{"id":164,"date":"2018-04-16T21:44:56","date_gmt":"2018-04-16T21:44:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/doncarbonexpress.com\/truebreadfellowship\/?page_id=164"},"modified":"2018-04-16T21:45:03","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T21:45:03","slug":"zerohedge","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/doncarbonexpress.com\/truebreadfellowship\/zerohedge\/","title":{"rendered":"ZEROHEDGE"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div class=\"su-feed\"><ul><li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/political\/california-iowa-4-other-states-hold-primaries-key-races-watch\" title=\"Early Returns Show Surprises In California As Other States Wrap Up\n\n            Update (0030ET):\u00a0Voters in six states went to the polls today for key primaries. While many races followed expectations, California delivered notable early drama with slow-counting mail ballots still to come.\n\nCalifornia Governor (Top-Two Primary)\n\nThe race to replace term-limited Gov. Gavin Newsom remains the biggest story. In a crowded nonpartisan jungle primary, early returns (approx. 45-50% counted) show:\n\nSteve Hilton (R) leading at ~26.7%\n\tXavier Becerra (D) close behind at ~25.8%\n\tTom Steyer (D) trailing at ~19.6%\nChad Bianco (R) is further back. If trends hold, Hilton and Becerra are positioned to advance to November - setting up a potentially competitive general election in deep-blue California. Mail ballots could still shift the order.\n\n\n\n\nPolymarket: Will Xavier Becerra advance? (Yes 93% \u00b7 No 7%) View on Polymarket\u00a0\nLos Angeles Mayoral Primary\n\n\nIncumbent Karen Bass (D) leads with ~36.5-38% (46%+ counted), followed by a strong surge from Spencer Pratt (R) at ~30%. Nithya Raman (D) trails at ~20%. Bass and Pratt are heavily favored to advance to the November runoff. Pratt\u2019s performance reflects voter frustration with homelessness, crime, and city governance.\n\n\n\n\nPre-election Polymarket: Will Karen Bass win the 2026 LA mayoral election? (Yes 68% \u00b7 No 33%) View on PolymarketIowa\n\nU.S. Senate (open seat): Rep. Ashley Hinson (R) won the GOP nomination decisively. State Rep. Josh Turek (D) won the Democratic nod. This sets up a key battleground race in November.\n\tGovernor (open): Early leads for Republican Zach Lahn in the crowded GOP field; Democrat Rob Sand unopposed.\nOther Notable Races\n\nMontana Senate (open): Kurt Alme (R) secured the GOP nomination.\n\tCalifornia\u2019s 11th Congressional District (replacing Nancy Pelosi): Scott Wiener (D) won with a strong lead.\n\tNew Jersey: Rebecca Bennett advanced in NJ-7; progressive Adam Hamawy won the open NJ-12.\nOverall Takeaway: A night of outsider energy and tight races, particularly in California. Full results may take days or weeks due to mail-in ballots. These outcomes will shape the November midterms.\n\n* * *\n\nAuthored by Joseph Lord via The Epoch Times\u00a0(emphasis ours),\n\nThe California gubernatorial and Los Angeles mayoral primaries are among the most closely watched races today.\nA voter fills out a ballot at a polling station in Des Moines, Iowa, on Nov. 6, 2018. Joshua Lott\/Getty Images\n\nVoters in six states will go to the polls today for a series of key races.\n\nThe biggest item of the night will be the litany of races in California, the nation&#039;s largest state. Others will be held in Iowa, Montana, New Mexico, New Jersey, and South Dakota.\n\nHere are the most important races to watch.\n\nCalifornia Governor\n\nThe race to replace outgoing Gov. Gavin Newsom is one of the most-watched in the nation.\n\nCalifornia&#039;s gubernatorial elections are designed to be nonpartisan. With about six candidates polling with at least 5 percent support, only the top two vote-getters will be on the general gubernatorial election ballot in November, even if both are of the same party.\n\nIn the final weeks leading into the primary, the election underwent a total shake-up when front-runner Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) left the race - and Congress - following multiple allegations of sexual harassment and sexual assault. Swalwell has denied the allegations.\n\nCurrently, the Democratic front-runners are former U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra and billionaire Tom Steyer. The two are polling close, although Becerra retains a slight advantage.\n\n\n\n\/\/--&gt;\n\n\/\/--&gt;\n\n\/\/--&gt;\n\n\nWill Xavier Becerra advance from the 2026 California Governor primary election?\nYes 93% \u00b7 No 7%View full market &amp; trade on Polymarket The main Republican candidates in the race are Steve Hilton, a British American TV show host and conservative commentator, and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco.\n\nPolling leaves it unclear whether Hilton or Steyer is favored for second place.\n\nLos Angeles Mayoral Primary\n\nResidents of Los Angeles will also vote in the nonpartisan mayoral primary.\n\nIncumbent Mayor Karen Bass is facing off against 10 other contenders. She is expected to win the top spot in the primary.\n\n\n\n\/\/--&gt;\n\n\/\/--&gt;\n\n\/\/--&gt;\n\n\nWill Karen Bass win the 2026 Los Angeles mayoral election?\nYes 68% \u00b7 No 33%View full market &amp; trade on Polymarket Meanwhile, the top Democratic contender for the second-place spot - member of the Los Angeles City Council Nithya Raman - is seeking to hold off a challenge from former reality TV star Spencer Pratt, running as a Republican, and make it to the general election.\n\nCalifornia&#039;s 22nd Congressional District\n\nIn California&#039;s 22nd Congressional District, Rep. David Valadao (R-Calif.) will face off in a nonpartisan primary with state Rep. Jasmeet Bains and Randy Villegas, both Democrats.\n\nValadao is expected to win a place in the general election, although his final opponent will be decided by the outcome on June 2.\n\n\n\n\/\/--&gt;\n\n\/\/--&gt;\n\n\/\/--&gt;\n\n\nWill David Valadao advance from the CA-22 Primary?\nYes 90% \u00b7 No 10%View full market &amp; trade on Polymarket Polling in the district is sparse. A single poll conducted at the beginning of May by Data for Progress, a left-leaning pollster, showed Valadao with 44 percent support, Villegas with 25 percent, and Bains with 21 percent.\n\nCalifornia&#039;s 48th Congressional District\n\nIn California&#039;s 48th Congressional District, a flurry of candidates have put their names into the ring.\n\nRepublican Jim Desmond leads in polls in the nonpartisan election, with fellow Republican Kevin O&#039;Neil coming in second in some polls. Marni von Wilpert and Ammar Campa-Najjar are the Democratic front-runners.\n\nThe seat was one of five redrawn to favor Democrats last year - but that advantage only holds if a Democrat wins the nonpartisan primary.\n\nCalifornia&#039;s 11th Congressional District\n\nIn California&#039;s 11th Congressional District, a slate of Democrats is competing to replace outgoing Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).\n\nMost polls show a lead for candidate Scott Wiener, a Democrat, while Pelosi has endorsed San Francisco Supervisor Connie Chan. Chan has come in second in some polls, and Wiener enters the primary as the clear front-runner.\n\n\n\n\/\/--&gt;\n\n\/\/--&gt;\n\n\/\/--&gt;\n\n\nWill Scott Wiener receive the most votes in the CA-11 primary?\nYes 99% \u00b7 No 1%View full market &amp; trade on Polymarket The two Republicans in the running - when they have made it into the polls at all - have pulled less than 5 percent support.\n\nIowa Senate\n\nAlthough Iowa has long been a lock for Republicans, it is among Democrats&#039; targets this year, as there are indications that the party could flip Senate seats previously considered safe. This year, Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) will not be seeking reelection, leaving the seat open.\n\nPolls indicate that Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-Iowa) is favored for the Republican nomination over her rival, state Sen. Jim Carlin.\n\n\n\n\/\/--&gt;\n\n\/\/--&gt;\n\n\/\/--&gt;\n\n\nWill the Republicans win the Iowa Senate race in 2026?\nYes 62% \u00b7 No 38%View full market &amp; trade on Polymarket The polls leave it unclear whom the Democrats will nominate between candidates Josh Turek and Zach Wahls. Turek has led in more recent polling.\n\n\n\n\/\/--&gt;\n\n\/\/--&gt;\n\n\/\/--&gt;\n\n\nWill Josh Turek be the Democratic nominee for Senate in Iowa?\nYes 93% \u00b7 No 7%View full market &amp; trade on Polymarket Iowa Governor\n\nIowa&#039;s gubernatorial race is open after Gov. Kim Reynolds, a Republican, announced that she would not seek reelection in 2026.\n\nSeveral Republicans are contending for the nomination to replace her. The polls show that candidates Rep. Randy Feenstra (R-Iowa), Zach Lahn, and Adam Steen are leading in that race. On the Democratic side, only state Auditor Rob Sand is running.\n\nA general election poll conducted in April by Echelon Insights, a Republican-aligned pollster, found that Sand had 51 percent support against Feenstra, who was polling at 39 percent.\n\nMontana Senate\n\nIn Montana, the last-minute exit of Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.) from the race left Republican challengers little opportunity to register against former U.S. Attorney Kurt Alme, who registered for the GOP nomination just as Daines exited the race.