes that will no longer be collected from departing billionaires. Rauh’s team calculates that by shrinking the existing tax base, the measure’s “net present value” is at least a $25 billion loss for California.

Then there is the retroactivity problem. The proposal aims to tax billionaires based on residency and conduct that reaches back to Jan. 1, long before any vote was cast. Individuals who believe they lawfully established residency elsewhere might have to fight California in court for years (at the expense of the remaining taxpayers), based on details as arbitrary as where these billionaires kept their pets or held club memberships.

The “onetime” framing of the tax deserves equal skepticism. As Rauh points out, the measure includes a constitutional authorization to lift California’s cap on taxation of intangible personal property. Once that legal infrastructure exists, future wealth taxes can be imposed at any rate, at any threshold, at any time. It is, in other words, a permanent new power for the state.

The Billionaire Tax Act is so erratic and its precedent so problematic that it practically begs Californians to pay attention to the second ballot measure. All Americans’ savings should be safe from such confiscation based on three clear principles.

First, fairness: When a worker sets aside after-tax income to invest for retirement, the resulting balance is not untapped revenue. To treat this savings as a fresh tax base is to tax the same dollar twice.

Second, stability: A tax system that reaches into asset values rather than income flows is inherently volatile. A founder whose stock drops 40% in a downturn still owes wealth tax on last year’s greater valuation. An ordinary saver whose 401(k) is taxed would face the same absurdity.

Third, and most urgent, is California’s own track record. According to the state’s nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office, state spending is poised to grow by nearly 70% between 2019 and the coming fiscal year, drastically outpacing a significant revenue hike over the period. The result is a cumulative deficit exceeding $50 billion over the next two years, a hole entirely of Sacramento’s own making, unrelated to Washington. Trusting politicians with that spending record to stop at taxing billionaires is reckless and naive.

When the wealth tax inevitably fails to deliver, the state will look for the next available pool of assets. Nonbillionaires who remain after California’s billionaires depart will be the likely targets, and their retirement savings could be the new tax base. As Rauh wrote earlier this month in his ongoing exploration of the proposals, “While approximately 0.001% of California households are billionaires, approximately 62% have retirement accounts.”

If this prediction sounds farfetched due to federal protections — or if you think billionaires will always be treated differently than normal savers who fill retirement accounts over a lifetime — consider what California already does to health savings accounts.

Federal law treats HSA contributions and earnings as tax-exempt. But under California’s tax engineering, the interest, dividends and capital gains are treated as ordinary income, affecting roughly 4.5 million residents. These people are not billionaires or millionaires. Politicians simply decided this was revenue the state was entitled to tax. Doing the same with 401(k)s and IRAs would not require new principles, just the same willingness.

A wealth tax on billionaires is the first step, and it puts the retirement savings of ordinary Californians at risk. The HSA precedent suggests that the threat is real. The Retirement and Personal Savings Protection Act would erect constitutional barriers against exactly that kind of expansion.

Written by Veronique de Rugy

Official website; http://twitter.com/veroderugy

Yet, between managing patient loads, documentation, and administrative responsibilities, staying current with family medicine Continuing Medical Education (CME) requirements often falls to the bottom of the list. It is not optional but a licensing requirement, a professional standard, and a direct factor in patient outcomes.

The right family medicine CME program should fit your schedule, match your specialty, and deliver content you can apply immediately in practice. Let’s learn what these CME courses cover and how to choose a program that works for you.

What Family Medicine CME Actually Requires

Understanding your CME obligations is the first step toward meeting them without unnecessary stress or wasted time.

• American Medical Association (AMA) Category 1 Credits and Maintenance of Certification (MOC) Points

Family medicine physicians must earn AMA Category 1 Credits to maintain licensure and satisfy MOC requirements each cycle. Programs offering both AMA credits and MOC points provide the most efficient path to full compliance.

• American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) Accreditation

AAFP accreditation ensures courses carry prescribed credits recognized by most state licensing boards. Verifying this accreditation should be your first step when evaluating any program, as non-accredited courses may not satisfy renewal requirements regardless of clinical quality.

• Board Certification and Recertification Requirements

Initial certification and ongoing recertification are separate but equally important obligations. Structured board prep aligned with current clinical guidelines reduces exam preparation time. Many physicians prefer programs that combine ongoing credits and board prep for efficiency.

Meeting your family medicine CME requirements efficiently starts with knowing exactly which credits count and which platforms are authorized to issue them.

Key Clinical Areas Family Medicine CME Course Should Cover

Family medicine is uniquely broad, and a strong CME program should reflect that breadth without sacrificing clinical depth.

• Primary Care and Ambulatory Medicine

Family medicine CME content covering best practices, clinical controversies, and emerging developments in ambulatory medicine keeps physicians current. This ensures they stay up to date on the conditions they manage most frequently each day.

Evidence-based updates in hypertension management, diabetes care, and preventive screenings are essential components of any well-rounded family medicine CME program worth your time. Physicians who stay current in these areas consistently demonstrate stronger diagnostic accuracy and better patient outcomes across their practice.

