Global Tobacco Use Is Steadily Declining

More than 60 years ago, on January 11, 1964, the Surgeon General of the U.S. Public Health Service, Luther L. Terry, M.D., published the first comprehensive report on the effects of smoking on health.

A committee was appointed to review and evaluate existing research on the topic in order to “reach some definitive conclusions on the relationship between smoking and health in general.”

And, as Statista's Felix Richter reports, while it may seem absurd from today’s point of view that the adverse effects of smoking were ever in doubt, 60 years ago the “tobacco-health controversy” was exactly that: a controversy.

After consulting more than 7,000 articles about the relationship between smoking and disease, the committee did come to a definite conclusion, however, making its report “Smoking and Health” a landmark study in the fight against smoking.

“On the basis of prolonged study and evaluation of many lines of converging evidence, the Committee makes the following judgement: Cigarette smoking is a health hazard of sufficient importance in the United States to warrant appropriate remedial action.”

 (Smoking and Health, 1964)

The report found that smoking is a cause of lung cancer and laryngeal cancer in men, a probable cause of lung cancer in women, the most important cause of chronic bronchitis and a contributing factor to cardiovascular diseases, resulting in a higher death rate from coronary artery disease among male cigarette smokers. After its release, it dominated newspaper headlines for days and was later ranked among the top news stories of 1964.

And while some tobacco control measures, such as warning labels on cigarette packs, were implemented promptly, cigarette sales in the U.S. continued to rise until the early 1980s, which is when they peaked at more than 630 billion cigarettes per year.

You will find more infographics at Statista

Over the past four decades, measures to discourage smoking and protect the public from second-hand smoke have become more and more strict and wide-ranging, resulting in falling tobacco use prevalence in the United States and large parts of the world. Looking at the U.S., the CDC considers the antismoking campaign a “public health success with few parallels in history”, as it achieved its goal despite “the addictive nature of tobacco and the powerful economic forces promoting its use.”

You will find more infographics at Statista

According to WHO estimates, 21.7 percent of all people aged 15 and older used tobacco in 2020, down from 32.7 percent at the turn of the millennium. As the cvhart above nicely illustrates, the tobacco use rate is highest among 45- to 54-year-olds at 27.5 percent, while it’s just 13.8 percent among 15- to 24-year-olds and 13.5 percent among those aged 85 and older.

Tyler Durden Mon, 06/02/2025 - 22:10

With Centuries-Old Ohio Paper Mill Set To Close, Locals Hope For A Miracle

Authored by Jeff Louderback via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Judy Sowers is the matriarch of a family that has seen generations work at “the Mead,” which is what the paper mill in Chillicothe is known as by many locals.

On May 8, Sowers gathered around a kitchen table with two of her daughters, her brother, and her son-in-law in a house across the street from the mill and its red-and-white striped tower.

Their conversation was on a topic that is on the minds of residents, business owners, and local officials in this community of 21,895 in the Appalachian foothills of southern Ohio.

Pixelle Specialty Solutions—and its parent, private equity firm H.I.G. Capital—announced on April 15 that it would be shutting down its paper mill in Chillicothe.

The company said the closure was necessary as part of its effort to “align its operation footprint with long-term business objectives.”

Jobs are on the line for around 830 workers. The company originally intended to shut down the mill in phases over the weeks that followed the announcement.

The decision was delayed after freshman Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) secured a commitment from H.I.G. Capital, which bought the mill in 2022, to pause the facility’s closure until the end of the year.

Chillicothe is known as the “Paper City.” The mill was opened in 1812.

Sowers’s grandparents worked at the Mead. So did John Angus Sr., Sowers’s father. Several other family members have spent their careers at the mill.

“If you didn’t work there, you had family work there, or you knew someone who worked there. Kids grow up hearing stories from generations of family members about working at the mill,” Sowers, 74, said.

John Angus Jr., Sowers’s brother, recalled his 42-year career that stretched from his early 20s to retirement age.

“It took me five years to get on there after I graduated from high school. At the time, it was a job many people wanted to have if they wanted to stay here,” John Angus Jr. told The Epoch Times.

“I worked shift work for almost 43 years, so I missed a lot of stuff with the family, but it put bread and butter on the table. It would be a shame to see it close.”

Chillicothe became the first capital of the Northwest Territory in 1800 and Ohio’s first capital in 1803.

Chillicothe’s downtown has been revitalized over the past decade and serves as the centerpiece of the city, featuring an ambience reminiscent of a Norman Rockwell painting.

Downtown Chillicothe, Ohio, on May 8, 2025. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

Restaurants, antique shops, coffeehouses, taverns, and Grandpa Joe’s Candy Shop occupy historic buildings reflecting an architecture from a bygone era.

With its downtown and attractions such as the amphitheater, where an outdoor drama about Shawnee Indian Chief Tecumseh still plays every summer, Chillicothe draws outside visitors.

Most of the businesses rely on local traffic, though, provided by major employers such as Adena Regional Medical Center, two state prisons, a VA Medical Center, a Kenworth semi-truck manufacturing plant, and the mill.

Trent Fannin and his wife opened Rost Coffee in downtown Chillicothe in 2016. The shop buzzes with traffic from mill workers, employees from downtown businesses, and high school and college students.

“Downtown Chillicothe has a lively pulse that downtowns in most towns across southern Ohio don’t have. It’s a destination, and hopefully, we don’t find out the impact of losing the mill. We’re concerned, but hopeful,” Fannin said.

Residents and local and state legislators are hopeful that Pixelle finds a way to keep the mill open long term or sell it to a company committed to making a long-term commitment to Chillicothe.

It was purchased by Col. Daniel Mead of Dayton, around 75 miles northwest of Chillicothe, in 1890. The Mead was one of the largest paper manufacturers in the country for more than 100 years.

In 2002, the Mead merged with Westvaco in a $3 billion stock transaction.

The headquarters of MeadWestvaco was relocated from Dayton to Connecticut, and then to Richmond, Virginia.

After learning about the plan to shutter the mill, Moreno wrote a letter to H.I.G. CEO Sami Mnaymneh, charging the executive with “selfish business decisions and corporate greed.”

“H.I.G. Capital is an investment firm with $69 billion of equity capital under management, riddled with Wall Street executives, including Mr. Mnaymneh, a billionaire five times over and one of the wealthiest people in the world,” Moreno wrote.

The firm’s business model is “to suck the proverbial blood out of companies it acquires until the companies declare bankruptcy, leaving the employees and communities it decimates behind,” Moreno said, pointing to the outcomes of some of the other transactions the private equity firm has made.

Read the rest here...

Tyler Durden Mon, 06/02/2025 - 21:45

With Centuries-Old Ohio Paper Mill Set To Close, Locals Hope For A Miracle

Authored by Jeff Louderback via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Judy Sowers is the matriarch of a family that has seen generations work at “the Mead,” which is what the paper mill in Chillicothe is known as by many locals.

On May 8, Sowers gathered around a kitchen table with two of her daughters, her brother, and her son-in-law in a house across the street from the mill and its red-and-white striped tower.

Their conversation was on a topic that is on the minds of residents, business owners, and local officials in this community of 21,895 in the Appalachian foothills of southern Ohio.

Pixelle Specialty Solutions—and its parent, private equity firm H.I.G. Capital—announced on April 15 that it would be shutting down its paper mill in Chillicothe.

The company said the closure was necessary as part of its effort to “align its operation footprint with long-term business objectives.”

Jobs are on the line for around 830 workers. The company originally intended to shut down the mill in phases over the weeks that followed the announcement.

The decision was delayed after freshman Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) secured a commitment from H.I.G. Capital, which bought the mill in 2022, to pause the facility’s closure until the end of the year.

Chillicothe is known as the “Paper City.” The mill was opened in 1812.

Sowers’s grandparents worked at the Mead. So did John Angus Sr., Sowers’s father. Several other family members have spent their careers at the mill.

“If you didn’t work there, you had family work there, or you knew someone who worked there. Kids grow up hearing stories from generations of family members about working at the mill,” Sowers, 74, said.

John Angus Jr., Sowers’s brother, recalled his 42-year career that stretched from his early 20s to retirement age.

“It took me five years to get on there after I graduated from high school. At the time, it was a job many people wanted to have if they wanted to stay here,” John Angus Jr. told The Epoch Times.

“I worked shift work for almost 43 years, so I missed a lot of stuff with the family, but it put bread and butter on the table. It would be a shame to see it close.”

Chillicothe became the first capital of the Northwest Territory in 1800 and Ohio’s first capital in 1803.

Chillicothe’s downtown has been revitalized over the past decade and serves as the centerpiece of the city, featuring an ambience reminiscent of a Norman Rockwell painting.

Downtown Chillicothe, Ohio, on May 8, 2025. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

Restaurants, antique shops, coffeehouses, taverns, and Grandpa Joe’s Candy Shop occupy historic buildings reflecting an architecture from a bygone era.