\n\nOn the Democratic side, no polls have been conducted, leaving it unclear who is in the lead for the nomination.\n\nAs recently as 2024, the state was represented by Sen. Jon Tester, a Democrat. Some general election polls have shown 44 percent support for a generic Democrat.\n\nNew Mexico Governor\n\nIn New Mexico, Democrat and former U.S. Secretary of the Interior Debra Haaland is highly favored to win the Democratic nomination in the blue-leaning state, which some Republican strategists had eyed as a potential target in 2024.\n\nOn the Republican side, Gregg Hull narrowly leads Doug Turner in polls for the nomination.\n\nNew Jersey&#039;s 7th Congressional District\n\nOne of the two top targets for Democrats in New Jersey is the seat of Rep. Tom Kean (R-N.J.).\n\nRebecca Bennett, a former Navy helicopter pilot, is favored to win the nomination, leading in most polls. Her closest rival is Brian Varela.\n\nNew Jersey&#039;s 12th Congressional District\n\nIn New Jersey&#039;s 12th Congressional District, incumbent Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-N.J.) is retiring, leaving open a safely Democratic seat in a district where the primary essentially is the general election.\n\nThe race has exposed ideological rifts in the Democratic Party.\n\nLeading the progressive side in the race is Dr. Adam Hamawy, a Princeton trauma surgeon and Army veteran with endorsements from progressive heavyweights such as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).\n\nThe main other contenders for the Democratic nomination include East Brunswick Mayor Brad Cohen, state Rep. Verlina Reynolds-Jackson, and Somerset County Commissioner Shanel Robinson.\n\n      Tyler Durden\nWed, 06\/03\/2026 - 00:29\n\">Early Returns Show Surprises In California As Other States Wrap Up<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/geopolitical\/barbarian-mindset-how-leftists-and-third-world-invaders-think-alike\" title=\"Barbarian Mindset: How Leftists And Third-World Invaders Think Alike\n\n            Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us\n\nThe fall of the Roman Empire is often presented as symbolic of the slow but steady decline of the western world today, and it\u2019s true, this comparison might be more accurate than many people realize. The disastrous collapse which escalated over the course of the 5th century was driven by economic crisis, a split of the empire into eastern and western halves, government reliance on foreign mercenaries for security, uncontrolled mass immigration, and ultimately, barbarian invasion.\n\nWhen the western empire failed, Rome was plundered and centuries of human innovation and progress were lost in the flames. It\u2019s an element that modern historians often gloss over \u2013 Each time the west has fallen, incredible knowledge that took generations to discover was dispersed into the ether. Each time, the human species was set back for centuries.\n\nMany lives were sacrificed and ancient cities were destroyed, but the loss of time is perhaps the greatest tragedy of all. It took another 400 years for the western world to reconstitute under Christian rule, but barbarians attacked again in the form of Muslim hordes in the 9th century. It\u2019s almost as if the grasping, predatory hands of useless ravagers are always lurking in the shadows, waiting for the west to rise from the ashes.\n\n\n\nHistory is, of course, nuanced and complex, but some patterns are patently obvious and the attempts to sack Rome, Europe and greater Christendom repeated regularly over the course of a thousand years. Western civilization endures, succeeds, creates wonders, creates wealth and advances human invention. Then, the third world invades in an effort to strip whatever wealth was amassed.\n\nThere have been other civilizations, or attempts at civilizations beyond the west which suffered similar fates. The fall of the Bronze Age empires is a perfect example; a calamity of human history very similar to the fall of Rome, if not more mysterious. There was the collapse of China\u2019s Han Dynasty in the 3rd century due to corruption, rebellion and foreign invasion by Mongolian tribes. The collapse of the Gupta Empire in India, triggered by Hunnic barbarian incursions, etc.\n\nHowever, only the west survived in the long run and only the west is still targeted for demolition in the modern era. I would break this pattern down into two distinct forms of human endeavor or states of existence\u2026\n\nThe Tribes Of Order: People who build, invent, create, persevere, maintain and seek to survive through merit, self discipline and industry. (Ayn Rand might refer to this group as the \u201cproducers\u201d).\n\nThe Tribes Of Chaos (Barbarians):  People who survive through brutality, piracy and deceit; those who live by stealing from the tribes of order. They wait until wealth and abundance is accumulated by others and then strip it away when given an opportunity.\n\nWhy do barbarians do this? Well, because it\u2019s far easier to smash and steal than it is to plan and innovate. Some might argue that the mentality is genetic.\u00a0 Some would argue it\u2019s a product of culture. Others assert it\u2019s a product of low IQ or low capacity for creative thinking. I\u2019m inclined to believe that it\u2019s a mix of all of these things.\n\nHow The West First Solved The Barbarian Problem \n\nI believe there is a distinct and identifiable moment in history when the barbarian plunder of the west went into decline, and that was the First Christian Crusade in 1096 AD.\n\nThis was, in a way, the act of self defense through \u201ccolonization\u201d. That is to say, the pattern of pillaging stops whenever the west takes forceful action to colonize the third world. In terms of the crusades, instead of allowing the barbarians to loiter on the doorstep of Europe and take territory whenever they pleased, the Holy Crusades sought to push them back and defeat them on their home turf.\n\nCenturies later after the Muslims were mostly contained, European exploration led to colonies across Asia and Africa, civilizing cultures with the barbarian mindset. The insatiable desire to hijack the accomplishments of the Tribes of Order was countered by simply GIVING these people western accomplishments\u2026and taking by away their ability to project power.\n\nWhen the west expanded to take over management of the third world, the invasions ceased and the third world was introduced to the wealth of modernization without having to steal it. One could easily argue that western colonization was a net positive for the world. It\u2019s not a coincidence that far-left ideologues and communists demonize it so frequently; they do this because they know colonization works. They use it themselves.\n\nThe Return Of The Barbarian Hordes\n\nIt is entirely predictable that, as the west embraces liberalism and socialism, the third world invasions have returned. We are the only culture that feels \u201cshame\u201d over our historic successes, so much so that many people are convinced we deserve punishment for the colonies of the past.\n\nThe biggest factor in this program of shame is the globalist agenda to erase national borders and identity through multiculturalism. However, I think it\u2019s important to understand that the globalists are not forcing third worlders to immigrate to the west; these people WANT to come here and the globalists are simply opening the gates to let them in.\n\nWhy do they travel from countries where their culture is dominant? Why come to Europe or the US where their values are not aligned, their languages do not function and their tribal thinking is incongruent? Again, you can take the man out of barbarism, but you can\u2019t take the barbarism out of the man. They come here because they see an opportunity to plunder the west after centuries of being thwarted. It\u2019s a behavior that\u2019s hard-wired into their gray matter.\n\nI outlined this dynamic in my article \u201cThe Third World Is Forever Chasing The White Man\u201d, in which I examined the habit of third world populations to constantly scratch for a piece of the first world instead of improving their own conditions at home. I also touched on the habit of leftist minorities to appropriate western culture and pretend they built it first (How often, for example, has Somalian Democrat Ilhan Omar falsely claimed that America was built by Muslims?).\n\nThese people do not want to develop their own accomplishments, their own stories, their own discoveries \u2013 they want ours. It\u2019s the barbarian mindset.\n\nI am reminded of a fascinating discussion by African commentator Franck Zanu, who presented his theory on why he believes African societies will \u201cnever develop\u201d without the aid of western colonization. He noted that African languages have no word for \u201cmaintenance\u201d \u2013 The concept simply does not exist in their vernacular.\n\n\n\nIt\u2019s a deeply profound observation on the difference between the third-world and the west. The act of maintenance is a key element that defines the Tribes of Order. Without maintenance, no civilizational legacy can be constructed. Instead, human beings continue to clamor in the dirt, or wait around for someone else to build and maintain a system that they can latch onto and feed off of.