• Behavioral and Mental Health in Primary Care

Family medicine physicians routinely serve as the first clinicians patients reach when facing anxiety, depression, substance use disorders, or other behavioral health conditions. CME content in psychopharmacology and addiction medicine equips primary care physicians to screen, manage, and refer these patients with greater clinical confidence.

This is an area where knowledge gaps carry real consequences, given rising rates of mental health presentations in primary care settings nationwide.

• Dermatology for Primary Care Physicians

Skin conditions account for a significant volume of primary care visits, yet dermatology receives limited attention in most family medicine residency training programs. Practical, case-based dermatology CME helps physicians accurately diagnose and manage common conditions without making unnecessary specialist referrals.

Syndrome-based content using real patient cases and clinical images translates directly into stronger diagnostic confidence at the point of care.

• Neurology, Pain Medicine, and Perioperative Care

Neurological presentations, chronic pain management, and perioperative considerations are areas where family medicine physicians frequently need updated, evidence-based clinical guidance. Family medicine CME programs that cover these topics, particularly those developed in collaboration with academic medical centers, provide practical frameworks.

These frameworks improve patient outcomes in complex and often ambiguous clinical scenarios. Faculty from institutions such as Harvard Medical School and Johns Hopkins bring credibility and clinical authority that generalist content cannot replicate.

• Geriatrics, Palliative Medicine, and Care Transitions

An aging US population means family medicine physicians are managing increasingly complex geriatric and end-of-life care needs across their patient panels. Family medicine CME courses in geriatric medicine, palliative care, and patient care transitions prepare physicians to handle these cases with greater clinical and ethical clarity.

The often-overlooked shift from pediatric to adult care is another area where structured CME courses deliver immediate, practical clinical value.

The most effective family medicine CME programs build a connected clinical picture that reflects how patients actually present in real practice settings.

What to Look for in a Family Medicine CME Course Provider?

Not every family medicine CME course provider is equipped to serve the full clinical breadth that family medicine demands.

• Video CME for Deep Clinical Learning

You can engage with expert-led lectures and clinical demonstrations at your own pace. This format excels for board prep and complex material where visual learning strengthens comprehension.

• Audio CME for the On-the-go Physician

Content can be consumed during commutes or between patients without screen time. This removes the scheduling barrier that makes traditional conference learning impractical.

• All-access Subscription Platforms

These combine video, audio, and board prep in one place rather than requiring individual course purchases. Regularly updated content ensures your CME investment stays clinically relevant year-round.

• Specialty-Specific Content Depth

Programs should cover primary care, behavioral health, geriatrics, and pain medicine, not just a general catalog with a specialty filter. True depth separates useful CME from credit padding.

• Faculty Credentials and Institutional Partnerships

Content developed by clinicians at leading academic centers carries greater authority. Peer review and freedom from commercial sponsorship are key markers of trustworthy CME.

• Flexible Credit Options Across Multiple Accreditations

Look for providers offering American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM), American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC), and American Academy of Physician Assistants (AAPA) credits in one platform. This consolidation simplifies documentation and reduces administrative workload at renewal time.

Providers with long-standing track records, verifiable accreditation, and credentialed faculty deliver greater value than newer, less specialized alternatives.

Find the Right Family Medicine CME Program for Your Practice

Family medicine physicians deserve continuing education that matches the breadth and complexity of what they manage every day. From board exam preparation to primary care updates, the right program covers every corner of family medicine. It should also address geriatrics, behavioral health, and dermatology with genuine clinical depth and accuracy.

Platforms like Oakstone offer accredited family medicine CME content developed by faculty from the country’s most respected medical institutions. Accredited CME programs worth your time are peer-reviewed, clinically grounded, and built for genuine professional growth.

Ready to meet your CME requirements while advancing your clinical knowledge? Explore accredited family medicine CME programs built for physicians who take patient care seriously.

Staff Writer; Jerry Moore

The era of the Greatest Generation, the Silent Generation, and the Baby Boom Generation, each distinguished by a significant record of sacrifice, has concluded. Currently, society must adapt to the eras of Generation X, the Millennials, and Generation Z. These generations are often perceived as possessing numerous suggestions and solutions to various problems, challenges, and situations. Yet, they have contributed comparatively less in terms of sacrifice for their community. Is it to attribute the limited sacrifices of Generation X, Millennials, and Generation Z regarding the Black community to their own shortcomings when contrasted with previous generations? The straightforward answer is no.  The true origin of the decline in sacrifices dates to the 1960s, a period when African Americans actively campaigned for their civil rights. During the Nashville student movement in 1960, university students organized boycotts and sit-ins, as in numerous instances, adults gradually withdrew from such efforts.