With its downtown and attractions such as the amphitheater, where an outdoor drama about Shawnee Indian Chief Tecumseh still plays every summer, Chillicothe draws outside visitors.

Most of the businesses rely on local traffic, though, provided by major employers such as Adena Regional Medical Center, two state prisons, a VA Medical Center, a Kenworth semi-truck manufacturing plant, and the mill.

Trent Fannin and his wife opened Rost Coffee in downtown Chillicothe in 2016. The shop buzzes with traffic from mill workers, employees from downtown businesses, and high school and college students.

“Downtown Chillicothe has a lively pulse that downtowns in most towns across southern Ohio don’t have. It’s a destination, and hopefully, we don’t find out the impact of losing the mill. We’re concerned, but hopeful,” Fannin said.

Residents and local and state legislators are hopeful that Pixelle finds a way to keep the mill open long term or sell it to a company committed to making a long-term commitment to Chillicothe.

It was purchased by Col. Daniel Mead of Dayton, around 75 miles northwest of Chillicothe, in 1890. The Mead was one of the largest paper manufacturers in the country for more than 100 years.

In 2002, the Mead merged with Westvaco in a $3 billion stock transaction.

The headquarters of MeadWestvaco was relocated from Dayton to Connecticut, and then to Richmond, Virginia.

After learning about the plan to shutter the mill, Moreno wrote a letter to H.I.G. CEO Sami Mnaymneh, charging the executive with “selfish business decisions and corporate greed.”

“H.I.G. Capital is an investment firm with $69 billion of equity capital under management, riddled with Wall Street executives, including Mr. Mnaymneh, a billionaire five times over and one of the wealthiest people in the world,” Moreno wrote.

The firm’s business model is “to suck the proverbial blood out of companies it acquires until the companies declare bankruptcy, leaving the employees and communities it decimates behind,” Moreno said, pointing to the outcomes of some of the other transactions the private equity firm has made.

Read the rest here...

Tyler Durden Mon, 06/02/2025 - 21:45

With Centuries-Old Ohio Paper Mill Set To Close, Locals Hope For A Miracle

Authored by Jeff Louderback via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Judy Sowers is the matriarch of a family that has seen generations work at “the Mead,” which is what the paper mill in Chillicothe is known as by many locals.

On May 8, Sowers gathered around a kitchen table with two of her daughters, her brother, and her son-in-law in a house across the street from the mill and its red-and-white striped tower.

Their conversation was on a topic that is on the minds of residents, business owners, and local officials in this community of 21,895 in the Appalachian foothills of southern Ohio.

Pixelle Specialty Solutions—and its parent, private equity firm H.I.G. Capital—announced on April 15 that it would be shutting down its paper mill in Chillicothe.

The company said the closure was necessary as part of its effort to “align its operation footprint with long-term business objectives.”

Jobs are on the line for around 830 workers. The company originally intended to shut down the mill in phases over the weeks that followed the announcement.

The decision was delayed after freshman Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) secured a commitment from H.I.G. Capital, which bought the mill in 2022, to pause the facility’s closure until the end of the year.

Chillicothe is known as the “Paper City.” The mill was opened in 1812.

Sowers’s grandparents worked at the Mead. So did John Angus Sr., Sowers’s father. Several other family members have spent their careers at the mill.

“If you didn’t work there, you had family work there, or you knew someone who worked there. Kids grow up hearing stories from generations of family members about working at the mill,” Sowers, 74, said.

John Angus Jr., Sowers’s brother, recalled his 42-year career that stretched from his early 20s to retirement age.

“It took me five years to get on there after I graduated from high school. At the time, it was a job many people wanted to have if they wanted to stay here,” John Angus Jr. told The Epoch Times.

“I worked shift work for almost 43 years, so I missed a lot of stuff with the family, but it put bread and butter on the table. It would be a shame to see it close.”

Chillicothe became the first capital of the Northwest Territory in 1800 and Ohio’s first capital in 1803.

Chillicothe’s downtown has been revitalized over the past decade and serves as the centerpiece of the city, featuring an ambience reminiscent of a Norman Rockwell painting.

Downtown Chillicothe, Ohio, on May 8, 2025. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

Restaurants, antique shops, coffeehouses, taverns, and Grandpa Joe’s Candy Shop occupy historic buildings reflecting an architecture from a bygone era.

With its downtown and attractions such as the amphitheater, where an outdoor drama about Shawnee Indian Chief Tecumseh still plays every summer, Chillicothe draws outside visitors.

Most of the businesses rely on local traffic, though, provided by major employers such as Adena Regional Medical Center, two state prisons, a VA Medical Center, a Kenworth semi-truck manufacturing plant, and the mill.

Trent Fannin and his wife opened Rost Coffee in downtown Chillicothe in 2016. The shop buzzes with traffic from mill workers, employees from downtown businesses, and high school and college students.

“Downtown Chillicothe has a lively pulse that downtowns in most towns across southern Ohio don’t have. It’s a destination, and hopefully, we don’t find out the impact of losing the mill. We’re concerned, but hopeful,” Fannin said.

Residents and local and state legislators are hopeful that Pixelle finds a way to keep the mill open long term or sell it to a company committed to making a long-term commitment to Chillicothe.

It was purchased by Col. Daniel Mead of Dayton, around 75 miles northwest of Chillicothe, in 1890. The Mead was one of the largest paper manufacturers in the country for more than 100 years.

In 2002, the Mead merged with Westvaco in a $3 billion stock transaction.

The headquarters of MeadWestvaco was relocated from Dayton to Connecticut, and then to Richmond, Virginia.

After learning about the plan to shutter the mill, Moreno wrote a letter to H.I.G. CEO Sami Mnaymneh, charging the executive with “selfish business decisions and corporate greed.”

“H.I.G. Capital is an investment firm with $69 billion of equity capital under management, riddled with Wall Street executives, including Mr. Mnaymneh, a billionaire five times over and one of the wealthiest people in the world,” Moreno wrote.

The firm’s business model is “to suck the proverbial blood out of companies it acquires until the companies declare bankruptcy, leaving the employees and communities it decimates behind,” Moreno said, pointing to the outcomes of some of the other transactions the private equity firm has made.

Read the rest here...

Tyler Durden Mon, 06/02/2025 - 21:45

What Happened To Harvard?

Authored by Robert Curry via RealClearEducation,

Harvard has rejected common sense.

When Lord Acton, the great nineteenth-century historian and champion of liberty, visited Harvard in 1853, he found that the college’s philosophy was common sense realism. Acton wrote that by “the third year, Reid becomes a textbook.” The Reid in question was Thomas Reid, author of An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense (1764). The common sense realist philosophers—especially Reid, Adam Smith, and Francis Hutcheson—fundamentally shaped the thinking of America’s Founders and provided the foundation for teaching and learning in American colleges until Acton’s visit and beyond.

Harvard was not alone in its dedication to Reid and common sense realism. In fact, as Arthur Herman notes, common sense realism was “virtually the official creed of the American Republic.” Allen Guelzo puts it this way:

“Before the Civil War, every major [American] collegiate intellectual was a disciple of Scottish common sense realism.”

In his book Scottish Philosophy in America, James Foster states that it provided the “philosophical orientation… at Princeton, Harvard, and Yale, as well as newly founded colleges stretching from Rhode Island to Texas.”

By the time of Acton’s visit to Harvard, although it was then—and is still today—referred to as Scottish, America had become the real home of common sense realism and the center of its continued development. James McCosh, president of Princeton from 1868 to 1888, is a prime example of this trend. McCosh published prolifically, was admired for his clear and readable style, and was one of many American thinkers who kept common sense realism strong in the nineteenth century.

The core idea of common sense realism is that self-evident truths exist and can be known through common sense; common sense enables us to recognize what is self-evidently true. Read the Founders, and you will find them constantly referring to self-evident truths. They drew their understanding of self-evidence from Reid. Because the Founders’ thinking relied on Reid’s conception of self-evident truth, Harvard, Princeton, and other institutions at the time aimed to teach American college students how to think like Americans.

We have heard and read these words— “We hold these Truths to be self-evident…”—all our lives. To understand the Founders’ conception of self-evident truth is to approach the very heart of the American founding. Jefferson and the other Founders held that “all men are created equal” is self-evidently true. According to Lincoln, it is “an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times.” For more than a hundred years, American colleges dedicated themselves to teaching the philosophy that the Founders and Lincoln relied on in making that declaration.

Things have changed at Harvard and virtually every other American university. As in the early days of the Republic, American universities today share a philosophical orientation.

Postmodernism rejects truth and common sense. This explains how a Supreme Court Justice can declare that she does not know what a woman is; Justice Jackson received her bachelor’s degree from Harvard College and her law degree from Harvard Law School. But postmodern academics are often not content simply to teach their students to reject truth and common sense—the foundation of the Founders’ idea of America. They also frequently indoctrinate students in Progressivism, the systematic rejection of the Founders’ idea of America itself. This is the explanation for all those fabulously privileged young Americans demonstrating their violent rejection of the American way of life by rioting in the streets and chanting anti-American slogans. They could not make their anti-Americanism any clearer—and, for the most part, they were taught this anti-Americanism in American schools and universities.