\n\nThis problem is the underlying lesson in the documentary \u201cEmpire of Dust\u201d, in which Chinese engineers travel to Africa to build roads and infrastructure, only to be consistently thwarted by a lazy population that seeks only to get paid for doing as little as possible.\u00a0 In many cases, they sabotage their own construction efforts to drag out the process.\u00a0 As a culture, they see no value in working to build something of lasting importance, and the Chinese engineers are left bewildered.\n\nThe evidence is endless within the very African nations that were once colonized.\u00a0 Billions upon billions of dollars in infrastructure was handed over to them, and in countries like South Africa and Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia), they let it all rot instead of maintaining it. They don\u2019t understand the riches that follow an ordered nation, they think only in terms of wealth that can be looted in the midst of chaos.\n\nBut what does any of this have to do with the leftist movements plaguing the west today?\n\nCommunism\/Marxism Is Organized Chaos\n\nIt sounds contradictory, but the philosophy of communism is a form of \u201corganized chaos\u201d, or engineered chaos to achieve a particular agenda. I would attach globalism to this equation because globalism is, ultimately, a desire for a globally centralized form of communism that operates on similar mechanics.\n\nAnd who does this philosophy most appeal to in the west? Usually it\u2019s the aimless ideologues with little or no ability to survive in a world where merit and strength are valued (woke activists, feminists, DEI advocates, etc.). And, people who consider themselves the \u201chave-nots\u201d. Useful idiots and emotional spastics who have been convinced that all the failings of their miserable lives are the fault of a rigged system.\n\nThey\u2019re convinced that society has stolen achievements away from them, that the cards are stacked against them, that the shining city on the hill is laughing at them. If only the system was forced to be \u201cmore equitable\u201d, if only wealth was properly redistributed, they would be rich, famous and successful.\n\nSo, the political left taps into this narcissistic desire for unearned distinction. It tells people, for the good of humanity, they must burn everything to the ground to get what they want. They are barbarians in first-world clothing; born within the gates, but barbarians all the same.\n\nThis is where communists and third worlders seem to intersect. They are part of the same \u201cTribe of Chaos.\u201d This is why leftists are so desperate to open borders to mass immigration. This is why the policies of far-left Democrats seem to aid plunder by migrants (like Somalian scammers in Minnesota or California). This is why leftists seem to be obsessed with enabling the Islamic invasion of Europe.\n\nIt\u2019s all about chaos and the fleecing of societies that value order. The globalists are also members of the chaos tribe, but they think of themselves as straddling the line between. Their vision of a \u201cnew world order\u201d can only be achieved through the destruction of the old world, the erasure of the past, the rewriting of history and memory and morality. They are grotesque pillagers of time.\n\nIf they get their way, the barbarian mindset will become the norm. People of order and merit (the producers) will be perpetually enslaved to the whims of parasites. It will be a never-ending cycle of struggling industry followed by collapse, back to the dark ages but condensed down to a terrible science. We will work to build and build again while the hands of the horde rush in to knock it all down and pick the bones clean.\n\nWithout aggressive action to safeguard our own tribe, nothing we create will ever belong to us.\n\n      Tyler Durden\nTue, 06\/02\/2026 - 23:25\n\">Barbarian Mindset: How Leftists And Third-World Invaders Think Alike<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/markets\/how-china-remaking-its-vast-western-frontier\" title=\"How China Is Remaking Its Vast Western Frontier\n\n            China is undertaking a vast effort to reshape its western frontier, transforming Xinjiang and Tibet from remote borderlands into strategic hubs for industry, energy, tourism and trade,\u00a0according to a new lengthy report from Financial Times.\n\nUnder President Xi Jinping, Beijing is pouring investment into highways, railways, renewable energy projects, manufacturing bases and tourism infrastructure across a region that covers nearly a third of China\u2019s territory. Officials see the west not as a distant hinterland but as a frontline for economic growth, national security and connectivity with Eurasia.\nXinjiang\n\nThe strategy serves several goals. It aims to integrate Xinjiang and Tibet more deeply into China\u2019s economy, strengthen border security, expand access to critical resources and energy, and make western China a more important link in global supply chains. Analysts say this could also reduce the effectiveness of future Western sanctions by increasing the regions\u2019 economic importance.\n\nThe transformation is most visible in Xinjiang. Tourism has surged, with record visitor numbers drawn to ski resorts, scenic villages and newly built infrastructure. International hotel chains are rapidly expanding in the region, while exports, manufacturing and state-backed investment continue to grow. For many Chinese visitors, Xinjiang is increasingly marketed as a safe and attractive destination rather than a politically sensitive region.\n\n\n\nYet the economic boom has not been accompanied by a rollback of state control. Human rights groups say the surveillance systems, security apparatus and policies that followed the mass detention of Uyghurs remain firmly in place. Critics argue Beijing is pairing economic incentives with continued social control and cultural assimilation.\n\n\n\nThe FT writes that\u00a0Tibet is undergoing a similar transformation. Massive hydropower projects, transmission networks and mineral extraction plans are positioning the region as a future energy hub. The flagship Yarlung Tsangpo dam could become the world\u2019s largest hydropower project, supplying electricity far beyond Tibet. Supporters see these developments as engines of growth; critics warn of environmental damage, pressure on local communities and risks to downstream countries.\n\n\n\nAt the same time, rights groups and researchers say policies promoting Mandarin-language education, migration and \u201cethnic integration\u201d are accelerating the assimilation of Tibetans and Uyghurs into mainstream Han Chinese society. Beijing rejects such criticism, saying it protects minority cultures while promoting development and national unity.\n\nTaken together, the projects signal a long-term effort to remake China\u2019s west. Roads, railways, factories, power plants and tourist attractions are reshaping the region\u2019s economy and its role within China. But the transformation is occurring alongside an extensive security system, raising questions about whether development is being used not only to modernise the frontier but also to cement Beijing\u2019s political control over it.\n\n      Tyler Durden\nTue, 06\/02\/2026 - 23:00\n\">How China Is Remaking Its Vast Western Frontier<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/markets\/cliffwater-private-credit-fund-gates-investors-second-straight-quarter-after-redemption\" title=\"Cliffwater Private Credit Fund Gates Investors For Second Straight Quarter After Redemption Requests Soar To 17%\n\n            The market may be in full-blown face-ripping bubble mode, and software stocks are now gripped in by a category 5 gamma squeeze hurricane, but not even that is helping the ongoing debacle that is private credit.\n\nThe flagship private credit fund of Cliffwater, a fund which has was slammed by redemption requests in the past quarter as the private credit crisis came to a fore, has again gated investors by capping redemptions at 5% in the second quarter after investors looked to pull more than three times that amount, or 17% of shares, Bloomberg reported, in a sign of relentless pressure on the $1.8 trillion market.\n\nThe $31 billion Cliffwater Corporate Lending Fund informed shareholders Tuesday that they\u2019d get about one-third of their requested money back, according to a letter seen by Bloomberg. The prior quarter, investors got back around half of the roughly 14% they asked for, with the vehicle choosing to cap withdrawals at 7%.\n\n\n\nShortly after Cliffwater\u2019s decision in March, S&amp;P Global Ratings lowered its outlook on the interval fund to negative from stable, warning that the 5% redemption threshold is \u201can important guardrail.\u201d\n\n\u201cOur repurchase program is intentionally designed to provide shareholders with periodic liquidity that aligns with the fund\u2019s long-term investment strategy and its underlying assets,\u201d Cliffwater CEI Stephen Nesbitt said in the letter to investors. And by periodic liquidity he meant far less liquidity than investors hoped to recovery.