W. Clement Stone stated, “You are a product of your environment.” During and after the civil rights era, did the adults in Black America adequately teach and exemplify for Black youth how to advocate and sacrifice for the Black community without resorting to a mindset of flight due to perceived high costs, according to some adults’ opinions? Some would argue that the answer is no. In the 1960s, the Baby Boom generation took the lead. Meanwhile, some of their parents and other members of the Silent Generation retreated when the stakes became too high, which indirectly influenced and guided many within the Baby Boom generation to adopt this course of action and belief. This attitude was ultimately passed down to their children and grandchildren, comprising Generation X, the Millennials, and Generation Z.

I do not intend to demean or criticize our ancestors or our Elders of today, as I believe they endeavored to the best of their abilities in most matters. During our struggle for civil rights, many progressive Black Americans opted to leave, and in some instances, to entirely abandon the Black community, the Black church, the inner city, and most cultural aspects associated with Black people, in pursuit of access and acceptance into suburban America. Over the years, White flight has remained a predominant concern because it has significantly and adversely affected most urban centers across the United States, particularly in predominantly Black neighborhoods. Nevertheless, most Black Americans or Americans in general seldom take the time to examine the profound void created by Black flight, as they prioritize suburban living, suburban education for their children, and real estate investments with the potential to appreciate considerably within their lifetimes. While I strongly believe that Black Americans should have the freedom to reside wherever their financial means permit, such liberties should not be at the expense of the broader Black community. As Black Americans, we ought to consistently strive to maintain a connection with and be associated with our brothers and sisters. In the words of Donny Hathaway, always remember “he ain’t heavy, he is my brother.”

The opportunity to assume leadership or serve as the central figure in a movement appears infrequent for young Black men, both within and beyond the Black community. Many contend that Black men across all age groups tend to avoid leadership positions, are often perceived as lacking discipline, and are considered less capable of leading. Additionally, they are frequently regarded as less vocal and less prepared than their young Black female counterparts. Whether consciously acknowledged or not, the NAACP’s appeal for Black student-athletes to boycott predominantly white institutions (PWIs) predominantly serves as a call for young Black males to assume leadership roles, given that men’s football and basketball generate most of the revenue at most collegiate institutions, thereby subsidizing all other men’s and women’s sports. By stating the facts, I am not attempting to exacerbate the ongoing gender conflict that perpetually divides the Black community. I merely wish to emphasize that young Black men continue to possess a vital role in leading within our community. Are our young Black men currently adequately prepared and capable of assuming leadership positions? My response is in the affirmative.

I must acknowledge that, in my lifetime, I served as a proud member of the NAACP. However, regrettably, not all relationships are built to last. The NAACP’s appeal to young Black student-athletes can be likened to politicians’ visits to our community every two to four years without establishing a formal relationship. Often, they remain largely unfamiliar and absent from the daily lives of our younger generations, possibly due to the black flight phenomenon and the diminished importance of community membership. While I understand the NAACP’s invitation to channel our athletic talents elsewhere, their statement inadvertently diminishes us to mere athletes, overshadowing our intellectual capacities. The NAACP might have better served its purpose by advocating for a boycott of all PWIs in the states where voter redistricting is underway, involving students, student-athletes, professors, and Black professional athletes alike.

If we aspire for our young Black sons and daughters to embody selflessness and perfection in their sacrifice for the Black community, it is imperative that older Black adults assume leadership roles and demonstrate to youth what genuine sacrifice and commitment to the community entail, both in words and in action. Adults should never ask or direct youth away from their dreams without first exhausting all possibilities with them for how we can help them achieve them.

Affirmation:

I pursue my dreams with urgency and purpose, knowing my actions today shape my community tomorrow.

Quote to live by:
“Dream big—but don’t let your dreams linger too long, because your sacrifice will always outlive your vision.”

Affirmation:

I am not just talented, I am intellect, leadership, and legacy in motion.

Quote to live by:
“I am more than what I produce; I am a thinker, a leader, and a force capable of changing the direction of my community.”

Affirmation:

I honor my community by staying connected, giving back, and lifting others as I rise.

Quote to live by:
“Success means nothing if it costs connection, never forget, he ain’t heavy, he is my brother.”

Staff Writer; Jamie Seals

May also connect with this brother on Twitter; mychocolatemind.

Also drop an email at; JSeals@ThyBlackMan.com.

I watched that happen again recently with a homeless man sprawled on the concrete at a bus stop in the Crenshaw district of Los Angeles. As is often the case, he was clad in tattered clothes, and all his earthly possessions, a blanket, and some cans and other food items were stacked up nearby. I called the L.A. mayors emergency crisis team and implored them to send aid to the man.

For years, the common and quasi accepted locale for sidewalk living without tents or shelter for men and women encamped on sidewalks was Skid Row and other parts of Downtown L.A.. That’s changed. Men and women encamped on sidewalks are now seemingly everywhere in the city. The result- cities are now in a frantic rush to remove sidewalk tents, shelters, and entire encampment from public space.

Los Angeles is among those cities. It and other cities have the law and public pressure to act on their side. In June 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court virtually gave cities and counties the license to sweep the streets of homeless men and women without providing places for them to live or services to keep them off the streets. The court ruled that cities could fine sidewalk sleepers and at the same time were under no obligation to find housing for them.