Tyler Durden Mon, 06/02/2025 - 20:55

DHS Removes Sanctuary City List After Criticism From Sheriffs

Authored by Joseph Lord via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on June 1 removed a previously published list of so-called sanctuary jurisdictions across the United States, which were accused of failing to comply with federal immigration law.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem speaks in Washington in a file photograph. Manuel Balce Ceneta/Pool/AFP via Getty Images

The move comes following criticism from a national sheriffs’ group that has mostly been supportive of Trump’s tough-on-crime policy approach.

In a statement, National Sheriffs’ Association President Sheriff Kieran Donahue said, “This list was created without any input, criteria of compliance, or a mechanism for how to object to the designation. Sheriffs nationwide have no way to know what they must do or not do to avoid this arbitrary label.”

On May 29, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, acting under the direction of President Donald Trump, published a list encompassing jurisdictions across 35 states—including city, county, and state government—that Noem said were “endangering Americans and our law enforcement in order to protect violent criminal illegal aliens.”

Following the criticism, the page where the list had been published was taken offline.

According to Donahue, DHS and other officials had not provided sufficient details on the methodology and criteria used to determine which jurisdictions qualified as sanctuaries.

The publication of the list “has not only violated the core principles of trust, cooperation, and partnership with fellow law enforcement, but it also has the potential to strain the relationship between Sheriffs and the White House administration,” the statement said.

During meetings between the group and administration officials, “no political appointee for the administration could explain who compiled, proofed, and verified the list before publication,” Donahue said.

The list came in response to an April 28 executive order signed by Trump requesting that the DHS produce “a list of States and local jurisdictions that obstruct the enforcement of Federal immigration laws.” Jurisdictions identified as sanctuaries could be eligible to lose federal funding.

In some cases, entire states were marked sanctuaries, including California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington, as well as the District of Columbia.

Some of the jurisdictions labeled sanctuaries fell in traditionally Republican states.

These include Anchorage, Alaska; Atlanta and surrounding counties; Boise, Idaho; Monroe County, Indiana; Douglas County and Lawrence, Kansas; Louisville, Kentucky, and four counties in the state; New Orleans; 10 counties in Nebraska; five counties in North Carolina; seven counties in North Dakota; and Nashville and one county in Tennessee.

Other states identified as having at least one county or city in violation of federal law include Hawaii, Maine, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin.

Trump’s earlier executive order called for department chiefs and other relevant officials to “identify appropriate federal funds to sanctuary jurisdictions, including grants and contracts, for suspension or termination, as appropriate.”

It also called on the attorney general and DHS secretary to “pursue all necessary legal remedies and enforcement measures to end these violations and bring such jurisdictions into compliance with the laws of the United States.”

The push to strip these jurisdictions of federal funds aligns with a long-held Republican objective to tighten border security and enforce immigration law.

Tyler Durden Mon, 06/02/2025 - 20:30

Rep. Jasmine Crockett Says Democrats Will Subpoena Musk If They Retake House

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

A House Democratic lawmaker said that if Democrats retake control of the House of Representatives, they will likely issue a subpoena to former Trump administration special government employee and Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

Musk, who departed the administration last week in accordance with the expiration of his special government employee status, appeared alongside President Donald Trump in a news conference in the Oval Office on May 30. The tech billionaire played a key role in the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), whose mission is to root out fraud and cut wasteful government spending. So far, it reports it has helped save taxpayers tens of billions of dollars, but aims to raise that to more than $1 trillion.

Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) told MSNBC on Sunday that Democrats had “tried to subpoena Elon Musk before” but it was blocked by Republicans, who control the House and its committees.

“I think that unfortunately, we’re going to have to wait until the Democrats are in the majority—which will hopefully be in the midterms—and then we can absolutely bring Elon Musk in,” Crockett said.

Democrats, if they control the lower chamber, “can have him under oath, and we can have him tell us about everything that he did,” she added.

As he departed his Trump administration advisory position last week, Musk had spent 130 days as a special government employee. During his press conference with the president, both Trump and Musk indicated they were on good terms and that DOGE’s work would continue.

Earlier this year, Democrats had signaled on multiple occasions they weren’t pleased with government cuts that were requested by Musk, DOGE, and the White House since Trump took office in January.

In April, top Democrats on the Senate and House appropriations committees criticized Musk and Trump for blocking what they said was $430 billion in congressionally appropriated funding.

“Instead of investing in the American people, President Trump is ignoring our laws and ripping resources away,” said the Democrats in a statement. They said the funding that was cut or frozen by the Trump administration had been approved by Congress.

Since taking office in January, Trump has said that he wants to reduce overspending in the federal government and terminate various programs that don’t align with American priorities.

In a statement issued by the White House, Trump said at the time that DOGE is designed to bring “accountability and transparency to federal spending, ensuring taxpayer dollars are spent wisely and effectively,” which he said, “has already saved taxpayers billions of dollars.”

After DOGE was established via an executive order in January, its website has reported that more than $175 billion in contracts, grants, and leases have been cut so far. That amounts to more than $1,080 per taxpayer, according to the site.

When he was working in the government, Musk framed his work overhauling the federal government in existential terms.

“If it’s not possible now, it will never be possible. This is our shot,” he told reporters in the Oval Office in February. “This is the best hand of cards we’re ever going to have. If we don’t take advantage of this best hand of cards, it’s never going to happen.”

In a CBS News interview published Sunday, Musk suggested that he wanted to slash funding to federal agencies because he views them as inefficient and wasteful, likening the federal government to an oversized Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV), an area of government infamous for its inefficiency.

“But my frank opinion of the government is that, like, the government is just, like, the DMV that got big, okay? So, when you say it like, ‘Let’s have the government do something,’ you should think, ‘Do you want the DMV to do it?’” he asked.

The Epoch Times contacted the White House and Musk’s company, X, for comment on Sunday.

Tyler Durden Mon, 06/02/2025 - 20:05

Schools In China Reportedly Isolate Students As COVID Cases Surge

Authored by Alex Wu via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Doctors and residents across China continue to report more infections and deaths as the latest wave of COVID-19 continues, portraying a far more severe situation than the Chinese regime is letting on.

Health workers take swab samples from a students to be tested for COVID-19 in Beijing on June 7, 2022. Jade Gao/AFP via Getty Images

Schools in various provinces are reportedly suspending classes and placing students in quarantine, leading to growing concerns among the public of a return of lockdowns, according to information provided to the Chinese language version of The Epoch Times and on social media.

A “home quarantine notice”—issued by a primary school in Guangzhou and circulated by Chinese netizens on China’s TikTok equivalent, Douyin, before it was posted to social media platform X on May 26 before CCP censors could delete it—has attracted widespread attention.

The notice said that a third grade student was ordered to undergo quarantine for seven days after being diagnosed with COVID-19. After the quarantine period, health certificates from a clinic and community health service agency were required for the student to return to school.

Schools in Shaanxi and Jiangsu also suspended classes after some students exhibited fevers, which were suspected to be COVID-19 infections.

The Chinese communist regime’s official data show that the COVID-19 infection rate doubled in April, with 168,507 cases, including 340 severe cases and nine deaths. The Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (China CDC) said that infection rates in China’s southern provinces were higher than those in the north.

Chinese state media Xinhua reported on May 28 that, according to health officials, the upward trend of COVID-19 infections has slowed, and in most provinces the epidemic has reached a peak or is on a downward trend.

However, residents across the country told The Epoch Times that the situation is far worse and that official data continue to not match their lived experience.

Because of the CCP’s history of covering up information and publishing unreliable data, including the underreporting of COVID-19 infections and related deaths since early 2020, accounts from local medical doctors and residents can offer valuable information for understanding the situation on the ground in the totalitarian country.

Kang Hong, a doctor at a clinic in Guangzhou city in China’s south who used a pseudonym for safety concerns, told The Epoch Times on May 29 that most of those infected with COVID-19 in this wave have been adults, although it has also affected children.

“Their symptoms are far more severe than the common cold,” including the white-lung symptom often seen in COVID-19 patients, he said.

Kang said that most patients came to the clinic for cold symptoms and fevers. They are not being tested for COVID-19 “because hospitals in China had not conducted large-scale nucleic acid testing for a long time because it was worried about causing social panic,” he said.

Many patients are also unwilling to take a COVID-19 test, Kang said, “because they know they are infected with the COVID-19 [based on their symptoms] and were unwilling to spend more than 100 yuan [about $13.90] for testing.”

He said that a doctor in a tertiary hospital in Guangzhou, where his daughter works, has died from COVID-19 in recent days. “It’s a senior doctor who only got tested when his symptoms became serious, and the result was COVID-19,” Kang said.

Although COVID-19 infections have increased, the local health bureau has told doctors that they do not need to report confirmed cases, he said.