\u00a0\n\nThe firm previously said that the fund, which has delivered a roughly 9.4% annualized net return since it was formed in 2019, has enough liquidity to meet 5% redemptions for more than a year without selling a position or an asset. After a second straight quarter of gating that may be tested very soon.\n\nCliffwater has become something of an unlikely giant in the private credit market by raising money at a rapid clip and deploying it across both direct loans and funds that do such lending themselves.\u00a0Other non-traded business development companies are set to report the results of their second-quarter tender offers in the coming weeks. In the previous period, some like Blackstone\u2019s BCRED went to extraordinary lengths to let investors cash out (all for nothing as the looming redemption flood will overrun even the giant fund), while other funds at Apollo Global, BlackRock and Blue Owl enforced their 5% caps.\n\n      Tyler Durden\nTue, 06\/02\/2026 - 22:44\n\">Cliffwater Private Credit Fund Gates Investors For Second Straight Quarter After Redemption Requests Soar To 17%<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/geopolitical\/feds-seize-over-ton-cocaine-massive-us-mexico-drug-smuggling-tunnel\" title=\"Feds Seize Over A Ton Of Cocaine At Massive US-Mexico Drug-Smuggling Tunnel\n\n            Authored by Jill McLaughlin via The Epoch Times,\n\nAuthorities charged four suspects on June 1 with felony drug distribution violations after finding a hidden tunnel used by drug runners inside a retail store in San Diego County that led into Tijuana, Mexico.\n\nInvestigators also seized more than a ton of cocaine worth about $45 million in connection with the subterranean tunnel, according to the U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office and the U.S. Homeland Security\u2019s Tunnel Task Force in charge of the operation.\n\n\n\u201cFor these defendants, it wasn\u2019t a light at the end of the tunnel. It was lights and sirens,\u201d said U.S. Attorney Adam Gordon.\n\n\nFederal agents with the tunnel task force started surveilling a Buy 4 Less warehouse on the 2400 block of Roll Drive in San Diego in late December 2025 after they became alerted to suspicious activity at the location, according to prosecutors.\n\nA group of seven or eight \u201cemployees\u201d at the Buy 4 Less showed up regularly at the store, but very few customers were seen coming in and out of the location, investigators said.\n\nThe supposed employees were seen taking multiple suitcases out of the store and into vehicles or walking the suitcases, which appeared to be empty, across the border into Mexico, according to the court complaint.\n\nInvestigators say that on May 29, a man loaded three large, heavy items into a white van that left the warehouse and parked on a street near a mechanic shop. Another man on a bicycle was seen looking around and into parked cars, allegedly conducting counter-surveillance for the van, investigators said.\n\nFederal agents watched as people removed three deep freezers from the first van and placed them into the bed of another truck, then load the deep freezers with packages, according to court documents.\n\nAfter the vans were loaded onto a truck, the truck left and parked a short distance away. Another man took the truck keys and drove away.\n\nSan Diego County Sheriff\u2019s deputies with a K9 police dog stopped the truck and were alerted to the presence of a controlled substance by the canine officer.\n\nAfter the traffic stop, the agents watching the warehouse saw two other men take heavy boxes out of the Buy 4 Less and load them onto a second truck, which was then driven away. Another sheriff\u2019s deputy with a police canine stopped the second truck.\n\nThe traffic stops led federal agents to discover 851 packages of cocaine with a combined weight of more than 1 ton inside the two trucks and van.\n\n\n\nThe subterranean passageway, stretching from Tijuana, Mexico, to the purported retail store near the Otay Mesa Port of Entry known as \u201cBuy 4 Less,\u201d shown in this photo, is estimated to be about 1,933 feet long, 55 feet deep, and 4.5 feet in height, with a ventilation system and electricity. U.S. Department of Justice\n\nThe drug seizures also allowed federal investigators to obtain a signed judicial warrant to search the Buy 4 Less, where they found the exit point of the subterranean tunnel hidden beneath the floor of a storage room inside the store, according to the U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office in San Diego.\n\nThe tunnel is about 55 feet deep and extends about 1,064 feet from the Buy 4 Less to the U.S.\u2013Mexico border. Agents estimate it continues another 800 feet to another entry point in Mexico.\n\n\n\nThe tunnel was accessed using a sophisticated hydraulic lift and was equipped with ventilation and electricity, and was up to 4.5 feet tall in some areas, according to investigators.\n\n\n\nTrucks coming from Mexico enter the United States at an inspection station after crossing the border in Otay Mesa, Calif., on April 1, 2025. Sandy Huffaker\/AFP via Getty Images\n\nThe drug bust and tunnel discovery are expected to impact the cartel\u2019s drug pipeline into California.\n\n\u201cThis investigation and seizure represent a significant blow to the Jalisco New Generation Cartel,\u201d said Acting Special Agent in Charge for Homeland Security Investigations in San Diego Kevin Murphy.\n\nCharged in the case were Gregorio Epifanio Hernandez Lopez, 29, of San Diego; Brandon Escalante Sandoval, 26, of Mexico; Jose Jimenez, 32, of San Diego; and Antonio Cortez, 18, of Mexico.\n\nHernandez Lopez is charged with conspiracy to use a cross-border tunnel and conspiracy to import controlled substances. All defendants are charged with conspiracy to distribute controlled substances.\n\nThe U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office in San Diego said the tunnel is one of 99 discovered in the Southern District of California since 1993 and the first since 2022.\n\n      Tyler Durden\nTue, 06\/02\/2026 - 22:35\n\">Feds Seize Over A Ton Of Cocaine At Massive US-Mexico Drug-Smuggling Tunnel<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/political\/whistleblower-leaks-stanfords-private-foreign-funding-records-exposing-ccp-linked-donors\" title=\"Whistleblower Leaks Stanford&#039;s Private Foreign-Funding Records, Exposing CCP-Linked Donors\n\n            Some of America&#039;s top universities have become soft targets for foreign espionage and influence operations, creating potential gateways for adversarial powers to access sensitive research, elite policy networks, and federally funded innovation pipelines.\n\nThe latest report from The Stanford Review should be viewed as yet another warning about the urgent need to protect academic institutions from foreign funding channels, obscure overseas donor networks, and national security risks within the higher education bubble.\n\n\n\nThe independent, student-run newspaper at Stanford University reports that a whistleblower has come forward with &quot;non-public foreign funding disclosures of Stanford University&quot; that, for the first time, reveal the names of Chinese state-backed entities and individuals funding the left-leaning university.\n\n\nINVESTIGATION: A whistleblower has leaked Stanford&#039;s private foreign-funding records to the Review, revealing millions in funding from Chinese state-linked entities and CCP donors. pic.twitter.com\/RWQkaxvAft\n\u2014 The Stanford Review (@StanfordReview) June 1, 2026\nAccording to the report, Stanford University accepted millions of dollars from Chinese state-linked firms, political elites, and entities tied to Beijing&#039;s political warfare and influence operations. This startling revelation is based entirely on disclosures the whistleblower provided to the student news organization.\n\nThe report continued:\n\n\nChen Yuan served as Vice Chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People&#039;s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) from 2013 to 2018. He is the oldest son of former Vice Premier Chen Yun. Before chairing CAIFC, he served as president of the state-owned China Development Bank from 1998 to 2013, turning it into one of the world&#039;s largest policy lenders. Hoover also houses the diaries of Mao Zedong\u2019s former secretary, Li Rui. The diaries contain commentary on senior CCP leaders, including Chen Yun and his family.\n\nChen Yuan\u2019s sister, Chen Weili (\u9648\u4f1f\u529b), spent two years at Stanford as a visiting scholar earlier in her career. Chen Yuan&#039;s son, Xiaoxin Chen (\u9648\u6653\u6b23), attended Stanford and donated $1,020,000 to the university in 2024. Members of the Chen family appear in Stanford records both as students and donors.\n\nStanford declined to provide additional information. Responding on behalf of External Relations and the Office of Development, a university representative said it is Stanford&#039;s longstanding practice not to disclose donor names or gift details without the donor&#039;s authorization. The representative said Stanford conducts rigorous due diligence on all gifts, with an additional layer of scrutiny for international ones.\n\nA restricted gift of this kind works as a research contract. The funds go to a named Hoover researcher or project rather than to the university unconditionally. The disclosure appears in filings made under Section 117 of the Higher Education Act.