That also gave city officials the license to ban clusters of street encampments without providing any housing placement substitute.

The Supreme Court went even further and rejected the notion that it was “cruel and unusual punishment” to punish people for sleeping on the sidewalks. The reaction from homeless support advocates was swift and angry.

Many business owners, residents, and commuters have stepped up demands that Los Angeles officials act. They repeatedly cite tents and other makeshift shelters as health and safety menaces. The Los Angeles sanitation department said it gets thousands of requests monthly to get rid of the tents and encampments.

Homeless rights advocate groups have pushed back. “We are seeing an increase in these laws at the state and local level that criminalize homelessness, and it’s really a misguided reaction to this homelessness crisis,” said Scout Katovich, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union. It has filed lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of sweeps and property seizures in a dozen cities including Los Angeles.

“These laws and these practices of enforcement do nothing to actually alleviate the crisis and instead they keep people in this vicious cycle of poverty,” she further noted.

The problem with the enforced removal of encampments and sidewalk tents is what to do with the occupants? In fact, the “where do they go “question has been the perennial question asked every time cities make periodic sweeps of homeless encampments. The sweeps amount to little more than rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. It is simply shifting them from one part of the city to another, maybe placing a few in temporary shelters, while leaving the rest right back where they started, plopped down on yet another sidewalk.

Though residents have mostly reacted with glances and shrugs, the growing number of those sidewalk dwellers present a clear and present safety, health and welfare hazard to nearby residents and business owners. They are more than an eyesore. They evoke fear and anxiety of the potential hazard their presence brings to residential neighborhoods.

That fear is heightened by the fact that the overwhelming majority of these men are African American. And they are for the most part young.

Many admittedly do have chronic mental and physical challenges, which are a major reason why they landed on the streets. That presents an even greater challenge for city and county officials trying to come up with a workable plan to remove them from the sidewalks but do so in a safe and humane way.

Los Angeles city officials have spent tens of millions of dollars on the removal of encampments. They have spent tens of millions more on building, renting, leasing temporary and transitional housing for the homeless. They have spent tens of millions more in ramping up drug, alcohol, and mental health treatment and counseling for homeless individuals. These are crucial and much needed ongoing measures to combat the homeless crisis in the city.

However, these measures fall flat in addressing the new norm of the men and women who make their homes on the bare sidewalk concrete.

L.A. city officials have not totally rushed head long to toss unhoused men and women back on the sidewalks—tentless. They have chosen not to criminalize those on the sidewalks. These individuals need help and support, not a jail cell. The goal must be to do everything possible to see that they get that help.

Written By Earl Ofari Hutchinson

One can find more info about Mr. Hutchinson over at the following site; TheHutchinson Report.

Also feel free to connect with him through twitter; http://twitter.com/earlhutchins

He is also an associate editor of New America Media. His forthcoming book is From King to Obama: Witness to a Turbulent History (Middle Passage Press).

What we know is true is Donald Trump,  US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, US Secretary of Treasury Scott Bessent and US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth with a retinue of tech, finance and business people such as  Elon Mush (Tesla, SpaceX) Tim Cook CEO of Apple, Jensen Huang CEO of Nvidia, Larry Fink CEO Blackrock, Kelly Orterg CEO of Boeing, David Solomon CEO of Goldman Sachs, Sanja Mehrotra CEO of Micron, Jane Fraser CEO of CITI, Ryan McInerney CEO of VISA, Michael Micbach CEO of Mastercard, Dina Powell McCormick President of META his son Eric Trump and several others accompanied Trump anticipating making progress in accomplishing several key goals and objectives.

Their aims were to:

1) resolve the issue of rare earth minerals. China maintains a virtual global monopoly on these minerals which are crucial to modern life providing the main components for smart devices, military and high-tech items. Unless there were some super-secret meetings and negotiations of the Deep State kind going on behind the scenes, there was no mention of rare earth agreements or MOUs following the two-day meetings. It was almost as if they went to China and came away empty handed, unless of course there were secret meetings going on behind the scenes, (wink wink).

2) Open China to additional foreign investment, gain access to China for US banking, finance and tech markets and partnerships.  Open dialogue about Chinses electric vehicles, come to an agreement on fentanyl and its components,

3)Secure help from Xi Jinping to resolve the Strait of Hormuz impasse and assistance for some type of settlement of the Iran War.

But there were no announcements about China opening up its internal markets to US banking, financial or tech companies nor was anything mentioned about Chinese companies partnering with any of these CEOs on joint ventures, collaborations or strategic partnerships! Nothing whatsoever. Trump did say China promised to invest several billions of dollars into US projects and ventures but the Chinese were strangely silent on this matter. Trump said the Chinese promised to purchase more US soybeans and agricultural products as well as two hundred US Boeing commercial aircraft. Yet no formal agreements or contracts were signed!