Mr. Li, a resident of Guangzhou city who gave only his last name out of safety concerns, told The Epoch Times that there are many people around him who have had cold-like symptoms recently, including his whole family. Li said these people were diagnosed with COVID-19 several times before, and they believe that their symptoms are another round of COVID-19.

Mr. Guo, a resident in the adjacent Shenzhen city, told The Epoch Times that during the May Day holiday (May 1 to May 4), many people traveled and started to show cold symptoms that were likely those of COVID-19.

Meanwhile, residents in northern China also reported a spike in COVID-19 infections.

Liu Kun, owner of a private clinic in Hohhot city in Inner Mongolia who gave a pseudonym for safety concerns, told The Epoch Times on May 30 that COVID-19 infections are ongoing, “with many experiencing symptoms of coughing, sputum, vomiting, and diarrhea.”

He said there are many patients whose “symptoms last for a long time—some even for months.” He predicted that based on the characteristics of this infectious disease, “there may be an explosive growth in infections in June and July.”

People wearing masks wait at an outpatient area of the respiratory department of a hospital in Beijing on Jan. 8, 2025. Jade Gao/AFP via Getty Images

Mr. Xu, a resident in Benxi city in Liaoning Province who gave only his surname out of safety concerns, told The Epoch Times that some of his friends and relatives have recently caught colds.

“We have already realized that it may be COVID-19 caused by a mutated virus,“ he said. ”The symptoms have been dragging on and not getting better. It cannot be cured by medicine at all.”

Xu said there have been sudden deaths, especially concentrated in people in their 40s and 50s.

The infections have also been rapidly spreading in Shanxi Province, Mr. Luo, a resident of Changzhi city who gave only his surname, told The Epoch Times. “My family members—including my wife, daughter, son-in-law, and granddaughter—have all been infected,” he said.

Fear of Zero-COVID Restrictions

The school suspensions and quarantines have heightened public concern that the regime’s draconian zero-COVID restrictions employed from 2020 to the end of 2022—during which communities were locked down, mass testing was mandatory, travel was restricted, and residents were forcefully sent to quarantine centers—could make a comeback.

Dr. Jonathan Liu, director of Liu’s Wisdom Healing Centre and a professor at Canada Public College, told The Epoch Times on May 30 that although mainland China is experiencing another wave of COVID-19 infections, the official data haven’t indicated a serious spread that requires the lockdown of cities.

“Following the continuing strategy of concealment, the Chinese regime does not want to shut down the cities or implement the zero-COVID policy at the moment because that will seriously affect its economic development. Now, stimulating economic development is the regime’s top priority,” Liu said.

Sean Lin, assistant professor in the Biomedical Science Department at Feitian College and a former U.S. army microbiologist, shared a similar assessment.

“The authorities won’t immediately adopt the lockdown measure because they also know that if they implement the strict zero-COVID policy, it will cause a huge backlash from the public,” Lin told The Epoch Times on May 30.

“So the government is now building mobile cabin hospitals or temporary isolation facilities in various regions to quietly take people away. There may not be major changes in policy announced to the public.”

The Chinese language edition of The Epoch Times reported earlier this year that, according to insiders in some parts of China, local governments were building large-scale mobile cabin hospitals to quarantine patients with respiratory infections, including COVID-19, such as in Urumqi in the Xinjiang region and in several provinces.

Employees work at a makeshift hospital that will be used for COVID-19 patients in Guangzhou, in China's eastern Guangdong Province, on April 11, 2022. AFP via Getty Images

Lin said that some places may have adopted measures to let people stay at home for quarantine, “but it will not turn into a large-scale policy unless the regime is unstable and the authorities have to take such measures.”

The China CDC has yet to release its COVID-19 data for May, but it did update its weekly influenza report, in which the number of infections had increased significantly in the week.

According to the weekly influenza report for epidemiological week 21 (May 19 to May 25), released on May 29, a total of eight influenza-like outbreaks have been reported nationwide. In comparison, only one influenza-like outbreak was reported nationwide in week 20, and no influenza-like outbreaks were reported in week 19.

Lin said that the authorities continue to cover up real COVID-19 data in China.

“The people do not know the real situation and the severity of the wave of outbreak, especially the severity rate and mortality rate. The authorities don’t tell the people,” he said.

Lin said that China’s situation is more complicated and severe, because “it involves multiple respiratory pathogens co-circulating and co-infections, with three or four respiratory pathogens infecting at the same time, not just this NB.1.8.1 strain.”

“But the officials have not revealed the real situation, so I think it is difficult for the international community to understand,” he said.

NB.1.8.1

Chinese health authorities announced on May 23 that Omicron variant NB.1.8.1 is currently the primary variant spreading across China, as detection of the variant increased in the international community.

NB.1.8.1 is a sixth-generation sub-branch of the XDV variant.

“The current data does not show that the NB1.8.1 variant has a significant breakthrough in pathogenicity, but it has an almost 1.8-fold improvement in immune escape capability. If it replaces the previous dominant variant that caused COVID-19, it’s because its transmission ability is enhanced,” Lin told The Epoch Times.

He pointed out that new COVID-19 variants have frequently emerged in the past three years.

“Often new strains quickly replace old ones to be the dominant one,“ Lin said. ”This has become routine.”

A person receives a COVID-19 vaccine at Los Angeles International Airport on Dec. 22, 2021. Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images

The World Health Organization (WHO) has classified NB1.8.1 as a “variant under monitoring,” which means that it’s on “a watchlist,” Lin said.

“At present, the international community does not regard this variant as worthy of special attention,” he said.

As the wave of infections in China continues, neighboring Asian countries and the United States have reported COVID-19 cases caused by NB1.8.1, including in international travelers at airports.

However, Lin said there is no sign of a ban of travelers or flights from China by other countries “because the WHO does not have accurate data from China.”

“According to the current monitoring of countries around the world, there has not been a rapid, large-scale increase in infections like in the one in 2020,” he said.

Lin said that because the Chinese regime does not reveal true data, “it’s not possible to track virus spreading routes.”

“This also brings about a greater danger,” he said. “China often covers up many things until they can no longer be covered up. When they come out, the situation is already quite serious and may be out of control. This is actually the biggest concern.”

Luo Ya, Fang Xiao, and Xiong Bin contributed to this report.

Tyler Durden Mon, 06/02/2025 - 19:40

Leaked Test Confirms Boxer Who Won Gold Medal Competing Against Women At Paris Olympics, Is Indeed A Man

Authored by Debra Heine via American Greatness,

The results of a chromosome test on Olympic gold medalist Imane Khelif at the World Boxing Championships in March 2023 confirm the Algerian boxer is, as many have suspected, a biological male.

In 2023, Khelif was disqualified by the International Boxing Association (IBA) for “failing gender eligibility tests.”

The leaked medical report, first published by 3 Wire Sports on Sunday, showed Khelif’s DNA showed “markers with male karyotypes.”

A separate medical report in June 2023 found that Khelif was born with a deficiency in his sexual organs known as “5-alpha reductase type-2,” showing XY chromosomes, internal testes and a “micropenis.”

The results of a hormone test showed that Khelif had a “male-type testosterone level of 14.7.”  In females, testosterone does not exceed the level of 3.

According to the National Library of Medicine, many people with 5-alpha reductase are “assigned female at birth,” but are in fact, “genetically male.”

Despite this, Khelif was deemed eligible to compete at the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics, where he “won” the women’s boxing gold medal representing Algeria.

World Boxing on Friday declared that in the future, Khelif will need to undergo sex screening to be eligible for any further boxing matches against women.

Khelief had previously expressed interest in competing at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.

World Boxing, which is set to run testing for the Los Angeles Games, requires any person over 18 required to undergo PCR testing to determine their sex. The tests will reportedly be “conducted by nasal/mouth swab, saliva or blood.”

In a letter to the Algerian Boxing Federation, World Boxing stated that Khelif will not be able “to compete in the female category at the Eindhoven Box Cup or any World Boxing event” until he undergoes the sex testing.

“Imane Khelif may not participate in the female category at the Eindhoven Box Cup, 5-10 June 2025 and any World Boxing event until Imane Khelif undergoes genetic sex screening in accordance with World Boxing’s rules and testing procedures,” the letter read.

“To all the people that insisted Imane Khelif was a woman because his passport said so, you were wrong. We were right. Sincerely, People with functioning eyes and a shred of honesty,” wrote women’s sports advocate Riley Gaines on X.

Author JK Rowling posted on X that Khelif’s ban from boxing is “a win for women because they won’t be battered to death in the ring by men.”

“I never said and never believed Khelif was trans. I knew* he was a man. The gender activists who created a political climate in which sex testing was seen as ‘bigoted’ are as culpable as the IOC for the travesty that ensued. *via a highly credible source who saw his test results,” Rowling wrote.

Broadcaster Piers Morgan also weighed in on X: “The biology-denying woke brigade abused and shamed me for saying it was outrageous and dangerous for Khelif to be beating up women at the Olympics. I’m ready for their apology, but won’t hold my breath.”