\n\nThe money was routed through the San Francisco law firm Adler &amp; Colvin. No other reported donation in the disclosures was structured this way. Every other donor listed a home or company address. Routing a foreign gift through a legal intermediary can make it difficult to verify the donor&#039;s true identity, as it obscures the funds&#039; true source.\n\nThe Hoover Institution shapes U.S. geopolitical discourse and participates in national research security work, including the congressionally authorized SECURE programs. Its scholars have led research on Beijing&#039;s global influence campaigns, including the program on China&#039;s Global Sharp Power (now called &quot;US, China, and the World&quot;), which examines how the CCP projects political influence through academic partnerships and financial engagement abroad. The SECURE program, which oversees $67 million in taxpayer funds, has faced growing scrutiny from Washington lately. The House Select Committee on the CCP is pressing the National Science Foundation to pause the program and review the University of Washington and Texas A&amp;M after finding that they have been collaborating with Chinese military-linked entities.\n\nStanford works with the Department of Defense, the Intelligence Community, and federally funded research programs. The Hoover Institution participates in national research security initiatives, including the SECURE program and the NSF-funded SECURE Analytics program. At the same time, Stanford takes millions of dollars from Chinese state-linked companies and elites connected to the United Front Work Department, the CCP body that co-opts and influences groups outside the Party. U.S. government reports tie these networks to the CCP&#039;s influence apparatus.\n\n\nMillions of dollars in gifts and research contracts have flowed from Chinese companies and political entities tied to Beijing&#039;s state and military-industrial system to Stanford:\n\nMillions from Chinese State-Linked Entities\n\n\n\tBOE Technology Group provided $254,000 in contracts in 2019 for research on high-conductivity stretchable electrode arrays. BOE is a Chinese state-subsidized manufacturer that the House Select Committee on the CCP says was founded in 1993 as a military and defense supplier and operates as a subcontractor for the PLA. In 2026, a federal jury found that BOE had infringed U.S. patents.\n\t\n\t\n\tHuawei Technologies provided $250,000 in contracts and gifts from 2019 to 2020, after the U.S. Bureau of Industry and Security placed it on the Entity List. The purpose was not specified.\n\t\n\t\n\tState Grid Corporation of China provided $1.5 million in contracts and gifts in 2019 to fund fellowships for graduate and postdoctoral scholars from China conducting energy research.\n\t\n\t\n\tThe Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) awarded $1.1 million in contracts in 2018 to a Stanford principal investigator for the Ali CMB Polarization Telescope (AliCPT-1), the first stage of a Sino-U.S. joint project led by CAS&#039;s Institute of High Energy Physics. U.S. participants include Stanford and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. The federally run National Institute of Standards and Technology designed and fabricated the telescope&#039;s superconducting detector arrays, which Stanford integrated into the receiver before the components were shipped to Tibet.\n\t\n\t\n\tChina National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) provided $380,000 in contracts from 2023 to 2026 for a Stanford principal investigator studying cement integrity for long-term hydrogen storage.\n\t\n\t\n\tChina National Technical Import &amp; Export Corporation provided $619,000 in contracts in 2022. The purpose was not specified.\n\t\n\t\n\tThe Ma Huateng Foundation provided $5.45 million in contracts in 2019. The purpose was not specified.\n\t\n\t\n\tJingdong Group (JD.com) provided $3.9 million in contracts and gifts from 2018 to 2021. The purpose was not specified.\n\t\n\t\n\tDowson Tong (\u6c64\u9053\u751f), president of Tencent&#039;s Cloud and Smart Industries Group, gave $800,000 from 2024 to 2025 to support a faculty member&#039;s research in the School of Engineering and the Hong Kong\/Stanford University Charitable Trust.\n\t\n\t\n\tTencent Charity Foundation Limited awarded $441,000 in contracts and gifts in 2016 to support Professor Leskovec&#039;s work on the diffusion of information.\n\t\n\t\n\tGuangdong Qitian Institute awarded $4.75 million in contracts from 2019 to 2023 to a Stanford principal investigator developing a curriculum to support the launch of QiTian School.\n\t\n\t\n\tMidea Group provided $680,000 in contracts in 2024. The purpose was not specified.\n\t\n\t\n\tWeichai Power provided $1 million in contracts in 2018 for executive education lectures at Stanford&#039;s Graduate School of Business.\n\t\n\t\n\tThe Beijing Institute of Collaborative Innovation (BICI) provided $984,000 in contracts from 2020 to 2021. The purpose was not specified. The Beijing Municipal Government established BICI.\n\t\nGifts from CCP-Connected Political Elites\n\n\n\tWilliam Ding, CEO of NetEase, gave $25.1 million from 2020 to 2021. Ding served as a Representative of the 11th Guangdong Provincial People&#039;s Congress and sits on the 13th CPPCC.\n\t\n\t\n\tDiana Chen, CEO of Pioneer Group Holdings, gave $6.2 million in 2023. Chen has served on the Beijing Committee of the 11th, 12th, and 13th CPPCC and is an Executive Member of the China Overseas Friendship Association (COFA), which is subordinate to the United Front Work Department of the CCP.\n\t\n\t\n\tC. C. Tung and Harriet W. Tung gave $3 million from 2020 to 2024. C. C. Tung (Tung Chee-chen) is the Governor of the China-United States Exchange Foundation (CUSEF), supervised by the Chinese People&#039;s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries (CPAFFC). In July 2022, the U.S. National Counterintelligence and Security Center warned state and local leaders that the CPAFFC and the United Front Work Department may exploit sister-city agreements to advance Beijing&#039;s interests. A Jamestown Foundation analysis characterized CUSEF as a vehicle for United Front &quot;lobbying laundering.&quot;\n\t\nThe Stanford Review noted:\n\n\nStanford reports foreign gifts and contracts as required by federal law, though it does not always disclose the source of the funds.\n\nWhat the disclosures show is a university that studies Chinese influence operations while accepting money from the people who run them.\n\nWithout a transparency mechanism for foreign gifts and contracts, the public has no way to know which researchers are funded by whom, or to what end.\n\n\nPerhaps the millions of dollars from Chinese state-linked companies and elites connected to Beijing help explain why Stanford has become a haven for the radical left:\n\n\nAmerican Communist Party spotted canvassing at Stanford. pic.twitter.com\/UxzUGarK4P\n\u2014 The Stanford Review (@StanfordReview) January 11, 2026\n\nWe\u2019ve got an update from the Stanford hunger strikers, who are back and charging in with full-blown moral superiority. One leads off with, \u201cAs a Muslim, specifically, I have a responsibility to stand up against injustice,\u201d and it only gets more sanctimonious from there.\nThey\u2019re\u2026 pic.twitter.com\/CjpmzXmkg7\n\u2014 Stu Smith (@thestustustudio) May 15, 2025\n\n\ud83d\udea8 Professor David Palumbo Liu, Stanford University, co-founder of &#039;Campus Anti-Fascist Network.&#039;\n&quot;When Zionists say they don&#039;t feel safe on campus, I&#039;ve come to see that as they no longer feel immune to criticism of Israel. Get used to it.&quot;\nBONUS: Refuses to condemn Antifa. pic.twitter.com\/PiVP5iMfOn\n\u2014 NizNellie3 (@NizNellie3) June 12, 2025\nSpy networks at Stanford?\u00a0\n\n\nMeet @ElsaJohnson, an American undergraduate junior at Stanford University who faced transnational repression (as well as her family!) from the Chinese Communist Party including online and physical surveillance on campus.\nOur universities have become soft targets for foreign\u2026 pic.twitter.com\/pOc5GuJrND\n\u2014 Rep. Elise Stefanik (@RepStefanik) March 26, 2026\n\nChinese students pose a unique threat to American universities. In August, we hosted an event on how to prevent academic espionage on campus. Listen to these Stanford students describe how the Chinese Communist Party exploits Chinese students studying abroad to collect\u2026 pic.twitter.com\/Wrn2YSWdQC\n\u2014 Heritage Foundation (@Heritage) November 11, 2025\nMeanwhile, foreign adversaries plowed $800 million into universities in 2024 (data via think tank American for Public Trust).\u00a0\n\n\n\nTens of billions of dollars from overseas have flowed into universities over the decades.\u00a0\n\n\n\nThe foreign-funding money trail may help explain why many universities have become fertile ground for Marxist radicalization, anti-capitalist ideology, and increasingly hostile views toward America\u2019s political and economic system.\n\nFrom a national security perspective, the concern here is not just about money flowing into classrooms, but about whether this foreign-linked funding is radicalizing the future generation. Short answer: yes.