I hate to be a Debbie Downer but, the US is no longer China’s main supplier of soybeans. China went elsewhere after Trump imposed outrageous tariffs on China during his first administration. China refusing to be intimidated or browbeat went to Brazil and Argentina instead, for their soybeans. This forced Trump to regroup, rethink his trade and currency policies and beg the Chinese to start buying US soybeans again!

None of this is new news. All of this information is on the public record in the public domain. Nothing was announced about President Xi Jinping agreeing to help Trump settle the Strait of Hormuz deadlock nor resolving the fallout from the US/Israel aggression against Iran. So, what if anything came out of this trip? It appears Xi Jinping is not about to interrupt Trump or bail him out while he is shooting himself in the foot.

What Xi Jinping did do was remind Trump about the Thucydides Trap which was a not-so-subtle rebuke. In effect Xi Jinping was telling Trump China is a rising power on par with the US which is a declining power; as the world clearly sees following Trump’s disastrous war of choice against Iran. Jinping also warned Trump not to interfere or publicly reference China’s internal politics and Xi was adamant about China’s red line against US interference with Taiwan reunification.  Trump got spanked in front of the whole world! But both men did agree to meet later in the year in the US.

In a face-saving spin, Trump claimed China agreed to purchase more US crude oil but again, no formal agreements were signed! But even if this was true, what most Westerners don’t know is, China has diversified its energy sources, China uses more coal, it has a massive oil reserve and it is building numerous nuclear-powered plants.

China is never going to allow itself to be dependent upon any other nation especially not a Western one! As far as trade goes, China wants to trade with the whole world not just the West. Here’s the kicker, the US only accounts for about 8.8% of China’s total global trade, that’s less than 10% and Trump’s foolish tariffs and trade wars have jeopardized that! The Southeast Asian Nations block accounts for 16.5% and the EU totals 13.1% both are larger portions of China’s trading partnerships although not in total dollars compared to the US.

Trump’s trip unless there were substantive secret meetings on the side was a nothing burger. In the final analysis it was more spin (BS) than substance.

Written by Junious Ricardo Stanton

When I was being considered for a job in the Reagan White House, I had to reveal every cent I had ever earned from any job or investment (which was simple since I had no money), and everyone else who worked for the administration had to do the same. It was a pain, but I was happy to do it, knowing that I would be serving in an honest government. High-ranking officials like cabinet secretaries with substantial portfolios put their assets in blind trusts during their public service. Blind, meaning the principal had no control. And though the ethics rules do not apply to the president, past presidents put their funds (with the exception of U.S. treasuries and mutual funds) into blind trusts anyway for appearances’ sake. The reason is obvious, but since this is a time of foggy ethics, let’s spell it out: Government officials are in a position to steer policy and award government contracts in ways that benefit or harm private interests. By requiring blind trusts, we minimize the chance that a decision-maker is swayed by the opportunity for private gain. (Though opportunities to affect outcomes by individual members of Congress are more limited, Congress needs to reform its own practices on this score.)

Trump, naturally, defied this ethical norm outright. This week, we learned from NOTUS that he went on a share-buying spree in the first months of this year, purchasing stock in companies that were about to get lucrative contracts. On Jan. 6, Trump purchased between $500,000 and $1,000,000 (financial disclosure forms require a range, not exact figures) in Nvidia stock. A week later, the Commerce Department announced permission for Nvidia to sell chips to China. He also purchased stock in AMD, another AI chip maker, right before they too were granted the right to sell in China. Also in January, Trump purchased between $65,000 and $150,000 in shares of Palantir, days before that company secured a billion-dollar contract to provide services to the Department of Homeland Security. Trump bought shares in Axon, a taser manufacturing firm. Coincidentally, Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced a plan to spend $200 million over five years on new tasers.

A White House spokesman helpfully explained that “President Trump only acts in the best interests of the American public … President Trump’s assets are in a trust managed by his children. There are no conflicts of interest.” That is the definition of a conflict of interest. What do they take us for?

Remember the special forces guy who was caught betting on Polymarket before Nicolas Maduro’s capture? This dishonest master sergeant participated in the operation and apparently used his inside knowledge to bet $30,000 on the timing of Maduro’s fall, netting more than $400,000 because, lucky guess, he was right.

There were other suspicious bets placed on Polymarket just before major developments in the Iran war. Almost inexplicably well-timed bets were placed just before Israel’s attack on Iran, before the United States started bombing, before a ceasefire was announced and at other key moments. Many accounts, some opened only hours before, made tidy sums. Who else in the Trump government may have made these bets? Did the president, ever grasping for lucre, take advantage of this ultimate form of insider trading?

It’s worth noting that there was no “swamp,” at least not in the way Trump claimed. There are huge inefficiencies in the federal government, along with redundancies, waste and overspending. But the main issue was never that the “swamp” denizens were siphoning off government funds for their private yachts. The chief corruption in Washington before Trump came along consisted of elected representatives unwilling to make tradeoffs between tax cuts and spending, thus creating ballooning deficits.