Tyler Durden Mon, 06/02/2025 - 19:15

Alberta Wildfires Disrupt 7% Of Canada's Oil Production

Wildfires in Alberta, Canada — the country’s energy hub — have shuttered 344k barrels per day of oil sands production, or about 7% of national output. 

Cenovus Energy, MEG Energy, and Canadian Natural Resources have halted output because of a 61,500-hectare blaze near the Saskatchewan border. 

One of the 26 active wildfires is about 6 miles from 470k barrels bpd of oil sands production. 

What's critical to know:

• Affected companies include Cenovus Energy, MEG Energy, and Canadian Natural Resources.

• Roughly 470k bpd of production is within 6 miles of active fires.

• Cenovus halted its Christina Lake site (238k bpd) last Thursday, expecting to restart soon

• MEG Energy delayed restarting part of its 70k bpd site due to power outages.

• Canadian Natural shut 36k bpd at its Jackfish 1 site after evacuations.

Important context: Canada produces 4.9 million bpd. It's the largest foreign oil supplier to the U.S., accounting for approximately 60% of total crude imports, with the vast majority of that coming from Alberta's oil sands.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith said on Monday that some 400,000 hectares have burned across the province, up from about 9,000 as of last week. 

Any major disruption to Alberta's oil production will tighten North American supply, push prices higher, and may force U.S. refiners to source costlier supplies elsewhere. It's a risk worth monitoring—something Goldman analyst Adam Wijaya flagged late last week.

Tyler Durden Mon, 06/02/2025 - 18:50

Trans-Identifying Athlete Wins 2 Girls' Track Events In California

Authored by Aldgra Fredly via The Epoch Times,

A transgender-identifying athlete won two girls’ events at the California high school championship on May 31, despite President Donald Trump threatening to rescind federal funding over the state’s failure to abide by his order banning male athletes from competing in girls’ sports.

A.B. Hernandez, a male high school student in Southern California who identifies as transgender, won the high jump and triple jump and placed second in the long jump at the California high school track and field championship, competing in the girls’ division.

The event took place after the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF), which governs the state’s high school sports, changed its rules on May 28. Under the new rule, a “biological female student-athlete” who would have earned a particular placement in track events would still receive the placement and medal she qualified for.

Following the rule changes, Hernandez shared first place in the high jump with co-winners Jillene Wetteland and Lelani Laruelle, and in the triple jump with Kira Gant Hatcher, who trailed by just more than a half-meter.

“The CIF values all of our student-athletes and we will continue to uphold our mission of providing students with the opportunity to belong, connect, and compete while complying with California law and Education Code,” the organization said in a May 28 statement.

The statement came after Trump warned California on May 27 that “large scale” federal funding would be withheld, “maybe permanently,” if the state does not comply with his Feb. 5 executive order that banned male students who identify as female from competing in girls’ sports.

In a post on his social media platform, Truth Social, Trump criticized California Gov. Gavin Newsom for allowing a male athlete to compete against female athletes at an event.

He stated that the male athlete “won everything” and advanced to the state finals. Trump did not name the athlete, but it was widely presumed to be Hernandez.

“As a Male, he was a less than average competitor. As a Female, this transitioned person is practically unbeatable,” Trump stated. “THIS IS NOT FAIR, AND TOTALLY DEMEANING TO WOMEN AND GIRLS.”

The Department of Justice (DOJ) has also launched a civil rights investigation into California’s law that has allowed males to compete in girls’ sports.

The DOJ announced on May 28 that its investigation aims to determine whether California, along with its senior legal, educational, and athletic organizations, was “engaging in a pattern or practice of discrimination based on sex.”

At the heart of the probe is AB 1266, a 2014 California law that permits students to participate in school sports in accordance with their gender identity and not their sex.

The DOJ contends this policy may unlawfully allow males to displace females from team rosters, scholarships, and podium finishes—outcomes that DOJ officials argue run afoul of Title IX, the landmark federal civil rights law.

Tyler Durden Mon, 06/02/2025 - 15:05

Never Forget Their Excuses For Lockdowns

Authored by John Tamny via The Brownstone Institute,

The worst arguments against the lockdowns inspired by the coronavirus were medical and statistical.

To see why, it’s worth remembering that as humans we’ve evolved to protect ourselves from death and disease.

The taking of freedom to protect us is always and everywhere excess. 

The above statement of the obvious requires mention as free thinkers and free-thinking organizations continue to either ignore how they sat out the lockdowns, or worse, excuse their inaction amid a massive bludgeoning of freedom back in 2020.

Let’s start with those trying to excuse their inaction.

The not-infrequently offered excuse is that since most organizations and individuals in the libertarian space either weren’t staffed by medical doctors or weren’t medical doctors themselves, how could they have made credible cases against the lockdowns? Instead, and rather than take a stand, they adopted “wait and see” approaches so that medical verdicts could be rendered. About those verdicts, some libertarian types are now saying that those who were publicly against the lockdowns back in 2020 were correct, but they made their cases obnoxiously and blindly given their lack of medical knowledge. The only response to this kind of dissembling is nonsense, utter nonsense. See this write-up’s introductory paragraph to see why.

Just as the worst arguments against the lockdowns were medical and statistical, the medical and statistical arguments made in favor of lockdowns were, if possible, even worse. As stated above, no one requires force to avoid sickness or death. About this point, more on it in a bit.

For now, it should just be said that even if the medical consensus had been correct, that millions and millions of Americans would die absent being forced out of work and into their homes, then any lockdown orders foisted on us by nail-biting politicians would have read as tame relative to the precautions taken by free people. The more threatening anything is, the more superfluous is any kind of policy reaction to the threat.

The simple, overwhelming truth is that people should never have their individual freedom to protect themselves taken from them, period. End of story.

Applying the previous assertion to organizations like Cato, Students for Liberty, and others that seemingly took a “wait and see” approach to the lockdowns, their stances were wrongheaded. Lest they or readers forget, the organizations mentioned were founded on the notion of individual freedom as the foremost ideal. In which case a “wait and see what the science or medical establishment says” is dangerously wrong.

It is simply because, as Brownstone Institute founder Jeffrey Tucker has pointed out, politicians at the local, state, and national levels did not take a “wait and see” approach. That they didn’t calls into serious question organizations and individuals sitting on their hands. How could they? Since we know government will never wait and see on anything, what an odd excuse or piece of internal reasoning to explain away a lack of action. It implies that freedom should always be the loser in times of uncertainty, or when politicians are feeling particularly hysterical. 

At which point it should be said that freedom is easily the best way to turn the unknowns and uncertainty into true knowledge. So, while libertarian groups and individuals who sat out the lockdowns should reflexively defend freedom every time government is in the process of taking it, it’s useful to add that free people crucially produce information.

Which brings us back to the earlier assertion in this write-up that people don’t need to be forced to avoid sickness or death. Some no doubt responded as they read the latter that some people would in fact have lived, worked, and run their businesses without regard to a spreading virus. To which the answer here can only be precisely.

Precisely because free people will respond in all manner of ways (including disdain) to fears driven by unknowns, we need them to be free. Without millions of different responses, or realistically hundreds of millions of different responses in the US, people (including “experts”) will be blinded to the truth about whatever it is that threatens us, or not. Since free people once again produce information, the only answer to uncertainty about what we don’t know is freedom. 

It’s just something to keep in mind in the here and now. Four years ago this month, over 40 million Americans lost their jobs, and hundreds of millions around the world found themselves hurtling toward starvation amid a global panic among politicians. Shamefully and tragically, some of the foremost organizations and individuals devoted to liberty sat out the tragedy and seemingly defend their inaction to this day by hiding behind medicine, science, and a lack of information. The excuses and internal justifications are wholly insufficient. Freedom is its own always and everywhere virtue, period.

Republished from RealClearMarkets

Tyler Durden Mon, 06/02/2025 - 14:25

Trump-Endorsed Nationalist Narrowly Wins Polish Presidential Election

In Poland's extraordinarily tight and closely-watched presidential run-off election, a staunch nationalist conservative on Sunday defeated a pro-EU liberal in an outcome that promises economic and geopolitical implications. With 100% of the precincts reporting, conservative historian Karol Nawrocki had 50.9% of the votes, compared to 49.1% for leftist Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, who prematurely declared victory on Sunday evening after the first exit polls showed him at 50.3%. 

Among the key issues in the election were immigration, abortion, support for Ukraine, and Polish integration with the rest of Europe. When he takes office on August 6, Nawrocki -- a former boxer who leads the Institute for National Remembrance -- will succeed term-limited President Andrzej Duda. Like Nawrocki, Duda is associated with the right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party.

Karol Nawrocki was endorsed by President Trump, who hosted him at the White House in May

Before the final tally, Nawrocki was optimistic, saying “I believe we will all wake up tomorrow morning with President Nawrocki putting the broken Poland back together.” He also quoted the Bible, saying God would "heal the land" of good people who “turn away from wicked ways."