\u00a0\n\n      Tyler Durden\nTue, 06\/02\/2026 - 22:10\n\">Whistleblower Leaks Stanford&#039;s Private Foreign-Funding Records, Exposing CCP-Linked Donors<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/technology\/value-didnt-arrive-bain-finds-cost-savings-ai-are-falling-far-short-projections\" title=\"&quot;The Value Didn&#039;t Arrive&quot;: Bain Finds Cost-Savings From AI Are Falling Far Short Of Projections\n\n            Now that attention within the AI revolution has one again firmly turned toward the cost-benefit equation (i..e., ROI) of tokens (see &quot;From Singularity To Tokenomics: The AI Narrative Just Hit A Serious Snag&quot;)\u00a0in particular, and the trillions behind the AI spending rollout in general, and we say once again because every few months we get some iteration of the following report from Goldman published almost two years ago today...\n\n\n\n... we have more bad news: according to a global survey by Bain, cost savings from automation are broadly falling short of projections.\u00a0Which means that those expecting big savings from their investments in artificial intelligence, which is most companies, will be disappointed.\u00a0\n\nThe missed targets \u201cshould be making executives uncomfortable,\u201d since many of them are approving increased spending for artificial intelligence on the basis of expected savings, the consulting firm said in a report shared exclusively with Bloomberg News. The problem is there are little actual savings to speak of.\u00a0\n\nThe survey, completed in April, was based on responses from executives at 951 companies with more than $100 million in revenue, across nine sectors: retail, technology, advanced manufacturing, healthcare, consumer products, energy, financial services, telecom\/media\/entertainment and insurance.\n\nIt found that among companies measuring their AI cost savings, the largest share (40%) realized reductions of 10% or less. Predictably, most had been expecting to see far more meaningful improvement, especially since they spent far more than that on the new technology.\u00a0\n\n\n\nHere\u2019s the part that Bain found the most troubling: 44% of large companies that are funding their next wave of AI spending are basing those investments on the last round of savings - savings that haven\u2019t yet materialized.\u00a0\n\n\u201cThe prior wave underdelivered. The savings pool is smaller than assumed,\u201d Bain warned. \u201cAnd the investment case for the current wave was sized against projections rather than actuals.\u201d Kinda like the bubble in AI forward earnings: based on projections - which as any intern can tell you can flip on a dime - rather than actuals.\u00a0\n\n\u201cSelf-funding the next wave from past returns sounds like discipline. In reality, it is a circular bet with a structural leak,\u201d the firm cautioned, and concluded that\u00a0&quot;The technology worked. The value didn\u2019t arrive.&quot;\n\nWhether driven by hope or FOMO or a blend of both, the AI boom is exposing divides between promise and reality. An MIT research report last year showed that 95% of corporate AI pilots fall flat and\u00a0concluded that the \u201cprimary factor keeping organizations on the wrong side of the GenAI Divide is the learning gap, tools that don&#039;t learn, integrate poorly, or match workflows.\u201d\u00a0\n\nSo Bain\u2019s latest survey wasn\u2019t the first evidence of AI underdelivering so far on expectations. And it\u2019s not likely the last either.\n\nBut the Bain report isolated a different problem: \u201cDespite a decade of investments in data modernization running well into hundreds of billions of dollars globally, the No. 1 reason AI programs underperform is that companies cannot reliably get access to their own data,\u201d Bain said.\n\n\u201cCompanies that don\u2019t validate their reinvestment math against what automation actually returned, rather than what it was supposed to return, are compounding risk rather than managing it\u201d\u00a0the Bain report concluded, confirming what many have already sensed: virtually nobody has done effective ROI analysis amid a technological rollout that has already soaked up more than $1 trillion in capital, the return on which appears to be modest at best.\u00a0\n\nBain&#039;s prescription: Instead of waiting to structure all of their data to make it ingestible by AI, companies should start with what\u2019s available to feed into the models, and then use AI to help sort out how to structure the rest.\n\nMeanwhile, companies that were meeting their savings targets reported running into barriers with data structure and accessibility at even higher rates than those missing their targets, but they were less likely to report organizational challenges such as insufficient budgets or competing priorities.\n\nAdding fuel to the fire, a comparable report from Gartner found that over 40% of agentic AI projects will be canceled by the end of 2027, due to escalating costs, unclear business value or inadequate risk controls.\u00a0\n\n\u201cMost agentic AI projects right now are early stage experiments or proof of concepts that are mostly driven by hype and are often misapplied,\u201d said Anushree Verma, Senior Director Analyst, Gartner. \u201cThis can blind organizations to the real cost and complexity of deploying AI agents at scale, stalling projects from moving into production. They need to cut through the hype to make careful, strategic decisions about where and how they apply this emerging technology.\u201d\n\nAs such, Gartner recommends agentic AI only be pursued where it delivers clear value or ROI, noting that &quot;Integrating agents into legacy systems can be technically complex, often disrupting workflows and requiring costly modifications. In many cases, rethinking workflows with agentic AI from the ground up is the ideal path to successful implementation.&quot;\n\n\u201cTo get real value from agentic AI, organizations must focus on enterprise productivity, rather than just individual task augmentation,\u201d said Verma. \u201cThey can start by using AI agents when decisions are needed, automation for routine workflows and assistants for simple retrieval. It\u2019s about driving business value through cost, quality, speed and scale.\u201d\u00a0\n\nThe problem, it now appears, is that virtually nobody has done an actual ROI analysis. But with token costs now soaring...\n\n\n\n... the time has finally arrived, and as enterprises pull back in horror from the &quot;great promise&quot; of the agentic black hole, one can easily understand why both OpenAI and Anthropic, both of which are extrapolating their burst in agentic revenue in perpetuity, are rushing to go public before the market once again does the ROI math.\n\n      Tyler Durden\nTue, 06\/02\/2026 - 21:50\n\">&quot;The Value Didn&#039;t Arrive&quot;: Bain Finds Cost-Savings From AI Are Falling Far Short Of Projections<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/political\/do-we-really-believe-freedom\" title=\"Do We Really Believe In Freedom?\n\n            Authored by Mollie Engelhart via The Epoch Times,\n\nDo we really believe in freedom? \n\nOr do we only believe in freedom when it applies to people who agree with us?\n\nDo we trust people we fundamentally disagree with to remain free citizens? \n\nOr do we believe they must be controlled through laws, censorship, surveillance, or social pressure because they are too dangerous to be trusted with liberty?\n\nThat question sits at the center of what I am most interested in during this moment in history, the 250th year of the American experiment.\n\n\n\nBecause when I look around, it increasingly feels like both sides are drifting in the same direction while packaging it differently.\n\nEach side frames the other as dangerous, radical, and incapable of self-governance. People on the left often believe the right is racist, authoritarian, anti-science, and driven by extremism. Many people on the right believe the left is hostile to faith, hostile to biology, hostile to free speech, and willing to use institutions to socially engineer society.\n\nIf you genuinely believe those things about your political opponents, then freedom starts to feel dangerous.\n\nAnd once freedom feels dangerous, control starts to feel justified.\n\nFor me, the COVID-19 pandemic broke the illusion.\n\nI suddenly realized I could no longer clearly see what the political left still offered someone like me. I watched censorship expand rapidly. I watched speech become conditional. I watched people lose jobs and platforms for asking questions. I watched mandates imposed alongside liability protections and dissent treated as danger.\n\nI watched mandates destroy livelihoods.\n\nI watched small businesses close while major corporations consolidated wealth and power. I watched people who had spent decades building restaurants, gyms, farms, salons, and family businesses suddenly deemed \u201cnonessential.\u201d\n\nI wasn\u2019t reading about these policies. I was living under them.\n\nAt the same time, I was living in a state that increasingly felt hostile to the practical realities of my life. Everything started feeling harder. More permits. More taxes. More hoops. More social pressure. It felt harder to make a living, harder to farm, harder to build, harder to protect my family, and harder to simply live outside institutional approval.