Old-school corruption was comparatively small-scale. In 2015, the United States scored 76 (where 100 is clean and zero is totally corrupt) on Transparency International’s ratings, the 16th-least-corrupt nation in the world. Today, we are ranked 64th and dropping. There was corruption — no nation is without it — but Trump’s constant howls about America being a “third world nation” were not remotely true before he came to dominate our politics. Yet under his maladministration, we are making rapid progress in that direction. He crows that the United States is “respected” in the world now. Does he really believe that people respect kleptocracies? We are becoming more loathed than respected.

The American Bar Association offered a partial list of the pay-to-play transactions in the first few months of Trump’s second term. Coinbase contributed $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund, while its major investors, Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, together contributed another $6 million to the MAGA Inc. super PAC. In the early days of Trump’s second term, the SEC dropped an enforcement action against Coinbase. Other crypto players — Ripple, Robinhood and Gemini — apparently seeing how the game is played, also made large contributions to Trump’s super PAC and were also rewarded by the SEC dropping charges. Ditto for Justin Sun, who purchased $75 million worth of World Liberty Financial tokens (putting money directly in the Trump family’s pockets). Not only were criminal charges against Sun dropped, but he was invited to a private White House dinner for top purchasers of WLF tokens.

When it’s too late to drop charges, pardons are for sale. A woman who donated $3.5 million to the MAGA super PAC was able to get a pardon for her father, who faced charges of bribing Puerto Rico’s governor. A healthcare executive who attended a $1 million-a-plate fundraising dinner with Trump secured a pardon for her son, Paul Walczak, a nursing home owner who pleaded guilty to tax crimes. The pardon freed him from prison and also from the obligation to pay $4.4 million in restitution to his victims. There are many others: Changpeng Zhao, Trevor Milton, Joseph Schwartz, Lawrence Duran and David Gentile — thieves, fraudsters and swindlers all. A whole cottage industry has sprung up consisting of grifters taking fees for getting pardon petitions to Trump’s desk. You may not have thought of Rod Blagojevich lately, but having received a pardon from Trump himself, he’s now in the business of lobbying Trump on others’ behalf. So are Keith Schiller, George Sorial, Jack Burkman, Jacob Wohl and Ches McDowell.

Which brings us to the putrid “deal” that is apparently in the works to “settle” Trump’s lawsuits against the U.S. government. Recall that Trump brought a suit against the Department of Justice for the Mar-a-Lago search and the Russia investigation, and against the IRS for the unauthorized release of his tax returns (which wasn’t the IRS’s doing). His original ludicrous ask in the IRS suit was $10 billion (two-thirds of the IRS’s annual budget) along with $230 million for the other inconveniences. As the judge in the IRS case observed, Trump was sitting on both sides of the table, and thus there is no actual case, just an undisguised attempt to loot taxpayers. She asked for briefs on this question due by May 20. Rushing to beat the deadline in which sanity might prevail, the administration announced that a deal is in the works to avoid the court altogether and hand Trump $1.7 billion in taxpayer dollars for a gargantuan slush fund. Under the terms of this deal with himself, Trump would agree to drop the $10 billion and $230 million suits in exchange for $1.7 billion to compensate anyone who claims to have been injured by what Trump considers the Biden administration’s weaponization of the Justice Department.

It’s just as grotesque as you imagine. Trump is reaching his grubby hands into the largest till in the world, the U.S. Treasury. Along with an apology from the IRS, the arrangement would also guarantee that the IRS would never audit any member of the Trump family ever again. As The Bulwark’s Andrew Egger described it:

“The members of the commission overseeing disbursements (of the $1.7 billion) would serve at Trump’s pleasure, and he’d be able to remove them without cause at any time. The commission would have no obligation to disclose its decision-making process for how to disburse the money.

“And then, of course, there’s the unbearable rottenness of the purported settlement fund itself: the shamelessness of Trump keeping a backdoor way to profit from it personally, the utter absence of any oversight controls that would even allow him to plausibly argue that the money will be spent justly, and the completely topsy-turvy travesty of creating a slush fund for January 6ers and other MAGA villains in the first place.”

The Trump administration already gifted $5 million to the family of Ashli Babbit. Michael Flynn and Carter Page received $1.25 million each. We can see where this is headed. The Jan. 6 rioters, all pardoned, will now cash in, among others. Will it include those who’ve subsequently been convicted of other offenses including possession of child porn? That will probably depend upon whether they can make large purchases of Trump cryptocurrency.

The damage to our civic culture is incalculable. Nations with high levels of corruption suffer from a suite of pathologies from crime to inequality to low growth to unhappiness. And what can’t be measured but is no less real is the deep sense of shame that living in a corrupt country engenders. The achievement of a well-run, honest government is something to be cherished. As we approach the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, we are witnessing the trashing of a carefully constructed, hard-won system. The United Arab Emirates is no less corrupt than the United States. So is Uruguay. And that was before the latest orgy of plunder.

Each and every act of theft and corruption is bad in itself and damaging to our national project. It’s something else, too — an offense against those who desperately need government help.