Voicing Poland-first sentiments, Nawrocki previously said:

"We cannot afford actions that harm our economy, agriculture, people’s wallets or the functioning of our social welfare systems. All decisions regarding the future of our good economic and political cooperation, including with Ukraine, will be based solely on the interests of Poland and Poles."

He has also warned against Ukrainian accession to NATO anytime soon, saying "It would be dangerous for Ukraine to be allowed into NATO as it would mean that the whole of the alliance would straight away be in a war with Russia.” He also said “The discussion about Ukraine’s entry to NATO is pointless...[Given its corruption], the Ukrainian state is not ready for many processes.” However, he's also said, "we will continue, when I become president, to support Ukraine in the face of the Russian Federation’s threat, which is also hostile to us. That is self-evident." 

He's also hammered Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky: 

“The Ukrainian president behaves in an indecent manner toward his allies, including Poland. He claimed that Ukraine was left alone at the start of the war, which shows he failed to recognise the significant efforts of the Polish people and the Polish president”

President Trump endorsed Nawrocki, welcoming him to the White House in May and dispatching Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to a May 27 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) meeting in Warsaw where she implored Poles to put Nawrocki in office: "I just had the opportunity to meet with Karol and listen -- he needs to be the next president of Poland. Do you understand me?” Noem also trashed Trzaskowski as “an absolute train wreck of a leader.” 

Heading into the runoff, the Polish stock market had rocketed ahead by 27% over the year to date, and 61% in dollar terms since the last parliamentary election, while government bonds returned 28%. Many observers expected a Nawrocki win to be a negative for the country's markets. "It's possible that the more NATO-skeptic Nawrocki may position Poland in a less favorable position when the time comes to rebuild Ukraine - a theme that has attracted investors to the Warsaw bourse of late," noted Dow Jones' Jamie Chisholm last week. Polish equities are trading at an average 9.7 PE ratio relative to estimated earnings for the coming 12 months, compared to 14.7 for the Euro STOXX 50. 

Victorious nationalist presidential candidate Karol Nawrocki speaks to supporters after the polls closed on Sunday (AP Photo - Czarek Sokolowski)

Political power in Poland is concentrated in the parliament and the prime minister, but, critically, presidents have the power to veto legislation and nominate the leader of the central bank. Nawrocki campaigned on the need for a check on what he called Tusk's political "monopoly" over national policy. Duda has thwarted Tusk's effort to fulfill campaign promises to loosen abortion restrictions and allow civil partnerships for homosexual couples. 

As the race headed down the home stretch, several members of the US House of Representatives sent a letter to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen alleging possible foreign interference in the election, in the form of illegal spending on ads by an Austrian company with ties to the US Democratic Party, and by an NGO that's received money from George Soros-funded organizations. The letter also demanded answers about liberal Prime Minister Donald Tusk's government’s "monthslong refusal to release tens of millions of dollars in public campaign funding that PiS is legally entitled to receive."

Turnout Polish presidents are elected to five-year terms, and they can only be re-elected once. The next major milestone in the country will come with 2027's parliamentary elections. Nawrocki's victory comes amid a string of elections across Europe pitting EU- and NATO-catering leftists against conservative nationalists. In mid-May, nationalist Romanian presidential candidate George Simion lost to centrist Bucharest mayor Nicusor Dan, following an election saga that saw the leading nationalist candidate banned from running and arrested. Simion endorsed Poland's Nawrocki, as did nationalist Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Upcoming contests of note include Norway's parliamentary elections on Sept. 8, Italy's regional elections on Sept. 21-22, and Moldova's parliamentary races on Sept. 28.   

Tyler Durden Mon, 06/02/2025 - 14:11

American Retail Giants Demand Chinese Suppliers Cover Up To 66% Of US Import Tariffs

Last week we showed that contrary to conventional wisdom, inflation - so widely and erroneously expected to soar after Trump's tariffs - had not only continued to decline, but the Fed's most closely watched metric, supercore PCE, just posted its biggest monthly drop since the covid crash.

And it's about to get even worse for the inflation fanatics: according to the South China Morning Post, American retail giants are now demanding that their Chinese suppliers shoulder half to 66% of the cost of US import duties, as the ongoing US-China trade war ramps up pressure on businesses’ bottom lines.

Amid widespread confusion over who will shoulder the burden of import tariffs, US retailers have been quietly locked in talks with Chinese producers for weeks over how to handle the additional costs caused by the trade war, with the firms facing intense political pressure at home to “eat the tariffs” and keep prices stable.

While Walmart and several other major US retail groups previously agreed to bear the full cost of the tariffs when they asked their Chinese suppliers to resume shipments in late April, global brands including several US retail giants are now pushing suppliers in both China and parts of Southeast Asia to absorb a large chunk of the cost of the levies, according to sources from suppliers serving companies including Walmart, Target, Nike, Puma and Adidas.

“Most of our customers, the garment vendors exporting to major retailers and brands, are being asked to cover 50 to 66 per cent of the current tariffs,” said an executive at a fashion supplier, which produces and sources from China and Southeast Asia and then sells across the United States and Europe.

While negotiations remain fluid, the details of how the tariff costs will be divided have not yet been finalized, the SCMP sources stressed, as both sides remain in constant contact as they try to navigate a “tough time” for the industry.

But many Chinese suppliers said they would struggle to bear the additional costs being demanded of them – especially if the current 90-day truce in the US-China trade war expires without Beijing and Washington reaching a deal.

In mid-May, Beijing and Washington agreed to drastically scale back tariffs on each other’s products for 90 days, with the US reducing its additional duties on Chinese goods from 145 per cent to 30 per cent and China slashing its levies on US products from 125% to 10%. But absent a deal, the tariffs will skyrocket back to three-digit levels in August. Last week, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent admitted on Thursday that talks between Beijing and Washington were currently “a bit stalled”.

A source with a stationery maker in eastern China’s Zhejiang province told the Post that the company had been in discussions with Walmart and other US retailers over “a backup plan” for what may happen after the tariff truce ends in August.

Walmart agreed to cover the full cost of any tariffs until August in its previous deals with the stationery maker, but the US retailer has yet to place any orders beyond August.

According to the source, the Zhejiang manufacturer is capable of footing about 30 per cent of the additional costs from the tariffs, but there is “no room” to go up to 50 per cent or higher. The company has yet to reach an agreement with Walmart.

“We agree to get prepared for the worst situation, while hoping for the best,” the person said, referring to a potential return to triple-digit tariffs.

When contacted by the Post for comment, a spokesperson for Walmart said: “We have always worked to keep our prices as low as possible. We’ll keep prices as low as we can for as long as we can given the reality of small retail margins.”

Puma declined to comment, while Target, Nike and Adidas did not immediately respond to the Post’s inquiry.

Bessent said on Thursday that there was “likely” a need for US President Donald Trump and President Xi Jinping to intervene to get a deal over the finishing line before August 12.

In keeping with Beijing's protecionist tradition, there has been a focus in China on mitigating the impact of the trade war by helping exporters pivot to the domestic market. But that often is not possible for Chinese factories that make products on a contract basis for foreign brands, according to a report by Christopher Beddor, deputy China researcher at analysis firm Gavekal.

“One executive at a large online retailer notes that pants made for the US market run much longer than those in China,” he wrote. “There’s also less domestic demand for oven gloves – as fewer housing units in China have ovens – and no buyers for some products such as bulk Christmas cards.”

Chinese exporters “will almost certainly be forced to curtail output and divert supply to other markets”, Beddor noted, hinting at a wave of deflationary exports by China.

In the US, meanwhile, retailers are coming under political pressure not to raise prices. Walmart CEO Doug McMillon warned on May 15 that the retail giant was unable to absorb all the costs of the trade war and would need to hike some prices. Two days later, Trump posted on social media that Walmart and China should “eat the tariffs”.

On May 21, Nike announced that it would start raising prices to offset the high costs brought by US tariffs. German sportswear brand Puma, meanwhile, has adapted its supply chain by cutting the volume of goods being shipped directly from China to the US, but has not ruled out the possibility of price rises.

Fellow German sportswear giant Adidas said in a company statement on April 29 that it “cannot make any ‘final’ decisions” on what to do, but added that “cost increases due to higher tariffs will eventually cause price increases”.

Target CEO Brian Cornell said on May 21 that price hikes were a “very last resort” for the company as it sought to deal with the cost of higher tariffs.

On Sunday, Trump said his tariff policies were aimed at promoting the reshoring of hi-tech products, rather than clothing and footwear, to America. “We’re not looking to make sneakers and T-shirts,” he said. “We can do that very well in other locations. We are looking to do chips and computers and lots of other things, and tanks and ships.”

Tyler Durden Mon, 06/02/2025 - 14:05

Court Blocks Government From Terminating Immigration Documents Of 5,000 Venezuelans

Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times,

The federal government cannot invalidate immigration documents that allow roughly 5,000 Venezuelan nationals living in the United States to remain in the country until October 2026, a federal court in California ruled on Friday.