\n\nSocially, it also became harder to honestly say what I believed without risking professional or personal consequences.\n\nThis week, I heard arguments celebrating the fact that Democrats overwhelmingly voted against liability protections for chemical companies accused of poisoning Americans. Many people presented that as evidence that one side cares about ordinary people while the other protects corporations from accountability.\n\nBut that moral high ground becomes more complicated when you remember that many of those same political voices supported mandating a vaccine under an emergency authorization, with liability protections already built into the system. At the same time, dissent around those policies was aggressively silenced.\n\nAnd the reality is that we are still learning about the long-term effects, trade-offs, and consequences years later.\n\nThat is not a conspiracy theory.\n\nThat is simply how medicine and biology work. Scientific understanding evolves over time.\n\nThe George Floyd era accelerated another version of this same instinct.\n\nSuddenly, institutions across America were pressured to publicly demonstrate ideological \u201cpurity\u201d around race, gender, identity, and social justice. Diversity, equity, Indigenous representation, and LGBTQ+ inclusion became not just social values but institutional litmus tests in many professional environments.\n\nIn some cases, executives, journalists, professors, and employees lost their positions not because they had committed crimes or acts of hatred, but because they failed to meet ideological expectations during a moment of intense cultural pressure.\n\nAnd once again, people became afraid to say the wrong thing out loud.\n\nBut now I watch similar instincts emerge from the political right under different circumstances.\n\nThere are increasingly subjects people feel afraid to discuss openly because they fear losing jobs, reputations, platforms, or financial access. Concerns about extremism, hate speech, anti-Semitism, immigration, terrorism, and national security are all increasingly used to justify expanded speech restrictions and surveillance powers.\n\nAnd to be fair, some of those fears are real.\n\nBut history shows that societies rarely surrender freedom all at once. Usually, it happens piece by piece, each side justifying control because they believe the other side is simply too dangerous to remain fully free.\n\nMany people argued I should have stayed and fought politically where I was. But I didn\u2019t.\n\nI moved to Central Texas. Honestly, I needed to breathe a little.\n\nAnd yet, even now, as I watch the country continue to fracture, I try very hard not to become tribal myself. I try to zoom out and see the bigger picture.\n\nAt the core of it, I still believe in freedom.\n\nBut that realization leads me to an uncomfortable conclusion: If I truly believe in freedom, then I have to believe the people around me deserve freedom, too\u2014even when I deeply disagree with them.\n\nOtherwise, what I\u2019m actually asking for is not freedom, but power for my side and restriction for theirs.\n\nMaybe the real test of a free society is not whether we support freedom for people we agree with.\n\nMaybe the real test is whether we still support it when we don\u2019t agree with each other.\n\nViews expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.\n\n      Tyler Durden\nTue, 06\/02\/2026 - 21:45\n\">Do We Really Believe In Freedom?<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/political\/leftists-try-cancel-giants-quarterback-his-appearance-trump-rally\" title=\"Leftists Try To &quot;Cancel&quot; Giants Quarterback For His Appearance At Trump Rally\n\n            Leftists often claim that when someone of celebrity status appears with Donald Trump, it gives Trump &quot;legitimacy.&quot;\u00a0 This is the common rationale they use to justify their insane cult-like behavior - Their habit of using mobs of mindless activist zombies in order to frighten people with status away from openly identifying as conservative.\u00a0 The truth is, the political left is a paper tiger, an astroturf movement with no power, blustering with false bravado.\u00a0 \u00a0\n\nIn reality, celebrities do not give Trump legitimacy.\u00a0 His landslide election victory gives him legitimacy.\u00a0\u00a0\n\nThe radical left is a one trick pony, constantly repeating the same lies and exaggerations in the belief that if they lie long enough those lies will eventually become part of the popular zeitgeist.\u00a0 For example, a white sports star has a positive interaction with Trump and the progressive media conjures a narrative that he is alienating his minority team mates because shaking hands with Trump is the same as shaking hands with &quot;racism.&quot;\n\n\n\nThis tiresome strategy is being used once again on New York Giants quarterback Jaxson Dart after he appeared on stage with Trump at a New York political rally.\u00a0 Leftist journalists assert that Dart shaking hands with Trump is the same as shaking hands with Hitler.\u00a0 The engineered controversy led to a couple of the QB&#039;s teammates expressing discomfort over the event.\u00a0\n\nThankfully, the opinions of Dart&#039;s teammates are meaningless and he has every right to stand on stage with whoever he pleases.\u00a0 At present, it seems as though other Giants players understand that they don&#039;t have to align politically in order to play a football game.\u00a0\n\nLinebacker Abdul Carter (a Muslim) initially voiced discomfort with the optics of the event, according to multiple reports. Dart said he discussed the issue directly with Carter and brushed off any rumors about beef between the two players. \u00a0For those who don&#039;t like Dart&#039;s promotional appearances, frankly they can shut up and stew in their salty snowflake juices about it.\n\nThe media, though, is never going to shut up about it because their job is to create controversy out of thin air.\n\n\u00a0\u00a0\n\nSome outlets think Dart needs to be cancelled (as if the political left has any power to cancel anyone anymore).\u00a0 Sports media site SB Nation claims that Dart&#039;s freedom to meet publicly with Trump does not mean he has the freedom to avoid &quot;criticism&quot; (persecution).\u00a0 It&#039;s the same incessant woke argument of &quot;cancel culture vs consequence culture.&quot;\u00a0\n\nTheir version of events displays an insufferable seething; something that might have been more familiar back in 2020.\u00a0 One has to wonder, do these people ever grow out of their childish delusions of grandeur?\u00a0 And the answer is no, no they do not.\u00a0 But we still examine such left-wing crash-outs because they give us insight into the thought processes of progressive authoritarians.\u00a0 As SB Nation asserts:\n\n&quot;Freedom is pretty great, isn\u2019t it? Here in the United States we love to talk about freedom. The people who love to talk about it the most, who bathe in the idea of American exceptionalism, tend to be those who rarely (if ever) travel abroad. They love to speak about the world in platitudes, always through the lens that the God-loving USA is free, and nowhere else is.\u00a0 It\u2019s a refrain the majority of Western foreigners find hilarious. Folks in the U.K? They\u2019re free. Europe? Free as well. Australia, Canada, New Zealand \u2014 yeah, they\u2019re free. \n\nThere are 20 nations broadly recognized as having freedom of expression, with the USA ranking third behind Denmark and Norway. Sure, all those nations might not let you brandish a firearm in public or hurl hate speech at people \u2014 but denying that doesn\u2019t make them \u201cun-free.\u201d&quot;\n\nYes, it does make those countries unfree.\u00a0 If any viewpoints including the truth can be labeled &quot;hate speech&quot;, then the populace does not have free speech.\u00a0 If the government can put people in prison over jokes and online memes, then those people are not free.\u00a0 In the UK, around 12,000 people each year are arrested for using restricted speech online.\u00a0 Most of these arrests are for basic and factual criticisms relating to mass immigration and migrant crime.\u00a0\n\nThis is not freedom.\u00a0\u00a0\n\nThe US is the only country in the world with freedom of speech codified into constitutional law.\u00a0 It is the only country in the world where the government is restricted from making laws referencing public speech.\u00a0 SB Nation uses their false narrative of &quot;speech vs hate speech&quot; to launch into their attack on Jaxson Dart.\u00a0 This is how these people rationalize their totalitarian behavior.\u00a0 SB Nation continues:\n\n&quot;We\u2019re having this discussion on a sports website because sports are, and always have been, inherently political. It\u2019s impossible to divorce the two, as much as you might want them to be separate...&quot;\n\nFor the political left, everything is political.\u00a0 From movies to TV shows to commercials to video games to comic books to beauty pageants to sports.\u00a0 Leftist activists believe they should control the platforms of famous people and exploit those platforms for propaganda.