If Trump succeeds in looting $1.7 billion from the Treasury, consider what that money could have been spent on. In round numbers, that cash could:

— Fund vaccines for children in developing countries for 33 years.

— Fund PEPFAR for two and a half years.

— Restore funding cut by DOGE for medical research on deadly pathogens like hantavirus and Ebola.

— Restore Medicaid funds that were cut in the Big Beautiful Bill.

— Pay the salaries of 7,000 immigration judges for a year.

— Employ 40,000 home health care aids for one year.

— Buy replacements for some of the munitions Trump burned through in the feckless Iran war.

— Purchase 2,600 Stinger missiles or about 6,000 Javelin anti-tank missiles.

— Fund research to expand the use of mRNA vaccines (cut by RFK Jr.) which have shown promise against RSV, HIV and flu (in addition to the aforementioned Ebola).

— Fund studies or demonstration projects on mitigating the effects of climate change.

— Invest in biotechnology and defenses against future pandemics.

The list of worthy projects that would benefit the public, not just the kleptocrat in the White House, is nearly endless.

Trump’s claim that he would “drain the swamp” is a cosmic joke. His administration is an ongoing shakedown of the American people.

Written by Mona Charen

Official website; http://twitter.com/monacharenEPPC

If the president wants to help himself and his party ahead of this year’s midterm elections, the most effective thing he can do is eliminate the tariffs. The evidence in favor of this move is overwhelming, and it comes from his own tenure.

As an obligatory reminder, tariffs are levied on American importers who pass the costs on to American businesses and consumers. Those insisting tariffs are “paid by foreigners” must now dispute not just history but the present.

The Cato Institute’s Scott Lincicome and colleagues reviewed a year of data from Trump’s tariff regime and found that “the higher costs from tariffs passed through to prices paid by Americans at a rate as high as 96 percent.”

Using daily price data from major U.S. retailers, economists from Harvard Business School found that the 2025 tariffs raised consumer prices almost immediately, with imported goods rising roughly twice as fast as domestic ones and adding nearly a full percentage point to the overall Consumer Price Index by October 2025.

This finding isn’t unique. My colleague Jack Salmon examined 56 quantitative studies produced over the last 30 years and found 19 showing tariffs raise prices and zero showing tariffs lower prices.

This reality has a real impact on Americans. The Tax Foundation put the cost of the tariffs at roughly $1,000 per American household in 2025, with another $700 coming in 2026 from the Section 232 and Section 122 levies, which were left unaffected by Supreme Court’s recent rebuke. It shows up in grocery bills, appliance prices and clothing costs — routine purchases for working-class households.

The damage goes beyond prices. Salmon’s literature review finds 25 studies documenting negative effects of tariffs on productivity and economic output. None of those studies show positive effects. Across Chile, India, Indonesia, Brazil, Hungary, Canada and the United States, the pattern is the same: Lower tariffs raise productivity; higher tariffs reduce it.

What about revenue? The Tax Foundation projects $956 billion from the remaining tariffs over a decade, falling to $697 billion once the economic damage, including the uncertainty and foreign retaliation, is counted. That’s a sign of a bad policy.

To be fair, some supporters of Trump’s tariffs were honest about their impact. Isn’t that the whole point? Raise prices and hurt the businesses reliant on foreign goods and inputs to help domestic manufacturers. We’re told that conceding to the working-class white voters who demand protectionism is worth the price.

The political results are now available for inspection too. A new CBS News poll shows that Trump’s approval is underwater with most voters, including white voters without college degrees, among whom his approval rating fell from 68% last year to 46% today. This is unsurprising. The supposed beneficiaries of economic nationalism are instead its most exposed victims.

It didn’t help that manufacturing employment, which was promised to boom, kept declining throughout 2025. And economic growth decelerated despite the major investment and energy around AI.

The tariffs also produced a final insult: They energized the very Washington insiders the president promised to defeat when he first entered the White House in 2017. When tariffs are numerous, arbitrary and have an exemption process attached, every affected business must hire a lobbyist to survive.

Data from Lincicome and his coauthors show that “the number of registered clients for tariff-related lobbying increased by 218 percent in 2025 with respect to the previous year. … Meanwhile, trade-related lobbying expenditures reached more than $900 million in the first half of 2025 alone and were 28 percent higher than in the first half of 2024.”

All that lobbying pays off, as evidenced by how the global tariffs have become riddled with exemptions. It’s also good for lawyers. More than 2,000 importers have now rightfully filed suits (an expensive process) seeking refunds on over $160 billion in tariffs the Supreme Court ruled were illegally collected.

The swamp was not drained. It was fed. Small businesses, who usually do not have the luck or resources to access the right people in the administration, pay the full tariff while their larger competitors petition for relief.

The president still has time to change course. The economic case for dropping the tariffs is airtight. The political case is increasingly urgent.

Written by Veronique de Rugy

Official website; http://twitter.com/veroderugy

The weaponization of compassion has launched a de facto competition of who can be thought to be the most “compassionate” (or, at least, not thought to be uncompassionate). The result of this arms race has been chaos, destruction and depravity.