In February, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem terminated Venezuela’s 2023 designation for Temporary Protected Status (TPS), a temporary immigration status granted when foreign nationals cannot return to their home countries due to safety concerns, such as ongoing armed conflict, environmental disasters, or epidemics.

A TPS designation protects individuals from deportation and allows them to apply for authorization to work in the United States.

The National TPS Alliance, representing TPS holders from across the United States, sued the government, with a federal judge in California issuing an injunction in March blocking the termination of TPS for Venezuelans. On May 19, the U.S. Supreme Court lifted the injunction order, affirming Noem’s decision.

Plaintiffs then approached the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, asking for relief, specifically seeking that certain Venezuelans be allowed TPS protections, resulting in the May 30 court order ruling in favor of the plaintiffs.

The court observed that on Jan. 17, the Biden administration had extended the TPS designation for Venezuela from April 2 this year to Oct. 2, 2026. On Feb. 3, Noem vacated the extension. She then terminated Venezuela’s 2023 TPS extension on Feb. 5. The termination came into effect on April 7.

The plaintiffs asked the court to recognize the validity of TPS documentation issued following the Jan. 17 extension and maintain the rights of Venezuelans who received TPS documents that are valid until Oct. 2, 2026. They argued Noem exceeded her statutory authority when she canceled TPS documents on Feb. 3 even though the documents were valid until October next year.

“Plaintiffs’ position is meritorious,” the court said. “Nothing in the TPS statute allows the Secretary to take such action.”

Venezuelans who received documentation based on the Oct. 2, 2026, date are “especially likely to suffer irreparable injury” since they have relied on such documentation to make their plans regarding staying in the United States, the court said.

As such, the court granted relief to Venezuelans with TPS-related documentation issued up to and including Feb. 5, the date when Noem published the TPS termination notice.

“The relief here would not extend to all Venezuelan TPS holders but rather a discrete subset—somewhere in the neighborhood of 5,000 individuals in the government’s estimation,” the court said.

Protecting National Interests

Noem’s Feb. 5 order ending the 2023 TPS designation for Venezuela said that such a step is necessary “because it is contrary to the national interest to permit the Venezuelan nationals (or aliens having no nationality who last habitually resided in Venezuela) to remain temporarily in the United States.”

In the TPS statute, Congress “expressly prohibits” the secretary of homeland security from designating a country for TPS or extending this designation if the secretary determines that “permitting the aliens to remain temporarily in the United States is contrary to the national interest of the United States,” the order states.

In an interview with The Epoch Times, Ludmila Padrino, a U.S.-based lawyer who works closely with the Venezuelan immigrant community, said that many innocent Venezuelans were being penalized for a small group of individuals who have committed crimes.

“Companies are sending out notifications that people have only a few days to continue working,” she said. “People can’t renew their licenses. It’s complicated, it’s distressing. ... The biggest challenge is supporting their families.”

The 2023 TPS designation applies to 350,000 Venezuelans living in the United States.

In an emailed statement to The Epoch Times, White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said the Trump administration’s policies are justified because TPS is, “by definition, temporary, and is committed to the discretion of the DHS Secretary.”

“District courts have no right to prevent the Executive Branch from enforcing our immigration laws,” she said. “The Trump Administration will continue to deliver on the President’s promises every day for the American people.”

The May 19 Supreme Court judgment affirming Noem’s decision to cancel the 2023 Venezuela TPS designation is “an important inflection point in the ongoing saga of lawless lower court decisions that flout plain law and legislate from the bench,” Jackson said.

Tyler Durden Mon, 06/02/2025 - 13:45

Chinese Communist Officials Call Harvard Their "Party School"

The Trump Administration's latest effort to reduce foreign influence in US institutions has led to Harvard University, the oldest university in the country.  It's a fair target considering Harvard's enrollment is nearly 30% foreign nationals, many of them from China.  A common criticism of the US is that American schools produce a limited number of graduates in STEM and leadership related fields, inspiring the claim that the US "needs skilled foreign workers" to continue its edge in business and technology. 

This is a fallacy - It's not that the US doesn't have enough students interested in STEM or leadership.  Rather, the problem is that top US universities have been bought and paid for by NGOs and foreign investors; by extension, they allow foreign students to steal spots that should be reserved for American citizens.  

Furthermore, Harvard is widely considered a stepping stone to a successful career in various areas of law and government, but many positions within the school's political enrollment are taken by foreigners (as well a DEI students).

One blaring example of this is the influence of China and the CCP over Harvard, which enrolls around 2300 Chinese scholar per year making up around 20% of the total international student body. 

Harvard receives hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign funding from numerous countries, but China is the most generous source, providing around $70 million per year to the Ivy League college.  

In a recent expose, The Wall Street Journal examined the CCP's extensive presence at Harvard and their view of the university as their "party school".  As the WSJ notes:

"Harvard enjoys a sterling reputation among Chinese officials thanks to its record in training high-flying bureaucrats who went on to take senior government roles and, in some cases, join the party’s elite Politburo. Some observers dubbed Harvard a de facto “party school,” as the party’s own training academies for promising bureaucrats are known. 

“If we were to rank the Chinese Communist Party’s ‘overseas party schools,’ the one deserving top spot has to be Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government in the U.S.,” said a 2014 commentary published by Shanghai Observer, an online platform run by the city’s main party newspaper."

The problem, however, goes well beyond the issue of foreign nationals taking American seats in American schools.  The CCP is notorious for using US universities as a training ground for CCP spies, not to mention using them as vehicles for the dissemination of communist propaganda.

Stanford recently addressed the threat within their own halls, noting the exposure of a Chinese spy operating under the alias "Charles Chen" who posed as a student and attempted to glean information from other students and possibly recruit them for CCP operations.  These operations extend to Chinese nationals studying abroad, as The Stanford Review states:

"Transnational repression, $64 million in Chinese funding, and allegations of racial profiling have contributed to a pervasive culture of silence at Stanford and beyond. 

It is this pervasive silence that has compelled us to write. After interviewing multiple anonymous Stanford faculty, students, and China experts, we can confirm that the CCP is orchestrating a widespread intelligence-gathering campaign at Stanford. In short, there are Chinese spies at Stanford..."

Chinese communist propaganda operations in colleges started with the proliferation of the "Confucious Institute" in 2004.  The program latched onto dozens of US schools like a parasitic organism, posing as an effort to foster understanding of Chinese culture.  In reality, it was designed to influence US education to favor CCP ideals, recruit American students to CCP causes and keep an eye on the activities of Chinese students abroad. 

Harvard was, of course, one of those schools.  After the exposure of Confucious Institute and its motives, the CCP shifted into different programs with different names but the same overall goals.  As mentioned, the amount of cash flowing from China into these colleges is extensive, which creates incentives for schools like Harvard to keep their eyes down and their mouth shut. 

Donald Trump placing Harvard under a microscope helps to illuminate the wider problem across all of America's top universities.  It's common to point out the influence of NGOs and woke activism in undermining higher education in the US, but what about foreign interests?  This danger is far less understood. 

Trump's freeze on more than $3 billion in research grants and his actions to ban foreign enrollment at Harvard for Chinese communist party members are an opening salvo in a war that is long overdue.  The fact of the matter is, US colleges have not served the American public in a very long time.  Rather, they have served foreign masters and globalist NGOs, indoctrinating America's youth with deconstruction cultism and communist ideology that poisons the academic nest. 

Drastic measures would have to be taken if the damage is ever to be reversed. 

Tyler Durden Mon, 06/02/2025 - 13:25

Pew Finds BlueSky's 'News Influencers' Aren't Influencing Anyone

Following last fall's U.S. presidential election, a wave of left-leaning X accounts—some of which self-proclaimed themselves as "news influencers"—announced their plans to abandon Elon Musk's social media platform in favor of the woke Bluesky platform.

A new Pew Research Center analysis of 500 top news influencers (each with over 100,000 followers) shows that Bluesky's adoption surged after the 2024 presidential election, rising from 21% to 43% by March 2025. Nearly half of the Bluesky accounts were created after the election, with a sizeable spike in the final weeks of November.

Despite Bluesky's rise as a digital 'safe space' for progressives, X remains one of the most influential platforms for online conversation:

Many news influencers on Bluesky joined during the platform's recent wave of growth. About half of sampled news influencers with a Bluesky account (51%) created that account after the 2024 election, including 42% who did so in the last three weeks of November 2024.

Even with Bluesky's growth, X remains popular among the 2024 sample of news influencers. As of early 2025, 82% have an account there, about the same share as in summer 2024 (85%).

And most of these news influencers with a Bluesky account also have an X account. Only 6% of the influencers we studied have a Bluesky account but not an X account, while 37% have both. The largest share (46%) have an X account but not a Bluesky account.