\u00a0 When a celebrity steps out of line, the struggle session begins.\u00a0\n\nDuring the Biden Administration normal people could not escape left-wing politics because they injected their woke ideology into everything.\u00a0 Sports are not political in the slightest, but progressive movements have tried to force wokeness into them at every turn.\u00a0\n\n\n\n&quot;Dart made a choice by grinning on stage with the sitting president, one who happens to be historically unpopular, the most divisive in modern history, and largely reviled in both New York and New Jersey, the states the New York Giants represent. \n\nDart was absolutely free to introduce Trump, he\u2019s free to support him - and personally, I don\u2019t want to see him lose his job for exercising his freedom.\u00a0 That crucially doesn\u2019t mean Dart should be free of any criticism or allowed to dance away from his decision...&quot;\u00a0 \u00a0\n\nA classic woke deflection: &quot;We don&#039;t want to see this man cancelled, but he should be cancelled...&quot;\u00a0 At no point do the people at SBN explain why it&#039;s a bad thing for a Giants QB to meet with Donald Trump, other than leftists in New York &quot;don&#039;t like Trump&quot; and they think Trump is vaguely racist, even though they can&#039;t come up with a single legitimate example of racism.\u00a0\n\n&quot;Dart has spoken as well, but limited his remarks on the appearance to a pre-written statement and has not taken any questions. Even in an instance where a white athlete started the drama, it\u2019s become incumbent upon his black teammates to answer the lion\u2019s share of questions about their teammate. Unfortunately, this is par for the course...&quot;\n\nTrump&#039;s policies have nothing to do with Jaxson Dart.\u00a0 The man is not political and his views are not up for scrutiny simply because he likes a President that leftists hate.\u00a0 Jaxson Dart does not answer to The View.\u00a0 He does not answer to SB Nation.\u00a0 He does not have to answer to his teammates, and his teammates don&#039;t have to answer to the media.\u00a0\n\nAs much as the activist mob might want to make Dart pay for escaping the liberal plantation, none of them has the power to do anything to him.\u00a0\u00a0There comes a point when leftists need to accept that they are impotent.\u00a0 Their cancel culture heyday is long gone and the culture of sane normality is leaving them far behind.\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\n\n      Tyler Durden\nTue, 06\/02\/2026 - 21:20\n\">Leftists Try To &quot;Cancel&quot; Giants Quarterback For His Appearance At Trump Rally<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/medical\/high-dose-vitamin-d-lowers-diabetes-risk-some-people\" title=\"High-Dose Vitamin D Lowers Diabetes Risk In Some People\n\n            Authored by George Citroner via The Epoch Times,\n\nA specific variation in the vitamin D receptor gene may determine whether high-dose supplementation lowers diabetes risk in prediabetic people.\nIllustration by The Epoch Times, Shutterstock\n\nNearly 115 million Americans are on the road to diabetes. New research suggests an inexpensive, widely available supplement could slow that journey, but only for some of them.\n\nA genetic quirk in roughly 70 percent of prediabetic adults may determine whether high-dose vitamin D can meaningfully lower their risk of developing Type 2 diabetes, according to a study published in JAMA Network Open.\n\nThe research builds on the D2d trial. More than 2,000 U.S. adults living with prediabetes were randomized to either take 4,000 units of vitamin D or a placebo for up to 3.5 years. Initially, the trial did not find any significant changes across the participants. The recommended daily allowance is 600 to 800 units for average adults.\n\nHowever, when scientists analyzed participants&#039; DNA, a more nuanced picture emerged: those carrying specific variations - known as AC or CC - in a gene called ApaI responded strongly to supplementation. Over the 3.5 years of the study, participants carrying the AC or CC variant had a 19 percent lower chance of developing diabetes. The roughly 30 percent with the AA variation saw no benefit at all.\n\n&quot;Diabetes has so many serious complications that develop slowly over years,&quot; study lead researcher Bess Dawson-Hughes said in a statement. &quot;If we can delay the time a person spends living with diabetes, we can reduce some of those harmful side effects or lessen their severity.&quot;\n\nThe distinction matters because prediabetes - defined by higher-than-normal blood sugar that hasn&#039;t yet crossed into diabetes territory - affects more than two in five U.S. adults, and often progresses silently. Identifying who stands to benefit from vitamin D intervention could allow clinicians to target supplementation far more precisely than current blanket guidelines allow.\n\n1 Gene Affects How Your Body Responds To Vitamin D\n\nVitamin D in the blood is converted into its active form in the body. Vitamin D receptors are highly prevalent and present in many cells throughout the body.\n\nWhen vitamin D binds to cell receptors, it helps cells do what they are supposed to do. In pancreatic cells, vitamin D facilitates the release of insulin to regulate blood sugar.\n\nPeople with the AC and CC variations were responsive to vitamin D and, therefore, derived more benefits from supplementation.\n\n* * *\u00a0\n\n[ZH: We sell high-dose Vitamin D + K2, which massively helps with calcium absorption. Pick some up\u00a0here.]\n\n* * *\n\nThe findings could help develop a personalized approach to preventing Type 2 diabetes, senior author Anastassios Pittas, a professor at Tufts University School of Medicine, said in the statement. &quot;Part of what makes vitamin D appealing as a potential preventive tool is that it is inexpensive, widely available, and easy for people to take.&quot;\n\nHowever, researchers emphasized that more research is needed to determine which individuals might benefit from higher doses of vitamin D, with Dawson-Hughes noting that future testing could involve a simple, affordable genetic test to identify those most likely to benefit from supplementation.\n\nRecommendations For Vitamin D Levels\n\nThe first step is to have your 25-hydroxyvitamin D level tested, Diana Cusa, senior registered dietitian at Plainview Hospital in New York, and not involved in the study, told The Epoch Times.\n\n&quot;If your levels are found to be deficient, you may consider supplementation and review your dietary intake and sun exposure habits,&quot; she said.\n\nCusa recommended that those who choose supplements should take 600 to 800 international units (IU) daily of vitamin D3 for general health. &quot;Higher doses may be needed if a deficiency is noted or for any targeted prevention trials,&quot; she added.\n\nCurrent guidelines recommend 600 IU per day for people up to 70 years of age and 800 IU for those older than 70. Excessive vitamin D intake can be harmful and has been linked to increased risks of falls and fractures among older adults.\n\nSunlight, Cusa pointed out, is one of the most effective natural sources of vitamin D, and spending time outdoors can help boost your levels. &quot;However, it&#039;s important to be cautious - not to spend too long in the sun without proper sunscreen, as excessive exposure increases the risk of skin cancer,&quot; she cautioned.\n\nWhile you cannot overdose on vitamin D from sun exposure, she added, taking high-dose supplements can lead to toxicity, &quot;so supplementation should be approached carefully and ideally under medical guidance.&quot;\n\nNatural sources of vitamin D include fatty fish such as salmon, tuna, mackerel, sardines, and rainbow trout. Other good sources are beef liver, mushrooms, egg yolks, and cod liver oil. &quot;These foods, which are rich in protein and healthy fats, can help support stable blood glucose levels when consumed in moderation,&quot; Cusa said.\n\n      Tyler Durden\nTue, 06\/02\/2026 - 20:55\n\">High-Dose Vitamin D Lowers Diabetes Risk In Some People<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","footnotes":""},"tags":[],"class_list":["post-164","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/doncarbonexpress.com\/truebreadfellowship\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/164"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/doncarbonexpress.com\/truebreadfellowship\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/doncarbonexpress.com\/truebreadfellowship\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/doncarbonexpress.com\/truebreadfellowship\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/doncarbonexpress.com\/truebreadfellowship\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/doncarbonexpress.com\/truebreadfellowship\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/164\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":165,"href":"https:\/\/doncarbonexpress.com\/truebreadfellowship\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/164\/revisions\/165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/doncarbonexpress.com\/truebreadfellowship\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/doncarbonexpress.com\/truebreadfellowship\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}