It’s easy to lose sight of just how often this pernicious dynamic takes place, so it’s worthwhile to point out a few of the disastrous policies that were promoted (and, in some cases, continue to be promoted) as being “compassionate” and to call them out for the societally corrosive lies they are.

1. It wasn’t “compassionate” to close our mental hospitals. The impulse was understandable; plenty of those facilities were substandard. But the results were catastrophic. Until fairly recently in this country’s history, the “homeless” population consisted largely of small numbers of unattached males who drifted from place to place seeking work. But since the 1980s, the homeless population of the U.S. has exploded. Nearly three-quarters of a million people are homeless, and the number jumped 18% from 2023 to 2024. California has 187,000 of the country’s homeless; more than 70,000 are in Los Angeles County alone.

2. It isn’t “compassionate” (nor is it respect for “individual autonomy” or “dignity”) to leave the homeless to live as they do. Homeless encampments are hotbeds of filth (including human urine and feces), crime and diseases like leptospirosis, typhus, hepatitis, tuberculosis and even plague. Across the country, cities are dealing with the economic impact of shuttered stores and declining downtowns attributable to the presence of ever-growing numbers of homeless.

3. It isn’t “compassionate” to hand out needles or create places where addicts can use drugs. Leaving aside what should be an obvious argument that we shouldn’t be encouraging, much less facilitating, the use of dangerous drugs, two-thirds of America’s homeless have a diagnosed mental health illness. A third have a serious substance abuse problem. Approximately half suffer with both. Open-air drug use exacerbates those problems and creates others.

4. It isn’t “compassionate” (or “equitable,” for that matter) to eliminate teaching math, giving grades, standardized tests, advanced academic programs for gifted students or graduation requirements, or to lower entrance qualifications for college and graduate school. It punishes high-achieving students and sends the message to lower-performing students that they aren’t capable of meeting basic standards. That, then, undermines public confidence in the graduates of our high schools, colleges and professional schools.

5. It wasn’t “compassionate” to stop enforcing our immigration laws.

6. It isn’t “compassionate” to allow violent criminals back on the streets.

7. It isn’t “compassionate” to subject children and teenagers with gender dysphoria (and other emotional disorders) to permanent alteration of their bodies with medical and surgical interventions before they are old enough to understand the implications of those decisions.

None of these decisions have had beneficial impacts on their intended populations. Worse still, they are all deeply destructive to other individuals, groups and society at large. Everyone affected should be able to protest the consequences of these failed policies without getting smeared with the false accusation that they “lack compassion.”

Another reason to eliminate “compassion” as a basis for public policy — which we’re seeing daily with painful clarity — is that these policies end up being vehicles for massive fraud. Anyone can set up a 501c3 nonprofit, claim to be working for a charitable purpose, and deceive donors into giving money that does little but line the CEOs’ pockets. And when government grants are involved, there is little oversight (take Minnesota, for example) and more incentive for grift, bribery and payback in the form of pouring money into the campaign coffers of politicians who hold the grants’ pursestrings. What we end up with is a situation where neither the nonprofits nor the politicians have an incentive to solve the underlying problems, since they’re getting rich from their continued existence.

Why has the United States become a nation where “compassion” trumps all other considerations?

Scholars like Helen Andrews argue that the emphasis on “compassion” over logic and methodical analysis is a function of what she calls “the great feminization.” Women, Andrews claims, are hardwired to be maternal, and thus more likely to be persuaded by something that tugs at their empathy than by that which appeals to their reason.

I’m not so sure. First, women have functioning brains, and they are certainly intellectually capable of dispassionate analysis. Second, an awful lot of men seem to be just as hornswoggled by appeals to their “compassion” as are misguided women. And third, I don’t understand how it is “feminine” or “maternal” to witness the collapse of huge sections of our cities into third-world slums; or to know that drugs are pouring into the country, children are being trafficked for sex, and young women are being raped and murdered because the borders are unenforced; or to see people stabbed to death on public transportation, pushed in front of trains or run down by crazed lunatics at Christmas parades because criminals aren’t incarcerated; or to watch as multiple generations of disadvantaged minorities struggle because of schools with weak disciplinary and academic standards; or to want children and emotionally troubled teens to be chemically castrated or surgically sterilized before they’re old enough to drive a car, drink a beer or understand the concepts of sexual satisfaction, fathering, giving birth to or nursing a child, none of which they will experience if they are “transitioned.”

None of this is “compassionate.” It’s objectively irrational. It’s wantonly destructive. It is the deliberate disregard of monumental, systemic, catastrophic failure, the evidence of which is irrefutable. There’s something seriously wrong with anyone who continues to defend these policies and programs, and I’m not persuaded that it’s a matter of chromosomal biology or evolution.

I don’t profess to have a complete solution. But a good start would be to demand meaningful metrics when we discuss proposed (and existing) policies and programs. What matters isn’t “compassion”; it’s consequences.

Written by Laura Hollis

Official website; http://law.nd.edu/directory/laura-hollis/