Pew's findings will disappoint rage-fueled leftist news influencers: 

 At the same time, most news influencers across the political spectrum have not left X. Three-quarters of left-leaning news influencers have an X account, as do 87% of right-leaning news influencers and 83% of those without a clear political orientation.

Pew also noted that most influencers continue to post regularly on X rather than on Bluesky.

The left relentlessly tried to dismantle X, with their army of PR propagandists staging a mass exodus. Months later, realizing Bluesky has zero influence at all, these crazed leftists have returned to X.

Tyler Durden Mon, 06/02/2025 - 12:45

Steel Yourself For Cracking

By Benjamin Picton of Rabobank

Steel yourself for cracking

Jamie Dimon made headlines over the weekend by saying that a crack in the bond market is “going to happen” due to accumulated fiscal and monetary profligacy (which he repeated again this morning). While that’s certainly an incendiary comment in itself, most of the newspapers seem to have weirdly glossed over Jamie’s more blockbuster bromides at the same event, where he noted that the “tectonic plates [of geopolitics] are shifting” and “trade is [only] a part” of that. The JP Morgan CEO was unequivocal that the USA would no longer be the issuer of the reserve currency in 40-years’ time if it did not retain its position as the pre-eminent economic AND military power, and that the biggest threat that the nation faces is “the enemy within”. Yikes.

The man responsible for financing the US government doesn’t seem too worried. Scott Bessent told a hearing of the House of Representatives that the United States “will never default” on its debts. The fact that the question is even being asked seems place a few asterisks around that answer, with some of those perhaps relating to the USA inflating its way out, or engaging in financial repression to make the debt ‘sustainable’, or raising additional revenue through tariffs and/or the provisions of the Section 899 ‘Revenge Tax’. The latter is designed to punish foreign capital flowing from countries that do not comply with US wishes on trade (EU digital services tax, I’m looking at you).

Is it time to question the sacred cow of globalized capital markets?

As if to highlight Jamie’s point on the primacy of geopolitics, Ukraine managed to sneak a bunch of drones into cargo containers and then use them to take down fully one third of Russia’s long-range nuclear bombers. Some analysts are calling this a Russian Pearl Harbour (which might gloss over how the USA responded after the attack on Pearl Harbour) but the event surely highlights the changed nature of modern warfare, and the extent to which ‘small and cheap’ can defeat ‘big and expensive’. We might have learned that lesson after rag-tag Houthis managed to confound the assembled forces of Western capitalism in the Red Sea, or after the war in Afghanistan took twenty years to replace Taliban with Taliban, but here it is highlighted for us once again.

On the subject of the Middle East, the USA has reportedly sent Tehran a proposed “detailed and acceptable” nuclear deal with the strong suggestion that Iran should take it. According to reports, the deal would involve Iran foregoing all nuclear enrichment capabilities – which the Iranian leadership says it won’t do – in favor of a regional enrichment consortium that will likely involve Saudi Arabia (Iran’s major regional competitor). This comes at a time when the IAEA has just released a new report claiming that Iran has secretly enriched uranium to 60% purity, well beyond the levels required for civilian applications. If that stock were to be further enriched to 90% purity it would be enough for 9-10 nuclear weapons. That news will likely make it all the harder for President Trump to deter Israeli leadership from a pre-emptive strike on Iranian nuclear facilities.

The USA had placed “maximum pressure” sanctions on Iranian oil exports to give the nuclear deal negotiations a help-along, but the WSJ notes in an editorial today that a White House directive was delivered last week to pause all new sanctions activity. The WSJ suggests that this is handing off some of the leverage that the USA currently has, and also represents a free-kick to the USA’s principal geopolitical competitor, China, who is by far the largest buyer of Iranian oil cargoes. The lighter touch on sanctions arrives at a time when OPEC+ has agreed to ramp up production by an additional 411,000 bbl/day. So, although crude oil prices are rallying today and face plenty of geopolitical risks on the road ahead, in the absence of a major risk event coming to fruition any rallies are likely to be capped by the plentiful supply outlook.

Turning to Asia, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ruffled some feathers in the Indo-Pacific by suggesting at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore that China could be credibly seen as preparing to use military force to alter the balance of power in the region. Hegseth said that “the threat China poses is real, and it could be imminent” in an apparent reference to US intel that Xi Jinping told the Peoples Liberation Army to be prepared to invade Taiwan by 2027. In a meeting with Australian Deputy Prime Minister and Defense Minister Richard Marles, Hegseth reportedly urged Australia to up its military spending to 3.5% of GDP. Marles (who is from the Right faction of the ruling Labor Party) seemed open to the idea. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese (a man of the Left), less so. China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs blasted Hegseth over his comments.

Kevin Hassett of the Council of Economic Advisors and Scott Bessent have been suggesting that Donald Trump might hold a call with Xi Jinping this week in an attempt to progress a trade deal. China has reportedly been withholding export licenses for critical rare earth materials, in contravention of the agreement to reduce tariffs for 90-days. After a reporter seemingly bruised the President’s ego with a question about the TACO trade ( TACO = Trump Always Chickens Out) Trump announced a doubling of steel and aluminium tariffs to 50% from June 4th.

Could we be about to see Trump get tough on China again?

Tyler Durden Mon, 06/02/2025 - 12:25

Recession? Atlanta Fed Hikes US Q2 Growth Outlook To Highest Since 2021

Having 'adjusted' their model for gold imports, and on the heels of ongoing calls from the 'establishment' that a recession is coming... because OrangeManBadEconomist, The Atlanta Fed has hiked its GDPNOW forecast dramatically higher (to 4.6% from +3.87% prior) after this morning’s releases from the US Census Bureau and the Institute for Supply Management.

That would be the best growth since Q4 2021...

The swing is being driven in large part by volatility on the import front (so expect some more 'adjustments'...

Additionally, the nowcasts of second-quarter real personal consumption expenditures growth and real gross private domestic investment growth increased from 3.3 percent and -1.4 percent, respectively, to 4.0 percent and 0.5 percent.

We look forward to the likes of Liesman explaining to us why this is not real.. and just you wait and see what will happen next.

Tyler Durden Mon, 06/02/2025 - 11:49

'Free' Government Money Accounts For 19% Of All Personal Income

Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

Free money includes Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP, Social Security, and more, discussed below.

Some may object to the term “free money” but the definition of Personal Current Transfer Receipts (PCTR) is “Payments to individuals for which no current services are performed, representing a component of personal income.”

I don’t want to get into a debate over “free” based on “current services”. Instead, let’s focus on the sustainability of the current path.

Personal Current Transfer Receipts Billions of Dollars Detail

PCTR as Percent of Personal Income

PCTR as a percent of PI is now 19.29 percent and rising.

Q: What if we adjust for inflation?
A: The numbers in billions change, but the percentages don’t. They are nearly identical.

Real vs Nominal Explanation

Medicare is indexed for inflation in several ways. The income thresholds for income-related monthly adjusted amounts (IRMAA) surcharges for Parts B and D premiums are adjusted annually for inflation. Additionally, certain payment rates for providers and other aspects of Medicare, such as Part D out-of-pocket caps, are also indexed for inflation.

Social Security benefits are indexed for inflation through a process called a Cost-of-Living Adjustment (COLA). This adjustment ensures that benefits keep pace with the rising cost of living.

Medicaid is indexed for inflation to a degree. Specifically, certain aspects of Medicaid, like the federal poverty level (FPL) used to determine eligibility, are updated annually for inflation. Additionally, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) expanded Medicaid eligibility to non-elderly adults with incomes up to 138% FPL, and the federal government provides 90% financing for this expansion.

Since benefits are indexed to inflation, there is no difference in the nominal vs real percentage numbers.

Demographics

Please consider 65…What It Means for You

The year 2025 marks a significant milestone in the United States. Why? Because a record number of people will reach the age of 65. On average about 11,400 Americans will turn 65 every day of the year 2025 a phenomenon referred to as Peak 65. This demographic shift, largely driven by the baby boomer generation, will have implications for retirement planning, healthcare, and the economy at large.

By 2025, approximately 73 million baby boomers will be 65 or older, making up more than a fifth of the U.S. population. This milestone represents not only an achievement in longevity but also a shift in how we think about aging, retirement, and more. As baby boomers reach retirement age in record numbers, many will be looking at new opportunities, while others may face unexpected hurdles.

Looking Ahead

Social Security payment are poised to skyrocket. Medicare will do the same.

There are fewer replacement workers and even less with skills. Those who support “deport them all” madness need to reconsider quickly.

Deportations or not, we are on a very unsustainable path with fewer workers with no wage guarantees who support more retirees with inflation-indexed benefits.

What’s Trump Doing?

As with Biden, and every preceding president, the answer is making it worse.

Trump is angry with Republicans for wanting to cut Medicaid. And Trump wants to make Social Security payments tax free.

And on the revenue side, the latest tax bill is a monstrosity. It’s expected to add $22 trillion to the national debt over the next 10 years.

*  *  *

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ZeroHedge.

Tyler Durden Mon, 06/02/2025 - 11:40